The man with the chest hair

This morning as I got on to the tram everything was as usual, pretty quiet. A gentleman sleeping in the back row, a couple of students lugging text books and ostensibly trying to study, a few fellow fiction readers- the usual suspects. That was until a few stops in I noticed a sunglasses-clad man seeming to stare in my direction. I will grant you that they were mirrored so this point is hard to defend; but for the perceived indoors and it not being close to dawn, it sure felt like he was starring. I played it cool, reading until the next stop, casually glancing out the window before letting my gaze brush past him on the way back to my book. The mirrored sunglasses were not what first caught my eye, it was the number of undone buttons exposing a 1970s reprise of chest hair in the most optimistic of senses. Every stop, glance up, brush by, wonder if, return to book. As we approached the second to last stop of my ride I began to wonder if he was infact starring at me and if so how I was going to lose him in the dash from the platform. Stop; and he exits, leaving me behind to wonder. I watched him walk past my window to notice that the chest hair and blue mirrored Oakley's were not the highlight of his outfit. Oh no. It was the fact he was wearing that unbuttoned shirt tucked into not navy dress pants, but navy dress shorts- smartly paired with knee high white socks and brown hiking boots. I smiled to think how I could have missed so much worrying about chest hair and mirrored glasses. 

Happy Friday- a first week recap

Praise be I have survived the first full week of class with little physical, and only minor psychological frustrating! Hallelujah. 

Students: I have 25 students in class, and 23 of them are male. That makes for a strange classroom dynamic. The good news is all of them have been polite and generally responsive, but we shall see how the rest of the semester goes. I'm a little concerned about the two women. Not because they may struggle academically, but because they are so preposterously out numbered. I hope that they find a platform in this class that gives them a confidence boost. 

Classes: holy readings batman. For those of you considering PhD school, get your reading caps on. I finished the second full book assigned to me yesterday. I'm also taking 9 hours (3 classes) so it might be a little bit of an exaggeration in some experiences, but also whoa. Classes themselves are interesting, seem to be really good people. But there are for sure moments that I clamp my hands over my ears to stop my head from spinning. I have a feeling this is only going to be a more frequent reaction. Hopefully my brain will acclimate and be less dizzy moving forward. 

Alarmingly, we had a cool front come through. Let me explain. The temperature dropped about 5-10 degrees and I honestly thought it was much improved from yesterday. Now the high today was 97 degrees. My Midwestern roots are cowering from the oppressive heat. This can't be real life that 97 is cool. And sure by comparison, but not actually cool. I'm still sweating more than normal. 

With any luck, it will indeed start to cool down. To like a real amount where an average human could wear pants and not instantly regret this decision. 

Let's talk about pants

Today was the first real full day of school lifeness. Typically, I prefer to wear skirts or dresses because 1) it's hella hot and skirts make sense, and 2) the correct but maybe less professional term "ass sweat" is a thing and do I need I explain that skirts have a breeze function? 

Here's the skippy. Just because you there's a pseudo cooling action happening, does not eliminate the actual ass sweat part of the equation. So skirts just make you feel the sweat more. For example, I have to walk about 10 ish minutes from the class I TA to the class I teach. Remember, THIS IS ARIZONA. That effectively translates to glisten droplets everywhere. Also, this skirt is lined. So hello unmoveable sweat glued second skin. There's nothing like walking drip glistening into a classroom where you are in charge of 23 men and 2 women. You know they won't get too close- because you smell. 

Which brings me to the piece of advice that I'm trying to follow: it doesn't matter how ashamed you are, carry deodorant. The people sitting near you will thank you. That curtesy does not quite extend to the public transit commute. This morning the body odor count was 3. #blessed. 

But really the worst thing that happened on public transportation today was the man wearing all black: shorts, t-shirt with some kind of red rebel lettering, black athletic socks, and brown hiking boots. Come on friend, try better. 

I'm sure I will have other updates later this week. In the mean time, go watch a documentary, learn something. We watched Chuck Norris vs Communism in class today. Worth it.

The Case of the Stolen Trailer

It's been exactly two weeks since my family and I were on the way down to this southern destination. I had happily spent the night with a dear friend and her family while my parents and subsequently all of my stuff loaded into a trailer were located at a hotel in Albuquerque just off the highway.

