Win a few, lose a few

Good news (at least to some, not sure who exactly, maybe just my mother). I just uploaded the massively wretched tome, the first draft of my dissertation proposal, all 172 pages (counting front matter, references, and appendices). The courseroom swallowed it with a slightly longer than normal gulp, and now it's there, posted in cyberspace, visible evidence of my willingness to take the next step in the process of earning this doctoral degree. I'm not sure what I pictured these days would be like, way back in 2005 when I first started this endeavor. I think my original goal was to teach online in an adobe hut in the desert. And to be a more valuable employee to my career college employer. Foolish girl, you say? Well, life was simpler back then, when I was naive and uninformed.

For the past 2,677 days (counting much?) I have lived in the fretful fog of the moment, just trying to get the writing done, take care of my students, eat good food and drink water, live in the present, do the next right thing. I haven't thought much about what comes next, after this journey is over. (I used to say if, but it's starting to look likely that I will finish, barring something unforeseen, like a party bus or an asteroid). Except for a general sense of anxiety and some hazy... I won't even call them plans.. I don't have a clear picture of a future. This is not a bad thing.

Unexpected events happen. Like today, for instance, the maternal unit called to ask me to take her to urgent care. She suspected she got bit on the ankle by a malevolent critter on her back porch, a spider, perhaps. This happened last Tuesday. Her right ankle swelled up like a sausage. Since then, she's been hobbling around in slippers with her walker, not driving, not eating much, popping quarter-tabs of oxy and hoping it will go away. No such luck. So today we spent three hours on a gorgeous Easter Sunday morning getting her through urgent care and over to the pharmacy to fill a prescription for an anti-inflammatory. And pick up a box of generic cheerios, so she would have something to eat tomorrow.

That is what I mean. You can plan all you want, but life does what life is going to do. Other people are busy living, and sometimes their lives collide with my plans. I have no control over events, in my life or anyone else's. In some ways, this is frustrating, but in other ways, it is strangely liberating. To accept the invitation to give up the illusion of control is a rare opportunity to appreciate the moment. To be here now, something I've been practicing for the last seven years. It's easier to accept the gift when the sun is shining like it is today. It's 72°. Rain is on the way, but right now the air is golden and ripe with the scents and sounds of spring. A stellar bluejay stole some moss from my back porch. Nest building time.

A woman who lives at the end of the gravel driveway was walking by as I went out to dump my kitchen scraps in the green compost bin. She hurried over to me, pointing at the back of the Love Shack.

“Did you know you have a rat living under your back porch?”

I started to feel some shame, because yes, I know we have a rat living under the porches, and I don't particularly care. Hey, wait a minute, I said to myself.

“Yes, we have a rat,” I said. “We also have birds, squirrels, possums, and sometimes, raccoons. And moles!” Implying that it's a regular zoo in our six-foot-wide strip of nature, and how cool is that? “Do you have moles down there on your corner?” She forgot that she believes that a rat is a bad thing to have lurking under one's porch.

“We don't have moles, but my neighbor does,” she replied. “And she keeps her yard perfectly manicured. The moles drive her crazy!”

Now we were rooting for the moles. Long live wildlife. Yay for fat rats who live under porches. Yay critters, in general. I'm happy to fatten up a rat with spilled birdseed. Why should this little piece of the planet be exempt from harboring god's myriad creatures? (If there is a god, yada yada yada.)

And the plot thickens. Now I hear the sound of running water. Back in a mo. Ok, I'm back. I peered out my back door. The basement door is open, and there are two short, scratched-up surfboards propped against the fence. It looks like the quiet weekend at the Love Shack is over. My neighbor has returned. Now if I'm really lucky, I'll get to hear her making out with her boyfriend till the early hours of the morning.

Get on down to the spiritual axiom

As the teachers left yesterday after day classes, they wished each other a happy Easter. One said, “Have a happy Easter, if you celebrate Easter,” leaving room for those of us who might be pagans, wiccans, heathens, addicts, non-Christians, and generic ne'er-do-wells.

I said nothing, my usual response to all things religious. I have no opinion on Easter, one way or another. Isn't this the day that Jesus was supposed to rise from the dead? Likely story. More likely the guy just looked dead. What a shock to wake up buried alive in a cave. Roll away the stone, let me outa here! From there, it's not too hard to picture the responses of the locals to his unexpected resurrection: It's a miracle! And the rest is history.

