Job available-- but am I?

A job I may be quite qualified came open this week.  It pays substantially more and would involve more projects and public relations, and is at my current institution.  Should I apply knowing there's a chance that J might get a job soon?

But haven't I been asking myself that for the past three years?  I have held myself back in my current job by riding my hopes on another person.  And now that it (J's job) may actually happen soon, there's this job. That I would be silly not to go for.

But once again, I will have to bite my tongue and let another opportunity  pass away.  Who knows when J will get a job?   He will be graduating mid-May, but so far we have no bites.  I say "we", but it's starting to grate on me*.  I don't have anything to do with this.  I am completely at the whim of someone else's career.

It's not a good time to be angry, but I am.  I am my own person and I am good at my job, but I am losing myself in his job search.  Even at work, now that my boss knows he's graduating, it is assumed that we're leaving and I'm being treated differently.  I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THIS. This would have been easier if he wasn't a student, and I wouldn't have had to tell anyone what was happening.  But with working with faculty... they were going to find out.  Now I'm awash in uncertainty not only in my own mind, but coming from those around me.

So, how can I apply for this job and still feel honest?  I don't want to not try, and then six months down the road J still doesn't have a job.  A month ago that thought wouldn't' have even crossed my mind, but who are we kidding?  The economy sucks and no one has contacted him about any of his applications.  It doesn't matter how talented/skilled/educated you are right now.  We could be looking at a long, dark haul.

Can anyone understand why trying to get a new job, especially in the same institution, would be a bad idea right now?  Even if I got it, if we had to move less than a year later, I would be leaving a bad reputation at a place I would have been remembered fondly, if only I hadn't wasted their time.  Plus, it's probably gotten around that J is graduating, so they won't even consider me.  Who would?  I wouldn't.

It's an endless fucking cycle of self-effacement, obnoxious martyrdom and failure.  Failure before I can even try.  I am just so tired of waiting.

*J isn't grating on me. He is wonderful and supportive and working really hard.

The scale of opportunity

More blog-searching today (and somehow this is a productive day at work) and I found a "trailing spouse" blog, albeit an expat* one.  She doesn't like the term trailing spouse either**, but her blog is endlessly positive:

As a trailing spouse, identity can be a tough thing (because if you're like me, that last thing you want to be called is a "trailing spouse"). But if the career you had before isn't going to work out abroad (or you lose yours via a layoff like me), maybe there's something else you'd love to do and try. Maybe, in fact, this is your big opportunity for that something you used to put on hold. 

Chantal at One Big Yodel 

I don't want my opportunity, a positive thing, tinged with the fact that I only have it because it's the consolation prize for having no control***.  Here's my internalized misogyny (it's just popping up way too much this week) again, in that I can't see my worth if I didn't come to it myself, as if taking that opportunity is just backsliding into a dependent female role. I don't, however, feel this way when it comes to education.  If J was working and I was going back to school or taking classes in whatever field I settle on, that feels ok. But if it's to start an Etsy or make Halloween costumes (traditionally female pursuits) it's not.  See what I did there?  Thanks world.  You've made me a woman-hater.

How do I cleanse my mind of these tendencies?  I feel fucked all-around.  And I haven't even touched upon the stink of privilege in all this.

*I'm more interested in domestic relocation.
**Yeah, I changed my title again, because no one's going to find this blog otherwise.
***I'm speaking for myself, not Chantal.  She has her shit together.

Glee: Yer Doin It Rong

I'm a little late saying anything about last week's Valentine's Day episode of Glee. Not that anyone was on tenterhooks waiting on my grand decree...

