laugh about it, shout about it

as the world turns into a crunchy-leaves-pumpkin-everything-sweaters-and-scarves-oh-look-a-skeleton whirlwind, i can't help but feel the tingling excitement of fall arriving myself. and while i love a pumpkin bagel as much as the next person and wait all year for hoodie weather to hit, i have to say that the thing i'm most excited for is that little voice in the back of my head, the itch in my fingers, that tells me that it is time to write.

i have been exhausted lately. like falling asleep at eight kind of tired. a toddler and a pregnancy will do that to you. but more than once in the past few days i have been overcome by the urge to write. the spark of something right on the very edge of my mind, that will only come into focus if i put fingers to keyboard. unfortunately, i haven't actually done much writing. you know, because of that whole exhausted-toddler-pregnancy thing i was just talking about plus about a million and three other things going on in my life right now that can all be thrown into the "oh my god why is this so stressful?" drawer. but fall means november. and november means nanowrimo. and nanowrimo means the one month a year that i allow myself to put my writing first. to ignore everything else that needs to be done and churn out a couple of thousand words a day. and i. am. ready.

i have my story premise, a sort of almost plot, a nearly complete main character and the urge to write. the urge is strong. the words are there. the inspiration is waiting. i just need the time. i can't wait. i'm even looking forward to the annoying dry spells when my story suddenly seems like the worst thing to ever hit a word processor and i'm cursing my brain for ever thinking it was worth my time and energy and i am trying to learn magic to pull words out of a hat because i certainly can't find anymore inside of me. that's how desperate i am to start writing again.

in other news, this pregnancy is almost half finished and i have honestly forgotten that i was pregnant for a good chunk of it. like, one day a few weeks ago, i was in the middle of a few really stressful things when one thing led to another and i thought "oh crap, what if i'm pregnant? i can't be pregnant right now! how will i tell my husband?! there's too much going on!" i was in the bathroom getting ready to pee on a stick when i remembered that, oh yeah, i am pregnant. i already knew that. duh.

surprisingly, all of this stuff has not been as bad on my schoolwork as i would have thought it would be. i mean, yes, okay, i didn't get anywhere near the amount of stuff done in september that i had planned to (really, nowhere close to my optimistically stupid summer me wanted), but i still feel like i have a pretty concrete idea of where i'm going. no wandering alone, lost in the woods of academia feeling for me. i may not be as passionate about this new topic as i was about previous ones, but i have to say, this feeling of knowing what i have to do and where i have to go next is actually pretty good.

the weather is cooling down. i may actually be able to finish this stupid degree which i honestly wasn't sure about last year. i have started to feel baby kicks and turns... i may be sleep deprived and stressed and stretched way too thin, but it is october. and i have the urge to write. and i think things are starting to look up again.

*Mrs. Robinson - Simon and Garfunkel

hey look! a new post!

while you take a minute to pick your jaw up off the floor and dust off your memories about who i am and why you liked to listen to me ramble (through your eyeballs...), let me catch you up on what i've been doing since the last time i checked in here.

[one] i am still dragging my feet on this whole phd thing. (surprise surprise.) but i changed my topic for, hopefully, the last time, and as long as i can manage to carve out some me time to work on this, i should actually be able to finish this stupid thing. fingers crossed.

[two] i am pregnant again! yup, in a few months cricket will have a brand new sibling, ducky. we still don't know the sex. we still can't settle on any girl names. i have complete confidence that cricket will be an amazing older brother.

[three] i tried this recipe for pumpkin banana bread and i was so excited for it and it was such a disappointment. like, i don't think i've been that disappointed in food in such a long time.

[four] i actually did manage to finish that poetry chapbook a couple months back (all the surprise from before with none of the sarcasm) and submitted it to a couple of contests. (that's a lie. i submitted it to one contest. my dream poetry publishing place, which i will likely not win, but i didn't want to risk any slight change chance i had by simultaneous submissions and by some miracle getting picked up by somewhere that is not my dream. so.) when i lose this one contest then there are a few edits i want to make to the collection before sending it out to other places (which are already carefully chosen). if (read:when) i don't get it in anywhere from the list then i have a mass list compiled of places that i should just start sending it to to cover all my bases.

[five] the past few months have been straight out of a sitcom/movie where the main theme is "what ELSE could go wrong?" the answer: everything. i have so much stress overwhelming me these days that i don't even know what to do with myself. except to keep moving. i must keep moving, or else i will be buried.

so i'm sitting at mason, just like the good old days that never freaking ended and turned into the good lord what am i still doing here days, and i was meaning to write this fabulous amazing blog post (because i should be reading a technical article but my brain has given up on life), and just as i started the floor i'm on got SO. LOUD. like, i'm not sure what happened, but i would really like these dudes to shut up. they are disturbing my peace. and my day was super long (and included being drenched in the rain walking around DC for over an hour) so the steam that i had coming into this thing has completely fizzled. so instead of a fabulous amazing post, this pathetic catch up post will have to suffice.

but i have mason days where i need to work, so i think i may be hanging around here a bit more than i have been. gotta say, i've missed it. i always do. 

there's another world we're living in tonight

[one] you guys, i want to live in the wizarding world of harry potter. i really do. it was so well designed and executed and just perfect in every single way. it's been a few weeks since i've been back home, and i still feel like i should just quit my life and go back. the "london" side is perfect. like, it seriously looks like a street pulled straight out of london, and then you go into diagon alley and it's like you're home. (if you, like me, have always felt more at home in fictional worlds than this real one i'm stuck in.) fire breathing dragons, people running around with wands performing spells that actually work, sipping butterbeer. i sat in the sun eating a scoop of florean fortescue's ice cream while listening to celestina warbeck perform live, and i cannot even explain how perfect that moment was. i would move to orlando in a heartbeat, get an annual pass, and spend every minute in diagon alley if it didn't mean that i had to live in florida. no offense to floridians, but the news stories that come out of that state have me noping big time. plus, too many bugs. but sigh, take me back.

