Cable was a bad choice

We have cable now. This is something we obstinately refused to have in our house in Idaho, and all I have to say about that is that I’m not sure how we entertained ourselves…oh, right, we had a social life there. And Netflix. Anyway, I’ve become especially enamored with the TLC channel, more so during periods of time when I have a lot of other things to get done. This Sunday on Sister Wives, the family is (the families are? I’m not sure yet what the politically correct term is) looking for a place to perform some type of commitment ceremony. Personally, I’m looking forward to the drama that is likely to ensue. In the meantime, My 600-Pound Life is always good for a little pick me up, especially if my pants are feeling snug or I’m trying to squash a recurring Fruit Loops craving. 

Through this new experience, I’ve discovered that one side effect of television in high doses is a sudden and severe loss of faith in humanity. Another side effect, and the one I’m usually dosing up for (because 90% of your first year in graduate school consists of feeling inadequate) is that it makes you feel like you’re on the smarter end of your species’ IQ spectrum. This is especially true of daytime television, where most channels are filled with people screaming in other people’s faces about how “they don’t know them” or engaging in heated arguments about which man belongs to whom, or which baby belongs to which daddy, and all the while I’m just wondering if we can take the babies in question far away from all these people so they can learn proper English and grow up knowing that most dads have teeth.

Other channels show you where doctors go when they can’t get jobs at respectable medical establishments. They now spend their days trying to convince the masses that drinking grapefruit juice and vinegar is all they need to melt off those extra pounds. This combination is also the cure for anyone suffering from pretty much anything. How do you know if you’re suffering from something? If you feel tired during the day, if your head hurts sometimes, if you absolutely detest getting out of bed in the morning, if you blink too much, or if you find yourself wanting to drink water sometimes, you’ve got big problems. Just keep calm and drink your grapefruit juice and vinegar. If that doesn’t work, try honey and cinnamon. If that doesn’t work, you’re probably human. Like the common cold, a reasonable cure for that condition has yet to be found. In any case, I started skipping these channels entirely after hearing a very popular TV doctor’s claims that vaccines “shore up your first chakra”.

Somewhat more respectable channels, like Animal Planet, provide you with shows like Fatal Attractions, which you shouldn’t watch while eating, and which still diminish your faith in your own species. This particular series focuses on people who like pets, but aren’t satisfied with your ordinary, garden-variety kind of pet. They prefer to take animals that are used to living in large spaces and feasting upon the raw meat of other animals, and relocate them to their bedrooms or backyards. This generally ends up in gore and death and denial on the part of the owner, who is convinced that owning a large black panther is NOT the reason we all just saw pictures of her bare skull after the thing pretty much scalped her. 

One man’s voice-over, on a video of him training his 12-year old daughter to boss around six full-grown tigers in a circus ring, claimed that his wife shouldn’t be upset because he would never put his child in a dangerous situation. Ah, yes, that fine line between a dangerous situation and a situation involving six, non-restrained, full-grown tigers. I feel silly now for confusing the two when the distinction was so clear. 

Also showcased was the plight of an elderly woman who had taken to feeding wild bears, a situation that went awry when she tried breaking up a fight between a male bear and his cub. I’m all about protecting the innocent from maltreatment, but if a bear wants to teach his cub a lesson and you are, for some maniacal reason, standing in their vicinity, I suggest looking the other way on that one.

Around the time they started in on people who keep bison in their house (at least until the bison kill them, then I imagine the remaining members of the family have the good sense to kick them out), I was considering the merits and possibilities of selective breeding in humans. Then, when I saw that the title of the next episode was “200 Snakes in My Bedroom” followed by “There’s a Crocodile in My Bed”, I remembered why it was important to do well in graduate school and promptly shut off the television so I could get back to work (meaning: go blog about the horrors I just witnessed). Cable, on many levels, was probably a bad choice.     

Masterpiece Monday

Unlike the majority of the population, I am not generally afraid of Mondays. This has become especially true since starting graduate school. When I was an undergraduate and working a part-time job I had weekends off and, therefore, actually knew what they were. In my current life, however, I rarely know what day it is. When you work every single day you tend to quit keeping track, so Monday rolls around and you’re like, “Oh, I have to work today…what is it, Thursday?” Monday must have felt like I was stealing its thunder, because one day it was like, “Thursday?? Do I look like Thursday to you?? Let me show you the difference between me and Thursday, babe.” 

Monday commenced its attack on Sunday night by refusing to allow me any sleep. It wanted me weak for the events to come. I settled in around 11:00, feeling quite proud of myself for getting to bed “early”, and drifted off to sleep with the sound of the heater humming in the background. Thereafter, I was awakened approximately every 30-minutes by bear-like noises issuing from Taylor’s open mouth. This is normal, but can usually be remedied by a swift kick to the leg or by a concentrated effort to roll him on his side. Not this night, said Monday, not this night. I gave up around 2:00 and relocated to the couch. I was trying my best to drift off when, suddenly, my body decided it had about ten problems that needed my immediate attention. My throat began demanding water and rasping out coughs like I was wandering the Sahara, my lower leg got an itch that no scratch would satisfy, I had to pee about 50 times despite my throat’s insistence that it hadn’t been given water for days, my brain wanted to revisit whether graduate school was a legitimate life choice, and the list goes on. The last I remember looking at the clock, it was 3:30 and my alarm was set for 7:00.

I woke up at 10:00.