I have memories of some Easters in my history. Well, not really memories, per se. I've seen black and white Kodak photos of my sister and me, sitting on the backyard swing-set squinting into the sun, ages about three and five, attired for church in pastel dresses, flowered bonnets, white patent leather shoes, and little white gloves. My sister displays all her baby teeth at the camera, while my smile is somewhat more circumspect, bordering on insipid.

I remember an Easter procession at the church, in which all the children carried daffodils to the alter, to create a big dazzling yellow cross. I think I've blogged about this before. My daffodil had yet to fully open; I was mortified. That feeling of shame is embedded into my genes.

I'm happy that this Sunday is Easter because the callers that usually call me on Sunday afternoons will be off doing their holiday thing with family, and I will have time to work on my dissertation proposal. Yeah, the massive beast is still hanging around, like a overfed, lazy cat, hogging the blankets and polluting the air with dust and dandruff. No, wait, that's me... huh? The good news is, after 150 pages and at least that many sources, I think I've almost got a good first draft. I hope to finish it and upload the monster into cyberspace sometime on Easter Sunday, if I can keep my neck away from the spiritual axiom.

This weekend the temperature should hit 70° for the first time this year. Everyone is excited, of course. All over town, Portlanders are breaking out their shorts, tanktops, and flipflops, bicycles, skateboards, walking shoes. Overnight my sleepy little village corner will turn into a pedestrian-infested, car-congested carnival of park-goers and cafe-mongers. Their music, their voices, their cigarette smoke and exhaust fumes will all waft into my windows on the not-quite-balmy spring breeze. What can I do, I have no defense. I have to open my windows: My place smells like an old gym sock.

Speaking of people who smell like old gym socks, what is with my obese female students smelling like mold? Really? Is it an environmental problem or a hygiene problem? What would happen if I asked them, “Why do you smell like mold?” They would probably look at me and reply, “Why do you smell like an old gym sock?” Then I would try to explain how I haven't vacuumed in a year because I've been working on my doctorate. They would retort, “Well, I work full-time, and I have three kids, no husband, and I live with my mother!” Okay, enough said. Forget I said anything. I won't ask about your stinky body odor if you won't mention mine.

I imagine all my obese female students wearing pastel mini-skirts, low-cut tops, and platform spike heels, tottering off to church this Sunday to celebrate the rising of an almost-dead guy. I'll be celebrating, too, in my own way, by typing a lot of incoherent words and phrases into pages and pages of white space. It's a religious experience, in a way. Especially that moment when I upload the wretched tome and cry to heaven, “Thank god almighty, free for the 21 days it takes my Chair to read and destroy my paper—at last!”

Even a rabid introvert needs human contact once in a while

My phone rarely rings during the week. When it does, it's almost always telemarketers. Despite the fact that I am registered on the national Do Not Call list, I occasionally get calls from people trying to sell me something. Usually they start out by thanking me for my past support.

“Thank you for your generous contribution to the Oregon Republican Party,” the caller, usually a man, will gush. “How are you this evening?” When I hear that opening, I know I am not the droid he is looking for. I know this because I am not a member of the Oregon Republican Party. Also, I know he is probably calling from Atlanta, the call center capital of the western world, because it is inevitably 4:02 p.m. Pacific time, not quite evening yet, here on the west coast.

“Oh, I'm sorry, I think you want the person with the same name as me who lives on the West side of town,” I say apologetically. The rich, white, conservative contributor-to-the-opposition-party person whose name comes up when I Google my own.

“Oh, I am so sorry!” the polite man with the southern accent will say contritely as I am hanging up my phone.

Those are the telemarketing calls I like, the ones that are obvious cases of mistaken identity. Or the ones that go something like, “Are you looking for new siding?” That one is easy to terminate, too. “No, sorry, I'm a renter,” I say blithely. Bam! Ten seconds, tops. My all-time favorite calls are marketing researchers, of course. What do you mean, will I take a 30-minute survey on Minute Rice? Of course I will! Oh, you mean you want me to actually be a user of the product? Oh, sorry. (Thank and terminate. Click. Buzzz.) Darn it. No, I don't smoke. No, I don't watch cable television. No, I don't use mayonnaise. Argh! No one wants someone who spends all her time writing a stupid dissertation!

