Reasons Why November Wasn't the Absolute Worst

I could write about how November was pretty sucky, in my true "depressing blog" fashion.  And it was kind of crappy.  The month started out with the epiphany that I'm kind of terrible and nobody will ever love me (not that I deserve it, anyway) and I'll never be as fulfilled as the pregnant ladies in diaper commercials or as musically talented as my roommate and my hair will never stop having split ends.

But really (and especially compared to last November...ugh) it actually wasn't such a terrible month after all.  Here's why:

I was freaking domestic as all heck, for one thing.  I made all manner of Thanksgiving food and a wreath!  Here are pictures:

Sweet Potato Casserole...toeing the line between side dish and dessert.

Cranberry Meringue and Cranberry-Pear-Pecan Pies

The wreath.  Not edible.

There were also two varieties of from-scratch cranberry sauce (not pictured).  The cranberry sauce may have inspired me to take up canning, despite my fear of giving my friends botulism.

I think the wreath was my favorite thing to make, despite it's not being able to be eaten.  Craft therapy isn't just for people in mental institutions, I guess.  Also I did this with people.  Two friends came over and we had craft night and ate soup and rolls and pie and watched the Grumpy Cat Christmas Movie on Lifetime (simultaneously better and worse than it sounds).

I did other things with people in November, too.  Despite my protestations that I was not worthy of love and friendship, people still insisted on hanging out with me (stupid people).  My old roommate came over one night and we ate green curry and watched the second Muppet movie (better than I'd expected it to be).  Another friend and I started a tradition (as in, we've done this twice) of making breakfast* while watching the previous evening's episode of "Grimm."

Culture!  I saw two plays on non-dates with a friend this month.  The first was Awake and Sing, which was really good.  The second was a college-level production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, which was not spectacular, but it had sentimental value on account of the time I played Lucy in our fifth grade production.  Also before both plays, friend and I ate burgers, which is less "cultured" but still delicious.

Thanksgiving also happened.  Through a last-minute twist of fate involving cranberries, I got talked into going to a friend's family's house for Thanksgiving dinner, and it was lovely.  I played with an adorable three-year-old and got my nurturing quota in for the year.  Not to fear, however--I still managed to get most of my "by-myself Thanksgiving" traditions done on the surrounding days.  Such as watching the "Buffy" Thanksgiving Episode.

One day.

Probably one of the most not-crappy things about November was that I got the results back from my grant application.  Not the knowing-whether-it's-funded results, yet, but the scores.  And the scores were not terrible!  They were in fact quite good!  So much so that if I did get funded, it wouldn't be too surprising!  That I will find out in January, however, so I am crossing my fingers.

So yeah...not bad...not bad at all.  And it's December now, and I've decided to get into the Christmas spirit if it kills me.

*This could be a good time to share the anecdote about how I unwittingly bought a nine-dollar loaf of Brioche at Whole Foods...but it's not that exciting of a story.  I unwittingly bought a nine-dollar loaf of Brioche of Whole Foods.  The French Toast I made therewith didn't even moderately rock my world.

Baby Steps

I am happy* to report some progress in my attempts to be more the type of person who is nice and sociable and less the type of person who is introverted and lame and has no friends.

• I was meeting with someone from the Office of Proposal Development about a preceptorship application I was filing, and I noticed she had a Golden Girls mouse pad.  Introverted Alex would have thought that was cool but not said anything, but not that day!  I was like, "so you're a Golden Girls fan?" and then told her about when I went to see the Golden Girls Drag Queens.  Talking to a work-related person about personal things?  Who even does that?
• After class one day I was talking to my classmate and we happened to walk into the bathroom together.  My rule is usually "when you enter the stall, the conversation stops."  This girl clearly did not have that rule, and continued to chat.  At first I was mortified as I am not capable of that level of multitasking, but somehow--don't know how--I managed.  I think I gained some Female Points that day.
• Then I went to a Halloween party, but that was more because I was coerced, but still.  Read about it here.
• I feel like I'm finally starting to fit in with the other grad students in my department (as much as I can, being a bone person in a department full of brain people, I guess).  I would always hang out with just the other people in my year, but now I'm having full conversations with the higher years.  It's probably because I'm doing the quals thing soon and I'm officially "one of them" now, but it's cool.
• Three of the past four days I ate dinner not by myself.

Baby steps, guys.

*Maybe "happy" is a stretch.

Halloween-ween*

Happy (Belated) Halloween, everyone!

I did actually do things on actual (i.e., not-belated) Halloween.  Social things, even!  I originally intended to stay home alone and do a Hocus Pocus/Beetlejuice double feature, but instead my friend roped me into going to a ward Halloween party.  Of course I couldn't just go to a Halloween party without a costume because that would be even lamer than watching movies alone on one of the best holidays, so I decided to dress as a secondary character from an obscure, no-longer-on-the-air TV show:  Dr. Claire Saunders from Dollhouse.

