While I was at the grocery store, my husband shaved his head. Like…bald. Bruce Willis bald. Billy Zane bald.

My reaction was less than mature:

I cried, and ran away.

So, I feel like shit about the hair, he feels like shit about me crying over it, and I feel like shit that he feels like shit and…well, you get it. It’s a big loop of shit.

It’s just hair, it’ll grow back…it’s just hair, it’ll grow back…

I wish I hadn’t reacted like that.
(I also kinda wish he hadn’t been curious enough to do it in the first place.)

Okay, so a co-worker just sent me this link:

http://www.writeinbush.com

So, what do you think? Is this:

a) Brilliant Satire?

or

b) Buncha Nutbags?

Please discuss.

I haven’t updated for a long time, obviously. Before, I had a legitimate excuse. I was working 30 hours a week, taking 15 credits of writing intensive work and still trying to keep my house from looking like Grey Gardens.

(Speaking of Grey Gardens, I just finally saw it for the first time last night and now I kind of want to watch it over and over and read everything I can about the Edies.)

Anyhow, school has been out of session for a month now, so my legitimate excuse for not blogging is about as expired as 60% of the contents of my fridge. A comment from a fellow reader at MamaPop reminded me of this blog, which reminded me that I am a writer and that writers should write.

The tragedy is that I had so much good shit to write about while I was immersed in classes about social theory, but it’s all congealed into a gross theory slurry in my brain by now. I must make a concerted effort to process what I’m working through in school and reassemble the bits that bang around my brainpan, and what better place to do it than in my blog for all seven of my readers?

I’ve noted a change in my personality over the last few months, a confidence in my ideals that has translated into an unwillingness to hide them. I am not unashamed of my political views or my feminism. I never have been, really, but I’ve grown into them, grown more aware of my worldview and how to articulate it, and I’ve grown much more vocal as a result. This crops up from time to time at work. I simply refuse to apologize for or shield others from my novel perspective that women are people and voters and breadwinners and deserve equal representation in society, government and the workplace.

As a result, I have gotten a bad reputation, I think, as a humorless bitch. Which is hilarious, because it’s pretty much like, “uh…I’m saying?” The fact that you think that is precisely why I refuse to laugh at your misogynist jokes and, furthermore, call you out for them!

I am currently five and a half weeks away from my last day here, at which time I will take on a horrifically low-salary job on campus as the LGBTA Coordinator. Not that I’m counting. I am looking forward to working in a field I am passionate about and actually making a difference, even if on the surface my job looks like party planning. My two largest projects are planning a Drag Show and a Queer Prom, after all. However, I will also be educating queer and straight students about LGBTQ issues, providing resources and referrals for counseling and other forms of assistance, and will help build a campus coalition of queer students, faculty and allies, who see LGBTQ issues as human issues we must all deal with.

The fact that I have a job I care so much about lined up immediately after one I am so flagrantly dispassionate about, is a dangerous thing indeed. As my termination date grows closer, I find it harder and harder to punch the clock.

Please stop calling it a “baby bump”. Really, please stop. Stop obsessing about pregnant celebrities and stop, in the name of all that is holy, calling it a baby bump.  It makes me want to claw my eyes out.

So I went ahead and checked the list of things I would like to get up at 6 a.m. to do, and I’m pretty sure “drink a fuck-ton of water and then not pee” is not on it.

I’ve been having a weird pain in my ovary so I have to get a pelvic ultrasound. I would just like to ask where I can donate money to a foundation for creating a method of looking at female reproductive organs that doesn’t require women to do the potty dance for a couple hours. Can you hook me up with those guys? Because I want to write them a check.

It’s 2008. I want hover cars, Air McFly’s and an ultrasound that doesn’t require inflating the bladder with water.

Today I participated in the most ridiculously chaotic civic process I have ever encountered. A caucus. Where I grew up, people voted on paper in little booths, like civilized human beings. In Washington, however, the Democratic primary doesn’t actually count, though the state spends millions of dollars on ballots for one anyway.

So today I met at a tiny Episcopalian elementary school kitchen with almost 150 of my neighbors to elect delegates to our county convention.  Our precinct had a heavy swing toward Senator Obama, with 9 of our 11 delegates going to Barack. And I am one of them.

I chose to volunteer myself as a delegate for Obama because, for the first time since I have been old enough to vote, a candidate I believe in has a real chance at being president.

I am not going to go into all the reasons why I want Barack Obama to be president. I don’t really want to get into a political discussion. I just want to say that, of the candidates in this race, only Barack Obama could make me sit in a tiny kitchen with 150 people for two hours to convince undecided voters that he should be our president, and I am proud to have the position to stand up for him on April 5th at my county convention with my fellow Obama supporters and say, “yes we can.”

