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I have lived in my current apartment for about six months. Since moving, I have bought one piece of furniture (a single Saarinen chair). I received a bar cart for Christmas, and some hand-me-down furniture from my mom’s garage (all against my will, except my grandpa’s Eames lounger), but other than that, my furniture from my teensy apartment in DC is all that’s currently in my large, lofty place here in Atlanta. I also haven’t bought rugs. I have 1,200 square feet of bare concrete floor, except what’s covered by a few chairs and mis-matched sofas. Sofas I don’t ever sit on.

I wanted a nice apartment when I moved here because, well, I’ve lived in some real depressing places. Apartments that just happen to be underground, or where my car gets broken into, or are the size of a nice walk-in closet, or are mustard yellow inside and don’t have functional heat or air conditioning or closet. Some really depressing places. So when I got here, I rented a big loft apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows, a roof deck AND a balcony, a functional dishwasher and a big closet. Actually one big closet and then four more smaller closets. Really. I loved it. And I still love it. I’m just never here.

You see, I love my job. Today, I left at about 6 p.m. Yesterday I left at 7 p.m. Twice last week I didn’t leave until after 8 p.m. I like being there. I like the people I work with. I like it when we hang out in my office talking about stuff until whoops, is it really 8 p.m. already? I guess I should go home so I can get ready to be back here in 12 hours. So I come home, clean up my breakfast mess, put on my jammies and then usually get in bed and read, or write, or goof around on the Internet. On the weekends, usually I sleep in, do laundry, buy groceries (mostly just cereal, milk and coffee), and then do some more reading, writing or internetting in bed. I use a full-sized-bed portion of my giant apartment 90% of the time I’m home.

I think about furniture sometimes. I look at $4,000 sofas with gorgeous Florence Knoll tweedy fabric. More Saarinen chairs. Eames molded plywood chairs. Entertainment centers. I look at plans for building my own custom bookshelves. I think about putting a rug someplace. I go to IKEA and walk around for an hour and leave only buying lightbulbs or batteries.

I signed a one-year lease here. What’s the point of nesting if I’m never home? And if there’s the possibility I’ll just move in six months. I don’t have furniture to invite people over for meals, so I don’t, even though I love cooking. (I do cook things and take them to other’s houses though.) I don’t have people over, so what’s the point of buying a dinette set? (It’s a self-perpetuating home cycle.)

Come to think of it, why did I even unpack? Why don’t I just put all my stuff in a storage unit and live in a studio apartment with my bed, since it’s the only furniture I ever use? I could set it up like a treehouse. Get a hammock. Keep the windows open. Live like that until I decide I’m ready to be permanently attached to a place long enough to justify putting books on shelves instead of just in boxes. But what will change in my life to make that feel right?

Sometimes I’m not going to make a point with a post. I’m just going to put down my thoughts somehow. Maybe I’ll make a point with this someday, but not right now. I just don’t know what I want right now in this area of my life, and I don’t want to waste a lot of energy doing something (decorating or buying furniture or whatever) just for the sake of doing it. I’d rather wait to make the right decision and then go from there. So what if that means there’s nowhere to sit.

I’ve seen this quote popping up a lot lately on friends’ blogs, feminist-communication theory blogs, etc.

“When I was a student at Cambridge I remember an anthropology professor holding up a picture of a bone with 28 incisions carved in it. “This is often considered to be man’s first attempt at a calendar” she explained. She paused as we dutifully wrote this down. ‘My question to you is this – what man needs to mark 28 days? I would suggest to you that this is woman’s first attempt at a calendar.’ It was a moment that changed my life. In that second I stopped to question almost everything I had been taught about the past. How often had I overlooked women’s contributions?”
–Sandi Toksvig

While I have no problem with the sentiment or the revelation (yeah, women made awesome contributions throughout history, and yeah, plenty of them went overlooked for many reasons), there is a flaw in the central argument here that really bugs me. “What man needs to mark 28 days?”

Plenty.

The first calendars were lunar, based on the lunar cycle, which is approximately 28 days. The Islamic calendar still is based on a lunar month. The Chinese, Hebrew and Hindu calendars are still based on lunar months. (Though they have made provisions to keep themselves tied to the contemporary solar year, like adding extra months in here and there.)

Pretend you’re a homo neanderthalensis. You live in a cave, or maybe a hut. You have language and live with a social group somewhere in an west-to-east band between what is now Portugal and Kazakhstan. You are an apex predator because you have learned to use tools. You eat plants and animals. You make simple clothing to protect yourself when it’s cold. You notice it gets dark and light outside. You see the sun and the moon.

