Settling in

So the antique mirror is above the fireplace.  A huge bouquet of flowers, courtesy of Best Friend O. is overflowing from a vase on the dining room table.  My grandmother's silver tea set is on the cabinet, and my great-grandmother's tea cups are inside.  The bookshelf is up, anchored to the wall, and filled with all the fiction (alphabetized by author), poetry (ditto), and miscellaneous art books, atlases of foreign countries, and crumbling antique foreign-language grammar books.  None of the plants, dug up in haste from my perennial herb garden and dumped unceremoniously into an assortment of pots, have yet died on the balcony.  The keys are in the little bowl I made as a small child on a table by the door, the good sheets are on the bed, and the cat is lounging on the desk, draping his paws over the edge.

In short, we are settling in. 

And part of that settling in means looking around and imagining a new life in a new place.

So there's the overwhelming task, overwhelming even to an extrovert like myself, of saying yes to every. single. invitation, even when it means you end up at a departmental party, looking lost, trying desperately to find some nice cheerful soul who will introduce you around so you can talk to somebody.

There's the trip to the grocery store that takes twice as long as it should, because you have to walk the entire length of the store three times before you find the bread. 

There's the church-hopping.  Best part of church hopping?  Getting to sing one of my favorite hymns four weeks in a row at four different churches.  Worst part?  Sheepishly raising hand during the "Are-there-any-newcomers-here?-please-raise-your-hand" announcement at one church, and the being completely ignored by those around me.  Awesome.

I don't feel lonely yet.  I'm recovering from a stressful summer and I am, frankly, still tired, so I've been sleeping in my spare time.  But can imagine that some time soon I may be lonely, in part because everyone is married here.  Now, I'm sure that's not true.  It can't possibly be true.  But in almost a month in new town at new job, I can't think of one person I've met who's single.  Not the co-workers, not my boss, not the new postdoc, not the IT folks, not the people I've talked to at the churches, not my TA.  Not one. 

But at the same time, I'm more relaxed in my single state than I've been in a while.  Firing up that old online dating profile to see if anything new floats to the surface in a new town several years since the last attempt has reminded me that what I've got on my own is no bad thing.  For instance, I was matched with a man who had a self-disclosed preference for a girl with "nice eyebrows."  I have no idea what that even means, and must confess that I giggled.  I mean, who on earth thinks that, much less writes it down for other people to read?  And the bigger issue still is that I promptly thought "are my eyebrows nice?" and actually thought about this later that night when I was brushing my teeth.  I looked in the mirror and evaluated my eyebrows because some stranger on the internet said he like nice eyebrows.  That's clearly a stop on the train line to CrazyTown.  So I just need to remember that being single, even if it is the extreme minority, is frankly more appealing than assessing eyebrows.

Job Interview Tips

As someone who recently entered and then (thanks be to the good, sweet, merciful Lord) exited the job market, I thought I might share some nuggets of wisdom with y'all about the whole experience.

Nice thought, right?  Yeah, I'm a nice girl.
 
But then I had second thought. And that thought went something like this: "Damn! Who am I kidding? I have two book projects, four talks, and a few papers to finish before I start my first tenure-track job in three months, Oh GOD WHAT AM I DOING?!?!?!!?!"  [panicked breathing, muscle convulsions, whimpering...]

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I decided not to share job market wisdom with you.  Isn't that a nice story with some sort of lurking moral? But I don't want to leave you high and dry either, dear The Readers.  So instead I've decided to post this helpful video on job interview tactics.  And by "helpful" I mean "hilarious", and by "tactics" I mean "as interpreted through the eyes of two small children."

You're welcome.

Now back to those two book projects.... [more whimpering]

An Open Letter to Our Unwritten Open Letters

Dear Unwritten Open Letters,

The other day I stumbled upon a hilarious time-suck of a website: Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency.  It is but one creative outlet for the many excellent authors associated with McSweeney's Publishing of San Francisco.