Sometimes I get lucky. Sometimes not. Today the phone rang at 4:02 p.m. I picked it up and responded with my usual wary drawl. “HELLLoh.” When I didn't hear my mother's smoker's tenor: “Hello, Daughter,” I knew it was a telemarketer.

After some clicks and some brief pockets of dead air, a woman finally said, “This is bla bla calling from Life bla bla bla bla. How are you this evening?”

Because this was the only human contact I've had all day, I felt an urge to connect. “I'm doing great, thanks for asking! How are you doing?”

There was a long moment of silence as she processed the maniacal tone of my voice. “I'm fine, thanks for asking.” I suspected she thought I thought I recognized her voice. My Aunt Sally, maybe. I could practically hear her brain chugging away: Will this nutty prospect freak out when she realizes I'm not her Aunt Sally?

“What can I do for you this evening?” I said eagerly, anxious to hear the marketing message. I am a student of marketing, after all.

She launched gamely into her spiel. “Have you heard of Life Alert Systems?”

“Life what?” I said with a sinking feeling in my stomach.

“Life Alert Systems is a medical alert system specifically designed to help seniors remain independent—”

“Hey wait a minute!” I interrupted. “How old do you think I am?” I admit my voice had just a hint of belligerence. And a touch of wounded vanity. And a teensy weensy bit of righteous indignation.

“Uh... This is for seniors 65 and older?”

“Sorry, that is not me!” I declared decisively. I didn't tell her my age, of course. Telemarketers are like squirrels: You shouldn't feed them if you want them to go away.

“Do you have anyone in the household over the age of—”

“Nope, sorry, there's just me.”

“Well, okay.... good-bye.”

Wait a minute. What? She gave up? She didn't even try! Well, admittedly I was working up a frothy case of buyer's resistance, she could probably hear it in my voice. But isn't that what she's been trained to overcome? If she was a really good salesperson, she would have done her best to sell me, despite my objections, even if it seems at first that I'm not in the target market. Everyone my age has an aging parent. She never asked. I actually think my mother should have something like Life Alert (“Help I've fallen and I can't get up!”) She could have asked me a few well-placed questions, I would have answered, I would have let her ramble on a long time before I eventually let her go. No matter how much I wanted to connect with her, though, I wouldn't have committed to a purchase over the phone. I never do, because to me that is debting. But that doesn't mean I didn't want to talk! Hey come on, where are you calling from? What's the weather in Atlanta? Don't go!

Dueling stereos and the wretched dissertation proposal

It's war at the Love Shack. Dueling stereos are shaking the woodwork. I'm being pummeled by New Order, bass on high. I don't know what my neighbor is playing, but I can feel it through my feet. I'm hoping she's getting ready to go out. It's about that time on a Friday night.

Last night around 1:15 a.m. I'd just gone to bed, when I heard a pounding somewhere in the building. My cat and I looked at each other. What the–? I got out of bed and staggered into the living room. The pounding was louder. I heard muffled giggles and a man's voice. Oh boy. My neighbor Joy is  living up to her name. I considered doing a little pounding of my own, and I don't mean that in a self-sex kind of way. However, after a moment, I decided against ruining their mood and went back to bed. They were done, anyway, if they were at the giggling stage. I presume. Hell, it's been so long, what do I know.

I'm taking a break from the gigantasaurus I call the DP, short for Dissertation Proposal. You thought I whined a lot during the concept paper. That was banana cream cake compared to this. The concept paper is to tell the Graduate School what you are thinking of doing. The Dissertation Proposal is to tell them what you plan on doing, down to the most minute detail. There are three chapters in the proposal. Chapter 1 introduces the idea, Chapter 2 justifies it and situates it in the existing body of knowledge. Chapter 3 is a blueprint of the study. When I say blueprint, I am being precise. I must plan every breath, every grunt, every fart. All this planning is starting to get tedious. The more specific I get, the more I want to just say F--k it, just let me wing it! It's qualitative, for gawd's sake. Another word for herding cats.