[two] it's almost nanowrimo time again! i was, as is typical of me in octobers, wondering if i should even do it this year. i have a baby that wants me to spend my days building towers for him to knock down. i have a dissertation that i need to write slash start from scratch with slash cry about in the bathroom. i have a severely neglected blog that i never seem to have time to update. and yet, i think i can write a fifty thousand word novel? am i crazy? apparently. i usually have some hint of a plot idea or a character or a feeling that could be turned into something by the beginning of october. this year? nothing. at first i took that as a sign to take a break from it, but then i got on the site, looked at titles in the adoption station, and started to get the excitement in the pit of my stomach that means creativity is near. i didn't see any titles that jumped out at me and filled my head with a story, but just looking through them started to get my brain turning, and now there is a feeling starting to bubble up that i might be able to turn into something. and it feels almost as perfect as being back in diagon alley. if i could spend my days writing in a fictional world on the beach, i think i'd die of happiness.

[three] baby update! cricket is seven months now. which means that it has been over half a year since he's been around and that is just ridiculously crazy to me. he's eating solids and crawling (sort of. he does some weird version of the worm across the floor.) and sitting up and knocking down towers and jumping and just basically being not a newborn anymore. it's mindblowing to me though it really shouldn't be, this is what babies do, they grow up. but goodness this is fast, having a baby around again brought light to the fact that i know waaay too many kid songs and if i used that brain power to remember something more productive i could probably be some sort of academic genius at this point with three post-graduate degrees, a hundred published articles, and seven schools begging me to work for them. instead i just have a vague sense of guilt and frustration and a much edited outline for a new dissertation topic. oh well.

*Here With Me - The Killers

at the beginning of the summer, with my hormones still out of wack from the whole having a baby thing and my brain just starting to function again as cricket started sleeping better, i made some school related decisions. basically, i decided to stop it... for now. i decided to stop being the computer forensics GTA and started replying to the many emails i get from prospective students with "unfortunately, i will not be working with this program for much longer and you should probably direct your questions elsewhere." i decided to finally just drop this really heavy, really dead weight phd attempt once and for all. it had just turned into this dreadful drain on my life that i wasn't even really working towards anymore, just kind of hoping that it would either happen or go away on its own. after almost ten years (ugh) i was going to finally, finally be done with mason. at least for now. at least so i could take a breather. at least until i wanted to go back to school because i wanted to go back to school and not because i was just stuck in it. after twenty-five years of being a student (because i am counting daycare/preschool for dramatics), i was ready to throw in the towel.

fast forward to the end of the summer, and i somehow found myself signing another year long contract to be the GTA for the computer forensics program. i somehow ended up in my adviser's office talking about switching my topic and giving this whole thing one last go. i am somehow heading to school in a bit for my first office hours of the semester, and... how did this happen?! i had plans. i made decisions. i was supposed to have pulled myself out of the quicksand of my life that is academia. and yet, here i am, right where i'm always at. sigh. i mean, my scholarship ends this semester and the idea of coming out of these past few years without a degree still makes me want to throw up, so i guess this is my attempt to say that i tried. my attempt to see if i want this enough to continue it when i'm not being paid to do so. this is my last chance to prove that i do have motivation and willpower and tenacity. but i can't help but feel like the real truth of the matter is that i've been running in place for so long that i don't know how to stop. i can't move forward and i can't still my feet. i'm like a warped energizer bunny.

i'm pretty sure that school is so wrapped up with who i am and what i do that if i ever did manage to get away from it, i would probably stop breathing. 

as your ship is going down, i'll stand by and watch you drown

UGH. so i'm gonna start this by saying that i realize that i am maybe overreacting a little bit because of hormones and stuff, but ugh.

if you have read my blog for any length of time, you probably know that i am a GTA for the computer forensics program at my school, a bittersweet job. while i have met some really great people through this job, there have also been times when i wanted to smash my fist through the computer screen just so that i could stop reading the crap i was forced to read. i love to help people, which i get to do with this, but on the flip side there are the students that just refuse to be helped. they are frustrating.

and then there are the jerks. (jerks is not the word that i have been complaining about to my husband for the last fifteen minutes, but i'm still unsure what my cussing policy is for this blog. i should probably figure it out.) (for some basic background information: this past semester, i graded the assignments for three different courses and then gave general advice and help for the rest of the program.)

so i just got an email a little bit ago from one of the professors that i TA for asking about clarification about points that i deducted from a student who was complaining about his final grade. so i read through the emails that the student sent and UGH.

the first email starts by insulting the person who graded the final exam. you could tell that he thought i graded the exams because he said that the grader was clearly "following a script," a description he used for me in later emails. he also mentioned that his "homework was graded wrong." then there were a couple of emails back and forth that showed the student to be passive-aggressive and condescending but are not worth quoting because they do not refer to me again. when other topics seem exhausted, though, he comes back to me and how i "unjustly deducted" points because i can't "think outside the script" and i count his right answers as wrong because i don't agree with them. he goes on to explain how he is an awesome professional that can do no wrong and it is frustrating to do all this work and have "an inexperience students [sic] grade [his] work poorly because he/she does not know the material." oh boo hoo.

firrrst of all, i deducted points (literally half a point two times) because your answers were wrong. the information in them was right, but as an answer to that specific question? wrong. second of all, i have had several students email me/come talk to me after i post grades to discuss their grades and question my decisions. i welcome these emails. i sometimes give points back. i am always fair. if you don't care enough to bring up your concerns until after you fail to get the grade you want, then you don't deserve the points in my opinion. and third of all, i know the effing material. jerk.

what i want to do is email the student, tell him he can take his GPA that "does not need padding" and all of his experience and shove it, let him know that i hope he fails and that trying to blame your grade on someone else (who literally deducted 3 points from you all semester) is kind of ridiculous. of course, i know that this is immature and unprofessional and just basically wrong, but uggghhh. i'm so annoyed.

(part of me is saying that posting this is unprofessional and wrong, too, but i read through it a zillion times and there is no way to tell which student out of the hundred some i am talking about and so that makes it okay, right? plus, i need to vent. and i think my husband is tired of listening to me repeat the same things four hundred times.)