Among the varied and delicious aspects of Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency is a column entitled Open Letters to People or Entities Who Are Unlikely to Respond. Here are a few titles from the column, sufficient in and of themselves for eliciting the sort of chuckle-fit that can drive an officemate to madness.

An Open Letter to My Ex-Fiancé About My Recent Arm Amputation

An Open Letter to the Man On Match.com Who Emailed Me to Fix a Grammar Mistake On My Profile Page

An Open Letter to My Toddler Regarding His Use of My iPhone

An Open Letter to the City and County Inspector Who Fined Me $500 Even Though the Weeds in My Front Lawn Were Well Under the 6” Regulation Height

An Open Letter to the Gentleman Blow-Drying His Balls in the Gym Locker Room

An Open Letter to the Glorious New Couple That Rose Like a Phoenix from the Infernal Failure That Was My Last Relationship

An Open Letter to Undated Yard Sale Signs and the Yard Sale Purveyors Who Make Them

An Open Letter To The Inanimate Objects In My Apartment That Just Sat There While I Was Heartbroken

An Open Letter to the Gym Shorts That Are Not in My Gym Bag


And so forth.

Scanning this column left me convicted, dear Unwritten Open Letters, of the fact that you were still, at present, unwritten. You see, when L and I first came up with the idea of creating you several months (years?) ago, we had been eating very good food and drinking very good caffeinated coffees wiling away good times in good company in a good city. And we had every good intention of carrying out these plans to draw you up.  But then the caffeine wore off, we waved adieu to each other and the city and the delicious coffee... and the business of life once again requisitioned our time and creative energies.  That, and we couldn't agree on the appropriate font.

Among the list of your envisioned kin were:
An Open Letter to Married Friends
An Open Letter to Friends With Kids
An Open Letter to Church Leaders on How To Incorporate Non-married Persons

A proper list, to be sure, and topics that deserve attention.  But fear not! Despite our negligence in bringing you to fruition, other people have gone ahead and done it for us -- put in the hard work of writing on these topics, and doing so brilliantly.

For example, several months ago My Lovely Sister-in-Law made me add to my intentionally spartan Bookmark Bar a link to an interview conducted by her pastor, the now-Bishop Stewart Ruch. It's all about how to preach Celibacy. I just now read it (sorry for the delay, Sis-in-Law!) and it is outstanding.  All that's left for me to do now is provide the link. Here is the link.

In summation, dear Unwritten Open Letters, you are for the present to remain as such. But who knows what the future will bring?

Yours in spirit, if not letter (see what I did there?)
E & probably also L

Possible Theories As To My Interminable Singleness

Theory #1:  I Just Haven't Met the Right Guy Yet

While having the merit of being most likely the correct theory, it is nevertheless wanting in terms of entertainment value.  Thus I propose alternate theories, all of which contain hypotheses already thoroughly and successfully subjected to empirical verification...


Theory #2: My Uncontrollable, Frequent Bouts with Klutziness are Not As Charming As I Think

In moments of greater confidence in my physical appearance (typically corresponding with moments spent in the presence of good girlfriends, and typically in conjunction with an abundance of finely distilled whiskies) I used to joke that there was a Hotness Conservation Law (yes, I frequently make jokes involving conservation laws; cf. Theory #3):  the hotter a person is, the klutzier he or she has to be. In other words, being the cause of numerous, nominally awkward social situations is necessary in order to, you know, make it up to the rest of the universe for having been, through no real design of his or her own, the receiver of a physical appearance our culture deems "hot".

I no longer hold to this conservation law, based on years of research:  I manage to exhibit profound unawareness of the spatial properties of proximate objects on a daily basis (walking into walls, stubbing toes on steps, tripping on sidewalks, clotheslining self on tree branches) yet this large number of klutz incidences cannot be balanced in terms of hotness or I'd be getting a lot more dates.

