Randomness. . .A Disorganized Update

I don't know where to begin, as I feel like there's so much I want to say.  And, of course, being a writing teacher and all that, I'm supposed to be able to do this really well.  Quite honestly, I don't really have the energy to work on a decent piece of writing.  So here goes:

I'm feeling like a real mess lately:  fat, lazy.  Work is good.  I've been teaching summer school for a week now, and it's great.  But it takes up most of my energy.  I guess I'm discouraged because I'm just not getting as much done as I'd like (story of my life!).  I'm feeling both fed up and run down (love those phrasal verbs!).  I mean, this kind of malaise is, sadly, kinda typical of me.  But I'm feeling especially in a slump lately, and I don't know why.  Or maybe I'm just in denial about the why.  Difficult to say.

Yesterday, Zee took me to the best fabric stores ever.  Well, maybe not ever.  Because the best ever could be F&M in Bakersfield, which is super cheap and has many, many apparel-type fabrics, which is appealing.  But yesterday, we went to Country Treasures in Chester, VT.  At Country Treasures, I drolled over tons of calicos and quilting fabrics.  The best part, IMO, is that they have tons of 30s and 40s reproduction fabrics.  I'm totally in love with a line called Aunt Grace.  Once I've finished a project, I'll try to post pics.  Then, we went to the Waterwheel House quilt store, where we found bolts and bolts of Amy Butler fabrics.  Increasingly, I'm just in love with anything Amy Butler designs.  Seriously.  I mean it:  if you aren't familiar with Amy Butler, please check out her website here.  She has the most lovely colors and designs in her textiles.  And her patterns and projects are lovely too.  I don't know that I've ever disliked anything I've seen from Amy Butler.  Wow!  I make it sound like she's underwriting my blog.  But, sadly, she isn't.  But this brings me to a larger point:  I am discouraged because I cannot seem to get any sewing or crafting done.  And I don't understand why.  It should be easy, shouldn't it?  I don't have a spouse or little ones to worry about:  my time is essentially my own.  So why do the sewing projects never seem to happen?  And I feel this way about so many things:  why does writing never seem to happen?  I understand why laundry and mopping and dusting don't happen too often:  they are such dreary chores.  But sewing and writing are things I feel passionate about (or at least I think I do); they are things I enjoy; they are rewarding activites.  So why am I such a lump / slug all the time?

On a related note, I'm disturbed by what I perceive as an increasing lack of discipline in my life.  Partly, this bothers me because I used to think of myself as a disciplined person.  In high school, I graduated a year early because I did tons of independent study, self-motivated classes (you know, fun stuff like Algebra II).  I finished a doctoral dissertation; if that doesn't take discipline and motivation, I don't know what does.  And yet, I cannot seem to control the food I put into my mouth daily.  I cannot seem to get motivated to exercise more than about twice a week (and yet, I tell myself that twice a week is two times more than not at all).  I just lack discipline is some specific, important areas of my life, and I don't quite know what to do about it.

Maybe the worst part of it all is this:  I so quickly descend into what some would term negative self-talk.  I obsess about what a "failure" I am, how "worthless" I am.  I feel like such a joke, like my life is a farce.  And I feel like, with very few exceptions, everyone I've really, really loved has treated me like I'm basically worthless--if you know much about my personal life, my history with relationships, you know which names to insert here.  And no matter what anyone says or what I know intellectually, at some deep level, I believe that I am somehow worthless, that I deserve to be treated this way.  Goodness--do you know how hard this is to actually admit?  I try to tell myself that it doesn't matter in some ways how others may have treated me.  I tell myself that all life is valuable, is meaningful.  I tell myself that the important thing is that God loves me, no matter how all these crappy men may have treated me.  And yet, it's so hard to actually believe these things, you know?

So yeah, I keep feeling like if only I could or would do this or that--lose weight, write, exercise, create--I'd be a happier, more fulfilled person.  And maybe I would be.  But all I can see most days are my shortcomings. 

