In support of feral cats and other scavengers

Walking the dogs is always an adventure, but this time of year in Minnesota, it becomes a particularly gruesome adventure. All the icky things that were safely frozen in snowbanks all winter thaw and start to rot. The smokers start to smoke more without the threat of frostbite. Birds mate and build nests. People eat fried chicken on their porches. So in addition to the half-eaten sandwich from Subway's January special, Cricket and Nick try to eat the fresh piles of cigarette butts, the chicken bones people (inexplicably) throw in their streets, the crusty old carcasses of animals that froze to death in February, and most disgustingly (to me, at least), the baby birds that fall out of the nest. Then, of course, they want to give me kisses. It seems like this year is especially bad. Where are the scavengers? The feral cats, the raccoons, whatever else eats this stuff before my dogs get to it? I want them back!

One of these things is not like the other...

Remember that Sesame Street song? Couldn't get it out of my head this morning at the gym, where I pretty obviously did not belong. It was my first time at Lifetime, which I joined because I got a huge discount for being engaged to an existing member. Also because I am NOT trekking all the way to campus just to work out this summer, and because the weather here will not snap out of "April Showers" mode.
So. I was there at about 8:30, which is a lot later than I'm used to working out, but is apparently rush hour for housewives. It was me, 30-40 youngish, yuppieish, mom-types, and 4 or 5 guys in their late 20s. The moms were chatty and very polished for being at the gym - manicures and really expensive gym gear - and were not about to ruin it by breaking a sweat. There was lots of speed-walking. I wore my best gym clothes, and still looked pretty scrubby, which was not improved by how red and sweaty I get when I run. I felt like I was in a Better Homes and Gardens magazine, or the Before in a Redbook makeover.* The guys were oblivious to everything but their own bulging muscles. One of them was so mesmerized by his own reflection that he almost stepped on me while I stretched. All the machines in the place face the same floor-to-ceiling mirrors and 15 big-screen TVs.
Aside from feeling out of place because of my scruffiness, I was completely thrown by the TVs. Now, I try not to watch too much TV, and I never, ever watch morning TV. I also am clumsy enough that I can easily hurt myself on a treadmill if there are too many distractions, so I tried to ignore the TVs, but MY GOD. It was like a train wreck of a montage of everything that contributes to that sad, restless feeling (what Matt and Marty might call a sniggle of evil) which I am trying to combat BY GOING TO THE GYM. Seriously. 2 sets were on stock market news (FYI, the economy still sucks), 3 were on the weather (cloudy and rainy, probably for the rest of your life), at least 4 were on morning shows dedicated to fad dieting and summer fashions (carbs are out, metallics are in), a few were set to celebrity gossip (Jessica Simpson has a cellulite problem, everyone else is having babies), 2 were set to cooking shows (healthy new chicken recipes! dinner in 30 minutes or less!), and the rest were set to at home fitness machine infomercials (you poor fat slob, paying to go to the gym - if you buy a Superflex 3000, you can get washboard abs, a tan, and happiness in your living room!).
Maybe it improves profit margins to make gym rats feel ugly/hungry/weak/poor, but GOOD LORD. Can't I get some PBS? Some nature shows? Maybe this will be the summer that I learn to read and jog at the same time....
*To be fair, I'm sort of one of these women in training. I don't technically "work," I did drive my SUV to the gym, and although I don't have babies, I do have Cricket, who ate half of a whole (uncut) cantaloupe from the kitchen counter today while I was running, and who inspired a single-mom friend of mine to tell me that babies are often less work than dogs.

Good News, Bad News: Woops!

