Ch-Ch-Ch Changes!

It is a new semester and a new adventure in my life is beginning. So you know what that means--time for a new look for the blog! It's girly, it's crisp, and it's just about Tiffany Blue! It's perfect for the new direction for this space.

After I finished the dissertation, I found myself struggling to write--I felt myself going all over the place. That was especially difficult given that this blog started as so focused and goal-oriented. My time away from the blog has been good. I miss writing every day--I miss the community--I miss the time to sit and focus and think about my day.

So I'm coming back to blogging again. This time with a different focus--planning for a wedding and planning for a life with the wonderful Dr. J. This space will probably be much more personal than it was last year--and I think I am okay with that as it was already starting to move in a more personal direction. The one thing I think will be missing the most from this revised blog is that I won't talk so much about university life here. Life in academia will probably only arise as it relates to Dr. J and I preparing for our dual academic careers together.

I've realized that I need a different space to talk about university life--one with more privacy--one that speaks to a very particular audience--one that I can start after I've been on the job a bit longer. I've only been in classes for two weeks now (and it is going great and I love it), and I just want to take some time to experience it for a while before I figure out how to incorporate blogging into that aspect of my life. I know I'm going to want an academic space in the future; I already have questions that I would like to discuss/think through in a public forum type fashion. I especially would like to blend my interests in race and gender and politics into a blog--just not yet.

So for now, this is a new start. Welcome to my so-called engaged life.

So Much To Say

(Understatement follows). This has been quite a week. Between the engagement, graduation, and faculty orientation, I am quite overwhelmed right now!

Many many thanks for all the well wishes on our engagement. I have enjoyed finding out all the things Dr. J was going behind my back when he was allegedly working on dissertation business. The story of him going to meet with my mother last Tuesday is a great one, but I don't have the energy to go into that now. Dr. J and I are doing great and trying to do our best to enjoy this time. Unfortunately he is already gone back to University Town, and I miss him dearly. These next few months of long distance relationship status are going to be rough but hopefully they will go by quickly. No wedding date is set as of yet, although we are looking at a 12-18 month window. I'm trying to keep planning and thinking-about-planning to a minimum right now.

School is getting underway here, and I am rushing to complete all the items on my to-do list. I am behind in a very un-Mon-like fashion. But I am enjoying meeting my new colleagues, and I think I am transitioning well into this new faculty role.

I have been thinking a lot about transitioning out of this blogspace. I have found it increasingly difficult to write here--for no other reason than suddenly this blog is a little "theme-less" to me. It was easy to write every day when it was just about the dissertation, but now that my life is turning in so many different directions, personally and professionally, this space feels very fragmented to me. There may be a wedding planning blog in my future as well as an academic one, but I really can't say right now. I do feel like I should keep an online space--especially after the delurking that went on this week (thanks to those of you who commented for the first time)! But I really need to figure out how, where, and to what extent I want to change my blogging. So when I'm sitting in boring orientation meetings this week, I'll have something to think about.

In the meantime, I was really touched to return to my blog and find this comment that was left regarding this post:

Anonymous said...
i am writing to you from india - i am not a woman of color, here all of us are different shades of brown - but i am from a lower caste community. i could have passed off as upper caste, but somehow i took to interrogating caste in my academic life. i live in a upper caste dominated place. i still have not from my childhood to now, been taught by men or women of my caste. i cannot hope to find any for the next ten years also. today as i write this, i am very very sad. there is a conference going on here on caste and democracy and all the lower caste men and the upper caste women are conglomerating in different venues. i was left out of everything, mainly because i raise distasteful issues concerning mainstream academic politics. i cannot sleep and i cannot cry. i just sit here and read your blog and feel somewhat better. i know that in india no woman from my caste will write a blog like this - sometimes i wonder if i can go on, sometimes i promise myself that i will stay and struggle for all those coming up after me from so far behind. thanks a lot.

I am greatly appreciative to this commenter for sharing this with me here, and it is certainly good motivation for me to reconsider why I blog and what I blog about. I am optimistic that I'll figure out my next stage for blogging soon.

