yet another(!) quick post ...

really, this is the last one. it's 5:45 a.m., and the car is all packed minus dogs and two or three smallish bags. couldn't sleep at all last night -- such is the way before a long trip, of course. and naturally, it's pouring rain here; according to the radar, it will be raining for the first, oh ... six hours of the drive. then it looks like a short respite from this massive weather "system" before we'll plunge into some sort of sleet-storm in michigan. yay. it will be fun to take dogs for walks at interstate rest stops in the rain and sleet. it's times like these that i curse myself for never investing in one of those ridiculous umbrella hats.

but i ran across my old friend edward gorey the other day, and thought i'd put up this link to his most well-known, and certainly one of his most macabre works. it's delightfully sinister and the pictures are fantastic. the work i'm talking about (click name to read and see it in its entirety) is the gashlycrumb tinies:
















i love it:
"G is for George smothered under a rug.
H is for Hector done in by a thug."

one more quick post

this is a golden retriever NURSING a kitten. and for whatever reason, i find it both totally hilarious/ridiculous and absolutely adorable. the look on the dog's face is such a golden retriever look: "[sigh] is this what it's come to? OK, sure. take the picture then. and, yes, i'll donate blood for your nephew."

happy holidays (again)!

it's about flipping time, etc.

well, i called to double-check, and it's official: i am officially graduating with my MA today. (although i'm not walking in today's [now over] ceremony ... i didn't do this for my undergrad, either. i don't really see the point, because it doesn't seem like such a big deal to me. maybe if i get a PhD i'll finally "walk").

my MAPC degree is so difficult to explain, i won't try too much here. it was basically an English program, but called "professional communication," having grown out of rhetoric, technical and business writing, and visual design theory. each student in the program is supposed to pick an "emphasis" area, which somehow i managed to ... avoid. or something. i think i'm the only person to graduate from this program without an emphasis.

on a completely unrelated note, tomorrow i'm leaving for two weeks in the tundra of minnesota, with a quick trip to see other family in michigan first. so chances are good this is my last blog post in a good while ... considering all of, i don't know ... my FIVE readers, i'm sure you five won't miss my venting and whining for two weeks+. maybe i will have some spectacular new, refreshing, happier (less bitter?) thoughts to post in the new year.

happy christmas and hanukkah (yes, i know it's over, sorry) and new year to everyone i love.

there are a lot of you. you make my life brighter.
carpe lucis, all of you.

as if i couldn't have told you:

everyone else in the world (other than me) is pregnant. yes, you heard me. everyone. even men.

the teenage (girls 15-19 -- yes, GIRLS) birthrate in the U.S. has risen for the first time since 1991. [see NYT article here. love the way it says this is fueling "the debate about whether the Bush administration’s abstinence-only sexual education efforts are working," LOL.]

yet another good friend of mine (whom i won't name here) is pregnant. this is in addition to my cousin alison (#1 in may), my friend jennifer (#3 in feb), my friend suzy (#2 in july, exactly one year since her #1 was born), and then all the rest of the teenage girls in the U.S., (and not counting all my other friends/relatives who have already been pregnant and given birth and now have children). christina aguilera is pregnant. nicole ritchie is pregnant. j. lo was denying it, but she's also pregnant. jessica alba is pregnant. and now britney "trainwreck-beyond-all-
comprehension-worse-than-a-trainwreck-actually" spears' sister, jamie lynn spears is pregnant.

she's 16. no doubt she'll be part of the 2008 report that teenage pregnancies are STILL UP for a second year in a row. [well, what can you expect from someone named "jamie lynn" from louisiana? that she would get a PhD in astrophysics (or even finish an associates degree at the local vo-tech)? it's come to this: if you want your daughter to be pregnant before she finishes high school, first: be from the deep south, and second: give her two names, one of which is "jamie." nevermind that you live in L.A. now and she's a character on a nickelodeon TV show.]

sigh. SIGH.

[how many of these young women have wanted to have a baby and a family since they were 20?? do they LOVE pregnancy and babies the way i always have? and what single (handsome, successful, not crazy-religious) 30-something man wants to get involved with a woman like me, who is clearly driven crazy by hormones and aspires to be a full-time mom?]

yep. i thought so.

mrah! i love it already.

eagle vs. shark, a new zealand movie featuring none other than jemaine clement, my favorite half (sorry bret!) of the indie-smash-hit duo flight of the conchords. (check out FOC's two most popular/hilarious "music" videos: "most beautiful girl in the room" and "business time" if you haven't heard of FOC and need to be convinced).

