Today there was a post on Higher Education for a Professor of Equine Lameness. In other words, Equine Lameness is hiring, but writing not so much. I really don't know why I even look on there, as their jobs are really not the kinds of jobs I'm looking for right now, Equine Lameness aside -- plus the moment for hiring has passed. (Plus -- I know what you're thinking -- no one would hire me without a book.) But you know when they would hire me? ...With a book! Like this book that's right here on my desktop! Sometimes I imagine the future and I imagine it being extremely pleasant; I don't care what you say. It's like you've completely forgotten that Toto is still playing in karaoke bars everywhere.
No matter what Toto is doing, however, the present remains laden with items-to-be-graded: greenbooks (bluebooks have apparently been phased out at That University Where I Teach, for reasons unknown ("Down with blue! And, uh, down with education!")), bibliographies, research papers, personal essays, profiles, interviews. The present is also dusty. I helped The Bay move this morning in what I have dubbed The Great Move To Nowhere.
As you may recall, The Bay has a little mold problem in his apartment. Toxic black mold, to be exact. In fact, I think today was the first time I've set foot in his apartment since maybe early February. I figure I get enough toxicity at work that I don't need additional servings from other venues. I considered wearing my SARS/Grippe Porcine mask, but didn't want him to take it personally. I seem to be okay; we sneezed a lot, but mostly because every box we unearthed brought with it an inimitable cloud of who knows. I think there's still some on my sweater. We packed up a rental car and drove it back and forth to a storage location, laden with boxes, chairs, a drawing table, a guitar (insert unpleasant memory of soulful guitar solo from maybe October, ended by my one-syllable unkind but honest bark: "STOP"; the guitar has never been heard again), and several Hercules-sized suitcases that couldn't possibly contain clothes, but what they did contain I did not ask.
The Bay declared the move "easy," and it was, mainly because he's only moving out, not in anywhere. No replacement zone has been found, you see. Not yet. We have essentially Moved Him To Nowhere. Is anyone else terrified? I am.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
craigslist is a job-hunting source for hulks only
All the job postings on Craigslist seem to require you to have a truck. It's like "no shirt, no shoes, no service," except here it's "no truck, no job." But of course! Let me just uncover with a dramatic flourish my enormous, purposefully manful truck, which I have hidden under a tarp until such time as it is needed for the transportation of a small armada of dogs, children, cakes, Hazmats, parakeets. It's in my vast garage; let's go there now. It seems weird that the vehicle in question has to be a truck, as opposed to, say, a normal car, like if you had a car instead of a truck you would surely not be hardy enough for the tasks at hand.
If you're thinking that these don't sound like university teaching positions, you're right. University teaching positions do not post on Craigslist (or, helpfully, anywhere, really) and therefore do not lend themselves as fruitfully to procrastination. You have to do all that stuff yourself. Still, I am waiting for the posting for a creative writing instructor that requires that applicants own a truck. "Bicep circumference must also exceed twenty inches. Please own chainsaw, planing tools, or similar. WWE experience required, 2-5 years university teaching experience preferred." I think I would begin my cover letter thus:
To whom it may concern:
ROAR! Behold my mighty physical presence and willingness/inability not to break things. I am writing to express my strong interest in joining XXX University as a member of the creative writing faculty. In my six years of teaching experience, I have thrown all sorts of shit in the back of trucks, including livestock, barrels with people sitting on top of them, and refrigerator/freezer combos. I have snapped the necks of adults and children alike, often between my third and fourth fingers with an easy scissoring motion, and have frequently hurled moving cars through plate-glass windows while bellowing fruitful, literary things, like "Praise Narnia!" or "Jhumpa Lahiri, where are you now?" Given the clear fit between the priorities of your university and my extensive experience teaching and practicing creative writing -- by which of course I mean existing as a fearsome urban hulk -- I would look forward to the opportunity to speak with you further about joining the XXX community as a faculty member.
Yours,
Kara
If you're thinking that these don't sound like university teaching positions, you're right. University teaching positions do not post on Craigslist (or, helpfully, anywhere, really) and therefore do not lend themselves as fruitfully to procrastination. You have to do all that stuff yourself. Still, I am waiting for the posting for a creative writing instructor that requires that applicants own a truck. "Bicep circumference must also exceed twenty inches. Please own chainsaw, planing tools, or similar. WWE experience required, 2-5 years university teaching experience preferred." I think I would begin my cover letter thus:
To whom it may concern:
ROAR! Behold my mighty physical presence and willingness/inability not to break things. I am writing to express my strong interest in joining XXX University as a member of the creative writing faculty. In my six years of teaching experience, I have thrown all sorts of shit in the back of trucks, including livestock, barrels with people sitting on top of them, and refrigerator/freezer combos. I have snapped the necks of adults and children alike, often between my third and fourth fingers with an easy scissoring motion, and have frequently hurled moving cars through plate-glass windows while bellowing fruitful, literary things, like "Praise Narnia!" or "Jhumpa Lahiri, where are you now?" Given the clear fit between the priorities of your university and my extensive experience teaching and practicing creative writing -- by which of course I mean existing as a fearsome urban hulk -- I would look forward to the opportunity to speak with you further about joining the XXX community as a faculty member.
Yours,
Kara
Monday, April 20, 2009
the greatest monogamy
Let's just talk for a second about having Crohn's Disease and nothing else. By "having nothing else" I mean not having any other diseases, any other malfunctions. Just you and the CD, romantic-like. Candles, roses. I just want to take a moment to remark upon what a phenomenally amazing lucked-out existence this is, Crohns. Think of all the things we don't have -- terrifying things. Every day is Sunday, man. We're like birds with backpacks full of gold bullion. Each bird its own individual backpack. God, life is so good. It's easy to forget.
For the past 72 hours or so it seemed -- it was possible, let's say; it was made to seem quite possible -- that somehow I had something in addition to Crohn's, like a side of, say, bacon with your omelet. A side of bacon that would wipe you out before you turned 30, say. Extinctify you. I fought my hypochondriacal nature to a certain extent. While I allowed myself to surf the Internet reading about my imminent demise for hours, I decided I wouldn't tell anyone about this, not until I knew for sure one way or the other. Because, as I told The Bay last night (all right, I tried not to tell anyone about it, but then dissolved into fatalistic tears around 10:30 pm last night -- I was going to die, I would never have children; at least this would temper the job search), my parents would be very, very, very upset.
At the hospital today I discovered that I am almost 100% certainly an all-Crohn's-all-the-time gal. High five with self! Just me and the Crohn's, the friendly, wonderful, familiar Crohn's, living together happily until we're 110 or 120 years old, maybe longer, maybe until I start getting carded for how old I am. Stay forever, Crohn's. Stay forever and don't invite any of your little friends along. We're living forever and we need to get back to looking for a job.
Last night while not-sleeping (I must have slept a little, since I had a mini dream that my parents sold their house to Abby's sister and brother-in-law to enormous outcry from the rest of my family) I was just thinking about how lucky and amazing it is to be alive and basically okay. I guess I don't think about that often enough; maybe none of us does. I've been stupid to feel like the past two months and all they've contained have been suboptimal. Just to have them is a privilege, and the truly difficult or scary thing would be not to have that privilege at all.
I'm gonna live, Maw! My emotions are back and I am really, really happy.
For the past 72 hours or so it seemed -- it was possible, let's say; it was made to seem quite possible -- that somehow I had something in addition to Crohn's, like a side of, say, bacon with your omelet. A side of bacon that would wipe you out before you turned 30, say. Extinctify you. I fought my hypochondriacal nature to a certain extent. While I allowed myself to surf the Internet reading about my imminent demise for hours, I decided I wouldn't tell anyone about this, not until I knew for sure one way or the other. Because, as I told The Bay last night (all right, I tried not to tell anyone about it, but then dissolved into fatalistic tears around 10:30 pm last night -- I was going to die, I would never have children; at least this would temper the job search), my parents would be very, very, very upset.
At the hospital today I discovered that I am almost 100% certainly an all-Crohn's-all-the-time gal. High five with self! Just me and the Crohn's, the friendly, wonderful, familiar Crohn's, living together happily until we're 110 or 120 years old, maybe longer, maybe until I start getting carded for how old I am. Stay forever, Crohn's. Stay forever and don't invite any of your little friends along. We're living forever and we need to get back to looking for a job.
