Secret Squirrel

Since graduation on Sunday, two of my now-former students have friended me on Facebook. I love them and will be happy to keep in touch with them, so thumbs up to this development.

The trouble? Sometimes they take tests entitled "What's your sex style?" And then I have to see the results.

I found winged aphids all over my tomatoes! My baby tomatoes that I grew from seed and which are now really more adolescent tomatoes but they will be my babies 4-ever! Oh noes! (It's possible I'm overly attached to plants, yes. Shut up.)

I squished all the ones I could find, and will attempt to blast the rest off with the hose when I water tonight. I don't have a handy spray bottle, but I might get one and try the soap-water-and-oil trick.

But the best thing, of course, is hungry ladybugs. I don't feel like I really need to buy 1500 of them (apparently the official unit of ladybug purchasing) -- that seems like sending the poor little things into a famine zone; my garden just isn't that big. Do any of you have an abundance of ladybugs in your yard that I could come collect?

So, um, school is canceled for the week. We had an emergency faculty meeting yesterday at which the Head said, "Some huge percentage of students are sick, faculty are also getting sick, the Health Department suggests we close if we're having trouble functioning. So we're going to do that."

The Health Department also said that there's no point closing for a day or two. It's 7 days or nothing. So we're off until Tuesday, then there's exam review week, exam week, graduation, faculty meeting week... and by June 12, I'm done. We can't extend the year the way a public school could because international kids have already bought their tickets home. What a weird-ass way to end the year.

(In case you're worried: no one is seriously ill; it's a quantity, not quality issue. Most boarders are going home. Sick boarders whose homes are too far away are quarantined in the Health Center, and there are 28 healthy boarders who are staying on campus.)

They asked for "all healthy hands on deck," but the place is dead. Most faculty do not share my opinion that it's better to be at work with friends than at home alone, so I think I'll see fewer and fewer people as the week wears on. We'll have to plan some sort of outing or I'll go bonkers.

Thanks in part to posting here, I managed to schedule my spring break pretty thoroughly, and my ratio of fun days to depressed days was about 14:1. Yay! But of course, that's all just a trial run for the real hurdle: summer. It starts in a month, and I'm terrified. Work has been so busy lately that I've planned even less than I usually do, which is why I'm up an hour past my bedtime posting about this.

So I'll extend the same offer I posted in March. I will happily:

* baby-sit!
* help paint your house, refinish your furniture, or do any other hands-on type projects you'd like to teach me to do.
* teach you to do anything I know how to do (make mosaics, cook, use assorted software packages...).
* run errands -- the odder and more out of the way, the better (bearing in mind that I don't have a car).
* fill in odd hours at the non-profit where you work.
* cook for you.
* organize the messiest room in your house.
* do pretty much whatever you'd like me to do for you, provided it involves leaving my house and/or interacting with at least one human being other than myself. Seriously.

I'd also love paying gigs. Ideally I would:

* copyedit
* tutor (writing, probably)
* work in a bake shop
* work in a garden store or do something else outside

If you have any leads or ideas, I'd love to hear them! My priorities are doing interesting things with interesting people and getting the hell out of my house on a regular basis. Anything that meets at least one of those criteria would be swell.

...becoming friends with my 15-year-old cousin on Facebook and discovering "cock" among her interests.*

...realizing that this means my students, many of whom I know way better than I know my cousin at this point, have equally terrifying things on their Facebook pages, and I just don't know. (Until they graduate and friend me. Eeep!)

*in among things like "glitter," "good conversations," and "spelling things correctly." She's actually an awesome kid. Whom I've known since she was born, so ack!

I finally watched the BSG finale last night, with spooky_thing, janet_carter, and my dear friend P who was visiting for the weekend. I studiously avoided all posts on the subject for the last 2 weeks, so if you wrote one, I want to read it now. Point me at it?

As for my thoughts, I don't want to get into a whole review, really, but here's the speedy bullet-point version:

• Too long with too many endings (spooky_thing: "Like Return of the King"). I expected 2 hours rather than 3, so I was exhausted by the end of the damn thing.
  
• WTF was up with angel/ghost-Starbuck and Imaginary Baltar & Six?
  
• So, so over the "ta-da, it was... EARTH!" "surprise" ending.
  
• I do not buy that all of humanity and Cylonity decided to just ditch all their tech and wander into the wilderness. Our heroes, sure, but I bet everyone else would have said, "Screw you! I'd like to be able to purify water and live in a house, thx."
  
