Sometimes a Manual Transmission is Just a Manual Transmission

Today whilst at work I found out that apparently I've been driving around without car insurance for two weeks! Because my fucking insurance company canceled my policy. Ok, it's not their fault. I love my car insurance company, usually. But they didn't get my check. You know, the one I wrote and mailed the first week of August. Which is apparently on holiday in the Caribbean somewhere, because it sure as hell didn't get to Trenton.

Of course the first thing the insurance company says to me is, "In the meantime, don't drive the car." Oh sure, I'll just climb aboard my MAGIC CARPET and LEVITATE the fuck home. Seriously. I pointed out that I needed this fixed sort of now, because I don't even have an office to sleep in, I'd have to sleep in the hallway, which was pretty embarrassing, and anyway I had to go to Trenton (unlike my check) for a class in literary theory, and while I'm sure I'd be delighted to skip two and a half hours discussing Freud, College B would probably be less so. So they accepted a check by phone. Which should clear....tomorrow. So call us then, to see if you have an active insurance policy again and can drive your car.

Sure. In the meantime, I'll just be STUCK IN PENNSYLVANIA LIVING OUT OF MY CAR. Since that's apparently all it's good for right now. Other than being a relatively soundproof place for me to vent my frustrations safely at Very Catholic College A.

Short version of rest of evening, paid beaucoup bucks (again), emailed College B, drove car home VERY CAREFULLY, exchanged car for mom's car, drove to campus, parked IN CHICAGO because mom's car doesn't have a graduate parking permit and can't park anywhere useful, got to class as they were taking a fifteen minute break.

I came very close to breaking my own first rule tonight.

This FireCat Reserved for Private Party

You may have noticed that this blog disappeared for a few weeks. No, there was not a glitch in the Matrix. I was being taught a lesson, or so I was informed.

Without going into the details that would give undeserved attention and detract from my ultimate point (there will be one, I promise; in six years together, Scully, have I ever been wrong?) I was being moderately cyberstalked. I knew who the person was. I have never met her personally, but we have had quite a bit of interaction in the past several years on several related internet forums. Apparently this person maintains a grudge against several people who frequent these forums because she feels that her privacy was invaded, and she felt I was as good a target as any to take one for the team, so she began posting my blog address all over the god-knows-where of creation. Her intent was to violate my privacy, so that I might presumably know what it felt like to be her (though how she thought she was going to violate my privacy by encouraging traffic to a professional writer's already public blog, I'll never know--I might as well thank her for the free advertising).

However, she miscalculated one thing: the only way she can violate my privacy is if I allow it to be violated. I have nothing to hide on this blog. Or anywhere else, for that matter. I have written about the things that shame me, but I have done so knowing that I am writing in public. I have made the utmost effort in my writings not to violate the privacy of others--my parents and siblings, my students, my beloved husband, my best friend (whose life occasionally literally depends on the collective silence of those who know him) and the many others held dear to me. (You know who you are, because mostly you're the ones who noticed when my blog went missing!)

Regardless of the point she was trying to make, wherein she to this day earnestly believes she has taught me and others a lesson (really? really-really?), she fails again to absorb the larger lesson being offered: everything offers a chance for forgiveness and growth. But you have to be willing to put down your grudges to take the blessing. You'll need both hands free to accept its grace.

What the Puck?

I can't even begin to describe the number of levels on which this is wrong, nor the amount of wrongness those levels contain.

They're damn tasty, though.

Brief Update

There were finals, and then there was a weekend wedding in Harrisburg followed by a trip to Pittsburgh and the most grueling half-marathon I have ever run (it was cold, it was wet, we ran up every hill in Pittsburgh, then I drank a beer. The end.) Then, on returning home, there were more finals, and a photo exhibit to dissassemble, crate, and and ship, and then a flight to Spokane and a marathon. In which I PRed, thank you very much.

And then I came home, bought groceries, went through six days' worth of mail, and dug a hole in my backyard big enough to contain a friend's hundred-pound shepherd mix when she couldn't afford to cremate him. Just in case you've been wondering where the hell I went lately.

I'm looking very much forward to having to go back to work soon.

Overheard Whilst in My Bathrobe

Early this AM, I met my dad on the stairwell as I stumped grouchily tea-wards and he trundled up in search of, from the looks of it, his hairbrush. We grunted at each other and shot a little half-wave, half-salute out from hip level, our customary pre-caffeine greeting.

Then, as I hit the downstairs hallway, his voice echoed back at me thoughtfully: "We are just two snips, passing in the flight."

And Now, a Poem. Sort of.

I spent a lot of my weekend visiting a good friend of mine, and her utter snob of a cat. The cat in question (who, I should point out in defence of my friend's taste, arrived in our lives with her name already firmly intact) spent much of the weekend whining at us in typical theatrical cat fashion. I'm inside. I'm hot. Feed me. My fur is touching me. Pet me. Stop petting me. Why are you staring at me? Etc. Late yesterday evening, after just enough gins and tonic (gin and tonics just sounds wrong), I composed a song in her cranky honour, to be sung to the tune of Don McLean's "Vincent".

"Xena (Furry, Furry Night)"

Furry, furry night
Paint your kitty blue and grey
Take her on a holiday
Go through the garden underneath the fence

Furry, furry night
Patterns in her stripey fur
Listening to hear her purr
As she sheds her coat upon your couch

Now I understand
Why you sit there hating me
How you suffer the stupidity
Of humans who won't set you free

We cannot not listen
We do not know how
While you stare and say, "Meow!"

Furry, furry night
Paint your kitty blue and green
Put her in a soup tureen
And set it on the sunny window sill

Now I understand
Why you sit there hating me
How you suffere the stupidity
Of humans who won't set you free

We could not listen
We did not know how
We thought you said, "Meow!"

One Man

One of my students invited me to photograph her final project for her Communications class. She and several other students traveled to Center City Philadelphia (an area with which I am only moderately familiar, mostly as home to the Reading Terminal Market and packet pick-up for the Philadelphia Marathon) for an experimental project in nonverbal communication: free hugs. Technically speaking, there was both verbal and nonverbal communication here, as they were both speaking and holding up signs with words written on them, but that wasn't the subject of their experiment. What they were interested in was how ordinary people would react to being offered a hug by a total stranger. Coincidentally, they chose to carry out this experiment on Good Friday.

The title of this post is a homonym for the man who began this campaign in Sydney, Australia--Juan Mann. That is not, to the best of my knowledge, a pseudonym. That is his actual name.

Scenes from the City of Brotherly Love

The free hugs crew sets up outside City Hall.

Bethann bends down for a little stroller action.

Heather gets a surprise!

John from Texas.

Something that doesn't happen nearly enough.

Lennon makes some new friends....

...who borrow our signs....

...and make friends of their own.

Diane and friend.

Bethann and Lennon.