Last night while not-sleeping (I must have slept a little, since I had a mini dream that my parents sold their house to Abby's sister and brother-in-law to enormous outcry from the rest of my family) I was just thinking about how lucky and amazing it is to be alive and basically okay. I guess I don't think about that often enough; maybe none of us does. I've been stupid to feel like the past two months and all they've contained have been suboptimal. Just to have them is a privilege, and the truly difficult or scary thing would be not to have that privilege at all.
I'm gonna live, Maw! My emotions are back and I am really, really happy.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
others below my window are having the best night ever
To celebrate the fact that it's hot as crap outside here in the Bay area, and because I still can't conceive of going to the gym without a small part of what remains lifelike in my soul ceasing to be lifelike, this morning I walked up a big cliff a couple of miles from the Fort. It's exercise, I figured. To prevent myself from throwing myself off the cliff when I got to the top, while climbing I spoke on the phone to Abby and then to my dad, both of whom are observant listeners and would totally pick up on the whooshing sound as my ten-ton body careened steadily toward earth, were I to make the leap.
Abby was assembling IKEA furniture, companion pieces to the Malm double-dresser I bequeathed her when I left New York.
"Malm! Malm!" I cried out affectionately a few times -- it really had been a good dresser, a dependable dresser -- and also could not help but think that nearly three years had gone by since the move from its quarters in my old place on 99th Street to Abby's had been brokered. I remember that morning because a moving man came for the Malm and I, extremely hung over and in pajamas, had let him in and totally pretended to help by sort of hovering roughly near the Malm, like a very unhelpful ghost.
Later on BW and I found Ayesha and some of her friends in Golden Gate Park, also in some sort of recognition of the weather. BW looked balmy and cool in some sort of linen attire as one ought to in hot weather, but since he had brought Bleak House to read out of doors, for fun, on a Sunday in the park, I felt that the effect was at least canceled out. This made us even, as I basically looked like the hot roasted pig over a spit that no one, even the person in charge of the barbecue, in charge of the spit, would want to touch. At least I had not brought Dickens. Me, I brought the stuff my students are reading. Like any carefree person, I underlined it with pencil and wrote things like "cf. dialogue" and "reference to Homes" and "exercise here" (meaning tell the students it's time to do the in-class exercise, not meaning move your body in an energetic way) while some of Ayesha's friends deftly played frisbee. They are Real People with Real Jobs.
"We could have been Real People," BW noted to me in between observing the scantily clad nymphlike women who had also chosen the same corner of the park.
Again, though, this came from someone reading Bleak House.
At home the Fort even smells a little bit hot. It's after 8 pm and the sun hasn't completely set. I can still see all the people wandering around under my window, Very Clean, Waiting For Dinner. One of them, seemingly not yet drunk, just announced to his companion,
"This is the best night ever."
Abby was assembling IKEA furniture, companion pieces to the Malm double-dresser I bequeathed her when I left New York.
"Malm! Malm!" I cried out affectionately a few times -- it really had been a good dresser, a dependable dresser -- and also could not help but think that nearly three years had gone by since the move from its quarters in my old place on 99th Street to Abby's had been brokered. I remember that morning because a moving man came for the Malm and I, extremely hung over and in pajamas, had let him in and totally pretended to help by sort of hovering roughly near the Malm, like a very unhelpful ghost.
Later on BW and I found Ayesha and some of her friends in Golden Gate Park, also in some sort of recognition of the weather. BW looked balmy and cool in some sort of linen attire as one ought to in hot weather, but since he had brought Bleak House to read out of doors, for fun, on a Sunday in the park, I felt that the effect was at least canceled out. This made us even, as I basically looked like the hot roasted pig over a spit that no one, even the person in charge of the barbecue, in charge of the spit, would want to touch. At least I had not brought Dickens. Me, I brought the stuff my students are reading. Like any carefree person, I underlined it with pencil and wrote things like "cf. dialogue" and "reference to Homes" and "exercise here" (meaning tell the students it's time to do the in-class exercise, not meaning move your body in an energetic way) while some of Ayesha's friends deftly played frisbee. They are Real People with Real Jobs.
"We could have been Real People," BW noted to me in between observing the scantily clad nymphlike women who had also chosen the same corner of the park.
Again, though, this came from someone reading Bleak House.
At home the Fort even smells a little bit hot. It's after 8 pm and the sun hasn't completely set. I can still see all the people wandering around under my window, Very Clean, Waiting For Dinner. One of them, seemingly not yet drunk, just announced to his companion,
"This is the best night ever."
Saturday, April 18, 2009
also
I find today's horoscope absolutely hilarious. Somewhere in the world, I have no doubt that this is true for some Libra, maybe a deceased Libra.
Libra September 23 - October 22
For Saturday, April 18 -A wave of generosity hits you today, and you'll become both the giver and the receiver. You're going to want to share all of your good news and give out all the affection and love you can give -- but you'll also be ready to get the gifts you have worked so hard to earn. Support, opportunity, respect, gratitude -- these will be some of the things you will be offered. Open your arms wide and you'll see how freeing it can be to accept what you know you so richly deserve.
gifts of the union
I bought like ninety thousand wedding presents today on the Internet. Nearly ninety thousand. Everyone is getting married; it's apparently all the rage. In preparation for being Michelle & Nate's hematomaed maid of honor in March (which ended up being awesome) I read all these etiquette books, terrified I was somehow going to commit some horrific faux pas by taking down dominoed table after table of tomato cans, or by releasing nitrogen bombs into the night sky, or something else equally non-wedding friendly. Apparently I did okay as nothing exploded.
I learned a lot about weddings in general while reading, among which was the fact that even if you're not going to a wedding, if you're invited, you have to buy a gift. Also I learned that you can't give IOUs (too late, I totally gave Shaina & Octy an IOU last January -- nice going, broke writer) and you can't be lame or cheap. Like you can't give a faun that your pet place-spirit has just birthed or something, because you already had that faun on your hands, and giving it to people when they're getting married is not an acceptable way of getting rid of it. Dear Kara, thank you for the lovely faun. We have named him Greg and he enjoys a life of relative leisure playing his wooden lute and shitting all over our ottoman. Love, People Who Are Married.
This pretty much depleted my food budget for May, but at least I'll be hungry-and-not-gauche. I also just want to say that one of these soon-to-be-wed couples registered for a massage kit, and I think that is sort of gross. I didn't read anything in these books about not registering for massage kits, but I think something should be added in upcoming editions. I got them a toaster.
You how know in -- forgive me; I was younger, I was bored, there was cable -- Sex and the City, one time Carrie registers for herself? She's not getting married, but she registers for herself. She registers for shoes. That's not a bad idea, though the shoes she registers for are sort of lame, the kind that would break your toes into a sort of cobbler crumble if you so much as took them for a test stroll. The one thing that appeals to me about the idea of registering for oneself, although it's now forever tainted with the fishy, vodka-soaked smell of that television series, is the formal declaration that probably no one would ever want to spend the rest of their life with you, ever. The idea of people giving you presents about it also seems explicitly rank, but the declaration seems pretty all right, somehow. Perhaps one day I will just send out some kind of announcement, instead -- a telegram? -- Kara joyfully announces that she's a great receptacle for spare time and eager body parts until something more convenient for you comes along! Service at 12, reception to follow. Please indicate if kosher meal is required.
I would register for the massage kit, absolutely.
I learned a lot about weddings in general while reading, among which was the fact that even if you're not going to a wedding, if you're invited, you have to buy a gift. Also I learned that you can't give IOUs (too late, I totally gave Shaina & Octy an IOU last January -- nice going, broke writer) and you can't be lame or cheap. Like you can't give a faun that your pet place-spirit has just birthed or something, because you already had that faun on your hands, and giving it to people when they're getting married is not an acceptable way of getting rid of it. Dear Kara, thank you for the lovely faun. We have named him Greg and he enjoys a life of relative leisure playing his wooden lute and shitting all over our ottoman. Love, People Who Are Married.
This pretty much depleted my food budget for May, but at least I'll be hungry-and-not-gauche. I also just want to say that one of these soon-to-be-wed couples registered for a massage kit, and I think that is sort of gross. I didn't read anything in these books about not registering for massage kits, but I think something should be added in upcoming editions. I got them a toaster.
