The number one thing I don't like about having a dog is that my cat doesn't hang out with me as much. Because he likes my cat and wants to play with him and Nikos, generally, does not want. But today, shut up in the bedroom with presentations to write, notes to copy, and grants to prepare, the dog is out in the living room watching football with the boys. And my cat? He is stretched out on the bed right next to me.

The number two thing I don't like about my dog is that he does not know how to lie down on command. It clearly our fault (we don't take the necessary time to train him) but he is also far more obstinate than my cat ever was. He is also less easy to train with food because he gets so excited about it. My cat knows 5 times as many commands as my dog. What is up with that?

The number three thing I don't like about my dog is that he had two accidents today. He is six-months old and he rarely has accidents, but ... he shouldn't have any. Why, dog?

The number four thing I don't like about my dog is that, despite (what I think is) real consistency in leash-training, he still pulls when we are walking. I certainly can't trust him off-leash. And running is difficult, too (but more because of the occasional jerks than consistent pulling). It makes it harder to exercise with him and both Guille and I are getting less exercise now than before we got him.

The number five thing I don't like about my dog is my new theory that he is mostly NOT a border collie (despite what his foster mom suggested) but, in fact, a Smooth Fox Terrier (or at least that's the dominant breed). That's not good news for the long term safety of my cat, but despite his over-interest in Nikos, so far we've seen no behavior that suggests aggression.



Smooth Fox Terrier 1      Smooth Fox Terrier 2                 Odys, my puppy



You'd think, wouldn't you, with all that to complain about that I would not like my dog at all. But I do. I love him. He's a snuggle bug and a lovey and energetic outside with good indoor energy. He's crate-trained and very good about staying out of off-limits areas (like the kitchen and laundry room) despite the fact that we have no barriers there. He does not bark except when Guille is trying to get him to and then it's more of a yodel. And I love him. Oh well.

Life. It seems to be going pretty well, I think. There's some stuff going on work wise that is neither full of drama nor angst, but is still difficult. I think that's a good thing. School starts Monday.

Family is doing well, as far as I can tell. I got to visit my sister in San Diego over the weekend and that was very yay. That trip, obviously, also involved multiple instances of getting to be Auntie Sam, which is always fun. I have learned about myself that I am not the fun aunt. Despite insisting to Mason (my nephew) that he think of Jelly Bellies when he thinks of me, I think, instead, he thinks of a second-rate unbuckler of carseats and a really awful stroller-pusher. ("Mommy," the two-year-old darling announced to my sick sister upon our return from the walk to the park, "Auntie Sam is a bad driver.") The thing is that I really enjoy reading him picture books and letting him make me pretend sandwiches, but I guess I just don't have the energy to spoil him. I am a failure of aunt-ness!

It was nice to come home, though. Guille is sick, but nice, and yesterday I got to see a whole bunch of friends from school. I realized that I think I can actually count many of them as friends and not just mere acquaintances, despite the transitory nature of grad school peer relationships. Life with the puppy is going very well, too. He and Nikos get along very well so far (knock on wood) and play together a lot. Life in a house that I own is going pretty well, too. We might buy a new car on Monday, too.

I own a house and I am living in it.

Still moving from house to house. Yesterday we signed all the paperwork to buy the house. Today we signed it a second time because they didn't like Bill's signature. It has to read "[G's grandma's name] by [G's dad's name] Attorney-In-Fact" on every line. Some of those lines were tiny and it went to the next line. That's why they sent it back. We were supposed to have MOVED IN last Tuesday. Since then we've been shuttling between friends' houses.

If the story weren't different every day ... or maybe if it hadn't appeared that we wouldn't get to buy the place at all last Friday due to a major money difference (that our agent messed up) ... then perhaps I wouldn't be constantly on the edge of tears.

Of course, on top of that, the owners of the house we've been staying in all year decided that they think that the house is in bad condition. I can't tell you how hard we worked on it. But the fact that they went out of their way to do us a favor and now they regret it, despite me and G's mom working so hard, just makes me feel sick.

And then I found out that Corinne died Sunday night. She was not a person who should die young. She was a person who loved life and laughed maniacally when things turned to crap because of it. She was light.

If I were in D.C., now is the time that I would say, "I give up" and run and spend the night at my friend's house no matter how much it left G high and dry.

