Shelter from the Storm

My reading load this week has been comparatively light, which has allowed me to enjoy a bit of relaxation and re-prioritization that has served me well. It has been a pleasant week.

Tuesday, I set aside all the stuff I was "supposed" to be working on, and focused instead on what I wanted to be working on: my PhD writing sample. I finished the book I had assigned myself and completed the 1 page abstract of my argument that my professor requested. He and I were both happy with the result, so after a bit more research, I will be ready to begin writing it! For dinner, we met up with Billy's family to celebrate Chuck's birthday.

Wednesday, I had a productive meeting with my aesthetic theory professor. I have a paper due for her tomorrow, and when I left her class Monday night, I had no idea what to write about. My meeting helped me talk through some things that had been confusing me, and the paper is almost finished. She also confirmed that I don't need to retake the GRE for my application, so that was a relief.

Thursday, I survived another Readings in Early Modern Literature class meeting, enjoyed spending some time reading Inada (more on that in a minute), and watched The Office with Billy. Last week's episode was a bit of a dud, so I was happy that this one made me laugh again.

Friday, my boss was out of the office, so I was able to get some of my reading done at work. (It's not that I'm a bad employee; when she's not there to give me work, I have little to do besides answer peoples' questions.) By Friday night, Billy's injured leg had healed sufficiently to allow him to participate in our softball game, which did not get rained out for the first time in weeks. Although we suffered our first loss, I was called out by the umpire when I was clearly safe, and we had so many girls that I had to sit out the second half, I had a good time.

Saturday, I spent several hours communing with Katherine Anne Porter, and by that I mean reading through the marginal comments she wrote in the books she left to the University of Maryland. I am trying to figure out the connection between her and Willa Cather, so my success of the day was finding a note in which she acknowledges the similarity between a scene she wrote and one Cather wrote. I believe I finally found the perfect pale pink nail polish (OPI's Isn't it Romantic?)-- feel free to laugh, but this search has been going on for months. To finish up the week, Danielle and I met for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, where I got to enjoy my Renee's Special, Chocolate Raspberry Truffle cheesecake, and Danielle's company. : )

As I said before, I've really been enjoying the Inada poetry collection I was assigned this week. Tucked inside the "Oregon" section are a few poems about his wife, including the one I leave you with below, which I wish I had discovered in time to have it read at my wedding. So simple, but just right.

X. Pledge

Repeat after me:

I

Do

You

We

Be

(Repeat as necessary.)

Perspective, Take 2

Tonight, Billy informed me that he will not be spending any time doing homework. I've decided that this is a great idea!

So instead, after deciding that my last post was somewhat depressing, I bring you a list of 5 happy things that cheer me up in the midst of this anxiety-inducing semester.

1) Pictures of these two little ones:

Josh, 1 year old, is a big Michigan Football fan. I bet he is pretty germ free for a baby, because his mom is my college roommate Beth, hand-washer extraordinairre.

Clara, 9 months old, might be the happiest baby I have ever seen. Also, she lives in Hawaii, so the backgrounds in her photos are always torturously enviable. Her mom and dad are my old friends, Krista and Jordan.

2) Glee. I drop everything to watch this show every week (Wed, 9pm). Every episode so far has been genius. A football team performing Single Ladies? (Skip ahead to 2:40). Absurdly delicious.

3) Rob Dyrdek. The first season of his new show, Fantasy Factory, took a while to get rolling. Season 2 has yet to disappoint. Full episodes are available online, and Vickie gave me seasons 1 and 2 of Rob & Big on DVD, so I can get my Rob fix whenever I want. He makes me laugh until I cry. Last night I dreamed that he died-- talk about a nightmare. Also, I couldn't find anything to wear to his funeral.

4) Crisp fall days that are the appropriate temperature for an open sunroof.

5) Discovering that my reading assignments for the week includes a poetry collection written by Oregonian Legend, Lawson Fusao Inada. I'm reading Legends From Camp. I don't even like poetry very much, and I couldn't put it down. Did you ever think someone could make Fresno, CA seem exotic and exciting? Mission accomplished.

(As a side note, Billy is even better than any of these things.)

Perspective

In 1988, a girl named Michaela was abducted in Hayward, CA. In 1989, a girl named Ilene was abducted in Dublin, CA. Both were so near my own hometown of Pleasanton that, for years, I was convinced I would be abducted. I can remember going into my parents room to sleep in their bed because I was petrified but would never admit the cause of my fear. Michaela was abducted from a grocery store parking lot, and I was scared to death every time I entered one. As an adult, I wonder if my refusal to name the fear out loud was some way of trying to protect myself from it.

