As well as tracking the blogs of my friends and family, I follow a few blogs just because I like them, even though I have never met the parties involved. There's one I like that I happened upon because the writer is apparently a friend of my aunt's niece. Seriously. A number of them are parenting blogs... there's one in particular that I really love; the writer is funny and sentimental and posts great pictures of her daughters. When I blundered onto it last year, I read about 20 posts in one evening. The thing is ... now I've been sucked in. I care about this woman and her family, and lately things have been looking a little scary and I'm worried about them. And then there's this other blog I got kind of hooked on lately, and the writer is grieving now after a miscarriage.

There should be a warning on my computer: The internet will suck away your time and connect you weirdly intimately with complete strangers.

I just don't know if it's good or bad... or just entirely different than previous social models. And while it's good, I think, to make connections with strangers, it's weird that my experience of the grief and joy of these strangers' lives is completely selfish - I am sad or happy for them, and they never know it.

Anyway, back to being selfish just about my own life. I've got a paper to write. Two papers to write, actually. If anybody knows anything about congestion pricing, please give me a call.

Oh! And...

I just want to say that I'm pretty excited about an imminent new person in Port Townsend, and that is a constant joy-making thought in the back of my mind.

The end is in sight.

No, not the bitter end. Just the summer, and in the nick of time. Dutch is sick of me being gone or busy all the time, Cook is sick of cooking all the food and washing all the dishes and sweeping all the floors, and I'm sick of being crazy-making-over-scheduled.

It's probably a clever subconscious strategy to avoid feeling awful about my spectacular failure to land an internship,* but I'm starting to really look forward to being under-scheduled. I plan to work about 30 hours a week, and that's ALL I will be doing. No school. No internship. No volunteering. Nothing responsible at all. Just the rest of my life, like sleeping, watching lots of cheesy movies, spending time with my kid, spending time with my husband, reading cheesy books, and maybe - hey, imagine this - calling some of my friends to actually talk to you!

Also, I need some time to remind myself that being rejected directly and indirectly about twenty times in six months isn't really a reflection of my value in the world.** It certainly isn't a reflection of my capacity to take joy in my life, and I haven't been doing that enough lately. The roses are in bloom here, and they're pretty darn spectacular, which you'd think would be enough to remind me about the importance of smelling all roses, literal and figurative. So there you go. My agenda for July and August: extensive smelling of flowers. I'll write it into my Google Calendar...

*I've had two more fruitless interviews and gotten two scholarship-rejection letters since I last posted about this. Hence the awful feelings...
** Just the Portland job market, I'm sure.

Families of Thailand

Dutch is watching "Families of Thailand" in my bedroom. (Because I'm working really hard on a project for school, obviously.) She's hooked on these movies we keep getting from the library - it all started with "Families of Sweden" and we're waiting for "Families of Japan" to be delivered to our library. We've learned some stuff. Dutch asks insightful questions like "why is it so hot?" and "why do they not have a car?" and "why do they not have very many clothes?" and so on. For an American kid who's totally baffled by the notion that we might not have enough money to buy whatever we want whenever we want it, poverty is as alien as monsoon season.

Exercising the precautionary principle in your life.

If you're pregnant, or considering ever getting pregnant, or know someone who's pregnant or considering getting pregnant (so really, if you're a human being), I've got something for you to consider:

Using a cellphone while you're pregnant appears to nearly double your child's likelihood of having emotional or behavioral problems. (And kids who use a cellphone also have higher risk of behavioral problems.) Researchers have no idea why this might be the case, and obviously there's no clear causality, but the association is significant. So you might want to consider, or suggest that people you know consider, avoiding cellphone use during pregnancy. Just in case.

Evidence of the day

Procrastination, summa cum laude

I found out yesterday that I have an upcoming exam... tomorrow.

