Blog Title: Bitch Ph.D.

Falalalala

Happy holiday season, shoppers!

thankful

... that my boyfriend and my husband and my kid love me even though I'm bitchy. In fact, I suspect probably because I'm bitchy.

... that Mr. B. is willing to do all the cooking and cleanup for Thanksgiving because he thinks the holiday is important, which pleases PK and lets me off the hook.

... that we've found a cute *Spanish*-style house (I didn't dare hope we'd get one) at a price well below what we thought we'd find.

... that Mr. B. and I are doing really well on the "working on the marriage" stuff (which I haven't blogged about and am unlikely to mention again).

... that Obama won the election. Wow.

... that meds for mental health are so much better than they were ten years ago.

... for Pseudonymous Kid's teachers.

... that Mr. B. and PK and I are, for all intents and purposes, among the richest people in history.

... that the people around me are so forgiving of my tendency to drop the ball on things.

... that Mr. B. and I are able to make choices about how and where we live, and that I am able to be half-assed about my own employment without suffering materially for doing so.

... that I live in a beautiful place near the Pacific ocean and can go to the beach whenever I want to.

... that I have basically won the quality-of-life lottery.

... for all my friends, including the ones I've never met.

Stuffing as Sports Car; and Snot

I love ding's story below. Parts of it are very familiar to me, both from my own growing-up and in my own life, where I do the vast majority of cooking (but not cleaning). This year I am hosting a dinner and have already been making things for a couple of days. I am very consciously setting the cultural work done by my laboring over the meal against the emotional work done for me personally.

Remember back when I was writing about how much I dread dinner? I still do, in a kind of bland way that has to do with both planning and the experience of eating with a 3 yr old, but I've really come into my cooking this season. If the academic job market is giving me something that is structured like a mid-life crisis, cooking is my sports car. Which makes Thanksgiving basically the equivalent of a weekend in Vegas. Or some such.

And yet! I have a cold! It's disgusting! I'll be lucky if I can taste my food at all tomorrow. And the poor people who are coming over. Nothing like having your food prepared by a walking virus. I am not thankful that my daughter sneezed in all my facial orifices at once last week. I am not thankful for brussels sprouts, but will make them anyway and thankful I can't taste them. I am not thankful for the job market wiki.

But I am thankful for Baby V, even if she is basically Typhoid Mary. And for Mr Vane, who won 4 tickets to a hockey game this weekend, tickets that put you in the fancy suite, but who gave them away to a coworker with 2 kids because my parents and grandma would be in town. And for all the awesome pumpkin things I have made in the last 24 hours (pumpkin butterscotch cookies, pumpkin cranberry bread, pumpkin pies). And for my students who dressed up in funny thematic costumes today for extra credit. I am less thankful for my student who, in a response paper, wished to "galvanize the power of heaven and hell" to express his disgust for a novel I assigned. But I am thankful he didn't come to class today.

I'm thankful for the bitches, both the eponymous ones and the commenting/reading ones. I hope no one is sneezing in any of y'all's stuffing.

laugh at the stupid californian

Yesterday was a gray day. Did I think to bring in the laundry? No, I did not.

Now it's hanging there dripping. And will continue to do so until it stops raining long enough for it to dry. Which could be who knows when. Oh well.

Also, today I was on my way to campus--running late, of course--and stepped out of the house to see the driveway! empty! Oh right, Mr. B. took the car today. So I run back inside, hit the garage door button, grab my bike but not my helmet--I'm in a hurry!--and okay, you can guess what comes next. As I'm rushing across campus, in the rain mind you, a damn maintenance truck pulls out from between two buildings right in front of me. I hit the brakes, the rear tire comes up off the ground, I think for a second "no helmet, dummy" as I scramble not to fly over the handlebars. Which I manage not to do, instead scraping my left palm (I always store my gloves inside my helmet) and somehow, despite the fact that my bike is totally a girl's bike, managing to give my lady parts a good whack on the center bar. Ouch.

On the other hand, we're almost certainly going to be living in this house by Christmas. Though we probably won't have painted it or taken down the fence yet. But even so, you can see that it's freaking adorable.

And thus a feminist was born of Thanksgiving

When I was growing up, I lived with my family in a smallish apartment on Santa Rosalia in Los Angeles. Bouganvilla climbed the white stucco walls of the apartment building, there were hardwood floors in most rooms and linoleum in the tiny white kitchen, and when the windows were open we could either hear the constant zhoosh of Los Angeles traffic or the drunk single mother across the courtyard yelling at her sons.

Mrs. C-, a tiny, shrunken apple of a woman, lived across the hall from us. She was proudly southern, kept an apartment that was full of old lady smells and hard candy and looked harder at the tiny Oriental woman living with the Negro man across the hall from her. Family lore has it that one day she knocked on our apartment door and told my mother that my father was leaving the house every morning looking too thin and if she wanted to keep her black husband happy, she'd better learn how to cook soul food.