You how know in -- forgive me; I was younger, I was bored, there was cable -- Sex and the City, one time Carrie registers for herself? She's not getting married, but she registers for herself. She registers for shoes. That's not a bad idea, though the shoes she registers for are sort of lame, the kind that would break your toes into a sort of cobbler crumble if you so much as took them for a test stroll. The one thing that appeals to me about the idea of registering for oneself, although it's now forever tainted with the fishy, vodka-soaked smell of that television series, is the formal declaration that probably no one would ever want to spend the rest of their life with you, ever. The idea of people giving you presents about it also seems explicitly rank, but the declaration seems pretty all right, somehow. Perhaps one day I will just send out some kind of announcement, instead -- a telegram? -- Kara joyfully announces that she's a great receptacle for spare time and eager body parts until something more convenient for you comes along! Service at 12, reception to follow. Please indicate if kosher meal is required.
I would register for the massage kit, absolutely.
Friday, April 17, 2009
events that I wish had not occurred in the past 24 hours
-Prompted by students (there was context, I swear), draw shark on blackboard with grisly-looking, unpleasantly aggressive teeth. Receive feedback from students that shark looks like wolf. Do wolves have fins, I ask you? Do wolves have fins.
-Due to willfully slow bus from university to train station (stopping at green lights is apparently now all the rage), sprint four minutes to afternoon CalTrain with bag of composition textbooks. Barely make train, heave ungracefully into seat. Realize foot cannot be felt. Page foot. Summon foot to life with good thoughts. Foot unresponsive. Take off shoe and sock on CalTrain (sorry, fellow riders) to discover that foot is blue. Punch it energetically several times. Once, aloud, say, "C'mon, go!", earning exceptional looks from other riders, who are probably Real People with Real Jobs and Real Lives, whose feet are always responsive. Later in the ride, the train power begins to fail at every stop, delaying the train and causing me to miss my BART. So glad I sprinted.
-Appear sullenly at beer garden around 6:45 pm wearing exact costume donned for work, having eaten two handfuls of cooked lettuce at the Fort for sustanence. Against/for what, not clear. Do not obtain a beer, although it is a beer garden. Make mean, reprehensible fun of The Bay's haircut, calling it a tonsure. Though it does look sort of like a tonsure, anyone with a medieval studies degree worth their salt should know that a true tonsure involves having a bald spot.
-Eat a cheeseburger standing up over a pinball machine, now also drinking beer. Behold my convalescence.
-Observe extreme drunkenness while sober. Channel Florence Nightengale. Fetch bins. Pour glasses of water. Later, lying awake around 3 am in the dark, try to coax back that dream from Tuesday night about the sunny house but come up with bupkiss. Settling, try to coax back the dream about being continually shot out of a cannon. Nothing.
-Due to willfully slow bus from university to train station (stopping at green lights is apparently now all the rage), sprint four minutes to afternoon CalTrain with bag of composition textbooks. Barely make train, heave ungracefully into seat. Realize foot cannot be felt. Page foot. Summon foot to life with good thoughts. Foot unresponsive. Take off shoe and sock on CalTrain (sorry, fellow riders) to discover that foot is blue. Punch it energetically several times. Once, aloud, say, "C'mon, go!", earning exceptional looks from other riders, who are probably Real People with Real Jobs and Real Lives, whose feet are always responsive. Later in the ride, the train power begins to fail at every stop, delaying the train and causing me to miss my BART. So glad I sprinted.
-Appear sullenly at beer garden around 6:45 pm wearing exact costume donned for work, having eaten two handfuls of cooked lettuce at the Fort for sustanence. Against/for what, not clear. Do not obtain a beer, although it is a beer garden. Make mean, reprehensible fun of The Bay's haircut, calling it a tonsure. Though it does look sort of like a tonsure, anyone with a medieval studies degree worth their salt should know that a true tonsure involves having a bald spot.
-Eat a cheeseburger standing up over a pinball machine, now also drinking beer. Behold my convalescence.
-Observe extreme drunkenness while sober. Channel Florence Nightengale. Fetch bins. Pour glasses of water. Later, lying awake around 3 am in the dark, try to coax back that dream from Tuesday night about the sunny house but come up with bupkiss. Settling, try to coax back the dream about being continually shot out of a cannon. Nothing.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
bentornato, sleep
Last night I slept for the first time in weeks. I had two dreams. In the first dream I was being shot out of a cannon over and over again, and it was not enjoyable. Each time I landed in a field far away from the shooting site, was collected like a killed fowl, then docilely stuffed back in the cannon for another round. The people who were in charge of the cannon were dressed in Revolutionary War reenactment costumes. They were also responsible for trotting out to get me after I'd been projected into the field. On the last round of stuffage I suddenly said,
"Wait, I thought of the ending to my story, let me out, I need to write it down," but the reenactors shot the cannon anyway and I woke up. It was the middle of the night. I lay there for a while trying to remember what the end of the story might have been, what story I could have been referring to.
In the second dream I was in a big, sunny house in the middle of nowhere and I was completely in love. That was it -- the whole dream. Such lameness neither dreams nor reality has never experienced -- I know -- except when I woke up I thought I remembered what I'd decided upon, in the cannon, as the end to my story, and I felt not-tired for the first time in weeks.
"Wait, I thought of the ending to my story, let me out, I need to write it down," but the reenactors shot the cannon anyway and I woke up. It was the middle of the night. I lay there for a while trying to remember what the end of the story might have been, what story I could have been referring to.
In the second dream I was in a big, sunny house in the middle of nowhere and I was completely in love. That was it -- the whole dream. Such lameness neither dreams nor reality has never experienced -- I know -- except when I woke up I thought I remembered what I'd decided upon, in the cannon, as the end to my story, and I felt not-tired for the first time in weeks.
Monday, April 13, 2009
sugar versus sleep: the deathmatch
On clearance in the Walgreens today: Foiled friendship cards. Read this as you like. Somebody needs a copy editor. Or friends.
Dear Walgreens,
I'm available for hire.
Thanks for the paper towels.
I remain,
Kara
Meanwhile the outrageous sugar cravings continue. I think I've had more sugar since I was released from the hospital than I had in the entire twenty-seven-point-five years prior. (This is a complete lie, c.f. dozens of my mother's pumpkin breads that I snuck, alone and with accomplices, during my tenure in Maryland (Don't put them in the freezer marked PUMPKIN BREAD if you don't want people to steal them); all baked goods made by Magical Majkin, Professional Pastry Chef, sometimes six varieties at a time; almost every encounter with Michelle; Jewish holidays; Christian holidays; Muslim holidays; other people's birthdays; Sundays; my freezer.) Could this be why I can't sleep at night?
Today I got the go-ahead to begin sleep-inducing activities.
Great! I thought. I can grade a little, read some Heidegger, enjoy some opiates and call it a day.
The doctor meant running. I can start running. (What the doctor does not know is how quickly I am tapering off of the Prednisone, now down to a steep 20 milligrams a day. I failed to mention this in my friendly e-reply.)
But since I'm following all directions except for that one, I dutifully took a break from my freelance project and trotted off down the road like a slow, confused lamb. (Despite having finished the San Francisco Marathon, I still run like an overfed, hysterically pathological lamb, and it's embarrassing. This is why I try to run on off-hours when people I know will not see me in the out-of-doors.) How long had it been since I had last run? As I trotted, cement trash basins and people in walkers passing me at every step, I tried to remember. I spent March too sick to stand (as well lecturing to university students and riding the CalTrain) and then in the hospital, so it would have had to have been at least February. No wonder it was so difficult. Baa.
After two miles I went home. Could this be sufficient for some sleep, despite the sugar coma I nearly induced this afternoon? (Thanks, Industrious Self of the Weekend. The macaroons made for Steph's birthday were good.)
Dear Walgreens,
I'm available for hire.
Thanks for the paper towels.
I remain,
Kara
Meanwhile the outrageous sugar cravings continue. I think I've had more sugar since I was released from the hospital than I had in the entire twenty-seven-point-five years prior. (This is a complete lie, c.f. dozens of my mother's pumpkin breads that I snuck, alone and with accomplices, during my tenure in Maryland (Don't put them in the freezer marked PUMPKIN BREAD if you don't want people to steal them); all baked goods made by Magical Majkin, Professional Pastry Chef, sometimes six varieties at a time; almost every encounter with Michelle; Jewish holidays; Christian holidays; Muslim holidays; other people's birthdays; Sundays; my freezer.) Could this be why I can't sleep at night?