I missed class last week, thanks to Pittsburgh, and somehow had written the exam into my schedule for a later date, so I came perilously close to living out my anxiety nightmare of being totally unprepared for a test. Usually in those dreams I'm not wearing any pants, and (major psychological insight coming up) I'm pants-less because I CHOSE not to wear pants earlier in the dream (for excellent reasons like "hey, this is a really long shirt - who needs pants!") so I'm humiliated as a result of MY OWN BAD DECISION. That's pretty much all my major psychological hangups bundled into one horrible dream.

Anyway, I will still be woefully unprepared for the exam, because this is one of those maddening classes in which I have a good grade, have done most of the reading, turned in all the assignments, and attended most of the classes and actually listened, and yet have learned almost nothing. I am aware that it is my responsibility to maximize my educational experience, and I should have been doing more toward that end, but I think that doing (most of) the required work should get you a little further along the way than it has in this class.

And today I am procrastinating! I have actually been doing schoolwork pretty steadily since Friday morning, but I am incapable of seriously knuckling down to anything for very long, as you know, so I have also washed dishes, wiped the mildew off all our windowsills, done another useless informational interview, applied for a job, baked a cake, and pretended to drive a plane (assembled out of our kitchen chairs). I'm using magical thinking at the moment to sustain the delusion that I'll get an A without actually studying. But I've already laid out my outfit, complete with shirt and pants, for tomorrow, to forestall any potential coverage issues.

Big plans!

Now that it's clear that I will never find an internship, let alone a real job, I have given up on all this silly interviewing and applying, and turned my mind to more important things. I am attempting to place holds on every cheesy movie in the Multnomah County library system, in anticipation of a long summer. Please send me your recommendations!

P.S. Regarding the previous post - we have no cat. Just poetic inspiration.

Move over, Jack and Allen.

Spontaneous poem by Dutch, preparing for a trip to the zoo (and dressed in a blue-and-navy-striped shirt, multicolored striped socks, and blue flowered pants):

Leapy cat!
Sleepy cat!
Pounce-upon cat!
Curl up sleepy cat, curl up sleepy cat, burl up sleepy cat!

Always look on the bright side of life.

I am feeling deeply demoralized by the fact that nobody seems interested in paying me a pittance to work for them. If I can't get an INTERNSHIP, how am I supposed to find a job? Hmm? The last internship rejection was particularly crushing, as my interviewer had informed me that I was one of only three applicants for two positions. Ugh.

But I am trying to be resilient about it. Really! The glass is half full! In three short weeks, I will be free for the summer! I will be working just 25 hours a week! I can enjoy the lovely Portland summer! Something will turn up - I'll probably end up cobbling together some random part-time things... in the meantime, please come visit. I will have lots of free time!

PDX-CVG-PGH-SLC-PDX in three lists

List One - things that pissed me off in the Cincinnati airport on Tuesday:
1) The broken switch in the cockpit of my plane, and the subsequent delay.
2) The bathroom stall in which I got myself wedged sideways (all airport bathroom stalls should be built to accommodate weary travelers with large heavy bags and 3-foot-long poster tubes).
3) The person who used said stall before me, and was too fastidious to put her naked butt on the seat, but not fastidious enough to clean up the urine splatters.

List Two - things I liked about taking the 28X from the airport into downtown Pittsburgh:
1) The couple who awkwardly reacquainted themselves (she's a student at Penn, he was on my flight from Cincinnati) while standing behind me waiting at the bus stop, and made out and snuggled the whole busride.
2) The Gaming Control Board Commissioner who sat behind me and flirted with the woman in town for her highschool 40th reunion.
3) The absolute fabulousness of public transit, as expressed in a $3 charge for a reasonably fast trip downtown, the opportunity to eavesdrop on and be charmed by my fellow humans, and the utterly gorgeous view of a golden moon setting over Pittsburgh, shining on the three rivers.
4) OMG they TOTALLY have a dedicated busway! EEEEEE!!!!!!


List Three - things I noticed about Pittsburgh in my brief escapes from the conference:
1) Big Yellow Bridges
2) Old white men in trenchcoats smoking cigarettes
3) Those rivers! So beautiful!
4) Pointy buildings
5) Inclines!