So Mrs. C- would put on her apron, come on over and watch soap operas with my mother while teaching her how to cook greens, black eyed peas, corn bread, southern fried chicken, and whatever else you'd find on a Baptist church dinner buffet. (The only thing my mother refused to cook was chit'lins. She knew we could barely stand her balut. There was no way in hell we'd eat chit'lins.) Mrs. C- (and her extended family) became a fast friend of our family and when she passed my mother cried the hardest, mourning her like a daughter.

All of this is to say that most of my holiday memories are of my 4'11" mother waking up at the ass crack of dawn to soak greens and prepare for a dinner Mrs. C- would have been proud of. Like her mother and stepmother before her, and maybe like all the Filipina village-raised mothers ever, she'd quietly begin the labor intensive process of feeding her family and their friends. (At the ass crack of dawn.) And like other Filipina mothers, she'd wake her oldest daughter to help her. (At the ass crack of dawn!)

I hated it. I hated the Sisyphean task of cleaning greens. I hated pulling the bag of giblets out of a thawed, cold white turkey corpse. I hated having to stand on a chair to lift a turkey that was half my size to put it into the sink and clean it. I hated deciphering pie recipes (my mother assigned me baking) and measuring and flouring and rolling out dough and I especially hated that my little sister was still in bed and I was getting turkey junk all over my pajamas and I smelled like raw turkey innards.

But as I grew older and realized that my mother was the only one cooking in the house during these holidays, I swallowed my anti-domestic hatred and helped her. (I still hated the fact that she'd wake me first and let my sister sleep an extra 2 hours.) Eventually, I grew to enjoy this part of the holidays - spending time with my mother in the dark morning hours, listening to her chide me over my inattention to the size of my chopping, how I forgot to put the fatback in the greens or left some grit on a leaf or 'forgot' to boil and cube the giblets. (I really think giblets are disgusting though they made all the difference in my mother's dressing.) She'd tell me stories of how good I had it; if I lived in the Philippines, I'd have to cook like this every day. I'd have to raise and kill my own chickens and pigs - and I'd have had to learn this at the age of seven.

I'd say to her, "And that's why I live in an American city, mom. So I will never have to learn that." And she'd slap my arm and we'd keep cooking.

But then her mood would change, especially as the morning stretched into afternoon and we were still in the kitchen (all three of us by now, my sister having joined us) smelling like butter or whatever we were cooking at the time - pies, rolls, green beans with bacon, black eyed peas (which takes frakking forever), corn casserole, ham, yams and sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, or the base for the punch later on.

And her mood would worsen as the sounds of dad and his friends watching football would increase.

By the time dinner was ready and the dining table was set with the good china and crystal, my mother was a tiny red ball of Asian fury and her target was often the men in the house who did nothing very labor intensive at all that day. My sister and I would instantly go into 'buffer' mode: running interference between mom and dad and hoping that post-turkey food coma would come so rapidly, the anger of laboring alone would be forgotten.

Sure enough, later in the evening my dad would put on his headset and sing loudly to contemporary Christian pop (don't ask) and wash all the dishes that had piled in the sink while my mother would finally rest, her earlier anger perhaps not forgotten but certainly repressed and swallowed. And I would go to my bedroom, write all of it down and vow NEVER to spend my holidays sweating over two ovens and a stove while my husband sits on his butt watching football.

These days, my sister has assumed the mantle of the Domestic Angry Goddess, though her husband is a little bit more tuned in than my father ever was (bless his clueless heart.) My brother-in-law wrangles the kids, clears the kitchen and preps the dining room, cleans the house and runs errands for my sister while she and I stand in her very small retro kitchen that reminds me of the apartment on Santa Rosalia and fight over counter space. And, true to form, my father saunters in 45 minutes before dinner is served and wonders when it'll be time to eat.

My sister's dinners are reminiscent of our mother's but with more Mexican dishes added to them and I wonder 'How the hell does Leslie do this without going frakking insane?' and I send up a little prayer of thanks that my kitchen back home in Chicago remains virginal and pristine.

My non-guilt at not cooking prompts me sometimes to tell my sister that the next day, on the biggest shopping day of the year, she can leave the kids with her husband while we make a day of manicures and pedicures at some spa, a movie and maybe some cocktails in the middle of the bright afternoon in a hotel. This is my Single Anti-Domestic Sister gift to her and I only wish that our mom was still here to join us. If anyone needed a day of complete self-indulgence and alcohol, it was my little mother.

So to all you Domestic Divas/Gentlemen out there, trapped in the Whole Foods or Vons or Dominick's or Byerly's of the nation, gritting your teeth over your turkey or your tofurkey or gnashing your teeth over head count and wondering why it's your turn to host again this year, have a wonderful holiday.

And book your spa appointment now.

Staring you in the face

As I've noted, I'm having some professional problems. But one thing that I thankfully never encountered, not even for a second, in my workplace, was sexism. It's pretty remarkable, when you think about it. Given how prevalent sexism is in the world, and hidden in all the ways we interact with one another, that I could just not experience it from a whole group of people? Awesome.