What I was going for

What I was.  Fake scar tissue is hard to manipulate.

Anyway, nobody got it because very few people have seen or remember Dollhouse, which is unfortunate because it has the one-two punch of Joss Whedon's writing and Amy Acker's acting.  People just thought my scars were creepy.

Apart from that, the party was okay.  Halloween parties are kind of like awards shows, I've decided. You don't really care about the people except for what they're wearing.  I did get to revel in the lovely double standards of men's and women's costumes (e.g., how men can dress as shirtless vikings or male strippers and people think it's so clever, yet had I decided to bare my shoulders there would have probably been a riot).  There were some okay snacks, but I couldn't really eat much without the scars on my lips falling off.  But after the party I went home and watched the first half of Hocus Pocus, and finished it the next morning.  It's definitely a movie that I have to watch alone because the scene at the end with the ghost of Thackeray Binx makes me cry.

Later that day I went to the anatomy lab and spent four hours with the cadavers, which I guess is a very Halloween-appropriate activity.  Then I saw an old friend from college and watched Beetlejuice.  I guess I got all of my Halloween activities checked off, though I could have done more.  I think next year, when I am 30, I will go all out for Halloween.  I even have an idea for a costume.  Teaser:  there will be blue body paint involved.

Until next year!



*If you get this reference, you are a cool person.  Also, RIP "The Neighbors."

Addendum! A Saturday in Salem

I have been remiss!  My last post got so sidetracked talking about how much I hate Dawn Summers and staying up past 10:00 pm that I forgot to actually finish writing about my birthday weekend.  Here is a summary of a fantastic birthday-adjacent activity that took place last Saturday. 

A few weeks previous, my friend Jon Sue-Ho sent me an email inviting me to Salem, MA, to see...

wait for it...

Drag Queen Golden Girls!!!

Of course I accepted the invitation immediately.  The only engagement more pressing would have been a tea with the actual Golden Girls, which would have involved bringing three women back from the dead, so obviously that would be a higher priority than seeing some men in lady clothes.  But here is the tale:

We took the Commuter Rail to Salem, which was pretty fun because I like riding on trains.  We got there and decided to keep our expectations very low.  After all, we were going to see a drag show in the basement of a bar in Northern Massachusetts, so we couldn't expect much.  We waited in line behind some female musical theatre enthusiasts (the kind whose dream role is Mama Rose) who had clearly been pregaming the show, so that was fun and also really loud.  We sat down and waited for all of the people who had paid more for tickets than we did to get their drinks, and the show started.

IT WAS AMAZING.

I'm not going to describe the whole plot but it was basically the Golden Girls "Lost Halloween Episode" which was a main plot with a "clip show" of Golden Girls episodes that actually happened.  So good.  Also, I got to take a picture with the Golden Girls afterwards!

It's not every day that I take a picture with four men
and am not the prettiest one in it.
But, check out the Bea Arthur.  Spot.  On.

One cool thing was that the one who played Sophia was an award-winning Judy Garland impersonator, and after the show he came out as Judy and sang a song.  Also Dorothy and Sophia are a couple in real life, which is darling.

After the show we went to get food, because the food proviso in our tickets was a $20 per person minimum, which would have been fine if we were drinking alcohol, but that's a little excessive for bar food, so we went to a hot dog place across the street and it was DELICIOUS.  Also way cheaper than $20 per person.

Then we had some time to kill before our train, so we wandered around Salem.  Salem, MA, on a Saturday night in October strangely reminds me of Waikiki...only colder and much more haunted-feeling.  Nonetheless, there were tons of tourists and tons of stuff catering to the tourists.  It was pretty cool though, seeing people in Halloween costumes two weeks before Halloween.  All of the museums were closed, but I got to poke my head into a few magic shops and I think I would like to explore them more on a future occasion.  There was a red line on the sidewalk that we followed around the main part of town through all of the landmarks (akin to Boston's Freedom Trail--maybe it was called the "Wrongful Persecution" Trail?) and we were determined to find the end of it.  And we did, in the most anticlimactic manner.  It just stopped among some not-particularly-special-looking houses.  It was probably a decoy line painted by some murderers to lead tourists to their lair.  Thankfully we got led to no lairs, but we did double back and get to the train station.

The most remarkable thing that happened while waiting for the train was that we were standing uncomfortably close to a couple that was furiously making out.  So furious was the out-making that the girl dropped her jacket on the ground, and I spent the next five minutes concerned that she would forget it when boarding the train.  And she definitely did.  Thankfully a more outspoken bystander pointed it out.  This may have been the highlight of the trip that didn't involve drag queens.

