Ughh, I do not want to write about how "the specific world area and language training is related to your academic and career goals". Is this why I have put off doing anything about it until the night before the fellowship application is due? Quite possibly!
At least this is the last of the applications I have to do. Once I send this email in, I'm done.
Anyway, for the moment I'm going to rant instead. I got a card from my grandmother today (although I suppose technically it came yesterday, since there's no mail on Sundays, but since I'm the only one capable of checking our mailbox*, if I don't get around to bringing the mail in, it just sits there till the next day), which makes two in about a week. I loathe getting cards from my grandmother; I resent their false sense of familial tenderness. They inevitably have some archeology article she clipped out of a newspaper- and anything about archeology which gets printed in a newspaper is 1. years out of date, 2. written to be read by the lowest common denominator, and 3. has nothing at all to do with my topics of study, somewhat similar to sending an article about a breakthrough in cancer research to a podiatrist. Of course, she would be aware of these things if she ever bothered to ask, but she doesn't really care. She doesn't send these things for my benefit; it's part of some mental checklist of "being a good person" she has: write cards, visit, ask after people's well-being. Actual feelings of affection or caring are irrelevant. Which annoys me more than anything. I'm not an adornment, none of my accomplishments are hers, and if she doesn't want anything more than something to list when she talks to her friends, she can leave me well the fuck alone.
God. I swear that I am normally a very nice person, but being around my grandmother for any length of time transforms me into a smirking, arrogant mass of malevolence. Like, to the point where other people notice and, apparently, gossip about it, which I know because people who were not even present on particularly bad occassions are very well-informed about them. The most famous of which seems to be the time when she asked my little brother- who was only 13 at the time- whether he'd danced with any "black girls" at the party his school had had a few days before, which was just really the straw that broke the camel's back, because I refused to allow him to answer and screamed at her for several minutes about bringing her fucking insipid racism into my city, my house, my family.
And seriously, when do I scream at anyone? When do I do things like announce, "Please, we're trying not to encourage her" as snarkily as possible when the 'her' is present in the room? When do I do get the point that my father (who for the record, would probably be more concerned if I started wearing dresses than if I got into a fistfight) will actually track how annoyed I get so that I can be safely shuttled into another room before things get bad?
Blah, whatever. I hate her, I hate who I am when I'm around her, and I hate the presence of her "Look What a Wonderful Grandmother I Am!" cards in my mail.
* That's not sarcasm. The mailboxes in our building have locks that require the delicacy of a master spy to open, and I am apparently the only one of the four of us who has the touch. Seriously, not even the people who work at the desk can open the things most of the time.
