Today Happiness Is

1) Rally for Sanity signs.


2) An entire day off tomorrow.

3) Corn mazes, haunted houses, and punny Halloween cards.

4) My reigning #1 status at Wii Arena Skateboarding. I have unlocked the final level at long last.

5) Great Big Sea, an awesome Canadian band (Newfoundland is in Canada, right?) that has a new CD out. The new CD? Is awesomeness squared.

Dear Sister

My dearest sister,

I know that I don't often take time to tell you how much I appreciate all you do. You are the duly appointed caretaker in our family and I don't know how you do it without going absolutely batshit insane. Well, actually, I find that you are just a teensy bit crazy, but, really, that's completely understandable. I find, while in the presence of our mother, that I revert back to 17, which would make me certifiably crazy, right?

Anyway, thank you. You are awesome.

I worry about you, though. You're still intimidated by the fast food workers of America as I observed when I visited earlier this month and you refused to take your order back even though it was entirely wrong. This inability to confront strangers with problems that you have? It's kind of a problem.

Also, I think that you think soap opera characters are real. I recently started tuning in to General Hospital once a week so that I could call and have something to talk to you about (who is the guy with the Irish accent? why is Jax married to Carly? Tracey and Luke? WTF?) and they way you talk about them sometimes makes me nervous. I made a comment about how Vanessa Marcil must have been hard up after Las Vegas got canceled and you just stared at me like I was rude to acknowledge the actual actress.

I'm a smidgen worried about the animal situation in the house, too. Two cats and four dogs is about four pets too many. Let's work on not replacing the animals as the inevitably die, okay?

But, really, I just want you to know that I appreciate you. It does ease my guilt to know that mom has someone around to count on. And I know you sometimes feel like you are responsible for everything. You're not, you know. You can call me. I'll help. I promise.

Thanks for everything!
Your favoritest sister in the world

Parental Units

I saw him across the miles of shoes that make up DSW at the Mall of America. An overweight bearded guy holding his wife's purse, baseball cap on his head. I blinked, so sure, so sure for that instant that it was him. Then I blinked again and he was just some guy I'd never seen before. I kept blinking until the tears went away.

She's laid up right now. She had surgery on an old ankle injury and she's on bed rest until the end of November. I send her silly postcards and punny Halloween cards, but when I talk to her on the phone she seems so sad. I am stumped.

I heard "Lay Lady Lay" on the radio tonight. I turned it up as loud as I could, screaming along the words while laughing and crying simultaneously. He used to try and claim that song was about a dog. A dog! As if.

She was so angry that night. She broke every single one of the plates and bowls by hurling them off the balcony. He wouldn't buy her new sheets for the bed, well then, he was going to buy her something worth even more.

He let me take the truck to school, but realized he needed it for moving something later that afternoon. He went to the school, took the truck, parked the car in exactly the same way I had left the truck (meaning he had to back it in) and left the keys in the ignition with a note "took the truck - drive this home - Pops" sitting on the dash. I laughed and laughed and laughed at the instruction. What else was I going to drive home?

She let me curl up into the bed next to her while she slept. I read book after book after book. She'd wake up, look at the pile of books, and ask me which ones I would recommend for her. I would tell her to read all of them, wanting to hear if she agreed with me on the merits (or demerits) of each one.

My uncles crowded around him and they asked him what they thought of the boy his youngest was to marry. He shrugged. "Sink or swim. You gotta let them make their own decisions." Dr. BB listened and wondered. Was that a yae or nae vote?

She finally got to drive the car on that road trip out west as he napped in the back. We were in the Rockies somewhere and the sign told us that there wasn't another gas station for a gazillion miles. Maybe we should stop for gas, I suggested. She looked down at the needle at the orange half hash, looked back at him sleeping, and said we'd be fine. As we coasted down that last mountain, running on fumes and dreams, him harrumphing in the back, me biting my nails to the quick, my mother opened the window and screamed into the cool air.

First Love

We moved there when I was seven. A falling down farmhouse in a rural area, cornfields separating our acres from the nearest neighbors, and an occasional cow straying into our front yard.

I was years away from being able to ride my bike three miles into town, to meet the other children that lived there, and to buy candy cigarettes and Big League Chew from the tiny corner store with money earned from scouring the road for pop bottles to take back for ten cents each. I was years away from the confidence in my physical abilities to do anything except wash dishes. I was years away from the knowledge that I could think fast and think hard and use my brain for something other than figuring out how to avoid another confrontation with my father.

