I swear to you, it happens every time. I get my hair chopped off into a funky, fun, short cut ("kickin" is how it was most recently described, by a cow-orker), and then I yearn for long hair. Somehow, though, never my long hair. Never hair that's thicker-than-belief and unmanageable-- hair that's less like hair and more like some sort of feral animal. No, somehow I get this idea that my hair, long, resembles that of Kate Beckinsale or Liv Tyler: spectacularly glossy and impossibly tame, with that windswept-yet-not-tangled look. Once I've successfully deluded myself into thinking that I could have such a glorious mop on my head, I grow my hair out. And inevitably, I then remember why I cut it short in the first place, and the cycle repeats.

Last night I remembered a conversation John and I had many years ago.

Me: Would you be able to accept me if part of my body wasn't real? Like, if I had a prosthetic leg?

Him: Only if you could accept my prosthetic ass.

Sitting in my office hours this morning, a girl popped her head in to ask me where room 101 was. I told her it was up one floor. She then asked, "is it on the second floor or the third?"

So, we're members at the local dog park, which means that we pay a yearly fee (which you can assume is a fairly hefty non-zero sum) and we can take Luke to the park whenever we want. There are lots of free dog parks in Gainesville, but given the horror stories that we've heard about the types of dogs that frequent those parks (unneutered, aggressive males), we choose instead to stay away from those places. And by and large, I'm thrilled with our dog park and I'm happy to pay the yearly fee. BUT. Lately, the park has fallen into disrepair. A big, dead tree came crashing down a few weeks ago, and the huge branches that came with it are still where they landed. While you can see them in the daylight, as dusk starts to fall they get harder to see and it's a bit of a hazard (for both humans and dogs). And then there's the dry dog area. It's a large section of the park that's fenced off from the rest. It's where you can take your dog if you don't want him going into the pond. And, since Luke gets a staph infection when he goes into the ponds, followed by a secondary allergic reaction, we tend to frequent the dry dog area. Except that it hasn't been mowed for FOUR WEEKS. Every weekend, I get all excited and think that this, this surely is the weekend when the owners will get their shit together and mow that area. And every weekend I'm disappointed. So today, I called up there and talked to the owner.

Me: "Hi! I was wondering if you guys had mowed the big dry dog area yet?"

Owner: "Well, we haven't mowed it this week... every time we go out to mow, it rains."

Riiiight. Well, let me tell you something, dear readers. It rained yesterday. That was the first time it had rained all week, and it certainly hasn't been raining every day for four weeks straight. I would have offered to mow the dry dog area for them, but the last time we offered to help out around there (John wanted to fix a broken fence that had remained broken for quite a while), we got stonewalled. So fine. They won't take care of the place and they won't accept help. And we won't go elsewhere because, again, unneutered aggressive dogs. They've basically got us over a barrel. And I have a feeling they know it.

Although we've lived in this house for over three years, somehow my office never got painted. It's still this wimpy, pale, pastel yellow that I really dislike. I'd always planned on painting it a nice deep yellow-- it was just a matter of finding the time to do it. Or so I kept telling myself. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been stealing time here and there from my "real" work and working instead on organizing my office, getting it ready for the new semester, and thinking about ways to make it a friendlier place to be. And that's when it hit me: I don't want a yellow office. For the same reason that John didn't want me to paint my office red ("you already get too angry when you grade"), I've decided that I'd much prefer a cooler wall color. And now that I've picked it out, I can't wait to start painting! My plan is to prime the office the Friday before Labor Day (I don't teach on Fridays, so that should work), then paint that weekend and (hopefully) have the office put back together by Tuesday. Stay tuned for photos, where I'll reveal the color choice and the final look!