I had missed three phone calls, received two e-mails around 8:00 requiring immediate responses, had six text messages blinking away on my phone screen, and I could barely get my eyes open. I dashed (sluggishly dashed, really) around the house, trying to get ready. One plus about graduate school is that being late doesn’t generally get you in trouble with anyone but yourself because no one is really keeping track of you, at least not in any strict sense of the word. They pay you for probably half the hours you work, and I assume they sometimes feel guilty for employing this sweatshop technique, so they usually (in my case, at least) let you be as long as you keep the lab running and the data rolling in (which means you can pretty much be located in the lab 20 hours a day, 7 days a week, so who’s really winning, here?). This is one of the few things, I believe, that keep graduate students going. If we were to follow our dreams of quitting and getting a 9 to 5 job instead, where we would get off work before the sun sets and have nothing to do but enjoy life, we’d get written up for showing up to work at noon on a Monday. We’d also have retirement plans, vision insurance, sleep on a regular basis, and a real life. But I digress. 

I blessed Taylor repeatedly when I saw he had left me some coffee, then cursed him repeatedly when I realized we had no coffee creamer (why that is solely his fault, I’m not sure), so I left the house without coffee because I’m not a “real” coffee drinker, I’m a “coffee-with-creamer” coffee drinker. I ran to the store for some dinner items (and coffee creamer) because I always shop in the mornings or else I’ll find some excuse not to do it after work, plus I needed a cake for a fellow graduate student's birthday that day. I had intended to make her one myself, but Monday made sure I was out of eggs, and that I only realized that at 10:30 the night before. Monday also made sure that everyone else was out of eggs, thereby ensuring that 50,000 people were leaving their cart in the middle of every aisle while they thoroughly read the contents of each item on the shelf or chatted with the long lost friend they had discovered in aisle 7. I dodged my way around the store, picked out the cake that appeared to have been sitting there the least number of days, and bought a balloon, which was nearly torn to shreds outside in the wind and rain that had arisen while I shopped. So impressive, Monday. In an attempt to shield my $6.00, super fancy balloon from the wind, I tilted it closer to my body and under my umbrella, thereby spilling the entire contents of the $4.00 latte I had just purchased at the coffee counter inside the grocery store. I loaded my groceries, balloon, and cake into the backseat of my car, all the while getting smashed by the door because the wind kept trying to shut it for (ON) me. I then attempted to sop up the latte now covering the entire front of my body, and headed to the office.

Because the parking lot that I pay $400 per year to park in is approximately an 8-minute walk from my office, I opted to park in the pay-lot that is directly across the street from my building. I pulled in and pushed the ticket button, but nothing happened. I pushed it 5 or 6 more times to see if that would do anything, but it didn’t. By this time, two cars had pulled up behind me and refused to acknowledge my reverse lights or wildly waving hand. I huffed some really bad words and then pushed the button for the parking attendant. He lifted the gate for me and said I’d just have to come to the parking office for a ticket when I was ready to leave. After driving around the lot three times, I gave up and cursed the wretched undergraduates for taking all the spots when they clearly had more time to make an 8-minute walk than I did, and then I parked in the fire lane with my hazards on because I had to go get my ticket. Without a ticket, the gate won’t open, and without a parking spot, I needed the gate to open so I could get the hell out. I ran up the two flights of stairs to the parking office, grabbed my ticket, and ran back down. On my way out, of course, I passed an empty spot. I parked there and decided to deal with the ticket issue later.

I walked once more through the whipping wind and rain with the balloon and cake in tow. I entered the office, 3 hours later than I intended to, covered in coffee and rain, complete with wind-ratted hair, and wished the birthday girl a happy fricking birthday. Then I realized that I had never sent the “Come to our office at noon for birthday cake” e-mail because I was sleeping during the time that I had intended to send it. I made some hasty phone calls and rounded up a few people to come sing the damn birthday song. I then proceeded to take my coat off and sit down for a minute and was rewarded with a large scratch down my arm from a now somehow broken and scraggly nail on my left hand. As you might imagine, there were no fingernail clippers in the office. By this time, my body was airing its grievances about the lack of coffee and breakfast in the form of a dull, thumping headache. I shoved some cake in my mouth and went about the 50-million tasks I could tackle on my 100-million item to-do list for the day. That stuff went okay, or at least no more annoyingly than usual.

 I left the office that night and climbed back up to the parking office, which was – of course – now closed. I wandered around for a bit, feeling furious, and then decided to see what happened when I put my already stamped ticket in the pay machine. It popped up with the new total that I owed ($7.00 for the not even full day of parking, damn thieves) and I was relieved that I’d actually be able to leave. But then the machine “couldn’t read my card”. I think I kicked it before punching the cancel button to get my ticket back. I trekked out to the parking lot, still fighting massive winds and rain (the east coast is on a roll with the weather lately), to the other pay machine in the furthest possible part of the lot. This one accepted my card after my numb hands were finally able to slide it through. I walked back to my car, shoved some important papers into the grocery bags in the back seat, and headed home. I hauled the groceries up the four flights of stairs to our apartment, unpacked them, and realized that one of my important papers was gone, and likely blown halfway to Nebraska in this savage wind. I stalked into the living room, informed Taylor that I didn’t care where I slept tonight so long as it was all by my damn self, and I went to bed. Well, first I made a bunch of cookies and ate half of them. Then I went to bed.

According to a fellow graduate student, other people had worse Mondays than I, so I shouldn’t complain. Monday's lesson for Karen was that socks need to be 100% cotton in order to survive a tango with the microwave. She discovered this after throwing her rain-soaked, non-cotton design socks into her lab's microwave, where they proceeded to catch on fire. Wow, Monday. Wow.