For a closet optimist I don't really put a lot of store in the future. I pretty much figure we're all going to hell in a handbasket (thus the name of this blog), that it's all hopeless, meaningless, and not a little ridiculous. Why plan for a future that will inevitably suck? But I must write a detailed plan for my dissertation study, as if there will be a tomorrow, and a tomorrow after that.

I rebel at the thought of having to follow a written plan. I'm a go-with-the-flow kind of gal. I'm the pot-stirrer who lobs a rock in the pot to see what will happen. I don't write up a hypothesis before I take an action and then dutifully measure the outcome. I just throw the rock (or the comment) and stand back to watch. This is how I run my classes. Some instructors prepare daily written lesson plans. The copy machine spits out these little gems of efficiency while I'm checking my mailbox. I turn away with a sigh. If only I were that dedicated. If only I cared. I know what chapter I'm supposed to cover, that's the best I can do. I just start asking them questions and let the process unfold. I don't check to see if they learned anything. That is what the test is for.

This morning I attended a Webinar on using “icebreakers” to help a class connect and learn. It was sort of fun. All my learning at the rinky-dink online school I attend has been asynchronous, meaning I have no real-time contact with anyone. There are no team projects. Everyone moves at his or her own pace, struggling through the assignments in isolation. Now and then someone will post a desperate plea in the discussion folder: Help! What is the ANOVA assignment all about? Can someone please explain statistics to me in brief and simple terms? So being online with 900+ other learners listening to some woman explain her PowerPoint show made me feel like I was riding something large, rocking along with a crowd of enthusiastic educators toward a bright and shiny future. These were people who really cared about teaching.

Not really my people. Another story for another day. My head is pounding in rhythm with my neighbor's bass line. I finally took pity on my cat, who is trying to sleep in the next room, and turned off New Order. Just like I have to write this dissertation proposal, planning in excruciatingly detailed every move I will make when and if the day comes I actually implement this study, just like that I have to bend over and take what the universe gives me today. Take two Advil and grab your ankles. This may hurt a bit.

I hide my anxiety with maniacal laughter

Three weeks into the term. The evening Human Resources Management class, the one that was having trouble last week, got on track and started steaming ahead, all systems go. The young man who had the agenda, who just couldn't make room for anyone else's vision, finally came to his senses, after a weekend to ponder his plight. He opened the team meeting with a sweet and heartfelt apology, which worked wonders, and that was that.

The daytime class, on the other hand, hit a wall today. It was painful to watch. Teresa, who had been absent last Thursday, was back, and true to form went head-to-head with the young slender blonde (I forget what I named her in a previous post... Lisa? Leisl? Lulu? I can't remember. Let's call her Lulu today, that name seems to fit.) Lulu is just young and stubborn enough to not know when to back down. In other words, she hasn't learned yet how to pick her battles. So when Teresa smacked her down with some verbal abuse disguised as teasing, Lulu rose to the bait and blurted out what could have been the undoing of the team.

“We got along fine without you last week!” she declared hotly.

Teresa didn't hesitate one moment. “I can leave if you want,” she said. But she didn't get up.

Lulu backed down. “I didn't mean it like that.”

For a moment the team teetered on the brink of disintegration. When Teresa didn't leave, Dina or whatever her name is—the older gal who is the only one with a lick of sense in my opinion—cautiously shifted the topic to the project. Steve, the only man on the team, remained stoically silent throughout the altercation. Pretty soon all four adjourned to the computer lab to work on their proposal. I stayed behind, which I usually don't do; I was very tired and not interested in watching the group fight off a meltdown.

After class, after the others had left, Dina said to me, “Well, that was intense.” That, I recognized, was her careful request to be heard. I listened, giving my best imitation of someone who cares, while she described trying to get Steve and Lulu to help her write the proposal for their project. “Lulu kept checking her phone, and Steve spent the whole time looking up Keurig coffeemakers!” She resented having to be the mean mom to the two members of the team that seemed to be willing to participate. Teresa was off typing something else, although she spent a fair amount of time in the hall trying to make an appointment with a doctor at OHSU. I couldn't help but overhear. I'm sure everyone heard. Not our business that she is married! Who would have imagined it: Pondering Teresa as a blushing bride makes me stop and wonder if there is any sense in the universe. Maybe I'm just not getting the joke.