anyhoo, eagle vs. shark promises to be equally as hilarious any FOC skit, sort of like napolean dynamite 15 years later and in new zealand (where they say "party" like "pahtee" and "girlfriend" like "gaelfrind"). two of the film's taglines are "falling in love was never so ... awkward," and "there's someone for everyone ... apparently." :)

here's the trailer, which is wonderful in itself. keep your eyes out for the little girl dancing toward the end, and the very last lines, which jemaine says in a phone booth (the best):

dear family and friends,

first: happy holidays to everyone!!!

wow! it seems like only a few years ago i was stuck in a dead-end relationship with a self-confessed asshole (one in a series!), trudging aimlessly through a totally stupid, pointless (neverending) MA program, and now i'm a stay-at-home mom married to a gorgeous, patient, adoring billionaire with YET ANOTHER baby on the way! this year we taught the twins french during the two months we spent in monaco on the yacht, and those "lean" times when i racked up credit card debt and chain-smoked my evenings away reading escapist fiction while contemplating the least-painful-to-my-family way to commit suicide seem like such a distant memory!

i know, a lot of you thought: sylvia will never get her life together and be an adult, doing grown-up things like paying a mortgage, having a savings account with money IN IT, and taking vacations that don't involve driving 12+ hours and a tent. but boy how time can change things, huh? i know some of you specifically asked my parents and close friends in hushed whispers, "is sylvia emotionally/psychologically retarded? you can tell us. nevermind that our adult children/friends are married with kids and have professional jobs that give bonuses! we just want to help. does sylvia hate men, is that it? does she WANT to be single and childless forever?? does she know SHE'S 30-YEARS-OLD?"

hahaha! i can laugh at all of that now! because i'm pregnant again and life is so perfect! a man i truly loved and adored felt THE SAME WAY BACK and went so far as to propose marriage -- something i used to think only happened TO EVERY SINGLE OTHER GIRLFRIEND OF MINE and not me. of course, because we were so in love and wanted kids so much, it was only a few months before the twins arrived and so for a whole year i was too busy to even send a nice christmas letter -- my apologies! (kids ARE a handful, huh parents??) so i'm making up for it now; better late than never!

it's crazy to think that only a few years ago i was living on less than $30,000 a year with ridiculous debt and two dogs and two cats, in a backwoods-redneck town (in an illiterate, bible-thumping southern state), eating cashews for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and spending every single friday night going to the movies with an ex-boyfriend who i was still in love with, but LOL, right?? it's so funny to think i used to rent a run-down A-frame duplex without a single piece of "new" furniture and a rotting wooden bathroom floor, just a half-mile away from a sewage-treatment facility that made my whole street smell like human feces three nights a week, haha!

to think i once spent a friday afternoon browsing through various sperm banks online, then crying for six hours straight before i begged an ex-BF to try again with me! :) oh, those were the times, weren't they, lol??

ok, well, i better get going now, the cook's not going to supervise herself making a five-course meal in the kitchen, and i think the maid is vacuuming a little too loudly in the east wing! we'll see some of you over the holidays, but i wish to extend an invitation to everyone to come visit us at any of our houses next year! the hamptons are prettiest in the summer, but lately they're so crowded we're pretty much living in the mediterranean on the boat -- winters we hop around a bit (we do love snow in moderation!), but are mostly at our south african vineyard. (i know, who would think i have time between all the kids and the husband to teach english classes and hold HIV+ babies in developing nations?? but somehow i MAKE the time.)

yours with absolute success and happiness dripping from every pore in my body,
:) sylvia
xoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxo!

one more reason women are cool

as if you didn't know women were fantastically cooler, more evolved, and more wonderful overall than (most) men. [yep, i'm in kind of an anti-man mood ... i could go on and on in this vein ... but won't. for now.]

check out this CNN article, "Evolution keeps pregnant women upright." i guess it never occurred to me that balancing all that extra weight in front had to be nothing short of miraculous, but it's not a miracle: it's evolution.

sweet lulu!

ahhhhck. woke up this morning at 5:30 a.m. to overwhelming odor of EXTREMELY PUNGENT dog urine. as it turns out, it was not a fresh nightmare involving me trapped in vat of dog urine, but was instead the reality of a giant puddle of it soaking into ... yes, the pillow and bedclothes just inches from my face. "oh, lulu," i thought of my beagle [still ON THE BED], "you little shit. just when you've been doing so well making it all night without emptying your bladder ..." [although in the past she has generally done this in a far corner of the upstairs, never ON BED, much less the pillow.]

just when i was getting ready to drag her roughly downstairs and outside, i noticed she was heaving. like she was going to puke. on the bed. usually when a dog starts doing the puke motions, i grab said dog and we rush (likewise) outside, but my first thought was, "well, the bed's already covered in pee, why freak her out?"

