Are you enjoying grad school?

I realized this evening, while sitting in a contemporary lit criticism and theory class, and not paying attention to a word that was being said, that, aside from my last desperately-worded post (which has resulted in many kind responses, and I thank everyone sincerely for their empathy and concern), I haven't said a thing about grad school, and I've been here and fully participatory (although that last term might need some extra defining) for about six weeks now.  If you compare my last post with all my posts leading up to the start of classes, where enthusiasm and excitement and nervousness virtually leaked from every pixel, there's a stark disparity there, and I think that deserves some explanation.  I mean, not three months ago I was confidently singing the lyrics to Linkin Park's "Waiting for the End" - "I know what it takes to move on.  I know how it feels to lie.  All I wanna do is trade this life for something new, holding on to what I haven't got" - and now I'm wondering where I went wrong.

So far, grad school has been substantially different from what I had expected, and has caused me to spend a great deal of time re-evaluating my ambitions and intentions.  It hasn't been different in an I-don't-like-it way; it's been different in a way that I had thought I would be protected against by my healthy little hoard of self-confidence and sometimes-arrogance.  It's, um, it's hard.  And not in ways that I had expected.

That's the thing that gets me over and over.  It isn't quite what I had expected.  I didn't think I would be so cravenly terrified of speaking in class.  Me!  Afraid of speaking!  I'm the person who opened up any class discussion going.  Now I sit in silence, only occasionally venturing opinions, and I second-guess every last thing that comes out of my mouth.  I didn't think that I would be so anxious that I might say the wrong thing, or make a comment or observation that would be labeled or thought of as "undergraduate-like".  I didn't think that I would have forgotten how to read critically, and ask questions, and really think about what I was reading.  I mean, this is all stuff that has been second nature to me for as long as I can remember.  There were very, very few undergraduate papers that I ever got back - either at OSU or CSUSB - that didn't have something-like-an-A on them, and the first paper that I got back here had a B+.  I nearly fell apart.

I didn't think that I wouldn't get any real feedback from my professors on my performance, in some way or another (aside from that B+ paper, I have struggled to divine whether what I'm saying is good/bad/stupid/appropriate/not interesting enough/utterly dull/sparkling from my professor's faces, because it's all I have to go by), or that I would live and die in a comment they might tangentially make about something I said.  I never thought I would care so much about what another person thought of me, and that I would shrink into myself because of the possibility of their disapproval.

It has impacted my enjoyment of school to the point that I now hate reading.  Me.  The person who has always had at least three books by her bed, and prefers to spend her time reading than doing anything else.  I go to such lengths to avoid it now that it's ridiculous.  My apartment is immaculate (and yes, those of you who know me, you understand what that means).  I have memorized the dialogue to virtually every episode of Frasier.  I walk to and from school, 2.5 miles each way, every day, just to string out the time where I'm not working on something for class.  I hide in bed, terrified, when I should be reading.

Apparently, what I'm going through is not unique.  I guess there's this sort of thing (I hate to qualify it by calling it a "disorder") called "Impostor Syndrome".  It's where people who are in challenging (in many different ways) environments are continually afraid that someone will discover that they're a fraud, that they don't belong, and that they should vacate their position.  It's particularly prevalent in academia (big surprise) - I guess even faculty deal with it.  It helps to know that other people suffer through this, but it isn't making it any easier for me to get over it.  The thing is, these people really do have long lists of accomplishments and successes, not virtual train wrecks of academic and professional careers (like me).  They went to schools like William & Mary, Duke, Dartmouth, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, Berkeley, and on and on.  They didn't go to OSU.  (This was my first experience telling people I had gone to OSU, and getting a look that had nothing to do with their football team.)  I know that I absolutely have to break through this, or my career in academia will be over before it's really begun, but when I sit in class, and listen to what other people say, and watch how the professor responds to them, and then listen to the drivel that's coming out of my mouth, and see the look of polite puzzlement on their face . . . well, it's a little bit difficult to try and access that self-confidence and arrogance that used to be there.

The thing is, there is a deep, deep well of insecurity in me anyway, which is why I have the self-confidence/arrogance mask, since that's the only way for me to get successfully through life.  Just applying to grad school took an enormous amount of courage: I was putting myself "out there" in a substantial way, asking to be judged and accepted, which was something I had never really done.  Mostly, I've preferred to hide from that kind of exposure, and the fact that I was accepted was fantastic, but then just opened up a whole new Pandora's Box.  But for some reason, I feel completely destabilized by grad school, and putting the mask on every day, just to get through classes, is becoming increasingly more difficult.

So I guess that's why I haven't written much about grad school.  I keep wondering if I should be here.  The words that Dr. Braden said when I met with him in his office - "We accepted you because of your writing sample" - and the fact that I was a wait-list . . . these things keep going around and around in my head, and I just wonder if I really do belong here, or if it wasn't just a mammoth mistake on their part, and at any moment, they'll find me out, and ask me politely and as kindly as possible to just get the hell out, and clear up some space for someone who really deserves to be here.

But hey, aside from all that, it's pretty cool.

Loneliness (Warning: Self-Pity Contained Herein)

It's been a long time since I was lonely. Really alone lonely. The kind of loneliness that doesn't seem to have any edges, but expands until it dominates your entire emotional landscape. The kind of loneliness that I ran into the arms of my ex-husband to escape. The kind of loneliness that I did escape for 10 years, but which has now resumed its place in the center of my soul, opening its arms to gather every feature of my kingdom-soul into itself.

And this time around it's harder to avoid. Back then, when I was alone, I had hope. I knew that I was young (19), and that I had plenty of time to find just the right person to keep the loneliness at bay. Now? Well, let's just say that I'm not 19 anymore, and there are many, many things that are different, and not just the fact that I no longer cling to optimism like a bloody limpet.

I have to say that reading about love and infatuation and excruciatingly-drawn-out declarations of "fine amor" in medieval romances isn't helping. I realized just how terminal the loneliness had become last night when I was walking home, and found myself making up a song that was deeply pathetic. Here are a few lines, for entertainment:

I, I miss your arms at night.
And I, I miss all the talks we had.
But I, I don't miss all those nasty fights,
The way we hated each other at times.
I, I miss your laughing face,
And I, I miss your goofy pranks.

And so on, and so on, and so on. Now, a caveat. I do not typically make up pathetic songs like this. If I make up songs, they are typically stupid and slightly inclined to hysterical humor (not hysterical in a can't-stop-laughing sense, but hysterical in a so-desperate-to-not-let-the-(fill in the dark emotion here)-eat-me sense.) Nor are they long enough to accompany me over two miles.

It seems like it should have been obvious to me just how lonely I was, but despite a few phone calls with my mom where I told her I was lonely, it wasn't clear to me that I was deeply, achingly lonely, like I haven't been since I was so desperate for love that I would do incredibly stupid things (but that's a story for another life). But the realization brought some recent behaviors into focus. Like, it might explain why I've sometimes found myself lying awake at 3:30 in the morning, with tears rolling down my face, with no real clue as to why I'm crying. Or why, when I'm home, I keep movies or Scrubs or Kingdom or Dharma and Greg on almost continuously, to the point where there is a constant noise in my apartment, even if I'm in the other room, and not really paying attention. Or why I have very long conversations with my cat (although, to be fair, I've always done that . . . except that now I get upset when he doesn't answer me).

I know that I tend to cry easily, but even when I discovered that literally every episode of the sixth season of Doctor Who found me in tears, I didn't make the connection. I just wrote it off to hormones. I mean, yes, okay, it's sad that Rory almost died (again), but the goofy pirate episode really didn't deserve racking sobs. And even the frustration engendered by the simple expedient of identifying which button to push in the old-Amy episode wasn't enough to dampen my enthusiastic sob-laden response to Rory and Amy standing on either side of the door of the TARDIS. There is just no reason for me to have cried as hard as I did.