Today I got the go-ahead to begin sleep-inducing activities.
Great! I thought. I can grade a little, read some Heidegger, enjoy some opiates and call it a day.
The doctor meant running. I can start running. (What the doctor does not know is how quickly I am tapering off of the Prednisone, now down to a steep 20 milligrams a day. I failed to mention this in my friendly e-reply.)
But since I'm following all directions except for that one, I dutifully took a break from my freelance project and trotted off down the road like a slow, confused lamb. (Despite having finished the San Francisco Marathon, I still run like an overfed, hysterically pathological lamb, and it's embarrassing. This is why I try to run on off-hours when people I know will not see me in the out-of-doors.) How long had it been since I had last run? As I trotted, cement trash basins and people in walkers passing me at every step, I tried to remember. I spent March too sick to stand (as well lecturing to university students and riding the CalTrain) and then in the hospital, so it would have had to have been at least February. No wonder it was so difficult. Baa.
After two miles I went home. Could this be sufficient for some sleep, despite the sugar coma I nearly induced this afternoon? (Thanks, Industrious Self of the Weekend. The macaroons made for Steph's birthday were good.)
Saturday, April 11, 2009
escape from the bog
The Bay has toxic black mold in his apartment. This being not his fault, he's moving out this month and looking for a place to live, so we've been wandering around the city looking at possible apartments for him. The desirability of most of them hovers around maximum shitstorm level orange, though none more so than the one we saw this morning, which literally consisted of some prefab walls erected in the middle of some woman's garage. (The sole window looked out onto the back of her car, which was darkly enclosed in said garage.) The room was terrifyingly small, and had a shower stall positioned directly within it, with no door. You could pull back the shower curtain and see your entire dark, enclosed-inside-a-garage quarters. It could be really dramatic if guests were there with you. Still soaking wet, soapy, maybe with a shower cap on, you could peep in and out from behind the shower curtain directly into the main room bellowing Here I am!, insert a brief guitar interlude, and then follow with Rock you like a hur-ri-cane! while you were shaving. Likely applause would ensue.
"All is included!" the landlady announced proudly. It was the sort of place that would encourage one to build a rafter for the sole purpose of hanging oneself from it. But one could at least die knowing that PG&E, garbage, and water were paid for. I nodded cheerfully, imagining my dangling body poised from the rafter I would build after my Scorpions-inspired public shower was over.
The Bay was polite.
"You know, I'm looking at a few other places today... and I think I'm looking for something with gas heat, not electric," he said.
"You're looking for something with gas heat?" I said after we left.
"What? I was just trying to be nice," he told me. We were near the albino alligator at the science museum so I suggested we go there to restore faith in the world. Alligators can often do this.
I'm a member of the science museum, so in theory I can pop in and out whenever I want to visit the alligators, sharks, and penguins. This is the life I envision for myself -- frolicking through fields, encountering sharks when necessary or pleasant, passing by sharks, greeting sharks, encountering more, singing, whipping my frock around -- although sadly reality prohibits such fantasies from transpiring very often. In fact, since our visit was impromptu, we didn't even get to the sharks today. So much for the hip-hop parade of sharks I rely upon each day, in my mind, to make sense of this world.
"There he is," I announced when we walked up to the albino alligator. "He is albino and lying on the rock." One important function I fulfill at museums is the bald announcement of the obvious, perhaps a byproduct of leading tours of very, very small children around The Cloisters some years ago.
("This is St. Roch. Now, there seems to be something round and raised on St. Roch's leg! Can anyone guess what it is? No, not a donut... close. No, it isn't a bug bite, but even closer! Why, it's a bubon from the bubonic plague!" [bucolic cheers])
"If I lived in a bog..." The Bay began, and I kindly did not point out that he does live in a bog -- it has toxic black mold in it -- but he trailed off. We will never know now what The Bay would do if he lived in a bog. (Except we do know because he does live in a bog; c.f. my important function at museums.)
"All is included!" the landlady announced proudly. It was the sort of place that would encourage one to build a rafter for the sole purpose of hanging oneself from it. But one could at least die knowing that PG&E, garbage, and water were paid for. I nodded cheerfully, imagining my dangling body poised from the rafter I would build after my Scorpions-inspired public shower was over.
The Bay was polite.
"You know, I'm looking at a few other places today... and I think I'm looking for something with gas heat, not electric," he said.
"You're looking for something with gas heat?" I said after we left.
"What? I was just trying to be nice," he told me. We were near the albino alligator at the science museum so I suggested we go there to restore faith in the world. Alligators can often do this.
I'm a member of the science museum, so in theory I can pop in and out whenever I want to visit the alligators, sharks, and penguins. This is the life I envision for myself -- frolicking through fields, encountering sharks when necessary or pleasant, passing by sharks, greeting sharks, encountering more, singing, whipping my frock around -- although sadly reality prohibits such fantasies from transpiring very often. In fact, since our visit was impromptu, we didn't even get to the sharks today. So much for the hip-hop parade of sharks I rely upon each day, in my mind, to make sense of this world.
"There he is," I announced when we walked up to the albino alligator. "He is albino and lying on the rock." One important function I fulfill at museums is the bald announcement of the obvious, perhaps a byproduct of leading tours of very, very small children around The Cloisters some years ago.
("This is St. Roch. Now, there seems to be something round and raised on St. Roch's leg! Can anyone guess what it is? No, not a donut... close. No, it isn't a bug bite, but even closer! Why, it's a bubon from the bubonic plague!" [bucolic cheers])
"If I lived in a bog..." The Bay began, and I kindly did not point out that he does live in a bog -- it has toxic black mold in it -- but he trailed off. We will never know now what The Bay would do if he lived in a bog. (Except we do know because he does live in a bog; c.f. my important function at museums.)
Friday, April 10, 2009
on russia and booze
Michelle's brother Sam is in the Peace Corps in Moldova, and in July she and her parents are going to visit him. They're going to Russia, too. Michelle's family are Fun and Exciting, and enjoy traveling and trying new things. My family -- much as I love them -- are frankly not of this ilk. We are usually a very morose vacationing group, woefully convening for Meals, and some of us (excuse me if I flatter myself with an exemption from this description) are not so into new places or new things. When I was working in the Czech Republic and my family came to visit me, I think I can safely say that every one of them was completely miserable. I have a feeling that if we traveled in small groups it would not be this way, but somehow the six of us together always manage to make things predictably dreary when away from Maryland or Ohio, where, although certainly never outright Fun, our Drear is kept to a remarkable minimum.
It never occurred to me to try to convince my family to go on a trip to Mother Russia, though it seems like it would be a sensible idea -- Visiting Jewish Roots and whatnot, though probably no one in my family would drink the vodka except for my sister and me (and maybe my 17-year-old brother, if left unobserved). Maybe we could wear head wraps and lead bears around by leashes, wield scythes. I have a feeling I would be great with a scythe. I understand that's not really what happens in Russia, and that wasn't what our ancestral peoples did there, either, but it makes the whole thing seem extremely appealing, especially when picturing my next-oldest brother, white New Balances gleaming, Jew-fro tamped in a head wrap, leading a bear around.
Michelle has been reading up about Russia in preparation for her trip -- particularly about this traditional way of taking vodka shots with bread, pickles, and some other items -- and last night in her kitchen, she, Josh, and Rudy tried it out while I, placidly medicated across the counter, drank water and observed them. The process involved breathing in extremely deeply, taking a shot, breathing out extremely forcefully, eating this bread, breathing, drinking, breathing. The whole thing seemed extremely dramatic and I doubt anyone having a snack in Russia does this, though all three of them -- after several shots of the vodka as well as an experiment with the dregs of some Hennessy (I don't make the rules) -- seemed very pleased with the technique and claimed it got them "into a flow." (Ha. Ha. I love Californians.) Starting tomorrow I'm allowed to drink alcohol again, though I have to say that this month-plus without alcohol has been remarkably entertaining. I haven't missed it. Talk about getting in touch with your roots.