There was a sun porch on the west side of that farmhouse. My parents put all the moving boxes on that porch after we moved in, so it was filled with cardboard and one leftover couch, stuffing falling out, that they put in there while they decided the best method of discard for it. I found myself on that porch a lot, hiding from him, working on my homework, and dreaming of how I could run away and never be caught.

I learned how to read there. I was very good at regurgitating information before that. I knew the letter 'a' meant a and I knew c-a-t spelled cat, but it wasn't until there was a cat in our farmhouse that I suddenly knew that c-a-t meant Penny, that annoying cat who scratched me so badly that twenty-four years later I still have a scar on my wrist. I joyfully reread all of the old assignments that I had worked so hard on and realized that it was all really easy. All of it.

And there I read. I fell in love, first with Ramona Quimby. She was misunderstood. She was bright, but confused about her place in the world. She was the youngest. She was just like me. As an adult, I read those books and I want to smack Ramona, but she was my first. My first confidant, my first chapter book, my first window to a world that I could escape to.

As I grew, I introduced new characters to my fictional world - Francie Nolan, Sara Crew, Mary Lennox, Anne Shirley, and Black Beauty all became my friends sitting on that couch - but the love of learning to read and learning escapism via my mind, that's my true first love.

Welcome to My World

This blog was originally titled Neurotic Grad Student because, um, I was a neurotic grad student. But somewhere along the line, I stopped being a grad student and the name of my blog began to grate on me. Every time I updated or commented on someone else's blog, the name seemed to mock me. You fail, it said. You are not a good neurotic grad student.

So I changed my screen name to NGS and changed the blog name to The Time for Change.

Life is about change, right? I feel like every year my personal life undergoes some massive reorganization and that's what the blog title is about. I've been writing here since September 2004 which makes my blog the old grey-haired woman with a cane hobbling about the interwebs. It's a chronicle of my life as a single girl stressed out over roommate problems to a stressed out grad school failure to an engaged girl with no end of devotion and grossness about her darling fiance to a newly married woman who is still moderately disgusting over that man.

We're going to be undergoing massive changes again soon. Dr. BB is on the academic job market and chances are pretty good we'll be moving soon. Moving away from this city that we love, this city where we met and fell in love walking around Lake of the Isles. But this, too, is a time of change. I might now always embrace change, but it is life.

And that's how we got here.

Dear World

Dear World,

I am a 31 year teacher. I teach lots of things, some of them expertly and some not so expertly. I am married to a wonderful man who works really hard and humors my many idiosyncrasies and tendency to hum Bon Jovi songs as I'm going to sleep at night.

Here's what I would write if I were going to write a bio of myself:

NGS holds a bachelor's degree from Bowling Green (Ohio) State University (go Falcons!) where she majored in political science and minored in mathematics. She holds an advanced degree in political science from the University of Minnesota with a focus on American politics and research methods. She spends her spare time reading books on Euclid and Newton and practicing solving quadratic equations. She's also obsessed with maintaining her standing as the all-time scoring champion on the Wii Fit Skateboard Arena game in her home.

In addition, NGS volunteers for an organization that monitors court cases and tries to figure out ways to make the criminal justice system more transparent and fair. She also spends a lot of time trying to convince her husband that they should get a puppy.

Oh, wait. That IS a bio I wrote for myself to include in brochures for one of my jobs. Who's to say I'm not awesome.

Here are some things you might not know about me.

1) The first time I ever carved a pumpkin, I was in college.

2) I am an expert on standardized tests (seriously).

3) In the last month, I have traveled every weekend except this last weekend when I worked both Saturday and Sunday. My husband is beginning to think he's a bachelor again.

4) If you are my friend, I will tell you when I think you're acting like an idiot. If you're not really my friend, I'll bite my tongue but later tell my husband that I think you're acting like an idiot.

5) I try to ride my bicycle at least 50 miles a week. Until it starts snowing.



6) I made a gluten-free pumpkin pie on Saturday. And gluten-free cookies on Friday. Just call me Martha fucking Stewart.

7) I can't make it past the first level of the Wii Super Mario Brothers game. My husband has completed all the levels and just looks at me with pity at my substandard video game playing abilities. In my defense, I don't have nearly the time to practice that he does. I'm too busy maintaining my lead in Skateboard Arena.