And let's not even get started on music. Merely listening to Limp Bizkit's version of "Behind Blue Eyes" is enough to get the tears rolling, and any version of "Wicked Game" is guaranteed to destroy my ability to approach the day with eyes that don't look like I'm completely stoned. (Oh, look at that. I got started anyway.) As for emotional-roller-coaster songs like Emilie Autumn's "Castle Down" or Rise Against's "Savior" or Linkin Park's "Waiting for the End" or Stone Sour's "Hesitate" - forget it. I can't even listen to them, because then going fetal under the covers is no longer a desire. It's a necessity.

It's why I spend so little time in my apartment. My search for the perfect apartment - for a space where I could be alone, and content, and comfortable - was truly a waste of time. I thought I'd be spending so much more time here than I have. I didn't realize, when I was running far, far away from California and the (second) mess of things I'd made there, that I would be so crushingly lonely that I would spend all day on campus just to avoid being home. I spent something like three hours in the grad lounge on Thursday, talking utter nonsense with anyone would listen (poor people), because I could feel the emptiness of my apartment waiting for me. All my books and pictures and knick-knacks and cat haven't been able to fill the emptiness.

The hardest part has been dealing with the quiet certainty that has lodged itself in the back of my mind, and won't leave, like all terrible lodgers. It's the certainty that I really will be alone for the rest of my life, that I'll never love like that again, that I'll be doomed to either a series of shallow relationships, with occasional moments of happiness to stave off suicide, or to just be alone, with my long-suffering cats, who will grow exponentially into a truly massive cat colony, until I go to work wearing clothes that I've knitted of cat hair. In the daylight, I know this irrational fear for what it is, and do my best to get the lodger evicted, but at night, when I'm vulnerable, he comes back, and settles down again, quietly waiting for me to give up. Parts of me know it's utterly ridiculous, but those parts always lose the fight. I think I need to arm them with something stronger than ephemeral hope, which becomes more and more ephemeral with each lonely night that passes.

This is just utterly depressing, so I'm going to stop now. At least I've realized what's happening, and why a friendly "hello" can be enough to make me cry with gratitude. Now I just need to get a grip on myself, dye my hair orange (because hope is stronger with orange hair), and do proper battle at night, instead of hiding behind trees and boulders.

For Better or For Worse

I do not typically tackle political or religious issues in a public forum, for many sound and unsound reasons, generally having to do with not offending people because you never know with whom you're going to need to get along, for business or social purposes, and it never hurts to not offend your friends, etc., etc., et cetera. We all know that I'm fairly argumentative, and definitely not afraid of confrontation, but until recently, I had firmly resolved to keep my opinions about political/religious/economic issues to myself, unless talking with family or engaged in civilized classroom debate. Since I have, however, decided that living in Charlottesville is a golden opportunity for me to stop pretending to be someone else, and just enjoy being myself, I have thrown my old resolve out the window, and am diving happily into my argumentative, confrontational self. That being said, and being spurred by a recent argument with my ex-husband about this particular topic (which was surprising, because I had thought we were on the same page on this topic), I'm going to briefly argue in favor of gay marriage.

As a caveat, let me make it quite clear that I will not discuss religion. Being somewhat areligious, I don't feel that I have a strong enough grasp on any religious doctrine to try and refute a ban on gay marriage within that doctrine. Furthermore, I believe that any religion which denies a human being the ability to live as a human being is not a religion worth considering (and I do say that categorically). I believe in God, big "G", but that's all I'm going to say about my beliefs at this juncture. They're inconsequential in this argument, to be honest, since my premise is that the right to marry is an inherent human right, and that the denial of it is a denial of one's humanity.

By-the-by, if you find yourself becoming offended by what I write here, let me know, and I'll be more than happy to have it out with you, albeit not publicly. We'll do it over coffee, or beer, or the phone, or Skype. And don't feel like you need to continue reading. I'm not standing over you, and won't be offended if you break off in the middle of this post (or indeed, right here).

One further caveat: I'm not gay, and have no current plans to be gay, despite a few conversations I've had with my sister about it being easier to pretend I am to stave off potential male relationships for my first few years of grad school (not altogether joking; no distractions need apply). I do not, however, need to be gay to believe that denying gay people the right to marry is just straight-up wrong.

So, as I said, the thesis of my argument is that it is a right of all human beings to marry, and that denying anyone the right to marry based on their sexual orientation is a violation of that right. Now, since I have about a half-million lawyers in my family, I am certain that someone, somewhere, will start happily constructing arguments defining exceptions to my categorical statement, all probably soundly based in current legal theory, and not one of which I find convincing or, in truth, relevant.

Humans have been getting married since, literally, the dawn of their existence. Marriage hasn't always looked like it does now, and has gone through so many permutations throughout the last several thousand years that I would find it difficult to accept any one definition of what marriage is. Even were someone to say, "Well, it's two people coming together in love to declare that love for each other publicly", I'd have to argue that, no, sorry, ever heard of arranged marriages? In fact, in the right (wrong) time and place, I'd even argue that a certain marriage would be a violation of an inherent human right (freedom), but that's a different argument for a different day. The point is that, no matter what definition you use for marriage, every human being has the right to marry. This doesn't mean they have to marry, nor does it mean that they should marry. It doesn't mean that, if it's forced on them, they have to accept marriage. It just means that, should they decide that it's something they want, then it's something they should be able to do. (And for the record, I do find the notion of needing a marriage license in order to get married repugnant.)

What makes it an inherent human right? It is inherent because it is a right with which everyone is born, regardless of class, race, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, etc., etc., and it is a right because it is bound up with that most integral and essential of all human rights: the right to direct the course of one's existence, otherwise known as freedom. If you accept that human beings have the right to be free (and if you don't accept that, then I do feel deeply, deeply sorry for you), and if you accept that gay people are human beings (and if you don't, then may I please direct you to my toilet, where other pieces of shit also float), then you must accept that gay people have the right to marry. Period. The end. No more discussion about the economic impact, the social impact, the religious impact. It is irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether you believe that one can "choose" to be gay, it doesn't matter whether you believe God sanctions it or not, it doesn't matter whether you believe that it will have a negative economic impact, or that we somehow have to "protect the children" (an argument which is over-used and under-important). None of these are reasons sufficient enough to change the fact that it is an inherent human right, for better or for worse, until death parts you from this world. You may kiss the bride . . . or groom. . . .

My Breaking Heart

There are times when there are no words to express the jumbled, confused disarray of emotions that come at you in a sleet-storm. When that happens, I tend to find refuge in the word "dude". So I will once again take recourse in my comfortable, familiar epithet. Dude.

I leave for Virginia one week from today. Next Saturday, July 30th, I will hop on a plane with my mom and hopefully drugged cat, and will arrive - after about seven hours in the air/airports (same thing; they're both like demilitarized no-man's lands) - in Virginia. We'll spend the night just outside Dulles International Airport, and then the next morning, will drive down to Charlottesville to take possession of my new apartment, new job, and new life.

Yesterday, I had two ReloCubes (they're like Pods) picked up, filled with all the detritus of my life. Some bookshelves, my desk, a few chairs and tables (along with a tiny doll dresser from the 1800s that I recently refinished, so proud, a post on that later), a bunch of boxes, some pictures, and that's it. It's what I'm taking to start a new life. It's overwhelming.

Of course, it would be anti-climactic if the only thing that happened over the last few days was the picking up of some Cubes. Yes, important, but God is not without a sense of drama. Thursday night, about 11:30, as I'm trying to pack up the last few boxes and find a way to stash them all in the Cubes without them falling on my head when I open the doors in Virginia, I get a call from my ex-husband. It was not a good call.

Back in 2003, the night before Easter, when all through the apartment, not a creature was stirring, except a tiny pregnant cat crying outside our sliding glass door leading out to a large grassy hill. Because it's me, the tiny pregnant cat came inside, and the next morning - Easter - presented us (my then-husband and I) with five baby kittens. I sat and watched them arrive, one by one, and the last one, whom we named "Bundle of Love", I literally pulled from his mother's womb, since she was too exhausted to push anymore. They were our babies, and while we were able to find a home for one of them - a little blonde baby girl named "Princess" - and eventually had to take the mother to the Humane Society (two things we regret), we kept the other four, along with my Nardabeast. We called them "the bodies" - I don't remember why or where it started - and they were the most precious, wonderful things in our lives. We loved them and adored them, and when my ex became my ex, he took them. It broke my heart, because they were my children, especially since I had long believed that I wouldn't ever have children. I'm learning to deal without their presence, and was doing fairly well, until my ex's phone call.