It never occurred to me to try to convince my family to go on a trip to Mother Russia, though it seems like it would be a sensible idea -- Visiting Jewish Roots and whatnot, though probably no one in my family would drink the vodka except for my sister and me (and maybe my 17-year-old brother, if left unobserved). Maybe we could wear head wraps and lead bears around by leashes, wield scythes. I have a feeling I would be great with a scythe. I understand that's not really what happens in Russia, and that wasn't what our ancestral peoples did there, either, but it makes the whole thing seem extremely appealing, especially when picturing my next-oldest brother, white New Balances gleaming, Jew-fro tamped in a head wrap, leading a bear around.
Michelle has been reading up about Russia in preparation for her trip -- particularly about this traditional way of taking vodka shots with bread, pickles, and some other items -- and last night in her kitchen, she, Josh, and Rudy tried it out while I, placidly medicated across the counter, drank water and observed them. The process involved breathing in extremely deeply, taking a shot, breathing out extremely forcefully, eating this bread, breathing, drinking, breathing. The whole thing seemed extremely dramatic and I doubt anyone having a snack in Russia does this, though all three of them -- after several shots of the vodka as well as an experiment with the dregs of some Hennessy (I don't make the rules) -- seemed very pleased with the technique and claimed it got them "into a flow." (Ha. Ha. I love Californians.) Starting tomorrow I'm allowed to drink alcohol again, though I have to say that this month-plus without alcohol has been remarkably entertaining. I haven't missed it. Talk about getting in touch with your roots.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
bureaucraptastic
The students' problems seem sincerely more pressing than mine. This semester they include shootings, arrests, break-ins, missing needles, fines on financial aid, estranged parents, and cramps. I believe them, if you're wondering. (The person with cramps, on the first occasion, attempted to tell me that surely I knew how horrible having cramps was, being a woman. I responded non-committally and gave her a negligible extension on her project. The second time she swung the other way: Surely I would never know what it would be like to feel "excruciating" stomach pain! If ever I had a sympathetic bone in my body I ought to just imagine how horrible the sensation might be! Having cramps seems to bear terrible pathos, I wrote back. Hope you feel better soon. (I hear that restraint is a professional virtue.))
I was thinking about all these things this morning as I was riding to work. If you choose the uber, super-Arnold insurance that the university provides, which you probably should if you're planning to get two colonoscopies, two MREs, twenty-three blood tests, have six doctors' visits, buy daily medications, and stay in the hospital for six days all in a five-month period, it turns out that they dock a third of your pay to cover your share. A third. So that means a third of your pay goes into merely subsidizing your medical bills. Are you there, Obama? It's me, Margaret.
Still, the students have it worse, because no one will listen to them because they are students. When I first started at this university, I was surprised by the amount of students that came to office hours just to say what's up. They were not really there to say what's up, of course; they were there for some kind of help because no one was listening to them. Why will nobody listen to anyone who is remotely young? It's the same thing in the hospital. Like living a few more years will suddenly make you filled with gravitas, like your judgment about what you need and why will bloom into this rare age-activated flower, petals and pollen everywhere. There are a lot of them who are lazy and won't help themselves, or don't need help. But the ones who are trying to get help can't get it. Nobody's listening, or almost nobody.
I don't see the point of working at a job where I can't listen to anyone, where I can't help anyone do anything. It just seems devoid of all purpose. Hello, Steinman and Blassburn, this is Kara, how may I direct your call? I can't do it. Or: I can do it. I could probably do it really efficiently. And that's the sort of depressing part.
I was thinking about all these things this morning as I was riding to work. If you choose the uber, super-Arnold insurance that the university provides, which you probably should if you're planning to get two colonoscopies, two MREs, twenty-three blood tests, have six doctors' visits, buy daily medications, and stay in the hospital for six days all in a five-month period, it turns out that they dock a third of your pay to cover your share. A third. So that means a third of your pay goes into merely subsidizing your medical bills. Are you there, Obama? It's me, Margaret.
Still, the students have it worse, because no one will listen to them because they are students. When I first started at this university, I was surprised by the amount of students that came to office hours just to say what's up. They were not really there to say what's up, of course; they were there for some kind of help because no one was listening to them. Why will nobody listen to anyone who is remotely young? It's the same thing in the hospital. Like living a few more years will suddenly make you filled with gravitas, like your judgment about what you need and why will bloom into this rare age-activated flower, petals and pollen everywhere. There are a lot of them who are lazy and won't help themselves, or don't need help. But the ones who are trying to get help can't get it. Nobody's listening, or almost nobody.
I don't see the point of working at a job where I can't listen to anyone, where I can't help anyone do anything. It just seems devoid of all purpose. Hello, Steinman and Blassburn, this is Kara, how may I direct your call? I can't do it. Or: I can do it. I could probably do it really efficiently. And that's the sort of depressing part.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
playacting: the musical
By the time I got to the BART yesterday morning, one block away from my house, I felt like a package of hamburger. Not a good portent. One thing that coming down from the prednisone does, even slowly, is make you feel like all the marrow has been sucked out of your bones. You get nauseous and exhausted. So there you are with your huge face and your sack of raw bones, and everyone sees the face and thinks, What a little plumper! Now THERE'S someone who had a huge and delicious breakfast and has the strength to hurl rocks through windows! when in fact you've just booted your breakfast in the CalTrain bathroom while the train was stopped at San Carlos and you barely made it back to your seat. Oh, and you're about to teach a 75-minute lesson and a 3-hour lesson back to back, and you haven't planned them, so wake up, you lazy inefficient asshole, you've got work to do. People like me disgust me sometimes, truly.
Ultimately going back to work is everywhere I want to be, of course. The campus smelled incredible yesterday, the way things smell right after it rains when the sky is undecided. I was wearing sneakers in case of emergency, which usually makes the day inestimably better (I don't know why, but heels have a way of ruining the workday that seems out-of-proportion to their power). In my creative writing class, I sent the students out for a short time to eavesdrop. We're working on dialogue.
"Don't get arrested," I said as I was telling them about the exercise. "Don't move as strange, blob-like pack, or people will know you're listening to them. Don't spend the whole time in Jamba Juice."
These were basically the directions I'd given myself before coming to work, too.
When they came back several of them were carrying Jamba Juices, but they had heard some pretty good stuff. A few had worn sunglasses (this was at about 6 pm, so conclude what you will) for additional incognito.
Dialogue is my favorite lesson to teach, not only because often I send the students away and they come back. The classroom without them, for those minutes, feels terrifying.
I came back to the Fort last night, which was the greatest mistake of all. All that travel after the teaching -- I had forgotten -- is untenably exhausting. All day people had been commenting to me on the phone how chipper! active! great! I sounded. They couldn't even see my huge face. I must have found a way to inject extra chins into my voice. I'm trying to. That's what people want to hear. They want to hear that you're just! great! because then it absolves them of having to put on a show of worrying about you when they aren't worried. So of course someone who's as huge! great! as I am would have no! problem! getting home over the course of two hours by myself. You have to play to other people's expectations sometimes.
The calcification in my wrist is giving me problems. If I move my wrist a certain way, I bump the calcification and almost automatically throw up. On the train I started to feel more and more like the hamburger package of morning. The train takes 90 minutes at night -- that's after the bus in That City Where I Teach, and before the bus or cab home in San Francisco. The person sitting next to me kept bumping into my wrist and other parts of me and asking me about myself.
"I'm sorry," I said, "I'm sick and I need to not talk."
"You're sick?" the person asked. "Wow, I never would have known! You look great!"
I threw up in the CalTrain bathroom again: peanuts that I'd eaten during class. It's hard to throw up accurately on a moving train, but I did it. When I came back the guy just smiled at me and then he gave me his card.
"Would you like to have a cup of coffee sometime?"
Ultimately going back to work is everywhere I want to be, of course. The campus smelled incredible yesterday, the way things smell right after it rains when the sky is undecided. I was wearing sneakers in case of emergency, which usually makes the day inestimably better (I don't know why, but heels have a way of ruining the workday that seems out-of-proportion to their power). In my creative writing class, I sent the students out for a short time to eavesdrop. We're working on dialogue.
"Don't get arrested," I said as I was telling them about the exercise. "Don't move as strange, blob-like pack, or people will know you're listening to them. Don't spend the whole time in Jamba Juice."
These were basically the directions I'd given myself before coming to work, too.
