Acknowledgements

I thought this day would never come.  I submitted a complete, revised dissertation to my adviser Monday night.

I wrote a dissertation.

Yup.  Past tense.  I wrote it.  I did it.  It's done.  It's over.  It is finished.

Except...not quite yet.  I still have my defense coming up: I will stand before my committee (wearing an appropriate power suit) and summarize my project, emphasizing its contribution to the field, after which my committee will commence to mercilessly grill me.

Well...not quite that bad, but you get the idea.

Anyway, one of the last things I wrote was my acknowledgments.  I sat and thought of all the people who have supported, encouraged, inspired and guided me throughout my academic career.  It was a really humbling exercise.  The realization of how much other people have contributed to and have been absolutely essential to my success...it's really humbling.

Acknowledgement is what I often fail to do consistently with God.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.  And when I fail to acknowledge Him, I start to think that it's all up to me and start getting anxious and fearful.  I begin to forget that He's got this; He always has and He always will.

Suffice it to say that the last paragraph of my acknowledgements was an unashamed shout out to the good Lord.  I felt like a gangsta rapper accepting an award.  "I wanna thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ..."  Like, um, God ain't pleased with your violent, misogynistic materialism, son.  Just sayin.  But I digress.

Intellectualism is looked down upon in the church world, and faith is looked down upon in academia.  But the former didn't stop me from pursuing my PhD, and the latter didn't stop me from acknowledging God and quoting the Word in my dissertation.

One of the life lessons I still haven't mastered yet is learning not to care.  Learning to just be who I am, who I know I am, who I was created to be, be content with it, accept it, embrace it, and not care.  I'll get there one day.

But in the meantime, as of July 20, you can address me as Dr. while I'm still figuring it all out.

I'm not brave.

I'm not brave.

I want things to stay as they are, truth be told.

I prefer an even keel.  A steady flow of manageable sameness.

As much as I issue challenges, even if they remain in my head, the truth is that I don't like to be challenged myself.

As much as I'm willing to admit that there are things I don't know and claim that I'm always open to learning, the truth is that I think I'm right about the things I do know (or think I know) and that I'm usually pretty confident about my rightness.

I hate messy things.  They unnerve me.  I prefer order.  I want things to just stay in place.

I care too much about what goes on in other people's heads.  I care too much about how I am perceived by others.  I often imagine others' incriminating, head-shaking disappointment once they actually discovered who I am, what I value, what I believe, what my views are, what my aspirations are.  I consistently imagine being exposed as a fraud.  You don't belong, you know you don't belong, but for some reason you want people to believe that you do.  

I don't like being faced with difficult questions.  Acknowledging my cowardice, I'd rather ignore them and let them somehow self-resolve.  Just because I'm not God doesn't mean that I'm completely powerless, but I'd rather allow my share of powerlessness to be brought into relief and it push me along like a gentle current.

I usually hang back.  Let other people hurl themselves into the fray.  Let other people be bold and declarative.  Let other people draw a decisive line in the sand and dare others to cross it.  Let other people respond appropriately.  I could even be accused of apathy.  Let other people be bothered.

I want to be loved.  Like any human being, I want people to care about me.  But I don't want fierce emotional stakes attached to me.  I can be a disappointment, and failing to meet others' expectations weighs heavy.

I fear my ordered, constructed, predictable, manageable space becoming suddenly unzipped.  I'd stand helplessly as all the unresolved jumble I'd carefully stowed away came tumbling out in a rush.  I would handle it.  Somehow, I always do.  But it would be one more niggling thing to occasionally jostle my mind and make me cringe to remember that time when.

Facebook and the Garden of Eden

I often have conversations with my husband and my best friend about the insidious nature of Facebook.  I'm back to being more or less active on it, but I've downloaded an app to block access to it during working hours of the day in an attempt to boost my productivity.

Anyway, the main thing about Facebook is that it's essentially a highlight reel of people's lives.  And people make the mistake of interpreting that highlight reel as the norm of people's lives and they misguidedly compare the norm of their own lives to the highlight reel of someone else's. (Check out this well-documented study.)  Facebook essentially enables us to ignore the many positive aspects of where we are in life and ruminate over what we don't have, what we haven't achieved, what relationships we haven't attained, what we haven't done with our kids because we've allowed ourselves to believe an inaccurate version of other people's lives.

A couple of Wednesday nights ago, my pastor used the current NBA playoffs as an example of this phenomenon during his lesson.  He mentioned that when you go and look at the replays of the latest game with the Golden State Warriors, what you see is Steph Curry and Klay Thompson sinking three pointer after three pointer.  What you don't see is all the shots they missed.

When we believe that there's something "better" out there that is somehow being denied us, we believe a lie.  If you have a relationship with God and you believe He is withholding something "better" from you, you've accepted a lie about the nature of God.

