All I gotta say is

anyone in San Jose want to go for some coffee next month?

Not one of those posts!

If anyone has been wondering why I haven't written in a week, it's because J has had two interviews with the same company in the past two weeks and things are moving.  But he doesn't want me to write about that stuff as much, because it felt bad the last time he didn't get a job, and the whole internet knew about it. I understand that.  Unfortunately what he's doing is pretty necessary for this blog to move along, so I've been feeling a little... clogged.  This is go time, the time I really need to write about this so the community I've been trying to build can help me along.

The prospect of moving is exciting, and FUCKING HORRIFYING.  Yes, I would like to move before the Fall semester starts (the busiest/worst/best part of my work year) but now I'm looking around my town saying, "Damn, I like it here", and researching towns where the jobs and thinking, "Damn, I like it here*".  I do like it here.

Powerless, that's what it feels like.  About to go somewhere where I don't know anyone and my only friend will always be gone and really tired when he comes home and it may be a suburb, and maybe I'll end up having kids only because there's nothing else for me there.  I've burst into tears four times today, and I swear I'm trying to find something positive.  I feel even more awful that I'm not jumping up and down.  I am happy about the opportunity, just not so jazzed about where it is.

He's flying to California for an interview next week.  If things go smoothly, we could be out of here by August.

*Here being here, now. Not there.

Oh here we go! A new word everybody! WINGSPOUSE(tm)

Alrighty, not only have a found a new term to replace our decrepit and roundly-hated trailing spouse, but it also offers a new direction! That is, no direction at all but to support your husband.  WINGSPOUSEe(tm)* is an executive help-meet, but who cares about concise vocabulary, when you don't need to worry about a pesky career anymore!

Can I be a wingspouse™ partner and still have a career?It’s possible to be employed outside of the home and still act like a wingspouse™ in some capacity. A few wingspouses are lucky enough to have a career that directly benefits the executive spouse. However, a true wingspouse™ is a full-time and equal partner to the executive. She enjoys being professionally challenged, but finds a separate career difficult because of executive career expectations, time demands, relocations, or family responsibilities. That’s just the nature of the beast. If this sounds like you, then you probably have the makings of a wingspouse.

Isn't WINGSPOUSE(tm) just another way of saying a woman's place is at her husband's side? Or the kitchen? Maybe I'm looking at this too harshly, but the solution here is not to find your own identity but to find a way to more successfully carve it out of his:

She enjoys the success of the executive’s career and actively participates in that success using her own unique set of skills.

Oy.  Over on the LA Times blog, one writer seems to think this is AWESOME (since when did married women not think being a good wife was important? Feminism doesn't mean marry a man just to torture him).

Wouldn't it be better for her spouse and children if she were to opt for a more traditional role — full-time wife, full-time mom, full-time writer of thank-you notes — a choice that continues to be embraced by many forces in our culture?

My head and my desk are having a party right now.  This is what I was talking about a few days about about not being able to surmount these ideas of traditional roles if I take one.  What also irks me is that it assumes a one-income household is possible for most people.

Good on her for making the website and trying to sell this idea, but WINGSPOUSE(tm) makes me want to WINGSPEW.

*It's all caps or go home. This website is crazy-pants.

Job available-- but am I?

A job I may be quite qualified came open this week.  It pays substantially more and would involve more projects and public relations, and is at my current institution.  Should I apply knowing there's a chance that J might get a job soon?

But haven't I been asking myself that for the past three years?  I have held myself back in my current job by riding my hopes on another person.  And now that it (J's job) may actually happen soon, there's this job. That I would be silly not to go for.

But once again, I will have to bite my tongue and let another opportunity  pass away.  Who knows when J will get a job?   He will be graduating mid-May, but so far we have no bites.  I say "we", but it's starting to grate on me*.  I don't have anything to do with this.  I am completely at the whim of someone else's career.

It's not a good time to be angry, but I am.  I am my own person and I am good at my job, but I am losing myself in his job search.  Even at work, now that my boss knows he's graduating, it is assumed that we're leaving and I'm being treated differently.  I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THIS. This would have been easier if he wasn't a student, and I wouldn't have had to tell anyone what was happening.  But with working with faculty... they were going to find out.  Now I'm awash in uncertainty not only in my own mind, but coming from those around me.