This evening. I went online to simplyhired.com and found a job worth applying for. I started gathering my materials. I hate jobhunting. I always feel so inadequate. But nothing ventured, etc., so I went through the motions, skilled at bla bla, adept at yada yada, willing to hardy har har. As I was getting ready to upload, I realized I had given them the outline they requested, but for their duties, not for their list of requirements. Oops. Good thing I saw that before I sent it. Attention to detail... right. It's late, what can I say. I'm tired, I'm bored, I just want it all to be over.

But tomorrow I get to get up and do it all again. Am I complaining about being alive, when we all know what the alternative is? No, I'm laughing, really.

We're not happy until you're not happy

My indefatigable dissertation chairperson saved her comments for Chapter 3 of my dissertation. Why am I surprised: She is a self-proclaimed methodologist, and Chapter 3 is the methodology chapter. It's the plan, the blueprint, the guideline of my study. She marked it up with the Word equivalent of red ink: Lots of purple balloon comments in the margin: Do this part over! Move this here! Call me if you want to talk!

Uh, no thanks.

I've been working on it off and on all weekend, checking my sources and my reference list, trying to make sure everything aligns, reviewing the university's exceptions to APA format to confirm that yes, Abstract and Table of Contents are not bold, but Introduction and References are. I'm tired. But I'm willing to slog onward.

I went online just now to look up “open-ended questions” and “unstructured interviews” in EBSCOhost and ProQuest. EBSCO refused to link to some articles: internal server error (their server, not mine), and ProQuest was down for maintenance. Can you believe it? On a Saturday night! How many graduate students are fuming right now, having stashed away a few hours to work on some obscure topic like interviewing cats about academic quality in for-profit Gainful Employment programs...

Just kidding. My cat has nothing to say about quality, academic or otherwise.

Too many hours to Saturday Night Live. My eyes feel like they've been weeping. I'd remember if I wept today, wouldn't I? I blame allergies. We had two days of sunshine and blue sky. Every leafless tree is quivering on the edge of bursting into bloom. White and purple crocuses and sunny daffodils decorate the rock gardens, and neglected winter flowerbeds are showing green sprouts: tulips, maybe?

It's beginning to look like Spring around here, and it's only mid-March. What the—? Is this global warming? Can't say I mind, really. The sun felt good, even though the air was cold. Well, cold-ish. Well, okay, warm, almost. Like, maybe 60°? Only for a few brief moments, and it was great, but I swear it was 45° in the shade, which is all I have in the Love Shack, lest you think I was basking in the glorious rays while I was editing my paper. Not hardly. I have the heat cranked. My feet are tucked in my homemade rice-filled foot warmer. I'm wearing fleece, a hat, fingerless gloves... the usual, and it will be like this until July 5.

We're not happy until you're not happy. (The best song title I've ever heard.) Sort of sums up the self-imposed plight of the chronic malcontent.

Last week I visited my naturopath, Dr. Tony. What a guy. He's got new stuff to try on me every time I see him. I feel like I'm in a Batman cartoon when I venture into his dinky little treatment room. Here, he said, turn over and lie on your stomach. Suddenly—Bam! He dropped the middle of the bench to realign my hips. I sat up, reeling a little. He gently hugged me, and then...crunch! He cracked my back. I flopped back, gaping like a beached trout. Then he grabbed my ankle and told me to hang on to the table. Uh-oh, I had time to think before he yanked my leg and popped my hip. Pow!

Then while I lay there trying to catch my breath, he gave me a remedy that seems to pretty much be targeted at curing whatever ails you. It's called spigelia, and it's potent stuff. Got heart palpitations? (Who doesn't?) Hey, no problem. Sinuses congested? We got it covered. Pesky intestinal parasites? (Yipes! Really?) Spigelia is your solution. Hmmmm. Why didn't he just give it to me when we first met? Why wait three years for the magical cure?

He dumped a few pellets onto my tongue, and of course it worked immediately, as homeopathic remedies often do (at least when Dr. Tony is standing there watching). Then he pushed on my arms a few more times.

“You know that stomach problems are caused by the emotions, right?”

We've had this talk before. I nodded. “So?”