Anyhow, Salem + Drag Queens + Birthday = Goodness.  Thank you to Jon Sue-Ho for a lovely evening.

Twenty-Nine and Feeling Fine

Again, apologies for the rhyming title.  It isn't even 100% accurate, actually, as I have been super sick for quite some time.  I'm on the mend, though--my middle-of-the-night coughing fits are much shorter and much less of an ab workout.  Hence, I'm writing this a week later, and if I wanted to be more accurate and less rhymey I would title this post "Twenty-Nine and Feeling Slightly Better."

At any rate, my birthday was a week ago and I am now 29!*  It's only been a week, but I think I'm settling into 29 quite nicely.  Some highlights:

• Presents!  Because the best part of aging is the swag.  From my family I got a new printer, which I finally set up two nights ago.  My friend PT got me a giant box of fruit snacks (which are actually fruit snacks and not well-disguised gummy vitamins as an attempt to kill me--it's a real concern).  I also got lots of cards and good wishes on Facebook and the promise that one day LT will figure out where the post office is to mail my present (which is also not an issue because I haven't figured out what I'm getting her yet and her birthday is in a week...I should get on that).
• Cake!  My roommate made me a cake and it was delicious.  There was Ganache, which is second only to Diet Coke on my list of "miracle elixirs."
• Activities!  I wasn't intending to have people over or to see people at all due to the aforementioned illness ("come over and celebrate my birthday and also maybe get pinkeye! yay!"), however, my roommate made me text people to come over.  It was very last-minute, and only two people showed up, but it was nice and fun until it was 10:00 pm** and people showed no signs of leaving anytime soon.  Even though I was putting out my best yawning and coughing signals.  It was like that episode of "Buffy" where it's her birthday but Halfrek's "justice" spell is keeping everyone from leaving.  Stupid Dawn.

If you're a Buffy fan, you'll know that Dawn is screaming "Get Out,"
which is kind of a thing she does a lot.
Nonetheless, that's how I feel about late night guests.
But I still think Dawn is the worst.
I mean, really, I think the entire viewership would have been just fine
having her die at the end of Season 5 instead of Buffy.
And don't get all whiny about spoilers,
the show's been off the air for over ten years now.

Anyway...to sum up, my birthday happened.  And now it's over.  Which is just fine because life goes on.  For instance, I've got this crazy cellular and molecular neuroscience take-home midterm to do this weekend.  And I'm going to play my ukulele in public again tomorrow.  However, I would just like to point out that in exactly 51 weeks, I will be THIRTY.  I guess I should get going on my "list of twenty-something experiences."

*Unless you ask my mother, in which case I've been 27 for a couple of years now.
**Because when you're almost 30, 10:00 is considered a late bedtime.

Nightmare at Trader Joe's

Halloween is just over two weeks away, so it's time to start dusting off the scary stories.  Gather round, dear readers, and listen to my tale:

Nightmare at Trader Joe's

(a tale of terror for the socially awkward)

It was a dark and rainy night (no, seriously, it's really raining outside), when I ventured out into the streets of Brookline in a quest for bread and sliced turkey at the Coolidge Corner Trader Joe's.  As I was walking down the aisle, I ran into the professor from my department whom I'm never sure I should call by his first name or not because he's not that much older than I am and he was never my professor.  Of course, it being a rainy night, I was wearing my giant raincoat that makes me look like a petite serial killer and my hair was horrendous and also I may have a mild case of conjunctivitis.  No matter, however, as I was more concerned whether I had anything embarrassing in my basket.  I then thought, what is the most embarrassing thing one can get at Trader Joe's?  It's not like they sell tampons...would Trader Joe's-brand tampons have a special name?  Like "Trader Flo's?"  Ha, I'm pretty clever, I should market that.  Before getting too lost in my brilliant tampon-naming thoughts, I managed to realize that I had nothing in my basket to be ashamed of (apart from a bounty of microwavable dinners-for-one), and proceeded to make the appropriate amount of small-talk before I continued down the aisle.

But I didn't need anything in that aisle.  

But I couldn't turn around!  Because then I'd look like I didn't know what I was doing in my own neighborhood Trader Joe's!  So I pretended to be looking for something in that aisle, which unfortunately was the weird soap/fake deodorant/essential oils aisle.  I landed on a shelf of bottled water, the most benign thing I could find in the aisle, and stared at it until he had walked away.  I spent the rest of my shopping trip looking around corners, because the only thing worse than running into someone you know at the grocery store is running into that person again at the grocery store.  I decided that I was in need of no more groceries and booked it to the checkout queue and hoped to the Virgin Mary that he wouldn't end up right behind me, or worse, that I had forgotten my wallet and we would have stumbled into humiliating "You've Got Mail" territory.  Thankfully, none of those things happened, but it was a close call (with the him being behind me, not the forgetting my wallet).  I paid for my groceries, did not wait for a receipt, and exited the store without further incident.