*Ha Ha You're Dead - Greenday

[one] i went six months without a single unsolicited stomach touch, and it was great. this morning i went to my old high school to cheer on my brothers, and it was like stepping into the land of unwanted hands on my stomach. i do not get it. first of all, pregnant people deserve personal space, too. it's bad enough we have someone coming in and taking over on the inside, it would be great if people on the outside could respect boundaries. and second of all, what do you think you are touching exactly? yes, there is a baby in there, but it's under a whole lotta layers. aside from the usual clothes and skin and muscles and everything else, i also have an anterior placenta (not sure if this is considered tmi so um sorry?), so really, there is absolutely no point in you rubbing your hand on me. it gets even worse when your sister shows up and asks all of your old teachers that hadn't already felt that they were somehow allowed to just touch my stomach (which isn't even that big yet!) in the middle of a conversation that had nothing to do with babies or pregnancy at all, "do you want to touch her stomach?" and then i can't say, "please don't" because i am me and these are my old teachers and ugh. i feel like one of those statues that people rub shiny because they think it's good luck.

[two] i'm sitting at mason, and it's pretty empty because it's still a little early and finals are coming up (already here?) and so it's really hard to not hear everything people on this floor are saying. anyway, one guy says that he didn't like any of the harry potter movies except for the second one and i almost had to say something because, what? the second movie is probably the worst of all the movies. how is it not only your favorite, but the only one you liked? i mean, goodness. i still don't understand this.

[three] i am supposed to be working on dissertation stuff. i am not working on dissertation stuff. i cannot work on dissertation stuff. it is impossible. i do not think i can school anymore. my brain refuses to function. i will gladly sit and research things that have nothing to do with my dissertation, but that i find fascinating, but i just shut down when it comes to my actual work. ugh.

[four] my husband, siblings, mom, and i went to a craft show yesterday at the place where we do pottery, and i bought this jam (because i have a really hard time resisting homemade jams for some reason. they just really appeal to me.), and i suddenly really want to eat it right now. and i do not have it with me. lesson learned: always carry a jar of jam in my bag. also, there were a bunch of things that i either make/ could make being sold for anywhere between fifteen and sixty dollars, and whenever i go to these kinds of things i think, i could totally sell my stuff. and now i am in the mood to open an etsy store again. 

i swear that you've got me all wrong

first of all, i don't know how anyone expects me to get anything done with this weather. like, seriously, there are freaking dementors wandering around outside and you want me to do research? or make bank calls? or harass real estate agents? or grade stuff? or do dishes? or clean out my closet? yeah, okay. this weather clearly calls for hiding out at hogwarts in a book and snacking on junk all day long. (except i am actually really hungry for real food, but we don't have any food in the house because i've been at my parents house for so long - it;s my first day back. and i also don't feel like cooking. i just want cheese enchiladas to appear in front of me with a side of rice and beans. i would be perfectly happy with a bagel with lox and cream cheese, too. oh, and i did laundry, so i guess it's the day for getting some stuff done.)

this brings us to my second point (well, let's pretend it does): my adviser has some tragically misguided ideas about me, and i don't know how to tell him that he's wrong. see, all of his other students are at his office constantly asking him for help and getting his opinion and showing him their results and whatever else one does with an academic adviser, i'm sure. i'm obviously not doing that.

when he talked to my third committee member, he told her that i am a really hardworking and independent student. i thought he was just saying that so that she'd work with me. it turns out that, no, he actually thinks that i have been sitting at home working on my dissertation instead of actively partaking in self-sabotage and procrastination. it would be funny if it wasn't so sad. see, i used to be that type of student that he thinks i am. i used to set myself deadlines and get my stuff done when it needed to be done. i used to work by myself and show up after a long absence with a completed project worthy of publication. (not my words. i'm surprisingly not that arrogant.) but now? now i have all but given up on my work. i have zero motivation and even less self-discipline. i am so over school but don't have the guts (or the ego) to let anyone else know and just drop out. or take a break. or something.

my adviser set up a research group of sorts for all of his students and anyone else who wanted to join. he subtly hinted that maybe i should present my work this week. (i think he just wants to know how far i am and doesn't want to come out and just ask me.) he actually thinks i have work done, you guys. i don't know how to break it to him that i've tried, i really have, and i just can't bring myself to do anything on this stupid project. it's part laziness, part procrastination, part being burned out, and part spite (because i am passive-aggressive and stupid and just realized this recently but i think i am stubbornly refusing to do any work on this to spite the people who are so invested in it. idiotic, i know.)

i might have to come up with some mysterious illness wednesday night. and then maybe in the next two weeks i can throw something together to give a presentation about? maybe? hopefully?

(i also just read a fanfiction piece about james and sirius right after sirius fell through the veil, and now i'm sad. and hungry. this weather, man.)

*As Lovers Go - Dashboard Confessionals

time for me to do it

this morning was so productive, you guys. so. productive. and now, when i still have a few things left to do, i just... stopped. my motivation and productivity and whatever else just came crashing down around me and i just spent the last almost hour trying to find a new chrome extension for tumblr because xkit stopped working and i'm not handling it very well. an hour that i was supposed to spend grading the papers that i didn't grade on tuesday so that i could grade them wednesday and then didn't grade on wednesday because i am the laziest, most procrastination-inclined waste of academic space there is. i just... school. ugh.

this morning, though, i was a real functioning adult. i was overachieving. egg salad sandwiches instead of cereal and milk for breakfast. buffalo and ranch chicken wraps instead of pb&j sandwiches for lunch. (my parents are out of town, so i'm pretending once again to be head of the household slash homemaker, and i think this is what i was made for. once cricket starts school, i can totally see myself turning into that overly obnoxious pta mom that bakes homemade cookies for every event, never misses a single excuse to show up at the school, volunteers for literally everything, is crafty in the showiest way possible, and makes sure that every other mom hates me for making them feel like they probably don't love their kid as much as i do. i mean, i am basically that person already. god help us all. (although i can just as easily see myself going to extremes in the exact opposite way as well, like total slacker mom gives her kids a bag of chocolate chips for lunch and shows up to every event in the same hoodie and other moms both feel sorry for me and are slightly scared of me. it will be interesting to see which way i go.))

