I don’t plan to ever take down this blog entirely, as the archives go back to my earliest days of blogging on Myspace. I’m just not going to own the suburbankitsch.com domain name anymore.

I do plan to pick up blogging again at some point in the future, but it will likely be under an entirely new name and domain. So sayonara for now, and have fun reading the archives.

My blog is titled Suburban Kitsch. I am currently a suburbanite. Kitsch means lowbrow, tacky, tawdry, or appealing to popular or undiscriminating taste. I try to avoid elitist-style pretentiousness in my writing. Sometimes I succeed in that effort at way too far a degree. For example, I actually have to try really hard to keep my bathroom humor in check, especially on my twitter account (tee hee).

The shirt below is an example of kitsch at its absolute finest. For some reason I own it. I think a distant relative may have given it to us unbeknownst to me.

Kitsch at its finest!

One day I was digging through my “sleep shirt” drawer and lo-and-behold, this treasure presented itself to me! I had no idea it existed in our house! I proudly put it on and ran around the house loudly singing “Freedom Isn’t Free” from the Team America: World Police soundtrack, and then I may have transitioned into Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (Angry American)” – i.e. the “boot in your ass” song.

Jared immediately pointed out my hypocrisy. “Your blog is called Suburban Kitsch. I thought you were supposed to be against elitism. You are embodying the very thing you are supposed to be against.”

Ouch. Buzzkill.

So then, what is elitism? What constitutes pretentiousness in writing or speech? Surely they are real things. I have observed personally those in the “educated classes” looking down upon those they deem to be inferior and ignorant… I can read plain indignation in the writing on their blogs. Even their writing seethes with judgment and an air of superiority. I observe it at parties. You would think we would have grown past the “cool kid” phenomenon now that we’re adults. But no, the judging of others has simply moved to the intellectual elite who feel they are more fashionable, hip, and educated than those yokel rednecks… regardless of political persuasion.

Personally, I always have to keep myself in check that I do not become like this. It is so easy for me to fall back on my education, my knowledge of news and culture, my one puny trip to Europe, or what I think are my enlightened views, and then use all this to therefore judge so many others. But those people I am judging know SO MUCH MORE than me about many realms of knowledge that I am completely ignorant about. My knowledge is not infallible, and I’m almost never the smartest person in the room. I’m no cooler than anyone else. In fact, I actually use the word “word!” as an exclamation of happiness, so that probably makes me the lamest person on the planet. Basically, I try to never let myself feel too self-important. This is VERY difficult.

I have an ongoing conversation with my husband about what particular words carry the most pretentious connotations when used in regular conversation. Jared feels that the word “fabulous” is extremely pretentious and should never be used by anyone unless they are actually on the TV show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. He also thinks that the word “atrocious” is about as pretentious as you can get, unless it is referring to a literal atrocity. For my part, I believe that in everyday conversation (at least in mixed company with non-PhD candidates), one should never use words that would be more at home in an academic journal article… for example “onerous,” “obfuscation,” or “pejorative.” In my opinion, using words like those in everyday conversation is just showy and pretentious to the extreme (not that I haven’t ever done it).

How about you? What words do you think have pretentious connotations? Do you care at all about elitism? Do you ever feel like you’re being judged by “intellectual elites,” or are you one yourself? Do you think there was something wrong with my parading around in said shirt while singing a Toby Keith song? (and just in case you didn’t catch it before – I was being a huge smartass while doing so).

And P.S. Freedom costs a buck-o-five.

Thank you for your time.

Extreme Joy

I arrived at work this morning to an email greeting me with this wonderful news:

On behalf of [the Vice President], I want to congratulate you on your selection as one of the recipients of the 2009 Staff Development Scholarships.

The Scholarship Committee consisted of a group of your peers from [divisions within the organization].  Of the applicants, the Scholarship Committee selected you for your demonstrated talent, dedication, and merit.  Through the pursuit of continuing education, you and others like you are setting a benchmark of excellence that [the organization] is pleased to sponsor.  [The Vice President] is very proud of you!

Your scholarship is worth $1,000 and must be used  by August 31, 2010.

I applied for that scholarship way back at the beginning of July and had just about given up hope of receiving it. I had expected to hear something by now. This was fantastic news!