It's 3:30 and with the help of G's mom the house is in really good shape to pass back to its owners. These owners arrive tonight around 10:00 p.m. G's mom (and dad, brother, and nephew) are in a hotel.

But wait!, you might say, why aren't they in the house that you closed on yesterday. Your new house with three bedrooms and that unfortunate wall that previous owners painted black? You know the one!

Um, yeah. We didn't close on it yesterday. For whatever reason (it involves paperwork, and faxing between Boca Raton and Tucson and G's dad having power of attorney for his grandmother and omg I am so glad G's the one taking care of that end of things), we had to wait. So now we're hoping to close by Monday. It's (remotely) possible it will be done by Friday. It's (depressingly) possible that it will take all of next week and into the next.

In the meantime, G and I are hopping from friend's house to friend's house (thank goodness anthropologists do their research in foreign lands every summer) and blessing our lucky stars that we made some friends here. Also for the graduate student listserv.

I am taking the next few hours to catch up on some work taiwanese drama. I am so tired that I sort of want to cry. I feel like I should tell people I love (e.g. dad) the new state of things, but I really don't have the emotional energy to engage in conversation.

I had a massively unproductive day, intellectually speaking. I was supposed to be nailing down some general thoughts about my research, like, oh, why bother? But it wasn't happening. I was overwhelmed, and avoided thinking in lots of productive and unproductive ways.

Productive Ways:
+ folded eight loads of laundry
+ cooked lunch for myself
+ went for a morning run
+ showered and shaved my left leg (this is an incentive to shower again tomorrow and shave the right one)
+ wrote letters
+ continued Nikos' hoop-jumping training (okay, that's only minimally productive ...)

Unproductive Ways:
- read children's picture books! (OMG Shaun Tan is amazing. Like whoa.)
- watched three episodes of the Korean drama "My Girl" (and can I just ask: why do all drama heroines thoughtlessly step out into traffic requiring saving from hunky and disingenously disinterested heroes?)
- drank 3/4 of a bottle of wine

I avoided all day long, but the drinking began later. We don't normally have wine on hand, but I needed some for a recipe (BEHOLD: I AM COOKING!!!) and then, after Guille and I failed at the gym, we came home and hung out together in the kitchen. I don't normally talk about research at home, but I felt inspired. And, after a few glasses, I started talking about sexual citizenship and sensorial anthropology and thinking about "education" beyond cold cognition and BOOM! I was off to the races!

Don't get me wrong. I've got a long way to go (and the first round of the IRB is only a very early step), but this is still very exciting. Time to email some professors. Or maybe once the wine wears off a little more.

1) As the Red Queen said, "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" When I got to sit in on a group of high school seniors in Rincon H.S. talking about body image, I was in total awe. They were talking about Bourdieu, habitus, and decolonizing language and body. They were doing surveys, taking field notes, and becoming involved in school policy-making. It was awesome. And there wasn't a blonde head in the room.

2) I'm getting really excited about Bakhtin. Especially the ideas that Kit Woolard develops about moving bilingualism to the center rather than relegating it to the margins. When I think about my own research, and why I want to be working with immigrant Latinas, this is a big part of why (metaphorically, since I'm interested more in expectations and norms and embodiment than language, and what I'm interested in re: language has more to do with stance than codeswitching).

3) I love this. I definitely want to be an anthropologist. I just wish that I could take the pace down a notch.

4) We may be buying a house much sooner than I expected.

5) Brain, Child is an awesome magazine, and makes me remember why - even with all it's massive problems - 2nd Wave feminism still has some good things to offer. (Which is not to say I identify as 2nd Wave, cuz there's just too much wrong there, but there's some lessons I think get lost in later iterations. I'm especially fond of the importance of over-representing in your personal life - and your teaching of children - what is under-represented outside.) I was especially a fan of the article on cursing like a sailor.

6) Ack! I have class in an hour and SO MUCH LEFT TO READ! LJ, you time-succubus.

I went on a DATE tonight! I watched James Bond!

And I didn't worry about school, or money, or anything else.

You know, rewriting stuff doesn't suck as much as it appears to. The best thing about rewriting stuff, of course, is an improved grade, but that is not nearly as personally satisfying as actually getting closer to saying 1) what I intended and 2) something reasonably coherent and interesting. Relevant critiques make the rewriting process way better, too.

