There is always something to feel bad about

I read an interesting book a while ago that stated that the reason why we treat people badly is usually because we are feeling guilty and anxious about things we know we aren't doing right but don't really want to admit it to ourselves, and so we project our negativity onto other people and then blame them for our unhappiness and problems. That idea really resonated with me, because sometimes Ifeel like I'm just a giant walking ball of anxiety and guilt. Then, my anxiety and guilt over things that I'm not doing right makes me avoid resolving issues and so I feel worse, and then some days I just want to go curl up in a ball and hide in my closet for a day or two until it all goes away. But, the world is too much with me and I am too much with the world to do that, and every now and then I have a breakthrough:

Reasons why I no longer feel guilty tonight:

I took care of most of the phone calls I was procrastinating for my calling and found a sub to take two of the classes for this Sunday.

I have done all of my reading for tomorrow and even looked up the words I didn't know in the poems rather than just guessing.

I went to Target today and only bought the things I went in there for.

I did not get annoyed with my mom the entire time she was here and actually look forward to seeing her again soon.

Reasons why I still feel guilty:

I should be in bed right now so I can get up early and exercise, since all of my pants are getting too tight.

I put off my visiting teaching until the end of the month and ended up not being able to go see one of the women on my list.

Today I ate a BLT, fries, and a milkshake for lunch; then I had a chili dog for dinner and I just had 4 chocolate peanut butter cookies. No wonder my pants don't fit anymore.

I am really not enjoying my Cuban poetry class very much, but I feel like the only one in there who is not really, really into it.

Well, I should just post this and go to bed so I won't have to feel bad about going to sleep late, since that will make me tired tomorrow and I will feel bad about being tired in class, and then I will feel even worse about falling asleep while doing my homework and then I will feel bad about trying to do reading when S-Boogie wants me to play with her, etc. etc. etc.

Moisture, moisture everywhere

One of the creepiest short stories I have ever read is called "Chac Mool" by Carlos Fuentes (all of his stories are totally creepy; he's like the Stephen King of Mexico). Chac was the god of rain in Mayan mythology and could only be placated through blood sacrifice. In the story, a man decides to buy a stauette of Chac Mool at an outdoor bazaar and then takes it home and leaves it in his basement. After a while he realizes that his house seems damp and is starting to smell weird and then the walls start growing mold and all the dogs and stray cats in the neighborhood start disappearing and other strange stuff. Basically, the god starts taking over this guy's house and the guy tries to escape and can't. It's a better story when you read it.

Our house seems to have been overrun by dampness today and I'm beginning to wonder if I'm getting punished for being unwilling to pray for "moisture". This morning S-Boogie woke up with sopping wet pajamas since her diaper was overflowing. Then, a few hours later I managed to have a drink of water go down the wrong way, coughed really hard, and wet my pants. Yes, I wet my pants. That's what you get for being a woman--raging hormones and poor bladder control. And then the final straw came this afternoon when I went to turn on the lamp next to our couch and realized that the carpet was soaking wet. The weird thing was that it happened while the apartment owner was here installing our new smoke detector. Mr. Fob and I had been noticing water in the track of the window, but were mystified because the rain can't get in thanks to the large overhang out front. Well, the owner went outside and turned on the sprinklers and we discovered the problem. The sprinkler in front is malfunctioning and shooting water directly at our window. We had no idea because the sprinklers only come on at night. I generally close the windows before going to bed, but it's a weird double window and I wasn't closing the outside one, only the inside one. So now we have a big wet carpet spot that needs to dry out, and it happens to be mostly under the couch. And we need to take the windows off their tracks and thoroughly dry everything out because it smells like rotting dead things. So, if anyone out there has been sacrificing small animals to Chac Mool in our name, cut it out! We have more than enough moisture around here.

