Debate debacle

 Joe Biden was just awful in this debate - inarticulate, rambling, sometimes inaudible. He missed so many opportunities to score points on Trump's ridiculous assertions.

That said, the commentators on MSNBC made some great points:

Expectaions for Joe Biden were low.

Trump is a liar and voters know it.

Trump is generally unlikable and was so during the debate, especially the 2nd half.

Some notable candidates have overcome poor debate performances and won anyway, including John Fetterman.

Debates don't matter in general, and how many undecided voters are paying attention the week before the 4th of July...

Minneapolis is growing on me

 Even though I complained about my Girl Trip, I have to say, my third visit to the Twin Cities as endeared it to me further. We stayed in a St Paul house with shops and restaurants within easy walking distance. We rode e-bikes around the Minneapolis lakes, and took a day trip to Duluth. We had some great food, much of it in restaurants with GF choices clearly marked on the menu.

Probably my favorite thing was how often people helped us with directions or advice without us even asking! While we were walking or biking, we often stopped to figure out where to go and someone almost always kindly and casually volunteered helpful suggestions. So different from Grand Forks and ND! I could get used to that!

Girl Trip 2.0

 Survived my second girl trip, though just barely. Many of the same issues as last year, though not as bad (though the trip was considerably shorter). Similar issues included being kind of bossy and treating me like her kid instead of her equal. Often being joyless and sort of dismissing my enthusiasm or refusing to validate it. Also this weird tendency to assert things that aren't true. Both have a terrible sense of direction and can't seem to recognize that. 

Worst on this trip was not listening: this happened many times, where I would say something, 2 beats would go by, and then she would say the same thing, making it clear she hadn't heard me or hadn't registered it or something. That gets old very fast. 

The big improvement for this trip was that we enjoyed talking.We had several very satisfying conversations and that made this trip much better than last year's trip. I suppose it is not completely unprecedented to enjoy talking with someone, but not really enjoying being with them...

I have to admit, this second experience has me again thinking about the joys of traveling alone. It feels odd while you're doing it, but it's so much easier: there's less coordinating, and less compromising - I get to eat the things I want and see the things I want. I would (still) prefer to travel with someone, but I can't seem to find a person who has the same rhythm as me.

High energy personality

 I was tabling at a conference today on campus...this was after a campus event yesterday evening, and I ran into someone from the College of Ed who attended both events. She asked me "where do you get your energy?" That's so interesting to me because I have thought, more than once, that ND seems a little low energy in general. I think my energy level partly comes growing up out west, where everyone is very hearty and active, as well as living on the east coast for so many years, where life is fast paced and you'll get run over (metaphorically and literally) if you don't keep up. I also think I'm just a high energy person, kind of "born this way," though of course, it's hard to tell what is nature and what is nuture.   

Local harrassment

 I was riding my bike down 20th St on Sunday afternoon when a car of rowdy guys drove past and the person in the passenger seat chucked a big gulp size cup out the window (at me?) - it hit the street right in front of me with an explosion of ice and liquid. Quite startling and weirdly hostile.

A few days later someone was telling me how a carful of guys frequently yell out the window at her when she is out walking, so frequently that she thinks this has become a "thing."

About a week later, I was crossing University Ave and a carful of guys shouted out the window at me; not words, just a loud shout, quite startling. I could hear them laughing as they drove away.

Is this all part of some sort of low grade female harrassment? Very strange and frankly disturbing. Another symptom of how hostile and angry young men are about their shifting social status?

Father's Day

 It's a weird day. I stayed off Facebook until the very end of the day because I didn't want to see people raving about their wonderful husbands being such great dads. When I finally looked, at the end of the day, I saw this great post from a friend, who really captured my ambivalence:

I didn't know what to say to my own kids because I didn't want to make the day more salient, but I wanted to make sure they knew I was thinking about them. So I waited until the end of the day and sent a message, basically saying that. I want to apologize to them for giving them such a terrible father, but that's not the right approach. Ugh! I wonder if this ever gets easier...

Prairie arrogance

 

This is so perfect. Someone I work with, who is a native North Dakotan, told me they give this children's book to everyone who visits them from outside the area.

I get that people who live here think they are made of stronger stuff than the average American, but this book epitomizes what irritates me about the people in this part of the country.

The wording is "you CAN'T know the X if you're not from the prairie." X includes the sun, sky, snow, and wind.

Um, I grew up in Arizona, we sure as hell "know" sun! And I moved here from upstate NY, they sure as hell "know" snow there (I think folks from Wisconsin might also have something to say about this).

Now, the wind, I'll give them that. But the other stuff is just obnoxious. I wonder how the friends who receive this book as a gift feel about its claims.

My point is, you don't need to be from the prairie to know nature, and people from lots of other places obviously understand the natural world. So just slow your freaking roll. 

As a side note, I grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona, which is beautiful, and a fabulous place to live, and people from there are rightfully proud. And no one wrote a book like this about it, and no one I know from there would dream of giving people a book like this - a book which celebrates their supposed superiority. js   

People are exhausting

What a day! Just one frustrating, debilitating interaction after another.

