L'opera, mi amore!

This week, it has been crazy, and it's somehow Friday once again.

Success: the research paper was completed and submitted on time. One final left, and I'll be done.

Semi-success: finished the third finger of Beer Glove #1. I'd probably finish it completely tonight, except that I apparently don't have the pouch with my yarn needle with me. Tomorrow for that.

Total WHEN KNITTING ATTACKS kind of fail: the Rainbow Crone scarf. Guys, I hate knitting with this yarn SO MUCH. It twists like crazy, folds, it's slippery as shit, and completed stitches further down the scarf have LITERALLY fallen out. I don't even know how this is POSSIBLE. So, no more Rainbow Crone scarf until I figure out how to fix this problem. Maybe I'll crochet with it instead, so I at least don't have to worry about dropping stitches.

I mentioned earlier in the week that I completed the second pattern repeat of the Argyle State University scarf, and I haven't touched it since then, because the paper, it was eating my soul.

More rows on Ribbed Sock #2, as well, because it's something I can do while roleplaying like the Friday chicken.

There was a lot of stress in the last week, but I handled it really well, all things considered. I was sort of spastic, but, again, able to finish the paper on time. I'm feeling good about graduating; I need to work on my resume and cover letter this weekend and apply for that job.

There's probably more but I'm trying not to get killed right now. How's everyone else?

Totally whining, because I lay down to take a nap before my shift and couldn't sleep. Of course, NOW I'm tired. Less than an hour to go.

Overall I had a good day, which is easy to forget at quarter to three in the morning. Last day of my least favorite class, during which she asked us for feedback and the class (very politely) ripped her to pieces. My complaint (I had to pick one!) was that it didn't feel like a senior-level literature class. THEN we got to fill out the evaluations, which I'd been looking forward to doing since... oh, two weeks into the semester. Ended up having a long, bitchy conversation with a classmate about how unsatisfied we both were with the class. This was the worst-taught class since the science class taught by the botanist who only came out of his shell when he was talking about his work studying fungus in Antarctica. No, really. The class material he presented on overheads (REALLY), and basically read them verbatim. Plus he stuttered.

It was also the last day of my favorite class, which is sad, except that we're having a party at our professor's house during our final period next week, so that will be AWESOME.

Aside from my internship stuff, which I'll be doing until the end of December, I have ONE paper left to write for my undergraduate career. It's due Friday.

I'm excited to be graduating, but totally bummed sitting in class listening to people talking about what they're taking next semester, and I will be taking... gainful employment.

Have I mentioned how much I loathe writing cover letters? Oh, so much. To the depths of my tortured soul. The very depths, I say. Anybody want to write one for me?

Did some more research for that paper, since the professor said she wanted more recent sources, so I have a bunch of .pdf files to read.

I'm supposed to be going to a Nordic Soul Matrix class tomorrow night, but I might just go home and do research and get my paper started. Ten pages by Friday noon. Stabbing self in face in 3...2...yeah.

Worked another inch or so on Ribbed Sock #2 in class. My When Knitting Attacks today, as the Knitmore Girls call it, was discovering that the needles had fallen out of the Ribbed Sock and having to rip back a couple of rows to get them put back in correctly. Minor, but frustrating, but I was able to make some good progress after that.

The Rainbow Crone scarf (the ribbon scarf for either finch's mom or the Rainbow Maiden) is knitting up delightfully quickly, which is awesome, because it's fragile enough that I can't just throw it in my bag. (Also I need to carry a bag that's less abusive to my knitting, according to the Ribbed Sock.)

Two more rows done on the Argyle State scarf tonight - I've finished the second pattern repeat and started the third - and I must've gotten at least a dozen compliments on it while I was helping patrons. Also the recipient kept - well - fanboying all over it, which was totally adorable.

Twenty minutes left in my shift; let's see if I can get another row done on this thing.

I'm so not ready for this week to be over. AT ALL. In fact, I'd like to lodge a formal protest, that this week went by much too fast and I'd like at least 48 hours back.

The problem with this week is that I spent the first half of it utterly unable to focus, so I got absolutely nothing done, to speak of, until Thursday morning. I mean, really.

( Intense emotional processing, which is actually the PURPOSE of the Friday chicken. )I'm not giving myself traditional goals for this week, other than 1) breathe, and 2) survive. Anything else is gravy.

I have this post I've been internally processing about the pathologizing of childhood, and you'll probably see it later this week too. (But don't be terribly disappointed if you don't.)

So that's me. How's all of you?

It's 10:49. I have a ten-minute presentation and a five-page paper due tomorrow at 1:30. I skipped my internship today so I could stay home and work on them. I haven't actually started either one. I'm struggling with a complete inability to focus, a total lack of inspiration, and I just wish the semester were over already. I hate this class, I could've taught this class better than the professor, I question virtually every decision she's made in teaching (including the books she selected), and I just have not words. The last thing I want to do is write a paper for her.

The thing that really upsets me is that we read a book, The Scalpel and the Silver Bear, for my Women as Healers class. It's written by the first female Navajo surgeon, and I really wish I could write my paper about THAT, but we have to write about the absolute shit we had to read for the second half of the semester. Also (and I've had this problem in virtually every English class I've taken) I can't find supporting documentation about what I actually want to talk about. WHY DOES SOMEONE ELSE NEED TO HAVE HAD AN OPINION FIRST? MY OPINIONS ARE AWESOME.

Hate hate hate hate this.

Also because I don't have an angry feminist icon, for some reason.

Tonight I'm taking a break from the brain-intensive beer gloves and casting on the Gryffindor Argyle State University scarf, now that I've found a proper gold yarn. It's double-knitting and colorwork, two things I've not done before, plus it's a pattern I thought was cool, so I'm kind of excited by it.