but back to my productivity.

after making sure the kids got on the bus and dropping the sister off at work and stopping at the apartment to check on the bunny and pick up my vitamins (because yesterday i was still a forgetful wannabe adult), i went to the bank and had an important adult bank meeting. and then i scanned and sent out all the important documents to everyone i was supposed to. and i made a bunch of important phone calls. (have i mentioned on here that i hate the house-buying-getting-a-loan process from the very core of my being? yes? well, there it is again.) and then i went to CVS and got important things i needed and nutterbutters which i probably did not need (but they were on sale! so still adulty!) and came home to pack the care package i have been meaning to seal up for weeks now but never got around to. and this was all before ten:thirty in the morning. and then i got on the computer to grade the papers and suddenly... i am me again.

i have tried to bribe myself with nutterbutters, but it has been going like this:

responsible me (rm): you can't eat any cookies until you grade at least half of the papers.
me-me (mm): i can, though.
rm: okay, yes, technically you can. but don't.
mm: *slowly reaches for cookies*
rm: don't do it.
mm: *picks up cookie*
rm: you can't eat that cookie until you at least start grading the papers
mm: *eats cookie*
rm: okay, that was just to remind you of how good they are so that you can start grading. motivation. and energy or something. but you can't eat any more until you at least finish grading two papers.
mm: i can, though.

and so then i wrote a blog post that probably could have been a lot shorter. just... ugh. school.

*On My Own - Whitney Houston

it just takes some time, little girl, you're in the middle of the ride, everything (everything) will be just fine, everything (everything) will be alrightl

if you remember, twenty-six was going to be the year of deep breaths for me. and it has been. but apparently, for me to take a deep breath, i need to have some sort of breakdown first. i think it increases my lung capacity. or something. i let myself fall just long enough into the fear-panic-self-loathing spiral that i really believe i have done it this time, gone too far down once again. just when the idea that it will no doubt take years to crawl back out of this starts to turn into truth, i inhale real deep, fill my lungs like balloons, and float slowly back up to solid ground. well, as solid as the ground ever is. it may not be the funnest cycle, or the most productive, but it's apparently what i do. should you want to try it yourself, here's how to go about it:

monday: after letting the pot of stress you have become slowly come to a boil for weeks, finally allow yourself to believe that it will boil over. that you will explode. that it is all too much and you cannot handle it. try and do something simple (like write a blog post) repeatedly. fail every time. write a stress-fueled mental breakdown of a post instead. cry. eat lots of junk food.

tuesday: wake up before the sun and resign yourself to the fact that that dull headache is there to stay. go out to breakfast with your dad. go to a pottery class with your mom. snarkily resent all the new students in the class and bemoan the loss of your old pottery family. grade papers for school. watch game shows on tv. pretend nothing is wrong. take phone calls and don't believe your lies about nothing being wrong. have a stressful breakdown to your parents at their dining room table. cry some more. eat lots of junk food.

wednesday: throw a bag full of clothes into the back seat of your car, pick your dad up, and run away to connecticut. stay there through the weekend. spend your time attending a conference and watching cold case and law and order. let your grandma go on and on about how awesomely amazing and smart and pretty and perfect you are. don't argue with her. don't answer your phone. don't check your email. allow yourself to take a deep breath and watch as things settle down around you.

sunday: come home. stumble a bit when you hit the solid ground. start to feel the panic rise again.

monday: take another deep breath, and start getting stuff done.

and here we are. monday again. so the apartment may be a mess, there may be a pile of unfolded clothes sitting in the hallway, the banks may be ignoring my emails, i may not be prepared for future assignments in two out of the three classes i TA for, we may have yet to buy a new house, and i was supposed to shower this morning. BUT we can easily afford two out of the four houses we're debating between without talking to the bank, one without having to ask them for a bigger loan but rather just putting down a little more to start with, and i mean three out of four is not bad. so we don't get the dream house? there's plenty of time for dreams and going after them later. settling for "would have been perfect if i hadn't seen the other one" isn't really settling at all. my husband will be on vacation in a couple of weeks and the apartment will be sparkling by the end of it, i am one hundred percent caught up on grading assignments and ready for the next couple of batches coming in this week. i live in a place where there is clean, hot water to shower with 24/7.

deep breath. start getting stuff done.

*The Middle - Jimmy Eat World

it sucks to grow up

so i've been trying to write a post for a few days now. a happy post. a look at my good news post. a post that should not be giving me so much trouble god dammit. but instead, all of the stress from everything else keeps seeping in and my good news sounds like overwhelming news. my happy sounds like i am three seconds away from pulling my hair out and jumping off the edge but i think i may punch you in the face first because aaaaarrrrggggghhhhh.

you guys, why is being an adult so effing hard? mortgages. like, why am i even dealing with this stuff? i was not built for it. i was built for fictional worlds and imagination. this is much too real for me. never ending phone calls from real estate agents and banks and mortgage companies and sales associates and i hate the phone. i will avoid phone calls for as long as humanly possible. i have to work up to them for days and practice what i'm going to say and take three deep breaths before i hit the call button and start praying that it goes to the machine the second that first ring starts. and that's when i call my grandmother. it's even worse with strangers. i really hate talking on the phone. and i do it now. all. the. time. and why are banks so annoying? and how can there be income that doesn't count as income when the money is all very real i assure you. and why are some sources of income more reliable than other sources? if the money is regularly being deposited into my account then why the eff do you care where it's coming from? like, i really swear i am not trying to steal your money, banker. i really will pay you back. i promise. just give me the effing loan. and houses. gah. why are there so many of them, and why are so many sucky? and why are the pretty ones the ones i can't have? and school oh my god. any forward movement that was started at the beginning of this semester has come to a screeching halt because i cannot even think about school right now beyond my office hours (and the first batch of assignments are due tonight. does it look like i have the time or energy to start grading papers? does it?) and i need to think about school because if i do not have solid proof of forward movement then the chances of me getting an extension on my scholarship (which ends this semester ohmygodohmygodohmygod) drop to pretty much zero. and mortgages, man. when did i become the type of person to worry about mortgages? and so much stress eating. i think i just paid the little debbie ceo's yearly bonus on my own. so of course i now feel fat and gross and filled with marshmallow cream as well as stressed and lost and like i should not be dealing with all of this i am the wrong person for the job.