Granted there are logical gaps in the above reasoning, to wit-- assuming that the better looking I am, the more often I'll get asked on dates.  But whether or not we want it, this is a pretty darn safe assumption, is it not?  Guys just don't approach strange women for date-getting-purposes unless they find them attractive.  Since I'm an "extended tourist" in my current city, a majority of my daily interactions with men are with men I hardly know and who hardly know me. I haven't been asked on a date since October, so you do the math.

But that's boring, and the point of introducing this theory was really to tell a self-deprecating anecdote confirming this theory. One of many possible such, I am afraid.

Yesterday I was on my way to giving a 2-hour lecture at The University At Which I Am A Visiting Research Fellow on ... well, I won't say, but see Theory #3 again.  I had some last minute prep to do, but it was a gorgeous sunny day and so decided to tackle said work whilst eating outside at a brand-spanking new, very hip café not far from the campus. Before taking a seat in sunshine, I went inside to ask if they had English menus. The owners (a lovely, sweet woman and her son -- very handsome, tall, about my age or a bit older, from this part of the world and therefore exuding that lovely and mysterious foreign je ne sais quoi -- you know what I mean, ladies) explained that they were still working on a translation of their menu into English.  The son then talked me through their entire list of offerings, made excellent suggestions and helped me place my order all the while being adorable and flirtatious (even with his mother smiling at us from the corner -- gotta love that confidence).  I asked if carrot juice was on the menu, and he said no but he'd make a fresh glass for me anyway.

During the meal the mother came outside and chatted with me a little.  Wise businesswoman. She told me a bit about how her son had lived in America for a while, and when she asked what I was working on and I told her, she smiled and said: "Wow! A woman like you, so young? That's really amazing!" (To which I responded, in my head: "I know! Tell your son!")

When I'd finished devouring the extremely fine meal, I packed up my nerdy academic-ie things and headed back inside the little café to settle the bill. As I stood there shamelessly flirting with both the mother and son (let's be honest, you gotta win over Mom), that warm bloom of confidence began to build up inside me -- the kind of confidence that unfailingly leads to my doing something awkward, and probably involving limb flailing.  Sure enough, as I handed over the money I knocked over the son's full glass bottle of Coca Cola, which then splashed its contents onto the mother's mint-green cardigan and trickled down into the cracks between the brand-new counter and the brand-new shelves and soaked into the brand-new decorative upholstery pastry board before crashing to the floor.

I froze, mortified. The mother said repeatedly, "Don't worry! Don't be embarrassed!" while I proceeded to do both those things.  I didn't even collect my change -- dashed out of the café and across the street, and then had to stand there in full view of the café and its patrons and - most crucially - in the line of sight of both mother and son - while I waited a full 13 minutes for the No. 7 bus to whisk me off to the university.  I tried burying my face in the book I was reading, but I'm pretty sure they could still see me from across the street.

Oh, and guess what?  Tall, handsome, dark foreign entrepreneur with excellent maternal relationship did not, in fact, ask me out on a date.

It was such good food, too. That part I really lament.  When is an acceptable time for me to revisit the café? Because even if I ain't getting a date, I sure as speckled robins' eggs ain't gonna forsake good food on account of my klutziness.


Theory #3: My Uncontrollable, Frequent Self-Exposure as ÜberNerd is Not As Winsome As I Think

More on this later.  Oh, so much more...

Dating in a small town (redux)

Kinda feels like this:

(from Nick Galifianakis)

What a small town

I'm sitting in the common area of our library, waiting for a student, and up walks a librarian I know a little bit from my teaching.  He's a nice guy: in the two conversations we've had, he's been friendly and helpful. 

So I say hello, he sits down, we're chatting about my class, and then he says, "I was looking up your class, and I saw your photo on the department website, and I realized why you looked familiar.  You were one of my matches on [online dating site] about three years ago!"

I restrain myself from going into hysterics, but only barely.  "Wow!" I gasp.  "What a small town!" 

And then I ask him if we corresponded through said dating site.  "Well, I wrote you," he says, "but I don't think you ever wrote me back." 

Zing!

Hallmark Holidays

Valentine's Day is obnoxious, but man, do I love NPR.  More here.