It was already a low spoons day - the cat woke me up at 5:30, as usual, but I just could not get back to sleep. I finally got up and figured I would be on time to work for a change.

When I arrived in the parking lot, a coworker came charging over to my car crying. She said she had been sitting in her car talking to her therapist, but she told them she had to go when she saw me. She then spent 20 minutes pouring her relationship drama on me. I tried to say some supportive things: I told her when I got here I had just gotten divorced and I felt very alone - all you can do is keep going until things get better. But seriously, wtf. We are not really friends like that and I don't have much to offer (certainly not as much as her presumably professionally trained therapist). Thank god the wind was buffeting us around and I could eventually use that as an excuse to go inside.

But the day was just beginning. I had about half an hour before I had to go sit at the desk for 3 hours (last summer, we covered reference from our offices - MUCH easier). After a few minutes, I was informed that my 10 am appt had arrived early. Of course that person had no idea that their timing was a major stressor on me, but I really needed a few minutes to get organized and get ready for the 3 hours out front. I gathered my stuff and met with the student, but now I was even more drained.

And there's more. I then attended a really chaotic meeting, where everyone just could not stay on task and we ended up sort of abandoning the effort without getting anything done. I am not generally negative about meetings, but today was not the day for me to try to engage in such a dysfunctional situation. And I just have too much to do right now to spend time listening to people chat about nothing. Argh!

Then, as I was finally leaving the desk, someone came up with cookies and asked me if I wanted some. I've worked there for 3 years and yet some people still ignore that I'm gluten free. Shoving cookies in my face is so unkind. This person wouldn't offer beef jerky to the vegetarians in the office, wouldn't ask our Muslim colleague if they wanted pepperoni pizza. This persistent lack of consideration for me seems pointed tbh.

After this fun exchange, I ran around all afternoon trying to check some stuff off my To Do List. In the middle of this, an event I was working on was scheduled for a time when I am unavailable. Maybe inadvertently, but it doesn't feel that way - my calendar is up to date. I don't absolutely need to be there, but I wanted to be, and I don't appreciate being excluded unnecessarily - there were many options, and it would have be so easy to ensure we picked a time that worked for everyone involved.

After work, I hurried to a meeting, but I got there a few minutes late because of construction on 32nd Ave, which really slowed traffic down. I took my snacks and went to sit at an empty spot at a table, but a person at the table said that spot was taken. So awkward! No one at another table said "you can sit here," so I walked to spot by the wall and sort of balanced my stuff there. Throughout the meeting, you guessed it, no one sat in the spot I was told was unavailable.

That was pretty much the last straw. To say I had no spoons left is a gross understatement. I couldn't wait to be home and not have to be polite to anyone!

Tomorrow is another day to try to make a difference (and try to resist punching someone in the face lol)

Conversation and friendship

I went to an event at the local winery this weekend, and, as I was leaving, I bumped into somebody I sort of know and stopped to chat. After about an hour of listening to this person talk, I made my excuses and left.

I was struck by how typical this interaction is, and how similar to so many others I have had since moving to the area. This person talked almost the whole time, didn't ask me questions, or give me much of a chance to respond. They told me about the places they have lived and got into a whole thing about national parks.  Though I have lived in many places, and visited many national parks for that matter, I never got the chance to share any information in this not-really-a conversation.

I have a new theory about developing friendships that this most recent interaction seems to further support. Though I typically ask questions and show an interest in the other person when in conversation, this behavior is very rarely reciprocated by the people I have met here. I believe these people never really develop into friends because they never learn anything about me...when they see me the next time, although they have shared so much (often fairly intimate) information with me, we don't really have any deeper connection because the interaction has been so one-sided. 

I have no idea what to do about this, or even if there is any way to circumvent this. I have discussed this with (actual) friends and they have had similar experiences. I don't know if this is a reflection of the era we live in, or if it is more prevalent in the midwest than on the east coast (it certainly seems to be very noticeable to me here, compared to other places I have lived). I have lived here long enough to have a rather long list of acquaintences about whom I know a great deal, but who know almost nothing about me (nor do they seem to have ANY interest in learning about me or actually being friends). 

For awhile, I thought listening attentively to this aggressive sharing was the way to develop connections, but it is clear to me after the amount of time I've lived here, that I have been deluding myself, because it is just not the case - although I know a lot (often more than I want to know) about a number of people, they have clearly not become friends in any recognizable meaning of that word. When I bump into people I "know" at social events, as I did this weekend, we fall into the same pattern of one-sided "conversation," where I learn additional information about their lives and experiences, but they continue to learn nothing about (or show any interest in) me.

The longer I live here, the more I depend on my "real" friends outside the area - I talk with them on the phone, and have put more resources into leaving the area to visit them. Friendship is important to me and I have always put emotional energy into maintaining friendships. I am now pretty much resigned to depending on friendships from other places I've lived, and I don't really expect meaningful relationships to ever develop during my time in ND.