I wrote five essays this week (although four of those were rewrites). Now that I'm done, I have to switch my attention to ... oh. More essays. One of these already has a very thorough first draft and has been peer reviewed, so that will make it better. The other one, unfortunately, is about a topic I care only marginally about but is being cowritten with someone I like a lot. It doesn't have anything about sex and very little about gender (two things which I realize are pretty friggin' central to my intellectual interests tho not so much my politically active interests) even though it's got lots of stuff on undocumented students. Still ... not my favorite assignment thus far.


NEWS: I have a job. My first day is tomorrow. I make $9.50 an hour and work 19 hours a week. I secretly want to take four crazy hard classes instead, but that's impossible if I've got a job. But since my job adds almost nothing to my professional development ... well. We shall see. I suspect a lot of my reticence is just the fact that I really love my full-time student life right now.

BIGGER NEWS: Guille got a job offer today. His job offer is for a real job with benefits. This has a potential impact on above secret plan, but no decisions will be made immediately. Once we can afford to water the plants again that may change.

(anthropology) I am sooooo tired. This week was overwhelming, but I finally managed to get out my National Science Foundation (NSF) grant proposal, my midterm, and my professional poster with the quantitative analysis of word variance in sex ed curricula. I feel good about the essays for the NSF (though I screwed up some of the other requirements - let's not talk about it), I am a little apathetic about my midterm (but am glad it got done), and I'm quite proud of the poster (my prof suggested we submit it to medical anthropological conferences). Next up is another book review paper, a current events presentation, and a paper that will form the bulk of our literature review for a research project on guidance counseling for undocumented students that I hope to continue with a colleague next year, and a qualitative research paper on discourse analysis. I am feeling good. That's four professional development thingies related to publication and presentation in conferences. I will polish them up over Winter break and begin submitting them in the spring.

(Bordieu) I look good. That is, I'm wearing professional clothes, shoes, and hair still and I like it. Like many people in D.C., I think a somewhat conservative business attire is the way to go. It makes me feel professional, which in turn keeps my behavior professional (I have yet to miss a deadline or a class or a meeting or anything - quite a change from my undergrad experience), and helps maintain clear boundaries between work and personal. I think, like at Identity, this is an important boundary to maintain, especially because there is already so much necessary overlap (I work mostly at home, my social network is made up of colleagues, etc).

(culture) I had a job interview today for an Office Asst. position in the learning disabilities program. It's really pretty ideal for me, only 3-4 hours a day during hours I can totally handle. It's on campus, walking distance from all my classes, and it seems possible that there is some form of tuition remission. I'll find out next week if I get the job. My fingers are crossed.

(Derrida) Did I mention I'm tired? I've been sleeping plenty (a minimum of eight hours), but my brain is begging for more time off. I'm sure meditation would help (as always), but I can't seem to be totally consistent with it. At least I haven't totally abandoned it. Exercise might help, too, but I rarely accompany Guille to the gym like I ought to.

(Foucault) My best friend is currently in a plane on her way to Taiwan (by way of Korea). I am super excited for her and proud that she is claiming her own path and making a career in unexpected and awesome ways. She is brilliant and therefore it would be easy to allow herself to fall into many little boxes set up for smart people, but she is also brave, and so she is making her own way. Go tatterpunk !

What's going on in my life:

Imaginary research: This becomes relevant in that I am writing a grant proposal to fund it. I've been reading lots of awesome books like Dilemmas of Desire to prepare for this, but in the past week or two it's taken a back seat to some of the other things I have been working on. I have learned a ton about the subject since arriving. It boggles my mind how much is out there already and frustrates me to no end how little of what has been written is available for wide consumption. Also, after being stood up THREE TIMES, I finally got to meet with the guy who really knows about education and Latinos, a crucial angle for my project.

Class projects: These would be (in order of due date) 1) Sociolinguistics quantitative project with another student of various sex ed curricula following variables for gendered terms like "guy" and "male," relationship terms like "healthy relationship" and "marriage," physical terms like "body" "vagina" and "hands," and descriptions of "sex" (this needs to be narrowed and analyzed still, obviously); 2) Sociolinguistics final project doing a discourse analysis of published narratives of immigrant (adolescent) Latinas about sex and pregnancy plus some lit review; 3) Mexican Immigration project with another student preparing a lit review, questionnaire, and possibly a flyer re: college guidance for immigrant students

Other course stuff: standard grad school reading and papers. I could do only this and still have no free time. So I'm not bothered that I don't get it all done.