My name is FoxyJ and I am a primpaholic

When my alarm went off at 6:30 this morning I turned it off and went back to sleep. Bad idea. At least I woke up at 7:30, which gave me enough time to shower and eat breakfast since my class isn't until 8:30. But, I took the brave new step of appearing in public without doing my hair. Yes, I actually went to school with my hair dripping wet, and not only that, I survived! No one ran away screaming or recoiled in horror upon looking at me. I have always tormented myself about the fact that I really, really need to shower and do my hair before leaving the house in the morning. Whenever we are packing for a trip I spend the whole day feeling bad for taking up space in the suitcase with my blow dryer, but I can't leave it behind. What I have been unable to figure out is why I feel so much guilt over making myself look nice. There is nothing wrong with doing your hair, and it's not like I spend tons of time or even use lots of products on it or anything. I guess I have just never wanted to be one of "those girls" who cares about their appearance so much that they spend an hour in the bathroom each morning carefully adjusting each strand of hair. Deep in my heart I want to be more "wash and wear" and I even tried having longer hair that didn't need so much maintainance, but I just can't do it. I also think the real reason why I feel embarrassed about all of my bathroom time is that I feel like the ends don't justify the means. I really don't look like I spend 45 minutes getting ready in the morning, do I? Not only that, but I live with someone who can shower, dress, and do his hair in less than 20 minutes. I guess I should just get over my guilt and admit it: I am a primpaholic.

Does a dinosaur roar?

This morning S-Boogie was delighted to have her auntie Skye stop by for a little visit. Skye brought along a wonderful treasure: a cassette tape of "Our Dinosaur Friends", which was one of our favorite records when we were kids. We listened to all the songs and sang and danced until we were all dizzy and out of breath. All day S-Boogie has demanded "more songs". Then, inspired by the music, we decided to go the dinosaur museum up at Thanksgiving Point. I was a little nervous given S-Boogie's attention span and the fact that I don't really like anything associated with Thanksgiving Point (that's another rant for another day, though). But, it turns out that the museum was a fabulous idea and S-Boogie loved it. They have lots of kid-friendly, hands-on stuff and she spent a lot of time stomping around and roaring. Here are some pictures, even though they didn't turn out that great since it was a little dim inside and she's a moving target.

This is Skye and S-Boogie dressed like trilobites. S0Boogie didn't want to wear the trilobite suit, so we only have pictures of her taking it off.










They have one room with an erosion pool where you can play with sand and water and create geologic features like meandering rivers and stuff like that. You can also bury the plastic dinosaurs in the sand and pretend that they are going to become fossils some day. S-Boogie was actually not that interested in this part of the museum, because she has recently developed a fetish for clean hands and also because she mainly wanted to throw sand and splash the water.




This is a model of Carcharodon megalodon, an ancestor of the great white shark that was quite a lot bigger and scarier than it was. S-Boogie was very impressed by his teeth.







This was the final stop on our tour--another sand pit where the kids can sit and use brushes to uncover dinosaur bones underneath the sand. S-Boogie was a lot more interested in this sand, but we didn't spend too much time there because we were getting hungry and tired. Overall it was a very fun day!

Noam Chomsky is not coming to BYU nor is he dead

So this term I am taking two courses: Spanish 655, which is a seminar on Cuban Poetry and Spanish 520, "Problems in Spanish Grammar". They are actually both fairly interesting and really not difficult to sit through for 2 hours, 3 times a week. (Yes, I'm crazy, but that's also why I am in graduate school). The Cuban poetry one is interesting and I really like the professor, but we are mainly focusing on Jose Marti and I am not a big fan of his poetry. He is the national poet of Cuba and is constantly quoted by both Fidel Castro and the exiles trying to get their country back from him, and led the first revolution against the Spanish, yada, yada, yada. For some reason his poetry reminds me a lot of Emily Dickinson, that weird visionary stuff full of big words and wacky symbolism and other things that make you wonder if everyone just thinks they are geniuses because no one can understand their work. I actually kind of like Emily Dickinson, so it's not like I'm slamming her or anything--her poetry just makes me tired after a while. Anyways, most of the same people are in my two classes since the Spanish department doesn't offer very many classes during the summer, and they combine grad students and undergraduates. I like almost everybody in my classes, except for one guy who I think we all want to strangle. He's the one who always sits up in front and is completely lost all the time, but not afraid to ask stupid questions or to show off big words that don't mean what he thinks they do. I know you know him and have had classes with him before. So today in my grammar class we were talking about phrase structure rules and universal grammar and the professor said "You all know who Noam Chomsky is, right?" So this guy piped up with, "Isn't he coming to give a seminar here or something?" My professor gave him a funny look and said something like, "No, I don't think Chomsky has any plans to come here any time soon." So then Slow Guy said, "Oh, he's dead, right? At this point the akward tension in the room was getting way too thick, so Dr. Turley simply changed the subject and went on with discussing noun phrases. Sigh

S-Boogie's latest tricks...