A Fairy Tale

A year ago yesterday, Dr. J and I went on our first date. We had been talking on the phone for hours for a little less than a week, and I was looking forward to this lunch with him. He was incredibly nervous (although it didn't show to much), but by the end of the day, we both knew that there was definitely something unmistakably magical between us. Although Dr. J and I generally remember the 4th of August (the first day we met), August 9th is our true "anniversary" date--it was the day we knew we were a couple. We had a talk not too long ago about if in the future we should "celebrate" the 4th or the 9th and decided on the 9th. So it was good to have Dr. J in town for this special day. His schedule has been busy this week with dissertation stuff (or so I thought), so it was nice to get our celebration started with a nice dinner Tuesday night (recipe to come B*). I had picked up a bottle of Reisling and also baked a lil chocolate cake, so Dr. J was surprised when he got in Tuesday night. We laughed and talked and danced together until the wee hours of the morning.

Yesterday morning, we were a little slow getting started--we actually slept for a while which was good. We danced to the anniversary song and got out and ran a few errands. We went to see Ricky Bobby and laughed as loud as we wanted because we had this big stadium theatre all to ourselves (it was about one in the afternoon). Our plan was to catch an early dinner at the first restaurant we ever went to here in New School City (a beautiful place on the waterfront). But right after we left the movie, a huge thunderstorm came up. It was pretty bad and delayed our dinner plans an hour. Fortunately, the restaurant screwed up our reservation time (they had us down for 7:00 instead of 6:00) so we when arrived, we were actually on time. Dr. J and I had a wonderfully romantic dinner--just like our first time there and the rain looked like it was going to let up, but it only did a little.

So we had a bit of a quandary. Our first visit to this particular restaurant was followed by a walk on New School City's famous downtown waterfront area. I really wanted to go down and sit at the pier so I said let's go anyway. It really worked out that it was raining because that kept the tourists away. It is a beautiful spot on the water where it is normally hard to get a seat (and it is a covered area so it was dry where I wanted to sit and look at the water). So although Dr. J was acting a little agitated about the rain, we finally got a parking space and got settled downtown at a nice spot on the water. The rain also meant that there was a cool breeze, so we just cuddled together and talked about what a great day and great year we had together. We were just floating in our own sweet confessions of love as Dr. J began to tell me how he wished the night could end--with our favorite group singing to us:



As we talked about how wonderful that would be--a perfect ending to our day, Dr. J began to deliver for me a beautiful poem about how much he needed me and loves me. When he finished, I was (I thought) floating as high as I possibly could be at that moment. It was just so wonderful to be sitting in the middle of a beautiful night with the man that I love by God's big beautiful ocean. And as I was all caught up in the moment, in his love, in the night, Dr. J suddenly dropped to one knee and asked:

Mon, will you marry me?

My mouth dropped open--I think I actually first said "shut up" because I couldn't believe it. I was in complete awe as I began to laugh and squeal and kiss him and say Yes YES YES!! as he slipped the most perfect ring in the world on my little little finger. It is perfectly classically me in every way:

I LOVE the details of the ring--I keep finding little things about it that I love:

And man it is hard to show in a photo, but this lil bling bling sparkles--it is just perfect for my little hand:

Dr. J knows he could have given me a rubber band and I would be happy, but it is so nice to have a man in my life who not only loves me right, but also knows me--knows my taste and knows how to make me grin like a giddy schoolgirl. We laughed, we cried, we just had a wonderful night out on the pier and of course, it stopped raining as we sat there. That gave us a chance to walk around downtown, make important phone calls, and duck into a nice restaurant for a little Riesling and dessert. We came home and danced some more, and in the surprise of the evening, I had forgotten to give Dr. J his anniversary present and card--which he enjoyed very much.

It was a day I'll never forget. I feel like a princess, and I'm not coming down from this cloud for a while. I can't believe so many things are happening in my life right now--I feel so lucky--so blessed. I never thought I'd be here. But it feels great. It feels like a fairy tale and I love it.