“Think of someone who is upsetting you.”

I thumbed through my ancient dusty moth-eaten mental Rollodex. “I can't think of anybody,” I whined.

“Someone at work.”

“Uh.... maybe Teresa?” She's my shadow side, it's gotta be her if it's anyone. Dr. Tony grabbed my arm.

“No, not Teresa. It's a male.”

I mentally reviewed my student rosters. Who could it be...? There are so few men in my classes, I hardly know these people, certainly not enough to be upset by them... Ch-ch-chug, my brain slipped a gear and came up with a name. “Uh, would it be... Roger?”

Dr. Tony grabbed my arm again.

“Bingo,” he said triumphantly. “It's Roger.”

My mind was saying, oh for crying out loud, this is ridiculous. It can't be Roger. Roger is a young man with entrepreneurial aspirations. He's likable, smart, articulate (although he plans everything he says, it takes forever for him to spit out one sentence), and he's an optimist (another word for born-again Christian). I like Roger a lot. I think he might be one of the brightest students we've seen at the career college. He could do better than our crummy school. He plans to start his own business, and here's the part that gets me: he actually believes he will succeed.

As I thought about Roger, I began to think Dr. Tony was on to something. Roger has something I want, something I've always wanted: success at running my own business. I would quit this lousy teaching job if I could just figure out how to make self-employment work for me. But I'm scared to try. I throw up every obstacle under the sun as an excuse for why my entrepreneurial ideas won't work, while Roger just goes ahead and does it. He's the most annoying creature in the world of business: the naive fool who doesn't know something is impossible, so he just... does it! Argh!

So, my heart, my parasites, my sinuses... all Roger's fault. Maybe I should send him the bill.

They move on, and we stand still

A recent graduate at the career college called my boss to tell him she got married. She also told him to expect a call from an employer seeking a reference. It took me a moment to remember who she was. Students come and go so quickly here in the career college world. Move 'em in and move 'em out. No sooner do I learn their first names, then they are dashing off to a new term, a new job, a new career. They move past me at a hundred miles per hour, while I'm poking along in the slow lane, living from nap to nap.

During my nap today, I dreamed about two students who are long graduated: I'll call them Trim and Toy, two older guys who used to work at Freightliner before they were laid off and sent for retraining. They chose healthcare administration. Trim was tall and thin,Toy shorter and rounder. Sort of a Mutt and Jeff kind of thing. Former coworkers, then classmates, and I think they went on to get hired by some big insurance company. Anyway, I dreamed about them. They had left a voice mail message for my colleague Sheryl, who celebrated a birthday today. In my dream, I paused at the office door, beckoning to Sheryl.

“Listen to this!”

She came trotting over. In my dream she wore her usual half-glasses on the end of her nose. Her blonde hair looked perfect. For an older gal, Sheryl is in pretty good shape.

We stood by the phone, holding in our laughter, while the voices of our former students thrashed through the speaker. Trim and Toy sang a long, complicated jingle about Sheryl, her cat, and her birthday. It was orchestrated with guitars, piano, and bongo drums, and the lyrics rhymed. I thought, Is that what they learn now in healthcare administration?

Dreams were in the zeitgeist today. This afternoon before I left for the day, the program director of the medical department, let's call her Joan, saw me from halfway down the medical wing. She stopped in her tracks and turned. “I had a dream about you!” she shouted down the hall. She clearly wanted to tell me about it, so I waited, trying not to cringe, as she hurried toward me. She reached me and grabbed my bicep.

“I had a dream about you!” Her blonde ringlets danced with excitement. “I dreamed you were a nun!”

Another teacher from the medical department, whose name has escaped me for three years, came rushing over to hear Joan's story about me in her dream.

“You were wearing the habit, the hat, the whole thing!” Joan screamed. “And your name was Sister Carol Ann!”

“That's amazing,” I said, edging away, back toward the relative safety and calm of the business wing.

So, not only am I a closet optimist, I am now so pure that people are mistaking me for a nun in their dreams? Hard to believe it's because of me or my character. I'm sure it's because I often wear head-to-toe black. I look like some weird monk person, silently skulking around the halls with a permanent frown line between my eyebrows. It's no wonder she was confused. Right?