AND my trip to harry potter world was effing cancelled because apparently things just need to suck for me right now with no light at the end of the tunnel and no silver lining.

uggghhhh.

see, this is why i never wanted to grow up.

*Still Fighting It - Ben Folds

not really sure how to feel about it

so i had a meeting on friday with my old stat professor, as you all know. i was a little worried about the fact that i've forgotten most of the statistics i learned over the years, and if forced to talk stat talk i would probably just start panic yelling random words like standard deviation, bell curve, and outliers. i was also worried about the fact that, although i know i'm going to need some stat stuff for my dissertation because my question is "how effective" and my adviser told me so, i'm not exactly sure what i'll be testing or how i'll be measuring stuff yet. but, as it turns out, i could have walked into that meeting completely unprepared (which i did. okay okay i was more in the basically unprepared camp than the completely one.) and still walked out of it with a very enthusiastic and excited new committee member (which i also did).

along with my email asking the professor for a meeting and telling her that i took a class with her a million years ago so she should love me, i sent a brief abstract and outline of what i think my dissertation is going to look like so far. (people are really impressed by this document because they think it means i know what i'm doing. in reality, it's literally the only thing i have done so far and i still basically have no idea what i'm doing. the outline is really good, though. whenever i read it i even fool myself into thinking that i have things under control.) anyway, the lady read my idea and where i'm hoping to take it and got so excited about it that she went and talked to my adviser about joining my committee and what she can help with and where she thinks we could go and how thrilled she is before we even saw if we were "a good fit" in person. like, guys, she is really excited about this idea. which was such a foreign feeling to me. i mean, my adviser likes my idea, sure, but he helped to develop it so he should. most other people either don't like it or don't care or want to tweak it into something that fits their interests better. (i'm pretty sure that my other committee member still has no idea what my idea is. i'm pretty sure he doesn't care in the least bit.)

one of the main issues i had with finding a committee is that i don't want to just build a system. i'm not interested in that. i've always been more into analysis and investigations and storytelling. and most of the people who are eligible to sit on a committee believe that, to get a PhD in IT, you should build a system. this lady, though? she was so excited that she would finally get to help on a project with data analysis, because that is her passion. she likes security, too, which is basically my background so we hit it off there as well. and she really liked my adviser and is friends with my other committee member. it really seems like everything worked out exactly the way it was supposed to. it was just an overall good meeting, and i left it really excited. (as i tend to get when people are enthusiastic about my idea and encouraging and not the negative, rude, you-should-probably-drop-out kind of people that a lot of my other meetings were with.)

but because i am a brat, it did not take long for the excitement to turn into "ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod now i actually have to do work and i'm going to be held accountable for things and the things i've been putting off but telling people i've been doing need to be done by the end of the month and i should pribably stop procrastinating and aaahhhhhhhhh." so on the one hand, this phd thing looks like it's actually happening. the wheels are spinning, the cogs are turning, we're brushing off cobwebs and finally making some forward progress. yay! and on the other hand, uggghhhh woooorrrk. 

(disclaimer: i know i sound obnoxious about this. i know this is a good thing. i will be happy about it at some point, hopefully pretty soon. at the moment, though, i'm just a tad bit super overwhelmed.)

*Stay - Rihanna

i should have known better

tomorrow morning i have a meeting with my stat professor from undergrad. she seems willing to join my committee... IF we feel like a good match in person. if she does join my committee, then i will have all of the IT/engineering/mathy type people that i need and i can get my last person from ANYWHERE. and people outside of my realm of sciencey tech geeks relate to me so much more, like me so much more, think my project is awesome. i feel like i should prepare for this meeting. i should brush up on my statistics and reread everything i have for my dissertation and read her biography and know her interests. i really need her to join my committee. this would mean the end of so much suffering. (it would also mean that i would suddenly have a full committee and zero excuses left so i would need to actually work and research and write and ugh i've gotten real used to not doing anything and blaming my circumstances. but i'm not thinking about that. at least not yet. for now i am only allowing myself to feel positive vibes about this. i will not allow myself to not want what i want, or what i am pretty sure that i think i want, or what i should want.)

my brothers are sleeping over, though. and i am so so tired. and i need to procrastinate now before i won't be able to procrastinate again. and so instead of preparing for this meeting i watched harriet the spy with my husband and brothers. because that felt like the right thing to do at the time. and i mean, i could start preparing now, but i would much rather go to sleep. plus, the work i have finished is depressing me. when i look at it, all i can think is, as sport would say (from harriet the spy obviously), "this is worse than crap. this is what crap wants to be when it grows up."

anyway. just in case this meeting miraculously works out (do you remember when i walked into these things confident and hopeful? i was such a young, naive idiot), i felt like it should be mentioned here. since i have filled this blog with years of whining about my lack of a committee. it's only fair. 

*I Should Have Known Better - The Beatles

outside the sun is shining, seems like heaven ain't far away

the thing about marrying a crazy sports fan is that sometimes, your plans to visit hershey, pa, home of chocolate and all things awesome, get delayed a couple of weeks due to sickness and stuff and then happen to fall on the first weekend of the world cup. and then suddenly your crazy sports fan husband decides that driving two hours there and back is much too long of a drive for a day trip, despite not having any problem with this a few weeks earlier. and you're a bit confused until the day is instead spent watching an endless stream of soccer games and how are there so many games played in one day?

have you been watching the world cup? is it just me or are there more players scoring on themselves than there probably should be? and did you see that player from uruguay that looked like his jersey had shrunk in the wash and he didn't have time to get a new one before the game?

i can't really complain, though, because in all honesty i do not mind watching sports games. and also the lazy days spent sprawled on the couch while he watches soccer and i read books are probably some of my favorites. plus, i figure that we should savor these types of days while we get them. i can only postpone growing up for so long. one day i will have a stressful career and/or a family (with real live kids) and i will look back on these early years of marriage with nostalgic longing. 

