It’s gonna be a long race to 11/2012

Saw my first pro-bachmann bumper sticker today.

Also my posts these days are so short I’d probabaly be better off tweeting

 

movements

As part of the poetry class I’m taking, I was looking at various books of poetry I have on my bookshelves and stumbled across this piece by Marge Piercy, which seems to fit the times, although it was published in 1991.

 

Snap crackle pop

I broke out of the office at lunchtime to go to my fave coffee shop and as I was walking I felt as if I was walking through a giant bowl of rice crispies: snap crackle pop. It was all the ice on the trees and street signs melting and popping off. Beautiful. Hoping my Midwest friends dig out soon

 

No really

I am planning to do better by this blog this year. No, really. It’s my resolution, or part of one.  But, based on something I read on some blog a few years back (sorry no linkage-can’t remember who you are), I don’t really start my resolutions until February.
January is too hectic: putting away Christmas decorations, LB’s birthday, mr. jolt is always away at the beginning of January (often missing LB’s birthday, curse you AALS annual conference!) Tell me, how do all those, “I will only have one glass of wine each evening and I will get up early and do a half hour on the treadmill three mornings a week” resolutions supposed to work when one is doing the single parenting thing for a week. They don’t work, that’s what.
So, January is where I test things out so that come February I am ready, damn it, ready to roll.
No really.

Okay, sometimes by February I’ve decided my resolutions are crap, but I’m hoping not this year.
One: get back into writing (check, signed up for poetry course and just submitted poem about an hour ago, probably the first poem I’ve written in 10 years)
Two: get into shape, no really (check, um okay, no, not really, but movement is good)
Three: get organized: (check, um no, okay, well, my plan was to get as organized as possible in January so that in February I could concentrate on One and Two. Not going so well. I am surrounded by pack rats. I am being THWARTED.
Anyway,
Four: Do better with this blog. No, really. Since last year I wrote TWELVE posts (half of those in March) that shouldn’t be a hard post to pass.
Fingers crossed – wish me luck.

 

Moving

As some of my regulars (not that there is anything here regularly to regularly read of late) already know, the jolt family is moving. Rather than to some distant locale, we decided to say ‘fuck it’ to the perennially anxiety-inducing game of “will we make a lateral move to some other state this year” we’d been playing for the last six years and simply move to a better school district near here.   While we anticipated a six month to year long search for something “different”, we fell in love with the second place we looked at.  Which meant we’ve spent the last six weeks frantically prepping our current house to sell & putting it on the market.   My current house has never been this clean.  It helps that four-five nights of baseball and tball each week mean that we are never home to get it dirty. 

Upon seeing the new place, LB told me that when he gets married that mr. jolt and I will have to move because he plans to live there FOREVER.  Which I take as a vote of confidence.   He also said that he wants to make the speeches at the “grand opening”.  

Here is a snippet from the property – if you want more pictures, send me an email & I’ll send them to you.

I’ll probably continue to be a bad negligent  blogger for a few more weeks and then I should be able to post deep thoughts that I have drafted while looking at this view of the creek that runs behind the new place.  Have a great weekend everyone!

 

Legal Tip of the Day: Please Read Your Documents

If someone sent one a draft document that contained a paragraph that read something like “blah blah [ADD DATE] blah blah blah [ADD DESCRIPTION X]” one could safely assume that the date and description need to be added.  If one was unsure, one could ask the drafter.  I am baffled and alarmed when I get a partially executed contract, signed by two parties, that still contains provisions with bracketed requests for additional information.  Yes, two parties signed a contract that does not actually contain the information, but still has brackets stating things like “ADD DATE HERE”.  Your tax dollars at work folks (both parties that signed are government entities).

Read the contract.  Please.

 

Yippee!

mr. jolt received official notice yesterday that, effective July 1st, he is a TENURED faculty member.

wOOt!!

 

It’s official

I have developed a reputation in my office as an intimidating militant feminist. This development makes me laugh because when I read my favorite feminist blogs and see the various efforts many make on a daily basis the concept that I am anything approaching militant or intimidating is absurd. What was the capstone in my qualifying to this elite cadre of scary ladies? I made a stink about the fact that only women were invited to a recent baby shower in our office and did not confine said stink to merely carping quietly to my peers.

Having cemented the reputation is kind of freeing, you know? They ain’t seen nothing yet.

 

Fuck off Logan Jenkins

In response to this horror  of an op-ed, Melissa McEwan wrote this.   To which I say, Yes, Melissa, yes!

 I ran a lot as a young teen, ran the mile in junior high and briefly flirted with being on the cross-country team in high school; in any event, I ran.  During the schoolyear, I’d run in the morning.    I stopped running after my sophomore year in high school after a foggy morning experience that still leaves me shaking when I think about it.

We lived in a classic northern California subdivision, wide streets, two car garages, palm trees mixing with live oaks along the sidewalks, etc., etc.  I was running along the sidewalk along the street, probably around 6am.  It was barely light, and foggy.  The fog was brighter than the sky.  As I neared the end of my run, a  pickup truck was coming the other way towards me.  It began to slow.  Shortly after I ran past it stopped then pulled a U turn in the middle of the street and began to follow me slowly about 50 feet behind me.  I had begun hyperawareness after it had slowed, and when it turned around I went into hyperfreak mode, thinking, “shit, shit, shit, shit”.  I was still running at a jog trying to think fast as it continued to follow me.   I saw a turn off ahead, which I knew to be a cul de sac, Sleepy Hollow Court.  Aha, I thought, I’ll turn there and he’ll think I’m going home because it is only a half block long so no one out for a run would otherwise turn there, right?

 So I did, ran up the cul de sac and hid behind a pine tree, half afraid that I’d made “the wrong decision” because I would now be trapped in the cul de sac if followed.  In my hyperfreak mode I never once thought to bang on a door of the dozen houses I passed, it was too early, people were still asleep. I was alone.  Also, I was simultaneously worried about being labeled a hysteric.  Yes, I was completely terrified and yet at the same time worried about embarrassing myself.  I waited, breathing heavy, for over 15 minutes, terrified that if I left too soon, the truck would still be waiting out on the main drive through the subdivision.  Finally, I left, walking, figuring I’d save energy if I saw the truck again and needed to sprint for home.

 I was lucky, the truck was gone.  Who knows what the driver’s intent was, perhaps they were only lost.  I don’t care.

 I never ran alone in the morning again until I was in my 20s, living in Manhattan, and even then, vast portions of the year I would not run in the morning because it was dark out.  Ten fucking years of less exercise because of one scary event.  Ten fucking years of less FREEDOM because of one scary event.

 Do NOT fucking tell women where and when they can run.  We’ve already internalized it.  We’ve already endured the comments on the street, on the trail, wherever we walk or run by.  We’ve already limited our choices to our own comfort level based on experience and the ever present voice of “WARNING, WARNING you could be next.”  We’ve already turned down the ipods to make sure we can hear any footsteps behind us.  We’ve already

 DO NOT fucking victim blame.  Fuck Off Logan Jenkins.  You just have no FUCKING idea what you are talking about.

 

School play

Should I take it as a comment on LB’s personality that his role inthe school play is a mule?

It would be accurate.