8) I played clarinet in marching band in high school. Last year I had my clarinet refurbished and cleaned and I love playing it. But I suck hard core. Two weekends ago, I went to my high school Homecoming game and the band director didn't remember me. I was crushed.

9) I read trashy romance novels all the time. I'm also rereading the Harry Potter series for like the billionth time. (I'm on the fifth book. Harry is still a whiny brat.)

10) I secretly want children.

11) I not so secretly don't want children.

12) I am conflicted about having children.

13) My husband knows my blog exists, but he doesn't read it. I've maintained it since before we even dated, so it's my space, but I wouldn't care if he read it. I don't think.

14) I think I'm a pretty good teacher, but sometimes I wish I had more patience with my students.

15) My favorite animals in the whole wide world are pigs.

That's all. Thanks for listening,

My Own Double Standards

I believe that women should be able to do what men do. I also firmly believe that if I'm in an elevator with a man, he should allow me to exit first, that if I'm walking with a man, he should walk on the car side of the street, and that if it's raining out, I should be allowed on the bus first. I have no cognitive dissonance with these things.

I believe that people can believe whatever they want to believe. But if you ever proselytize to me about your religion, I will never be able to look at you again without remembering that and hating you.

I believe that people have the right to vote, even if that vote is different from mine. But if I ever hear you admit that you voted for anyone named Bush for president, for Michelle Bachmann, or voted against a school levy, I will think you are an idiot.

I believe in tolerance. But I am quite intolerant of people who are themselves intolerant. People spouting hatred about homosexuals, folks with accents, or that black man who is our president get no respect from me.

I think about these things a lot. Some of them bother me. I am almost rabidly anti-religious and it pains me sometimes. I want to be open-minded, but as soon as the talk of deities and mysticism comes up, my blood pressure rises and I can feel the meanness ebbing out of my pores. Some of them don't bother me. Bachmann is batshit crazy and the people who vote for her must be batshit crazy too.

But I wonder. Still I wonder. What other double standards do I hold that I am unaware of?

Appropos of Nothing

I am sick. There will be no deep meaningful thoughts here.

I was in Michigan this weekend hanging out with awesome people. Exhibit A. Me and SV. I have a girl crush on this woman. (Note the redness of my nose. I failed Tissue Blowing 101.



Here I am with ladies who deserve to know that I am about to give them the worst cold of 2010. Sorry!



I don't know about this picture. SV sent it to me. I think it captures my maniacal side pretty well.



While I was cavorting about rural Michigan in dive bars with my high school friends, my husband was involved in more innocent pursuits, including playing in the leaves with our godson.



Happy Monday. May you avoid the Horrid Cold of 2010.

A Reminder

As I watched the Giants destroy the Bears on Sunday, I took note of the pink additions to the uniforms on the field. Pink gloves, pink arm bands, pink accents on helmets, and let's not forget about the pink baseball caps on the sidelines.

It's not that I don't think breast cancer awareness is important. It totally is. The NIH estimates that 12.2% of women will be diagnoses with some form of breast cancer at one point in their lives. But.

October is also domestic violence awareness month. And, while it is difficult to determine exact numbers of women who are victims of violence in their own homes, some of the most common statistics used indicate the prevalence of domestic violence is as high as nearly one in every four adult women experiencing at least one physical assault by a partner during adulthood. 25% of women in our country. It's shocking, appalling, and sad.

Domestic violence causes death, too, just like breast cancer. But the death count is not what keeps me up at night. It's the count of the women who are alive, breathing, and living in fear in their own homes. It's the children who call 911 from under their covers, afraid of the outcome of the confrontation outside their bedrooms. It's the women who call the shelters, not knowing what to do or who to turn to. It's the women in the ER, making excuses for their bruises and broken bones, lying to medical professionals to protect their families and lives. It's the acceptance in our culture that it's okay to solve arguments using emotional and physical weapons.

So, yes, please continue to support breast cancer awareness. I would ask you to consider a different charity besides the omnipresent Susan G. Komen Foundation that focuses its resources on fundraising and finding a medical cure for cancer without considering prevention, helping women with the costs of medical care, or alternate forms of treatment. This foundation does some good work, but it also spends a huge portion of its budget on fundraising and frankly, there are other good breast cancer awareness charities out there doing better work.

But, also, when you're wearing your ribbons, writing your checks, and walking in those walks, take time to consider other options in October. Millions of women are counting on you.