speaking of growing up, i've been doing some research for my dissertation. (sort of. like background information for background information. but hey, it's something.) research makes my brain fuzzy even though i'm pretty sure it's supposed to be making me smarter. that's the whole point of research, isn't it? i have also been burning a lilac candle and my apartment smells heavenly, and i'm just feeling really good about today. you know those days? that are nothing special at all, that are not memorable in the least bit, but that are still really good days? yeah. (i was at walmart this morning and candles were on sale and i've had lilacs on my mind (refer to previous post) and so i obviously bought one. i want to go back and buy five more. usually the candles that are on sale smell like crap, but this one is so pretty. i forgot everything i actually needed to get today, though. oops. i also got a really good smoothie. not from walmart.)

i'm thinking of making brussel sprouts for dinner. you can have a side for a meal, right? i just really don't want anything else. you probably don't care what i eat for dinner anyway. this post has gotten wildly off topic.

you know, maybe it's this candle that's giving me floaty brain syndrome. there's like half an inch or so of liquid wax that just looks so pretty i kind of want to jump into it. candles are so distracting. anyway, i should probably get back to research before i completely lose the ability to be smartish. 

*Exitlude - The Killers

i'm perfectly aware of what i'm yet to know

hello, and welcome to another edition of sarah blogs instead of doing work. *theme song plays* *fake studio audience claps* today we find our main character very much not working on writing the first chapter of her dissertation despite having said that she was definitely for sure one hundred percent going to spend her office hours researching and writing because she completely failed at doing that on wednesday when she was also definitely for sure one hundred percent going to get that first chapter done. she is seated in one of the comfy maroon chairs in the third floor student lounge of the engineering building, singing the vaccines "under my thumb" in her head. her legs are crossed one over the other and james, her laptop, is resting on her thigh. her hoodie is just two shades darker than the chairs, and she has the sleeves rolled up in an effort to fool her head into thinking that it is time to get down to business. she refreshes tumblr for the fifteenth time in three minutes and sighs when nothing new pops up on her dash. she switches to the browser window that has the tabs of research related work open (using a different window was her way of making sure she actually got work done) and her eyes immediately glaze over. she goes back to tumblr. refreshes the page. resists the urge to fall to her knees, throw her hands in the air, and scream "give me something to reblog!" to the heavens. she goes to check her email - again - and sees the blogger tab. her eyes light up. yes, she thinks, the perfect distraction. she clicks the "new post" button, takes a deep breath, and begins to write. cue voiceover.

so the other day i had the meeting with my adviser that i had been putting off for longer than i'm willing to admit because i didn't want to have to say, "i know it's been basically an entire semester since i last saw you, but nope. haven't done anything in that time. not a thing. what was my project going to be about again?" the thing about meeting with my adviser, though, is that i walk into the meeting panicked, lost, and ashamed and i walk out of the meeting confident, hopeful, and ready to work. he's magic. you cannot convince me otherwise. (because i cannot resist being a complete embarrassment, i told him during the meeting that his office is my happy place. i am surprised i have not been arrested for creepiness yet. if i suddenly disappear, that is why. well, that or laziness. one of the two.)

anyway, in the midst of suggesting great suggestions about methodology and committee members and the like, he said, "this part of the phd process is where you are designing the class. in the next part, you actually take the class." and i had a perfect moment of clarity. the skies parted, and a ray of light shined down on his office bathing us in a heavenly glow, and that "aaahhhhhh" angelic music filled the background. because of course i'm supposed to be designing my own class right now. i mean, duh. some part of me knew that, i swear, but it hadn't registered. see, up until that point, i had felt like i was taking a class that i didn't know the rules to. i showed up every week to an empty classroom because there was a room change and i didn't get the memo. i had never gotten the syllabus, either, and there were assignments i was supposed to be turning in i just knew it, but i didn't know what they were. or how to find out what they were. and i probably wouldn't know how to do them anyway.

but now i can take a deep breath and figure this out. a new perspective was all i needed. i mean, at least until this adviser-high wears off and i realize that a new perspective does not change the fact that i have no idea where i am going or how to get there and that i probably should have gotten off this education train one or two stops ago.

voiceover stops as our main character looks up to stare out the window, contemplating her feelings on this whole post-grad thing she got herself into. the ding of the elevator can be heard and a babble of voices draw our character's attention until they fade down the hall in the opposite direction. her stomach grumbles loudly. she looks around the now empty lounge, glad that no one is left to hear. she's starving. she glances at the clock on her laptop. just over one hour left. she takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. she can do this. she opens the tumblr tab and hits f5.

*Under Your Thumb - The Vaccines 

ask me your questions

okay so i dunno what goes on in other majors, but in computer forensics - especially on the intelligence side -we are taught over and over again about the different sources of information. (like, really. over and over and over again. i cannot stress enough the number of times i have learned about where to look for information.) anyway, one of these sources is scholars and academics. it seems obvious enough. if you think that a terrorist is planning a stegosaurus attack on the white house and there is a person that has spent nearly his or her entire life studying stegosauruses (stegosauri? why are neither of those giving me a red squiggle?), well you'd obviously go talk to that person. i mean, duh.

i always thought that the whole "spent nearly his or her entire life studying" part was pretty important. i mean, you'd want to go with the tried and true experts, right? apparently that is not always the case. apparently you can use a paper that a student wrote for an independent study as a reference and talk to said student about the finer points slash clarifications slash whatever.

if you are not seeing what i am getting at, here's the short version: the fbi (yes, that fbi) called me today (well, an agent of the fbi obviously. not the whole organization.) to ask me a few questions about things i wrote about in my independent study paper. (cue dropped jaws. i know, right?)

earlier today, this was my thought process:
god i should really write another blog post.
i could write about the crazy weather.
oh my god no one cares about the weather. you write about the weather way too much. get a life.
yeah, but rain and hail and snow one day followed by gorgeous sun the next? crazy.
no. one. cares.
oh man i hope the clay in my trunk didn't freeze like last week.
at least i'm at home so i don't have to wear rain boots when there's not a single puddle on the ground like an idiot.
ooh sunny weather means flip flops.
ugh, but flip flops mean lyme disease.
it would suck if i got lyme disease again. those antibiotics were the worst.
talking about potentially getting lyme disease is just as bad as talking about the weather.
ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
i'll give myself to the end of the day. and then i will blog about the weather. again. gah.

and then the fbi called and i didn't have to write about the weather anymore. but i did anyway.