• I'm not even going to get into all the plot holes you could fly a base ship through. This has never been a carefully plotted show; Moore and Eick have repeatedly said (too lazy to find a link) that they prefer to tell good stories and make decisions on the fly about where those stories will go. That's not my prefered story-telling method, but I can deal.
  
• By and large, I actually enjoyed it. The characters' endings were satisfying -- particularly Baltar and Six, who managed to get away scot-free with almost destroying the human race. I think that's awesome. And you kind of have to respect a finale as trippy as that, in which God, apparently, is a sadistic SOB who wants his creations to lead themselves into a recurring cycle of creation and holocaust (says P), and in the meantime, just wants us to smoke a bowl (says spooky_thing). Dancing robots spell our DOOOOOOM!
  

And now it occurs to me that it's maybe time to retire this icon.

...according to Michelle Obama, who is planting a freaking vegetable garden on the White House lawn.

From the NYTimes article:

While the organic garden will provide food for the first family’s meals and formal dinners, its most important role, Mrs. Obama said, will be to educate children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables.... Twenty-three fifth graders from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington will help her dig up the soil for the 1,100-square-foot plot.... Students from the school, which has had a garden since 2001, will also help plant, harvest and cook the vegetables, berries and herbs.

It's kind of ironic (in an awesome way) that the first First Family of color looks the most like me.

(That was flip, but seriously? The crazy hippies lobbied for this, and now it's happening. Not because there was some huge public outcry that dragged the President kicking and screaming, but because, gosh, the First Lady cares about the health of her family and America's families, and having a vegetable garden sounds like fun! Let's all pull weeds together as a family project! I had no idea what it would be like to have actual respect for the people in the White House... but I have to tell you, it rules.)

Which is ironic, considering that I'm posting this from my couch on a snow day. But on Friday I started seeds indoors for the first time: four little starter pellets of Sungold cherry tomatoes (3 seeds in each pellet), plus a small pot with a semicircle of basil seeds and a semicircle of oregano seeds.

A month or so ago, my friend at work mentioned that he and another friend had discovered that a) the Science Dept. has a greenhouse, and b) nobody uses it for anything. He'd brought in a bunch of plants from his house, she'd started some herbs and peppers in various pots, and there was plenty of room for me. (Insert obvious series of jokes about using the greenhouse to bolster the school's finances here.)

So Friday after work I puttered around with dirt and water and seeds! I honestly got teary being in this warm place with green growing things. I pinched back my friend's basil, just to have an excuse to stay a little longer, some garden work to do. My fingers smelled like Thai basil for the rest of the evening.

I recognize that this makes me sound crazy, but I'm rather dreading Spring Break. Two weeks of unplanned time, with nowhere to go and no one to talk to and no one expecting anything of me, is a free ticket to Depression Island. (Multiply that by 5 and you have... summer. *shudder*)

I'd like to head that off at the pass this year, so I'm making the following offer/request. My empty Spring Break runs from March 17 through March 29. Fill! My! Time! I will happily:

* baby-sit!
* help paint your house, refinish your furniture, or do any other hands-on type projects you'd like to teach me to do.
* teach you to do anything I know how to do (make mosaics, cook, use assorted software packages...).
* run errands -- the odder and more out of the way, the better (bearing in mind that I don't have a car).
* fill in odd hours at the non-profit where you work.
* cook for you.
* organize the messiest room in your house.
* do pretty much whatever you'd like me to do for you, provided it involves leaving my house and/or interacting with at least one human being other than myself. Seriously.

I am also accepting suggestions for other ways to leave my house and interact with other people over the course of these two weeks. Yay for being proactive!

For everyone who asked about my acupuncture experience:

I'm not sure why it occurred to me to try acupuncture, other than that I'd tried everything Western medicine had to offer. And I'm a strong believer in holistic treatments in general. My understanding is that acupuncture is a good all-purpose treatment to try, if your problem isn't structural enough to be helped by one of the movement-based (Feldenkrais, Alexander) or spine-based (cranio-sacral) techniques.*

I found my acupuncturist through my health plan. They give a "discount" (it is crappy), so they maintain a list of approved providers. I picked one who said she specialized in IBS.

I started last July. My first appointment was just talking -- she took a detailed medical history. After that each appointment has consisted of a few minutes of checking in, and then me lying with needles sticking out of my body for 45 minutes or so. I went every week for the first month or so, and then switched to every couple of weeks, and now I'm at every month (right before my period starts; we've found that works best).