When they came back several of them were carrying Jamba Juices, but they had heard some pretty good stuff. A few had worn sunglasses (this was at about 6 pm, so conclude what you will) for additional incognito.
Dialogue is my favorite lesson to teach, not only because often I send the students away and they come back. The classroom without them, for those minutes, feels terrifying.
I came back to the Fort last night, which was the greatest mistake of all. All that travel after the teaching -- I had forgotten -- is untenably exhausting. All day people had been commenting to me on the phone how chipper! active! great! I sounded. They couldn't even see my huge face. I must have found a way to inject extra chins into my voice. I'm trying to. That's what people want to hear. They want to hear that you're just! great! because then it absolves them of having to put on a show of worrying about you when they aren't worried. So of course someone who's as huge! great! as I am would have no! problem! getting home over the course of two hours by myself. You have to play to other people's expectations sometimes.
The calcification in my wrist is giving me problems. If I move my wrist a certain way, I bump the calcification and almost automatically throw up. On the train I started to feel more and more like the hamburger package of morning. The train takes 90 minutes at night -- that's after the bus in That City Where I Teach, and before the bus or cab home in San Francisco. The person sitting next to me kept bumping into my wrist and other parts of me and asking me about myself.
"I'm sorry," I said, "I'm sick and I need to not talk."
"You're sick?" the person asked. "Wow, I never would have known! You look great!"
I threw up in the CalTrain bathroom again: peanuts that I'd eaten during class. It's hard to throw up accurately on a moving train, but I did it. When I came back the guy just smiled at me and then he gave me his card.
"Would you like to have a cup of coffee sometime?"
Monday, April 06, 2009
the oy of cooking.
Items made in Fort Phil Collins kitchen today:
1) Blueberry muffins. I have never made blueberry muffins before. I just don't love them very much. David, one of my brothers, has had this lifelong relationship with muffins, sort of a Tristan and Isolde thing that has frightened people in the past. Blueberry, his best loved. There was a Passover some years ago when David and I had some pet goldfish that lived in the kitchen near the stove, and one morning when I came down to eat one of the gross (sorry, Mom, but it's true) matzo-meal muffins she'd made with the tiny blueberries baked inside them, I saw the fish dead, floating on their sides in the water. Their eyes were wide open, of course, but starting to grow opaque and dark like the mini blueberries. Since then I've never wanted another blueberry muffin again, until today.
I'd recently received a request for blueberry muffins and decided to fill the order. I ate one when it came out of the oven and it was actually pretty fucking good. I tried not to think of the fish. I can't remember their names. Goldie, no doubt, or something similarly unimaginative.
2) Chicken cabbage salad. I know I shouldn't be eating cabbage, but the guilt. The Jewish guilt. These muffins and whatnot are making me feel really nervous, like at any moment I'm going to turn around and discover myself incapable of standing, suddenly transmogrified into a loaf of something highly yeasty. My friends eat carrot sticks, run miles and miles along beaches. My friends lift huge canoes over their heads and hurl them into abandoned movie theaters eighty feet away. They subsist on boiled tofu and do things like pilates, yoga, calisthenics. They are ready for battle. I am getting worried. I bought some cabbage.
I'm supposed to be "walking around" for 40 minutes to an hour each day. I don't think this means power-walking with my butt out like Rose from The Golden Girls, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean walking from my oven to my computer back and forth either. So every day I've been taking long walks to do errands. On the errand walk today (Important Wares Acquired: Ziploc bags and a head of cabbage) I decided I'd try to make myself eat some cabbage tonight and see what went down. Since I can't feel the ulcers I guess I might as well try to make myself fight-ready, though I don't know when the fight will be. I mixed up about a third of the cabbage head with half a grilled chicken breast and some mustard and avocado. It made a lot of cabbage. I took a picture of it and sent it to Fellow Crohn R. (not to be confused with The Other Crohn, who must continue to be stuck under some car somewhere, eternally changing a tire that says I'M EXTREMELY RUDE on it).
OK to eat? I asked R.
"No," said R., which was all I needed to hear, and I ate it.
1) Blueberry muffins. I have never made blueberry muffins before. I just don't love them very much. David, one of my brothers, has had this lifelong relationship with muffins, sort of a Tristan and Isolde thing that has frightened people in the past. Blueberry, his best loved. There was a Passover some years ago when David and I had some pet goldfish that lived in the kitchen near the stove, and one morning when I came down to eat one of the gross (sorry, Mom, but it's true) matzo-meal muffins she'd made with the tiny blueberries baked inside them, I saw the fish dead, floating on their sides in the water. Their eyes were wide open, of course, but starting to grow opaque and dark like the mini blueberries. Since then I've never wanted another blueberry muffin again, until today.
I'd recently received a request for blueberry muffins and decided to fill the order. I ate one when it came out of the oven and it was actually pretty fucking good. I tried not to think of the fish. I can't remember their names. Goldie, no doubt, or something similarly unimaginative.
2) Chicken cabbage salad. I know I shouldn't be eating cabbage, but the guilt. The Jewish guilt. These muffins and whatnot are making me feel really nervous, like at any moment I'm going to turn around and discover myself incapable of standing, suddenly transmogrified into a loaf of something highly yeasty. My friends eat carrot sticks, run miles and miles along beaches. My friends lift huge canoes over their heads and hurl them into abandoned movie theaters eighty feet away. They subsist on boiled tofu and do things like pilates, yoga, calisthenics. They are ready for battle. I am getting worried. I bought some cabbage.
I'm supposed to be "walking around" for 40 minutes to an hour each day. I don't think this means power-walking with my butt out like Rose from The Golden Girls, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean walking from my oven to my computer back and forth either. So every day I've been taking long walks to do errands. On the errand walk today (Important Wares Acquired: Ziploc bags and a head of cabbage) I decided I'd try to make myself eat some cabbage tonight and see what went down. Since I can't feel the ulcers I guess I might as well try to make myself fight-ready, though I don't know when the fight will be. I mixed up about a third of the cabbage head with half a grilled chicken breast and some mustard and avocado. It made a lot of cabbage. I took a picture of it and sent it to Fellow Crohn R. (not to be confused with The Other Crohn, who must continue to be stuck under some car somewhere, eternally changing a tire that says I'M EXTREMELY RUDE on it).
OK to eat? I asked R.
"No," said R., which was all I needed to hear, and I ate it.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
pictorial updates: hematoma city + bigface
Item one: The hematomas are doing what they ought. The ones on my hands just look like someone tried to greet me too forcefully. Never let anyone greet you in a physical manner, unless they're Gael Garcia Bernal.
Item two: The Bigface. It's getting there. Getting to bigness. Apparently no one else is noticing it yet, I think because people are used to me being the little Roly-Poly Wonder We Can All Rely On. If there's one thing I can be depended upon, it's to have a face larger than the square footage of a Michael Jackson video troupe costumery, prednisone or no prednisone. I think this is working in my favor.
Saturday, April 04, 2009
the flour-based saturday night activities of convalescents
Saturday night at the Fort means G-R-A-D-I-N-G! Disco inferno! Strobe... and re-strobe! My social life is an absolute nonstop whirlwind of excitement, absolutely befitting of a 27-year-old woman living in the middle of a major metropolitan area. (Other nights of the week that mean G-R-A-D-I-N-G! at the Fort include Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. Stop by anytime to get a piece of the action.) From my window I can see all the people dressed in their clean clothes heading to dinner. Some of them are clearly already drunk and a lot of them are in love or are doing a good job of appearing to be. It is about 65 degrees. All the cars have their windows down. Women are wearing these carefree, sort of muslinesque scarves that seem annoying. The Bay, at work, informs me that other people are hateful and I should be glad that I am inside by myself.
Sometimes on Saturday nights, alone, grading, I bake. This is because I am basically a cat lady without the cats. The problem with baking on Saturdays, however, is that the goods do not have an immediate exit point (for example, work on Tuesday or The Bay's mom (I pretty much make all my impressions on The Bay's mom through baked goods, in the style of young Jewish women everywhere)). One cannot even mail one's baked goods away the next day if one bakes on Saturday. One has no choice but to eat all said goods and then cry out for the cats she does not have. Boy, I am such a catch. Leap on this right now! All items must go!
