A Capitalist Brew

We recently got the American Girl catalog in the mail. It was not the first time I had seen or heard of American Girls, but it was the first time I ever really sat down to look at them. They are mega bucks, but they are so cool! I never really saw myself as someone that would be really into a doll like that. Face it, I am the girl that collected GI Joe figures when I outgrew Barbie and Cabbage Patch Kids. Still, Brooke and I have perused the catalog several times talking about which dolls and accessories we like. I have decided that when Brooke gets a little older, we are going to be into American Girl dolls. She needs to be a little older because they are not geared towards girls her age.

So, why do I like them so much? I like that these dolls are geared towards teaching history. There are several historical dolls that teach you about a particular time period. The creators of these dolls make it fun and interesting to explore history. When you go to the American Girl web site, you find articles about volunteerism, travel, friends, and even money management! I think it is wonderful that they are promoting these aspects of being a young girl…and the kind of young girl I want Brooke to become. I want her to be someone who is a smart, responsible, and confident member of society. This is one small way to help influence her in the right way, and we need all the help we can get raising our daughters these days. So, I am already planning about which dolls we will purchase and when we will visit American Girl Place.

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Do you ever have a memory of a long lost friend pop into your mind and prompt you to Google their name? I don’t usually have much luck but continue to try every once in a while. (Note: It baffles me how I can find nothing on most people when inexplicably you can find me by Googling my maiden name…which I don’t print anywhere.) Well, this happened to me yesterday when I should have been working, and I came upon this person. I don’t think I have seen or talked to this person in around 10 years, but his music is a constant in my life. I thought about sending him an email until I read that he was really into these 9-11 conspiracy theories. Since I just posted about that, I had to mention this finding here. It made me decide not to contact him. I still adore this person, but all I could think to say to him was that I just don’t get it. I have spent the last da trying again to wrap my head around how someone could be in this universe where they truly believe the conspiracy theory is more plausible than our notion of reality, but I just can’t get there.

But I didn’t intend for this post to become anything about conspiracies. Really, it got me thinking about long lost friends. There are two or three friends who I have lost touch with several times in my life only to come back together and find that our lives have moved in the same direction and brought us back together seamlessly. It is like we were never apart. There is one person in particular who I know will always be one of my best friends because she holds a piece of me that is so critical to the person I have become…even if we continue to move in completely different directions throughout our lives. Then there are the friends who grow apart in such different ways that you later look at that person, look at yourself, and can’t imagine that you ever talked to that person let alone shared a friendship with them. For instance, my best friend in 8th grade ended up dating guys who kept ending up in jail and then got pregnant in the first year or two out of high school. Where was that common thread? Anyway, I will continue looking for many of my long lost friends because I would like to know what they are doing and if we would still make a perfect match or have become polar opposites.

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Yesterday I had an exam in econometrics, today I had an exam in real estate and a problem set due in game theory, tomorrow I have a problem set due in econometrics, and next Monday the draft of my comprehensive exam research project is due. The pressure is definitely on this week. Last night Luke slept through until around 3:30 am. Brooke, however, was up from 2:30-3:30 in the bathroom dry heaving. I am not really sure what is wrong with her but think she might be suffering from some post-nasal drip. Scott is also still sick with some funk after a month. I don’t know what is ailing him either. I am really worn out. I have added Airborne twice a day to my drug habit of caffeine and Tylenol PM.

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Initial reports are in on the caffeine experiment. So far it seems that on an “average” day it takes 9 cups of coffee (not mugs…cups as measured on the coffee pot) and 2 shots of espresso to keep me functioning througout the day. Lately, however, it would seem that number has nearly doubled. Hopefully I will get back to an “average” day in another week.

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Brooke has been telling me she has a cold in her nose for several days now but is otherwise just fine. So, today we take her to the zoo. She has been asking to go for a while and has been even more demanding since they talked about zoo animals in school this week. So, we haul both the kids around Birmingham Zoo this morning. Everyone is exhausted when we get home, but Brooke and Luke manage short naps. They are both ready for bed early, and Brooke is looking bad and not feeling well (though well enough to ask to go out on an errand to Office Max with Daddy). I start getting Luke ready for bed early, and I think he is in bed at 7:15. I start getting Brooke ready for bed after finding her curled up in a ball on the office floor. She finishes on the potty and is getting into her pull-up for bed when she grabs her tummy. I quickly turn her towards the toilet, and she hurls. A few minutes later she proclaims that she feels much better and goes to bed. Anyone who knows me probably knows how much I hate puke (there is only one thing that disgusts me more), so I really appreciated this lovely finale of Brooke’s.