Apparently, Bun - our Bundle of Love - the sweetest and most endearing of all the cats, the shyest, most timid, most darling little gray cat beast, was lying on his side, crying plaintively, and breathing heavily, with his little pink tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. My ex was wondering what he should do, and because I was distracted with packing, I advised him impatiently to find an emergency animal hospital, and take him in. Of course, nothing is that simple with my ex, but after several heated conversations, he finally got him in.

And called me 45 minutes later, crying, telling me that he thought that Bun might die.

The bottom dropped out of my world, and I ran out the door, thinking only that I might be too late to see my little Bun one last time. It was, of course, completely unexpected, as he's only 8, and should have many, many years of happy, pampered life left. But no. No, apparently, at this point, the best estimate that anyone can give us is 6-18 months.

My little Bun-creature, who has the sweetest heart of all my bodies, has cardiomyopathy. It's the kind of thing in humans that leads - immediately - to pacemakers or heart transplants. In cats, the options are limited to medications. Cardiomyopathy is where the heart - one giant muscle - becomes enlarged, and thus pumps blood less efficiently. Thursday night Bun was essentially having a heart attack.

Since then, we have also discovered ($4,500 later), that he is anemic, and the poor little guy has spent the last few days - and will spend the weekend - in a vet hospital. He received a full blood transfusion today, because apparently there was so little oxygen left in his blood that he was suffocating. And on Monday, my ex and I will meet with an internal specialist, who will tell us why/how Bun became anemic and cardiomyopathic. And then we'll have to make a decision. And it's a decision I did not imagine myself making anytime soon.

It breaks my heart, and makes all this Virginia stuff seem very, very far away. My little Bun-heart is dying.

Home, Sweet . . . What the Hell?

Oh, my God. You have got to be kidding! How is it that it is so difficult to actually find livable space in Charlottesville?! This is the first strike against my new home - the fact that, though I will be leaving in FIVE WEEKS, I do not yet actually have a home.

Wait, you ask. What about that place you scored when you were visiting in April?

Excellent question, I answer. Let me explain.

When I went out in April and scored my little apartment with its postage-stamp kitchen, I fully intended to live there, at the very least for a year. It wasn't paradise, no, but it seemed like it would be fine. Of course, since I knew nothing about the area, I was taking it all on faith, and I have since discovered that faith can really screw you over if you trust everything to it (pay attention, radical Muslims). While I'm there I'm in such a frantic panic that I secure the place without thinking, terribly afraid that someone else will get it if I dither. Once I get home, my brain switches on, and I think, hey! You know what? I bet there are probably reviews on the interweb about what it's like to live there.

There were. They were terrifying. Thank you, www.apartmentratings.com, for keeping me from being potentially murdered in my bed.

So, this apartment complex had marketed itself as a graduate-student-friendly housing solution to noisy party-hungry undergrads, which are what usually infest campus, or near-campus, housing. This marketing plan even included strict Nazi-like warnings about sound, such as, anything louder than 55 db (which is pretty freakin' quiet, let me tell you), will be punished by firing squad, and any "gatherings" larger than 5 people will be punished by lampshade-making. I thought, hey, all well and good, I'm in this place to study and learn and be a successful grad student, not party. I won't be in any danger of lampshades!

Well, they did a great job marketing, but apparently fell through on the follow-through. Reading through the reviews quickly assured me that if I did live there, I would fall prey to fallout from neighboring domestic fracas, drug deals, and the always-delightful case of mistaken-hooker-identity. Comments like "scary, gross . . . worst year ever", "dirty, noisy, and over-priced", or my favorite "run, run, run", were just a prelude to statements about how, well, dirty, noisy, scary, and gross it was, and how I should run, run, run away. So it seemed like the most prudent thing to do, despite the fact that I had signed a lease and given them a $450 security deposit, was to pay attention to the 15 (of 16) negative reviews, and run the hell away.

So I did.

In the process of relinquishing that lease, I found a charming post on my new English grad student listserv. Boasting a darling 1-bedroom apartment in a "geographic hot spot" (still not sure what the hell that means, actually), I started to talking to a fellow incoming English grad student who was full of promises and excitement, and thought, "Hey, this sounds like a good idea." So began two months of broken promises, confusion, and downright irritation and legal-inducing action. I will not bore you with the details, since they're not really that interesting; suffice it to say that apartment #2 is now no longer a home-sweet-home, and I am looking for apartment #3. (I will tell you, though, that the landlord wanted the rent 10 days before the first of the month. Yes. I'm serious.)

Third time's the charm, right? I certainly freakin' hope so!

So I've spent the morning desperately searching Charlottesville's few housing websites to find somewhere to live. It's a small town - 40,000 people, swelling to 60,000 when school's in - so there aren't a whole lotta options. So far I've found 4 potential places (all significantly more than I expected to spend ($150 more a month is significant when your estimated income is about $1,400/month)), none of which are really ideal. One of them requires an hour bus ride to get to school (no car, remember?), one is definitely closer, but isn't on the bus line, which means I'd be walking in the winter, and one of them is just tiny (400 square feet). The best - and closest - place is cute, reasonably affordable, and available now. So I've submitted my application, and it's all just a matter of waiting to see if they'll approve it, and then start that whole lease-signing-security-deposit thing again.

Call this a learning experience. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to have learned, but I'm sure I'll take something from it, if only an appreciation for how truly lyrical some people can be when describing housing horrors. If you're interested in some fun reading, here are the reviews for apartment #1.

Getting Ready to Say Good-Bye to California

I think it's time to start the good-bye process. That's the nice thing about having a few months before you leave somewhere for an extended period of time - you can do all those "last things" that will allow you to create a series of lovely memories to take out and handle when you're feeling lonely and homesick. This last weekend - Father's Day - I enjoyed what will probably be a last Father's Day for awhile with my family in Pasadena, starting at Louise's Trattoria with my mother, father, and brother, and then (when my parents had to go to a badly-timed baptism in LA), began an evening of drinking and poorly-played pool in a pleasant drunken haze with my brother, starting at Lucky Baldwin's in Pasadena, and ending with an impromptu dinner at Barney's Beanery (Irish-Style Omelette and Newcastle was a new - and delightful - combination for me) and the always-fun atheist-full conversation which inevitably accompanies beer and eggs.

Last weekend was my nephew's first birthday, which was wonderful, and beautifully orchestrated by my sister: a taco bar, monkey piñata, scores of friends and family, and a monkey-shaped cake which Lindsay and I were up late frosting with squishy pastry bags and tiny star tips, smoothing buttercream frosting with toothpicks and milk . . . oh, never again. I don't know when I'll be here for his birthday again, and it was very poignant, knowing that it was his first, and probably the last I'll see for awhile.

Next weekend is the Fourth of July weekend, which means the lake and sun and the boat and all sorts of enjoyable, hedonistic delights (probably including more beer). Then the weekend after that is a good-bye to Little Tokyo, with sushi and drinking and ramen, oh, my! And the weekend after that is the annual family jaunt to the spectacular gem of June Lake, nestled in the Sierra Nevadas, although I'm hoping sincerely that I won't miss it next summer, since it's something we've been doing for almost 30 years now, and is a sacred tradition. Then . . . after that . . . I have one more weekend, and then I'm gone. At 11:30 AM PST, July 30th, I'll be flying out of Ontario International Airport, and then at 9:10 PM EST, I'll be flying into Dulles International Airport, for the start of something new and wonderful and utterly exciting.