Eve fell into the same trap in the Garden of Eden.  She was in a literal paradise.  She could eat freely of every tree of the Garden.  But the adversary deceived her into believing that God was withholding something better from her.  Instead of enjoying the beauty and provision that surrounded her, she focused in on what she didn't have.  The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil became her Facebook newsfeed, distracting her from the truth that she already had everything she needed.

Are there things in life I desire that I haven't yet attained?  Absolutely.  Let's be honest.  I'd like to be a mother.  I'd like to own a home.  I'd like job security instead of this prolonged life of going from gig to gig.  I'd like to put down roots somewhere instead of continuing to bounce around all over the place.  But are my needs being met?  Do I have a wealth of things to be thankful for?  Am I surrounded by wonder and beauty and love?  Absolutely.  I am where I am for a reason.  Where I am now is not where I will always be.  So, God, help me to appreciate the now.  Help me to turn away from fruitlessly, foolishly, futilely comparing myself with others.  Help me to believe that You are who You say You are.

For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from those who walk uprightly.

— Psalm 84:11

Out, @$%&ed spot!

It's a quote from Shakespeare.  Macbeth to be exact. Act V, scene i.  Lady Macbeth sleep walking and talking, feeling all kinds of guilty because she was the mastermind behind her husband's shanking of Duncan.  She tries in vain to rid herself of the "spot" of blood that taints her conscience.

So, I finally got my teeth cleaned today.  It had been an embarrassingly long time since I last had my teeth cleaned (can't remember the last time I had dental insurance, and I still don't, but they had a $99 summer teeth cleaning special at the Student Health Center dental clinic, so I said what the hey), but I wasn't overly worried about it because my dental hygiene game is on point.  If there's one thing I absolutely pride myself on, it's the state of my teeth.  I obsessively take care of my chompers.  Brush at least twice a day, floss like it's the last step in the plan of salvation.  I don't play.  Ever since I got my first cavity at 19, I became a born again flosser.

The hygienist who cleaned my teeth was all chirpy and cheery about the state of my teeth.  All my x-rays looked good, my teeth were beautiful, she said.  She said that whenever I get a job offering dental benefits that she would recommend I opt out because with my teeth, I would save money just paying for a yearly check up out of pocket.  I was all beaming and excited.  But then the dentist came in and gave me a once over before I could leave.  And he said I had a teeny tiny cavity.  Very minor, mind you, nothing to be alarmed about, but a teeny tiny cavity nonetheless.  (The hygienist later said she didn't say anything to me about it at first because it was so minor she didn't think the dentist would recommend getting it fixed.) A filling I had slightly cracked, and a bit of bacteria got in.  Did I want to see it?  He gave me a mirror to hold up, and there it was, reflected in his little tooth mirror inside of my mouth, on the back of my first molar on the upper right hand side.  A tiny black spot.

Oh.  Em.  Gee.

My brain went into full Lady Macbeth mode.  How dare a wretched little black spot decide to manifest itself on my molar?  This cannot be.  No, ma'am and no, sir.  Nawl.  Nah.  A tiny black spot does NOT have permission to exist on a SINGLE ONE of my carefully brushed, obsessively flossed teeth!  Do you hear me, denizens of the underworld of oral bacteria?!  I have a (very infinitesimally, completely unnoticeably) discolored tooth, and I am NOT here for it.

I wanted to karate chop and drop kick the air.  I wanted to throw myself onto the floor and pitch a two-year-old style screaming fit because a tiny black spot had utterly dashed all of my glorious dreams of superior oral grandeur.

One tiny spot.  A cornucopia of shame.

"Have Done" List

I always make "to do" lists, so it's time for a "have done" list.

Have Done:

1. Submitted a revision of my last chapter of analysis to my adviser.  All that's left is a revision of my intro, and then, on to the conclusion.  I still have a bit of work to do, but I'm SO CLOSE to finishing.  I can't believe it.

2. Made homemade chicken noodle soup.  I'm really proud of myself, like, I feel legit.  I saved a couple of carcasses from roast chickens P and I had.  I picked off the little fragments of meat, put it aside.  Broke the carcasses up and browned the bones in some olive oil.  Added celery, carrots, onion, thyme, a bit of rosemary, some pepper, 3 quarts of water and let that sucker simmer for an hour and a half.  Afterward, I strained the chicken stock, then put it back on to simmer for about 20 mins adding some fresh onions, carrots, celery, and other seasonings to taste.  While that was simmering, I boiled just about a cup of dried egg noodles.  After that, I added the egg noodles and the meat I set aside, and let it simmer for about 5 more minutes.  Ridonculous.