Wow, it's been awhile. Sorry about that.
First, there were finals, although I think the related procrastinating led me to write more than usual. Then there were the book days, family bonding, drinking, eating, travel, more bonding. There was a concert, some travel, some fiction, some shopping, some self-indulgence (a haircut, a pedicure, 3,000 calories a day, new shoes, and nary a sober evening) (Ha! Nary! Ten points if you can use it in a sentence today without laughing). There was no exercise, no theory to read, and hardly any fresh fruit or veggies. For awhile, I felt like I had fallen off the wagon, but who gets on an intense-study, no-fun, up-at-5am wagon? Really, it was more like derailed; it remains unclear whether it was finals or vacation that derailed me.
Good News: Denver, where I met up with Amanda, Sarah, some margaritas, a sunburn, the Title IX store(purveyor of fabulous sports bras), and M.I.A. (purveyor of seizures).
Bad News: the M.I.A. concert proves that I am old and frumpy.
Good News: Fort Collins, where I hung out with Amanda, her ridiculous dogs, got an Indian taco and another sunburn, and caught a ride to Casper with Jane.
Bad News: I'm still peeling.
Good News: All my siblings made it to Casper for Chris' graduation. Hard to describe unless you've met them all at once, but there were ukuleles, didgeridoos, nose flutes, Apples to Apples,
five Explorers, and three dogs. Also drinking and lots of hilarious wedding "planning."
Bad News: This wedding stuff is kind of stressful. I don't know what my colors are! We aren't registered yet!
Good News: No one will care what my colors are if a gypsy-trained, tambourine-playing pygmy goat jumps out of my wedding cake on the big day.

The case of the mystery alarm clock

If you're reading this, chances are I've complained to you in the last several weeks about how I keep waking up between 4 and 4:30am and can't get back to sleep. General consensus so far has been stress-related insomnia. So when I went to bed last night, having finished my last term paper (yay!), I expected to sleep well. Or at least better. At least past 4:30.
Well, I was wrong. I didn't sleep. But I did figure out what's been waking me up every morning! A semi truck, much like the one in this picture (only ours is bright green), has been barreling up and down our street about once an hour. At just before 4am, it was empty and headed toward the river, where Ford has some kind of storage lot for new vehicles. At 4:47am, it headed back up our street toward the highway.
The thing is, our street is residential. There are stop signs! There is a non-residential street, without stop signs, just two blocks east of us, which is where these trucks used to drive.
Here are my questions:
1) What the hell?
2) What would you call this kind of truck?
3) Who would you contact about this? The city, the company, the trucker?
4) Where do I get one of those "Not a truck route" signs?
5) Is it legal to just construct my own road block?
Sigh. I'm going on vacation for a week. Hopefully, by the time I get back, this will have stopped on its own....

Quote of the day: Yoshimi battles the pink robots of modernity

“The self changes by one’s holding fast to it. (That which does not change is not a self.) I am ‘I’ and yet not ‘I.’ If I were simply ‘I,’ that would not even be ‘I.’ In order that I be ‘I,’ there must necessarily be a juncture at which I am outside of ‘I.’” - Takeuchi Yoshimi, "What is Modernity?"
I'm done with classes. I'm done with exams. I'm done with everything except this one long paper for my history of consciousness class. I feel like I've been avoiding this paper basically my entire life. Perhaps you will understand what I mean if I tell you that this quote is taken from the chapter I'm writing about - one of the easiest, shortest, most reasonable pieces of theory we read all semester. So it's kind of obvious that I'm having a hard time concentrating - there are so many other, better things to do than to worry about what Yoshimi thinks modernity is. Like laundry, and dishes, and watching Cricket kill and eat a fly, and picking at my split ends, and wondering why on earth, if this babble counts as theory, the crazy, chatty, homeless man on the bus the other day is homeless and not a well-respected theorist. And blogging.
Disclaimer: I held off on blogging until now, and I already have an impressive 11 of my minimum 15 pages written. And the paper isn't due until Friday.

Spring, again

This is the view from my kitchen window. Note the blooming magnolia AND the clothes drying on the line. You can't hear it, but there are birds chirping. I'm beginning to fantasize about vegetable gardens (what should I plant?). Hopefully spring sticks this time around....

Quote of the Day

"She was, you know, in, like, the putting out business." - B., speaking on the economic role (which was not prostitution) played by one of the Prophet's wives in early Medinan society, during the presentation of her final project in Women in Islam. B. is apparently at the top of her class, and possesses a bewildering combination of ditziness (stupidity with dimples) and arrogance which leads me to believe she will probably someday be my boss.