I entered what I ate today into an online calorie tracker. It wasn’t so bad, but not so good either. It tells me I’m not getting enough vitamin D.  Could my lap-top tan have anything to do with that?

I’d like to have a drink. That would be more calories though.  I don’t know what I want more right now, the drink, or to not fall victim to grad-school-gut. I once thought the gut was only limited to theses and dissertations, but I was mistaken. They take years of crafting at library carols and behind computer screens.  It’s one souvenir I’d like to leave without.

forget it. I’m having the drink.

Mr. Errata: Do I use this whole can of frosting?

Alotta Errata: (laughing) Yes.

Mr. Errata:  What do I spread it with?

Alotta Errata: A knife… or a spatula…

Mr. Errata: There’s no special frosting tool?

Alotta Errata: mmmm… no.

Mr. Errata:  Well I don’t know, I’ve never frosted a cake before

Alotta Errata: (incredulous) You’ve  never frosted a cake?

Mr. Errata: I’m a man!

In order to air my frustrations more eloquently, I wrote this haiku:

My lab results in

wasted paper wasted time

STATA loves me not.

To start with, the weather is still quite warm, and riding a bike with a heavy bag strapped to your back creates certain, ahem, hygeine issues that must be dealt with. Now it would be great if our society was OK with a little bit of sweat now and then, but it seems that we are not, especially not when it comes to being female. I’ve found two solutions to this problem. The first is to go to the gym before class; this means waking up very very early (booo) but also means much less car traffic on the roads (yaaaay). The second is to simply bring a fresh shirt with me, and to freshen up in the ladies’ room after my ride in. This saves time (yaaay) but creates an excess in laundry (booo).

I would like to get some panniers or maybe some folding baskets to attach to the sides of my bike rack, but they just aren’t in the budget right now. The bike rack works well enough for gym trips. A few bungee cords and I’m off, but I’m not about to bungee cord my back pack on there; not with my laptop in it.

Weather is also a much bigger consideration than it used to be.  I have to ask myself if I think it’s going to rain today despite what the weather man says, and if it IS going to rain, how bad will it be? Light enough to ride in? If not, can I leave campus early enough to beat it home? The same goes for daylight. While I do have lights and reflectors and I am well equipped for night riding, I still prefer not to whenever possible. This means I must budget my time carefully. Technically, I should be studying right now instead of writing this blog entry, because I’ve only got about 6 more hours of daylight before I have to leave campus. Oh well. Marx will have to wait his turn.

Biking also limits the amount of things I can buy at the grocery store, which I guess is good considering I’m on a very tight budget these days.  I have to consider the fragility of items, and their temperature sensitivity. It’s a new way of shopping for me. I’m used to buying in bulk to save money- now I have to carry it all on my back.  It doesn’t matter that I’ll save 20 cents if I buy the bigger size, If I can’t carry it, I can’t buy it.

Despite the limitations I’ve been enjoying the experience. I only wish more people would give it a try.

Crickets. That’s what I’m listening to right now. They’re so loud here that when I called Mr. Errata for our evening chat (which has become quite short now that we’ve realized what it is costing us) he asked if I was sitting outside.  I might as well sit outside; these walls don’t seem to keep out the noise, or the critters themselves for that matter. My morning routine now includes a visual sweep of the bathroom for crickets, spiders, and the like.  I should be focusing on my theory reading but I’m distracted. It isn’t the crickets really; it’s this overwhelming sense of displacement. I don’t feel at home. I suppose that is to be expected. I’m not home. I made my first stab at cooking a meal this evening.  The owner of the home wasn’t here, so I felt a little bit better about poking through all of the cabinets trying to find a can opener and a strainer. The large skillet I found was a bit… unclean. I decided a quick wash before using it couldn’t hurt, but the sponge looked like a health hazard as did the rag draped over the faucet. Frustrated, I cut up one of my new face clothes into small swatches so that I can have a few bits of cloth to wash my dishes with. Of course, I have to bring them back into my room and place them on the edge of my mini laundry basket to dry; I don’t want the homeowner (what should I call her?) to know that I find her kitchen habits less than satisfactory.  Despite the awkwardness of cooking in a kitchen that is not my own, it was nice to have a hot dish for dinner.  It would be nicer not to eat it alone on my bed. I have to remind myself that this is just temporary.

Classes start tomorrow.  To be honest, I’m nervous. I know that they wouldn’t have let me in if they didn’t think I could handle it; I know that they truly want me to succeed here. My success is in their best interest. Still, I’m afraid. I’m afraid that somehow it was all a mistake, that I’m not really ready. What if I make a fool of myself?  What if my research interests are not significant enough? What if this choice is just another line on a long list of errors? I suppose we’ll find out in about 15 weeks time. Wish me luck.