3. Spent the past three Friday mornings praying with my husband for one hour.  It started as a prayer chain at our church the first couple of times (you know, individuals or families sign up for an hour), but then we wanted to keep doing it together on our own.  I'm the worst with consistent spiritual discipline.  I know I am.  But when you're doing it with someone else...there's just something very powerful and motivating about it.  Setting time aside to pray together has bonded us in ways that nothing else can.  I wish we would have started doing this a long time ago, and it's something I really hope we continue to do, in some way, in the future.

Flowers

My first anniversary flowers are dying.  They said, "We're done.  Enjoy our decaying beauty."

Snapshot

Getting ready for church this morning.  My husband was already dressed, and I thought he was sipping his cup of coffee on our green couch waiting for me while I fiddled with my hair for the thousandth time.  "Honey?  Honey?"  Where was he?  Not on the couch.  The door was ajar and I found him standing outside with one hand in his pocket, the other holding his to-go cup.  He was enjoying the beautiful morning, and I was taken by the sight of him.  Relaxed in a suit and tie, staring out into nature.  I wanted to capture that moment and press it so close to me.

On the Job Training

(Sigh.) That dirty dirty D.

It's getting done, though.  I turned in my intro before my anniversary, and now I've plunged back into tedious editing.  Trying to have a revised version of my second chapter of analysis submitted to committee by the end of the week.

I've never written a dissertation before, (and in the mighty, powerful name of Jesus, I will never write another one), but somehow it's getting done.  Mind you, there are all kinds of tips and tricks out there.  All kinds of Dissertation Writing 101 out there for me to take advantage of.  Not to say that I haven't consulted anyone or any resources to help, but in the end, it's kind of like, ey, saddown and write.  That's what it comes down to.  Sitcho self down, stop playing games, and write.  Tips and tricks be durned. 

Now, in order to saddown and write, you have to prepare yourself.  You have to have done some extensive reading, note taking, organizing and outlining.  If you just saddown and write with no plan and no preparation, it's a recipe for disaster.  But my point is that at some point all the tips and tricks and advice come secondary to actually getting the thing written, and you can't worry about whether you're correctly following step five of Dissertation Writing 101 or what have you.  At some point you have to just do it and trust in your ability as an academic that you're going to produce something worthwhile.

I started thinking about all of these other things that I'm doing now or have done that have all kinds of advice, tips, etc. attached to it, but in the end, you just have to prepare, go for it, and trust:

1. Going natural.  It's been almost a year since I last got down with the Soft and Beautiful burn your scalp up to straighten your hair out creamy crack.  And my, my, my, there is everything under the sun out there to advise black women on the best ways to "transition."  The best products to use.  The best twist-out techniques.  But at some point, I had to stop being afraid I was going to "mess up my hair," stop being discouraged by people who warned me how hard it was going to be, and somehow just figure out a way to make it work for me and my hair.  And so far, so good.  Bantu knots? Yaaaassss!

2. Getting married.  We did pre-marital counseling, read books and did all the things you do when you're about to get married.  I listened to advice and tried not to get too annoyed at the people who always wanted to warn us about how "hard" marriage is.  But once we said "I do," we were the ones who had to wake up next to each other every morning from there on out.  We had to jump in there and trust each other and God to make it work.

I have a feeling that all of the other transitions we have coming up are going to be somehow the same way.  Moving to another state.  Starting a new job.  Starting a family.  Sure, you have to prepare, but in the end, there's only so much you can do.  In the end, I feel like we all just end up jumping in and getting on the job training.

One Year

Yesterday my husband and I celebrated our one-year anniversary.

Time flies.  It's so cliche, but it's the only thing I can think of to say to describe how unbelievable it is that we have already been married for a year.  We still have our wedding vows taped to the mirror in our bedroom.  We still have unopened, unused wedding gifts in our little storage unit.  We haven't even dried ourselves off with all the towels we received as gifts yet.  We wash clothes once a week, and we just keep washing and reusing the same towels.

They say the first year is the hardest, but if this is the hardest its going to be, I think we're going to be fine.  Contrary to popular belief, we are not these adorable little lovebirds who flit around from love cloud to love cloud.  At least not 100% of the time.  We've had our moments of conflict and discomfort and uncertainty.  And it hasn't been the end of the world.  What initially drew us together is what always draws us back together.  Believing in that, knowing that, is one of the most comforting, secure truths about our marriage.

What I've always said about my husband is that who he is is what I need.  I feel like it's my slogan for why I married him.  There's something holy about the whole thing, why he is who I need.  Even though I still don't believe in the idea of "The One," I do believe God brought us together.  And I do believe God knew something, all along, that I couldn't have ever known about myself and my needs.  There are many reasons I am who I am, and there are many reasons my husband is who he is, but one of those reasons is us.  Who we are together.

There are so many profoundly spiritual aspects of marriage I've pondered that parallel the dynamics of our relationship with God.  Love, forgiveness, acceptance, communion, communication, intimacy.  Even the idea that you can never really 100% know a person, there's something about them that will always remain a mystery to you, but that love demands you take a chance on them.  It takes faith to commit yourself to someone for life.

