Clarissa's Blog

I identify profoundly with this post:

But every so often, I feel, very acutely, how ill-suited I actually am for this culture into which I work so hard to integrate my family. How uncomfortable so many of the interactions are and how lonely the whole immigration endeavor feels.

 A woman observed Klara and me playing outside yesterday, loudly admired how beautiful Klara is, listened to Klara prattle on and on, and then asked. . . if she speaks English. Because if a 15-month-old mispronounces a few words, it’s got to be because she is a child of immigrants and not because she is very little. 

Klara’s speaking is very advanced. She says “thank you” and stuns everybody at daycare with how many toys and pictures she can name. But she’s 15 months and she only has 10 teeth so far. Of course, she mispronounces words. It’s not an accent. It’s how kids speak. 

An alternative is to hang out only with university people who are not congenitally incapable of noticing nothing but one’s accent. OK, I went out with 3 colleagues who are moms to the playground. And it was even more uncomfortable than the encounter with the “does she speak English” lady. Two of the three colleague moms were immigrants themselves, so that’s a plus. Accents were not mentioned at all.

But oy vey, the entire time we spent on the playground, they exchanged slogans. It was like they were robots who had their Demonstrate Your Liberal Identity setting turned on. I love talking politics but these colleagues weren’t talking politics. They weren’t talking at all. They were mechanically delivering lists of points I’d heard and read before. Verbatim. 

Then they started gleefully listing everything that made them superior to the locals. And that’s when I began to miss the “speak English” lady and wished I could chat to her instead. She hadn’t understood 80% of what I said but that was still more refreshing than the slogans and the gleeful superiority over the country pumpkins. From the linked post, this is how the encounter with these colleagues made me feel:

And then I got angry that I have to socialize with people for whose company I am so ill suited, and who can’t and don’t actually want to get to know the real me, or if they did, I know they would not like me, because the real me has no place in their world.

In Arizona, where the legislature seems dedicated to a program of zeroing-out state funding to higher ed, and Illinois where an ongoing political struggle has left the state budget-less, the declines are over 50%.

Oh, so that’s who’s refusing to sign our budget. A fellow named “Mr. Ongoing Struggle.” 

I’d rather we weren’t mentioned at all because all this does is reinforce the two-sides narrative. 

So remember Ms Pattie, the teacher Klara loves? I asked her to babysit on Saturday because N and I want to celebrate our 10-Year anniversary. 

When I asked her how much she charges, she told me that the daycare pays her $10 per hour. Of course, I’m not going to pay her $10 because it’s exploitative and immoral.  

And please don’t think that she’s new at the daycare, and that’s why her pay is so ridiculous. Ms Pattie has worked in childcare for 30 years and at this particular place for 6. And she’s fantastic. 

I’m very outraged. 

I started getting emails from colleagues who say things like, “I am starting to work in crisis literature and have discovered that you already have a book coming out about it” and ask me to let them know what the book’s argument is. 

I’m very happy because my goal was precisely to define the conversation about crisis literature before people took it in a direction I don’t like. And now everybody who wants to write on the subject will be forced to quote me. 

The book is really going to be super timely. 

Are people who write shit like 

video of Trump admitting to a string of sexual assaults appeared last October

genuinely that crazy or do they know they are bulshiting but simply don’t care? 

Long-form journalism seems to be recovering after the prolonged post-election slump when nobody published anything but monotonous Trump-related moans. Here is a great article on the disappearance of retail jobs. 

My summer schedule is as follows:

7:00 – 8:00 – wake up, get dressed, have breakfast (bran buds sprinkled with cinnamon), read news, heat Klara’s milk.

8:00-8:45 – Klara wakes up, I give her the morning milk, get her dressed, and take her to daycare.

8:45-9:45 – I go either to the gym or to an appointment (dentist, HR, pedicurist, periodontist, somebody who needs me at work, etc).

10:00 – 12:00 – I work on my research. 

12:00 – 1:30 – I eat lunch and cook. 

1:30 – 3:00 – more work.

3:30 – I pick Klara up, feed her, and we go on an adventure (the bookstore, the gardens, the neighboring subdivisions, etc).

7:00 – N comes home and we read to Klara together. 

7:30 – 8:00 – I bathe Klara and N puts her to bed. Putting her to bed used to be a long and arduous process but now it takes about 3 minutes. 

8:00 – 9:30 – I read and N does the dishes and watches his program.

9:30 – N and I enjoy each other’s company. 

Of course, on the days when Klara is at home, the schedule is dictated by her two naps and includes no gym, appointments, or work. 

It’s unbelievable that alarmist moans related to Merkel’s very boring and run-of-the-mill campaign statement would pollute my news feed for quite this long. 

Are there no real news anywhere in the world? 

8:25 am and the little beauty is still fast asleep. We are the luckiest people on earth. It wouldn’t be as easy if she woke up at 5 am, like one little cutie I know. 

The problem with all the reports that Facebook users experience a decline in their mental health because it makes them seethe with envy is that there’s no reason to believe that the source of envy is Facebook and not the people themselves. 

It’s truly insane to believe that Facebook turns one into a resentful, jealous gnat instead of one turning Facebook into an opportunity to wallow in an already existing assholery. 

And hey, I hate Facebook. But it’s weird when people accuse it of making them who they are.