But man, the frequent sexist barbs I have gotten from other lawyers in the short time since I've been practicing really sting. Not only am I a woman, but I'm a clearly rather young woman (although maybe I look older--I don't know--people seem surprised when they find out I'm "only" 26). And this presents major problems. Probably the worst such one was about two weeks ago. I was appearing in an unfamiliar environment on behalf of one of our clients, for an administrative hearing. I was trying to make a deal with the city's attorney so we didn't have to go forward with the hearing. After going back and forth for a while, and my taking a few minutes to think about it, I ended up accepting the deal he'd offered. He began to draw up the papers. Up to that point, we'd been having a cordial, even friendly conversation--discussing the applicable statute, making arguments, and once he was drawing up the papers we engaged in small talk. He asked me where I went to school, about my job, and I returned the questions. We talked about how bad the legal market is right now. He told me that the city was paying him a law clerk salary even though he is a licensed attorney. I expressed surprise and said I thought that was, as I put it, "bullshit."

And then he turned to me, stopped what he was doing (he had been filling out forms all this time), looked me straight in the face, and said "yeah, they claim there's a hiring freeze, but I see them hiring people. And the only people they hire are women and minorities."

Just like that--I was silenced. I was so taken aback that I couldn't even think of how to respond. Conversation's over. I stood there in silence while he finished up the papers. As I drove back to the office, I was stunned. How could someone stare me straight in the face, me, a brownish woman with a funny name, and say that he couldn't get paid because women and minorities (I'm trying to replicate the disdain in his voice) were taking all the jobs? Was he trying to put me in my place? Just totally clueless? Put me in the "lawyer=one of us" box and forgot that he wasn't among his buddies? I don't know, but it stung.

And these are stories that I think need to be told, because although there is a lot of data out there about outright sexual harassment, there's not much done in the way of cataloguing the minor sexist slights a professional woman has to face in her expanded workplace. Not only is the effect psychological, but it's professional. Being subjected to sexism is distracting. I don't even know how many minutes of conversation I've missed because I was in my own head, saying, "did he really just fucking do that? What the fuck? Should I say something?"

I've been patted on the head. I've been asked over and over again, incredulously "Are you actually a lawyer?" I've been called "sweetheart," "dear," and "honey" by older male lawyers I didn't know. I've had multiple people say 'you're (lawyer's name) assistant, right?' even though I was participating in the discussion in a way someone's assistant would not do. I've had other lawyers attribute things I said, just minutes later, to my (male) boss, as if they couldn't be bothered to acknowledge me as a separate person with a name. I've had lawyers for the Cook County Sheriff, when we were visiting the jail, issue subtle threats of violence toward me and the only other woman in the room ("I don't even want to think about what those inmates would do to these girls if they got them in a room").

I don't know if any of this has hurt my clients. So far, I've done my work under older, male bosses with a lot of experience who others respect, so they put an imprimatur of seriousness on the work. But I really shudder to imagine what it would be like if I were going it alone. And I'm saddened to think of all the times I've been effectively silenced, because of how clear it was made to me by older male lawyers that they saw me as lesser and other. When you get sworn into the bar, a panel of judges talks to you about how you're joining an "elite group" of people. I reject that--I don't want to be elite. But I do want to feel a sense of camaraderie with people who are my colleagues, and for the most part, I haven't gotten it at all.

It's getting colder, so fuck the homeless

Chicagoist alerts me to some new signs that have gone up in a few CTA stations around town. Apparently, the CTA is trying to crack down on what they call "Continuous Riders." If you have a brain, you know that "Continuous Riders" means "homeless people."

And Mike Doyle of Chicago Carless contacted the CTA, which gave him some standard evasive answers and flatly denied that the new signs are directed at targeting the city's homeless.

The real question here is: what's the penalty? Let's say that someone is "caught" by CTA personnel about to enter the train going to opposite direction, without exiting and re-entering. What then? Do they get arrested? Fined? Both? The Chicago Police already have a slew of regulations to help fight against the city's homeless, and give them a way to boot them off the CTA. Which, believe me, they use on a regular basis. The CTA ordinance (pdf) contains a provision that prohibits sleeping or dozing "where such activity may be hazardous to such person or others or where such activity may interfere with the operation of the CTA's transit system." So, it's against the law to sleep on the train? It's news to me, considering that the summer I worked downtown I fell asleep on the train basically every day both to and from work. And even missed my stop a few times, which means I have also committed the DREADFUL ACT of getting off and getting on another train going in the opposite direction without paying an additional fare.

And if you look in that PDF, it doesn't say anything that would amount to a prohibition on so-called "continuous riding."