*The Scientist - Coldplay

let's take it easy

i think i have finally reached that point where my brain has decided that enough is enough and it is time to take matters into its own proverbial hands. its way of doing that is to make writing anything that is not "productive" extremely, extremely difficult. and i mean, i know that i need to do dissertation work. i really do. but i just. don't. want. to. i'm standing on the edge of a precipice and any forward movement - even a breath - will send me falling off into real phd territory. where i won't be able to throw up my hands and say, "oh well, i tried. i have to quit because of all of these reasons that have nothing to do with me. at least i didn't put any actual effort into it." where i won't just be a "phd student;" i'll be a phd student. i will need to pull my obsessive tendencies from my fictional worlds for a bit and focus them entirely on the government's intercept techniques and whether or not they are effective in increasing the success rate of prosecutions in this age of new technologies. (and also maybe a little on the erosion of civil liberties although i am told that is a dissertation on its own and i need to calm down and learn to limit myself.) and ugh. i like my fictional worlds and my little bubble i've created where i'm not responsible for anything. i really do.

you may have noticed my quotations around the word productive up there. they exist because apparently, writing a little fanfiction is doable-ish. like, only at times when dissertation work is really not feasible. i think maybe because my brain knows that i need to do this. it's the first time that i'm writing fanfiction not because of love for a character, plot, or world. this is fueled by pure anger at lazy writing and cheap endings. i was told to care about two characters over the course of three books, and though they never made it onto my list of favorites, they deserve a real ending. and i can't rest until i give them one.

blogging, though, that's been ridiculously hard. like, i'll be marathoning a show online (because tv is the only thing that will numb my brain into shutting up about being productive) and i'll think, "wow. british commercials are so weird. i should write a blog post about that." and then i come on here and realize, "well that's a stupid thing to write about. i should write about that really cool person i met. no no that's stupid, too." that in itself is alarming because you all know that writing hundreds of words about a stupid topic is kind of my thing. but then comes the really scary part. my brain, trying to be subtle, will slip in little things like, "well, i mean, since i'm already online i may as well get some research done." and that is when i know that something is wrong. that is not how i work. there is no "might as well get some research done" in my life. it is all "oh my god i need to do all of this research by next week or i will fail out if life" or nothing.

*When You Were Young - The Killers

so i'm sitting in my husband's cubicle at my old high school. the chatter of all my old teachers blends with the randomest collection of songs my ipod could possibly give me to form a hum of background noise. i'm grading graduate student papers on incident response. i'm drinking black tea with mint from a beauty and the beast thermos. there is such an overlap of adultish me and teenage me at the moment that i'm not sure what to do with myself. i don't think surreal is the word i'm looking for, but it feels something. the part of me that never really understood how to grow my vocabulary wants to say weird and leave it at that, but it's like a specific brand of weird. a certain weirdness that makes me feel like i'm taking a step back from my life and watching it from the ceiling (and also mixing metaphors). it's not the visiting the past feeling that i get every other time i'm here (which is pretty often). it is more of a sitting in the present as the past forms a fog that swirls around me. i don't know if i'm making any sense so i'll just stop now.

on a different note, you may all remember my complaints from previous semesters about the papers that i had to grade. about students who didn't know how to string together a sentence or failed to comprehend exactly what a paragraph was. today i was grading the first assignment for one of the classes i TA for and  the quality of work has gone up exponentially. it's partly awesome (yay for education!) and partly not because there is suddenly so much more to grade. it's surprising how much faster grading goes when twelve students all submit the same paper and no one meets the page minimum. well, actually, i guess it's not really surprising at all. fingers crossed that the lab reports for the second class have improved as well. 

you blame me, but some of this is still your fault

okay, so. remember how, a few weeks ago, mason called me and basically accused me of stealing money that they gave me? in a check? a month before the accusation? yes, well, it didn't end there.

monday afternoon. i'm sitting in the student lounge outside of the engineering school GTA office for my office hours. (i rarely sit in the office. i'm literally only there when there is absolutely nowhere else i can go. being a TA for the computer forensics department kind of sucks because forensics, as one of my professors would say, is like the red-headed step child that no one likes. he was talking about the field in general, but i feel like the metaphor still applies. another professor says our program is the bastard child of the university. that works, too. basically, we don't really fit anywhere and no one really likes us. the engineering department hires me so i'm kind of with them, and the classes i TA for are cross-listed with the tcom department so i'm kind of with them, but really, i'm with neither. story of my life, man. anyway, the engineering TAs feel like i'm taking up a spot that results in them having extra work. they are also like a little tight knit family that i just don't belong to. sitting in their office makes me slightly uncomfortable. also, it always smells funny in there. but i digress.) these two people come up to me and are like, "sarah? sarah kabli?" now, i'm sitting in a general student area and am not really sure how these people know me, but i answer with a hesitant yes because apparently i'm the stupid girl who gets murdered in the first ten minutes of a horror movie. imagine that.

anyway, they take me into an office and the lady turns to me, hands clasped in front of her and a serious look on her face. "i'm from the dean's office," she says, as if that's supposed to mean something to me. as if i should know what's going on now. i nod and stay quiet, not bothering to keep the confusion off of my face. "you're on a scholarship, right?" she asks. "and they pay your full tuition?" i confirm this and she gives me another one of those knowing looks. there was a pause where i assume she was waiting for me to confess to something, which i didn't because i still had no idea what was going on. "i'm in charge of the finances for this department, and i noticed that you got some money last semester that you shouldn't have," she finally says. but the way that she said it made it clear that by "got," she meant "took." ugh, i thought.