So, how can I apply for this job and still feel honest?  I don't want to not try, and then six months down the road J still doesn't have a job.  A month ago that thought wouldn't' have even crossed my mind, but who are we kidding?  The economy sucks and no one has contacted him about any of his applications.  It doesn't matter how talented/skilled/educated you are right now.  We could be looking at a long, dark haul.

Can anyone understand why trying to get a new job, especially in the same institution, would be a bad idea right now?  Even if I got it, if we had to move less than a year later, I would be leaving a bad reputation at a place I would have been remembered fondly, if only I hadn't wasted their time.  Plus, it's probably gotten around that J is graduating, so they won't even consider me.  Who would?  I wouldn't.

It's an endless fucking cycle of self-effacement, obnoxious martyrdom and failure.  Failure before I can even try.  I am just so tired of waiting.

*J isn't grating on me. He is wonderful and supportive and working really hard.

Livid and inarticulate: Planned Parenthood Funding Axed in Budget Cuts

The House voted today to stop federal funding of Planned Parenthood.  The vote passed 240-185.  That means 10 Democrats voted for this?  Planned Parenthood (bless them, fund them, donate to them) gets one third of their funding from the government. And I never thought that I'd link to Fox News, but there's an article about how a proposal from Betty McCollum (D-MN) about cutting Nascar funding (WTF) was voted down, while cutting family planning funds down.  Drag racing up, women's lives down!  I'm trying to track down how representatives in Arkansas voted, but I know it's not good.  What can you do? Sign a stupid internet petition, write a real letter, call, show up in person with a sign? Right now, bills are being crafted that will make it ok for a person to kill a doctor for performing an abortion if that person is doing it to save the fetus's life [Update: it's gone now, but why did it exist in the first place???].  It is all I can do to not send emails to all representatives in AR that just say "YOU FUCKING SUCK".  I know it's not the end, but really? Birth control for horses, but not for human women.

Never let anyone say that there is no need for feminism anymore. Make them explain why.  Make them explain this. And this. And this.

Awesome? Shame? Texas?

I'm sure everybody has seen this by now, the United States of Shame:

I was pretty happy with "Worst Credit Score", as Arkansas is usually the butt of any joke including goats, Billy Bob Thornton or cousin-marrying.  Most Arkansans fall back on Mississippi to make fun of, but unfortunately that's where I was born.  You learn to be tough at the bottom of the barrel.  Ohio is looking even better for us now, since they are worst at "nerds".  How is that bad?  I think it bodes well with J getting a job there.  And Colorado can't be too bad since I don't do cocaine. I have beat the system!

(Also: Delaware is "worst at" abortion? That is a discussion all in itself.)

And the rejoinder, The United States of Awesome:

In J's words, "BROMINE PRODUCTION?"  I agree-- we do lots of stuff ok: state parks, classy parking meters, Cavender's spice, jelly pie(?), first female US Senator, gays and bigots living in peace together, outhouse races, The Gossip, Maya Angelou and the freaking Clintons.

Beth Ditto and Secretary Hillary Frigging Rodham Awesome Clinton

Bromine, since as an Arkansan resident for 17 years I still had to look it up, is a halogen element used in pesticides, flame retardants and Mountain Dew.  Its latin root bromos means "the stench of he-goats".  Awesome.

What does this have to do with Texas, capital of wind power and low high school graduation rates?  This is the next place J is looking at for a postdoc.  I think I said, "TEXAS? TEXAS?" in an excited/anxious high-pitched voice a few times before he calmly answered yes.  Seriously, I have never heard Texas come out of his mouth.  So, it's now France and Texas, though I still think we shouldn't lose hope in Ohio or Colorado until there's an actual rejection letter. 

 I'm realizing just how little I know about what's going on in my spouse's head, how many places we might go that I can't even imagine.  Makes my little searches for library jobs seem futile. Texas. Texas. Seriously, Texas. I know I'm from Arkansas, but Texas seems so weird.   And even stranger, I find I am drawn to this idea.  Things to think about.