no boys allowed in the room!!!!

I've been living in a tiny flat in London so long I've forgotten what laundry dried in a dryer and not just strung over the radiators is even like.

I use the unscented dryer sheets because an allergic reaction to fabric softener once had me drive myself to the ER at 4:00 am for a shot in the butt of prednisone followed by a week of pills and I still had red welts for A MONTH after that. If I don't use anything then everything just gets too stacticy.

i don't have staticky clothes but i don't really know why

one of my cats is really staticky; I've wondered if I should rub him with a dryer sheet (not really)

To wrap up the tamponless-in-turkey story: arrived at the airport with plenty of time to score some sort of "feminine hygiene product" in the very large and very busy international departures terminal. The Ataturk airport has one of the biggest duty free stores--I shouldn't even call it a store, it is like its own *wing*--I have ever seen, along with some luxury brand shops and a book and movie store. Also a Popeyes Chicken.

But no pharmacy.

No Hudson News type place with overpriced toiletries in tiny sizes.

No tampons.

NO PADS.

NO NOTHING!!!!! NOWHERE IN THE AIRPORT!

Our flight was then delayed three hour, increasing my panic because I am already halfway through the 17 pads that the spouse had gotten the night before. There is no way in hell I am going to make it through the three-hour delay, much less the ten hour flight! Still sick as hell, achy and coughing and miserable, desperate ad tearful, I realize my only option at this point was basically to start asking strangers if they had anything they could spare.

And then, in the distance, I saw a better solution: the Emirates VIP lounge, where I could see two lovely young women staffing the front desk.

I walked in and immediately burst into tears explaining my situation. They could not have been more lovely and gracious. "It is no problem! We can help you with this! Please, sit and we will take care of you." They led me to the lounge and poured me a fancy water, and in a minute or two appeared with with several pads wrapped up all nicely in paper, like a present.

To the ladies of Emirates Air, you are my heroes. Thank you for being so kind and soothing. The next time I am in a position to help another woman out of a pickle, I will do so in your honor!

Now back home and crazy heavy period seems to have disappeared as abruptly and mysteriously as it had appeared.

(I have totally rubbed a dryer sheet on a staticky cat before)

i don't have staticky clothes but i don't really know why

― computer champion (harbl), Sunday, February 22, 2015 5:26 AM (4 hours ago)

same here

Everything in our house is so staticky that when I wash my hands, I get a shock from the water coming out of the faucet.

q, that is a fantastic story!

aw quincie that story made me so teary. yay for the emirates ladies!!!

my friend was an exchange student for a year in Latvia in the early 90's. before she left her host sister had the presence of mind to watn her "BRING ALL OF YR WESTERN TAMPONS" if she hadnt brought literally a suitcase full, she said she would have been cutting up towels & bedsheets

i had my mom mail me tampons when i lived in colombia in college
i think the lesson of that story is "if you need some menstrual assistance, ask a woman!"

is there something stopping you from laying out the facts about his counterproductive behavior and asking him to make xyz changes? (not a flippant question, just wondering)

― groundless round (La Lechera), Thursday, February 19, 2015 2:52 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is old but i never replied

i think it's the fact that we work together on projects and i fear that i am/i will be seen as someone who burns bridges with people who don't agree with me and fucks up working relationships. and that that plays into his stereotyping of me and a few of the other women we work with.

and also i fear that he has more cache than me in a particular project and that my calling him out will lead to a schism with me on the losing side. id be in the right, but id also be left out of yet another project because of other people's problems dealing w/ women (or my problems putting up with BS)

id be in the right, but id also be left out of yet another project because of other people's problems dealing w/ women (or my problems putting up with BS)

― jello my future biafriend (roxymuzak), Thursday, February 26, 2015 10:20 AM (30 minutes ago)

totally know this dilemma. i chose "being in the right" a lot when i was younger, and i occasionally ask myself, "what if i didn't make a fuss? what if i didn't quit? maybe i made the wrong choice in retrospect?"