When I look at my husband, sure, I'm pretty happy that I lucked out with a handsome guy.  An adorable dimple when he smiles.  Thick eyebrows over long-lashed, deep set, downturned hazel eyes. He has smiling eyes.  The kind that smile to a greater degree than his lips.  I'm also pretty happy he's still taller than me when I wear heels.  But more importantly, when I look at my husband, I see a man who simply loves me and wants to make me happy.  I see a man who is going to be a wonderful father.

I know so many things can change.  People change, situations change, goals change...so many things are subject to change.  I realize that.  How we are now is not how we will always be.  But that doesn't have to be negative.  I just have a lot of confidence that we will change and adapt to change together.  At the very end of his wedding vows to me, my husband repeated this line: "My love for you is here to stay."  That's one thing I can be sure of that will not change.  For either of us.

The Procrastinatory Minute: Newlywed Marriage Advice Edition

The healthy married couple handles conflict without either person feeling that the other is fundamentally rejecting the essence of who he or she is.

— L.L. Etnach

Back at It

If I can just ______, then I'll finally feel like _______.

If I could have a dime for each time the filling-in-the-blanks with any phrasal combination of my brain's choosing was NOT true...

It really seems like it would be true, like, when you finally attain that thing, you just know you're going to feel this certain way.  Well, let me qualify it, maybe it's true that you will feel a certain way, but the feeling never lasts.

If I had considered this when I was say, in my early to mid twenties, I would have thought that idea was depressing.  But now, it's kind of liberating.  Like, the realization that you cannot depend on any earthly event, accomplishment or situation to indefinitely "make you happy" lessens the insane pressure that comes with essentially worshiping the destination and forces you soak in the journey.

Enough philosophizing.  The current fill-in-the-blank combination which has once again proven itself untrue is "If I can just finish this last chapter, then I'll finally feel like I can breathe."

I mean, it felt amazing finally turning it in, but now the reality of the remainder of hard work that still lies ahead is sinking in.  Right now, I'm revising my very first analysis chapter per my adviser's comments.  While I'm thankful that my first draft was "solid" according to her, no red flags or fundamental unsoundness of my analysis were detected, most of my revisions are more complicated than rewording or moving around a sentence or two.  More like "reframing" entire sections, adding several bits of critical/theoretical support...tasks that aren't herculean, necessarily, but that can be time-consuming.  No quick fixes.  And I still have the introduction to contend with.  It's going to be a reworking of my prospectus, so at least I'm not starting from scratch.  But the intro is a pretty big deal, so it's not like I can just throw it together and dust off my hands.  The only thing I will concede is not a huge deal is the conclusion.  So, anyway, I'm back at it.

There is small cause for celebration, however, and it is that I won a Summer Doctoral Research Fellowship.  I'm praising the Lord because this will definitely make our lives easier before our big move.  P scored a summer class (which is not in danger of being cancelled, it's an online class and those fill up pretty quickly) and combined with my fellowship, we'll be good.  My sweet guy got me one of my yummy favorites, a strawberry shortcake, in honor of my accomplishment.  Yay!

I still have my work cut out for me, but it's all coming together and I have a lot to be grateful for.

Lemme tell you somn bout DIS gul

Ey, you heard bout dis gul?

Maaaaann, lemme tell you somn bout DIS gul, yo.

Yooooo, I heard she had finished some last chapter of analysis or somn like dat.

Yup.  Mmmhmm.  She was ackin all crazy and stuff cuz of some dissertation or somn, right?

Den she turn around and finally finish a draft of her last analysis chapter.

Sent it in to her adviser an errthang, fam!

Yeah, so I had heard that all she got to do now is start workin on dem revisions and stuff.

Den she gonna be writin a introduction and stuff.

Yeah, den she gon submit a super revised version with a conclusion and stuff.

Yup, yup.  I know, right?  Junk crazy, right?

Talmbout a defense date July 20.

Maaaaan, that's crazy, tho, right?

I had heard she had been workin and writin this thing for bout two years or somn and now she almost done, tho!

Daaaaang, man, that's crazy.  For real.

"Trying"

So many things don't make sense until you're staring it in the face.

I know I can be an annoying know-it-all.  A control freak who won't even let my husband cut a homemade pizza fresh out of the oven with a pizza cutter because I don't like the way he does it.  The way he does it pushes all the cheese and toppings out of place.  There's a certain way to do it to avoid that...here, just let me do it.  It's this idea that you know how things should be.  How things should be done.  What is "proper."  When I think about this personal quality, it annoys even me.  At least I'm self-aware.  But what I'm learning is that what's in your head of how things "should be" loses all credence in the face of what is.

