Make Me Blog!

Tell me what you like most about any interpersonal relationship--romantic, familial, whatever!

I'm thinking...

What I Might Be

I've had these thoughts/quotes/ideas/lyrics/words that keep coming to me in the last two weeks. Because I am superstitious, I think I have discerned a pattern.

First, I heard the Lao Tzu quote, "When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be."

Then, I took my 4-year-old nephew Deuce to the park and watched him attempt the monkey bars. I had a sad feeling suddenly because I remembered that I'd never learned to cross the monkey bars on my school playground. I'd always been too scared to let go of the one bar behind to grab hold of the next one in front.

On FaceBook, I read a friend proclaim, "I am working on being more audacious, shameless, & fearless. Love makes anything possible."

And I heard Erykah Badu croon to me on my Pandora station,

Bag lady you gone hurt your back
Dragging all them bags like that
I guess nobody ever told you
All you must hold on to
Is you, is you, is you

One day all them bags gone get in your way

...

Girl I know sometimes it's hard
And we can't let go

...

Bag lady
Let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go

So, I wanted to weave together some deep philosophical thoughts on these things--my feeling that I am being prompted to let some things go to make room for others, to release some of the past so that I may live in the present and dream BIG for my future.

But I'm sleepy and not particularly prosaic this week :-) I do know, however, that I am ready to start the journey to becoming what I might be.

Isn't that an amazing, intriguing, frightening, exhilarating thing--what I might be? I'm ready for a little fearlessness, too, for in the words of the beloved Audre Lorde, "I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I'll be sending messages on a Ouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side."

What I might be... I don't know who she is, but I'll bet y'all ain't ready for her!

XOXOXO

100 Facts about Elle (27)

Apparently, I don't love all chocolate.

I buy Hostess cupcakes, peel off and eat the fudgy icing, spoon the cream out of the middle, and throw the cake away.

Similarly, if I eat Oreos, I prefer double-stuff, because I lick the cream out of the middle and throw the cookies away. My cousin Tren, who has elevated Oreos and ice cream to a food group, refuses to share her Oreos with me for this reason.

Wasting Oreos, it seems, is akin to sacrilege.

I Need Budgets (#26)

For money, yes. But I'm about to believe I'm a lost cause.

But mostly, for time. Kiki Be has me thinking...

I always feel harried and rushed and tired.

But I'm this super procrastinator who's best friend is a daytime nap.

So the questions for the ages are: What the hell do I do that makes me so tired? Why am I soooooooo sleepy? For real (and this is, admittedly, an anomaly), I slept for like 4.5 hours today.

And I'm ready to go back to bed now. I need to make more productive use of my time!

How am I ever going to be a mama, revise a manuscript, teach, be active in my community, etc., when 93.66% of the time, I'm longing for a nap?

100 Facts about Elle #25

Or so. I haven't used this label since April 2007.

Okay. When I was younger, I loved horror movies. That was one of the things my cousin Tesha and I had in common. My sister--not so much. Tesha's sister--my cousin Trin--a big hell to the n-o. We couldn't even watch Unsolved Mysteries or that The Twilight Zone-like show (the name escapes me now) because the music scared Trin.

As I've gotten older, horror has pretty much lost it's appeal for me. When I try to explain why, I pretend that growing older made me wiser. "When you're young," I say, "it's fun and exciting to get scared in a setting that you know is safe." I also, at different times, claim not to like all the blood and gore (I really don't) and not to like suspense (I am impatient!). And I really did notice, like everyone else, that the token person of color gets axed pretty quickly in horror films.

But here, I will divulge the real reason for my recent lack of affection for the genre.

I watched The Ring. And my reaction to that film was much like my reaction to most others--I was unperturbed.

Until seven days later.

While lying in bed, I noticed a ring on the ceiling. My ass was scared.

What did it mean? From where did it come? I wouldn't get my ass up to explore--I was not about to be that disposable token.

So I lay there, terrified, for hours.

And then I realized, my printer was on and the power button was lit... the power button that had a circle on it.

I got up and turned that thing off and got my ass back under the covers.

And, yeah, pretty much since then, I no longer like horror movies.

I Haven't Forgotten!

Comebacknikki sent me these ages ago. I kept procrastinating, because number five is hard. I've decided to do it later, but in the meantime, y'all answer it--the thing I need most in this world is more books to read!!!