It's almost terrifying how few weekends there are left, and how much I'm going to miss everyone. But, to be perfectly honest, there's so much that I won't be missing. California is a great place, but despite the fact that I was "born and raised" here, and have even spent 5 years here as an adult, I've never really loved it the way some people do. There are parts of it that I like, but, well, I'm not in love with it. Aside from the fact that there are so many people, and I am not a crowded-city kind of person, there is so little of the natural beauty left in the populated areas. I miss the open, green spaces of Ohio, and when I was in Virginia, and saw it again, I got homesick for the green. I hate the traffic, and the fact that it takes ages to get anywhere. Life is so fast-paced, it's as though there's never any time to stop and think, as if you're not doing something at every minute of the day you're wasting your life. I could go on, but why? Mostly these are just things that I say when people ask me why I don't love California. I've never really loved it, and there's no easy way for me to explain why.

People do keep asking me when I'll be coming back, as though there were ever any question that I wouldn't. It's funny the assumptions they make - as though this time in Virginia was a brief period in exile, and that I can't wait to come back. Of course, when I moved to Ohio, that's how I felt, too. I had never lived anywhere other than California before then, and I really did view my time in Ohio as exile. I remember on a visit in 2004, in fact, 2 years before we moved back, we went to the beach, and I wrote in the sand, "I WILL come back." When a sure-thing job opened up in California, I didn't hesitate a minute, and ran back as fast as I could. And what did I find? That everything I had left California to escape was waiting right there for me, with open arms, to drag me back down into the muck and unhappiness I thought I had left behind for good.

It's one of those painful things you have to learn when you're "growing up". It's not that you can't go home again; it's that you shouldn't go home again. Well, maybe not you. But certainly me. Essentially, I won't be coming back to California. My family knows, too. Not in the obvious, let's-talk-about-it kind of way, but in the sad, quiet way you know things. They've all alluded to it a few times, and in a desire to be honest, I haven't contradicted their allusions. My father was very sad, actually, when he heard that I would be going to Virginia. When he heard how long it would be, it was quite cute how he said, "Well, that's too long. We'll have to talk about it." I think they all know that it means that once I leave, I won't be coming back except for visits.

On the train a few months ago, coming home late from work one night, I started talking with a German professor at one of the Claremont colleges. She's from Germany, but has been here for many years. I asked her if it was hard being away from family, and she said that when she was younger, it wasn't quite so hard, but now that she was older - and they were older - it was especially difficult. I also know that spending your life away from your family is difficult. My aunt has lived on the East Coast for all of my life, anyway, and I know that the isolation from her family - despite the fact that she's built a beautiful life for herself there - has been hard on her. She's very excited, in fact, that I'll be out there, and I'm actually pleased that she's so close. She's in Annapolis, which is only a few hours drive from Charlottesville (and which takes you through some of the prettiest country), so I envision many little trips back and forth.

I'm digressing. The point is that I know that it is difficult to be away from my family - I was away for 5 years! - but that at some point, I have to make a decision: to live my life for my family, or for myself. It's a difficult decision, but I know that, ultimately, I'll decide to live it for myself, and that I'll have to keep my relationship with my family strong through mediums other than frequent visits. I'm lucky that things like Skype and Facebook and email exist; they create ways to interact on a personal and intimate level with people, and while they certainly aren't the same as a face-to-face visit, they can't still be wonderful. Even the phone! My mother and I aren't 45 minutes away from each other now, and we can still spend 2 hours on the phone - easily - though we'll see each other the next weekend, or we saw each other a few days before. So I know everything will be okay; we'll get by.

Still, it isn't easy to say good-bye. I know that I'll shed many tears when it comes time to leave, and probably many before then. But at least I get time to say good-bye, and time to do a few "last things", so on those nights when I miss my family so much it hurts, I can think of them, and feel like I'm home with them, even though I'm 2,600 miles away.

A Visit to Virginia - Part I

The Rotunda of the University of Virginia. A statue of Homer is in the foreground.

Wow. Virginia is gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. I had forgotten how much I missed greenery, but it all came home the moment we left the cocoon-like embrace of Dulles. Even though it was 6:00 in the morning (3:00 AM in my real world, the west coast), and Lindsay and I hadn't slept since the night before (why do I always think red-eyes are a good idea, and then, after flying one, swear that I won't ever do it again?!), I was immediately entranced with and refreshed by the spring greenness of northern Virginia. It didn't hurt that it was a gorgeously cool, clear day, and I'm pretty certain that by the time we reached Charlottesville (about three-and-a-half hours later), my sister was thoroughly tired of my exclamations, "Oh, it's so beautiful! Look, isn't it gorgeous, Lindsay? Don't you think it's so pretty! It's so green! I've missed this so much! Oh, wow, Linz, look at those trees!" Yeah, see, admit it - you're already annoyed, and you didn't have to listen to it for three-plus hours. But seriously. When I moved to Ohio, it was the thing that first made me love it - the sheer plethora of vert - and the green was the first thing about Virginia that captured my heart. I felt at home, as though my soul had lived there since I left Ohio, waiting for me among the trees and meadows, and that these last five years in California I'd only had a loaner soul. I'm sure that in one of my past lives I was either a dryad or druid.

None of the pictures that I have of my trip -- which are mostly of people and places -- can even begin to do justice to the beauty of a Virginia spring, but a few of them can perhaps give a glimpse of it:

Looking down from the Rotunda towards the "Corner", a collection of shops, bars, and restaurants.

View from the steps of the Rotunda. The statue is Thomas Jefferson, who founded and built the university in 1819.

Looking up towards the Rotunda.

Those are just a few of the 600-some pictures I took while there. Of course, a disproportionate number of those were of my nephew (if you have an absolutely adorable subject like that, it's hard not to indulge yourself), and this is probably one of my all-time favorites:

My monkey-face in the bath.

I had such a great time trying to make Andrew laugh and then get the laugh on camera. But as soon as I put the camera up to my face, he would inevitably frown. So I have several series of pictures that are off-center smiles, with something important like the top of Andrew's head cut off, followed by perfectly-centered frowns. This was one of the few times he obliged me by laughing while the camera was up to my face. Anyway. I digress.

I am in love with Virginia, and cannot WAIT to begin school. The campus is beautiful, the people in the department friendly and downright awesome, I've got an apartment that is kinda sorta cute, near campus, the gym, and a dining hall (more on that in a minute or two), downtown is fantastic, the Corner fun, and the atmosphere, all-in-all, perfect for me. Of course, it'll be interesting to see how much time I actually have to sample the downtown culture, Corner, and other areas of Charlottesville (or C'ville, as they all call it, which I hate, since I think "Charlottesville" is very pretty, and "C'ville" downright ugly), since I know I'm going to be super-busy, but I love it, and am itching to move and get settled in! I even - briefly - considered moving early (my lease begins in July) and giving up our annual June Lake trip, but I came to my senses. I can't give up June Lake. That's heresy. My family would probably disown me.

So, anyway. Our trip was wonderful. It was lightening-fast (I could have stayed for several weeks), but I got the important thing taken care of: I found my apartment. As I said, it's kinda-sorta cute, but hey, for under $700, what do you expect? It's a 60s/70s-built brick building, so, square and uninteresting, but it's 650 square feet (that's right, Bill Gates! I know you're jealous!), which is actually perfect for me (I hate cleaning), and the main living room area is big enough for my desk, my bookcases, a couch, and a dining table. Since the noise ordinance for the area is Nazi-strict (seriously, 55 decibels or lower, and if you have 15 people or more at your apartment, it's grounds for immediate eviction), I don't anticipate the size of my apartment putting any serious kinks in my social life. The kitchen, though . . . wow. It's like a postage stamp. Look:

My postage-stamp kitchen.

That's it. There's no counter on the other wall. Just a couple inadequate shelves (which I will probably take out and put something useful like this in their place). That is the sum total of my kitchen. Look! No dishwasher! What's even more important is that I'm not sure my half-size baking sheets will fit in that oven. I may have to get some quarter-size sheets. This will put a serious crimp in my baking, which is unfortunate. There isn't even room on the counter for a microwave. I may have to ignore their strict "no modifications to the interior" rule and mount my microwave above the counter.

Anyway, it is because of this postage-stamp kitchen that I have decided that I will be eating on campus quite a bit. So much, in fact, that I'm probably going to get a dining plan. Yes! I have decided to accept with grace the fact that I absolutely hate to cook (cook, I said, not bake), and let other people cook for me. Plus, like I said, there's the Corner, and well, look at what I had for dinner at this place called Michael's Bistro and Taphouse one night:

Brie with honey, almonds, and fruit.