I can also be kind of a prude.  Even after I got married, whenever couples would talk about "trying" to have a baby, I was just kind of weirded out by that whole terminology.  I often had to try to suppress unseemly images my creative brain would conjure up of said couple struggling, wincing, exerting effort, wiping sweat from their brows as they "tried."  Eww.  That's not the way I would talk about wanting to have a baby, I would think.

Maybe it has to do with the word "trying."  Normally it's associated with something precarious and difficult.  Like, something that takes extra physical exertion and mental skill.  I don't associate the connotations of "trying" with doing what it takes to conceive a child.  I mean, really?  It's not that complicated.  And I'd rather not picture people I'm casually having a conversation with "trying."  lol.  Like I said, I can be kind of a prude.

But...(there's always a but), now that the reality of planning to start a family is staring me in the face, I finally see the light.  "Trying" is kind of the only appropriate way to describe that particular circumstance.  I mean, we're all adults here, there are things that you do or don't do to prevent things from happening, and there are things that you start doing or stop doing to allow things to happen.  The most concise way to describe the process of allowing things to happen is "trying." 

I know, it seems like common sense, and of course I knew that people weren't really talking about the act of "trying" but more about their decision to be purposeful about conceiving, but still, it really didn't completely click for me until we began to think seriously about starting our own family.  Not too long ago, I began answering people's inquiries about our future family plans with "We're planning to start trying this fall."  Oh. em. gee.  Did I just use "trying" in the gross, conjuring of undesirable mental images sense?

I'm not a special snowflake.  I don't have a more "proper" sense of terminology or of anything else.  We're just like the millions of other couples in the world deciding when to start "trying" to have a baby.

I wonder if that's a part of what being a mother is like.  What I mean is, if part of being a mother is simply observing your child come to these universal conclusions.

Dear Anthony,

You were one of the ones who got on my last nerve, I swear.  One of the reasons I left that miserable job.  Yeah, that job.  The one that sucked the life out of me and turned me into someone I never want to be ever again in my life.  The one where I lost a bunch of weight, made a few messed up life decisions and quit in the middle of the year.

But back to you, Anthony.  You were a part of my worst class, 5th period. The class I had to take to and from lunch.  The class who stupidly brought little roasted potatoes back from lunch and treated me to an in-class food fight.  You were obnoxious, always finding an excuse to get up out of your seat, go to the bathroom, do anything but your work.  You were always getting into it with the other kids, although I know it wasn't always you.  I know, some of them would make fun of you and provoke you.  The truth is, even though I often viewed you as a "problem student," I knew that at heart you were a good kid.

One thing my brain keeps going back to concerning you is the time someone messed up your food at lunch.  I don't remember exactly what it was they did...like poured milk in it or something to make it inedible.  You got SO mad.  Oh, my God.  You nearly got into a fight with the kid over it and afterward, I remember us standing there in front of my classroom door, you still super heated over the whole thing, and me, talking to you to try to calm you down.  You were so upset, you started tearing up.  "That was my FOOD, man!" you kept repeating.  Suddenly, it hit me, and I felt ashamed.  The reason you were so upset, tears welling up in your eyes because some stupid kid poured milk in your lunch was because having lunch at school was probably the only time you got substantial food during the day.

Another thing surprised me.  When I finally announced that I was leaving, you were one of the most vocal ones crying out in protest.  "Pleeeeeassse don't leave, Miss Smith.  I'll change my ways, I'll be good in class, on God, if you just pleeeease don't leave us."  I remember cynically thinking, really?  Now you want to change your tune after putting me through hell?  I couldn't believe that you, of all people, were begging me to stay.  It was slightly amusing.

Anthony, I couldn't believe it when I got on Facebook yesterday and saw some of my former students, your former classmates, posting R.I.P messages about you. (Yes, some of them wanted to be my Facebook friend after I left, and I figured why not.)  I immediately messaged one of my most dependable students from that time and asked what had happened.  She told me that you were shot and killed the other night while playing dice with a group of others.  She didn't give me all the details, but I can fill in the blanks.  Some argument probably arose between you...I'm guessing money was probably at stake.

What a senseless killing.  What a senseless death.  I'm sorry, Anthony.  I'm sorry for you and your family and for all the people affected by losing you.

I thought about you for a long time yesterday.  I wondered if maybe I should have stuck with that miserable job until the end of the year.  I had the chance to affect your life in some way, but I was too demoralized, cynical and burnt out to think about anybody but myself.  I really hated where I was in my life during that time, but I'm really trying to learn that it's not always about me.  For what it's worth, I will always remember you.

Your former Spanish teacher,

Miss Señorita Smith

The Procrastinatory Minute: Music Edition

Another late night library date with my man.  Poor guy has been burning the midnight oil a lot lately.  It's his last semester of coursework.  The least I can do is drag my lazy carcass to the library with him to get a little more of my you-know-what written.