Needless to say, as soon as I read the email I was jumping around my office gleefully like a crazy person. Remember the ridiculous happy jumping dance Tracy Flick does in Election when she first thinks she won? Yeah, that was me this morning. I think I actually let out a little squeal and clapped my hands in glee. My office mate would have thought I was insane except that she is used to regular outbursts like that from me by now. I promptly told her the good news and then I ran and quickly told another coworker friend who wrote one of my letters of recommendation. Hugs were exchanged. I giggled.

The icing on the cake about getting this particular scholarship besides that a). I worked damn hard for it, b). I can sure use the money, and c). It’s a fantastic morale booster and a great résumé-padder, is that a good friend of mine applied for and got the same scholarship as well! We were in direct competition with one other and we both received the award! Hooray for overachievers!

Murderous Rage

Fast-forward to a mere 30 minutes later.

I got a semi-emergency call from my husband at work telling me he had just discovered that the meth-addict contractor we hired to paint the outside of our house (who had already finished the job, crappily, a few days ago) had stolen some stuff out of our garage and possibly from the inside of our house as well. I rushed home from work to find that the only possession in the entire world that I cared about, my Grandma’s wedding ring that I inherited 2 1/2 years ago when she died, was gone. No $hit. I had posted a comment on a friend’s blog less than 2 weeks ago about how this particular ring was the only possession in the entire world that I care about, and now it’s gone. I don’t know how long it has been gone. It could have already been gone when I posted the comment. They were working on the house for about 2 weeks.

A police report has been filed and I have made the rounds to every pawn shop in Norman, Noble, and Purcell looking for my ring. It is a one in a million shot I will ever get it back but I’ll still check back every week or so. It doesn’t help that the ring is so generic looking – it’s a white gold round cut four pronged solitaire diamond ring. Real distinctive. It fits perfectly on my right ring finger. Only I would be able to identify it if I saw it. It does have a slightly bent prong and the diamond is a little bit loose.

God is mocking me. God says, “Kathy, it’s just stuff. Even if it was your only remaining tie to your Grandma and you placed a great deal of value on it, it’s still just a rock.”

Yes, God, you’re right. But that’s not going to stop me from eschewing your mockery by ironically praying (to you!) to get it back and continuing to scope out the pawn shops… and also to hope that I’m not just an idiot and that it’s lodged underneath my dresser or something.

The situation with the contractor is really sketchy and we’re not even sure if it was him personally who took the ring and some of the other stuff. He definitely took a ladder and some other miscellaneous low-value stuff out of our garage, but we have no idea what else could be missing from the inside of our house just yet. We’ve tried to do an inventory on everything valuable we have, and we can’t find anything else missing just yet. The problem is that he brought at least 2 or 3 other people (read: drug-addict friends) over to do work at our house at various times who we never really met or had a chance to talk to. Any one of them could have taken the ring without his knowledge. The main contractor was clearly high out of his mind at least once or twice when he showed up to do work, and we could tell that one of his other workers was high a different time as well. They were hired to paint the outside of the house, and they only even had access to the inside because of a technicality where we had to leave a garage door unlocked for 2 days so they could paint it. They did not ever have permission to enter our home.

Hindsight is 20/20. We looked him up on the Oklahoma Dept of Corrections database this afternoon, and guess what? He has an extensive police record of drug offenses for sale and posession – meth and marijuana. He most recently got out of jail in November 2008. At least none of his criminal offenses were for violent crimes.

Lesson learned: Trust no one. This should really be common sense but sometimes you have to learn the hard way. With contractors:

1. Get multiple references, especially if there is a need for them to have access to the inside of your house while you are not there. Call the references.
2. Ask if they are insured. (Ensures further credibility).
3. If they seem a little bit high, they ARE high. This might be ok if they’re just mowing your lawn or something, but don’t let them in your house or garage! Protect your garage access code and door openers at all costs!
4. If they spout conspiracy theories they may or may not be high, but you should probably fire them anyway. You don’t want your hard-earned money going to support Ron Paul, 9/11 “truthers,” or antivaxers, do you? Not to mention that pesky meth habit…
5. Look them up in the OK Dept of Corrections Offender Database online BEFORE hiring them.
6. Yes, meth addicts do work for much cheaper than other contractors, but it’s not worth it. Believe me!