Portobello mushroom with spinach, roasted tomatoes, julienned russet potatoes, goat cheese, and a balsamic vinegar reduction.

Brown-ale cheesecake. This was so good that although Linz and I originally ordered one slice to share, we had to order another. It was that good.

The beer menu. Outstanding. I will definitely go back.

So, because of places like this and the postage-stamp, I will not be eating at home much. And if it means I only eat two meals a day, then so be it. I need to diet anyway.

The rest of the apartment is perfect, though. It'll be just me and my cat, Nard, and, of course, my books. I have decided that they'll be going with me, if nothing else does, since they're my only friends, and I may as well accept that with grace, along with my hating to cook (grace is going to be very important here). So they're all going, and will probably overrun my apartment (especially since I have no intentions of ceasing to purchase any more during the next six-ish years), but whatever. Better an apartment overrun with books than rats, right?

I realize I haven't posted many pictures of the campus. I'll do that next post. This one is already unforgivably long and meandering. But at least it has visual appeal.

Good-Bye, Junior

Today was a rather emotion-filled day. Well, not all of it. Just the last hour of it. The earlier part of the day was actually shit-boring-tedious, like all my days at work (which I just realized I've never discussed here . . . I'll have to do a post one day on what it's been like working as an admissions coordinator for a graduate school while doing my own admissions process to other grad schools). But this evening I did something that made me sad and nostalgic and melancholy: I sold my car. Well, perhaps not sold outright. More like traded for past debts acquired from a couple of quarters of post-bac work, living expenses, and bail-outs. But all the same, my car -- a car that I got when he was two years old, and have had for seven years -- is no longer my car.

I got Junior in 2004. My dad had bought him brand-spankin' new in 2002, and although he loved him, he wanted something that was a little more comfortable and gas-efficient for that grueling drive up and down "the hill" -- the 20-mile trek into and out of the San Bernardino Mountains, where my parents have lived since 1994. It's a trek that puts more than miles on cars -- it puts miles on drivers. So he splashed out on a BMW, which ended up in my mom's hands about two months after he bought it (he took her Honda Pilot) -- a foregone conclusion as far as my siblings and I were concerned. We all thought it amusing that they even pretended that the Beamer was for him, but I digress.

So in 2004, my parents did the incredibly generous thing of giving me Junior -- a cute little white Honda CRV. My mom and brother drove it out from California (I think they both still have nightmares from that trip), and my at-the-time husband and I christened him "Bradley Junior" after me ol' dad. And Junior became our go-to guy. He had great clearance for snow (although we did get stuck a few times in three-foot-deep drifts), 4WD, good traction, was comfy, had plenty of room for all our crap (like the carriers of three yowling cats), but still got good gas mileage, and was kind of sporty and fun. Junior saw a lot of driving. One of our favorite things to do when we were in Ohio (and in California, too, although not as much) was to go on drives. We'd just get in the car and go -- north, south, east, or west, it didn't matter. And we'd talk, and stop at little gas stations or convenience stores for munchies, and watch the Ohioan countryside roll past. We got lost a lot (my ex never had a fantastic sense of direction), but we always found our way back.

Junior took us to school every day, and acquired two generations of Ohio State stickers: his first a sticker placed proudly on the rear window by my mom the day she rolled into Columbus with Junior and my brother, ready to hand him -- well, both hims, probably -- off to his new parents; the second placed reverentially by me on the replaced rear window after a couple of prats smashed it to get an empty computer monitor box. He also acquired a huge "RAMMSTEIN" sticker (gone and not replaced -- it really was enormous), a smaller Rammstein cross on one side window, and a Slipknot "S" on another side window, as well as a couple of Buckeye bead necklaces, a Rammstein necklace, and a grad tassel all hanging from the rearview mirror. (Yes, I like Rammstein. Yes, I will be seeing them May 22nd when they make one of their rare US appearances.) He became habitually covered in pet fur -- dog or cat, take your pick, I have a traveling menagerie -- scratches on the dashboard where I put my feet up during long drives, and now has tiny little pockmarks of rust, which is apparently what you get living in a state where salt + snow = short life for cars. He has a permanent ice scraper and set of chains in the back, old parking permits from Ohio State in the glove compartment, and collections of Nalgene water bottles under the seats.

I'll still ride in Junior for the next few months, of course, since he's been traded to one of the people with whom I currently live, but he's no longer mine. Why did I trade/sell him? Well, for one thing, I'm such a naughty driver that my car insurance is $178/month (no, seriously, it really is -- and please note, I said "naughty", not "bad"). That is not something I will be able to afford on my sparse $1400/month stipend. Then there's the price of gas -- $4.11 f*&%in' a gallon, REALLY? -- which I can also not afford. And then, of course, there's all the little maintenance costs of a car -- tires, oil changes, new windshield wipers -- other stuff I . . . just . . . can't . . . afford (I am going to be so poor). It was the smart/necessary thing to do. But it still makes me sad.

This car carried me and three of my five cats across the country, when my ex and I moved from Ohio to California. For five days, 16 hours a day, Junior absorbed the yowling and crying and howling of three pissed-off cats, across 10 states, with music blaring out of the six-disc CD changer (I swear, by the time we reached California, I was completely deranged). He took me up and down "the hill" when I lived in Lake Arrowhead and worked in San Bernardino. He carried my things from our house to my new place of residence when I got divorced. I've sobbed in him, laughed in him, been grumpy in him -- although I don't think I've ever done the naughty in him. He's been my friend, always reliable, always there, always supportive.

Good-bye, Junior. I know that your new owner will take care of you, although he won't love you the way that I did. And because of that, I feel very, very guilty.

Moving Trauma

I have become suddenly overwhelmed by the amount of things that I need to do before I move to Virginia to start what I am coming to think of as Phase 4 of my life (Phase 1: Pre-Marriage; Phase 2: Marriage; Phase 3: Limbo; Phase 4: Grad School). Why suddenly? Yes, that's an excellent question. It shouldn't be sudden. I have known for a full week now (oh, dear God, has it only been a week? Seriously? That can't be right. . . .) that I will be moving to Virginia, and leaving the frustrating delights of California for a six-year-possibly-plus sojourn in the South. (Yes, Virginia is considered -- or considers itself -- the South. I know that's going to be a bit of a culture shock, but that's for a different post.)

So much to do! So much to think about, and figure out! And so much to figure out just on the moving front! Should I rent a UHaul and drive myself, my books, and my few pieces of furniture out? Or should it be Budget, or Penske? I spent a terrifyingly illuminating hour on the interweb today reading about the horrors people have experienced using the three aforementioned truck rental companies, and have my own horror story about Penske -- again, for another post. Or should I sell virtually everything, and ship the few things that I truly care about out, and then just live on boxes and carpet until I can buy new stuff? Or should I borrow someone's truck, and pack what I can into the truck, and then do boxes and carpet until I can get new things?

And seriously? How the f*** is moving so expensive?!

Let me explicate. After the divorce, I took approximately half of what my husband and I had managed to accumulate in our 9+ years of marriage, as well as some things that I had had before we married. This didn't amount to much -- I was able, after divorcing, to fit it all into a 10' x 10' storage unit, with PLENTY of room left over. My worldly possessions now amount to a few bookcases, a coffee table, two desks (one a wicked antique rolltop desk (which will be for sale, by the way), and the other a thoroughly modern, enormous computer desk, which I will be taking with me), a few side tables, and . . . oh, yeah, about 2,000 books. Not to mention a cat and his paraphernalia, some cross-stitch stuff, tons of pictures and doo-dads and knick-knacks, and then about 12 boxes of Christmas decorations, and, of course, something like eight boxes of kitchen-related stuff -- a full set of red and white wine glasses, champagne flutes, Wedgwood wedding china, baking stuff. . . .

