Feeling terminally unique

I can't really dredge up much enthusiasm for this doctoral journey when the pace of it ebbs and flows so much. I'd like more flowing and less ebbing, but at this point, I am almost past caring. Every now and then I feel a spark of interest, like, oh, yeah, I remember why I chose this topic. But mostly I'm beyond both frustration and enthusiasm. At each roadblock, each obstacle, I shrug: Whatever. I have a similar reaction to each success. Yeah, whatever.

I checked the course room every day this week, hoping for word from the Institutional Review Board that they have approved my revised recruiting method. It's a small change, how hard could it be, people? Instead of an approval notice, I got an announcement that my Chair is out of the office until July 29. Because the IRB keeps us at arm's length, communicating to us only through our Chairs like we are cootie-infested members of a lower caste, I can assume I will hear nothing this week. Oh well. Maybe next week.

It doesn't matter. I will be out of town this weekend myself. I'm going to Minneapolis for a reunion. So, if the plane goes down somewhere between here and there, let me just take this opportunity to say it's been a blast writing this blog. I hope this isn't the last post, but then do we ever really know what will happen when we walk out the door? I'm more likely to get decapitated in a car wreck caused by some texting teenager than die in a plane crash. But I've always wanted to be special.

Speaking of feeling special, I probably mentioned I have a new neighbor. Joy is gone, replaced by a young man named Everett. Everett moved in and then disappeared for a while. I feared he might have drowned in his tub. But no, I saw him last week, said hi, made a connection. It's sort of that connection you try to make with your kidnappers, so they won't kill you, you know what I mean? I kicked myself later for not mentioning how thin the walls are at the Love Shack. Because now I am suffering.

He's got something in his bedroom, some kind of a machine with a motor. Does this sound familiar? Wasn't I complaining about Mary having something that intermittently whined on and on? This is not a whine, it's a rumble. It's right on the other side of the wall. I can hear it when I watch my television. I can hear it when I take a bath. Imagine your windows are open to a summer night, and off in the middle distance, you hear the grumble of a freight train slicing through the night, rushing along the Gulch toward Hood River. It's like that. Only it never stops.

Air conditioner is my bet. An exotic guess would be an aquarium pump—maybe he has tropical fish in his room to help him sleep. Maybe it is a refrigerator, for his beer. No, it doesn't go off, it just keeps rumbling, a low, low vibration that I can feel in my chest. Annoying as it is, it isn't as bad as Joy's music. So I'm going to just live with it. I will pretend it is a freight train, heading east out the Gorge, carrying coal. No, not coal. Carrying art supplies and yarn for hungry artists and knitters. Yeah.