I am beginning to feel I’ve switched lives with some sickly Victorian ingenue. You know the type, perpetually ill with some ambiguous malady like “exhaustion” and given to fainting spells. I am sick for the third time in a month. I literally swooned today, even.

But circumstances would not permit me to stay home from work, because it would have left my department of four down to just my replacement, who still has to ask me questions every 15 minutes. With our manager out with the same flu I have and our buyer out on a personal day, I had to become what I have always hated: the fucking noble asshole who comes to work even though they’re gravely ill and undoubtedly ends up getting everyone else sick.

When my fever hit 102, I gave up all nobility and told New Girl to call me if she had any questions. She never called, so it either all worked out, or she quit. Whatever.

On Monday there is a meeting between two departments to fight over my time. I don’t really want to be a part of it, so here’s hoping this flu outlasts the weekend. No, srsly, please go away, flu. I didn’t mean it.

My husband complained that I don’t blog anymore. The truth is, I hardly have the time, between school and work, and I apparently have to get strep throat to find the time.

Today I had a scare that had me thinking I was about to have a lot more extra time. I was called to the office of the VP of HR. While I was told I wasn’t “in trouble” that certainly doesn’t mean I’m not being laid off. I’m part time, and I’ve techinically been replaced, though volume in our department has swelled over the last year and there has been no hurry to get rid of me.

I ran upstairs, ready to have the bandage peeled off quickly, only to discover I didn’t have my badge to get through the security door. When I came back to get it, I whispered to my boss, “Am I being let go? Because I’d rather hear it from you.”

 It turns out I am a dork and they want to offer me a new position.

I don’t know why I always expect the worst, but having been let go in the past, I no longer feel invincible or irreplaceable anywhere, and being a part-timer with a full courseload makes me a good candidate for lay-offs. Last week, an entire repair facility in our company was shut down, so the fear of a lay-off is by no means unwarranted.

A minor heart attack is good for the spirit, right?

After battling a persistent sore throat, body aches and on again off again fever for four days, I dragged myself to the doctor this morning, who had to look at my throat for about five seconds before announcing, “Oh, that’s strep. I don’t even have to do a test. I mean, I can if you want, but that’s textbook strep.”

I was oddly proud that my pharynx looked like a textbook picture for strep throat. Is that weird? Anyway, he did the test, and now I have a handy bottle of amoxicillin, some Ben and Jerry’s sorbet and an intense case of the boredom. I went home sick yesterday after trucking through three hours of work, so this is day two.  I actually feel better today than I did yesterday, which I feel speaks volumes about how good my immune system is without penicillins, and I am so over sitting at home already. Work actually sounds fun after two days of daytime television and trashy celebrity “news” rags. Hey, did you know that Brittney Spears is crazy now?

Frankly, the only reason I didn’t go to work today is because, you know, what kind of asshole goes to work after the doctor says, “Strep”? Hi coworkers, I love you so much, so here’s a nasty throat infection!

The only time I realize I’m sick is when I try to accomplish a simple task like lunch and discover that my faculties are extremely dampened, as I end up covering every inch of my kitchen in coffee grounds—including the skillet where I was preparing my grilled cheese and on the sandwich itself— and follow up with a triumphant encore wherein I ignite a paper towel on the stove as I attempt to clean up my mess.  I can now, however, declare with 100% certainty that grilled cheese and coarse-ground Kenyan coffee is not the scintillating taste sensation it sounds like it should be, so no need to try that one out if you’re curious.

This morning, I had my admissions interview with Fairhaven College, the school for interdisciplinary studies at WWU. I decided to not dress like a slob like I usually do on Fridays, and wore a skirt, heels and took the time to apply makeup. My interviewer, however, had bedhead and wore an oversized mens dress shirt over a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers so I felt severely overdressed.

Every time I wear makeup, which is rougly 4 times a year, everyone seems to think it’s a marked improvement on my usual appearance, and it makes me feel like shit. “Wow, you look pretty today!” Meh. Am I such a hideous chud without makeup? I’m not even sure why I felt compelled to wear it, frankly.

They let me know there are only 15 open spots for the spring quarter, which wasn’t fantastic news, but the good news is that I can attend WWU and take classes that will apply to my “degree program” (not that I, like, have one yet) with Fairhaven, and then apply to Fairhaven again in the fall or summer, which is apparently a lot more open for new students.

I think I’m getting sick again and I can’t help but wonder if it has anything to do with the bacteria we worked with in my lab last night. I might just be a horrible hypochondriac.