Domestic bliss: Our house is still awesomeness itself, but Guille and I are a little antsy that he still doesn't have a job. I still think a lot about having kids, but it's not a conversation we can really have seriously yet. Probably not for at least another year. I miss my people back home. I have a couple of people here I really like, but no one yet that I actually want to spend regular time hanging out with. Yet. Also, my cat loves his training time, and now does annoying attention seeking behavior randomly until I get up and do his series of tricks with him (he can Sit, Lie Down, Scratch the Post, Jump Up on My Hand,  Fetch - okay, just go to the toy still, we're working on this one - and Come on command), but I'm proud that he's smart. He's also lost weight because he has so much more space here. Guille's doing well, though, and is very excited today because his old friend Pablo is with us for a couple of days.

The only thing that's weird is that people keep telling me to calm down. I'm CALM!!! I'm excited, passionate and undoubtedly motivated, but I'm not stressed. I hope that my mix of determination and enthusiasm isn't offputting to too many people, but at another level, I really don't give a damn. I know what I am here for, I am inspired by what I'm doing, and I'm not going to pretend I'm not. But I also think the people I will like will accept me for who I am, fast pace and all.

Two days ago, as I was heading out to meet the people in my department for drinks, I realized that my bank card was missing. I knew I'd seen it since the last time I used it in a store, but that was pretty much it. I searched my car, my room, my clothes, my trashcans, my purse, my backpack and all to no effect. I was, as you might imagine, made anxious by this as it added to the general feelings of being "out of control." However, what I needed to do was quite straightforward: call the bank, cancel the old card and get a new one. Simple. Straightforward. Totally manageable. A couple of deep breaths later I was back on track.

Then, today, as I took a break from reading and grant proposal writing, I went out with Guille to grab a slice of pizza so that he could get out of the house (the stir-crazy appears to be setting in). It was there, at the restaurant, that I discovered that since yesterday, my two forms of photo I.D. (my Maryland driver's license and my UA student ID) were missing. Just, gone , from the plastic covered pocket in my wallet they normally inhabit. Again, I searched everywhere, and even managed to cut my thumb open on some glass left over from the accident last year hiding under the passenger's side seat in my car. I can manage the CAT card, but the driver's license means that I have to actually go take a driving test at the DMV here.

What is going on here? I'm about to cry. This is incomprehensible since I clearly remember when I last USED both the I.D. and the bank card. The only possible explanation is gremlins. Either that, or the coyotes here are playing tricks on me. I was just under the point of overwhelmed, but Tyche is determined to test my mettle.

EDIT: I found the latter offending I.D.s after hours of searching hiding in an obscure part of my purse. The bank card remains in the gremlin hideout.

Whew! It's been a full couple of weeks.

 The drive out from D.C. was actually considerably easier for me than I had anticipated, despite the last minute breakdown of Guille's computer which signified the loss of my nine books-on-CD I'd dutifully borrowed from the library and burned onto the computer in anticipation of the drive before we even left for Ecuador two months ago! But I still had a couple of lectures and my old friend NPR kept me entertained whenever we were close enough to civilization to hear it. Guille's car really struggled, I'm afraid, burning much more gas than we expected and eventually refusing to drive above 60 mph. It made us nervous enough that in Texas we stopped early and took it to a dealership. They advised about $500 worth of "necessary" work, but I called my old mechanic in D.C. and he explained that half of that wasn't really necessary while the other half was, but could wait until our trip was done as long as we didn't really mind the gas-guzzling or slower pace. We didn't, and continued on, only to have a terrifying clunk and hissssssss cause us to pull over to the side of the highway in Lord-knows-where West Texas. A big chunk of metal had inexpicably blown out of a piece of machinery we suspect might be the Mass Air Flow Sensor, but caused us no further problems and we drove on, arriving after a mere four days of driving.