I find this all despicable. I know people for whom the only way they managed not to freeze to death was by riding the CTA up and down the length of the City of Chicago all night long. What's the harm? What's the problem with having someone just sitting on a train? Shall we try to throw homeless people off the train when they're just riding from point A to point B, rather than engaging in "continuous riding," because we don't like the way they look or smell, or they make us uncomfortable?

If the city is concerned about the city's homeless riding on the trains all night, perhaps they should fund additional shelters instead of spending money on enforcement of a law that is unfair, cruel, and almost certain to be disproportionately applied.

UPDATE: Wow, I really didn't know that the site was was read by so many anti-homeless. I said that thing about funding additional homeless shelters because, well, there really is a shelter deficit in this city. But even if there wasn't, like someone said above, there are often people who can't stand the shelters because of their onerous rules. Plus, they can be awful. I have a former client who described his experience in a shelter as "fighting off rats."

And so there are always going to be people who don't have anywhere to go for the night. Even if there are more shelters. Even if those shelters change their rules or become less sanctimonious. And I, personally, am ok with those small number of people riding the CTA to keep warm.

Commenter kid bitzer said "like some of the earlier commenters, i'm inclined to think that the el should be for getting from place to place, not for sheltering from the cold." Which sounds like a reasonable position. But you can't enforce this rule in a reasonable way unless you're only using it as a rule against homeless people. What about a homeless person who rides the el from beginning to end of the line, not to get from place to place, but just for shelter from the cold? No "continuous riding," just rides from one end to the other. Perhaps he gets off, has a cup of coffee, and get back on twenty minutes later going the other way. Should that be disallowed? It's not using the el for its intended purpose.

After all, the el is not to be used except for "getting from place to place." I personally like my right to use the CTA as I please, as long as I am a paying customer, and not interfering with other passengers or the train's operation. As a middle-class professional person, I have slept on the train, gotten off and gone the other way, and rode the brown line downtown and back one afternoon because it's a beautiful trip and I was bored. And no one bats an eyelash.

Let's just all admit to what is being said here, in coded terms: you don't want homeless people on the train. And I say, have some goddamned compassion for your fellow human being.

monday morning random blog post generator

1. I now have so many email accounts (for the blog, for me personally, for my class, for spam) that all my google cookies are completely confused and I am constantly having to go to a different page--say from blogger to google docs--to logout and log back in again. Beware the hegemony of google.

2. Resolved: tomorrow I up my meds. I think I'm ahead enough on refills that I can afford to do this without setting myself up to run out before the new year. Also I am tired of having no energy and I'm sure Mr. B. is tired of my shrewishness.

3. There is a certain irony in the fact that we're in the middle of a housing crisis and I canNOT get anyone to agree to let us buy their house.

4. Thanksgiving. SO. UNINSPIRED. Should I do the decent, responsible mother thing, and invite my own mother and her brother, thereby setting for PK the example I hope he will follow and allowing him to have his own relationship with my mother despite the fact that she drives me insane? Or should I indulge my selfish immaturity and not bother? And do we really have to do a damn turkey?

5. Clinton for Secretary of State: what???

6. iPhone: are you the parent of an elementary-school-aged child? Then you need one of these. "Here, honey, play with my iphone while I (shop/talk to this grownup/wait in line at the post office)." Also it gives you, the adult, something to do while hanging around during the kid's half-hour TaeKwonDo/soccer/fencing lessons, which are always somehow too short to drop him off and go *do* anything. Plus it syncs up your calendars, complete with alarms. So. Freaking. Handy.

7. Thank god that PK has half days all week (no afternoon volunteering for me!) and that it's a 4-day weekend coming up. Do you think it's remotely possible that I'll do some cleaning/get a "yes" about the latest house we've offered on/pay the bills/catch up on my grading/prep for the last few weeks of the semester? Okay, that last one is pretty unlikely, I admit.

Sunday Night Penne with Onion, Bacon, and Garlic

Like Sybil, I've been feeling quiet lately. I'm having some professional and personal problems, and have been home trying to figure things out most of this week. Luckily, things are really starting to look up. But while I've been resting and thinking, I've been doing a lot of cooking. It's really therapeutic, and it's fun, and there's a certain satisfaction in creating something delicious to feed the people I love. I haven't been cooking seriously for too long as an adult, although I spent a ton of time in the kitchen as a child with my father, chopping, frying, tasting, grating. Looking at recipes to try and make the foods I'd come to love when living in the US that weren't available in Egypt. Making homemade mayonnaise, and homemade maple syrup. Thinking about this stuff makes me miss my father terribly, and makes me incredibly happy that I'm going home for Christmas. Perhaps while I'm there I can cook a few meals for my dad, like the simple meals he cooked for me every night when I was growing up.

1. Dice up a medium white onion, then put a large pot of water on to boil for the pasta.

2. Scrape bacon fat from this morning's breakfast into a deep skillet over medium heat, along with a tablespoon or two of vegetable oil, because you realized you're out of olive oil. Throw in the onion, along with a handful of coarse sea salt.