In theory I should be "cured" by now; my acupuncturist said it was likely that I would only need the most occasional maintenance after the first few months of treatment. I didn't go last month, and am still fine. Woot! But the truth is that acupuncture is so relaxing and wonderful that I don't want to give it up. It's totally worth $65 a month. (Besides, there's always something breaking somewhere that she can fine-tune -- my feet hurt, my circulatory problem is acting up, whatever.)

I have even less empirical evidence for this than I do for the rest of it, but I feel like it's had an effect on my overall mood, as well. This school year I've been the happiest I've been in years. Depression is seriously a faint worry, rather than a looming threat. There's other good stuff going on too, so who knows if acupuncture has anything to do with it? But I've read that it can, and I'm going to give it some credit, at least.

* This is me talking out of my ass. I would love to learn more about this, but right now I have only my usual conglomeration of half-knowledge from the internet and overheard personal experience. I'm sounding authoritative about something I only sort of understand... what else is new?

I've made a few purchases recently that have -- without hyperbole -- changed my life. So I thought I'd share, in case they might change your life, too:

1. My down coat. I got mine from Land's End, but they don't seem to have it available anymore -- they've already switched to cute raincoats. Their February is not like my February. Anyway, the point is: it's long, it's black, it has fleece cuffs so the cold doesn't get in, it has a hood, it's quilted, it's full of little puffy feathers, and it's awesome. It's made the difference between "Oh god oh god it's 7 degrees out" and "Eh, I guess it's a little cold." Plus, hood = no hat head!

2. My Mini-DVI to Video adapter. That and an audio cable (I think that link is to the right thing) connect my laptop to my TV's A/V cables (the red, white, and yellow ones)... which in this era of streaming television is effectively equivalent to having free cable, plus a TiVo. Best $25 I ever spent.

3. My slippers. I didn't buy them myself; they were a gift from spooky_thing's parents, on his suggestion. They're warm and fuzzy, and did I mention warm? My feet are always cold in the winter. This leads to some serious discomfort (as soon as I come inside, my toes turn bright red and start itching like crazy). But for the last month, I've been religious about putting my slippers on the second I take my shoes off, and this problem has pretty much gone away! (And when I need extra warmth: aspartaimee's Baraucktion socks. Ahhh, warm feet.)

4. Acupuncture. Goodbye, digestive problem which has made eating unpleasant for years!

I'm probably forgetting a few things -- I feel like my life has been unusually blessed with Wonderful Things lately. And now I'm curious: what would go on your list?

Man, it's been a long 8 years. I haven't quite dealt with that yet, I don't think. That's my entire adult life -- last semester of college and all that followed. For my students, it's their entire aware life.

That's 8 years of the involuntary president's voice shudder, 8 years of ridiculous internet clips, 8 years of the Daily Show. Almost 8 years of twitching at the date "September 11," and almost 8 years of war. 8 years of gathering with friends to laugh because it kept us from crying -- and 8 years of crying anyway.

President Barack Obama isn't going to solve everything, but at least (as my friend said tonight) he's going to try. I am hopeful. (And also sleepy. I have lost way too much sleep to this man already. Take that however you want; I'm going to bed.)

spooky_thing and I are forever indebted to his roommate incontango for introducing us to our new appointment television: Tool Academy.

Yes, it's a VH1 reality show. Shut up. Behold the premise: a group of wronged girlfriends nominate their boyfriends to attend the awesomely named Tool Academy, in which they will learn... well, how to behave less like the assholish tools they are. (Why do the men agree to go on this show? Because they think they're on the even-more-awesomely named Mr. Awesome, that's why. How much do you love this already?)

The show proceeds in typical reality show fashion: the couples have to do some stuff together that teaches the men some non-tooly "skill," like "communication" or "fidelity." The man who fails the hardest gets kicked off the island by a scary British therapist, at which point his girlfriend decides whether or not to dump him.

On the one hand, as spooky_thing said, I love that there's a show with the premise that men should treat their women better, and that we as a TV-viewing society should mock the ones who don't.

On the other hand, the women make me very, very sad. They all know how to spout the right "oh snap, girlfriend" lines, but they are apparently incapable of applying this showy girl power to their own situations. After all, if your television debut sports the caption "Naked Tool's Girlfriend," you really must ask yourself what is wrong with your life. The girlfriend of the first eliminated Tool stayed with him at least long enough to drive off the set (uh... spoiler alert), and I have little faith that any of the other women will do better.