]]> https://alottaerrata.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/crickets-and-apprehension/feed/ 3 alottaerrata https://alottaerrata.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/head-west-young-woman/ https://alottaerrata.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/head-west-young-woman/#respond Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:29:50 +0000 http://alottaerrata.wordpress.com/?p=165

I’ve been gone awhile, I know. But now I find myself in a new place and even though I’m surrounded by people- very nice people in fact, I’m lonely. I also seem to have a bit of time on my hands – at least for now. As a new graduate student on my way to a Ph.D, I’m sure the pace will pick up shortly. In the meantime I’ve been trying to get used to these new surroundings. I’m 14 hours from the place I’ve called home for my whole life, unless you count my 4 years in western NY when I was an undergraduate. Mr. Errata is still living in our condo. He’ll be moving out here eventually, but we are dealing with buying and selling and nothing seems to be working in our favor at the moment. While he sleeps alone in our old bed, I’m sleeping alone in a creaky old twin. I’m renting a room in the home of an older woman. The neighborhood is quite nice and close enough to campus for me to get around by bike, but it still doesn’t feel like home. The furniture isn’t mine. The crickets are loud. The automatic sprinkler wakes me up at 5am. Even the CVS here feels foreign; they sell beer and hard liquor. Paper towels and toilet paper in the same aisle as Maker’s Mark is just weird. Then there are the signs for gun bashes. I’m not sure exactly what a gun bash is, but they have admission prices for adults and children.

Yes, we do. But sorry, Bill. Shit is not allowed on Network TV. Neither are the F word or the N word or any words that “in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities” The FCC is watching out for our well being you know. They wouldn’t want any of us to be offended by words that might remind us that we have bodily functions or lusty urges, and they certainly wouldn’t want women to feel degraded or marginalized. Oh wait. I take that back.

It is perfectly OK to call a woman a bitch on network TV. I don’t know why it never occurred to me until tonight, perhaps it was the comic who, despite most likely being warned not to, used shit in their set quickly followed by bitch. Only the word shit was muted. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not about to go cry to the FCC. My panties are not all in a bunch – that would make me a bitch.  In all seriousness though, while I feel the FCC has become more of a problem than a solution, this double standard of the English language still perplexes me.  Why is it that there are no real male equivalents for a word like bitch? If you call a man a bitch, it emasculates them, which is quite possibly the worst thing you could do to a man. In fact, emasculating a man by using a word such as pussy causes such damage, that the producers of a PBS documentary on psychological trauma suffered by US Soldiers chose to allow its use while bleeping out the f-word within the same sentence.

You may be wondering about the word “pussy.” Ugly as the expression is, we felt it was absolutely necessary to convey the way a soldier seeking help was made to feel—accused of being unmanly or weak. If we had bleeped both words, the viewer would have had no idea of the emotional impact of what the soldier was called. But I can share with you the news that, yes, a complaint has been filed with the FCC for use of the P-word.

When you call a woman a bitch it could be because she’s more aggressive than society would like, or perhaps because she has a sour disposition, or really is just plain mean.  What about a man who is too aggressive? Is there such a thing? And I am not speaking in sexual terms. The man who is aggressive in the workplace is called passionate, a go-getter, a leader. Not so for women. What about a man who is just plain mean? I suppose we could call him a jerk, or an ass, or even a bastard- but really, do those words have the same bite as bitch?  Bastard might come close, but somehow I don’t think it is quite the same.

Let’s look at the FCC guidelines again.

The FCC has defined broadcast indecency as “language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities.” Indecent programming contains patently offensive sexual or excretory material that does not rise to the level of obscenity.

Well there you have it. Bitch doesn’t depict a sexual act or an excretory organ or activity.  Well no wonder it is allowed. And that totally explains why the n-word isn’t allowed, because we all know that the n-word  has everything to do with sexual acts and excretory organs.  Oh wait, I’m wrong again. The n-word has to do with decades of enslavement, disenfranchisement, and overall oppression that still goes on today. So while it doesn’t fit into the tidy little paragraph above, the n-word is banned for significant reasons.  If we applied the the reasoning behind banning the n-word to the word bitch, do you think that bitch might find itself banned as well?  If someone is your bitch, aren’t they subordinate? oppressed? Is it, like the n-word, a derogatory word based on nothing but a biology- a basic physical attribute? Is it not treated in a similar way when used between friends? For instance, a woman who introduces other women as “her bitches” is speaking of her friends. A man who introduces a group of women as “his bitches” is probably making a buck off of them. Similarly, a black person who refers to someone as “my n-word” is saying that they are peers, while if a white person said the same of a black person, it would not be viewed the same.

I don’t think banning the words is the solution. Making them go away does not wipe their existence from our minds and our lips.  Banning bitch will not suddenly make people think differently about women, just as the taboo of the N-word has not stopped racism from happening.   I’m not sure what the solution is, or if there is one to be had.  All I do know is that there is a double standard built into our very language,  the building blocks of our thoughts.  What kind of society can we build with these malformed bricks? My guess is a very unbalanced one- but if I criticize, well that just makes me a bitch.