The Good News and the Bad News

Ok, so cliche, but there's good news and there's bad news.  I'll start with the bad.  Late this morning, I decided I'd do some work in the yard.  Increasingly, this is something I really enjoy.  I was feeling a bit depressed and decided I'd make myself get out and dig and weed and plant, partly in hopes that it would make me feel better.  But there was certainly work that needed to get done too.  Anyway, as I rounded the corner, I heard something ruseling in the shrubbery near the garage.  I figured it was probably a frog or toad, as there always seem to be lots of them about.  When I walked by a second and third time, however, I saw something scurrying away into the shrubbery, something with a tail.  Now, if you know me at all, you probably are well aware that I'm positively terrified of snakes.  Some would even call it phobic.  I mean, I have nightmares about snakes--had one last night, in fact.  I don't even like to see them on TV.  Well, I decided that this thing with a tail was probably a lizard; lizards I can handle.  But I was starting to freak out.  So I did what I often do in a near-crisis:  I called my dad.  I say something like this, "Dad, I know that this isn't a great time, and this is going to sound silly, but there's something in my yard, something with a tail, and I think it's a lizard, but what if it's a snake, what do I do?"  And we talk for a second and decided it's probably a lizard.  Just about then I look over and see it.  It's looking right at me.  And guess what--it's not a lizard.  It's a snake.  Just a small one, black with coral colored stripes running the length of it.  And so I'm saying to dad, "Oh my goodness.  It IS a snake.  It's looking at me."  Well, apparently there's not a whole lot I can do about this snake living in my garden.  I guess that knowing he's there is good; I can't be totally as surprised by him if I know he's there, right?  Anyway, the first bit of good news is this:  I didn't have a full-blown panic attack, which happened the last time I saw a snake in the wild.  Wait.  Is my parent's yard the wild?  They live on a golf course.  I wasn't happy, and I kept checking to see where he was, but I didn't have a total freak out over the snake.  I even decided to call him Ernie, in hopes that naming him will make him seem less threatening.  Really, he'd be kinda cute if I weren't positively terrified of any snake.

But the real good news is this:  I planted four rose bushes that I bought yesterday.  That gives me six in one corner of my yard.  Six is enough that I feel like I can now say that I have a rose garden.  I still need to do more work in my rose garden; I want to put up some sort of border to set it off from the rest of the yard, and then I want to put in some cedar mulch.  But for now, it's good enough.  Oh, one of the roses is called Creme Brule, which just makes me happy.

If you follow me on Facebook, you may know that I've been redecorating my bathroom.  There was nothing wrong with the bathroom; it was just really, really boring.  It sorta felt like Motel 6 bathroom.  That's maybe an exaggeration; it felt like the Red Roof Inn bathroom.  But over the last week, I've painted the bathroom.  I'll post some pics when the whole thing is done.  I'm just so excited!  I painted a couple walls a rich chocolate brown and the rest I've painted a bright turquoise.  It's like a pool blue.  I have new towles which incorporate both colors.  And I also have new decor that has cupcakes.  And the whole thing feels chocolatey / ice cream shoppy, if that makes sense.  I don't know--it's like the bathroom is suddenly this cheerful place, which is exactly what I wanted. 

I'm still wanting to put up some shelves, probably painted bright pink.  And I have some stuff to hang on the wall still.  But when it's done, I'll post a couple of pics.

Update on Summer Reading

So I thought it would be of benefit to post a quick update on my summer reading.  Again, it's the whole thing about having goals (see post dated 17 May).  This morning, I finished _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_.  For those of you not in the know, that's the second of seven in the Harry Potter Series.  I've also read about 2/3 of Wilkie Collins's _The Woman in White_.  With my mom here for two weeks, I didn't get as much reading done as I might have liked, and that's OK because spending time with mom was so great.  I do have in my possession most of the books I'd like to get to this summer.  I've refined and prioritized my list a bit.  So here's the revised list in the order in which I think I'll be reading.

1.  Finish _Woman in White_.

2.  Mrs. Dalloway

3 and 4.  Start the Old Curiosity Shop and An Abundance of Katherines (Dickens requires being broken up by light reading)

5.  To the Lighthouse

6.  Vanity Fair

7.  The Waves

8.  Trollope's The Warden

9.  Till We Have Faces

10.  Eliot's Middlemarch

11.  Gaiman's The Graveyard Book

12.  Anna Karenina

13.  Intersperse the rest of the Harry Potter Series with the above, just to break things up

14.  Intersperse a variety of feminist literary theory, which I'm reading in part for an independent study.  I need to get started on deBeauvior's The Second Sex.  I'm really not feeling up for this.