Which one do you begin to notice a pattern in?

Obviously, the moon. New moon to full moon cycles are visible to the naked eye, neanderthal or otherwise. The sun is generally bright ball that looks different at certain times of day, but is generally unchanging. So, you start to count the cycles of the changing moon, and then you notice more patterns. After three moon cycles, the weather changes. It gets warmer. Three more and it’s hot. Three more and you start to cool off. And then there’s three of cold weather.

The first calendar is made.

Now, I’m not saying that the bone in the picture at Cambridge wasn’t of a neanderthal woman’s menstrual cycle*. I’m just saying that to assume it was (also, to assume it was a man or woman’s lunar calendar, or to assume it was anything else), and then to base an argument on that, is not logical.

If you want to say that women’s contributions to history have been overlooked, just say they have and give examples that can be proven with facts, not assumptions.

*The average length of a woman’s menstrual cycle is 28 days, but that’s exactly that: an average. Recent studies have put the mean cycle at 29.1 days, with a standard deviation of 7.5 days. Which means that most women report their cycle being between 21.6 and 36.6 days long.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I did a love songs show today. Well, songs I think are love songs. I even played my favorite Okkervil River song (at 8 minutes long, I’m sure somebody fell asleep during it somewhere). Thanks for listening!

The White Stripes – Fell in Love With a Girl
Weezer – You Gave Your Love to Me Softly
They Might Be Giants – New York City
The Walkmen – Stranded
Spoon – Anything You Want
Aretha Franklin – Do Right Woman, Do Right Man
The Marvelettes – Beechwood 45789
Gladys Knight & The Pips – The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me
Smith – Baby, It’s You
Sondre Lerche & The Faces Down Quartet – Night and Day
Sam Cooke – That’s Where It’s At
Joe Tex – The Love You Save
Roxy Music – More than This
The Rentals – The Love I’m Searching For (Alt Version/B-side of Friends of P single)
The Ramones – I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend
The Postal Service – Nothing Better
Okkervil River – So Come Back, I Am Waiting
Mazzy Star – Fade Into You
Elliott Smith – Pitseleh
Otis Redding – These Arms of Mine
Santo & Johnny – Sleep Walk
James Brown – Please Please Please
Iron and Wine – Such Great Heights
Built to Spill – Car
Big Star – Thirteen
Brendan Benson – The Pledge
Frank Sinatra – Call Me Irresponsible
Dean Martin – You’re Nobody Til Somebody Loves You
Bobby Darin – I’m Beginning to See the Light

Today, I played a garage rock show. As everyone knows, garage rock began in 1963, when The Kingsmen paid $36 for an hour in a recording studio and put “Louie, Louie” on tape. And then, ten years later, when Iggy and the Stooges released “Search and Destroy,” it was over.

Here are the songs I played, and some of the stories I told about them:

The Kingsmen – Louie, Louie
Like I said, the first garage rock song. Apparently when it was released, an angry parent wrote to Robert Kennedy demanding it be banned for obscenity. So, the FBI launched an investigation, obtaining master recordings of the song and interviewing the band members. They determined it couldn’t be obscene because the lyrics were “unintelligible at any speed.”
The Who – I Can’t Explain
The Rolling Stones – Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown
The Standells – Dirty Water
The Ramones – Rockaway Beach
The Yardbirds – For Your Love
Incredible guitarists were in the Yardbirds: Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page!
The Bob Seger System – Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man
The Kinks – Powerman
The Pixies – Tony’s Theme
The White Stripes – Hello Operator
The garage rock revival of the 2000s was lovely, and brought us Meg and Jack White, who are also lovely.
Franz Ferdinand – This Fire
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Maps
Beck – Gamma Ray
The Walkmen – The Rat
Wavves – Super Soaker
The Strokes – The Modern Age
Sleigh Bells – Infinity Guitars
Sleater-Kinney – You’re No Rock and Roll Fun
Elastica – Stutter
Bikini Kill – Rebel Girl
These are some of the garagiest lady bands around.
Spoon – Stay Don’t Go
They Might Be Giants – I’ve Got A Fang
Interpol – Obstacle 1
Hot Hot Heat – Bandages
The Dandy Warhols – Bohemian Like You
Death Cab for Cutie – That’s Incentive
Crystal Antlers – Andrew
The Clash – (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais
The Sir Douglas Quintet – Mendocino
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich – Hold Tight!
Dave Dee (a.k.a. Dave Harman) got into music after being one of the first cops on the scene of the car accident that killed Eddie Cochran and injured Gene Vincent. Harman started playing Cochran’s guitar while it was impounded in the police station, and held onto it until he could return it to Cochran’s family.
The 13^th Floor Elevators – You’re Gonna Miss Me
Iggy and the Stooges – Search and Destroy
Did you  know this was produced by David Bowie? Now that you know, are you surprised?