This evening's Women as Healers class involved talking about the mpreg story I wrote my paper on. The story in question is a "in the near future" feminist science fiction piece in which there exists the technology to remove a woman's uterus, place it in an artificial pouch, and connect it to someone else via a conduit implanted in the navel. It's a semi-surrogacy situation, without the legal messiness, because the uterus and eggs don't belong to the host and obviously aren't actually inside her. The sidebar has marketing materials, newspaper articles, and excerpts from a scholarly paper all using a rhetoric of pregnancy as a messy, dirty burden that the "busy professional woman" can escape from by having a poor woman of color someone else to do the work for her. In fact, the host who is interviewed is a woman (from El Salvador, I believe) who wanted more children but had to be sterilized in order to keep her green card, and so this is the closest she can get to actual pregnancy. The "main" part of the story is a man, a scientist, who takes his wife's uterus in order to have a son after the illness and death of their daughter. The wife, incidentally, isn't interested in having another child, and I got the impression that she gave up her uterus because she was tired of arguing with him about it, but Howard convinces himself that there will be a Magical Point at which she will become interested in the baby and then all will be well.

Most of our discussion was focused on the reversal of gender roles, and the way that Howard (and his privilege) processes pregnancy and others' reactions to it, using simultaneously the Mansplanation "I, a man have experienced this thing, so now it is valid" approach (did you know that morning sickness was not something in our heads, ladies? it's REAL! because Man Howard has experienced it!) and the rhetoric of "I am special! because I are a PIONEER! and if you discriminate against me it must be because I am a MAN HAVING A BABY and that makes YOU uncomfortable!" Also I understand racial oppression because my ancestors are Irish. (Yes, Howard seriously reminds me of Privilege Denying Dude. Google it, it will make your morning.)

Speaking of Privilege Denying Dude, I have a particular classmate (Poli Sci major, Women's Studies Minor) who is gay and Asian, and acts like no one in the world could possibly be more oppressed/stereotyped/racialized than him. He's loudmouthed in a particularly obnoxious way, and several members of the class (including me) get into arguments with him virtually every week because of it. Tonight's Privilege Demonstration was regarding Man Howard's attitude toward parental leave (which he turned into an argument about how it was DISCRIMINATION, REALLY, and if he were adopting a child and he got discriminated against, he would throw a fit. Which, I actually had to turn to a human being in real life, face-to-face discourse, and say, "It's not about you. Stop making it about you."

One of my classmates, a fellow knitter who's usually a little more aware than this, opined that she didn't understand why Dorothy (the wife) and Rosa (the sidebar host) were getting so much sympathy, because they both CHOSE to do these things. (Obviously she's never been in a relationship where it was easier to give in than to argue, even if you really didn't want to do something, because your partner was so gung-ho about it they weren't hearing you when you said no.) The professor pointed out that criticizing Rosa was operating from a position of white privilege, because framing her decision to be sterilized to keep her green card as a choice was problematic. (She did concede the point after I re-emphasized that Rosa wanted more children but chose sterilization rather than deportation; obviously returning to her home country was something she desperately didn't want.) So Privilege Denying Classmate stands up for her against the professor, saying that Knitting Classmate can't be experiencing privilege because she's a lesbian, and her oppressed state as a lesbian basically outranks her privileged state as a white person. I could not possibly be making this up. And then, not ten minutes later, he gets into an argument with another classmate about how she shouldn't treat intersectional oppression like a hierarchy. Because it's only valid when he does it, obviously.

He wasn't in class last week. It was so nice and quiet and civilized.

On the other hand, tag-team jumping him for being wrong is kind of fun.

I finished the first Ribbed Sock and I'm now going back and forth debating whether to immediately cast on the second, or finish the damned Seafoam Shawl. After I finished the sock, I got three more rows done on the shawl. I really just need to be working on a project that doesn't feel like the most tedious thing ever. My Knitpicks order should be here tomorrow! So I can get started on that. Except that they'll probably leave the box at the office and I won't be home until after the office closes, so I'll actually have to wait until Thursday. THURSDAY CANNOT BE HERE SOON ENOUGH.

I'm in a weird mental state right now; I'm writing a paper for my Women as Healers class, and I'm still in the transition stage between reading the source material I'm going to talk about and the beginning of the actual writing process. This apparently means that I'm profoundly dissatisfied with every sentence I produce, because I've written this paragraph three times and it still feels awkward. Like I shouldn't be talking about a paper I haven't started? I'm not sure. But the paper is (going to be) about the medicalization of childbirth through the lens of a nurse-midwife's memoir and a science fiction short story about mpreg. (My degree requires reading the weirdest things!) Pregnancy is a very gendered thing, even when it's not.

Thinking about this story makes me wish I had enough time to re-read Ethan of Athos and add in commentary about pregnancy in the Vorkosiverse. Maybe I will do that on the train tomorrow; I'm pretty sure I have it on my ereader (which I cleverly failed to bring to work with me). Science fiction and pregnancy! A fascinating topic.

Poking around, I just found an article on Junior, and now I'm thinking about writing my paper about mpreg. I love this class.

I have to ask this, so I can concentrate on the paper I'm supposed to be writing, rather than sitting here mulling over this or (worse) researching it.

O ye writers of fanfic:

Have you ever written a gender-swap AU? This includes fics where one, a few, or all characters are just naturally genderswapped (e.g., a universe in which Squall and Seifer are female and Quistis and Rinoa are male), or Something Happened to cause one or more of the characters to spontaneously swap genders (e.g., Hermione slipped polyjuice potion in Ron's pumpkin juice to make sure he NEVER laughed at her cramps again).

( If you have, could you answer me a few questions? ) Feel free (oh please please please) to pimp this out to your friends, relations, acquaintances, random people on the street, whoever.