I'm enjoying revisiting the Harry Potter series.  I've been watching the movies on DVD too, partly in anticipation of The Half-Blood Prince opening this summer.  I do not think that the Harry Potter series is great literature.  But I do think it's clever and interesting.  And clearly, what Rowling does speaks to our culture in a way that few literary works seem to have done.  I could go on and on about it, but I'll spare you that.

I'm not feeling so enthusiastic about the theory I think I'm supposed to be reading.  I mean, it's just feeling a little depressing at the moment.  And what I really want to be reading is fun stuff, mostly from the YA section at the library.  And just because I have this whole list going does not mean that I can't and won't be reading fun stuff from the YA section.

One more observation about summer reading.  I really enjoy sitting on the deck and reading.  So completely relaxing.  It's supposed to rain later, or I might be tempted to spend the day reading outside.  But I also like getting up early (this morning, Fen woke me at 5:15) and reading all morning, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the couch.  There's something peaceful about the quiet early mornings around here.

On an unrelated but exciting note, bears have been seen in my neighborhood the past two days.  And by "neighborhood," I mean within 1/8 of a mile of my home.  I don't know why, but I find that very exciting!  For those of you who don't know, Guinnie is a little bit nervous of bears, but she figures she could outrun a bear or at least run faster than Polly.

An Update

Hey Kids!  I haven't posted in a long, long time.  Yesterday, I took my mom to the airport--she had been here for two weeks.  And between hanging out with her, traveling with her, and home improving with her, I just didn't have time to post.  Here, quickly, are a few hilights from her visit.

1.  The grave with a veiw.  This is this early 20th century grave with a window on top, looking up at the sky.  Apparently, the deceased wanted a window incase he wasn't really dead--that way he could look out.  There was much condescation on the window, preventing me from seeing the dead guy from outside :(

2.  Robert Frost's grave in Bennington, VT.  We were taken on a tour by the resident tabby cat.

3.  Painting my bathroom.  This is still a work in progress--I'll post pics once it's done.

4.  Watching hours and hours of BritCom, especially the Black Adder.  Especially love the episodes with Hugh Laurie.

5.  Food, food, and more food.  We had some especially super breakfasts out!

6.  Saturday morning farmer's market.

7.  Putting a new bed / area in my yard.  The entire yard looks fab, by the way, thanks to mom.

I Want. . .

a wrap skirt. Having been inspired by Libby Dibby and by a conversation with Cheri, I really want to make a reversible wrap skirt.  And I think that this one will fit the bill.  Isn't it so me?  I especially love that 1) it's reversible and 2) it ties with a ribbon.  I'm thinking that I'll make one side in a light-weight denim / chambric and one side in a floral.  I'm hoping that I can get by without even making a trip to the fabric store; I'm thinking that I must have something in my stash of fabrics that will be suitable.  I think it'll be perf for teaching this summer.  And if it turns out well, I can see many wrap skirts to come, possibly in Amy Butler fabrics.  This looks to me like it will be a quickie project; maybe I can get one done before mom arrives for her visit next week.  I'm just so excited.

Goals

That last post about why I feel the need to post my summer reading has gotten me thinking more generally about goals for the summer. And I guess that this is as good a place as any to start to hash out some of that. I mean, there's a lot I'd like to get done over the summer (yoga, writing, sewing, painting my bedroom, lose weight), but it seems overwhelming just thinking about it, you know? And the problem (or a problem, anyway) that I tend to have is that I love, love, love setting goals, and I tend to set these ridiculously high, unrealistic goals, and then when I don't meet every single goal down to the last detail, I feel like a total failure. Please don't tell me how silly and unhealthy this sort of perfectionist thinking is--I'm well aware of it. Logically, I do see the problem here. This very tendency has recently made me a bit hesitant to set concrete goals of any sort. However, I always feel like if I have no goals, I won't make any sort of progress at all towards anything. At this juncture, I'm asking myself why I can't be OK with just "being," why I have to focus on the "becoming." I don't know how to answer those questions.

So it seems that I have a love/hate relationship with goals. On the one hand, I need them to feel OK about myself. But on the other hand, they clearly make me feel not OK about myself. Arrgh! Why does this have to be difficult? It sounds like I need a good therapist, doesn't it? Oh wait, the last therapist told me to dump all my friends because you all only valued me for my appearance, not for who I am on the inside. I don't know why, but this statement is especially ridiculous, IMO. I mean really--I'm not quite cute enough for that to be my only source of social currency. Oi.