ah, good instinct there. my poor baby's "puking" was actually mass volumes of clear saliva, and i realized that she was suddenly in the middle of a scary dog seizure, right there on the bed.

beagles, i learned earlier this fall when she had her first big seizure [where we rushed to the vet and i was sobbing and holding her while driving because i thought she was DYING], are very prone to epilepsy. it usually sets in between 1-3 years of age. lulu is 2.

dogs usually lose bladder/bowel (i guess i got lucky with the latter there this morning) control as the seizure starts, and the giant flood of saliva comes before and during the seizure itself. often dogs are blind during seizures and this can last for awhile afterwards (although this doesn't seem to be the case with my lulu).

so, this morning at 5:30 on the foot of the bed, i just petted her and loved her and kissed her warm head and told her over and over she was a "good girl" while she convulsed, her limbs frighteningly rigid, her eyes bugged out, and with the saliva continuing to pour out from her mouth. she slowly stopped shaking, and finally her little body started relaxing. my poor girl.

i took both dogs outside and gave them a biscuit, then gave lulu one of the doggie valium the vet gave me after her previous seizure. when they came inside, both dogs dozed in the crate, and now they're on the sofa [yes, that's the kind of pet owner i am] compulsively licking themselves, one of their favorite activities. [i'm wondering if she didn't spit out the valium or something; shouldn't she be SOUND ASLEEP instead of chewing her own butt?]

[big sigh.] lulu's back to normal and will cuddle up with booker here soon. the bedclothes have finished their wash cycle. i have grading. and then traffic court later this afternoon [ahem.] just another day in the life ...

p.s. incidentally, the beagle in the pic is not lulu, but looks STARTLINGLY similar. i need to get my own photos on the computer, i know ... and aside from the seizures, the slow potty training, her skittishness around strangers, etc., she is such a snuggly, wonderful dog -- sweet as a dog can be. she snores like an old man. she actually hugs me back.

damn them all

that's my attitude this morning toward the fraternities and sororities of the universe.

a freshman (not one of mine, holyshitthankgod, not one of mine) here died this weekend of alcohol poisoning at his off-campus frat house. his name was ben sprague. (click here for the story).

his blood alcohol level was .379, apparently well over the .35-coma level. his "friends" found him on a futon in the frat's living room sunday morning. fucking stupid kids.

i listened to two separate persuasive speeches in the last few weeks from young sorority girls on the dangers of alcohol in college, and now this senseless death. maybe my southern good-ol-boy school will finally wise up about politely looking the other way as the student body carouses drunkenly through tailgating and football games, "rush" week, and spring break booze cruises. perhaps parents who silently condone binge drinking as a part of the college tradition will snap out of it.

drinking at obscene levels aside, ben was the seventh student to die this fall. yes, the SEVENTH. it has been a bad year all around. it's like someone put some "Use Poor Judgment" elixir in the town's water supply or something. god knows i've made some bad decisions this fall, too.

but at least my family isn't going to have the worst christmas of their lives in a few weeks. and at least all of my students will make it home safely for the holidays. where they will be held by their parents fiercely and with a wild kind of love to (hopefully) sustain them through a brighter spring term, where we all make better decisions.

ahhhhhhh ....

done. done. and done.

i just taught my last class of the semester, hallelujah.

as for the grading of the zillions of items just completed or re-written within the last week:
not done. not close. and jesus i just want to sleep.

poor students, they still have finals for a week. my class itself doesn't have a final, so i get to have a whole week of grading and doing final grades, and also grading, and emails (damn the emails!), and then some more grading. but at least no classes to teach, thank christ.

i'd like to say something beautiful and moving here about how teaching this semester has been ... but i'm too tired right now. maybe another day. i will say how lucky i am to have the best job in the world ... i love it, and i love my students so much. how many people feel that way about their jobs? not many, i know. i didn't love my last job in marketing by any stretch of the imagination.

anyhoo, i'm going to celebrate now by enjoying a (hopefully) peaceful nap with the dogs upstairs in bed. maybe just a couple sudoku ...

questions i have no answers to

a colleague of mine is trying to put together a book of "women's journeys," and has asked if i'd be willing to answer some questions for her. she added that when it's published and she's on ellen or oprah, she'll give me credit. i suspect her book might be light years away from both publication and a subsequent press tour, but i agreed to answer her questions.

so, here they are, staring at me (for over a week now), and what can i say? everything i think of sounds so goddamn trite, i can't stand it. why aren't there some easy ones, like "what are your dogs doing RIGHT NOW?" (playing tug of war with a dirty towel in the yard). or: "why did you and your last boyfriend break-up?" (nevermind).

anyway, here they are. someone please tell me what to say.