I just uploaded Chapter 3 of my dissertation proposal to my Chair. While she mulls over my occasional, not-so-subtle use of the first-person pronoun, I will be patching all three chapters together, hoping against hope that I've included enough detail, in the right order, followed the correct template, fixed their errant formatting issues, and checked all my references. Here's hoping the dissertation gods take pity on me and let me pass this hurdle in less time than it took to clear the last one (the wretched concept paper). I doubt it will happen that easily, though.

My classmates trade names of good editors. Their posts lead me to wonder if they actually do any of their own writing, let alone their own thinking. Not me, by god. I'll sink or swim on my own. Editor? I don't need no stinking editor. I may eat those words later, but for now, I'm just hoping I retain enough brain cells to be able to spot those increasingly frequent moments when I leave out entire words, write fragments, and fail to make my subjects agree with my verbs. I weep to remember the days when I used to be a superb speller, when I had a vast vocabulary, when I intuitively understood the secret rules of grammar. Sigh. On the bright side, my memory is failing, so soon I expect I won't be able to remember anything. That will be some kind of relief.

My sister is in Germany, riding bikes with her love in the slushy streets. It's nice to realize that somewhere people have lives and are living them. I hope I won't be standing still forever. I plan to finish this doctoral journey one day soon, and find a life and live it. Maybe not Germany, but maybe someplace more exotic, like... Palm Desert or Yucaipa.

I'm not ready to be unemployed

After a hellish first week, the new term at the career college is.... I can't think of any words to describe how this new term might unfold. I can't say off to a rousing start. The word stumbling comes to mind, but that might apply more to me than the term. Not sure that is useful. As a descriptive term, I mean. Maybe the word hopeful applies: I think we may have more students, judging by the voices echoing down the halls. I wonder if any of our friendly, helpful admissions advisers told the new students that our campus would be moving to a new site in a few months.

To be honest, we still don't know if the move is happening. Rumor has it that the lease is up in April, but I suppose the management could decide to rent month-to-month until they found a suitable location. I'm not feeling all that positive about the possibility of moving. Last week I overheard two students say the reason why they chose our site was because it was near their homes. Location, location, location.

It occurs to me that anyone who hasn't read my blog before wouldn't have a clue what I'm talking about. I'm writing as if I'm narrating an ongoing soap opera for a devoted audience, when in actuality I know that my regular audience consists of a handful of people. I mean, I can count the number of you readers on one hand. The rest of you are drop-ins, looky-loos, accidental tourists traipsing through my blog on your way to someplace else. I can tell what you search for when I look in the stats, and I know you won't find it here. Sorry. Thanks for dropping by, though.

If you stick around, you'll get the whole sordid story of the dinky career college for which I work and its imminent demise. Although, now that I think about it, the demise has been imminent for the years. I guess that doesn't qualify as imminent anymore, does it? It's like going into hospice and outlasting your caregivers. People get a bit peeved. Enough already, just die, would you? Jeez.

I'm not ready to be unemployed. I tried to figure out how I would live if I had to work a minimum wage job. (Oregon minimum wage is $8.95.) My lifestyle would be severely impacted. Like my friend Bravadita, I would have to give up my car. I would have to find a house-share situation. I would have to stop eating organic. Any one of those outcomes would make me want to jump off the Fremont Bridge. I'm such a hothouse flower. I remember when I used to drive a school bus. I remember when I packed books in a warehouse for a two-week temp job. I'm too old for that now. And too damn well educated. No one would hire an aging, unemployed Ph.D. from a crummy for-profit online university to work in a warehouse.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, hey, where is that optimist that lurks inside you, Ms. Chronic Malcontent? Here's the deal on that. The Optimist is not chronic. She is both rare and shy. You may not see her very often around this blog, since the Malcontent is a bully. But maybe if you clap your hands three times and say I do believe in magic, I do, I do, I... well, no, maybe not. I don't know. I'm just writing drivel so I can move past my resentment and get on with writing Chapter 3 of my dissertation proposal. That, after all, is what I live for these days. Work is just that interval that comes between sleeping and writing. Maybe someday this will just be a bad dream, and I'll be able to just sleep and write.

And there she is—don't blink!—the shy Optimist, hovering by the water cooler, waving her tiny hand at us.