A lot of why I started the art/music venue I did, and kept at it for 10 years, was so I could set the terms and put up with less of that sort of BS.

i guess my thing is that it doesn't have to be a big confrontation. if you work with this person in any capacity, and it's work, it can start as a simple cordial (professional) conversation. i guess i deal with needing to confront people a lot for work and usually don't reach the point of actual confrontation unless someone is like lying to my face. then i don't feel bad about it at all. if it's a "we need to get along better" convo that's kind of normal and not worth second guessing if the professional relationship is worth saving. if it's not, who cares? but it sounds like you care.

however, i fully understand that these professional relationships are more nebulous than the ones i deal with at work, where there are at least somewhat clear job responsibilities, etc.

it's a lot easier if it's related to a job where you both get paid at a "professional" place of employment. When it's something that is somewhat like "a hobby," it is harder because the guiding principle tends to be "fun" or "enjoyment" so there is an enjoinder to not do/say things that get in the way of that.

yeah that's why i added the disclaimer -- i can see how it would be more difficult.

of course, you're no dummy! I'm just trying to articulate the dynamics of creative project relationships. It's something I've thought about for a long time, but I don't yet have a pat response/clear analysis.

it's like i just want to pretend like the awkward dynamics aren't there and treat it like any other professional interaction, the way it should be. even though i know it's not really like that :(

hell i still haven't found any local people who want to have anything to do with me; it's a long road. i wish you the strength to do what you need to do roxy!

prob just stop going to meetings and play video games instead

I've been looking at doctoral dissertations lately and for some reason I always read the acknowledgements. I'm sick of seeing variations on 'I could not possibly have got through this without the love of my husband/wife/squeeze'. How am I supposed to get through it as a single woman, then? Yes, I'd really love to have someone to support me through this, and just support me in general, to be honest, but I'm not going to NOT get through it without that hypothetical person.

Let's just take a moment to consider that maybe that Thank You is for all the years that spouse put up with the PhD's always being busy, always being distracted, long nights, academia bullshit, and listening to the same 700-odd pages of material for 4-8 years. Just think--you won't be forcing that on anyone! You're practically a walking, talking public service.

Ha! The thank you is deserved for those reasons and more, it's true. And internalizing all that is hard, and would be easier with a partner, but maybe I'll manage it without my head exploding.

Me & my friend wanted to have a thank you page in our masters thesis that was just an itemized list of how much vodka & wine we drank while writing it.

PhD candidates probably shouldn't ever be allowed to inflict that on anyone in a domestic partner relationship tbh, and anyone who doesn't smother them in their sleep is a much nicer person than I am.

xp lolol

Crabbits, that would have been awesome.

I should add that my dept. and field is filled mostly with women, which is why I posted it in this thread. Men also say they couldn't have done it without their wives. It's just that I see such an overwhelming number of women thanking men for enabling them to finish a task. I know it's an unusual task, and that support is helpful, but it still gets to me as a single woman.

I know, I'm just trying to take the edge off with bitter mockery. As you do.

I know I'm a jerrrrrrrrk but those spousal acknowledgements always have a touch of "Thank you to my wife for taking care of all my bodily needs, our home, and raising our children p much on her own while I pursued this" and for women, it's "Thank you to my husband for accepting he was going to have to learn to cook and that our home and children would be uncared for while I pursued this."

It's possible that I'm like a person who only has a hammer so all they see is a nail--all I see is women's labor everywhere I look.

You succeeded in taking the edge off, and it's much appreciated as today is one of those I'm-not-good-enough days. I mean, I'm practically not allowed to be a female grad student if I don't have those, right? (Caveats: this may also apply to the majority of men. And it probably did NOT apply to my female supervisor).

Yeah but she's crazy. And mean. (If it's the person you talked about.)

(I mean, to me. Who we talked about.)

Yes, her. She's improved very much in the last year or so, but she's still a deeply socially odd person all the time, and yes, still mean some of the time.

I know I'm a jerrrrrrrrk but those spousal acknowledgements always have a touch of "Thank you to my wife for taking care of all my bodily needs, our home, and raising our children p much on her own while I pursued this" and for women, it's "Thank you to my husband for accepting he was going to have to learn to cook and that our home and children would be uncared for while I pursued this."