Let me back up. When packing all of my things to move out of my apartment in Kansas, we had decided to cram it all into a 12-foot Uhaul trailer. So in went the heavy furniture. My bed with box springs, headboard, frame, couch, kitchen table and chairs, book shelves, night stand, end table, dresser, chest of drawers, mirrors, basically everything you could use in a one bedroom apartment. My dad had found this 10 foot bookshelf for my new place and so that went along one wall with each of the 9 shelves stuffed with things from boxes of kitchen staples, bottles of wine, empty suitcases, small assorted boxes that would fit in the narrow space, briefcase functional purse bag (what do women call those? Oh yeah, practical and fashionable), totes filled with hangers, you get the picture. The couch went along the other wall, then the dismantled bed and bedroom furniture got squeezed between the two and smaller moveable pieces got piled or stacked on top of that. All of these diligently packed cardboard boxes which included everything from toiletries, glasses (like the ones I see through), contacts, jewelry boxes, framed art (some of which were gifts), boxes of letters I had received over the last two years in Kansas (I'm an excellent pen pal), hand made quilts, some suitcases including professional wear, sweaters, t-shirts, jeans, and last but certainly not least, all of my academic materials. Yes, that includes all of my notes from my master's degree including my thesis research, readings, and any professorial feedback all lovingly packed away in boxes to be piled in the trailer. To give you a visual description, this trailer was full, floor to ceiling, right to left, and any space besides. To have let a small animal loose in there would have doomed the poor thing to death by asphyxiation- not crushed by moving articles. There wasn't a lot of space to move, there also wasn't a lot of air.

We shut and locked the back of the trailer, with anything that didn't fit in there either in the back of my dad's pick up truck, or in the trunk/backseat of my car. For comparison sake, those things were mostly books (remember how I'm an academic by nature and pedigree), kitchen stuff like bowls, plates, mixers, cleaning supplies, some clothes, one end table, and electronics. Off we set, and little did I know, it would be the last I ever saw of the things wedged behind the padlocked door.

That was Friday. We made it to Oklahoma that night, then Saturday stopped in Albuquerque for the night. Sunday morning I woke up and joined my parents for breakfast. I sat in the little breakfast nook that hotels have these days sipping coffee and finishing off a bagel, mom across from me, dad putting things together for the last leg of the trip. Mom's phone started to ring, she answered, "What?! What do you mean it's gone?"

My stomach dropped. Just fell out of the bottom of my torso and hit the tiled floor under my chair. Black coffee now bitter.

Scurrying and frantic questions ensue, to the hotel staff, to the impatient cell phone, to the various corners of my skull. Stealing my nerves, I got up too, and walked out to the parking lot to see my dad's once heroic looking truck sitting naked of any Herculean feats of towing strength, all signs of a trailer gone. Completely lifted off the hitch, and nothing but an awkwardly parked vehicle beside.

"Some trip, huh fam?"

In his honest efforts, dad had backed the trailer up against the wall of the dumpster location so as any potential thieves couldn't open the doors of the trailer. Presumably, the pressure on the hitch from the trailer tires against the curb would make it difficult to wiggle it off the hitch or move anything else until morning. Sometimes our best efforts often come undone by ill-devices.

Within thirty minutes or so, the police arrived and soon a report of an abandoned trailer came through the radio. We followed the police officers to the described location.

There she was. Sprawled open and nothing left of the studious packing except for the 10-foot bookshelf and a crumpled piece of wrapping paper. Hollow, breathable, light.

Police report filed, a woman through a window in a nearby house mentioned that this was the second or third time a Uhaul had been abandoned on this road-ironically half a block from a Uhaul center. Of the two police cars present and 3-4 officers, I think each of them apologized to me, citing rampant heroin problems in the city, a recent uptick of theft by hotels, and a moral sadness that no one deserves this.

Unable to put much into words, I walked across the street to sit on a bench at the park there. No one to blame. At least no one I knew. Slowly recounting the things in the boxes I vaguely remembered stuffing into the trailer. I had labeled them, but couldn't read what they said now. I didn't have the energy or the heart to hold a grudge against the city as a whole. After all seeing my friend and her family had been absurdly good for my psyche. I couldn't harbor aggression at the police response, they recovered the trailer, but a few hours was not going to magically track my possessions as they scattered to the mountain winds.

One officer approached me on my solitary bench, "I'm really sorry about this miss. Is there anything I can do?" "Got any recommendations for sleeping bags?" Call it a defense mechanism if you want, but the options were laugh or cry and in my personal opinion, anything before 9 is too early to cry. With the report already on file, there was nothing left to do but hitch the much lighter trailer back to the truck and leave the sadly disappointing city.

For the next 7 or so hours, I mentally paged through the things that I had watched sealed behind those trailer doors roughly 40 hours before. The furniture I could live without, floors aren't super comfortable, but passable for a while. Then I got to the sentimental things.

The t-shirt quilt made of choir shirts.
The camera and memory card that contained my last images of college performances and last moments in Kansas. Not to mention the pictures I took on my Minnesotan road trip a few weeks prior.
The postcards friends had sent me from around the world.
The diamond earrings my dad had given me for graduation I had never worn.

