Moby!

B's best friend Crys is over a lot, often with her golden retriever. It's nice to have a big, panting, affectionate dog around, sweeping magazines off of the coffee table with his overzealous tail. Ever since my little dog went to pee on the Big Rug in the Sky in June, I've had a kind of hollow in my gut. Crys says that she works too much and that I'm always welcome to take Moby out for runs or car rides when she's not around. I really might take her up on it.

I had people from my cohort over to work on a project tonight and it reminded me that my friends, and my friends' friends, can't be generalized to represent society. I always forget that. The guy in my group was wide-eyed every time Moby came in the room and would loudly editorialize about how gross it is to have pets, and "why not just have birds and bears and raccoons in the house." I couldn't even be tactful about how absurd that was. Thinking the girl in my group would be similarly bewildered, I was shocked when she casually added that, "animal companionship sort of gives me the creeps."

Uncomfortable, I steered us back to our research project. But for the next hour or so, every time they talked, I'd just think, "Aliens."

This week in graduate study finds our heroine battling crippling feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing!

Self: I am gonna start being awesome at school starting tomorrow!
Self: You will sleep in until the last possible minute and forget a freaking pen.
Self: Oh. Really? I thought was gonna start being productive.
Self: Nope.
Self: Okay.

As always, straightening my life-space tends to help maintain that illusion of control. Oh man, I am gonna get so much research done on this freshly made bed with newly laundered sheets!

Grad school is 80% pee-your-pants hard and 20% junior-high-easy. The trouble comes when the brain-breaking abstract stuff masquerades as the Mickey Mouse stuff and vice versa.

For example, I'm writing a faux-bituary of J.K. Rowling for a class, which I took to be a straightforward task. You know, cursory research, zero analysis, some meaty quotes and then attaching sentences together like cars on a shitty toy train. Two hours, tops. Unfortunately, it seems that summing up with reverence someone's recently snuffed-out life is kind of a ballbuster.

It turns out I really admire J.K. Rowling which makes writing about her accomplishments challenging. I should've picked Jay Leno or Serena Williams or something. And, while I feel like a jackass comparing myself to her, I really identified with some things she's said.

To Harvard graduates in June 2008:
"What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure. At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers."

A drawback of raising your kids to be spazzy little nerds is that at a certain point their reading level spikes way beyond their maturity level. Thus, the books my 12-year-old self brought home from the library were very adult in complexity and vocabulary, but also "adult" like video stores by the highway are sometimes "adult." So by the time my mom put the first three Harry Potter books in my hands when I was 14, I was already years past C.S. Lewis and Dr. Doolittle and full speed ahead into John Irving and Sylvia Plath. And because I was kind of a brat, I tended to dismiss anything that was unapologetically targeted to adolescents. I thought that being naive and sophomoric was something to be ashamed of, which, in retrospect, was terribly naive and sophomoric of me.

So on a long car trip to Michigan, I gave them a shot and from the first chapter of Sorcerer's Stone, I was, shamelessly and without reservation, a fan. Yes, derivative, lame, overhyped, fleeting, whatever. I don't care. All I care about is all those made-up characters and their made-up feelings. I was in Paris the day the 7th book was released in English and as Jon and I walked around Montmartre on a cloudless July day, all I could see was Deathly Hallows in cafes. Deathly Hallows all the way up the steps of the Sacre Coeur. Deathly Hallows on the metro. I finished the book a few days later in a hostel in Amsterdam at 3 a.m. Jon was asleep and I just sat on the edge of my bed in the huge ballroom-turned-barracks and grieved the end of the series in the cold quiet. It was weird.

The days have been perfect this past week but the nights are getting pretty chilly. I'm talking long underwear and an electric blanket. I'm talking adhering myself to Nick at night like a snoring, covers-hogging barnacle.

Tonight B resolved to stoke the enormous wood-burning stove downstairs. Drinking a beer while feeling sorry for myself about the paper I have to write beside a flickering, popping fire is far superior to drinking and procrastinating and being cold.

This is what the fountain outside the library looks like when you finally finish your paper.

It's funny how suffocating feelings of incompetence and dread show up to the party as soon as I have a bunch of beastly work to get done. I want to tap my brain on the shoulder and say, "Just because work isn't fun doesn't mean you have to flood my bloodstream with feelings. Sack up."

These feelings tend to spike at 11 p.m. and increase exponentially as each hour of the night passes.

Nice fountain, though.

As my dad says, "Nothing's free but the sunshine." Free grad school isn't free. It costs $350 per quarter in cryptic "student fees." Rest assured there was much teeth-gritting and nose-wrinkling when I wrote that check today. I will exact passive-aggressive retribution by spending my monthly stipend check on cheap beer and tattoos. Take that, the state of Ohio.

Does anyone ever accomplish all the things they'd like to on their day off? When I go to Columbus for the weekend, I get nothing done. When I stay in town for the weekend, I get nothing done.

