Grumpy

Midget dogs don't usually inspire me much, but to me, this is the iconic image of grumpy.  I am sitting in my windowless office, complete with a tan push-button phone, brown file cabinets, cork board, metal desk, and a chair with no wheels, no arms, and the exact ergonomically wrong size for said metal desk.  I am not angry -- my partner of 28 years often collapses all my "not happy" moods into one lump category of "angry."   But this dog pretty much sums it up.    And honestly, I don't think we should give our emotional states too much press, if you know what I mean.  The business of living is far too complicated to give in to feeling states.  But I do know it's perilous to ignore them, too.  

Being grumpy comes from surveying the landscape.  We had what must have been the aftermath of the Oklahoma tornado blow through here last night: not the full brunt, but reported 90 mph winds knocking down branches and trees and a few power lines.   That's a pretty apt description of the economic and social landscape right now too.  The tornado's not here, but it doesn't look pretty, especially for those of us who were marginally rooted in the first place.   Most of the people I talk to are openly frightened and we are, too, although we have been for some time now.  But mainly I'm grumpy about all the waste, all the stupidity that puts us in a world of our own making (okay, some more than others had their hands in the clay).  The joy we experienced in the changeover to an Obama future wasn't naive -- but hope was about the fact that at least with this version of government, we might get through it.  

Still... I would like to find a way to banish stupidity, my own included.  I stumble through bureaucracies (ironic that the American Sociological Association, a group of individuals that presumably has read Weber thoroughly, is so heavily loaded with institutional limits, membership gates, and insider knowledge).  I trip over the piles of paper in my office that illustrate the sheer volume of things I have taken on just to continue to pay bills, remain engaged in intellectual activity, and successfully navigate the "mothering discourse" expected of me by my daughter's schools, music teachers, sports clubs, and such.   I write about a thousand words a day, for various things (creating books and conference papers, supporting grad students in other places, complaining to my network of colleagues and friends about academic junk on a listserv, writing for this blog and all the other marketing ones I do, and of course, commenting on student papers).   I doubt more than a third of it gets read, even less of it having any meaningful impact on the world.   It's certainly not filling my pockets or helping me remodel the bathroom (no, I swear I'm not in the market for a  $35,000 commode...) 

 I know this is not that bad.  Really.  But it could be a lot better. 

I keep hoping somewhere in there Mr Obama is going to forgive us our sins, oh, I meant debts, and then I can start all over again, teaching somewhere part time and running a gluten-free deli in Easthampton with Sarah and Colleen... but of course, the sheer audacity (0f hope! hahahaha get it?) of my wishes is precisely the reason I'm probably not a spiritual person prone to prayer. My team never wins, I do not feel absolved, and I harbor deep suspicions that purgatory is more fun than heavenly rest.   This week grumpy is my religion.