BOTH

This is gonna blow your world up, my sweet babies.

The lead singer in Cigarettes After Sex is not a woman.

I never would have...

I just...

Wow.

I like to play music for my kids when the lights are out, after we've read stories and they are on the verge of falling asleep.  I played a few songs from the self-titled CAS album and asked my daughter if she thought the singer was a man or a woman.  She paused and really seemed to give my question some thought.  And then she said, "maybe both."

ARF!

This guy I work with earned his PhD from an online institution.  You know...whatever.  But he insists that everyone address him with the prefix "Dr."  I just call him by his first name with the prefix "yo" because I am an irreverent twat.

 

Anyway, this guy somehow manages to secure himself a student worker most semesters to help him do his job.  I just want to point out that nobody else in our department has a student worker.  Nobody.  So, either he's special or he's "special." 

 

I once unintentionally challenged his claim to this special help by asking, what I assumed to be, the department's student worker to photocopy some of my lecture notes for my boss.  That's when I realized that this indentured servant works for Dr. Special exclusively because the kid never had time for my work.  He was simply too busy with Dr. Special's many, many tasks.  

 

On a side note, this student worker is usually brown, female, or both.  That's just a casual observation.  I have no statistics to back up that claim.  I just notice it because our school's demographics are mainly white/male and I can't think of one white male working in that position in all the years I've been here.  I may be mistaken and/or this fact may be totally irrelevant.

 

Anyway, the current worker is a woman who, when she passes, scrunched up her nose when she smiles, the same way someone might smile at a dog or a toddler.  She seems very nice, this woman, but I would not be shocked if one day she were to reach out and pat me on the head or give me a little scratch under the chin.  Or a salty dog biscuit.  

AS IF YOU NEEDED TO ASK

What do I think about Donald Trump?  What do you think, I think about Donald Trump?

Sheesh.

I DON'T KNOW IF I MENTIONED

I started a grad program four years ago.  I also had a second baby four years ago.  In fact, I took the GRE while five months pregnant and that tadpole was turning summersaults in my belly during the test.  Only during the math section, though.  I couldn't believe my eyes when I opened my acceptance letter, because deep down I believe I am too stupid to be a scientist. 

I completed my graduate coursework while working (teaching) full time.  I was forever reading/wiping sweat from the pages of my textbooks at the gym or writing research papers while simultaneously nursing my daughter at one in the AM.  life has been pretty stressful these past few years. 

I think it was sort of assumed that I would write a lit review for my final project, but when I signed up for the program I had hoped I would be able to conduct a science project, from beginning to end.  So two years ago I started contacting people in my field of interest.  For a while I felt like a waitress slash actress in Hollywood desperately trying to get noticed.  I kept mailing expensive head shots to established scientists begging them to give me a break.  It's harder than you might think, getting your foot in the door.

But someone finally responded, and to her, I am forever grateful.  She agreed to be my research advisor even though she's not at my school, or even my state.  She agreed to train me in her lab.

I thought I had to secure travel funding to get myself to her lab and pay for lodging but then I won a $350 voucher for a round-trip flight from the YWCA (What?? Completely random!) and she said I could stay at her place (What?? Completely trusting!*)  And then I won a $5,000 scholarship from my school.  And then I learned that a certain media organization wanted to help fund a portion of the research.  Suddenly everything was snapping into place.

I spent all of last year working on this project.  I kept track of the hours, but I don't even want to add them up, because I really don't care to know how many hours I logged in that lab.  It was a lot.  A lot of rolling out of bed on Saturday at 5 AM and spending seven hours carrying out my procedure, listening to the radio, and talking to myself. 

Now it's done.  The media organization reported our findings and we found our story on the cover of newspapers in Europe, Indonesia, India, China, as well as South and North America.  We finished editing our manuscript last week and we are going to submit it this week for peer-review, and hopefully, eventually, publication.  I was invited to speak to interested toxicologists in my state's health department and I will be presenting at a national conference next month.  In the spring I will be attending a conference in California and I have an opportunity to meet many of the people I cited in my paper.  I can't believe this is my life. 

I graduated a few months ago, and when I did, I was given an award for academic excellence.  I plan to use it to pay for my flight out to CA.  I was surprised when I opened the graduation brochure, to see my own face, smiling back at me in a story that featured my project.  During the ceremony I spent a little time shoving the brochure in the face of my demons saying, "See, you were wrong. I am not a total idiot."  Some of them were silent.  Some of them reminded me that I was dumb lucky.  Some of the nastier ones insist I tricked people into thinking I am capable of success. 

Some things, I guess, never change.

* I could have been a total weirdo!  I  mean, I am a total weirdo.  But only one that would apologize profusely for entering your house stinky after a run and leave beer in your fridge. 

LULLABIES FOR SLEEPY BIRDS

APOCALYPSE by Cigarettes After Sex

I'm quite smitten with this band.  It's spacey and ethereal, which is how I prefer my bedtime music.  But I'm also completely besotted with the singer's voice.  I can hear her smiling when she sings "your lips my lips; apocalypse..." 

She gives me butterflies whenever she sings that line.  Is that normal?

TEACHER

I have been working at my current institution for 14 years.  Reading my 13 year old posts, it looks as though I never intended to work there so long.  Independent of all the good and bad times, this is the look I have been madly trying to cultivate:

MUSIC AS A PORTHOLE

WAITING by Alice Boman.


This song is a porthole to a parallel universe where I can run my wild ponies unfettered, and not worry about putting all that I have built in this universe, in jeopardy.