Note: I am not a bad mother. I am really sorry that Brooke feels so bad and threw up. I held her hair away from her mouth and cradled her in my arms when she was done. But I think that spending another night up with a puking child might send me over the edge right now. As it is, I get no sleep, am up twice at night with a 4 month old, and have a really big exam Monday and another exam Tuesday. Puke really needs to wait until at least Wednesday to get onto the schedule. Yes, I am making light of this because that is my coping mechanism these days. It is going to be worth it soon, right?

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Lately my life has literally involved running around trying to keep everything running with the kids, the house, the business, and school. This second course in econometrics is going to be very helpful in my career, but the class itself is extremely demanding. Previous students have said that the class is more than enough work if it is the only class you are taking, and they were not kidding. Unfortunately, I have two other classes that are suffering a little neglect as well as two small children and a business. Add to the mix the October 1 deadline looming for my comprehensive exam research project, and you have a disaster waiting to happen (have I mentioned that I have two exams next week?). I think I am only functioning due to near-lethal levels of caffeine during the day and Tylenol PM at night. One of my classmates said that I might be taking some cues from Elvis, but seriously, I am not sure how else I can get through the semester. I need lots of caffeine to stay awake and working, but I also need to get the most from the time I do have devoted to sleep. I can’t get up with Luke and then lie in bed for another 30 minutes trying to get back to sleep. Without the Tylenol PM, I think I would be getting more like 4-5 hours of sleep rather than the 5-6 I now get. But it is only for about another 2.5 months.

Okay, so I thought it would be interesting to see how much caffeine I am actually consuming. And that way, you will know what to tell the kind doctors in the white coats when you check me into coffee rehab. So, I am going to keep track of my consumption over the next week and let you know just how much caffeine you need to keep this many balls moving at one time.

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This morning Luke and I were coming home from taking Brooke to school when a car pulled right out in front of me and then barely moved as I was about 100 meters away from him going 50 mph. Gotta love it. Then, as I got closer I noticed a bumper sticker on the back of his car that stated “9-11 was an inside job”. I was furious. As a matter of fact, I was so enraged that I considered not slamming on my brakes and crashing into him. Really, he deserved it. It was a good thing Luke was in the car to keep my wits about me.

I don’t even want to get into the discussion of why there are these ignoramus people who truly believe that it makes more sense to explain the 9-11 attacks as a government conspiracy rather than a terrorist act. Honestly, these people are so devoid of the ability to think rationally and logically that a rational and logical critique is wasted on them. And it was painfully obvious that this person also lacked the rational thought process required not to pull out in front of someone like that when there was nobody behind me to be seen. I will say that the ignoramus made my point about bumper stickers though. I don’t want them on my car because I don’t want someone to look at my car and know that much about who I am and what I believe. It is none of their business. And I certainly don’t want to say something inflammatory on my bumper sticker that will make other drivers want to slam into me or key my car in the parking lot. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

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Today marks the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 attack on America, and I don’t think I have ever really put into words my memories of that day and the weeks following the attack. I think it is time I did this for myself and also so that I have a written record of what life was like on that day to share with my children.

The morning of September 11, 2001 was a typical morning in our new apartment in Falls Church, Virginia. We had moved there less than one month ago so that I could attend the M.S. in Finance program at George Washington University. Scott was still looking for a job and actually had an interview later in the day. He was still asleep, and I was awake watching the Today Show and drinking coffee as I would any other morning. Suddenly Katie or Matt announced there was breaking news that a plane had flown into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. I was in disbelief and wondered how such an accident could have happened. It never occurred to me that someone would have done this on purpose, but all of that would change in a few minutes. I woke up Scott, and we watched the first video coming from the towers only to see the second plane come and hit the other tower. Our view of the unfolding events changed with that missed breath and heartbeat. We were silent in complete bewilderment over what we were seeing.