That's when the tears fell. Facing some portion of Hwy-40, probably staring at the slowly changing landscape and the outline of a haunted trailer up ahead, I sobbed. I'm not a pretty crier to begin with, but this was the kind of convulsing, snotty sobs that end up wiped on sleeves and backs of hands. It doesn't get more poetically dramatic than driving on an unfamiliar road, following a hollowed out hope, and snotting on to my forearm. Some Indy film is going to recreate this moment and make waves at Sundance.

In fact, it's so dramatic, I had to laugh. Look at this plot twist in cinema scope. It's ridiculous, and uncomfortable, and there has to be something worth learning from this moment. Sure, it is only stuff. Some of it more poignant than others, but it's got to be more of a crippling blow to my ego or at least an assault on my pocket book than anything else. And besides, there's always the hope that all of my academic products would be prized by heartless thieves. Maybe instead of a life of crime, they would turn to interlibrary loan and APA nuance. It's probably a pipedream, but in some sad sick way it makes me smile. Almost everything in there was going to be replaceable. Not all of it, clearly, but I would still move into a new apartment with my 10-foot bookshelf that even thieves didn't think worthy of stealing, and whatever was left in the back of the truck, and my car.

Recovering and settling into an already strange place hasn't been a cake walk, but it's getting better. The cohort is fun, and amused by my dry commentary about the trailer. Friends have poured in support and the pen pal pipeline is up and running again.

Plus, once I figure it all out, I'll have a really great stand up shtick about Uhaul's slogan "America's Moving Adventure."

Moving south: the youngest of the snowbirds

Yesterday I had the remarkable favor to meet two fellow travelers who have transitioned from the Minnesotan northern snow-packed life to this melted canyon. Let's call them Suzanne and Steven though those are not their real names. As I was headed to the mailbox, a woman in the parking lot exclaimed- are you the girl with the Minnesota school sticker?! Yes. Tis I. Shortly find out that they are both from Minnesota, and have moved here only recently. In a quaint sort of way, you would never match the two intuitively as a pair, but in their interactions I catch glimpses of the adorable gnarled couple that will reminisce at family gatherings and flirt with each other long past the days of senior discounts. They owned an art gallery in Texas for a while and are quickly filling me in on all of the music and arty things that happen in the area. From symphony concerts to gallery openings, these must be the people to know. We spoke for maybe 10-15 minutes about how we were going to laud over the heads of our still residential snowbound friends our good weather fortune in December. They live a floor above me but on the other side of the building. 

Some part of me finds solace in knowing that there is a common vernacular between a group of people that isn't academically rooted. As in I can talk to Suzanne and Steven about the Twin Cities as "the cities" and not have to explain myself. Or use geographic locators about that town that everyone gets pulled over in on 169, or even the charming lilt of a "oh you betcha" that seems to evaporate in this desert heat. It could be the climate here. In Minnesota you stay together for warmth, talking or remarking about the icicles on your eyelashes. Here, no one sits next to you on the rail if they don't have to, not because your bulky coats physically forbid it, but because the body heat of strangers exacerbates the already too sweaty atmosphere. Maybe it's simply comforting to know that in a place so new, that similarities extend beyond the pedagogy and research. That neighbors can be more that academic resources. They might lend you a cup of sugar, make fun of the palm trees, or comfortably speak to your roots without having to explain a hot dish. 

Can I have your number?

I thought about preemptively titling this post with a number after it, but that seemed over zealous. I'll simply count the times someone asks for my number on the light rail separately. 

Meet Ross. Unnaturally angelic blonde curly hair, cut too short to pass as a cherub, but I'm sure his mother thought he was darling. We spoke of parties, of school, of party schools, and a friend of his who moved close to my home town. Thankfully, and good for you Ross, he was not creepy, merely conversational. And when leaving the train he asked for my number but didn't balk when I passed on the question. We wished each other luck, and went our separate ways. If Ross over here sets the standard of light rail pick ups, then at least I won't be excessively creeped out all the time. 

"Dry heat" is an institutionalized lie

I suppose the first post on this blog should be about what in the world is going on and why. All you really need to know is that I've moved across country to get a PhD in communication studies in this sweltering state of Arizona. In this process everyone I've ever talked to about moving here said the following words: "oh well it's a dry heat." 

Oh yeah? Tell me more about how you like to lie to people. As someone with naturally curly hair, it's still humid here. Trust me. 

As the kind and apprehensive couple in Bed Bath and Beyond told messy week as we collectively stared out at the torrential downpour, "well it's monsoon season." The casual monsoon season no one bothered to mention. So everyone who has ever mentioned to you this vague "dry heat" concept, regard them with skepticism as they have now been outed as liars. 

I have made it a goal in beginning this haphazard journey to blog several times a week mostly on my way to or from the office whitest riding public transit. I should also relay in detail how I had most of my belongings stolen while moving here, the mess of an apartment, and probably my teaching adventures too. So let's hang out on the interwebs and I'll tell all the stories that are too real to be made up. Fiction isn't this strange.