But what am I doing?  Regaling my readers with random songs I have to listen to.  You know how a random song pops up in your life and seizes you and then you have to keep listening to it and it keeps hitting you in the feels and you can't let it go until you've run it into the ground?  I hate the weird, cornball stuff I end up liking.  I really do.  It's embarrassing.  

#1.  "Dearly Departed" by Shakey Graves.  Just the name of the artist is so stupid.  But I was having a solitary lunch in this place downtown which specializes in pot pies and it came on the radio.  And it got its stupid catchy clutches into my brain.

#2. "Underneath" by Hanson.  I was reminiscing about the 90s with my husband and we started playing Hanson youTube videos and laughing.  But that little 90s reminiscence inspired me to add Hanson to my Pandora playlist.  And then I heard a Hanson song I'd never heard before that hit me DEEP in the feels.



#3. "Show Up" by John P. Kee.  You know I got that Contemporary Gospel box checked on Pandora, tho.  And when any John P. Kee song, but this one in particular, comes on, I'm in the kitchen with my mom on Sunday morning and I feel a warm blanket of home wrap around me.  Like someone put a big plate of some good food in front of me.  Like a black prayer warrior grandma just enveloped me in her ample bosom and she just bound the enemy and loosed every blessing in my life.  This is like the best dissertation writing song.  I have to listen to this on repeat sometimes.



 Sigh...let me try to type a few more lines...

Like a Wedding

Me and Lucía during the Q&A after the reading

That's how I would describe my latest feat of academic significance, organizing a campus visit with the author of one of the novels I analyzed in a chapter of my dissertation, Lucía Charún-Illescas.  I was pretty pleased with how everything turned out, and it was such a rare opportunity to meet her and expose students and colleagues to information about the black presence in Peru.

Anyway, there was so much planning: getting sponsorship, dealing with paperwork and rules and coordinating dates, making sure the bookstore would be there with copies of the book...and then during the visit: going to and from the airport to pick up the guest, running around to pick up food and supplies, making sure everything was in place.

And then, just like that, it was over.  Like I said, like a wedding.  All of this planning and agonizing over it, and then when it happens, everything's a blur and it's over.

All in all, it was well worth it, and I hope to stay in touch with Lucía in the future.  And now, back to writing my you-know-what.  I think I'm finally starting to see a tiny light at the end of this long tunnel.  And I have a defense date set: July 18.  Almost there...almost there.

Thirty-four

Wednesday was my birthday.  Since I am currently still off of the Face of the Book, I didn't get the annual perky, cute, heart-warming Happy Birthday messages plastered all over my wall.  It was my self-inflicted punishment for working slow as heck on my dissertation.  Oh, you don't want to finish this chapter?  No FB birthday messages for you, slacker.

Nevertheless, my big day was a sweet and lovely day in no small part due to my sweet and lovely handsome hunk of a man. I woke up to several cute and cozy small gifts with a lavender birthday card.  After wishing me happy birthday, he admitted sheepishly, "I didn't know what to get you."  I just cried, overwhelmed by his sweetness and sincere desire to please me.  I loved every single thing. He was also determined to make me a birthday cake, and, by George, he pulled it off.  Chocolate on chocolate with sprinkles and pink gel writing out "Feliz cumple Channy."  My husband bakes cakes, people.  And yes, he put 34 whole candles on that sucker and did light them and I did blow them out. (Not before I made a wish!)  He really helped me have a special day.

How did I get to be 34? When I turned 31, I called it my "Baskin Robbins birthday" (31 flavors, har har).  When I turned 32, I called it my "Magic Johnson birthday" (his jersey number).  When I turned 33, I jokingly called it my "age-Jesus-was-when-he-was-crucified birthday."  But now?  It's the last-year-before-my-fertility-takes-a-nose-dive birthday.

I know, I know.  I need to stop reading statistics online.  There's something to be said for educating yourself, but there comes a point where it becomes obsessive, and that's no fun.  To be frank, just my existence defies all kinds of statistics. The fact that I was raised in a two-parent black home with parents who never divorced. The fact that I spent my childhood in Italy.  The fact that I'm a college-educated, married black woman (the stats are brutal, y'all), married to a white man, at that.  The fact that I'm about to finish a PhD program.  The fact that I'm trilingual (more or less). I could go on...Can I just accept the fact that I defy stereotypes, statistics, norms, whatever and live with it?  If the statistics have often not applied to me with everything else, why would they now?

Things will happen when they happen.  The present is a gift.  I should celebrate it and take care of what I can today.  Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.