Ashley Fink (Lauren Zizes) in the middle, with Chris Colfer and Amber Riley. Image from Wetpaint

I was a huge Glee fan during the first season, because they pushed some boundaries and introduced more diverse characters*.  Not as good as Huge, but still pretty dern good.  Sure, they did some questionable stuff, but how could you stay mad at a show with gay teenagers, ambiguous sexuality, plus size ladies, several differently-abled characters, teen pregnancy realism (sort of) and unbridled female determination?  Yeah, the second season turned around and slushied all of that (fat phobia, genderqueer hate, misogyny, slut-shaming).  Ok, perhaps that existed the whole time, but it felt like an envelope was being pushed right? Maybe just a small envelope?

Sometimes I find it mind-boggling how some jokes get through without someone calling foul, but entire plotlines? This episode found Puck, the bad-boy character, suddenly falling in love with the newest Glee-member, Lauren Zizes (played by Ashely Fink, from Huge!!). She's been a pretty fantastic recurring character though the show's run, but unfortunately the show's creators aren't content with her being an awesome, mouthy wrestler-lady, they have to always film her eating (close-up on her mouth) and milk the fat jokes for all they're worth.  They brought her on as a main cast member, but so far have made everything about her weight.

The show starts with Puck staring at Lauren while a voiceover says, "You can't choose who you fall in love with."  Really? That's how you're going to start this?  Would they have used that line if he was staring at Quinn?  First "ugh".

Lauren gets a main part in this episode, where Puck decides he wants her after she tells him she doesn't want him.  I immediately thought, is this supposed to be an interesting plot because he wouldn't normally go out with a fat girl?**  I felt really bad making that connection., but not so fast, brain-- he goes on to tell her several times he likes her because of her curves and body, even once saying he likes her despite her curves.  And then he serenades her in the choir room in front of the whole Glee Club-- with "Fat Bottomed Girls" by Queen.  I really liked this song until this episode.  The whole club was clapping along and having a great time, while Lauren sat silently.

The song ends and she tells him, "That was the first time anyone ever sang me a love song. And it made me feel like crap".  Ok, maybe someone will learn a lesson: like someone for who they are, not for their body type.  Don't reduce a person to a body part.  Don't tell someone they're attractive despite something you don't like.  Don't make your attraction sound like a kink (unless you're just going for some kinky fun times, of course).  They end up on a date by the end, but you never hear Puck say that he understands that she wants to be loved for who she is, not because he's suddenly curious about big beautiful ladies.

Fink peeking at other Huge cast members. Really, if you haven't watched this excellent, short-lived show, do so now.

Leslie at Two Whole Cakes (lovely blog) saw the song as awesome and empowering, and I'm glad that some good can come out of this episode that was played so cheaply for fat-laughs.  But I saw it as sexual tourism, not to another country, but another body type.  He's wowed by her body and the way she rejects him, and that just doesn't stack up very romantically in my mind.  He plys her constantly with food.  He assumes she doesn't want to go out with him because "guys like [him]" have hurt her before.  Ugh ugh ugh.  I wish some lesson had been learned, and that we don't have to wonder if Lauren is always wondering if he loves her as a person or a body.  But Glee isn't great on lessons, really. My favorite quote EVER about Glee's shortcomings is from Satah at This Ain't Living: 
SUGGESTED AD CAMPAIGN FOR GLEE: remember that one time you liked what we did? We take it back!

I've obviously been thinking about this awful episode too much, and should not be expending my valuable (limited?) thought resources on a teen musical dram-edy.  I want more diversity on TV where the character's non-white/hetero/thin/cis identity is NOT all the writers can think of.

And this is what he could have sung and it wouldn't have been as bad, but still pushing it:

*If I use any terms that are not ok, PLEASE TELL ME.  I'm not always sure, and I try to look everything up and get the terms right.  I'm not asking for a 101, just a helpful nudge.
**Don't think I'm fat-hating by saying that. In the context of the episode, with the writer's obsession about her weight/eating food, it's obvious that's the direction they're taking. And in 2011, it's just sad that this is still how TV works.

Rec letter sent!