1. Please describe one of the most important choices that you have made in your life.

2. What tools do you use to guide you in your decision-making process?

3. If a young woman came to you and asked advice for her future, what would you tell her?

4. What person has made a significant difference in your life and why?

5. In what ways would you like to influence others?

homesick ...

i'm super excited about the movie juno. it looks like this year's little miss sunshine, but with a glorious, snowy, minnesota twist (and michael cera. i am in love with him). already this film is getting stellar reviews, and hopefully will actually come to theaters in my backwoods vicinity.

and, on top of what appears to be a charming movie, there's the juno soundtrack, which, if the trailer is anything to go off of, features lots of charming acoustic-indie guitar songs, as well as some retro favorites (see the link for a complete list).

last weekend minnesota had a little blizzard. my folks there, and many others, hunkered down with a fire in the fireplace, and later powered up the snowblowers for the first time this season. i just stared out my south carolina patio doors at the dead trees and dead grass and became profoundly nostalgic for snow. and home.

then this morning i found this at youtube. a semi-famous moldy peaches song (many of juno's songs are originals by kimya dawson, from MP). it's someone's "home video," but it's beautiful and hit me in all the right places today:

"anyone else but you"

meet sharon

my new roommate. sharon lives in the bathroom. she has been living there for awhile now, sometimes in the tub, sometimes on the floor around the toilet. sometime a little too close to my hairdryer for comfort (down sharon! your hair looks fab! get away from my damn hairdryer, please. i mean it. please.).

this was one of THOSE mornings, where hormones must be up to no good (this rachael yamagata song at youtube, replete with bizarre/stupid video montage, made me cry and cry), and coupled with general fatigue i was very tempted by to do the whole fetal ball thing in the shower. usually this shower position is accompanied by a raging alcohol-induced headache, but since i haven't been (praise jesus. i am too old) hungover in forever, the sitting-down-in-the-shower generally means i REALLY do not want to face the day, the masses, the email reply to yet another girlfriend who's having baby number 2 next summer, the whole living-life-normally-deal.

but then sharon was there! creeping away from me (sharon, i swear, i'm not washing you down the drain, why are you running from the shampoo? don't be like that, please.) and reminding me: "hey, don't start your day sitting in your bathtub with the shower water getting cold! be a trooper! i might bite your goddamn face [sharon's kind of vulgar] if you curl up down here!" and then, "see, look, i'm heading over to the hairdryer ... don't sit down or you're going to have to fight me for it when you get out."

thanks, shar. i made it. another day dawns.

a banana republic manager in an alternate universe

[four new men have recently come forward to admit sexual "encounters" with senator larry craig (R-ID).]

dear senator larry craig,

oh, larry. i really do feel for you. and your wife. (because she has totally known "all along," even if you do manage to [somehow] have sex from time to time).

if you hadn't been raised somehow to equate homosexuality with evil, and if you hadn't been too ashamed of your feelings for men, and if you hadn't hidden those "shameful" urges from everyone and then went on to become active in a political party that talks about everything in absolutes (heaven and hell, right and wrong, you're with us or against us) ... you might've really had an interesting, fun, relaxed, entertaining life just being a gay man.

think of how liberating, larry! you could have sex with men ALL the time and the only people who would give a shit would be closed-minded assholes that you don't care about anyway! you could own DVDs of every musical ever made and not care what anyone thinks. you could spend a whole weekend in europe, just shoe shopping, damn them all. you could've been an awesome gay senator! you could enjoy wearing scarves and throwing fabulous parties with tasteful wine and desserts. you could belt out britney and cristina at karaoke bars and LOVE IT.

or you could've done anything else, all stereotypes aside. (yes, you could still be in the NRA, seriously).

but instead, you chose your path as republican senator, as a straight man. and because you can only run so hard for so long from who you really are in your heart, you have had lapses. and now everyone knows about them, not just the minneapolis airport one.

but larry, there's still hope! that's right! it's never too late to admit the truth. and it's not like you've committed a crime (men's room incident aside) by being gay for christ's sake. think of the new life you could enjoy when you're free to be who you are! there's so much living left to do. to quote one of my favorite starbucks "the way i see it" cups (#43), by writer armistead maupin:

My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short.

yours sincerely,
:) sylvia

speaking of horses ... water-horses, i mean

this is too darling not to share. thanks to bridget for the link. :)

previously, i always wanted my own panda family, but now i think i might have to include a hippo to my future menagerie. i think if my hippo was anything like jessica, she would get along splendidly with the two cats, two dogs, the small polar bear (i want one of these, too), and the panda family.