Friends

1. I have a friend who said if "Friends" were a black show, it would be called "Dawgs."  Wassup, dawg? This is the same friend who subversively invented a writer on the spot to counter the cultish, must-be-in-the-know and must-be-serious mono-ethnic culture of "whiters" in a Creative Writing program. She dramatically rolled lemons across the long workshop table as she began to read a poem about lemons.  Kidded me about an inappropriate and everlastingly embarrassing crush.  Burn me, Kram, burn me.  Other funny fragments of poems I remember: lemon tipped ears, made of your wax a thick brew, my fried pajamas, I'll rock you into, I put the cat back. She would walk through the quad collecting fall leaves listening to Al Green.  I'm so tired of  being alone, I'm so tired of on my own.  Long-armed, hair-netted, cigarette-smoked ladies sizzling up melts and fries and serving them up to drunken stragglers in a 24-hour on-campus diner.  Late-night giggling girls devouring the greasy fare, not caring if they were out of place.  The same friend who knew it was me who wrote that letter to the editor of the campus newspaper about ignorant frat boys in the elevator at the library before she saw my name at the end because of my use of the word "guffaw."  She used to high-five me for using SAT words.  She rebuked the devil in a drawing to cheer me from absurd infatuation: a Spanish professor nearly thrice my age.  Scolded a former suitor, claiming he had "coleslaw stained hands" (on this blog).  Red Lobster Ultimate Feast.  Discarded bowls of stiff Cream of Wheat and strewn sunflower seed shells.  I once gave her some candied sunflower seeds and flavored massage oil (the least scandalous of my offerings) in front of church ladies at her wedding shower.  She one-upped me when my time came, though.  Good.  An age old question, equal parts meta and hilarious: What if there were no hypothetical situations?

2. I have a friend who used to be my husband's Portuguese instructor before I knew he existed.  She was my Portuguese instructor, too, from that class I audited that summer before I got lazy and stopped going.  An English-language-learner story where I laughed myself to tears:  In Brazil, when you order ice cream, the word to use for "scoop" is bola.  So, if you wanted two scoops of ice cream?  Dois bolas.  Well, she learned that words don't always translate directly when she went into Ben and Jerry's and asked for "two balls."  Two literature nerds and frequent tea drinkers on my green couch.  Among many other things, I learned that my uncle looked like a samba singer she used to have a crush on.  Later we drank tea long distance over Skype while we suffered through the academic job market wringer together.  We laugh that we both ended up with dark-haired, introverted, bespectacled husbands.  This city and this program and this 5-year chunk of my life?  She's woven into it.  A refreshing constant.

3. I have a friend who ended up committing his whole life to me.  A shy guy wearing plaid, band tees and hoodies.  Skater punk with freckles and a big heart.  He used to be ashamed of being from a small town, couldn't wait to get out.  But now he's proud of where he's from.  That's what I remember him telling me on our second coffee date.  He asked if I wanted to hear him play open mic downtown.  Hipster coffee bar with a mini-stage.  He plays left-handed, like Jimi Hendrix.  My jaw dropped when I saw this shy guy transform into a passionate powerhouse from the first strum.  I remember a particular week we spent every single day together.  On the last day of that week, we bought guitar tuner batteries from Best Buy and kissed for the first time.  Now, I know he likes the toilet paper roll over instead of under.  Now, I make omelets for him that fall apart, but he doesn't care.  Now, I see glimpses of him as a father.  We still laugh about my response to a certain message he sent me on Facebook being nothing more than a single smiley face.  I didn't want him to think I liked him.

Chapter 4 Procrastinatory Thoughts

1. We were at the library this past weekend, and there was this Asian guy with a red plaid shirt and khaki pants on who kept walking around and around the library.  It was so weird.  At about the 4th time he walked by I got super distracted and sort of obsessed with the whole thing and started excitedly texting P about it. (We were sitting in separate areas.)  "Did you see this guy?  He's just walking around and around the library!  What is he doing??" Eventually, at about the 10th time (no lie), I started wondering if maybe there was something wrong with him.  I texted P and asked if maybe we should ask if he's okay.  The next time the guy walked around, P got up and approached him to ask if he was okay.  A minute or so later, P came walking over with a grin on his face to tell me the guy said he had plugged his phone in and was waiting for it to charge and he didn't feel like staying in one place while he waited.  Wut? Okay...it was so funny and weird.   But then earlier this week, on our way out of the library, we saw him walking around again...wearing the SAME EXACT thing!  And P told me he saw him again a day later...STILL wearing the same thing!  So weird.

2. Yesterday was our 10-month anniversary.  I had a meeting with someone at the department, and on my way back to my library jail cell, I heard P's voice so I stopped by his office to say hi.  His office mates were in there, so he came out and chatted for a minute, then I asked him if I could announce to everyone that it was our 10-month anniversary.  He was cool with it, so I said, "Hi, everyone, I have an announcement to make...today is our 10-month anniversary!"  And everyone was like, "Awww, congratulations, you guys are so adorable," etc.  But suddenly, it dawned on me that if I begin a statement with, "I have an announcement to make," one of the top assumptions is that I might be about to announce that I'm pregnant.  This realization made me feel strangely powerful.