So now that I've written about goals, I don't know where to go from here. Do I make a list of goals? Do I not? Fenway is especially lovey today--do I spend the day cuddling with him?

More on Summer Reading

Ok, I know that I'm obsessing about planning my summer reading.  I also know that probably noone cares, besides me.  And I'm fine with that.  I guess that I feel like in order to actually get anything done, I need to have goals.  And those goals seem real when I say them aloud, you know?  So here's my summer reading list, so far.  It needs to be prioritized somehow.  I haven't got to that yet.

Reading List, Summer 2009

In no particular order:

1.       Mrs. Dalloway

2.      An Abundance of Katherines

3.      Old Curiousity Shop

4.      Finish Dalgleish novels

5.      To the Lighthoues

6.      Harry Potter Series

7.      The Waves

8.      Woman in White

9.      Till We Have Faces

10.  Graveyard Book

11.  Thackery

12.  Trollope

13.  Eliot

14.  Forsyte Saga

So this’ll work if I read one book / week.  Oh, except for that HP is one entry.

Then, plus I have all that feminist theory I’m supposed to be reading.

LT Creates Jewelry on Etsy

Ok, so I wanted to give a little "shout out" to LT Creates Jewelry on Etsy.  Etsy.com , as you may know, is a web site where individuals sell their hand made wares (or sometimes, just craft supplies).  I think it's such a fab web site, and I love looking at what people are making.  However, I've only ordered anything once or twice.  But there's this great vendor who makes and sells jewelry from vintage silver-plated flatware.  Her work is really, really nice in my opinion.  After C. got a spoon watch from LT, I was ready to go ahead an place my order.  I got a spoon watch and matching spoon bracelet.  You can see a pic of the watch above.  The bracelet I got is identical, except that instead of the watch face, it has a turquoise bead.  I love both pieces, but if I had to pick one, I'd probably say that I actually like the bracelet best.  The pictures here and on Etsy really don't do the pieces justice--they are much prettier in person.  You send LT your wrist measurement, and she custom sizes them.  And I just love, love, love that this is vintage 1940s silverware that's been repurposed; that idea really appeals to me.  I ordered online and had the pieces in hand in less than a week.  And I think the prices are quite reasonable.  The only drawback IMO is that they are both somewhat difficult to clasp.  The clasp is large, and I'm sure that the piece is secure while one is wearing it, but it's a bit difficult to negoiate.

More on Summer Reading

So I guess that if I'm going to "do" the 19th century English novel this summer, I should throw in some Trollope, Thackeray, and Eliot.  This is starting to feel overwhelming.  But then again, I have always wanted to read at least one novel from each of the three aforementioned writers.  And maybe I can wrap it all up with Galsworthy's Forsyte novels, which I know are really 20th century.  But they feel like a commentary on Victorian society, don't they?.  Oi.  I'm losing control over my summer reading list.  And it's only 16 May!

#10 on summer reading list

Gaiman's Graveyard Book.  Am dying (pun! pun!) to read this one. 

My Summer Reading List--A New Take on the Thursday Thirteen

Ok, so last night, I was lying in bed, watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on DVD, and man I love that movie.  And I had a really good idea for today's T13.  Well, clearly I should have written it down, becuase I've totally forgotten it.  (You may note that I'm making an effort to post more regularly--this is part of a larger effort on my part to simply write more regularly.)

Anyhow, I'm working on putting together a summer reading list, so I thought this could be a collaborative T13.  You know, I'll start, and if any of y'all have suggestions, please contribute in the comments section.  So my "theme" for my summer reading list is this:  Virginia Woolf, 19th century novels, murder mysteries, lots of quickie YA lit, and rereads (this could include Harry Potter and JRR Tolkien).  Ok, so that's not really much of a theme, nor is there a lot of unity there.  I guess the connection is basically stuff Drennan reads for fun but doesn't HAVE to read for work.  So your suggestions should fall into one of the aforementioned categories. 