3. Mince up about six cloves of garlic, and throw them in with the onion. Stir around with a wooden spoon, and put in a few shakes of dried oregano. Mm, fragrant. Add some dried parsley flakes for good measure. You can, of course, use fresh herbs, but dried ones will do. The whole point of this dish was for me not to have to go shopping.

4. Pull off five slices of bacon from the package, and lay them on top of each other and cut crosswise into half-inch pieces. This process is not precise. Throw little pieces of bacon into another skillet, and turn the heat on medium-high.

5. When the onion is soft and the garlic and oregano fragrant, look in the cabinets for canned tomatoes. Find "diced tomatoes with onion and garlic." Huh, that'll do. Open the can, drain most of the juice, and throw in with the onion/garlic.

6. When pasta water boils, throw in the pasta you have, which happens to be a pound of fortified whole-wheat penne. Check to see when bacon is mostly done and crispy. When it looks good enough to eat, throw the bacon, including all the fat, in the other skillet with the onion, garlic, and tomatoes. Season some more including a few more shakes of dried oregano, dried parsley, and the dried basil you just discovered in the cupboard. Grind a pepper grinder over the whole thing a few times.

7. Pasta is done! Drain it in a colander. While it's cooling off, dice up another two cloves of garlic. In the pot you used to cook the pasta, throw in two tablespoons of butter, shake some oregano in there, and throw in the new garlic. Stir around until fragrant.

8. Put drained pasta back in the pot, along with the sauce. Stir around over low heat for a minute or two to combine flavors and soak everything up. If you have crusty bread, serve it with that. If you don't, like me, just have seconds. It's a nice way to end a weekend, and will make enough food for two hungry people, plus leftovers for the next day's lunch.

Riding in Cars with Boys

Dutch at Sweet Juniperr has a beautiful and moving plea for the saving the Big 3. Given the debate here about the original bailout, I don't expect everyone to agree with him, and I am not sure how squarely I agree with him on all points. But the piece is gorgeously composed and the comments are just as illuminating. The post and the thread get at so many of the intangible and irreplaceable aspects of American culture - our stories and mythologies, our past, our indebtedness to that past, our seething snobbery about the working class. I'm interested in reading what you all think.

Dear "conservative" students

Your "liberal" professors don't hate you because of your politics. Really. I mean, we might very well hate your politics, but trust me: we also hate the liberal politics of your peers because they're so often stupid and based on specious reasoning, white guilt, and/or condescension.

That said, we *do* hate you. But we do so because you are smug little twits and because you think that your 18-year old libertarian nonsense is (1) conservative: (2) coherent; (3) something we haven't thought of; (4) self-evidently true and obvious.

Really. Wipe that smirk off your face and quit with the weird superiority/persecution complex, already. It's irritating.

Dear drunk guy on a bike

Watching your unsteady serpentine through the intersection in front of the mall at noon on a Thursday, big 42-oz plastic cup full of (presumably) beer, raising your glass to toast the four-lane throng of cars waiting at the light while you crossed on the pedestrian signal, clearly enjoying yourself in the Southern California November sunlight and good-naturedly hassling the dumbasses (including me) stuck in their stupid cars, well, you really put a smile on my face. Thanks, dude.

Mexican Winter Chicken Soup

Dinner party, M. LeBlanc-style. Rules: don't clean up, don't plan, don't stress.

1. Send email to friends telling them to come over for dinner. Assign one the task of bringing loaves of crusty bread, the other dessert.

2. Go shopping.

3. Wash and pick over about 1.5 cups of black beans (I bought the organic ones from the bulk food section at Whole Foods), and put in medium saucepan with water to cover, over medium-high heat. While the water's boiling, peel and mince up two cloves of garlic. When the water boils, throw in the garlic, a bay leaf, and a tablespoon of chili powder. Cover loosely and turn heat to low so beans/water mixture simmers. This will be simmering for the next hour and a half or so.

4. Pull out the whole rotisserie chicken you also bought at Whole Foods, on sale for $5.99! Start pulling the meat off the parts, first the leg, then thigh, then the breasts, and shredding it into bite-size bits with your fingers. Discard cartilage, skin, bones, funny bits into separate bowl for use in ambitious stock-making plan or for hungry boyfriend to eat when he gets home. Cover bowl of chicken flesh with foil, put in fridge. Sit down to read blogs.

5. When beans are close to done, take them off and put in a bowl, which you can leave sitting on the countertop.

6. Dice up a really big onion (or two smaller ones) and put in a bowl. Then dice up two jalapenos (remove the seeds and pith first!) very finely, two peeled russet potatoes (also small dice) and mince up 6 cloves of garlic. The jalapenos, potatoes, and garlic can all go in one bowl.

7. Put about 3/4 cup of vegetable oil in a giant pot, and turn on medium-high heat. When it's hot, throw in the onion, turn down to medium, and sautee for maybe 7-10 minutes until onions are soft. Then throw in the other bowl of chopped-up stuff (potatoes, jalapenos, garlic), and stir that around for a few minutes. Then put in a 1/2 cup flour and stir that around for a minute or so.