1. What is your favorite 80s hair band?
BonJovi, hands down. Though, I did/do love me some Aerosmith. And, I have a separate post drafted for Queen.

2. If you could chose another career & instantly acquire the knowledge/credentials to start working in said field tomorrow, what would you choose to do?
Catering and event planning. I have a million related ideas in my head.

3. Have you ever said "I love you" and not meant it?
No. Something in me won’t let me do it.

4. What person do you trust the most?
“The most” is hard! There are at least six people I trust with my life. I’ll go with my sister--I can tell her things I can't tell my parents :-)

5. What are the five books you think everyone absolutely should read?
Leave your answer in comments.

On Becoming a Feminist, pt 3--The Black History Month Post

**my own thoughts on a much-written about topic**

I just re-read Tera Hunter's To Joy My Freedom for my labor history class. I agree with one reviewer who said that while it is a story about women and work, it is all so a story about women and freedom. At the heart of this book is the story of how working class black women defined for themselves, through work and leisure, what it meant to be freed and later, free. Whites and black bourgeoisie disapproved of the these definitions, but poor black women persisted. They persisted, especially, in the face of white women's frustrations and desires to define black women wholly in terms of their service and relationships to white women.

Much has been said about that last issue, in many contexts. It is in works like Hunter's that re-tell the story of how white women despaired of ever finding "good help" and in Evelyn Nakano Glenn's articles about racial inequality and division in public and private "women's work." It is in books like Korstad's Civil Rights Unionism and Brattain's The Politics of Whiteness that detail how adamant white women were that they not share workspace with black women, and in other books that point to how effective white women workers, often treated as "unorganizable," were in organizing hate strikes.

This desire to define black women in narrow terms that marginalized most of their existence was evident among more progressive white women, too, of course. It is in the stories of overtly racist "first wave" feminists (yes, I'm going to point you to the coverage Deborah Gray White gives to this in Too Heavy a Load) and the somewhat more covertly racist second wave. A few weeks ago, a woman in my class asserted that the response of the second wave to women of color's concerns can be summarized, in part, as, "That's nice, dear. Now let me handle the real issues and you run to get me a cup of tea." That is harsh, yes, but has much truth.

A more generous view of second wave strife can be found in Winifred Breines's The Trouble Between Us: An Uneasy History of White and Black Women in the Feminist Movement. By generous, I mean that Breines imbues white women with a sort of naivete--a desire for a perfect, interracial world that prevented them from understanding the realities of a multi-racial one. I think Breines is perhaps too beneficent in excusing the actions of these women--she implies that many white feminists didn't understand racism, how deeply embedded it was in American life. Neither does she rigorously question why, if the inclusionary "nostalgia" she credits had such a hold on white feminists, were they so exclusionary-of other women of color, of lesbians, of poor women. It is a well-written book, but I still hear the, "Sometimes we do racist things, but we're not racist!"

Cynthia Griggs Fleming's Soon We Will Not Cry: The Liberation of Ruby Doris Smith Robinson (one of the best gifts I've ever received, btw) has a much different take--she does discuss white women's racism, arguing that, "many of these women struggled to confront the racist stereotypes that their society had accepted so long... some of them lost the struggle," (128). The results were attitudes and condescending behavior that furthered the divide between black and white women activists.

Fleming has an excellent one sentence summation of the "trouble between us": "Being an oppressed black woman has always been quite different from being an oppressed woman in American society." I'd go so far as to change "black woman" to "woman of color." And isn't that what radical women of color have been pointing out for over a century now? When Sojourner Truth asked, "Ain't I a woman?" And the club women who understood that race work was women's work said it. The Combahee River Collective stated it quite eloquently. The works in This Bridge Called My Back, the voices in Listen Up!, the many works by bell hooks (I can't believe I just started reading her in the last year!)--all of these strengthen and reiterate Fleming's assertion, explaining how and why the experiences have been different and how and why those facts were ignored.

Honestly, I believe I leaned towards Breines's understanding when I first came to blogging. I hid that post a long time, embarrassed* at my naivete. Imagine my surprise (yes, I'm finally getting to the point), when I discovered bloggers like BfP, nubian, Black Amazon were still having to make the same arguments. Nostalgia, idealism, and ignorance only go so far. I sensed blatant resistance as noted in the comments here:

I have had too many to count now unfortunate discussions with white sisters in which it was demonstrated conclusively that (a) they are incapable of taking themselves and their experience as white women -- with their oppression stemming from their placement on a ped[e]stal, not from anything remotely like the backbreaking life experiences of most women of color -- out of the center of the discourse; and (b) they have real, emotional, defense mechanisms against accepting the idea of intersectionality -- the indivisible nature of race and gender in women of color -- and that this may mean that their narratives of oppression simply don't line up the same way as narratives of women of color.