J. hid in our room after work yesterday while I had some friends over for craft night.  It's something I used to do years ago, and I've restarted it.  Weekly on Wednesdays, people come over with whatever they're working on and sit around and talk.  I've met some new friends this way, and it gives me an excuse to sit down and wheedle on something (because it's written down! That makes it more important).  There was one odd bird who came with one of my friends, who was very smart and funny, but kept making negative blanket statements about Southerners and the South in general.  Yeah, we've got some fucked-up stuff going on down here, but we're not all shitty politicians.  She also made mean-spirited comments about Southerner's pride in their hospitality*, and that people are just as hospitable in the North (she's from a New England state).  I don't think I've ever heard anyone say Northerner's aren't hospitable, we just put a focus on hospitality (I do) and that helps us keep our mind on it.  I mean, I had just told her I'm from a very southern state, and she says, "I just hate the South".  Well, um, ok.  Do you want another drink?

It was so blatant that I didn't get mad about it, just really confused at why someone I didn't know would come into my home and say mean things about our colleges and entire citizenry.  Maybe I was rubbed the wrong way when she dissed a college I would have gone to had I been able to afford it (arguably the best liberal arts school in this part of the country).  I caught myself thinking, "So, this is the exact person people are referring to when they say Northerners are rude!  Maybe they meant, 'There's one particular Northerner that's gonna rub you the wrong way, watch out!'"  Yeah, just that one person. Other than her inexplicable outbursts about how awful we all were for living in this part of the country, she was a fun person.  And yet, I'm not looking forward to being insulted again while serving wine and opening my home to someone. The Southern Hospitality stops right there, darlin'.

RIP Rue

Really, a pride in hospitality is about the only thing that ties me to my Southern heritage.  I don't go for "southern pride" or whatever, or feel an urge to go back to where I came from, but I guess it's like when someone says something bad about your sister, and maybe it's true, but only you get to diss your sister. She's yours!  Yeah, there are lots of bigots in the South, and they're less shy about being loud about it.  But when you're sitting in a room with a bunch of nice people in Arkansas, don't say everyone from Arkansas is bad.  Really, manners, people.

Anyway, REC LETTERS!!  Once I got everyone out of the house, J. crept out from his hidey-hole and said his advisor sent him and email, and the letters were sent.  The explanation for the "emergencies" that may have messed up my husband's job prospects did not seem to equal a month of flakiness.  Hopefully he's back in the running for a few things and this doesn't count against him.  That was a good end to the day.

I've been sleeping very badly for the past four days.  It's probably the crazy sleeping schedule I've had during the winter holiday, but that still doesn't make sense. When I get into bed and decide to sleep, I always go to sleep-- so that's not the problem.  I've just been waking up in the middle of the night for no good reason, then not fully sleeping til I have to wake up.  J. even went to sleep the same time as me (it's been hard for him lately to turn his mind off for a decent bedtime).  However, when I did my middle-of-the-night sudden wake-up, he wasn't in bed and I found him fallen asleep in front of his computer on the couch.  The look on his face when I found him was so sad-- he just couldn't sleep at normal times anymore.

I'm going to try taking melatonin for a few days until I start sleeping normally** and suggest he try it too.  He's resistant, and that's fine, but the stress of writing and jobs and flaky advisors is having a bad effect on his body.  I only wish taking a hippie sleeping pill for a few days would actually fix the problem.

Speaking of my body being crazy, I finally figured out why I got so sick after New Year's: alcohol isn't a raw food, thus it doesn't react well with raw foods. In other words, there was nothing to soak up the little alcohol I had to drink.  Healthy + Unhealthy did not cancel each other out.  Beware!

*Just because we're proud of our hospitality doesn't mean we've got a monopoly on it. Geez, people.
**I've been eating well, exercising, not eating chocolate after dinner.

Is this a lady problem?

You know you have a problem, but no words to describe it.  Time goes by, and you tell yourself it's all in your head.  Then, when someone else says they have the same problem, thus validating it, you feel better! The problem is still there, but now you know you're not crazy.  This is for all the commenters who have assured me I"m not crazy. And I do feel a whole lot better.