8. Pour in four cups of chicken stock and a cup of heavy cream. Stir around. You should be on medium heat still. While it's melding together, get out your can opener and open up your 28-ounce can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes and the can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Take out a couple chipotles and dice them up (about three teaspoons' worth).

9. When your pot is boiling, throw in 2 cups of the tomatoes and the diced-up chipotles, and the beans from earlier. Get your chicken out from the fridge and throw that in too, as well as the 8-oz package of shredded monterey-jack cheese, and stir it all around. When all of that boils, turn the heat down to low and let it simmer.

10. Taste it. It should be decently salted b/c of the stock, the rotisserie chicken, and the adobo sauce. Grind a pepper grinder over it five or six times. Make sure heat is low and ask your boyfriend to keep an eye on it.

11. Take a shower, because you haven't in several days and people are coming over. Boyfriend, who is better cook than you, will adjust heat, salt, and add additional pepper. After about twenty minutes, the soup is ready. You keep it on low, though, until your friends show up. About a half hour.

12. Just before you're ready to serve, stir in a cup of milk to thin it up.

13. Serve up in bowls. Garnish with a couple slices of avocado, sliced green onions, and a dollop of sour cream.

14. Have seconds, and hang out with your friends.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that this recipe will make a lot of food. Like me and my three dinner party guests had two helpings each, plus there are at least three helpings' worth of leftovers. And you could make it even more soup by adding more stock, more milk, or both. Mine was quite thick--more like a chili than a soup. If I had followed the recipe from Gourmet, which I doubled and altered, I would have had 10 cups of liquid (6 broth, 4 cream (!)) and instead I used 6 (4 broth, 1 cream, 1 milk).

But my period was *last* week

So yesterday Pseudonymous Kid and I were both having the "Must... get... out... of... bed..." thing going on, neither of us being morning people (getting him to school at 7:55 is so freaking hard, I swear to god), and I just decided FUCK IT and call him in "sick." After which we went back to sleep for a couple more hours. I did have to get up to go teach my class, at which point he got up and sat himself down in front of the Wii; I came back to find that he was a little annoyed because he'd tried to call my cell to ask if he had permission to use the stove in my absence (answer: no) but because he doesn't really understand the whole 1-before-area-code thing and for some reason my area code was on the fridge phone list he kept getting an error message from the automated operator.

In any case, he'd decided that lack of permission meant better safe than sorry (this kind of judgment being why I trust him alone for an hour or so in the house, foot-licking behavior notwithstanding) and had gotten himself some quiche out of the fridge. Which he was just about to microwave when I walked through the door. So I nuked his quiche, rewrote the phone list sans area code, wrote my cell # in sharpie on the landline phone, corrected the outdated numbers on the phone list, recalled his attention to which numbers belonged to neighbors, grandparents, teachers, and other Responsible Adults he could reach in a crisis if for some reason I'm not available (bad mama!), commended his judgment, and we settled in for a highly ennui-laden afternoon of mutual video game playing.

Until we had to drag butt out of the house for a PTO meeting. Love those meetings. Not. At which meeting I confessed to his teacher that no, PK hadn't really been sick, I'd just been having One of Those Days. Have I mentioned how much I love PK's teacher for understanding these things? (Also because he's the kind of teacher who happily accepts a invitation to go to the beach over the weekend with us, who willingly takes over the entertaining PK role once there, who will actually go into the very cold water for several hours with PK and build sand forts and then have a sand fort war, who'll teach the kid to skip rocks, and who winds up the afternoon by offering to bring back one of his wife's outgrown child wetsuits after they go home for Xmas, but I digress. I highly recommend, btw, young energettic elementary school teachers who love kids but don't yet have any of their own.)

Anyhoo. So after the meeting, PK and I went and bought takeout Italian and a two-pound box of See's candy. Went home, ate dinner, then went to bed (Mr. B. being out of town) and ate chocolate while watching Ratatouille. PK learned a new word, "self-indulgent," and I actually feel somewhat better this morning.

That said, I'm seriously wondering if it's even *possible* to have seasonal depression in southern California, where the temperatures have been in the 70s for the last couple days after being in the 80s all last week.

If it is, it would explain the regional popularity of See's candy.

Reflections

I got my hair cut this morning. First time since February. It was relaxing; and then this happened:

In my mirror, I could see the reflection of a woman behind me who was getting her hair colored. She was in her 50s, I would guess. She kept doing this thing where she used her hands to tug back the skin around her eyes, then around her neck and chin, cocking her head at angles and considering the results. She was doing a thing with her mouth that she probably never does in real life, but which she probably imagines is her default condition.

