Memories of a (Mexican-American) woman who grew up in a bar.

The other week I was putting in facetime in local bars, and I met these two (Mexican-American) women, and we started chit-chatting.

It turns out that one of them grew up in a bar in the city that her dad ran.

A lot of times, her mom would cook up something for bar snacks like tamales, menudo, or posole, and then like on a Sunday afternoon her mom'd take her and her sister and her brothers down to the bar, wheeling after them this little red wagon with a big pot on it, all the way down the sidewalk to the bar.

But, women couldn't go inside the bar, so they'd stop outside, and then her two brothers would lift the pot off the wagon and go take it inside, while all the rest of them all waited outside.

That same woman said her dad also worked some on the railroad, and on the line going way down into rural Mexico, sometimes farmers would pay for rides "in kind" and give the conductors bananas and whatnot.

Signs of voter discontent.

During the recent primaries, I ended up doing some canvassing in the neighborhood near my house, which has a ton of Irish and a decent amount of Italian townies, with a reputation for working class conservatism and machine politics.

Several times, I heard comments like "out of touch" and "they gotta go," about long-standing politicians who came up through the area.

Some people are talking about a leftie surge, which may be true, but my most immediate impressions have been of people resolutely voicing support for getting rid of career politicians, who they associate with the moneyed class.

It just seems like they know that something's not working, and it's breaking up even old allegiances with the machine.

An odd dream of a book author.

The other month, I dreamnt -

I'm at a book event or a party or something, and there's this (shorter) (pear-shaped) (late middle-aged) (black) woman with a bit of an afro going out in two mounds from her head, and somehow I know that she's Northwestern Professor Laura Kipnis.

I either think or speak with someone, and suddenly I know that she simply used the white woman author picture on her book, to give herself privacy.

I turn to talk to her, and begin a conversation.

And then, I wake up.

I miss writing.

I really miss reading and writing towards a goal.

Currently, I work, and outside of work my activism energy goes towards a campaign, including reading necessary political books in order to educate myself on issues and tactics.

Between that and my following politics, I read fiction, and very rarely go see a film, but have no big academic interest disconnected from the daily and near-term political churn.

So, I'm currently trying to figure out how I might regain that mental space in some form.

I knew that I'd have to sacrifice writing a pop book to go in this direction, and I do think I made the right choice to go for a campaign, but I do miss reading and writing on subjects related to my Ph.D. studies.

Maybe if I get elected, I can start up research again as a regular hobby?

I might also try to write shit up privately now and then as I'm able.

No closure with my Ph.D.

I really don't have closure with my Ph.D.

I only realized this a few weeks ago, when I was catching up with a woman who I did my Masters with and is now a tenure-track prof at an R1.

She brought a friend along, and we all talked subject matter etc., and I caught up with her about how fucked up my committee was, and my program in general.

I hadn't really talked subject material like that in a while, and it was so enjoyable.

It was almost too a "I could have maybe had it" moment with teaching and moving in those circles, but then again, it's simply not worth the time and chaos and risk for years, and a lot of teaching situations are just shittier and shittier, so it's not like I was missing something real, but rather wanting a situation that really doesn't exist.

In reality, she also encouraged me several years ago just to stay in the city and do something else, since I have other stuff going and it's really not worth it to pursue the "good" academic jobs; that was actually some of the most helpful advice I received, and it's very true, and jibes with what other young R1 profs have been saying lately.

On another note, I also realized that I still regret having no control and being so horrendously mistreated by all 4 faculty in my area, to an insane and egregious degree.

I switched committees and got out, but I never got a chance to tell them straight-up what their behavior was like, since I had to be so tentative and deferential in order to get my degree.

At some point soon, I want to state that, and let them know that their behavior fell below basic accreditational standards.

Hopefully I'll do that this spring, flip power dynamic and regain control, and leave the situation permanently in the past.

A dream of things broken.

The other week I dreamnt -

I'm lying in bed, and can picture the bedbug cuffs around each bedleg perfectly, as if I'm seeing myself from outside of myself.

There's rusty water in some and Dawn dishsoap in others, but most are all racked up and half breaking, from me moving around in my bed as I sleep and from that the bedleg wheels ramming up against the cuff edges.

. . .

(I do have such cuffs around the legs, and they're full of Dawn dishsoap, but they're not broken.)

Am excited to be able to budget.

Since losing my one elder care job and probably getting set up in the same type of elder care job but through a home, I'm really, really stoked to finally be able to budget.

All my adult life, I've never had a stable income stream, where I could estimate my monthly outlay, and then know something like, "Okay, I have fifty dollars this week I can spend on extra stuff."

That's because I was always working multiple jobs to heap up a lot of money, and I was in boom-and-bust cycles where I'd be flush with cash during the academic year but be dry during the summer, and whatnot.

It's really sort of exciting to have just two part-time jobs that give me consistent hours forever, extending outwards to the horizon.

Finally, I can plan more, in ways that people think is default normal, but were never available to me.