1.  Mrs. Dalloway (obviously Virginia Wolf, but also a reread)

2.  John Green's An Abundance of Katherines (YA, although not trashy like so many YA reads)

3.  Dickens's Old Curiousity Shop  (19th century)

4.  Finish PD James's Dalgelish series of novels (murder mystery)

5.  To the Lighthouse (also Virginai Wolf and reread)

6.  Harry Potter series (yes, the whole thing.  Do you think I can do it in 2 weeks?)

7.  The Waves (Virginia Wolf again, but not a reread)

8.  The Woman in White by Collins (which I've already started--19th Century)

And that's it of the top of my head.  Oh wait.

9.  CS Lewis's Till We Have Faces (definitely a rearead but an old favorite)

Ok, so that's really it--can you give me four more so I can get to 13?????

John Green--The Next Big Thing in YA Lit

So my considered (dare I say "expert") opinion is that John Green is the next big thing in young adult lit.  And seriously, I'm making a career out of reading YA lit.;  So here's the break down:

A couple of weeks ago, I read Green's Looking for Alaska.  This novel was published in 2005, and many critics have, apparently, compared it to Catcher in the Rye, which I think is highly overrated.  But maybe that's just me.  So Looking for Alaska was not wonderful, didn't change my life, but it was very good.  And I read a lot of YA lit, and most of it is crap.  I've been reading some of the Gossip Girl series, and seriously, those are so very vapid that 48 hours later, I can't even remember what the books were about.  So to find contemporary YA novels that are actually meaningful is always exciting and refreshing.  So basically the novel follows a nerdy protagonist Miles (oh, he's obsessed with "last words" that is, what people say on their deathbeds) as he goes away to boarding school.  He soon meets Alaska, with whom he promptly falls hopelessly in love.  Alaska is far too cool for our protagonist, but he becomes friends with her.  And I supppose that the novel is about Miles's attempt to really understand Alaska, but it becomes his attempt to find himself.  And maybe what he finds is, in part, that other people are unknowable.  I like Miles, as a character, and maybe that's just because, as some of you know, I just really tend to like nerdy men.  Miles feels familiar and irresistable.  A librarian colleague of mine says that the book glorifies underage drinking and sex and such.  I would say it's not so much a glorification as an authentic representation of teenage behavior.  And that's certainly not to say that all teens behave like Miles (or more accurately, Miles's friends), nor am I saying that it's acceptable behavior.  It just is.

Green's second novel is titled An Abundance of Katherines.  It is high on my reading list, along with The Old Curiosity Shop.  That seems like an odd paring.

Yesterday, I read Green's Paper Towns, his latest work.  I have to say that although I enjoyed it and appreciated it, it felt a lot like Looking for Alaska.  Here we have another nerdy teenage protagonist, Quintin, or Q.  He's hopelessly in love with Margo, the too-cool chick next door.  Like Alaska, this young woman is unobtainable but also incredibly troubled.  And Q. feels the need to save her, in a very literal sense.  In his quest to save Margo, Q. grapples with the problem of our inability to really understand or even know another person.

I say that Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska are alike, and they are.  Maybe that shouldn't detract from our ultimate enjoyment of these novels.  Green's protagonists are lovable, nerdy teenagers, on the cusp of adulthood, and they are dealing with questions that certainly seem universal.  And while they may not find the answers they hope for, the novels move toward finding meaning in our relationship with the world around us.  This seems to me to be an essentially optimistic way of looking at life and and young adulthood.  In the world dominated by Gossip Girl and the Princess Diaries, I'll take Green's novels any day.

A few more fun facts about John Green and his work:  Apparently the rights to all three novels have been purchased by movie studios, and Green is currently writing a screen play of Paper Towns.  Green can be seen weekly on YouTube, where he and his brother, post vlogs directed towards the "nerdfighters," their loyal followers.  Green also owns Willie, who is quite possibly the fourth cutest dog in the world, after my Bostons, of course.

Reflections on a Sick Day

So on Sunday, I had a fever and body aches for most of the day.  And despite my initial panic related to swone flu, I now seem to have recovered.  But yesterday, Monday, I stayed home from work.  I should add that there was no real reason I needed to go into work.  We're in final exam week, and I didn't have any finals to administer on Monday.  So a sick day, a do nothing day seemed in order.