"uh, yeah. i got a check from mason at the end of last semester, but they called me before this semester started and i gave the money back," i explain. "we didn't get any money back," she said. "well..." i shrug. "i paid it back the day they called me." after a few more minutes she said that she was going to take it up with the student accounts office because they should have returned the money to them and who knows where they actually put it, and we agreed that if i got a check again this semester i would go talk to her instead of paying mason.

but oh my god am i never going to trust a check from mason again. ever. (this wasn't the first time i got a check back from them but it will be the last time i ever deposit one.) i have never felt like such a criminal for doing absolutely nothing wrong in my life. and mason, you need to get your act together and figure this stuff out. you should probably know where all your money is supposed to go. sheesh.

*Which To Bury, Us Or The Hatchet - Relient K

what the hell

i've been at mason a long time. a really, disgustingly long time. i've seen the campus nearly double in size and the number of trees shrink to almost half. i have seen buildings and the school paper change names. i experienced the migration from webct to blackboard and from masonmail to outlook. i have seen professors and presidents and deans come and go. there's a part of me that finds comfort in this fact and a part that wants to die just to put an end to it. i have learned the hard way that the experience of a student at a university changes drastically depending on what level you are at - and not in a good way. encouragement turns to scorn, helpfulness turns to hindrance, and everyone loves to blame you for the fact that they just didn't prepare you for the next step.

after all of that, you'd think that i'd be used to change. but i'm not.

i get on the computer this morning all ready to face the responsibilities i put off yesterday for the super bowl, and they changed their freaking email system again. it took me twenty minutes of fiddling with the settings, and it still looks wrong. the font is huge and the bold isn't bold enough and every reply opens a new window. what the hell, mason. stop messing around with this. gah.

going back to the super bowl. during the playoffs, i decided that i was going to root for the seahawks because none of my teams made it in and they had pretty colors. (duh.) plus, i somehow hadn't seen them play at all this season and thought that they were some kind of underdog cinderella story. so, i should be pretty psyched that they won. but i have never rooted against the team i was rooting for so much before. it all started with their game against the forty-niners where i spent all but the first fifteen minutes of the game hoping the niners would win. and then yesterday was pretty much the same thing. (and also, what the hell were you broncos doing? it's like you were actively trying to suck. goodness gracious.) despite this, i never "turned" on the seahawks formally. i wanted them to lose both times while simultaneously telling anyone who would listen that i hoped they won the whole thing. lesson learned: i am really bad at being a sports fan. also, i like underdogs. BUT after marrying an avid sports fan i can pretty much hold an intelligent conversation in most sports and you'll think that i know what i'm talking about and that i'm a sportsy person... but i'm not. and if you talk to me long enough then you'll realize i start to slip and call the players characters and turn plays into plot twists and that annoys hardcore sports people for some reason. (you'll also learn that i spend most of the game commenting on looks and names. like, did you know that the lions have a character named pettigrew? as in peter pettigrew? i don't care how many times i am told his name is not peter. he is still a rat, and that's why they lost because they put their trust in a traitor. they're just lucky it didn't turn out worse. i mean, the last people who put their trust in a pettigrew ended up killed by lord voldemort.)

and speaking of harry potter, what the hell jk rowling. you cannot write a book and then years and years later come back and say, "actually, no. i changed my mind." it doesn't work that way. have a problem with how you wrote things? write yourself some nice fanfiction and move on with your life. i feel like i have to have a rant about this lady soon. it's been building up for years. (in case you have no idea what i am talking about here, jk rowling recently came out and publicly stated that she regrets putting ron and hermione together, that hermione should have ended up with harry, and the whole ron thing was just wish fulfillment and didn't make any sense. whatever, rowling.)

*My Eyes Burn - Matchbox 20

how does anybody get anything done?

sometimes people will say something referencing the fact that i am sort of somehow maybe on my way to becoming a holder of a phd and i just kind of laugh nervously and make some comment along the lines of "it's been a bit of struggle 'till now but that's the plan" because deep down i know how completely ridiculous it is. i mean, i do want to get the degree to end all degrees and all that, but there's something very self-sabotaging about the way i'm going about actually getting it.

take, for example, today. i was supposed to spend the day reading articles and doing some preliminary research so that when i meet up with my adviser this friday he won't know that i have spent exactly zero minutes thinking about my dissertation over the winter break. zero. and that i maybe stretched the truth a little (or a whole freaking lot) when he asked me in emails if i was following certain things and i told him yeah of course i am. but the best laid plans... and other useless idioms that let you know that that is not what happened.

instead i spent the day reading fanfiction (which i am apparently back to doing) and getting worked up over fictional characters. and i also worried a bit about a stain on my "books turn muggles into wizards" t-shirt because dressing like an adult is apparently beyond me. i did manage to get a load of laundry done and take out the trash, but that was about as much responsibleness as i was capable of. there may have also been a bit of pretending that the nervous tension in my stomach was solely caused by the stories and not at all by the fact that i was procrastinating life. and you know how much research i got done? none. i didn't even open the articles. i didn't even open the email the articles were sent in. but i did get the urge to write some fanfiction again, so there's that.

also, i bought a ring today and it's a little too big and seems to be getting bigger by the second which is making me sad.

also number two, last night i got exactly two hours of sleep (if that) because i was just. not. tired. and i wasn't tired the entire day and now it is past midnight and i am still not tired and what is wrong with me? i'm usually (well, at least for the last couple of years) that obnoxious person that has to sleep for like ten hours a night. and all i can think of is this girl they were talking about on the radio a few weeks ago who had a tumor on her brain which made her never have to sleep ever, and i can't remember what happened to her and am pretty sure that i don't have a tumor on my brain but my mind is nothing if not a lover of what if's and late-night hypochondria. also, lightheadedness. i've been feeling light-headed a lot recently and that's not a sign of brain tumors is it? i'm pretty sure headaches are, and my normally constant headaches have been noticeably missing from my life and thank god for that, i tell you.

this post has gotten wildly off-track.

anyway, long story short, i am not an adult and am getting pretty bad at pretending to be one. also, i wish i had studied english and was doing a phd on fanfiction and its role in something or other. i would be right on track. (i overuse the word also.)

*Take It Like A Man - Dragonette