I've had a rough week. It feels like no matter how much time I spend on my school work, it will never be satisfactorily "done." Most of my work this semester feels like work instead of pleasure. I've put so much pressure on myself as as a result of this PhD application process that the whole thing makes me feel overwhelmingly overwhelmed.

Tonight, after a class that drained rather than energized me, I came home and discovered this article on people.com. I started thinking about how this one man has stolen the lives of Jaycee Dugard and the girls she bore after he violated her, how he possibly stole the lives of Michaela and Ilene, and how his actions trickled down far enough to terrify a little A's fan in Pleasanton so profoundly that she couldn't even speak about it.

These days, if I have trouble sleeping at night, it's because there are too many ideas in my head. Instead of kidnapping, it's Willa Cather. I guess I'll take it. There are bigger fears out there than "I am never going to finish this reading," or "I have no idea how to provide feedback on this paper," or even "What will I do if I don't get into the PhD program?" Hopefully, the work I have to do tomorrow will feel more like the privilege it really is than the burden it was beginning to become.

Bits and Pieces

A few things here and there...

I can never make up my mind about Roger Federer. When he's on top, I'm desperate for anyone to beat him. When he looked fallible, I was cheering for him to make it back to the top. But it annoyed me when, after beating Andy at Wimbledon, he pulled a jacket out of his bag that had "15" emblazoned across the back. Today, I'm happy imagining that there is an article of clothing inside Roger Federer's racquet bag, designed to celebrate 6 US Open victories in a row, which never got to see the light of day. Congratulations are in order for Juan Martin del Potro, who becomes the first person to defeat both Federer and Nadal in a Grand Slam tournament. Neither played their best against him, but he rose to the challenge.

Patrick Swayze has lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. As a member of the generation of girls who grew up loving Johnny Castle, I feel sad. I have always felt, though, that his real life love story with his wife, Lisa Niemi, was more inspiring than any of his movies. My thoughts are with her as she tries to imagine life in a world that no longer includes the man she's been with since she was, I believe, only 15.

They have begun building the James Webb Space Telescope that Billy is working on. You can read about it here.

Congratulations, Kanye West. You've succeeded in doing something so absurd and ridiculous that not one single person is willing to come to your defense-- I didn't know this was actually possible! Also, you should be required to attend just one session of my current seminar on aesthetic inquiry before you are allowed to use the word "greatest" or spout off about "real art" even one more time.

President Obama is coming to my campus on Thursday to speak about health care reform. I think I'll ask for the morning off. I find it hard to maintain my sanity in the traffic that hits College Park on a rainy day, so I don't think I will make it through the mayhem surrounding a presidential visit.

I came across this quote from Elliott Gould in Esquire, which I thought was especially profound. "It is essential that I listen, so I can try to minimize problems that I create for myself." If only I could remember this at all times.

All right, enough, I must get back to my reading for my Early Modern readings class. So far, I hate it. I've got a Willa Cather book in my bag that's burning a hole in my curiosity, but instead I'm trying to decode "The articles whereforth John Frith died." An article I read yesterday from the New York Times quoted some scholar who thinks a "conservative" estimate of what percentage of academic searches begin with Google is about 95%. In order to figure out what the heck John Frith is saying, to Google I go... where, evidently, I'm in good company.

Hitting My Stride

For the past two weekends, my 10 mile training runs have been the same: the first mile feels fine, and then miles 2-5 feel miserable, but around halfway I find my stride and enjoy the rest of the run. That's how grad school started out for me this time around, as well.

I have classes on Mondays and Thursdays every week, and I have additional Monday, Wednesday, and Friday classes that each meet once or twice per month. All of these additional classes met this week, and I had a meeting with a professor, so for several days I was feeling completely overwhelmed. I had quite a bit of extra reading to do and less time to do it in because of the additional class sessions. As always, however, I found a way to get done what needed to be done, and at this time tomorrow, I will have made it through.

Tomorrow I attend the first session of the publications workshop, in which I am the only master's student. I was intimidated even before the professor who leads the workshop stopped me in the office to say, "Your essay will be great for our class to look at, because the rest of them only need surface level changes." Why not just tell me it was the worst?! I keep reminding myself that if I am going to make it in academia, I need to toughen up, and there's no time like the present. My friend Anne-Marie reminds me that you don't learn anything when you're perfectly comfortable. Steve Prefontaine said, "To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift." I recognize that being a graduate student is a privilege that very few people get to experience. If I don't get into the PhD program, this year might be my last one in grad school for quite a while, so I owe it to myself to take on everything that interests me, even if it periodically stresses me out. I'm also fortunate to spend my time away from the books with a husband who calms me down, makes me laugh, and reminds me that I don't need to be engaged in "serious study" all the time.