I have decided not to do this tonight, only in part because of the strange packaged cookies I ate earlier. They were purchased by Juan during the days she was here and have been sitting on top of the refrigerator. They are those Chessmen cookies that used to have actual chess pieces emblazoned on their cookie bodies, but now they have things like flowers and watering pots. They are no longer strategic. They are now cookies that were made for the people under my window who are drunk and young. I ate about six of them.
Tonight's baking substitution: Some Montaigne essays that are fun to read when you are feeling void of enthusiasm. It's a thing I do. I know: I'm not normal.
Sometimes on Saturday nights, alone, grading, I bake. This is because I am basically a cat lady without the cats. The problem with baking on Saturdays, however, is that the goods do not have an immediate exit point (for example, work on Tuesday or The Bay's mom (I pretty much make all my impressions on The Bay's mom through baked goods, in the style of young Jewish women everywhere)). One cannot even mail one's baked goods away the next day if one bakes on Saturday. One has no choice but to eat all said goods and then cry out for the cats she does not have. Boy, I am such a catch. Leap on this right now! All items must go!
I have decided not to do this tonight, only in part because of the strange packaged cookies I ate earlier. They were purchased by Juan during the days she was here and have been sitting on top of the refrigerator. They are those Chessmen cookies that used to have actual chess pieces emblazoned on their cookie bodies, but now they have things like flowers and watering pots. They are no longer strategic. They are now cookies that were made for the people under my window who are drunk and young. I ate about six of them.
Tonight's baking substitution: Some Montaigne essays that are fun to read when you are feeling void of enthusiasm. It's a thing I do. I know: I'm not normal.
Friday, April 03, 2009
nutrient investigations of the third kind
The face, it expands. It is like bread left to rise, friends. Timely that today's New York Times Well blog is all about prednisone and its discontents. I have to say that these little blurblike pieces annoy me in their pretty packaging with their easy morals, but I can't say I didn't somehow enjoy hearing about how prednisone is shitty. Requisite woman-power body-image comments appended by overinterested NYT readers, of course. See my half-lidded drone eyes.
Unrelated to this article, I decided to try to Embrace Nutrient Activity today. I know the ulcers and abscess like their soft white bread and shee, and but I can't help but imagine that if I eat like that for a seventh day in a row, I'll be absolutely useless in battle. I would thrust my cat-o-nine-tails in the air and come up with wind only, shaming my nation. By which I now mean the nation of Soon-to-be-Unemployed People. I don't know who we're going to battle against but I imagine it probably involves assholes and lapels.
Never mind the enormous vegan cookie I ate this afternoon (I didn't know it was vegan when I bought it but now I know). I have consumed spinach, nonfat plain yogurt, brown rice, and a dry-roasted eggplant that set off my fire alarm with considerable panache. I'm like a Californian or something. Partly this shift was inspired by my cat-o-nine-tails reverie (last night's Saw V-inspired insomniatic musings, followed by a waking dream in which The Bay dyed his hair blonde with frosted tips and dumped me because I told the whole world how poor his hygiene is). Partly it was set off by our dinner last night, The Bay's suggestion, of vegetarian Chinese food. I ordered these steamed pea shoots for myself (yeah, I understand I'm a Crohn, not a panda, but I was just trying to be responsible) but also ended up eating probably about a cup of this fried fake meat stuff that was supposed to not be for me. Fast forward two hours to me writhing around in the bed with worse pain than I'd had in the hospital, attempting to watch Father of the Bride streamed over Netflix and announcing that I was unequipped to feel love and that I was a drain on the advancements of humankind.
It turns out that I don't feel enormously better on the spinach-and-brown-rice diet than I did eating Chinese food and LifeSavers. Maybe the doctors are right, and I really am best off eating white toast and boiled chicken. But what about the battle, I ask you. What about the battle.
Unrelated to this article, I decided to try to Embrace Nutrient Activity today. I know the ulcers and abscess like their soft white bread and shee, and but I can't help but imagine that if I eat like that for a seventh day in a row, I'll be absolutely useless in battle. I would thrust my cat-o-nine-tails in the air and come up with wind only, shaming my nation. By which I now mean the nation of Soon-to-be-Unemployed People. I don't know who we're going to battle against but I imagine it probably involves assholes and lapels.
Never mind the enormous vegan cookie I ate this afternoon (I didn't know it was vegan when I bought it but now I know). I have consumed spinach, nonfat plain yogurt, brown rice, and a dry-roasted eggplant that set off my fire alarm with considerable panache. I'm like a Californian or something. Partly this shift was inspired by my cat-o-nine-tails reverie (last night's Saw V-inspired insomniatic musings, followed by a waking dream in which The Bay dyed his hair blonde with frosted tips and dumped me because I told the whole world how poor his hygiene is). Partly it was set off by our dinner last night, The Bay's suggestion, of vegetarian Chinese food. I ordered these steamed pea shoots for myself (yeah, I understand I'm a Crohn, not a panda, but I was just trying to be responsible) but also ended up eating probably about a cup of this fried fake meat stuff that was supposed to not be for me. Fast forward two hours to me writhing around in the bed with worse pain than I'd had in the hospital, attempting to watch Father of the Bride streamed over Netflix and announcing that I was unequipped to feel love and that I was a drain on the advancements of humankind.
It turns out that I don't feel enormously better on the spinach-and-brown-rice diet than I did eating Chinese food and LifeSavers. Maybe the doctors are right, and I really am best off eating white toast and boiled chicken. But what about the battle, I ask you. What about the battle.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
unemployed.
I quit my job today. I was not planning to do this, but the door to the office of the chair of my department was open. I went in. I sat down. I explained that I had Crohn's Disease. Someone had already told him. I explained I could not work there anymore after this semester. I explained that there was nothing in the whole world that I liked, as a job beyond writing stories, more than teaching. I didn't say anything I didn't mean, including that there was no way I was coming back, even if I got better. Afterward I went into the PWCM's office. "Hi," I said. "C'est fin," I said. Nothing. I felt nothing. Not even a twinge.
I had practiced this, the quitting, while I was in the hospital, and I had cried my eyes out. In the hospital I cried about the peril of my job as well as a number of other things, mainly because there was nothing else to do. The truth is I had been planning to quit anyway, probably; a five-hour commute for a full work schedule and less than minimum wage seems an oddly robust trade-off, and after two years of it the sense was beginning to wear thin. Yet in the hospital I had practically given myself an aneurysm imagining my life without teaching, without the students -- dubious though they may sometimes be, not being in the classroom, not hearing their weird ideas. Not talking about writing. What if I never taught again? What if no one hired me? How would I live? I imagined myself pining away, working at a desk, shelving items, answering phones, typing reports, how can I help you. I would change my name to something from Little House on the Prairie. I would have eighty to ninety chins and stop listening to music. I would marry someone named Brian or something, and have two wholesome children with round faces and blond hair. I would skin carrots and feed them to Mini Brian 1 and Mini Brian 2. I would wear khakis. I would laugh at animated films. I would stop reading except for Woman's Day. I would live in an unspellable town. How this was connected to quitting an adjunct job I honestly could not tell you, except that there is really nothing to do in the hospital.
But today, in my emotionless state, I was like a freaking mime. (I was even dressed in my mime sweater, which in the past has caused me to be mistaken for a person in Hamburglar costume.) I went to class. The topic of the day was bioethics. One of the small groups considering a position on the topics we were discussing somehow became interested in the idea of cloning polar bears. The idea was that genetic engineering was ethical if it somehow involved the cloning of polar bears, mainly for food purposes. Eating polar bears. Cloning polar bears. These are my students. I stood there for a moment looking at them.
"How," I had to know, "did we settle on polar bears as a model for this claim? Was this just a stroke of genius, or...?"
One of them simply looked at me.
"Roar," this person said.
I don't care what shit comes with the grading or the commute or the underpayment or that it's completely over; at some rare moments, at least for the next six weeks, I seriously do have the best job in the world.