And I've seen the evidence, carefully disguised as "but we're all women" and "all oppression begins with the subjugation of women to men" and "how can I be a problem? I'm oppressed, too!" It reminds me of colorblind racism, in a sense. They rely on the sorts of narratives of which Breines's is simply the latest incarnation. Yolanda excerpted one, Susan Brownmiller's In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution which says:

It is fashionable today to criticize the women's movement for being white and middle class from its inception, yet no movement agonized more, or flailed itself harder, over its failure to attract vast numbers of women of color. [elle's eyebrows shoot skyward]...

Belief in human perfectibility was the chief driving force among the Women's Liberation founders. [the aforementioned nostalgia]...

"We didn't feel we had to apologize all the time when the leftists talked about Vietnamese women or black women or poor women. Of course we cared about all those women, but we wanted to care in the context of feminism."...

Criticism is easy [a grain of truth in my classmate's comment?]; working for specific goals in an imperfect, complicated world is hard. The failure to attract poor black women, or poor Hispanic women, or "ghetto women," or "welfare women," would be used as a club against Women's Liberation by its critics with numbing consistency for the next thirty years.

Who are these critics that clubbed Women's Lib? And does Brownmiller not see that she is, in fact, embodying their criticisms by only arguing how it affected the white women and not why it was made? I find Catharine McKinnon's "From Practice to Theory, or What is a White Woman Anyway?" similarly problematic, especially given its dicussion of intersectionality.

My questions, I suppose, are ones that have been asked approximately a trillion times: How are bridges built? How does this affect my identification as a feminist? Do I give up, despite the fact that I love and respect many white women and know some who do understand, at the very least (these links are not exhaustive), that there is a problem created not by nostalgia and utopianism, but by very real racism and classism?

From the point of view of many women of color, white women are incongruously oppressed and privileged--and that privileging is often predicated upon our subjugation. Though they may not have initially fashioned or designed that privilege, they do derive benefit from it--and we feel the results.
________________________
*In re-reading, I realize "embarrassed" may be the wrong word--I believe in the sentiment of that post, but think I underestimated much.

Brain Break

I've been thinking about my next introspective post about my feminism, about how it is problematic because of the backs I've used as bridges--the women in my family who have sacrificed and deferred their own dreams, desires, liberation so that I can pursue mine.

But, that will come later as I am tired and see the light at the end of this chapter. In the meantime, a frivolous attempt to delve into my philosophy:

You scored as Utilitarianism. Your life is guided by the principles of Utilitarianism: You seek the greatest good for the greatest number. "The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” --Jeremy Bentham "Whenever the general disposition of the people is such, that each individual regards those only of his interests which are selfish, and does not dwell on, or concern himself for, his share of the general interest, in such a state of things, good government is impossible.” --John Stuart Mill More info at Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page... Utilitarianism 95% Existentialism 90% Divine Command 70% Justice (Fairness) 70% Hedonism 65% Kantianism 15% Nihilism 15% Apathy 10% Strong Egoism 0% What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03) created with QuizFarm.com

On Becoming a Feminist, pt. 2

**Yes, it's long and I apologize, but if you love me :-) bear with me and read it. I really want your opinions on the last part.**

"Your mama on welfare!"

When you're a black child, growing up where I grew up (and in many other places), that is one of the worst insults other children can hurl at you. Before we can even put into word our biases, before we can fully engage in our own stigmatization of poverty, we know, in the simplest terms, that welfare is racialized, feminized. Shameful.

My mom's mom was a retired domestic and farm worker, relegated to the "welfare" provisions of our social security system. I've mentioned before that she was a cook with unmatched skill. What I haven't mentioned is that she also bought much of her food with food stamps and that during the summers, we were the one who'd have to walk the short distance to the local grocery store to buy the makings of lunch and dinner.