Cautious Optimism

I have nothing particularly noteworthy to comment on President Obama’s address to Congress tonight that hasn’t already been said by people far more eloquent than me, but his speech did fill me with cautious optimism. Of course, I thought that Obama gave far too much compromise to the anti-reform crowd in his plan as detailed in the speech tonight, but such is politics. I think this is the best we can hope for in this country right now.

We have a horrible broken health care system right now in this country. That is a fact. I think with this speech it appears that perhaps, after a month of complete and total standstill, perhaps progress can begin to be made again toward getting some sort of major legislation passed by the end of this year. Additionally, the unbecoming heckling outbursts of the anti-reform crowd during Obama’s speech clearly hurt their own cause… so yay for that.

So as to not end on a negative note, here is a happy little video that has been making the rounds lately online. Enjoy.

1. I didn’t like the fixed width columns and not being able to change the color scheme on the page. It made the overall page too skinny and it was not very aesthetically pleasing, in my humble opinion. I much prefer the 3 column layout as it stands now. And,
2. I recently noticed that Stuff White People Like was using the same template as my blog. This was simply unacceptable. Clearly, that far inferior highbrow elitist blog was ripping me off. I had to put a stop to the travesty.

Hopefully I can figure out some of this complicated CSS coding stuff in the next few weeks and further personalize the page, but I’m fairly happy with how it looks right now. If only the Interwebs could have just stuck to HTML so I don’t have to go learn stupid CSS… I was pretty good with HTML coding. But noooo, everything just has to change every few years.

I’m going to a monastic cabin retreat in the wilderness this weekend… alone. Sans husband. It’s not even a retreat in an “everyone holds hands and sings Kum Ba Yah” kind of way. This is the kind of place where people go to be alone and just walk the trails in the woods all weekend. I have my own cabin. I plan to bring my full (good) camera equipment, hike on some beautiful nature trails, and get a lot of sleep. This particular retreat location was run by Catholic nuns until 2008 (it is now operated by laypeople). It also has a really nice prayer chapel (which actually kind of looks like the kind of place where people would go to do yoga), which I fully intend to use… though that’s just an extra perk. I’m sure they would be completely fine with people busting out some yoga moves in there, which I would definitely do if I were a yoga snob.

Anyway, hi. I still exist. Hopefully I can get some real rest this weekend.

Anyway, here’s the rest of the meme I copied:
__________________________

April – My mom-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer; she spent most of the year going through chemo treatments, surgery, and radiation therapy. The treatments messed her up so bad that she is now permanently disabled and will likely never be able to work again.

May – My brother sprained his ankle in one of the worst ways possible.

Summer – My dad-in-law was diagnosed with an advanced stage of prostate cancer. He’s still going through radiation therapy.

September – Coming home from a podiatrist appointment for the messed up ankle, Wes (my brother) was rear ended in a car wreck that almost killed him. The driver fell asleep at the wheel and hit him going at full highway speed. Wes broke his neck and a lower vertebra, sustained a traumatic brain injury, and possibly permanent nerve damage manifesting in his legs being cold all the time.

Fall – My work lost a HUGE contract that we’ve had for about 20 years. This decreased the college’s budget by over 10% a year (It might actually be bigger than that, I could have my numbers wrong). In the meantime our college’s president declared a hiring freeze, so we can’t hire anyone to fill vacant positions. All of us are asked to pinch pennies.

December – My mom had foot surgery for a tumor she’s had in her foot for years, and to cut some tendons that have been pulling one of her toes completely sideways. She hasn’t been able to stand up for very long in months, and there were only two pairs of shoes she can wear b/c all the others were too painful.

On the other hand, 2008 was good in a lot of ways (especially for me personally):

I still really enjoy my job (that I got in mid-2007), and in spring 2008 I got a promotion. My job allows me to get a Master’s degree with 50% off tuition, and I started the Master’s of Public Administration program in fall 2008 (with two A’s to boot!!!). Despite the penny pinching and downturn in the economy, I’m really not at all in danger of losing my job… it just might get a lot harder if people leave and we can’t hire anyone to replace them. Fortunately we haven’t had a single person leave our department since June (which may be because of the challenges of finding a job right now).

I got to go to San Francisco for work in early April. Jared came with me for part of the time. Neither of us had ever been there before and we both had a great time.