The next thing I remember is the Pentagon reporter coming on and saying that he didn’t want to alarm anyone, but it seemed that there had been some kind of an explosion at the Pentagon. A few minutes later we found out that the explosion had been caused by another plane crash. A sudden feeling of horror overwhelmed me as I realized what was unfolding before my eyes. I rememer thinking, “My God, what next?” And he answered shortly thereafter with news of Flight 93 coming down in Pennsylvania and speculation about its intended target. I think it was about this time that phone calls started coming in to us wondering about our location. Our apartment was 5 miles away from the Pentagon and 7 miles away from DC (we lived right inside the Beltway). I went to school about 2 blocks from the White House, and everyone wanted to make sure we were home and not downtown that morning.

Watching the towers fall was probably the most surreal experience of my life. It was unfathomable that those buildings would crumble, and I could barely breathe thinking about all the people who were in there and lost their lives. And yet somehow in the next few days school opened again, and we had to come together as a united America and go about rebuilding our lives and our sense of reality. Stepping foot off the Metro at Foggy Bottom for the first time post-9/11 was probably the second most surreal experience of my life. On the corner where the old GWU hospital stood (it has since moved across the street), an armored Hummer and two soldiers with machine guns stood keeping guard of the city. This was something I never could have imagined I would see in America. Washington, DC looked like a war zone, and in many ways it was.

For quite a while after 9/11 I went to school never knowing what was going to happen next. It was like there was a palpable feeling of anxiety in the air. Was something else going to happen or was that really the end? There was a security breach at JFK one night, and as I left school there were helicopters flying very low over the area with floodlights blazing down onto the dark city streets. People were shouting about security increasing the perimeter around the White House. It was nothing, but it was a reminder of how life would never be the same. Not once that I was in DC and saw a plane come over the city to land at Reagan National airport did I not think about how easy it would be for it to take a turn and crash into one of the monuments or government buildings.

What I experienced 5 years ago still lives vividly in my mind, and I don’t know how long it will take to fade. This year the colors and emotions seem more intense than they have in the past four years. Maybe it is all the hype over the fifth anniversary. Maybe it is a sadness that things have not changed more and that we have lost that unity we felt as a nation in those weeks following 9/11. My hope is that you too stop to think about the patriotism and sense of purpose you felt driving you on 5 years ago and try to live a little more of that each day.

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Some call it football season, I call it the season of excess insanity in Tuscaloosa. On campus there is a new and improved stadium, new signs providing all kinds of directions for gameday, and people kicking me out of the parking lot on Fridays at 5 pm. (I guess they think that Ph.D. students should stop working at 5 to take part in football activities? But then where would I park?)

Around town there are RV’s parked everywhere. I mean every available parking lot looks like an RV park. The town looks like everyone was plucked away by aliens if you go out during the football game. I, on the other hand, care very little about the football game and football team. Sure, I would prefer that they won and may watch a few minutes of a game on tv if passing by, but I am not part of the Bama football culture. Part of it is not being from Alabama. Part of it is being a Ph.D. student. Last week one of my professors asked if anyone had gone to the game or knew who won. Nobody went or knew…even the one person in the class who was actually from Alabama. The professor said that was good because we were not working hard enough if we had time to go to football games. So, don’t ask me if I watched the game, know who won the game, or who Bama is playing next week. I didn’t watch and don’t know the answer.

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I have not had a decent night of sleep in, well, months. At the end of the spring I was not sleeping well due to the fact that I was hugely pregnant. This summer I was not sleeping well because I had to be up several times a night with Luke. Lately he has been getting up more often at night again, Brooke has been waking up early, and Scott has been hacking half the night with a cold. I need to stay up later because I have so much work to do. Web hosting work, studying, research, and problem sets are hanging over my head and causing me to come close to having a panic attack. My econometrics professor suggested that we spend close to 20 hours a week outside of class working on econometrics. I think I could budget that kind of time while the kids sleep, but this would involve my getting zero sleep at night. A few weeks into the semester and I am not sure how I am going to make it all the way to December. I may fall to the ground in exhaustion before Christmas, but at least then I would get some sleep.

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