You know, as an aside, I have quite a bit of "stuff", but very little of it actually PRACTICAL stuff. I mean, take the china. I have eight full settings of Wedgwood's India china (gorgeous stuff, I love it, and will never part with it), along with crystal wine goblets, sterling silver flatware, serving dishes, the lot. However, do I have everyday dishes? No. Glasses? No. Oh, I have some mugs, and a few random pieces of glassware, but dishes? No. Same thing with pots and pans and stuff. I have tons and tons and tons of baking stuff -- cookie sheets, Silpats, cookie scoops, measuring cups, cookie cutters (seriously, something like 300 cookie cutters), stoneware flats, all sorts of crap. But pots and pans? No. I have one Le Creuset 12-inch cast iron frying pan, a 10-inch Calphalon saute pan, a 3-quart sauce pot, and, um, oh! A double-boiler. And that is it.

So here I am, with all of these random remnants of a once-established life, and not with any of the things that I'll probably really need (like a bed; I don't have one of those), and yet, somehow, despite my utter lack of large pieces of furniture and a real paucity of space-sucking items, I am finding it almost impossible to move to Virginia for under $5,000! Seriously! Now, tell me, how is that possible?! It find it utterly baffling. And that doesn't take into account doing things like buying a bed, or a couch, or other pieces of furniture I was hoping to have to make life, um, livable (I guess those floor cushions at Crate and Barrel are going to become my primary method of keeping my butt off cold winter floors), nor does it include important things like deposit and first month's rent on the apartment I'm hoping to find at the end of month, or first month's living expenses, or books for class, school supplies. . . .

Ugh. The notion of getting rid of everything and starting new has such appeal when I look at it all like this. Yet . . . my books . . . and Nana's little muffin tins . . . and Mom's cheese plates . . . and the still lifes (lives?) that my Aunt Joanie did before she became famous . . . and all my little pictures and candles and tiny sterling silver tea set that I got from Williamsburg when I was 10. . . .

This is an impossible dilemma. And I only have three months to sort it all out. Because come July, I need to be packing, and moving, and going! God help me. And God help those poor souls who have to deal with me over the next three or four months.

Accepted to UVA!

Wow. So much has happened since my last post, and I'm still not sure that I've really processed it. I mean, I've talked it over with other people, I've sat here thinking about it, but I don't think I've really, REALLY processed it -- despite the fact that I've started a "To Do" list for it.

I was accepted to the University of Virginia. That exceptionally nice email that I got from Dr. Braden was the prelude to an even nicer and heart-stopping phone call that I received on March 30th. I was at work when the call came, and it literally took every ounce of self-control I had not to run around the place shrieking at the top of my lungs and laughing like a maniacal twit. Not that I haven't laughed a lot and giggled and grinned until my mouth felt as though it were going to fall into my lap. I've done lots of that. But very little shrieking . . . although I did let go one great, whacking "Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" in the car when I left for the day, and started laughing, which one of my co-workers said she could hear down the street. . . .

Anyway. That's it; it's true. I'm going to UVA. I'm going to UVA! Screw the Emerald City! I'm going to be a in a full-time PhD program! With funding and everything! That's the part that I think I'm having the hardest time accepting. The fact that the 10th-ranked school in the country -- SERIOUSLY! -- is going to be investing over $200,000 in me, just so that I can earn my PhD, is a little bit hard to believe. That must mean that they have a lot of faith in me. And why? Based on what? A few letters of recommendation, a writing sample, a personal statement, some grades? Based on all that, they've decided that I'm worth the investment of all this time and money? The only other people who've invested that much in me were my parents -- and I don't think they tallied it all up at the beginning, when they first had me, like UVA has done. (In fact, I think if you asked my parents, they would probably say they'd have reconsidered it had they known how expensive -- both monetarily and emotionally -- I'd be.)

Which makes me wonder, what is wrong with these people? Have I pulled the wool over their eyes? What did they see in my application that made them believe that I would be worth the risk of the investment? This is an honest question, because I really don't know. But they didn't make their decision blind-folded. In his last email to me, Dr. Braden said:

I've very glad you will be joining us. It was clear from your file that your story is not the usual one, and that you've worked very hard over the last several years to fit yourself for top-level graduate work. The writing you sent us convinced us that you've done so successfully, and I'm very glad that things have worked out.

Ha! Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!! VALIDATION! (Must be said in the elongated, overly-dramatic style of Braveheart.) I swear by all that is holy, I will remember this for the rest of my life. I really, truly will. It will be the first time that someone who has NEVER met me before, and has never heard my story, and knows nothing about me except what I've sent them, decided that I was intelligent, hard-working, and capable of doing something super-challenging. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! (Break for a few minutes of demented, Frankensteinian laughter.)

Excuse me. I'm back.

So, then, of course, after reading that, I have to wonder -- what did I say that convinced them that I was ready? I went back over what I had written in my personal statement, and I still don't know. What in there convinced UVA, but somehow didn't manage to say anything to the other schools to which I applied?

Who knows. Who cares? I'm going to UVA! I'm off to start a new future, with all sorts of interesting people. To learn and learn and learn and learn, and continue learning some more! It's a wonderful, wonderful place to be, with lots of things for me to see; I cannot wait until I get to go! It's off to the wonderful UVA!

Yeah. I'm a great big dork. But so what?! I'm no longer in limbo! I'll be a full-time grad student, in an excellent program, with excellent people, an excellent stipend, and exciting opportunities for an excellent future.

It's about freakin' time.

The Waiting List

So I've spent the last few days shouting all those imbecilic things that people shout when they're really happy -- "Yee-ha!" "Woo-hoo!" "Yahoooooo!" Why? I shall tell you why. It's story time, children.

On Sunday, I received an email from the Director of Graduate Admissions at the University of Virginia. Dr. Professor Gordon Braden. (Okay, just Dr. or Prof. -- this isn't Germany.) It seriously was, like, oh my God, the best email, like, ever. (Yes. It was necessary.) It was probably a form email (even though it seemed personalized, but come on, I write personalized-seeming form emails all the freakin' time), but it still made me super happy. Here's the meat of it:

I'm writing to you about your application to the doctoral program in English at the University of Virginia. I realize it's been a while since you sent in that application; we've had quite a large number of files to work through, and we've found the decisions particularly difficult. In that highly competitive field, though, we were especially impressed by what you sent us. What I can tell you at this point is that you are on a very short waitlist for admission. I'm sorry not to be giving you a final answer one way or another, but we are tightly constrained by finances in making actual offers, since our policy is not to offer anyone admission to our doctoral program without a full package of financial support, and we can only fund 12 of those. I wanted to get in touch to let you know of our great interest in your application, check to see if you are indeed still interested in us (as I very much hope you are), and see if you have any questions I might be able to answer right now.

Do you see why I've been shouting all those imbecilic rejoicements? I've been put on a waiting list!!! And, what's even better, from a later email of Dr. Braden's, I am in the top 5 on that waiting list. That gives me a very, very good shot.

But here's what's making me really happy. It's not that I have a very good shot, because I'm very realistic, and I know that being waitlisted -- even being in the top 5 of the waitlist -- does not guarantee that I will be accepted, and that there's still a good shot that I won't get a place. So it isn't the waitlist that is making me so very, very insanely happy (although, of course, I'm back in that place where I have hope, which is a sad place to be, because it's better not to have hope when there's really no hope). It's the fact that someone has read my application, and has actually considered me for admission. There's one line that I read over and over and over again: "In that highly competitive field, though, we were especially impressed by what you sent us." That's the one. You know why? Because it's validation. It means that someone has read my application (or a committee of someones), and hasn't completely laughed, and thought, "This chick is insane for even thinking of applying." Up to this point, I've been having this conversation in my head. It goes something like this:

"So, I see you've applied to our graduate school."

"Yes, I have. I'm extremely interested in this school . . . "

"Yes, yes, thank you. We've had a large number of applicants this year -- in fact, we've received approximately 300 applications, and we're only able to fund about 12 spots. Tell us -- why should we accept you? You aren't a particularly good applicant, in fact. Let's take a look at your application. . . . Hmmmmm. Well, I see that you did reasonably well on your General GRE, but not outstandingly well on your Subject GRE -- 660? That's only the 76th percentile."