This show is gross, no doubt. But at least the first episode was also very entertaining. And if I hadn't learned to find schadenfreudisch amusement at drama queen, attention whore reality show contestants, what sort of American would I be? (Answer: an even angrier, more depressed one than I already am.)

(I tallied this up yesterday for my own benefit, but I thought some of you might be interested, too. I'm pretty pleased with myself!)

I didn’t keep track of this well enough right after the farmer’s market closed at the end of November, and I’ve definitely eaten some of my stock since then. But what I have today is:

( OM NOM NOM )

spooky_thing found me this article in the Globe: "How the city hurts your brain ...And what you can do about it." Basically, it summarizes some studies about how time spent in the city is more stressful than time spent in nature. This is particularly mind-blowing:

Studies have found that even a relatively paltry patch of nature can confer benefits. In the late 1990s, Frances Kuo, director of the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois, began interviewing female residents in the Robert Taylor Homes, a massive housing project on the South Side of Chicago.

Kuo and her colleagues compared women randomly assigned to various apartments. Some had a view of nothing but concrete sprawl, the blacktop of parking lots and basketball courts. Others looked out on grassy courtyards filled with trees and flowerbeds. Kuo then measured the two groups on a variety of tasks, from basic tests of attention to surveys that looked at how the women were handling major life challenges. She found that living in an apartment with a view of greenery led to significant improvements in every category. ...Kuo and her colleagues [also] found less domestic violence in the apartments with views of greenery.

Whoa! This strikes me as the sort of information -- like all the studies that show that eating crap for lunch and getting no exercise during the school day increase attention problems, behavior problems, and poor performance -- which suggests relatively easy, cost-effective, life-improving measures that will never actually happen. I hope I'm wrong about that.

The end of the article talks about how densely packed cities may lead to more innovation, "as strangers interact with one another in unpredictable ways." (And then it gives props to Cambridge.) This is exactly what I love about cities -- that, and not having to drive to get to most of the things I need, want, and find inspiring. (With the exception of green things, which would not be an issue if I lived in, say, JP and could walk to the Arboretum. Somerville has rather less green space, though that's being worked on.)

It's rather more scientific than your typical pop psychology fluff piece, and worth reading... but it still strikes me as a pop psychology fluff piece. I want to know more about how all of this works!

Tonight I joined my colleagues for the traditional caroling from dorm to dorm before Winter Break. My friend didn't want to sing anything Christmas-y, so none of the kids would feel left out (a perspective I find it hard to complain about, obviously). On the other hand, I said, we as a school and a country have set our major break in the school year to coincide with Christmas, so it feels disingenuous to ignore that -- like we're going "la la la, I can't hear your claims of religious favoritism."

I told my friend that I have this friendly argument with other friends every year, "as a Jew who loves Christmas," to which she replied, "Maybe you should form a support group."

So here's my support group of one: My name is in_parentheses, I'm a secular humanist spiritual atheist Jew, and I love Christmas.

Why? I love snow, and sparkly lights, and the sharp scent of evergreen in the house, and eggnog, and everybody giving each other baked goods. I love the shared cultural tradition of people walking around singing familiar songs to each other. And hey, I love presents -- the choosing, the wrapping, the giving, the opening. I love the fact that I get two weeks off work, no doubt. I love my family, and I love that this the time I get to see them. I love spooky_thing, and that this is the time we get to share our families with each other.

You'll note that "Christ" is nowhere in there. It's true that my favorite carols are the Christ-iest -- "Silent Night" and "Angels We Have Heard on High" just plain have more soul and spirit and beauty than "Rudolph." But that has nothing to do with my belief (or lack thereof) in the meaning behind the words.

Despite the total lack of Jesus being the reason for my season, all those things I love are Christmas. They aren't Hanukkah or Solstice or New Year's (though I love those things, too); they're the pagan secular religious mishmash that is our American Christmas tradition. I totally respect the feelings of those of you who feel left out by this time of year, obviously. I just felt like I've been having this discussion often enough that I wanted to lay out my feelings on the subject.

And now I'm going to go home, turn on the tree, and bake some cookies.