S-Boogie is now almost 2 years old and she is really growing up so fast! She isn't a baby anymore, but not quite a big person either. Mr. Fob and I were realizing the other day that soon she will be able to understand what we are talking about and we'll have to be careful not to say stuff like "masturbate" while she's listening. On the other hand, it will be nice for her to have enough language skill developed to say "I have left the milk in the bookcase near the yearbooks" instead of wandering around the house saying "nuk inside" while we try and find the sippy cup before it turns into cottage cheese. But seriously, she is a very vocal child and that seems to be her strong point at this stage of the game. She loves talking and provides a running commentary on everything we are doing, as well as commands us to do her bidding at all times. Today she was dancing in the living room and suddenly pointed to a spot on the floor and commanded "mommy, dance". I couldn't refuse, even though the blinds were open. She also said "see you" very clearly after daddy said that on his way out the door to work. Not all of her words are very clear, though: at dinner we were eating grapes and for some reason when she started to say it it came out sounding exactly like "bitch". Mr. Fob and I just looked at each other and burst out laughing, which of course encouraged her to say it again! Her other favorite thing lately is the swimming pool; the two of us went for a little while tonight without Mr. Fob since he was at work. She loves to splash in the water and will wade right in until it is up to her chin, and then she just laughs. The only great and horrible tragedy about the pool is that they have two amazing waterslides that she is still too little to go on. We have to keep her busy at all times so she won't abandon the kiddie pool and try to climb the stairs up to the big slides. Maybe in about 10 years or so she will be big enough, and hopefully by then she will not have figured out what "scary" means. It is currently a concept she doesn't have in her brain at all.

Confessions for today

Yesterday I ate a rather large bag of Doritos that I had been saving for a picnic.

This morning I got mad at S-Boogie because she was kicking me while I was trying to change her diaper, so I slapped her on the leg. She looked at me and slapped me on the arm and said "mommy owie too". I guess I won't do that again...

I've been getting S-Boogie ready for bed in time to watch Jeopardy at 7:30, even though I know TV rots her brain.

Sometimes I pick my nose while I am driving in my car.

I like to read the obituaries and am especially fascinated by younger people dying in strange and tragic ways.

Some days I don't brush my teeth until I go to sleep at night.

I really like that song by George Michael about having a quickie in his car and that one about being "too close" because they turn me on.

I haven't vacuumed my living room floor for over two months.

Domestic goddess

I'm really having a hard time adjusting to being back in school this term. I am glad I didn't try to go spring after I nearly went crazy during winter semester. But, I sometimes wish that I weren't going to school at all. Lately I have felt very conflicted about the school thing in general. It feels like the right thing to do, I generally enjoy it, and it's a nice excuse to hang around adults and pretend that I am still a normal human being. But I also kind of like being a mom who stays home and doesn't do much besides eat too many cookies and sit around reading trashy books while her child destroys the living room. I am also realizing that neither school nor mommyness is fun and exciting in the same way that other things are, like spending two weeks on vacation or eating an entire pan of warm brownies in one sitting. I think I have been expecting that one or the other will suddenly make my wildest dreams come true and I will be so in love with it I will never want it to end. The truth is, most of my fellow grad students don't really enjoy writing 20 page papers on Jose Marti either, and most moms I know agree that not every day is super-fantastico. But, yesterday I loved every minute of my grammar class and discovered that diagramming sentence structures fills me with near-orgasmic delight. And then at night I also discovered that thoroughly cleaning my kitchen is just as fulfilling, so for now I think I will be goddess of many incarnations, not just a domestic one.

Para comenzar

So I've been thinking about starting a blog for a while now, mainly because I like to read other people's blogs and I'm just a voyeuristic person by nature. Sometimes I wish that everyone I knew kept their journal online so that I could find out exactly what they are thinking, but that probably just stems from the fact that I am too chicken to ever ask anyone what they are feeling or thinking and so I spend most of my time assuming. So yeah, I am emotionally stunted and extremely insecure, we might as well establish that right off. Also, I feel nervous to start a blog because I kind of want some sort of audience but at the same I time I want to be free in expressing my feelings about things without offending anyone. But, since I haven't really told anyone about this yet, I will just assume that I have no audience. I'm not sure I will ever have anything interesting to say so hopefully things will stay that way.