Those were the most humiliating experiences of my young life. Typically, my sister, my cousin Tesha (Trinity's sister) and I would have to go. We never went in together--each day, one of us had a turn and the other two lagged outside, as if people in our small town wouldn't realize we were a group. We went early in the morning, so no one our age would be there and shopped quickly as possible, the shopper of the day dreading the moment she had to tear the appropriate amount out of the booklet and receive her change in paper stamps. It seemed as if the cashier took forever and that the quick scurry out of the store, head down, eyes glued to the tile, was never fast enough.

Eventually, we pretended to overcome the shame in a "radical" way: "Yes, I am in this store with food stamps and I am not ashamed!" as we slapped the stamps on the counter and eyed the cashier. It seemed bold at the time, but it was not. It was more of a "See, I'm not ashamed to do this shameful thing."

As I got older, my behavior morphed from scorn and ridicule to a condescending sort of pity. You know, the kind that expresses itself verbally as "Those poor people. I just don't know what I'd do if I were them" and silently as, "But thank God I'm not!" By the time I was in my MA program, I had the distinct feeling that something was not right about the discourse surrounding welfare and mothers and children who received it. Still, I had not formulated my own theory and while I thought I identified with poor women, part of me wanted it clear that I was not like them.

And then I found some of those works I mentioned here, Linda Gordon's Pitied but Not Entitled, Jill Quadagno's The Color of Welfare, Gwendolyn Mink's Welfare's End, Whose Welfare, and The Wages of Motherhood, Winifred Bell's Aid to Dependent Children, Lisa Levenstein's “From Innocent Children to Unwanted Migrants and Unwed Moms," JoAnne Good's Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform and so many more.

I learned how white women reformers championed only one mother as deserving of assistance--the widowed, white woman--how they ignored other mothers for fear that they--these never married or abandoned or brown or non-western European mothers--would turn public sentiment against the call for mothers' pensions. I learned how white men crafted the Social Security Act so that people most "deserving" of assistance would be white males attached at some point to the work force, so that there are two tiers--the unemployment insurance and retirement pensions that people "deserve" after having worked--and the "other tier"--the despised welfare programs for people who had not worked or who had been employed in excluded categories. I learned that excluded categories included jobs like teaching, social work, and nursing, thus excluding many women from the top tier, and also domestic and agricultural work, thereby excluding most blacks from the honorable tier. I learned that the later distinctions, that created a top tier category for women who had been married to men who worked in one of the included occupations, meant that many white women got to leave the bottom tier programs.

And I finally knew what was wrong. From its earliest days, the system was designed to leave people of color and women in bottom tier, "handout" categories. It never valued the work of women outside the work place, never acknowledged the right of women to be mothers outside any but the most narrow of confines. It was never meant to be a true system of social provision, characterized as it is with paltry payments and intrusive interrogations. In its most recent forms, it spurs people to question recipients' abilities and rights as parents, an idea I think Fab addresses here:

What can we do in the name of integrity and justice to stop the state’s attempts to destroy low income and people of color by taking children away, by CPS investigations on low income families, the resorting to second class citizenship via one’s lack of access to efficient, free to low cost, friendly and of high quality health care including dentists and psychiatrists–ending the immigration bullshit operation, constant police intimidation of our communities and families, how it is expected that our act of change be done with “grace” and non “angry”, or divisive, dreaming for the better tomorrow and living as our life depended on it, because our integrity is shattered daily by poverty and those out to protect us and the bullshit services for low income people. Where supposed criminal behavior, bad parenting, neglect and abuse is judged upon [by] a middle unaffected class.

If there is ever an experience during which it feels like scales fall away from your eyes, this was it for me. My politics, my self-identification, my thinking--all have changed since.

Which brings me to another point (related, I promise). Considering John Edwards's anti-poverty platform, Nonpartisan asked me did I think Edwards was an urban populist or an agrarian radical. I had to do some quick research (and I'm so grateful NP brought this to my attention) and I found this speech, excerpted at Ezra Klein's

Work gives pride, dignity, and hope to our lives and our communities... To be true to our values, our country must build a Working Society – an America where everyone who works hard finally has the rewards to show for it...
In the Working Society, nobody who works full-time should have to raise children in poverty, or in fear that one health emergency or pink slip will drive them over the cliff.
In the Working Society, everyone who works full-time will at last have something to show for it...
In the Working Society, everyone willing to work will have the chance to get ahead. Anyone who wants to go to college and work will be able to go the first year for free.
In the Working Society, people who work have the right to live in communities where the streets are safe, the schools are good, and jobs can be reached.
In the Working Society, everyone will also be asked to hold up their end of the bargain—to work, to hold off having kids until they’re ready, and to do their part for their kids when the time comes.