This year I am thankful for

my family, the biological and the chosen, who keep my life three-dimensional, colorful, and full.

my third (!) Thanksgiving with spooky_thing, who always feels like home to me.

my good health.

my job, which gets me out of bed at 5:45 every morning and through 12-hour days (mostly) happy to be doing it, and my career, which I love so much that I suspect I'll be cheerfully slogging through those 12-hour days for the rest of my working life.

my colleagues and students -- as always, it's the people who make the difference between fun and not for me, and I wouldn't love my job nearly so much without their silliness, camaraderie, and appreciation.

my home in my Somerville in my Greater Boston Area, and all the communities and businesses and progressive hippie infrastructure here that enrich my life.

all the food stocked up in my mud room and basement and fridge and chest freezer for Winter Experiment in Localvoration II, and of course the people who grew it and the land it grew from and the farmer's markets that make it possible for this to be the way I eat now.

a new president-elect who (I hope) will make me able to be proud of my country again.

the ability to appreciate all of this more days than not, clear-eyed and depression-free.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

1:09: Ok, Prop 8 is at 52.3 to 47.7 Yes, with 24.2% reporting. Which sucks. MN is 43 to 41 Coleman, with 74% reporting. Which also sucks.

And I am bed-bound, because I have to get up in 4 and a half hours, get on a train, and go teach some classes.

"President-elect Barack Obama." Just keep saying that to yourselves. It's real.

12:40: Reporter: "In Kenya they've declared it a national holiday."

12:34: John Kerry: "I have the latest exit polls. Bush is exiting, Cheney is exiting..." Hee! jadelennox: "He made a joke and it was funny! Why didn't he do that 4 years ago?"

12:33: Hee! There are people dancing in the Christian Science reflecting pool.

12:33: Jeanne Shaheen is going to kick some butt.

12:30: Teachers get paid, we can smoke pot, and puppies are safe! (Translation: no on 1, yes on 2, yes on 3.)

12:27: Copley Square, "Sweet Caroline" is playing in the background. I heart you, Boston.

12:25: There's a lot of crying right now. It's not a dream.

12:17: "A world was connected by our own science and imagination." SCIENCE! We have a president who likes science!

12:11: "This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance to make that change." Word.

12:10: "YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!"

12:08: "It was built by the young people who rejected the myth of their nation's apathy. ...And from the millions of Americans who organized..." ...Ok, I can't type fast enough. I'm just going to bask.

12:06: Whew. "You have earned the new puppy that is coming with us to the White House." Heee!

12:04: ACK CABLE TEST NOOOOO COME BACK!

12:03: He said gay and straight! ... "We are and always will be the United States of America!" I've never been patriotic before, but this man, this moment, makes me proud.

12:02: Tivo: "Needs to change channel at 12:00 in order to start recording Robot Chicken."

12:00: Hello, first family!

11:57: Globe editorial cartoon

11:50: spooky_thing: "They keep showing Oprah, now that they've found her in the audience."

11:48: jadelennox: "I can finally start traveling abroad and letting people hear my accent." msakai's sister: "Time to take down those fake maple leaves!

11:47: "President-elect Obama." I've been doodling that on my notebooks and dotting the "i" with a heart. (Um, metaphorically. I swear.)

11:41: Multiple people in chat window: "I have to go to bed; it's late." leighjen: "Call in hoped tomorrow."

11:38: Via mildmannered: "as Black women we have been slaves to a nation and to our bodies, and we are that no longer."

11:29: "Campaigns are often harder on the candidate's families than on the candidate." For real. "Dear Obama's daughters, I'm so sorry. Love, Chelsea Clinton and Amy Carter."

11:26: Nice shout-out to Obama's grandmother. Very, very classy. "...To find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences." Yes. That is what this is all about. "We are all Americans. And believe me when I say, no association has ever meant more to me than that." You know what? That's the first thing he's said that I've believed the whole campaign.

11:24: Ok, this is pretty classy. I bet he's a little relieved that he can stop being Asshole Maverick Guy and go back to being decent.

11:23: "The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly." For fucking real. Stop booing, people.

11:23: Ok, McCain, let's hear it.

11:17: McCain called Obama to concede. I'm shaking.

11:14: I was looking at reference books on presidents for a 7th grade assignment today. The ones we have all stop at Clinton. But when we buy new ones? Barack Obama's going to be in there.

11:10: mildmannered: "We finally get to live in the good alternate universe."

11:02: "It's 11:00, and the next president of the United States will be... Barack Obama."

Why didn't it feel real until Jon Stewart said it? Oh, right, because he's the only person who's been keeping me sane for the last 8 years.

I am speechless with joy.