I had practiced this, the quitting, while I was in the hospital, and I had cried my eyes out. In the hospital I cried about the peril of my job as well as a number of other things, mainly because there was nothing else to do. The truth is I had been planning to quit anyway, probably; a five-hour commute for a full work schedule and less than minimum wage seems an oddly robust trade-off, and after two years of it the sense was beginning to wear thin. Yet in the hospital I had practically given myself an aneurysm imagining my life without teaching, without the students -- dubious though they may sometimes be, not being in the classroom, not hearing their weird ideas. Not talking about writing. What if I never taught again? What if no one hired me? How would I live? I imagined myself pining away, working at a desk, shelving items, answering phones, typing reports, how can I help you. I would change my name to something from Little House on the Prairie. I would have eighty to ninety chins and stop listening to music. I would marry someone named Brian or something, and have two wholesome children with round faces and blond hair. I would skin carrots and feed them to Mini Brian 1 and Mini Brian 2. I would wear khakis. I would laugh at animated films. I would stop reading except for Woman's Day. I would live in an unspellable town. How this was connected to quitting an adjunct job I honestly could not tell you, except that there is really nothing to do in the hospital.
But today, in my emotionless state, I was like a freaking mime. (I was even dressed in my mime sweater, which in the past has caused me to be mistaken for a person in Hamburglar costume.) I went to class. The topic of the day was bioethics. One of the small groups considering a position on the topics we were discussing somehow became interested in the idea of cloning polar bears. The idea was that genetic engineering was ethical if it somehow involved the cloning of polar bears, mainly for food purposes. Eating polar bears. Cloning polar bears. These are my students. I stood there for a moment looking at them.
"How," I had to know, "did we settle on polar bears as a model for this claim? Was this just a stroke of genius, or...?"
One of them simply looked at me.
"Roar," this person said.
I don't care what shit comes with the grading or the commute or the underpayment or that it's completely over; at some rare moments, at least for the next six weeks, I seriously do have the best job in the world.
insomnia redux.
It is almost midnight in the Fort. Tomorrow I will go back to work. I do not really have a lesson plan yet. I am wide awake. I will not, cannot fall asleep. I just ate seven meringues ("a melt-in-your-mouth sensation!") and spoke for about an hour to the PWCM, who clearly wanted to go to sleep, about -- your guess is as good as mine -- slam poetry? stray cats? It's not clear. I also made the mistake of mentioning how I had been having nightmares about Saw V, which we watched a couple of weeks ago, and now it is fresh in my mind again, the heads comically popping like productive grapes. In the hospital I thought about Saw V a lot. Don't watch it if you're squeamish, or, say, get tubes inserted into your veins often. While we had been watching the movie I observed that if that had been me in Saw V, I would probably not have fought for my life by letting my blood spray everywhere and getting jackhammered open and stuff; I probably just would have been like, "Okay, this is stressful; no thanks," which is a lot what being on all these medications is like, attitudewise.
Today, in addition to my students' papers, I read an "oral history of Jamaica." What intrigued me about this "written oral history," which I found on the sidewalk on the way home from the bank, was that it made absolutely no freaking bones about its oxymoronicness. It was just like, Greetings.The first line is, "Jamaica -- home to many. Its story can only be told from the mouths of those who have lived its song." Or written down and deposited on a street corner. I did not learn a lot about Jamaica from the written oral history, except there was a recipe for beer chicken in there that sounded pretty good. I typed it out for future use, when I can drink beer again, or anything. I have put it next to my recipe for Aztec Hot Chocolate, which I read about two nights ago when I also could not sleep and read a History of the Aztecs. I hope this is all going to come in handy.
I have never been a real insomniac before. I feel like I could build a birdhouse. Isn't that what insomniacs are supposed to do? They are supposed to be Paragons of Industry. I could bake banana bread. I should probably stop eating sugar. I already wrote twenty pages in my "novel." In the most recent part of the novel I have inexplicably inserted animate pine trees that are given frantic, sort of waddling chase by a group of Robin Hood reenactors. It will probably come out of the novel, but since I have no emotions right now and have been told I am not equipped to make major decisions (I think I gave like 10 A's today!) I will just leave it in. The idea of pine trees fatly running is pleasing to me. I imagine them like obese people in the middle of a shit, surprised on the toilet and running hairily in circles with their pants around their ankles. I am an appreciator of nature!
Sometimes in college when I couldn't sleep I would read the dictionary. I circled words I liked and then wrote them in a book. I used them in very bad poetry, although once some of my poetry won me a thousand dollars. Extremely weird. Ted and I went to Six Flags and I think also had Dippin' Dots about it. We were into those then. They didn't taste like anything much but the idea of tiny balls of self-contained ice cream was very exciting to us for some reason, and we sought them out everywhere. There was some money left over after the roller coasters and Dots, obviously. I keep forgetting that happened -- the poetry money, I mean. I don't ever forget about the rest of it. The poem was a Real Life Poem about being in love with a gay man who didn't love me back -- pretty portentious for a 17-year-old. I'd never even been to San Francisco yet! Three weeks ago when I was in my office hours a student came in and showed me a little book he keeps of words.
"What should I do with them?" he asked.
"Don't use them on purpose," I advised.
I think the worst part about not teaching anymore will be not having these reminders every now and again that most people aren't thinking about anything, ever, but that some of them really, really are.
Today, in addition to my students' papers, I read an "oral history of Jamaica." What intrigued me about this "written oral history," which I found on the sidewalk on the way home from the bank, was that it made absolutely no freaking bones about its oxymoronicness. It was just like, Greetings.The first line is, "Jamaica -- home to many. Its story can only be told from the mouths of those who have lived its song." Or written down and deposited on a street corner. I did not learn a lot about Jamaica from the written oral history, except there was a recipe for beer chicken in there that sounded pretty good. I typed it out for future use, when I can drink beer again, or anything. I have put it next to my recipe for Aztec Hot Chocolate, which I read about two nights ago when I also could not sleep and read a History of the Aztecs. I hope this is all going to come in handy.
I have never been a real insomniac before. I feel like I could build a birdhouse. Isn't that what insomniacs are supposed to do? They are supposed to be Paragons of Industry. I could bake banana bread. I should probably stop eating sugar. I already wrote twenty pages in my "novel." In the most recent part of the novel I have inexplicably inserted animate pine trees that are given frantic, sort of waddling chase by a group of Robin Hood reenactors. It will probably come out of the novel, but since I have no emotions right now and have been told I am not equipped to make major decisions (I think I gave like 10 A's today!) I will just leave it in. The idea of pine trees fatly running is pleasing to me. I imagine them like obese people in the middle of a shit, surprised on the toilet and running hairily in circles with their pants around their ankles. I am an appreciator of nature!
Sometimes in college when I couldn't sleep I would read the dictionary. I circled words I liked and then wrote them in a book. I used them in very bad poetry, although once some of my poetry won me a thousand dollars. Extremely weird. Ted and I went to Six Flags and I think also had Dippin' Dots about it. We were into those then. They didn't taste like anything much but the idea of tiny balls of self-contained ice cream was very exciting to us for some reason, and we sought them out everywhere. There was some money left over after the roller coasters and Dots, obviously. I keep forgetting that happened -- the poetry money, I mean. I don't ever forget about the rest of it. The poem was a Real Life Poem about being in love with a gay man who didn't love me back -- pretty portentious for a 17-year-old. I'd never even been to San Francisco yet! Three weeks ago when I was in my office hours a student came in and showed me a little book he keeps of words.
"What should I do with them?" he asked.
"Don't use them on purpose," I advised.
I think the worst part about not teaching anymore will be not having these reminders every now and again that most people aren't thinking about anything, ever, but that some of them really, really are.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
insomnimatrix.
The sleeping pill didn't work. I still couldn't fall asleep. All night I lay there thinking about how pleased I was not to feel anything. In the morning I felt strangely groggy, however. I called the doctor.
"Oh, well," she said, "with the amount of prednisone you're on, it probably won't do anything anyway."
Tonight I plan to strike myself with an anvil before bed, and see how that goes.
Today I went to a cafe to do some grading, and The Bay showed up, looking extremely goofy and dirty as usual. He sat down across from me and something weird happened. I grinned.
"What's wrong with you?" he asked.
"I think I'm happy," I said.
"Oh, well," she said, "with the amount of prednisone you're on, it probably won't do anything anyway."
Tonight I plan to strike myself with an anvil before bed, and see how that goes.
Today I went to a cafe to do some grading, and The Bay showed up, looking extremely goofy and dirty as usual. He sat down across from me and something weird happened. I grinned.
"What's wrong with you?" he asked.
"I think I'm happy," I said.
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