"Yes, well, you know, it was a very difficult test, and even though I spent a great deal of time preparing for it, there were several obscure--"

"Yes, well, I do have applicants who have scored in the 80th percentile and above, so I'm afraid that doesn't help your application. So let's take a look at your transcripts -- oh! Hmmm. I see that your GPA from Ohio State is less than a 3.0?"

"Yes, well, that's something I addressed in my personal statement. You see, I was married during my undergraduate years, and it was a very difficult marriage -- in fact, we're divorced now. I did do well in my major classes, as you can see, but I had also planned on doing a different major before I finally settled on English -- Microbiology, as you can see -- which required lots of math and science classes, and I have to say, I'm not," with a small, deprecatory laugh, "wonderful at math. Also, I took some time off, and then went back to school, and took classes specifically to prepare for graduate studies-- "

"Yes, I see, that, but at California State University, San Bernardino, which does not have the same reputation as Ohio State."

"Yes, I know that, but I did still get a 3.94 GPA, and that included master's-level classes. I know that CSUSB doesn't have the same reputation, but there were some excellent faculty there, who demanded just as much of me as did my professors at OSU."

So this is the conversation I have with myself. It goes on and on, of course, often talking about my personal statement and writing sample, but I won't torment you any further. Let's just say that I'm fairly certain that this entire application process has very seriously demented me. I mean, I know I was slightly demented to begin with, but this has just sent me over the edge. Very little that I think about lately has nothing to do with grad school. Yes -- you read that correctly, and I wrote it correctly. I have become kinda male in my single-mindedness, except that instead of sex, about once a minute I think about grad school.

I won't lie and say it doesn't also dominate my conversation. I try not to let it, but again, it's kinda like being a guy -- if it's what you think about more than anything else, it takes a hell of a lot of self-control not to converse about it . . . and I don't have the lifetime of self-control that most men develop when it comes to sex. So, yes, I obsess about grad school. But is it any wonder? I mean, the rest of my life will be affected -- changed -- by the decisions that I receive in the next few months. Acceptances, funding -- it will all change the course of my future, as nothing else has except for getting married . . . and getting divorced.

Oh, Lord. I have no idea what the point of this post is/was, except that I'm really excited that I've been put on a waitlist. It's a small bit of validation, that will get me through the next round of application decisions. I will just be very, very happy when this is all over.

Three Emotions

So, lately I've been experiencing one of three emotions: a sick, desperately-certain terror that takes up residence in the pit of my stomach, engendered by the knowledge that I will not be accepted to any of the seven schools to which I applied; a wild, flaring hope that is almost worse than the sick feeling, because it brings with it its own nausea, and I have to block out everything else in order not to throw up; or a numbness, where everything is muffled by cotton wool, and all other emotions are drowned in a lake of apathy. For the last month and a half -- since the second week of January -- I've been waiting . . . and waiting . . . and waiting . . . and waiting to hear from grad schools. My last applications were sent to meet the January 1st deadline, and since then I've just been waiting. I've only heard from one school -- University of Wisconsin, Madison -- and that was a firm denial. Nothing polite about it, either. Just a check of the website, and a "Denied" link telling me that my application was not accepted. No reasons, no soothing boilerplate about the number of qualified applicants and the paucity of available spots. When I saw that, I really did want to throw up, and it took me a few minutes to bring my heavings under control.

I vacillate between thoughts about my unutterable stupidity for applying to a bunch of schools that, as my ex assures me, I really have no business asking for acceptance from, and thoughts that maybe one of them, somewhere, will actually like my personal statement and writing sample, and will give me the chance that I so desperately, desperately want. Cornell, University of Toronto, Notre Dame, the aforementioned University of Wisconsin, University of Texas, Austin, University of Virginia, and University of Indiana. . . . The thing is, none of these are really back-up schools, and I am learning that I really, really should have applied to about 100 back-up schools. I guess I just got carried away, believing that if this was really meant to be, that I would be accepted, and that all the cards would finally show a full house.

There's this website that is, as a friend put it, like crack to a crack addict. It's called The Grad Cafe, and among other things, it offers applicants the opportunity to post their results. So if you are a button-pushing maniac, like myself, you can refresh the page 50 times a day (and sometimes more frequently, just in case), to get real-time updates on the schools to which you've applied. That's how I knew, before I even checked the website, that I hadn't been accepted to University of Wisconsin. Obsessively clicking "refresh" led me to the post stating that "all those who have been accepted have received their notifications", and that it was all over bar the clean-up of drunken-spectator vomit. It's also how I know that I probably won't be going to Notre Dame. When I read that, back in the first week of February, a few people had gotten phone calls with offers of acceptance, and my phone didn't ring . . . well, let's just say that my hopes for Notre Dame now center around a potential wait-list.

There are also the forums, where you can chat with other sick, desperate people like yourself, and hate those who have been accepted. When I saw that one of the people who had been accepted to Notre Dame had been accepted as a medieval lit person, I congratulated them, then made a little doll with their Grad Cafe username and avatar pasted on it, and spent the next few hours poking pins and needles into it. They've got my place, dammit, but at least they'll hurt for it, and won't enjoy a second of it.

The terrifying thing -- the REALLY terrifying thing -- that I've learned from this site is that there are some people who are in their third go-round! They've done this -- twice -- with no acceptances, and have still mustered up the git-and-go to do it a third time. Frankly, I figure I can do this once more, and if that's that, and I'm not accepted anywhere, then that is God's way of telling me to find something else to do with my life, because academia ain't gonna be it. I cannot imagine finding the testicular verve to pony up the time, money, and emotional fortitude required to do this a third time. I was talking to one lost soul who's applied to 11 schools (third time around), and is currently 0-11. I'm hoping for her sake that she gets in somewhere -- unless, of course, one of the schools to which we've both applied (and there are a few) offers her a place instead of me. I have my limits of generosity of spirit.

I have learned one helpful thing from this site. There is a school that I didn't apply to, that it sounds like I should apply to, ASAP. It's Fordham, in New York, and it has a medieval studies center. Here are the two good things about it: my statistics are higher than their average accepted applicant, which gives me (I hope) a decent chance of being accepted; and they have rolling admissions, which means that I can still apply for the Fall, 2011 semester/quarter. The person who was accepted to Notre Dame (and who applied to many of the same schools to which I've applied), got their M.A. in Medieval Studies from Fordham. So it is, most definitely, worth a shot. If I'm accepted to Fordham, I'll remove the pins and needles from their little doll.

And, to top it all off, Borders is closing! What the hell?! It is a much, MUCH better bookstore than Barnes and Noble, and the fact that they lost out on the e-reader race, thus forcing their store to close, is just unbearable. So, while mourning my own probable defeat at the hands of the grad admissions committees, I'll wander off to Borders to mourn with them in their defeat, and take advantage, simultaneously, of their 25%-off sales. Just as I expect the crows to find solace in my carcass, so will I yet find solace in Borders'.

Return of the Writer

I can't believe how long it's been since I've written.  It's been . . . wow -- it was May when last I posted!  Who knew?!  So much has changed since then, and funnily enough, so much is the same.  I still live in the same place, and am still in limbo -- no grad school yet.  But, well, I'm 30 now, which was tough for me.  (I cried the morning of my birthday -- I didn't think I would cry over something so silly, but I really did, and I cried for reasons that have more to do with the fact that my life is now NOTHING like I thought it would be than the fact that I've hit another decade.)  My 30th birthday was incredibly fun, though.  I celebrated with a few friends and family by going to Little Tokyo in LA and hitting a few bars/sushi restaurants/karaoke places.  It was great fun -- we started off at the famous Daikokuya for some kick-ass ramen, then wandered down to a little crack-in-the-wall (literally, this bar is in an alley) called Far Bar, got happily drunk, then stumbled to ZenCu for some rockin' sushi, and finally, drunk and very full, ended up at Max Karaoke Studio for some totally blitzed karaoke.  All in all, an excellent way to start a new year.  And so far, my 30th year hasn't been entirely awful.