And, though his proposals are different and sound wonderful, here is where I have a problem: what is the difference between his rhetoric and that of the Social Security Act framers? Why are the only ones deserving are the ones engaged in paid work? For that matter, why do we still work under definitions of who is or isn't "deserving?"

If we prioritize paid work over all else, ignoring that paid work is not always liberating, honorable, possible, or desirable, what happens to the people included in the 5%+ who are always unemployed in a "full employment" capitalist society? What happens to those that can't or don't work? Why are we steadily trying to fix and fix?

When do we change?
___________________________
For more of my struggle with the stigmatization of welfare, see here.

On Becoming a Feminist

**The story of how I came to identify as a feminist can’t be summed up as easily as my turn to labor history. This is post one of some ;-)**

Despite my genuine love of hot water cornbread, I don’t cook it. I can’t. It’s never shaped correctly. The outside is not crispy enough. The inside never seems done (though my aunt tells me all the time “The hot water cooks the cornmeal!”) It is a mental block, I know related to a disastrous episode of cooking when I was twelve years old.

My mother put some hot water cornbread on to fry, five pieces in a little black, cast iron skillet, then started to comb my sister's hair. That has always been some task, as her hair is thick and long and required some time to pull into ponytails. Hot water cornbread cooks quickly and my mom called me to check on it and turn it over in the grease.

I was a touch peeved--I'd been caught up in some book I probably had no business reading. But I couldn't display my anger overtly--my mom would've popped the hell out of me with the brush or whatever was close by. Instead, I marched into the kitchen in a nylon slip and jabbed the fork into the cornbread. All five pieces had fried together, so they lifted from the skillet together, then fell back down into the grease. Virtually every drop of boiling oil that was in the skillet splashed out and onto my nylon-clad stomach and thigh. I screamed.

From here, the story gets twisted in my family's collective memory. My mother claims that she jumped up, threw on clothes and rushed me to the ER.

My sister and I clearly remember that she looked at me, told me to take my time, and "Stop hollerin'. You a woman. You gon' get burned plenty of times cooking." Only after I went into the bathroom and tried to pry the nylon away from my bubbling and blistering skin, did she get up to check on me and realize that this was serious.

How, you're wondering, is that related to feminism? See, in the ER that day, suffering from 2nd and 3rd degree burns, and angry about that damned bread, I decided I was not going to be a woman. Not if this is what it entailed.

Later, I thought that was the most ridiculous thing in the world. I laughed at my twelve year old self. Silly girl, how could you not be a woman?

Now, I'm back to knowing exactly what I meant.

The History of One (Aspiring) Labor Historian

In my quest to be the most self-obsessed navel-gazer you know, I've decided I want to do some posts about how the professional and political me came to be.

I came to history by a twisted route which I've re-capped before. My BA is in psychology, so I initially went to grad school in a counseling psychology program (I wanted forensic psychology, but there weren't any universities close by and I wasn't ready to leave home again). I had doubts from the beginning--did I think everyone could be rehabilitated? What if I couldn't help someone? Then they upped the program's requirements to 48 hours and some extensive internships, and I admitted to myself that I just didn't want to do all the for an MS in psychology. I took a quarter to think about it and while I was "off," I took some history classes. They reminded me of how much I'd loved my African American Studies minor, and I thought, "I can do this." I applied for admissions to the history department and got accepted.

Now, my plan was to study the 60s. As an aside, that's been an interesting decade in this country's history. In the 1660s, Virginia was cementing the "peculiar institution." In the 1760s, many Americans were on a course to committing quite the treasonous act. In the 1860s, the Civil War--I can't pithily summarize that. And in the 1960s, the country (or at least the laws of the country) was changing in the most amazing ways, socially, politically, culturally, the result of grassroots efforts, people getting sick and tired of being sick and tired. These were the 60s I wanted to study*--as a black southern woman, I was worshipful of the Civil Rights Movement, curious about the movement for women's rights, and interested in exploring the links between those two. As the daughter of a largely silent VietNam vet, I wanted to know more about that era, how and why it happened. And as someone well-acquainted with Motown Records--because that's what my mom did on Saturdays while we all cleaned; she opened the front and back doors to let in the sun and put on old, scratchy records--I admired the soundtrack of the 60s. And I did study them--I took classes on VietNam and Watergate, on the New South and black women. I wrote papers on the Cuban Missile Crisis and the perspectives of soldiers involved in the VietNam war.