Quoting for truth.

I think of it in terms of "Thanks for relocating to a location not of your choosing and taking on more of the financial burden of keeping us sheltered and fed."

ljub, do you have a support network? even it's just people to call and vent to from time to time? if not you should at least complain on ilx. all the time!

i totally feel your frustration; when i was trying to finish a ph.d. i was single and it seemed like most people who had stuck it out in the program were coupled off. i wondered if there were someone to cook me dinner sometimes if it would have kept me from...disappearing from my own life for long periods of time, with no work done and no way to account for my whereabouts. but i have no evidence that this was true. single women did complete the ph.d, including dear friends of mine. it was hard, but it was hard for everyone and at least they didn't have significant others getting in their faces about how remote they were and how they didn't do the dishes enough or whatever.

io is completely otm, Ph.D. candidates' significant others are generally sick of their shit. she is also correct about differential gendered labor taking place within heterosexual academic households, at least in my experience.

Same with partner track lawyer households.

I didn't know Jeff could cook.

I'm not a partner track lawyer.

thank god for that 'cause ilx needs you

jk jk

I've been billing out the wazoo for the last two weeks or so and let me tell you, partner track is for the birds.

xps to horseshoe - my support network is mostly a couple of people in the lab, plus a couple of other student friends here who aren't very close but with whom I can vent and have fun once a month or so. I don't tend to vent to friends and family back in the UK because when I manage to Skype with them I just want happy catch-up conversations, and not to comb over what feel like failures! Sometimes I moan to my dad as he's an academic and 'gets it', when he can be bothered to listen.

The trouble with locating your support network in the lab is that when issues come up between you, as they did this week, you feel really cast off. That happened this week (somebody getting more and more obsessive about little details of the way we do things and appearing to accuse other people of being lazy). So I'm down to a support network of one, really - it's just me the other student in the lab that I'm really close to, bitching about our colleague :/ That won't last, we'll figure it out with the other person, but it feels shitty.

Once a month! My god I would never make it as an academic. I'm feeling shut in NOW and I was out til 3am dancing.

Or whatever kind of movement you can manage in a 17 foot wide bar with 200 other people.

sorry to hear that about your internal lab politics! it makes sense that you wouldn't want to talk about grad school stuff with friends and family--i tended not to either. if it's not too personal a question, do you have a therapist? i only ask because i wish i had had one back in grad school. more essential than a significant other to survive the experience imo!

i also feel like UK people are more stiff upper lip about emotional support, so maybe you don't need these things the way i did, and i am being terribly nosy, so ignore me if i'm prying too much. i just have lifelong fellow-feeling for women in graduate school.

Two different people in my fb feed got engaged today and I am feeling some kinda way about it.

Although I feel p garbagey in general and I'm prob PMSing so whatevs.

xps - no therapist. I'm not against the idea at all, apart from the cost. If I had one, though, I'd take up every minute of my weekly hour or whatever with family stuff for weeks and weeks before I ever got to the lab! Things aren't so bad in the lab, and nowhere near as bad as a year ago. But yeah, the fear of doing poor work, dealing with my supervisor and occasional politics can get very overwhelming. At the moment I dream most nights about letting people down. Last night I dreamt I organized a conference, turned up and sat around doing nothing and not going to sessions. A lovely woman from our sister lab upstairs was my co-organizer and she looked so disappointed in me but she didn't say anything.

horseshoe, I was just thinking of you the other day because I was thinking about what I would do if I graduated and couldn't face doing an academic job (which is a possibility) and the first thing that occurred to me was high school teaching. And then I remembered the levels of stress radiating from the teacher thread and thought of you and thought, well, grad school may be stressful but I bet it doesn't touch teaching!

Engagements don't make me feel much, but the pregnancies of the early 40s crowd do. Sure this came up on some other thread recently but can't remember where.

just wanted to follow up on an old topic --

i am pleased to report that i think that i have made a new female friend and we have hung out twice, both times top notch fun and larfs
she has time to spare and a worldview similar to mine, and we have lots of things in common (but also some things not in common, a nice blend) i feel optimistic.