Now I just need to find more blogs about domestic movers!  If I drop everything to follow my husband to Iowa, it's not quite the same as going to Borneo or something. At least with an international move, I'll have an air of worldliness and perhaps a new language.  No offense to Iowa, but you understand?  You take away the glamor of international travel (yeah, yeah, I'm reading all about that glamor) and it's just me schlepping around without a job.  Help prove me wrong! Where are you guys?

Traveling Spouse!

It was staring us in the face!  You're always an accompanying spouse (they are too), a trailing spouse sounds fucking dreary, but if you are going from one place to another, you are a TRAVELING SPOUSE. What bad connotations does that have?  I just started reading Robin Pascoe's Culture Shock this morning, and when she said "traveling wife", it just clicked (after crossing out "wife" and adding in "spouse").

I'm reading the 1992 version, and though there's a 2000 edition, I am still amazed that in this day and age, wives are still the majority in traveling "with".  What is with this frigging world?  I know I'd still have issues with my situation, but if it wasn't so common for the woman to be accompanying, I think I'd feel less neurotic about it.  Let's all take a moment and hope/pray really hard that our children/our friends' children will have to look back on us and wonder why we were all so weird, divided and unequal.  I want them to squint in frustration trying to understand the things we did and the world we had to live through.

But, anyway, I am happy with traveling spouse.  But should we take a poll?  I've added one on the right, so have at it.  Hopefully there are as many readers as there are choices.

What will my 2:30 feel like? The second shift and my ABD

I wanted to start this post with a horrible commercial that pops up on Hulu: 5-hour Energy. The "busy moms" version to be specific.  I hate the commercials for obvious reasons (they're commercials) but this one rubs my eyebrows the wrong way.  The woman gets home from work with grocery bags, and says she needs energy for her second job (kids, home, husband).  Her husband has suggested she take energy shots to stay peppy, and we see him sitting on the couch reading the paper (ostensibly after work also?).  Does he have a second job? It doesn't look like it. Why does she have a second job and he's maxin' and relaxin'?

The Husband is thinking about not teaching a class next semester, in order to focus on his thesis.  Excellent! He is ABD (all but dissertation). Though this will be the first time he's ever done this, so I'm horrified at the great expanses of time ahead of him.  Do I love him? Do I admire him? Do I believe in him? Yes, yes and yes. Do I believe he is incredibly susceptible to the call of the internet, Oh Great Time Suck? Big yes.  He is on his laptop from the time he gets up till the time he goes to bed. Now that he has an iPhone, he reads his news in bed*.  I'm looking around on the internet for the program that locks you out of your favorite sites for blocks of time, but I can't summon the proper keywords. Hell, I could use it too.

WARNING: Rant alert!

He wastes so much time on the internet! He claims he is looking at his RSS to see if jobs have popped up, but it really looks like he's reading the Times or webcomics or some other completely non-job/science related piece of animated cat crap**.  On the days where I can fully take care of the house and he can go off and focus solely on his work, I still have to shove him out of the house and tell him to stop reading LifeHacker.  And he acts hurt when I do this.  The truth is, he has tried to blame me for him not getting enough work done, and I say BULLSHIT to that.  That has hurt my feelings more than anything he has ever done to me.***  So when I make him breakfast, tell him I'll take care of things at home, even sometimes offer to make him a little lunch so he doesn't have to interrupt his writing and he is still futzing on the internet and acting slighted when I tell him he really needs to get going, it drives me insane.  I start thinking I am overreacting. When really I just want to get the hell out of this town, my shitty job, and any chance he has to think that I am the one who is holding all this up.  Hello? I'm holding someone's life up? I'm in the way? Oh no you didn't.