Also, because I spent the day looking up at the TV between staring at my books and the flashing cursor in my barren, barren Word document: Pundits! Stop referring to the election as a done deal! Quit suggesting that it will take a miracle for McCain to turn this around! You are freaking tempting fate! Haven't you ever heard of jinxing yourself? Cryin' out loud.

PBR from the future.

B and his friend Crys celebrated B's new tattoo and payday (freaking payday!) by getting me very drunk before 9 pm. They showed me another comfortable dive bar in Athens besides Tony's. Who wants to drink someplace where your shoes don't stick to the floor?

I guess a couple weeks ago they replaced the splintering, hardly-doing-its-one-job-of-being-a-horizontal-plane bar with this acrylic, illuminated number. So now I know what it's like to get bombed on a spaceship.

As a recent alum of the sprawling leviathan that is (the) Ohio State University, it's not hard to find things to like about Ohio University. All of my classes are in one building. Which is right next to the library. Which is right next to the bureaucratic-jumping-through-of-hoops building. Which is all ten minutes by foot from my house. Ohio State hasn't even had a library for two years. A small, cozy, convenient campus is an alien concept.

Today I had to go to Payroll in order to drop off my direct deposit form. Because I haven't had a source of income since August 25th. And then I bought a bed. And then I bought a camera. And then I paid September rent. So when that stipend check comes on October 1st, I want it fast. I want to melt that stipend check on a spoon and shoot it up between my toes.

Payroll, however, is in some satellite building, a twenty minute walk east of campus into nowheresville. The building itself is oversized, utilitarian, over-air-conditioned: markedly OhioStatesian. When I turn in the form, the woman at the desk apologizes to me for "having to walk all the way out here." Are you kidding me? At Ohio State, I'd have to walk twenty minutes to four different buildings until I found the right office, wait for 45 minutes to be told I'm missing a form, then they'd have me sign away my first born and tattoo Carmen Ohio on my forehead.

This morning, I was doing research on the library computers for my assistantship, compiling articles about social media and the presidential campaign, occasionally pausing to wonder if maybe Barack Obama is courting my vote because he like-likes me. Should I ask him to homecoming? I bet he's been asked like a thousand times already. Then, in a room silent except for the mad clicking of keyboards, someone's phone rings, blasting their "MMMbop" ringtone. It continues ringing, unanswered, until finally a frat dude built like an ox stands up, holds up the phone like a trophy, puts it to his ear and says "Hey, Mom." The room erupts into laughter, and I think, "Holy shit, I'm at work right now." Vast improvement from being verbally abused and coming home smelling like shawarma.

I'm not sure whether it was the extra shot in my latte, the way the weather seemed like it was trying to right a personal wrong (sunny and crisp, YES) or the fact that when I set my iPod to random it gave me "Outta Sight (Outta Mind)" by Wilco (usually it saddles me with some painful Nick Cave b-side), but I was out of my skull happy today.

When I was reviewing some basic statistics for my dry research theory class, I thought, "I miss math." For some reason, reviewing all those sigmas and x-bars was like visiting old friends. I guess all this theory and ethics is making my analytical brain act out.

My housemate, B, with whom I have had a benevolently awkward relationship with up to this point, made a huge dinner tonight. So, I take back any silent domestic criticisms I may have had. Dude can cook.

Look out world, I have half of a staff mailbox!

I was caught taking this picture by one of my professors checking his mail. He quickly realized what I was up to, and nodded respectfully. In his thick Chinese accent he said, "You must take picture. It is very proud time."

It was embarrassing/encouraging.

Before I moved, I thought that it would be the being here that was difficult, and the school part would be fine. Being here is weirdly comfortable. However, any romantic notions about how lovely and interesting it would be to be in graduate school evaporated today. It hit me like a ten car pileup in a dense fog, the sheer volume of time that will not be mine in the next year. I'm a little despondent today, grieving my beer-soaked summer, my lethargic, above-it-all undergrad mindset. I've always had an anaphylactic reaction to trying my hardest. Can you imagine if I was a first year law or medical student? How thin is my freaking skin?

And there aren't even unwitting friends and boyfriends around for me to bitch at! More than likely, that is a good thing. I can't help but feel sorry for myself and I can't help but feel like a baby for feeling so sorry for myself.

I keep thinking of that interchange in Kicking and Screaming:

Jane: Sometimes you can be such a child.
Grover: But if I was a child, you'd find that endearing!

Here I am on my first day of 17th grade.

On my first day of kindergarten, my mom wanted to hold my hand and walk me to the bus stop and wait with me there. I said, "I'm in kindergarten now. I can do it all by myself," and started heading down the driveway. While I'm not as fearless as I was then, with my sailor dress and applique tote bag, I felt pretty level and self-assured today. I'm used to myself.

The most important lesson I learned today was outside of the classroom. Don't ever lose your car's keyless entry fob. Because they cost ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS to replace. It is especially devastating if you've just spent three hundred dollars on books. Ouch.