(Mr. Vane says I have a mirror-face; I expect we all do. A thing we do with our features when we look in the mirror that creates the face we see in our mind but which no one else ever sees)

While she was doing this, the woman applying her color was oblivious. The stylist was really young, maybe 22, super thin, a shock of red trendy-messy hair. Way too much makeup for a face that young. Skinny jeans tucked into massive boots, a cling clang of bracelets rattling around. The whole time she applied the little foil envelopes of color she watched her own face in the mirror. Cocked her head different ways to watch how her hair fell. Narrowed her eyes and pursed lips just a tiny bit. Checked out her profile while coloring the bangs.

I watched this scene for about 2 minutes and it was all I could do not to dissolve into tears. I ended up getting bangs cut into my hair for the first time ever. They are already distracting me with the feeling of something being in my eyes.

Recipe Bleg

Fucking Sybil's post below has made me starving already, and it's not even 9 am. I'm taking a few days off from work, so what better time to cook up some crazy-delicious shit? Here's what I want. There's the soup that I seem to be seeing everywhere--first at the grocery store, then at the coffeeshop I was at last night, and I want a recipe that someone here has actually tried, that turned out yummy. One version of the soup I had was called "Chipotle Chicken and Corn Soup" the other "Cheesy Chicken Chipotle." They were different, but the elements that I want include: some cheesiness, a mellow spiciness, beans, corn, chicken, perhaps bits of tomato, and a non-gloppy texture. The one I had last night had an orange "broth" that was thicker than water, but not like a cream-soup texture.

I want to make delicious soup! Help me, friends. I guess I could just try and improvise something, but I don't think I'm quite ready for that in my cooking development. Also, I'm strapped enough for cash that I can't afford spend a bunch of money buying ingredients for something that turns out to be an uneatable epic fail.

nom nom

Pictures of food can really make you hungry.

pseudonymous kid may need psychiatric help

PK: Mama, can I lick your foot?
Me (not really paying attention): No.
PK: Why not? It's my tongue.
Me: Okay, fine. Go ahead and lick my foot.
(PK licks my foot)
Me: !!! I can't believe you just licked my foot!
PK: Now some milk to wash it down.

They're not going to go without a fight

Despite the fact that most Americans might hope that Bush lays low in the final days of his historically unpopular presidency, he’s decided to try to push through at least one last-minute agenda: a plan that would allow health care providers to refuse to perform abortions and other procedures they object to on moral or religious grounds.



Go read Postbourgie for more. Ironically, it's the turtle--not the news item--that's work-inappropriate.

Quiet

I've been feeling quiet lately. Partly it's the season. I, like so many of us, am not so good with the dark and November is historically a shitty month for me. I have been really thinking a lot about my cooking as a way to appreciate, instead of dread, the season. Tonight I made an awesome slow cooker beef cabbage stew (my first time ever working with fresh cabbage); last night beet-flavored pasta with fresh cherry tomatoes and sweet peppers sauteed in red wine and garlic; the day before zucchini bread; and the day before roasted chicken and butternut squash tossed with feta and whole wheat orzo. It's been a tasty kind of quiet.

Being on the job market has me in a state. Not a verge-of-panic kind of state like the one I endured last year while my materials were out. This is a much more resigned and inward-looking state. I feel now, in a way I only knew before, the improbability of my career working out the way I thought it would. The chances of landing a good tenure-track job were always bad. Now, because of the way the world has turned, they are abysmal, even with a PhD from a good school with a strong department, good publications, extensive teaching experience, great evals, and a good diss. It's a lot to wrap one's head around and it takes a long time to really feel the truth of, "it's not me, it's the market."

And the reality is, feeling that might be worse in its ways.

I'm at a point where I am thinking I'd rather not even get any interviews this Fall. In part because that just stretches out a process that I still doubt will end with my getting a tenure-track job. If I'm going to just get on with it in a real job, I'd rather know sooner than later. And in other part because I feel not as confident as I used to about wanting that tenure track job. That ambivalence is somewhat circumstantial: last year at this time, for example, we felt a hell of a lot more confident about Mr. Vane being able to find a new job wherever we went and about selling our house for a profit. Now we feel way less confident about both. I don't know how much sacrifice I want to ask for for this career.

I know how that sounds coming from a woman and I am nauseous at the narrative it plays into. But it's more about the profession, to my mind, than gender. I don't know how much I am willing to do for this profession anymore. By which I mean both upending my family at financial loss or continuing to pound away at the tenure-track market year after year. Increasingly, I understand the profession as one that is not good to its people. That cannot find a way to institutionalize a paradigm that privileges or rewards teaching and service. That cannot sustain itself, or the number of trained would-be professionals it puts into the world, anyway.

Which brings me to my next point: in looking about some MLA career guide stuff today and in an essay by James Papp, came across this passage re: letters of recommendation:

Though the academy has a cherished tradition of confidential letters of reference, the prudent candidate will know what each letter says. Many referees are happy to share the content of their letters. At some institutions, a third party, such as a placement coordinator, is able to review it. There are job seekers who arrange for a dossier to be sent to the address of a relative (Bachmann 58). At the bottom of these tactics lies the truth that, though hiring committees desire substantive information in recommendation letters, certain negative or suggestive comments--however well intentioned by the author, to present a "balanced" picture--can remove a candidate from a field of apparently flawless rivals.