One thing I did with my sick day was to get caught up on some reading I'd been meaning to do.  I read the first 150 or so pages of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White.  Collins is a contemporary of Dickens and writes in the same sort of way.  Anyway, here's something I've noticed only recently:  I really, really enjoy the Victorian "triple decker" novel.  This is worthy of comment only because for years I maintained that, with a few notable exceptions, the long, Dickensian novel was not for me.  And Dickens himself rather annoyed me, with the exception of A Christmas Carol.  But last summer, I read Collins's The Moonstone and enjoyed it.  I also read Dickens's Bleak House, not so much because I wanted to but because I thought it was something I should read at least once in my life.  Much to my amazement, I really, really enjoyed Bleak House and would like to move on to either The Old Curiosity Shop or Our Mutual Friend.  So do our reading tastes change as we get older?  When I think of the books I really, really loved as a child and young adult, I know that I still really, really love these works--The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Frankenstein, The Wind in the Willows, Little House in the Big Woods, which is by the way the first chapter book I read at the ripe old age of six.  But I'm also finding that I'm growing to love works that didn't appeal to me, not at all, when I was younger.

Oh, and next time I'm in CA, I really, really, really want to visit the La Brea Tar Pits.  I've been before and all, but I just really want to go again.

Thursday Thirteen: Personal Anthems

I haven't done the Thursday Thirteen in AGES.  But this morning on the way to work, I realized that there is this whole set of song which, when I sing them at the top of my lungs, make me feel somehow better.  And I decided that a list of such songs would work for the T13.  I have to say that "personal anthems" doesn't really seem like an appropriate term for this list, but I can't think of anthing better.  So here we have it:  songs which, when I sing them, automatically make me feel better.  They work best sung as loud as possible while driving down the highway, windows down.

1.  Willie Nelson:  "Where the Soul Never Dies"

2.  Creedence:  "Lookin' Out my Backdoor"

3.  The Pixies:  "Here Comes Your Man"

4.  Tom Petty: "Mary Jane's Last Dance," but I'm also big on the one about "you don't know how it feels to be me."

5.  U2: "Stuck in a Momen," but "Mysterious Ways" is right up there

6.  The Beach Boys: "Sloop John B."

7.  Dusty Springfield: "Son of a Preacher Man"

8.  Aerosmith: "Rag Doll."  I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but for a while my "party trick" was knowing (and singing) all the lyrics to this particular song.

9.  The Beatles: "Here Comes the Sun"

10.  The Specials: "Enjoy Yourself"

11.  REM:  "The End of the World."  Oh, but I am also quite fond of "Superman."

12.  ABBA:  "Take a Chance on Me"

13.  The Eagles: "Heartache Tonight."  Oh, and in case I've never told you this, I think "Hotel California" is cursed.  So don't listen to it all the way through.

So things have felt weird lately.  And don't ask me what I mean by "weird."  It's just like everything's been a little off, you know?  So maybe I should be embarrassed to admit this, but I've been reading some of the _Gossip Girl_ novels, and boy are they bad.  Really, really bad on just about every conceivable level.  Seriously, these novels have no redeeming qualities whatsoever, as far as I can see.  Of course, the logical question at this point is why am I reading them.  And I can't really even say why.

Also, adding I think to my general feeling of weirdness is that on Tuesday, I attempted to explain literary postmodernism to my students.  And I can never really define or explain postmodernism in a way that really works.  So I always resort to just looking at some examples, and I think it works, but I am never quite sure.  And so we spend all this time looking at _The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales_, which is OK because it's a children's lit class and stuff.  But I guess I feel unsure.

More later about general weirdness.

Degrassi

OK, have I mentioned that over the past year or so, I've watched a ridiculous number of Degrassi episodes?  It's so, so bad on so many levels, and yet, it's like I can't stop watching.  Here's a break down for those of you who may not know what Degrassi is.  There are several incarnations of Degrassi, the most recent being Degrassi: The Next Generation.  But basically, it was a series first produced in the late 1980s and early 90s in Canada.  The program apparently received subsidies from the Canadian government and ran in the States on PBS at that time.  The Kids of Degrassi Street was followed by Degrassi Junior High and finall, predictably, but Degrassi High.  The series was resurrected as Degrassi: the Next Generation, which is now on season 8, I think.  Currently, The Next Generation (which sounds Star Trek-y but isn't) runs in syncdication on the cable network The N but also elsewhere, such as my local Fox station.  Episodes are available on hulu and can be streamed from Netflix, if anyone is interested.