We arrived in Tucson on the 9th and started unpacking and settling in. I've got a fantastic library/study with a view of the fruit trees growing all over the back yard. I've set up my altar here and even managed to meditate once, but I'm not quite settled in to a routine yet. I love this room and - complete with a delicious overstuffed chair and full-spectrum floor lamp - I can't imagine any problems spending huge chunks of time in here studying. Our bedroom is enormous, but comfortable, and includes a Venetian bath, the only sad thing is that we can't allow Nikos in there since the owners want to make sure there isn''t any lingering pet dander to make them allergic. We've got covers on all the couches, though, so he seems happy enough without our nocturnal presence. We've also started to get to know the area; I've got my Pima County Public Library card and have checked out The Count of Monte Cristo, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Name of the Wind. Life seems very livable for me.

On Friday, I joined a bunch of other UA anthro students on a trip to Northern Arizona to see/participate in a Powwow at the Kaibab Southern Paiute reservation. I've seen powwow dancing on T.V., have heard recordings of drumming and singing, and have met a very few indigenous North Americans, but this was another thing altogether. However, unlike my time as a tourist in Misahualli, Ecuador, there was no sense that their cultural performance was for my benefit. Rather, the other students and I (and the professor) worked our tails off hauling trash, flipping Indian burgers to be put on fry bread (mmmmm!), selling raffle tickets and Paiute T-shirts to fundraise for next year's Powwow, serving food and moving the heaviest bleachers I've ever encountered from one side of the grounds to the other on our shoulders between sneaking off to watch the dance and drumming (singing) exhibitions and competitions. We ran/walked in their 5K. We even signed up for their 3 v. 3 basketball match, but got intimidated by the competition and backed out. It was, on the whole, another utterly new experience for me, and a wonderful one.  On the same trip we drove out to Colorado City, where I noticed we were all were far less comfortable with the community of polygamists rejected by the LDS church. That part of the adventure still requires a great deal more thought from my end, so not much to say about that yet, except that I'm very glad I saw it. On the way back home on Sunday we stopped and hiked about 3 miles along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and that was also much more cool than I had expected. Despite the awesome stuff we saw, the best part of the trip was the chance to start to get to know some of the academic community I am joining. I remain optimistic that this is the best place for me.

Also: I got my hair cut off again. It's nice and cool in the heat.

Also: Guille's doing well and has made me a number of delicious meals since getting here. Also his computer is finally set up and he's beginning to settle into the job search. Life is good.

Yes. I've made it. I've registered for one class. I'm going on a three day camping trip to a powwow or something in Northern Arizona with the applied anthropologists. I've vacuumed the pool and watered the houseplants. We've been grocery shopping. My books are on the three shelves in the MY library/study. In other words, things are going well.

More later.

Did you happen to read that angry open letter to Better World Books a week or two ago? Well apparently so did their Customer Care guy. I didn't bother to contact the company when my book didn't show up in time. It was still within the margin of error re: arrival time and it was so cheap that it wasn't a major loss.

But now I have my book. YAY!

In fact, the guy Priority Mailed it to my dad's house and it was here waiting for me when I got in from Ecuador.  This is awesome.  (Secretly, I'm not a huge fan of the book thusfar, but that's hardly his fault!) I am so glad that this company is as awesome as it appears to be. So go buy from them! Forget about Amazon.

Also, I've been home for two days now and I still haven't had time to pack. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. How do people DO this?

I'm packing.

This is good because the doing keeps me from feeling anxious. I have little doubt that the coming two month stint in Ecuador is going to be incredible, I just have no idea what specifically is going to be amazing about it. I am very slightly worried about altitude sickness since a good friend of the family died of it this year (he was otherwise very healthy), but there's not really anything I can do about it and the likelihood of real problems is low. Driving to Tucson isn't nearly so intimidating now that I've copied so many books on CD from the public library over. I'm still hoping tatterpunk will drive with me and Dad and Trish have also offered to keep me company, but if it doesn't work out, it's no big deal. Of course, like the Ecuador trip, once we arrive I've got no idea what to expect.

I left TPR on Friday, and it was a relief to have the drudgery end. Even though I'm still doing drudge work, it's MY drudge work and that makes all the difference.

I have no emotions about leaving, except my stomach and chest suggest that I am anxious.  I have had moments where I have felt absolutely brokenhearted, and a couple of times when moving on to the next step includes the elation of being a little closer to my heart's goals: especially becoming a professor and having babies (never mind that those two things may not work easily together). Mostly, though, I just feel focused on getting done what needs to be done.