Then I graduated. And that was that. Until, burned out from teaching and continuously, lovingly harassed by my friend John and my old advisor, I decided to work on the PhD. I wanted to return to the safety of the 60s.

My advisors here said, "No." The social movements of the 60s were well-documented, both as grand, large-scale things and as small, community-centered efforts. While re-thinking, I fell in love with Linda Gordon's Pitied but Not Entitled, and Jill Quadagno's The Color of Welfare, and virtually everything I touched by Gwendolyn Mink, and even Winifred Bell's Aid to Dependent Children. "I'll write about welfare in Louisiana," I said. Advisor raised a brow, "Mmm, possible, look into it." But it was hard, because I just didn't know how to do the research and I was a bit unmotivated.

Then I read Jacqueline Jones's Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow. That, along with Pitied but Not Entitled and Deborah Gray White's Too Heavy a Load, are books that I read word for word because I loved them so much. And I knew. I wanted to write about black women's work, in and out of the home. I wanted to write about work that wasn't necessarily liberating or the primary thing by which women defined themselves.

And I knew the poultry industry. I knew about low wages and chicken rashes and finding out on Thursday that you had to work Saturday (plans be damned) and washing the clothes separately and joints aching and being so damned tired. But I also knew about saying "Fuck ConAgra and this job," and slowing down the work and telling the supervisor off and being the best mama you could be and taking time for your children, despite the company's demands and helping the new women on the line.

That, I decided, I could write about. But since I stumbled into labor history, I feel woefully unprepared sometimes. I had to find out for myself about the archives in Madison and at Georgia State and even a few things I needed at UT Arlington. I still am unclear on the "new" versus the "old" labor history. There are bellwethers (book-wise) I'd never heard of before this semester. And my head is swirling with "craft unionism," "industrial unionism," "economic unionism," "pure and simple unionism," "business unionism" and all sorts of distinctions I didn't know. When I talk to the NLRB about my FOIA requests, 90% of the time, I can't be clear, because I don't fully understand the way all of it works.

But, increasingly, I think I made the right choice.**
_________________________________
*Though, if I had to choose, wailing and weeping, another 60s, it'd be the 1860s. Since I heard professors say, "No law or person "freed" the slaves. They freed themselves. They stole themselves away from the plantations," I've been intrigued. That's bold and wonderful, "stealing yourself away."

**Though, after the dissertation becomes a book, I will revisit my 1960s. I want to write a biography of Diane Nash one of the founders of SNCC, whom I've admired since I first read about her.

100 Facts about Elle (17)

Fact # 17
I thought this was cool... if you ignore the smudged eyeliner (that's a bad habit). For a very limited time, see who I resemble! Actually, I see a little Sarah Vaughan and that's it.

***image removed***

100 Facts about elle in 100ish days However Long It Takes (16)

Fact #16

The best way (meaning superior to the myriad other ways) to get me off track?

Cookbooks and Recipe Cards. And not internet recipes. I need ones I can hold in my hands without printing them out first. I love them in bookstores. I love the cards that come in the mail sometimes. I love the magazines in the check out line. I love getting out the ones my mom had from the 70s and 80s. I love the ones school or church organizations put out.

And I never have time to cook anymore.

100 Facts about elle in 100ish Days However Long It Takes (15)

Fact #15
Well, my city-slicker friends just call me "country"...

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The South That's a Southern accent you've got there. You may love it, you may hate it, you may swear you don't have it, but whatever the case, we can hear it.
The Midland
Philadelphia
The Northeast
The Inland North
The West
North Central
Boston
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

100 Facts about elle in 100ish days However Long It Takes (14)

Fact #14

I would much rather have a runny nose than a stuffy one.

I hate congestion with the intensity of a thousand suns.

**from the land of the Miserable-with-Head-Cold people**

100 Facts about Elle in 100(ish) Days (13)

Thought I forgot, didn't you?

Fact #13

This is at least 90% me...

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

100 Facts about Elle in 100(ish) Days (12)

Fact #12

I'm cheating--I don't know if these are really facts about me or just a recap, but oh well.