You know, you see these kinds of things in movies and you read about them happening to other people, but you never think it's going to happen to you.

On "The Working (Mormon) Mother Problem"

This is actually something that has been on my mind for quite some time, but as the urge to actually blog about it was inspired by a particular thing, I'm going to do this in "open letter" format, as those are kind of popular these days.

Dear Leaders of the Latter Day Saint Church/Directors of the LDS Institute of Religion,

First of all, I love you guys.  I really do.  I know we don't always see eye-to-eye on things and sometimes you make me cry and question my self-worth entirely, but hey, I'm a Mormon feminist, so that's just part of the package.  I try to trust in your counsel and believe that you mean well and kind of know what you're doing (your line of communication to the Person In Charge is much shorter than mine, after all), but then I read this (for people who don't like to click on things, it's the chapter on "Mothers' Employment Outside the Home" in the "Eternal Marriage" Institute Student Manual), and I felt a little perturbed, to be quite honest with you.  As a single LDS woman who hopes to one day have a PhD and also a husband and children, this is something that's on my mind quite a bit, and I hope you don't mind if I offer some of my thoughts:

First, this manual was published in 2003; however, the most recent quote in this chapter is from 1996, and the majority of the quotes are from before I was born.  I know that some principles are eternal, but things have changed.  As Dallin H. Oaks so kindly pointed out last October, the median age for first marriage for men and women is on the rise.  A lot of LDS women aren't getting married at age 21 anymore.  And not because we're too busy burning our bras and singing along to Helen Reddy--we're just facing the reality that marriage isn't a guarantee.  So we're following the counsel of Gordon B. Hinckley and "getting all the education that we possibly can," and with that education comes opportunities and careers, hopes and plans.  Imagine what it would be like to plan for several years to build a house, and lay a foundation, and then have to leave it behind.  Getting married and having children would be lovely; but sacrificing our entire careers to do so would feel as if we were abandoning a huge part of ourselves.  It's not that we love our careers more than our families, but we've loved them longer.  Furthermore, with that large amount of education we obtained, many of us also obtained student debt.  Even if I were married to a billionaire, I would still feel a responsibility to pay for my education myself.  And unless my mommy blogging really takes off, that means I need a job outside of the home.

Secondly, many of the quotes seem to imply that the only reason mothers would work (if they have husbands who also work) would be to afford fancy and unnecessary things.  This is not why most mothers work outside the home.  As I mentioned before--we put a great deal of time and sacrifice into developing our talents and our careers.  We find fulfillment and joy in them.  One quote by Ezra Taft Benson wondered how any woman could find anything more exciting and fulfilling than housework and changing diapers, begging the question, has Ezra Taft Benson ever changed a diaper?  Of course there is joy in motherhood, and some women need only that to be fulfilled, and that's great, but every personality is different.  A woman should not be made to feel like a bad parent (or the instigator of her divorce or the cause of gang violence and societal collapse) because she is truly happy being a working mother.

Third, not only are the quotes in the lesson a little outdated, they also lack variety of source.  None of the people cited have ever had the experience of being a working mother...or a stay-at-home mother...or a mother...or a woman.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if women who are trying to make important decisions about their families and careers could hear the perspectives of women who have had to make these same decisions?  I'm sure there are women in the General Auxiliary Presidencies who would love to chime in about their experiences as mothers or as career women (as some of them haven't even been married!).

Finally (though I could say more), and maybe this part is to all of the married or hoping-to-be-married people who read this blog, but I want to stress two words in "The Family: A Proclamation to the World":  "individual adaptation."  Actually, I just want to stress one word:  "individual."  I strongly believe that there is no "one size fits all" approach to raising a family.  I came from the "working dad/homemaker mom" household, but we weren't the Cleavers.  Some kids I knew came from the "two-income family" household, but they weren't the Huxtables.  (I don't know of any pop-culture reference of a family where the mom worked and the dad stayed home off the top of my head.)  Following a tradition out of a sense of societal obligation only can be really harmful and can cause resentment if partners feel that compromises are unfair or sacrifices are unequal.  (Also, they could be limiting to men who are--gasp!--actually better at nurturing than their wives are.)  Husbands and wives should consider together, as equal partners, what situation works best for them as a couple and as a family.

And that's all I have to say about that.  To sum up, maybe just think about updating the Institute Manual a little bit.  Thanks.

Love,

A.