Tonight's Women's US Open Final, which is about to commence, reminds me that sometimes, the hardworking, nice girls finish first. Are there two more likeable personalities in sports than Caroline Wozniacki and Kim Clijsters? When Caro beat Melanie Oudin in the quarters, I couldn't even be upset about it. When Serena came unglued last night, I couldn't help feeling upset that she ruined what otherwise might have been one of the best moments of Kim's career. Time for the match to start!

It is a Game, After All

Watching Melanie Oudin's cinderella run into the quarterfinals at the US Open has been the highlight of my week. You may remember hearing about her breakthrough performance at Wimbledon a few months ago on this very blog. She also shined on the national stage a few months prior with a big win in a Fed Cup tie against Argentina. The women's game has lost its appeal for me since the retirement of Justine Henin because the world's best women seem to crack under the pressure of reaching the top. Watching Ana Ivanovic push her visor down over her eyes while she cries through a tiebreaker is not a lot of fun. Serena Williams's dominance at the Slams recently is somewhat tainted by what often seems like apathy toward all the other tournaments. Melanie Oudin, on the other hand, seems to think that the "job" of being a professional athlete is actually fun and acts like she enjoys the pressure of competitive sports. She shouts "Come on!" and pumps her fist after every winner, which is refreshing in a game where the #1 player could be heard saying to her coach, "Why am I such a chicken?" in the finals at the French Open.

Most of us don't get the chance to throw our hands up in the air and scream at the top of our lungs very frequently in life-- certainly not while we're on the job. Melanie gives us the chance to scream. Part of the appeal of tennis, for me, is that its stars seem to be motivated by the drive to compete rather than money, and they recognize that they live very charmed lives. Melanie's not the only one having the time of her life.

On Friday, Taylor Dent (who has been fighting to return from a back injury) defeated Ivan Navarro in a fifth set tiebreaker. After the match, he pulled down the umpire's microphone to thank the crowd and took two laps around the court slapping hands with the fans. When asked about the time he spent deciding if he wanted to return to tennis, he said it would have been "irresponsible" of him to have the ability to return and not try. Of the match, he said "The US Open is such a unique experience for a tennis player. It's really unbelievable that I have the privilege to experience it."

In the press conference following Andy Roddick's third round loss to John Isner, a reporter asked Roddick how his 10-12 year old self would have felt if he could have been told the details about how his professional career would pan out. The question seemed to be suggesting the young Andy might have been disappointed to know he'd only win one major, find himself unable to beat his rivals, and suffer one heartbreaking loss after another. Andy's curt reply, "I think he'd take it," emphasized the absurdity of the question. Every time he is asked how it feels to play in an era when he seems to be doomed to find himself second, third, fourth, or fifth best, he responds by saying things like "I'm one of the lucky few who gets to hear the crowd cheer my name."

There are a lot of reasons to love tennis. It's a mental game as much as it is a physical one. A single person can reach the "final four" in 21 straight Grand Slams, and a young kid from Georgia can come out of nowhere to win the hearts of the crowd and beat the big name players. A match can hinge on a few key points, and momentum can shift almost instantly. A player can save several match points and come back and win. And when Melanie Oudin thrust her arms in the air today, it was for love of the game and the thrill of victory. At no point did she seem to be thinking, "I just ensured myself $175,000 instead of the $85,000 I would have made if I'd lost this match!" nor "Now I can renegotiate my Adidas endorsement deal!"

Marriage Takes Patience

... especially when you're married to me. Just this week, I have:

1) refused to eat $1 hot dogs because they were disgusting. Give me Nathan's or give me nothing. (Sunday)

2) left my wallet in Billy's car overnight, prompting a 7am "Do I need to come back home to bring you your stuff?" phone call from my husband. (Monday)

3) forgotten my track jacket at softball practice, forcing my husband to backtrack 10 minutes to retrieve it. (Wednesday)

4) locked myself out of the house on my morning run, after Billy had left for work, prompting a 7am "I need you to come back home to bring me a key" phone call to my husband (after knocking on the neighbor's door to borrow her phone). Thankfully, my mother-in-law came to our rescue, saving Billy the trip and helping me get into the house. (Thursday)

What is in store for Billy tomorrow? No one knows.