What I did today:
Woke up. Cleaned the bathroom. Showered. Got in bed and read. Blog surfed. Unplugged the modem and gave it to my sister to hide. Read some more. Wrote half a paragraph. Looked at my edited hard copy and tried to figure out how to pull the stuff Advisor wanted out of the notes and put it into the text. Took a nap.

Woke up. Got the modem back for 20 minutes. Checked e-mail. Tried to find critiques of George Borjas--advisor is wary of him and I mentioned him by name at the end of the chapter. Flipped through some blogs. Re-surrendered modem. Played tic-tac-toe, inventive scrabble (rules? we don't need no stinkin' rules!), and read _Giddy Grandma_ with The Kid. Tried to entice him to start reading _Second Cousins_ .

Went to Chili's. Decided to try, once again, to "get a buzz" (I've never been drunk. High either, but I'm way too scared for that anyway. Didn't start drinking until I was 23 (trust me, that's significant for a Louisianan :-) and, before tonight, never had more than 2 drinks in one night.). Had a strawberry margarita. Had an amaretto sour. Came home. Had a Parrot Bay thingy. All I got was somewhat sleepy. Flopped across the bed. Gave The Kid and nephew permission to sleep on an air mattress in the living room.

Strangest thing happened: an ex, for whom I still have a sweet affection, called just to chat. an ex, with whom I have a child, called to ask why I'm not interested in his life. an almost ex (he better quit messing with me!) called to reiterate that he's tired of my being generous with everyone else and selfish with him, to emphasize that I need to grow up (hah!), and to inform me that, unless I get some "little boy" whom I "can run all over," I'm going to "end up alone" Perhaps I will be pissed about this tomorrow, but apparently the alcohol did have some effect as all I said was, "Mmm, okay," and then, at his primadonna-ish gasp, "Well, what do you want me to say?!" My selfishness, IMO, amounts to the fact that I won't get down and worship him as the most brilliant engineer in the history of history. Two people who are used to being "teh smart" equal ego clashes from hell. He hung up in my face. Brief contemplation of calling him back and invoking attitude. Smug remembrance that, since he is upset, he won't be able to resist calling me to remind me how upset he is.

Responded to e-mail from another TA. Re-surrendered the modem. Broke out the old school, spiral, non-perforated notebook--cuz that's what I do when I'm serious about writing, baby. Wrote a page and four lines. Dozed.

Woke up. Requested modem. Checked e-mail. Checked a coupla favorite blogs. Decided to post. Realized I'm wide awake at 2 a.m. Realized my mom, in town for her class reunion, never called me back last night. Reminded myself that I am a mother who insists a woman's life does not have to revolve around her children--especially her grown ass children--and thus my pout because I wanted to see my mom and she's busy doing ridiculous things like having fun with her classmates is totally hypocritical.

Will re-surrender modem. Will climb into bed with John Higham and an article about Slavic coal miners and transnational or translocal or transsomething something. Will fall asleep around 6 am and be bitchy all day tomorrow/today.

See you then.

100 Facts about Elle in 100(ish) Days (11)

Fact #11

Some of the issues I encountered on other blogs * this weekend led me to discoveries about myself: 1) I really am clueless when it comes to the politics of interracial/interethnic conflicts within the so-called left and 2) I probably am as sarcastic as some of my friends claim.

The moral of this story? My mom was right when she said, "Everybody you think is your friend ain't your friend!" and I really should rely more on reason, less on snark.

*I debated on giving that link, but my God! I am still reeling. You have to see BfP's post so that all the misconstruals and misquotes don't fry your brain, though.

100 Facts about Elle in 100(ish) days (10)

Fact #10

My dad has me addicted to the Don Pendleton's The Executioner books. I love Mack Bolan. If you know of him at all, you know why that may be problematic with my stances on some issues.

Actually, my dad is the reason I'm a voracious reader. Not only did I pilfer his Executioners, I read his romance novels (he loved the sweet Harlequins), a few Louis L'Amours, and a Western series (of which, I can't think of the name right now, but they always had a big drawing of the hero's face on front and he had an almost-handlebar, black moustache).

Fun times.

100 Facts about Elle in 100(ish) Days (9)

Fact #9

I am a firm believer in retail therapy and food for comfort. I have encountered few problems that shopping and an obscene dinner afterwards can't help me face.

The two problems that I have encountered that retail therapy and eating don't help: the perpetual broke-ness of my pockets and my scale.

That is all.