I guess that originally, the show was conceived of as dealing with "issues" that face the real teenager:  drugs, alcohol, sex, unwanted pregnancy, all the things that "real" teens in the "real" world apparently deal with.  It was supposed to be a realistic look at being a teen, as opposed to the more sugar-coated representations that were available.  Anyway, one result of this is that we have a limited cast, maybe 12 teens, who deal with an inordinate amount of problems.  Seriously, I hope that no one teen has to face as many problems / issues / drugs / cases of sexual assault as any one of the teens on The Next Generation faces.  There's a truly soap opera quality to the whole thing, IMO.

Anyway, I cannot at all figure out why I find this compelling.  I mean, I tend to read and watch a lot of pretty trashy media aimed at preteens and teens (I tell myself that I need to keep up, as part of professional development or something, but really I find it relaxing!)  But why am I drawn to this nonsense, which in no way reflects my own experience of junior high or high school.  What I'm trying to say is that I'm pretty sure it's not about nostalgia.  Nor are the issues dealt with in a particularly interesting way.  For all the attempt at being progressive, it strikes me as a repackaging of hetero-normative, white, middle class values and lives.  In fact, when I went to a conference a couple of weeks ago, I went to a panel dealing with Degrassi, and one of the papers I heard explored this very topic--the ways in which, although the teens have sex, the representations of promiscuous females is really NOT terribly progressive. 

One thing I do like about the earlier episodes, even of The Next Generation, is that the males do, for the most part, look very much like average, teen males, often complete with acne and a physical awkwardness that seem authentic.  The producers seem to be using more of the beautiful people in the more recent episodes.  And on the whole, the females are more attractive than the males.  Is this sending the message that it's more acceptable for males to be somewhat unattractive but that females have to be pretty all the time?  I don't know.  I'd like to see more average-looking women with leading roles.  I guess that's not going to happen. 

I am not sure where I'm going with this post.  Maybe it's just this:  long before Gossip Girl, the Canadians depicted teens partying, sleeping around, and living with little adult guidance or even interaction. 

Oh and one more thing:  Have I mentioned that there are days when all I really want is to be in So Cal?

OK, I'm sitting here eating a hot, toasted, buttered bagle, thinking that I really should post more often.  Everything's just felt so crazy lately.  And it's like I have ZERO motivation to actually get anything done, particularly work-related stuff.  And I know that when I feel this way, writing--blogging, journaling, even e-mailing--often helps me feel more grounded.  So yeah.  There are only three weeks of class left in our semester--and I guess that's good.  I mean, in some ways, I'm so "over" it, so ready to be done.  But in others, it feels overwhelming, like there's so much to be done in so little time.  I am looking forward to simply having some time off, to having time for other stuff.  I feel like my house is a totally mess, and my yard needs some serious attention.  But really, I'm thankful just to have a yard.  I don't know--I've been feeling weird about things lately, like there's something missing from my life, but I can't totally put my finger on what it is, although I have my suspicions!  And it feels like there's really nothing I can do about it anyway.  And so I just try not to think about it, you know?  Seriously, I just never really featured myself as a "career woman."  And what really gets to me are those people (some of you know the types) in the church who are all critical of "career women" and who would probably say that my personal problems stem from my choosing of a career over marriage.  And that really gets to me because I didn't choose career over marriage and family.  I can honestly say that I never one put career above those things.  I've just tried to make the best of the hand I've been dealt (metaphorically speaking), even if it's not the hand I would have chosen for myself.  And sometimes, I want to say to people, "Look, instead of the criticism, how about extending a little kindness and understanding."  I mean, really, I kinda always assumed I'd end up like just about everyone else I know, living a quiet life as a homemaker in suburbia, spending time with family, attending my same little chuch, the one I grew up in.  And it just didn't work out that way for me.  And it's not that I'm not content with my lot in life; it's just that it's really, really hard sometimes.  And I feel like so few people get that.  There are times when I want to say, "Umm. . . .a little help?"  But there's no one to ask for help.  It gets overwhelming.  And even now, after 5 years, there are still nights when I miss J. so much that I cry myself to sleep.  Wow!  When I started typing, I had no idea I'd get into all this--guess it's what I needed to say just right now.