Guille and I have been in Tucson since Saturday, and the trip has been very successful. When we drove in from the airport we drove through the ghetto and Guille (and I, even though I was here before) had a rude awakening about the depression that this area is experiencing. Later, we drove through another section of town looking for apartments and found nothing but the kind of shitty broken down undergrad housing that we really don't want to be a part of. Thank goodness things started to turn around later. We began to see nicer and nicer areas, well landscaped (yes, desert can be beautiful with strategically placed cacti) and well kept.

We went out for lunch with one couple, then tea with another, then dinner with a third - all from different sorts of jobs, but all well off - and despite our intention to invite them (after all, they were doing us a favor!), they all ended up treating us. It was very unexpected and just so nice to know that we're gonna have at least a little bit of a safety net (one family even offered us a place to stay for a couple of days if we haven't signed a lease by the time we move here!). 

The job thing for Guille - the secondary goal of our trip - has gone pretty well, too. We've learned about a couple of areas that could be very interesting to him. One we heard about this morning sitting in a coffee shop next to the anthro dept. and Guille thinks he could do some consulting type work/volunteering for them (depending on what they can afford) even while we're in Ecuador. It's a microcredit borderlands small nonprofit startup. Probably not a long term job, but maybe a way to break into the scene here.

I'm feeling ambivalent still. Perhaps even more than before I visited this time and it became a manageable reality. Nonetheless, this has been a very good trip.

I spent all day in front of the T.V. watching "What Not To Wear" and "Next Top Chef" with Guille while I recovered from my hangover. The hangover came from the 4 bottles of wine that me and Guille and Yoli polished off last night. Oh, and the rum. Dad and Trish were on silent retreat, and so we had the house more or less to ourselves. It is very rare for us to be social - let alone entertain on our own turf (even when we have our own turf, which we mostly don't now) - and mostly that suits me fine, but it was really nice to do this weekend.

Guille made this delicious pork in a gyro style (without the spit, of course) and we ate it with pitas and red onions and fries Guille made and tzatziki we picked up from our favorite Greek/Turkish store (amazing honey! good olive oil, great tzatziki, and occasionally fig cookies for a real treat). It's always the same little old Turkish guy with the hearing aid who is there when we go. It is definitely the typical "local" connection, since he now knows us, even though everything there is imported. Often we go after Dim Sum, but we're watching our bottom line right now (no eating out! we're saving up for new tires), so instead we went after a two hour walk at Brookside Gardens. So beautiful! Tulips everywhere, among other things. I could kick myself for forgetting my camera again. And the walk really helped my mental state as well.

Seeing Aubri last Monday and Kat on Friday was also really great. I am definitely going to make an effort to get out of my homebody ways to spend more time with Aubri, and I am very excited about having a regular pre-work lunch with Katharine once a week.

Also, Nikos is doing a great job of sitting on command, and he has "come" down pat. Next up: shake!

aubrilee's post reminded me that I'm pretty much in the same boat as she is, except instead of moving to China, I'm moving to Arizona. And before I'm moving to Arizona, I'm going to Ecuador for two months.


And, no, I haven't given any thought really to what my life is going to look like once I'm in grad school, but I don't think there's really any way I can know until I'm there, so I have to just have faith.

Speaking of faith: Christ is Risen! Woo-hoo!

This is Nikos. He is my cat. He is super cool.
 
And, he needs someone to take care of him while I am in Ecuador for two months (June-July). He would need to move in with you - he likes hanging out around people and is ridiculously chill. He doesn't talk much, mostly chirps, and likes to curl up near you rather than ON you, but is very tolerant of any attention you give him. drownophelia and aubrilee I am thinking first and foremost of you, but others are also entreated.

I would bring all his food for the time and litter and toys and even his "tree" if you are willing to take that into your house for the time.

We have been living in one room for the past 6 months, and he's totally fine with that, so space (as far as HE'S concerned anyway) is not an issue.

Let me know if you are interested and how much you think would be appropriate for payment for keeping him for that length of time. I don't know, having never done this before.

I need help! My family will also be out-of-town and I haven't found anyone who can take care of him. If you know of anyone who might be interested, pass it around!