For the last month, I've spent the greater part of my time studying for the GREs.  Plural, you say?  Yes!  I'm taking TWO Graduate Record Examinations this year!  One is the standard, General GRE that ALL grad schools require, and the other (the one I'm currently avoiding study-time for) is the Subject GRE, and in particular, the GRE Literature in English Subject Test.  Now, I'm not usually a person who has a terror of tests, but I will admit that this particular test is DAUNTING.  I spent the first part of September studying for the General, and did fairly well on that (top 2% overall, thank you!), and have spent my time since then studying for the Subject.  I'm taking it Saturday, and still feel nowhere NEAR like I will ace this test.  It's a behemoth!  It is -- I kid you not -- a test which will potentially cover all English, American, and world literature from approximately 400 AD to the present.  Of course, with only 230 questions (YES, 230 questions in 170 minutes!!! (Do the math, that's less than a minute per question!)), they can only cover a finite amount of material, and since, as the wonderful people at the Princeton Review assure me, there is no such thing as a "standard English curriculum", their choices are limited as to what they can realistically expect people to know.  Still, there's much more material on this test than that with which I have an intimate and comfortable relationship, and so I am spending my time becoming intimate and familiar -- at least, in a cocktail-party sense -- with some of it.  It is, as I said, daunting.  And I'm terrified. 

Which is why good sense is suddenly prevailing, and I'm going to leave this post half-finished, and return to the studies. . . .

If I Won the Lottery

I've passed the last hour or so thinking about what I would do if I won the lottery. California's MegaMillions is estimated to be about $64 million right now, and, even though I didn't buy a ticket, and even though I don't really play the lottery, I still thought about what I would do if I won. It's funny how specific my plans are, even though I don't play it. I wonder if I should start? A dollar a week or something? It's unlikely that I'd win, but then, maybe I would.

The funny thing is that the greatest pleasure in winning for me would not come from finally being released from financial woes (because I know that lots of money has its own problems), but from being able to fix the things in the lives of the people I care about which are related to money. I mean, for example, let's say I take the pay-out -- $41 million. Starting with my parents, I'd pay off their house, and give them a few million, so they could retire in comfort. Nothing fancy or frivolous, just comfortable retirement, so they can travel and my dad can bird, and my mom can finally get to all those projects she's been planning for years. I think I'd probably ask them to keep working, though, just a little bit longer, just because I think they're too young to retire yet. Then my soon-to-be-ex-husband. I'd give him a few million, so that he could be free of his parents, and other expectations of failure. Then he could go on with school or graduate school, or invest it, or write, or do whatever he wanted. I mean, theoretically, if he were intelligent, he would invest it, and live off the interest. $3 million dollars, spent at $50,000 a year, would last for 60 years. That's something to think about. So, say I've spent about $6 million -- I still have $35 million left.

I'd pay off my friend's house for him, and give another friend enough money to go and open a brewery in Japan -- his life-long dream. Then I'd probably pay off my sister and her husband's house, so that my sister wouldn't have to work, and could just stay home and be with her baby (who will be born soon!!! I'm going to be an aunt!!!). As for my brother . . . well, I'd probably give him enough money to go travel, or go back to school, or do something different with his life than what he's doing now.  He's young -- he deserves freedom from so much.  But I'd have provisions in there.  It wouldn't be free money.  I'd also probably give a million or so to my aunt, so that she could stop trying to find work at 60+, and just enjoy the years she won back from cancer.

So, let's say I've given away another $5 million. That leaves me $30 million. What else would I do? I'd do a few selfish things: pay off my school loans, buy a house or two, invest the bulk of it. I'd still apply to grad school, and seriously hope that I'd be accepted, because I think I'd really like it . . . and I can't imagine not working, doing something useful and productive, for the rest of my life. I mean, I'm only 29 (soon to be 30, but not talking about that right now). I'd travel -- see all the places I've wanted to see, but not been able to, because of time and, more importantly, money: England, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Russia. . . . I'd set up a home-base somewhere, with lots of acreage and animals -- horses, sheep, chickens, dogs, cats, geese, ducks, that sort of thing. I'd buy a Steinway, and build a library for myself -- a two-story library, with lots of comfortable armchairs for reading, and then I'd fill the library with thousands and thousands of books. The tempting thing would just be to put work on hold forever, and do nothing but read and read and read and read. But that's too self-indulgent. I would probably do it for a year or two, though. Do nothing but read, and play with my animals, and cross-stitch, and swim. . . .

Speaking of animals, I'd definitely put a few million dollars into building a rescue for domestic pets -- a no-kill shelter, and probably give another few million to Big Cat Rescue, which is my charity-of-choice. They rescue big cats -- lions, tigers, leopards -- from all over, and are always desperately in need of money.

So that's what I'd do if I won the lottery. I'm sure there are other things I'd do that I haven't thought of, but I'm pretty happy with what I've got now. The things that winning the lottery would do for me -- help me make the people I love happier and more comfortable, allow me to help the people and animals that I want to help -- would give me peace of mind and contentment, I think. I know that money can't solve all my problems, and I know that it can bring with it its own issues, but I would try not to let it dominate me. That's not to say that I wouldn't have a wonderful time building and furnishing my houses, and shopping for books and "feathers" and things. It would be nice to finally have enough money to buy, for example, a black Coach purse, or a set of happy yellow dishes from Crate and Barrel, and it would be lovely to just see something and be able to buy it. But I think that I'd rather forget it was there, and just enjoy the contentment it affords, if that's at all possible.

Of course, not buying lottery tickets puts all of this beyond the bounds of the practically reachable. But it's fun to dream.

A Very Dull Post

I just finished watching Wall-E, one of the last movies Pixar has done (second-to-last, I think, just before Up). It is such a darling movie, and it never fails to make me cry -- just when Ev-a thinks she's saved Wall-E, and then he doesn't know her . . . oh, it's just so sweet and sad. I've only seen it a handful of times, probably because of the fact that it makes me cry, but I think it's even better than Up. Up was darling. But it was predictable. You knew what was going to happen. There were no surprises. And the premise, while clever, wasn't that surprising, either. Wall-E was clever, and surprising, and not entirely predictable, and also had that bittersweet edge to it that I think marks some of Pixar's better movies, like The Incredibles and Finding Nemo. You weren't as invested in what was at stake in Up, but in Wall-E -- well, who doesn't want to go home? And one of the really amazing things with Wall-E, one of the things that gets overlooked about it, is the fact that there is almost no dialogue. And the main character, Wall-E, communicates his sweetness and vulnerability and dedication almost completely through gestures and his oft-repeated "Ev-a". It's an amazing testament to the talents of Pixar.

So now I have Spinal Tap on in the background, principally because I've seen it a million times, and I don't have to pay too much attention to it. Talk about a movie with a bittersweet edge. It's like all Christopher Guest's movies. They're just hilarious and painfully bitter at the same time. There isn't one of his movies that isn't both insanely funny and painfully bittersweet -- This Is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind. . . . The only Christopher Guest movie I wasn't crazy about was the last one, For Your Consideration. I wonder if he'll do anymore, but the fact that he hasn't written/directed another one since (and this was in 2006), and the fact of its rather crappy reception, probably means he won't -- or at least, not for awhile. Which is really too bad, because he had an incredible cast by the end there. The first four, though, they're really exceptionally good movies. I love each and every one of them.

This post doesn't really have a purpose. It's just an attempt to avoid some homework. I've made some lists of things I need to do, and I know that I should really be doing them, but I don't want to do them. It's all part of the malaise I've been dealing with lately, where all I really want to do is piss about, and not actually do anything productive, unless it's creative productivity (writing, cross-stitching, reading, etc.). Anything that I'm "supposed" to do is for some reason anathema to me. I think it might just be that I'm totally burnt out. I need a break. A break from life, really, but a break of any kind would be good. I suppose the best that I can hope for is a break from school, but I'm crossing my fingers for my unemployment insurance. I'm just hoping that comes through. If it does, then I don't need to worry about work or anything for a few months at least, which I desperately need. I'm still trying to figure out where my life is going, and what I'm doing, and what I want, and I haven't had any spare moments to think about it. So I'm hoping that over the summer I get a chance to get some perspective on things.

This is an abominably dull post. I think I'll end it now before I send everyone into terminal boredom. Good night, all.