Which Side Are You On?

clearly, today is topsy turvy day

Frustrated by the failure to overturn Roe v. Wade, a growing number of antiabortion pastors, conservative academics and activists are setting aside efforts to outlaw abortion and instead are focusing on building social programs and developing other assistance for pregnant women to reduce the number of abortions.

Minnesota's US Senate Race - We Steal Now?

I thought my utility as a local reporter would cease after the Republican National Convention. Who'd have thought a contested Senate race would pop up here?

Norm Coleman is trying his level best to fashion the same judicial coup in the Minnesota Senate election that the Bush Administration successfully used to seize the Presidency in 2000. There's some chance he might succeed.

Here's the executive summary: Coleman evil, local media compromised (Star Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio), Franken not taking it seriously and needs help. Links at bottom.

Coleman is very canny and gets the propaganda game VERY well. Take this: the initial vote reports uniformly erred in Coleman's favor. The initial reported results, based on 3 AM call-ins from far-flung counties, padded Coleman's numbers by 500 votes. Coleman, being clever and manipulative, has turned that on it's head and is on the rampage about why the 'Democratic Secretary of State's Office' keeps giving Franken more votes. The reason? Because the first numbers were wrong. How were they wrong, Norm? They were skewed in Coleman's favor. Why is that, Norm?

The direct attacks on manifestly-biased Democratic FARMER LABOR! (note the social-democratic third party) Secretary of State Mark Ritchie have begun. Tim Pawlenty, jilted suitor, is got his sly digs in on one hand and is pretending to play off that he's above it on the other.

There is an attempt by the right wing media to say Minnesota 2008 is like Florida 2000. This is also turned on it's head - in Florida in 2000 Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush and their friends disenfranchised poor and black voters by the double handful, arranged Republican staffer riots, and succeeded in narrowing the discussion to the point where the Supreme Court could appoint Bush. So what I hear when they push that is 'I would like to steal Minnesota like we did there, please?'

Nate at 538 gives Franken a reluctant 'leans Franken' on the recount. Minnesota's voting apparatus is top-notch, with fully auditable paper trails and transparency. (earlier post)

Coleman has declared victory. Twice. The right-wing bloggers are uniformly pushing the talking points. My visit to Franken headquarters a few days ago (where I shared my 'Coleman sure turns things on his head, fight hard for this' thought) ended in a not-at-all reassuring 'Don't worry, we have some great people on this.' Right! As one of the commenters (Norsecats) on a Pandagon thread says,

Franken was not a strong candidate. I live in MN, and I do not know of many people who were really enthusiastic about Franken’s candidacy. Coleman started the mud-throwing, but Franken was throwing it thick and nasty as well. Just as an example: the Mpls. StarTribune put out a voters’ guide. Franken’s summary of his views spent half his time attacking Coleman.
I think Coleman is loathsome, but if you can’t draw more than 42% of the vote in a wave year, when the presidential candidate carried Minnesota with more than 55% of the vote, you are a weak candidate."

Pseudonymous Kid is not always cute

Me: PK, please finish your juice and then go brush your teeth.
PK: Mama, why are you writing a check?
Me: Because I owe people money. Finish your juice.
PK: Can I draw a picture of a spider on your check?
Me: NO.
PK: Aw, come on. Right here?
Me: No. Finish your juice?
PK: (brandishing a pen) A little picture?
Me: NO. Get away!
PK: Aw, Mama. Why can't I draw a picture of a spider?
Me: When you grow up you can draw pictures of spiders on your bills, but you can't do that on my bills. Now finish your juice.
PK: Mama, can't I please draw a spider?
Me: NO.
PK: I'll draw it right here! It won't ruin anything!
Me: PK, knock it off! Finish your juice!
PK: Mama, why are there wrinkles on your forehead?




I blame Lauren.

Into the West

...when I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not; but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter"
-Mark Twain


Pop showed up yesterday.


I learned this in a phone conversation with my mother.

I'd love to talk, Jimmy, but your father's waiting supper for me.

This was a bit of news. First, Jimmy is my brother. Second, my father passed away in 1989.

I said as much to my mom.


No, Ma. Its Taddy.
Well, thank you, sweetheart. And don't call me Ma.

Yes, ma'am.
I don't care what you call me but I don't care for that.

Yes, ma'am.

After a little more of this Bertie and Jeeves repartee, she returned to the urgency of her departure.

Yeah, Mom. About that.

Yes, dear?

Well, uh, you know. Himself. Cooking dinner. I'm surprised.

He loves to cook, Jimmy.

No, Ma, its Taddy.

I know, dear. I love you too. I love all my boys. But now I have to go.

And don't call me Ma, sweetheart.


Yes, ma'am.