At the end of April, I completed the OKC Memorial Half-marathon! (the key word is completed. I didn’t run the whole way, and finished at just over 3 hours. My goal for 2009 is to run the entire race). Wes and my sis-in-law Lori both ran the race in April (and Lori actually beat Wes by a lot… he looks forward to a rematch in 2009).

In May, the day after Karen’s (my mom in law) first chemo treatment, my sis-in-law Kerri gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Lily. We were honored to have Kerri and Steve (bro-in-law) hang out at our house in Norman during the labor. Lily is an adorable baby. She played with our little dogs a whole bunch last week at Christmas and found them to be hilarious.

My job allowed me 5 weeks off work in the summer to go to to the UK with Jared for his law school Oxford summer program. Having lived in Oxford for the better part of 5 weeks, I got to know the town pretty well. I also got to travel all over the UK (London, Cornwall, Bath, York, Edinburgh) and to go to Paris for a weekend. I strongly recommend going to York if you ever have the chance to go to England, and Cornwall was the most beautiful place Jared and I have ever been (I recommend staying in St. Ives).

During the time we were in Europe my mom-in-law had surgery to remove the (at one time cancerous) lump from her breast… she followed up with radiation therapy in the fall and she is now CANCER FREE and is growing hair again! (the chemo caused all her hair including eyelashes and eyebrows to fall out).

Wes’ car wreck in September didn’t kill or paralyze him despite a broken neck, and the one potentially good thing to come out of the wreck is that because he was in a neck brace for two months, he was forced to rest the messed up ankle. Now the ankle is hurting him less even when he runs. (However, the insurance settlement is still pending, which sucks).

Another job-related blessing for me this year – I GOT OUT IN TIME. Before I started working at my current job in 2007, I worked at a mortgage servicing company that had a pretty big portfolio of Lehman Brothers loans. In case you didn’t pay attention to the news at all in 2008, Lehman Brothers went down in flames a few months ago. I don’t think anyone at my old place of employment lost their job because of it, but the loans we serviced were getting messier and messier right around the time I left and continuing to the present. I shudder to think about still having to work there.

The 2008 election season was rife with fiery conflict between Jared and I and people we know (as election seasons usually are)… but now I’m excited about the coming Obama presidency. I don’t think the country is going to change dramatically because of the new administration, but it is like a breath of fresh air. It’s really cool that we will have a leader that most of the non-US western world views favorably. (Now if only John Edwards hadn’t screwed up so spectacularly by cheating on his wife while she was undergoing cancer treatment and he was campaigning for president… that one goes on the “why 2008 sucked” list, I guess).

…so 2008 wasn’t a total loss for me. Lots of people haven’t been quite so lucky, though. I’ve read a bunch of facebook statuses lately saying how 2008 sucked. Why was 2008 a crappy year or a good year for you?

But I saw the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in Norman on Friday night… Jared and I both saw “guy with mental illness riding a bike WHILE playing a harmonica.” It was the coolest thing ever. We were in my mom’s convertible at the time, so we even heard the harmonica. He was playing it with both hands while apparently riding his bike for transportation. It was great. Norman has reached a new level of awesomeness.

And that’s what makes Norman so much cooler than Edmond.

1. I think that people who “don’t like the taste” of water are extremely ghetto. It’s water. It doesn’t have a taste. Sometimes Norman tap water has a taste, but that has nothing to do with the properties of water itself. That has to do with Lake Thunderbird (aka Lake Dirtybird) being a filthy festering water source. Get a filter or buy bottled.

2. I think that the Hinder song “Lips of an Angel” is just about the worst song I have ever heard in my life. Really, no other terrible song even comes close to the hatred I have for that song right now. It makes me cringe and it offends my sense of dignity, justice, and artistic merit on multiple levels. It is painful to listen to. And just so you know, I am embarrassed that Hinder is from Oklahoma. They have now bumped Toby Keith down from his top spot on my “Worst Band or Artist to ever come out of Oklahoma” list. A few songs that are better than Lips of an Angel:

Bruce Springsteen’s version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” *shudder*
Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue” *double shudder*
Anything by William Hung
Anything by Michael Bolton
The sound of my dog whining

If you like that song I don’t think I can be your friend. Please explain to me what redeeming quality you see in that song.