/end rant

Him not teaching means no income on his side.  He has considerable savings, so we won't go poor, but I'll still be the only one bringing in income.  He'll be completely at his own leisure to get things done, and I'll still be working my two jobs and shouldered with the responsibility for income.  He'll be sipping coffee all day and I'll still be coming home to cleaning.  I'm getting upset just writing about this.

I need to talk to him. Like, tonight. We need to figure out how long he can do this. I'm saying a semester, and then we'd better be out of here.  He'll need to make hours for himself, and he will need to make a schedule for working and not surf.  He doesn't need to make our living room couch his office, because that is my space too.  If he is working, he needs to be somewhere he can close a door.  If he is not working, he needs to spend less time on the internet in the first place.  Mostly because if he is not working, he really should be helping out around the house more.

For myself, I am going to stop using the internet so much at home. I'm going to clear a space for my laptop, put it there and turn it off.  We are eating at the table, no more struggling to find something good to watch during meals and settling with Running Wilde. That's a really terrible show, which is a shame.  I need to re-direct the white-hot ire I am feeling right now from my husband (who really is my favorite person in the world) to the internet.  So I don't go home and smash his computer and lock him in a room.

I am going to get a drink first, though.

*Not allowed to use the iPhone in bed unless we're doing something together. It's distracting for me to have that stuff in the bedroom. It's where I sleep!
**Ok, I love that stuff. But in its place.
***He never hurts my feelings, so I guess it's not really that bad.

Floating in space

I wrote a pretty harsh post about the husband's job search, and for some reason forgot to post.  I just got a really sweet email from him, apropos of nothing. It made me remember the hate-rant, and thank god I didn't publish it.  I know this thing is anonymous, but it still would have been wrong.  He really does love me as hard as a person can.  And likewise.

Don't get excited!

I ran into an old classmate/friend/colleague on Saturday visiting town.  Putting two and two together, I realized she lived very close to NewTownX.  She was really enthusiastic about it, and it was good to know if we moved there, I would at least know one person.  But I know not to get too excited about it. The application hasn't even been sent in.

I am bugging him gently but not often.  Never accusing.  Using my super-supportive voice.  He's been doing more work lately, acting more like what I imagine a soon-to-finish PhD would act like. 

I won't say I have to hide my disappointment when I come home from work and he's napping on the couch. Believe it or not, I look forward to some time by myself to do my work.  It might not be academic, but I enjoy it, and I just can't get stuff done when he's around.  Why is that?

This in place of the teary rant I was writing earlier.

Thank you, PhD comics.

Spending too much time reading while my boss is gone gave me time to take a wrong turn into Sad-town.  I started to write about how I didn't see the harried, never-at-home academic in my own spouse: I often saw procrastination and time wasted on the internet that could have gone towards one of the joyful things they we dont' do anymore so he can "focus".  I'm glad it was lunch, because I had to off-load a few tears.  Some old frustrations came up in that, and one new one I'd say to him if it didn't sound so mean: when you waste your time, you're wasting my time.  I'm going to try to let this comic make me feel better.

In which I try to explain my ire

The emphasis on women following men really gets under my skin, and that's the majority of these articles I'm compiling. I guess I'm rankled in general about how un-unique my situation is, and if it wasn't so common, maybe I'd feel differently and would have better/different resources. How can I properly articulate this?

I am a person. I'm nearing 30, with a degree, a good job (but not necessarily a career yet) and a spouse. I like my house and my town.  I like to cook and ride my bike.

But since I'm a female person, my resources and advice aren't the same as a man. And there really isn't as much to tell a man (sorry dudes, that really is the short end of the stick) because it's mostly women following men to a new place.  And there really isn't that much of an infrastructure to counsel us, because it's just expected that we follow.  So what's the fuss?

I have a fuss!  This isn't easy.  I'm not just following blythely. I'm not even following completely happily. There should be books on this, obvious answers/counsel.  But there's not, and it's because of shitty expectations. 

If this is a post-feminist world, then I'm Shirley Maclaine*.

*Maybe in another life?