Back in elementary school, before it was unconstitutional to read the Bible aloud to public school children, I was taught that everything was put on the planet for a reason, that everything has a job to do. I took this rule to include ALL things, even inanimate objects like flatware and laundry baskets. For some reason, this idea stuck with me and over the years I started to think that all of these things had feelings (stay with me). At nearly thirty, I continue to anthropomorphize my surroundings. If I don't finish my orange juice, the orange juice will feel bad because it's not fulfilling its destiny. Or if I reach for a certain glass in the cupboard and then change my mind and reach for a different glass, I have the urge to go back and pick the first glass because otherwise it will feel shunned. (Which then leads to a vicious cycle because the second glass will feel rejected.) After nearly ten years of watching me do this very glass dance in front of the cupboard, John observed the other day, "you have a very Marxist outlook on life."

Each year Beloit College releases a list of facts intended to help professors relate to the incoming class of college students. The Beloit College Mindset List for the class of 2011 was recently released and, in honor of my first day teaching my very own class, I thought I'd pass along some of the more interesting tidbits about the first post-Cold War class.

1. What Berlin Wall?

2. Humvees have always been available to the public.

9. Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.

10. Pete Rose has never played baseball.

15. Russia has always had a multi-party political system.

42. Women's studies majors have always been offered on campus.

43. Being a latchkey kid has never been a big deal.

53. Tianamen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.

55. MTV has never featured music videos.

61. They never saw Johnny Carson live on television.

66. The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.

I am often struck at how different John and I are, most notably in the way we think. The other night, for example, I read an article about a recent study that had been done about women who don't voice their opinions in marital arguments. Here's what I read aloud to John:

"Women who force themselves to stay quiet during marital arguments appear to have a higher risk of death, a new study shows. ... Eaker and her colleagues found that, over a 10-year period, the most striking finding was that women who self-silenced were four times more likely to die than women who expressed themselves freely during marital arguments."

My reaction: "Wow! That's really good to know!!"

John's reaction: "Uh, yeah, there's something wrong with that. We all have a 100% risk of death."

This thing of us thinking differently also becomes apparent when I immediately believe some statistic that I read, while John starts saying things like, "but they only have a data point of one!"

Me: "I wonder what my students will be like this semester?"

John (behind the wheel): "I bet they'll be bad drivers."

I've blogged before about my love affair with laundry and all things domestic, but only recently have I pieced together why these strong, Martha-esque phases crop up periodically. Because it's not that they're an ever-present yearning; rather, they only seem to materialize when I've been doing intense brainy activities to the exclusion of everything else. Case in point: I've been in the Library of Congress all week, doing dissertation research, and dammit if my brain isn't teeming with information about things like scrofula, dropsy, St. Vitus' Dance, and more. About midway through the week, I started desperately looking forward to being home and doing laundry, vacuuming the house, and going grocery shopping. We'll be home tomorrow, which I know is soon enough, but it can't come fast enough for me. People, there's baking to be done!

Because OH MY GOD, how difficult was that, just now, when I tried to create a shipment online??? F@?KING harder than convincing a cat to give you a urine sample! And clearly it's all my fault, for bitching about UPS a few weeks ago on this very blog. I logged into UPS. I entered my shipping information. I entered the dimensions of the package. I then began to enter my credit card information, which I've done lots and lots and lots of times on that very website. I clicked the "next" button. And the same credit card page came up, prompting me to click "next". I did. And it came up again. So I clicked "next" again. And on we went. I tried to cancel the shipment and start again. And LO AND BEHOLD, the website hung on the same. damned. page. The lesson here? Don't bitch about UPS. You never know when the answer to "what can brown do for you?" will be "give you a freaking aneurysm!"

Your Rapper Name Is...

Malicious Alchemist

Since our two-year anniversary with Luke passed with little fanfare (because we were in Kansas and he was at the pet resort), I thought I'd mark the occasion now by posting one of my favorite pictures of him. Here he is, completely unaware that he has yogurt on his lower lip:

(The floors are a work-in-progress, folks).

Happy Anniversary, Luke. We're so glad we get to be your family.

I saw a commercial for something the other day that made me laugh out loud. It was a pill for Restless Leg Syndrome. You've got to be kidding me. Restless Leg Syndrome? Is that actually a thing? Sometimes I have a hard time keeping my hands still. Does that mean I have Restless Hand Syndrome? Oh, and my butt itches. Do I have Itchy Butt Syndrome?!?