3. Today is St. Patrick's day and I've begun a tradition of wearing a particular lime green dress.  My last name is now extremely Irish.  I mean, Irish to the max, so I feel this faux-obligation to celebrate my newly-adopted Irish heritage.  My husband on the other hand, freckled, red-bearded (when he grows it out) with a super Irish, holiday-appropriate middle name to boot, leaves out of the house fearlessly unadorned in green.  I told him that he's not worried about getting pinched because he's one of the ones who commands the pinchers to do his bidding.  He's immune to St. Patrick's day pinches by default just for existing.  He's a tall undercover leprechaun.

I would surrender a kidney to the black market to get a dissertation-writing machine in my possession. Just hit the "finish" button and be done.  Sigh...how did such a lazy girl get this far?

Why I'm Feeling Bad Right Now or The Things I Hate

1. I feel like I'm not a good worker.  I am not writing my dissertation.  I am taking way too long to just finish.  Why can't I just sit down and focus and write?  I cannot stand how terribly I've procrastinated.  It feels like every word I attempt to type is pure garbage.  I keep trying to tell myself that it doesn't matter, that it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be done.  I hate that I've put myself in this situation.  It is 100% my own fault.  I'm already not going to walk in a graduation ceremony.  I feel like I don't deserve to walk in one anyway because of how much time I've thrown away, like I don't deserve to celebrate, and I utterly hate it.

2. I know I'm driving my husband crazy.  If I were him, I would not want to be with me right now.  This is what I hate the most because when I'm in my selfish little whining procrastinatory sad world, it sloshes all over him.  I end up making him feel badly for no reason.  No reason at all.  It's what I hate the most about myself and it's what I desperately wish I could change the most.  I really hate seeing other people negatively affected by me.  My moods.  My absurd ways of conceptualizing things.  It's terrible and ridiculous, but it's what makes me feel like he would be better off without me.  I hate that I allow this stupid thought to even enter my mind.

3. We're in a position to move together and we want to stay together.  We don't want to do the long-distance academic couple thing.  We just don't.  And we don't have to.  He'll be done with coursework and he doesn't have to finish his program on site.  But since he's decided to move with me, what that means is that he'll no longer be on assistantship, which means that he'll no longer be a full-time student, which means he won't be eligible for certain grants/awards, which means that he'll be missing out on opportunities that he could benefit from academically and professionally.  And it feels really unfair.  And I hate it.  I don't want to be separated. I don't want to be alone.  But I don't want him to be disadvantaged, and I feel really badly about it.  I know what he wants is for us to stay together and it's what I want, too.  But if we have to sacrifice being together for him to have more opportunities that would help him in the long run...I hate that we're in this position.

4. Whenever I read things that are supposed to help people who have committed their careers to academia (i.e. The Chronicle of Higher Education), it makes me want to scream and cry.  It makes me feel like I'm not cut out for this, that I don't have what it takes to be successful.  My worst fear is that all of this time, all of this education, all of this dedication will be worth nothing.  That it's all an exercise in futility.  I almost don't care anymore.  It was never my dream to get a PhD and ascend to the upper echelons of the ivory tower.  That is not me.  All I wanted was to have a satisfying job doing something I'm passionate about.  Because what I thought I was passionate about doing before starting this program, at least the circumstances under which I was doing it, was not it.  That is the only reason I did this.  Because my last job was the job from hell, and I needed a ticket out.  I'm being honest.  I didn't start a PhD program because it was my dream.  I started it because it was a way out.  I'm not saying I regret doing this.  It was where I needed to be at the time.  I furthered my education, connected with a lot of wonderful people (including my husband!), and had great experiences.  I don't regret it.  But I am too old to be unstable and insecure in my career goals.  I am too old to be "finding myself" and "figuring out my passions."  That's what I hate.  That continued sense of instability that I wanted to be done away with a long time ago.

5. I want to have a baby and I want to wait to have a baby at the same exact time in equal amounts.  But I'm afraid to wait.  I'm not getting any younger, and the very idea of fertility treatments makes me feel sick.  When is the perfect time to have a baby?  When is the perfect time to make any kind of change, any kind of life-altering decision?  There isn't one. We don't have a perfect set of circumstances awaiting us at a perfectly appointed time in the indeterminate future.  It just doesn't exist, and I wish I could rid my mind of that absurd idea.  All we have is now.  All we are given is today.  And I have been terrible at being thankful for today, living in today, doing the best I can today.  The one thing I obsess over is the one thing I have no control over: how things will play out in the future.  It's a shameful waste of time and energy.  It's a relationship-drainer.  I know it, but I can't seem to help myself, and I absolutely hate it.