So yesterday, while hanging out in my office with some students, I ate a bunch of those pink-and-white frosted animal cookies. Then I started to get a sugar headache, so I dug through my desk looking for something not-sweet. I found a box of Triscuits with five or six cracker-things* left.

They’re months old. And stale. And gross. I made a face.

“What, stale?” a student asked me.

I nodded, but I kept eating it. And once I swallowed, I went for another, ate it and frowned again.

“What are you doing?” another student asked.

My excuse basically explains my entire life philosophy: “I need to keep eating them, to balance out the sugar headache I’m getting, I just need to lower my expectations.”

And then, one of these students says, nearly under his breath, “Hey there, Liz Lemon.”

Yep.

(By the way, I then continued to eat all the remaining Triscuits and I saved myself from having a sugar headache. The end.)

*What do you call Triscuits? They’re not really crackers, they’re closer to shredded wheat nuggets than anything else, but that’s not really something you eat as an afternoon snack. That’s breakfast. And it’s sweet, not salty.

I did another radio show today from 2-4 p.m. We’re on the radio in The Hub, the campus main open area/dining area/everything area, and 2-4 is right after lunch and when people are hanging out on class breaks, so it’s a time where you know people are listening to you.

I was having a pretty busy day today too, so taking two hours out to be on the radio sounded like a nice way to have a little breather and a little fun. It didn’t really work out that way. There were some interruptions (our studio also has the access door to the building’s network closet), some mistakes (all my fault) and some just general frustration (I need another set of hands in there, or some more desk space).

But I did play music I liked. I added the White Stripes song at the last minute since they announced today they broke up. My reaction? I didn’t realize they weren’t already broken up. Oops.

The White Stripes – Hotel Yorba
Wolf Parade – Call It A Ritual
The Walkmen – Stranded
Animal Collective – Grass
Annuals – Brother
The Anniversary – Crooked Crown
Badly Drawn Boy – The Shining
Big Star – September Gurls
Neutral Milk Hotel – Oh, Comely
Built to Spill – Liar
Elliott Smith – Waltz #2 (xo)
Bon Iver – Re: Stacks
Daniel Johnston – Some Things Last a Long Time
Brendan Benson – Biggest Fan
The Decemberists – Los Angeles, I’m Yours
Fleet Foxes – He Doesn’t Know Why
Modest Mouse – Sleepwalkin’
Sufjan Stevens – The Henney Buggy Band
The National – Terrible Love
Oxford Collapse – Please Visit Your National Parks
Spoon – I Turn My Camera On
The Arcade Fire – No Cars Go
Superdrag – True Believer
Thom Yorke – And It Rained All Night
Okkervil River – Listening to Otis Redding at Home During Christmas (live)

Tune in next week (I’m still deciding if 2-4 p.m. on a Wednesday is too busy for a show and if I’ll pick another timeslot), where I’ll play some songs and hopefully not make as many mistakes.

I do not run marathons. In fact, I rarely do much of anything that could be considered exercise. I’m pretty sure I burn most of my extraneous calories through worrying. I’m so good at worrying I’ve had wrinkles since before I was into double-digit ages, and gray hair since 19. I have been on five different kinds of anti-anxiety medication. I’m right in the middle of the healthy-weight range for my height and build though, which I attribute mostly to this stress-calorie-burning machine my body must be.

What do I worry about? In short, everything. I worry about small, immediate things like am I going to get called into this meeting that starts at 9:30? Did I turn my headlights off in my car? Did I forget my office keys? I worry about other small, less-immediate things like will I get everything done today that I need to do? How will my meeting at 10:45 with students go? What’s for lunch? What am I going to play on my radio show tomorrow? What am I going to wear the rest of the week to work? Will this snowstorm affect this weekend’s trip to the Georgia College Press Association? How is my family doing? How are my friends?

These are easy though. These are like things to worry about to keep my mind off the Big Worries. Am I doing the right things with my life? Am I a good person? Am I doing enough good things for other people? Do I make a difference? Does my life matter? Those big ones can crush you if you think about them too much.

Don’t worry. I’m worried enough for the lot of us.