Good and Busy

I cannot say enough how nice it is to have Dr. J. New School City is his hometown, but it was so nice to hear him say he was coming home--to me. We stayed up until probably 7 this morning--just talking about all sorts of things concerning us. It has been a while since we've done that, and I'm starting to feel it now. Somehow I still had the energy to do a good bit of shopping and cooking today (and I hate to cook). I made a nice salmon dish with yellow rice--I should have taken a picture of it like B* and ProfMe--next time I make it I definitely will.

In any event, Dr. J has some dissertation business to take care of while he's in town, so I'm trying to use the moments we aren't together to get things in order for classes. Preparing for this new course (new to me) is becoming a bit more time-consuming than I expected. Especially putting together assignment descriptions. I tried to find some similar assignments on-line, but I haven't had much luck. So for the most part, I'm starting from scratch. But I have about 75% of that work done. I want to get everything drafted at least before I head out of town for graduation this weekend. (Congrats to Melyssa who is also walkin the stage!) Unfortunately, I haven't made much progress on the book chapter that is due next week--hopefully the approaching deadline will light a fire under my behind before the week is out.

Time Why You Walk Away?

I really don't know where my time has gone this week. I feel like I've been moving non-stop and today am I doing a little crashin and burnin. Fortunately, this week has been very productive and has gotten me even more excited and motivated for classes to start in the coming weeks.

Let's see, where did the time go??:

• I finished the majority of my unpacking. The sofa company replaced the torn couch that they delivered when I moved in, but when they brought my new coffee table, it was damaged as well. So I'm still waiting on a new table. Sigh.
• Something is wrong with my personal laptop. It won't read any USB devices and it takes forever for Windows to load. In attempting to save the files that were on it, I discovered that the CD Burner no longer works either. Fortunately, I have my new laptop from the school and I finally figured out how to upload all the files from my old computer to this one. I still have not been able to recover my lost dissertation files though.
• My graduation invites were a big hit with the grandmothers--I can't decide which one is the proudest--they are both walking around like peacocks. I got to see both of them this past week when I went home to get my hair shaped up.
• My regalia is very regal--It was delivered to my hometown address so my mother has been taking care of it for me. I love my robes--they are going to be a pain to wear in this heat, but I'm looking forward to walking in them next Saturday, and wearing them again in a few weeks for our opening convocation.
• All of my paperwork has finally been processed from HR, so I was able to get my new ID card yesterday and made my first trip to the library (where the nice librarians all called me Professor Mon). I'm still looking for a few texts for fall, but mostly at this point, I'm trying to finalize my booklist for my spring seminar.
• I'm also trying to get the sources I need to finish this book chapter revision. My co-author has completely left this in my lap (she's gone out of the country) and I'm struggling with what to do to make this work.
• I've learned that there are a few too many stairs to climb to get to my office. But I love being in my office. They are prepping it right now for a good cleaning, so I probably won't be in there much this coming week. I need to spend some time figuring out what I want to put on the walls. Part of me wants to put up some real militant Black posters, but I don't want to scare the children. Any suggestions on office decorations??
• I've watched quite a bit of TV since I've been here. Why did I sign up for all these channels????
• I had a wonderful time meeting some faculty members and students of color yesterday. There was a minority student program that I stopped in on, and I was given the opportunity to introduce myself to the students. It was cool to see their reactions to me--an combination of disbelief, excitement, and admiration. After the program was over, a few of the students in my major came to introduce themselves to me. More than anything else that has happened since I've arrived, meeting those students made me feel like I'm in the right place--like this is the one thing more than anything else in the world that I'm supposed to be doing right now.
• Dr. J and I met a year ago yesterday. He sent me beautiful roses yesterday morning and they are just gorgeous. It was rough not having him here yesterday--that was the only downside to this week. But fortunately I'll get to see him soon. We haven't been out on a date in a while, so I'm looking forward to us finding some nice romantic spots here in New School City. This city is known for its great food, so I'm sure we'll have a wonderful time trying out places while I'm here and finding "our" spot.

All of the business of the week has been great, but scary. This is just the beginning.