Thinking about work.

Several points:

1. It's a lot easier to make lists of, analyze the lists of, plan to conquer the items on the lists of work that needs to be done.

2. You can say you're going to grade whilst waiting for students to show up for possible, theoretical, hypothetical appointments. But you might instead spruce up the new interface you have because of your recently updated OS, and that is way, way shinier than catching up on grading.

3. That curriculum thing--striking out the old stuff, putting the new stuff in a different color? So. Tedious.

4. Also my feet hurt.

5. Also my eyes.

6. Who's kidding whom? I ask you.

7. I've seriously just had the thought: I know I'm not going to get enough sleep already, so then, what's the point?

8. I need to get started on that not-enough-sleep stat.

Here's today's poem, in conclusion.

Bitter: some thoughts.

Today while avoiding work, I took a tour around my kitchen and swooped down on some leftover salad from the night before. Touring the chaos of my house is one of my prime work-avoidance techniques, and it's basically how I get my laundry done, clothes put away, kitchen straightened, etc. But I digress: the salad was made of some spring mix, two heads of white endive, and blood oranges. I dressed it with olive oil and salt and pepper--the orange was juicy.

Because the endive is sturdy, the salad was really none the worse for wear for having stood around for a few hours. If this horrifies you, I'm very sorry. In fact, the whole thing tasted just wonderful, and part of what made it wonderful was the acid of the orange juice, the unctuousness of the oil, the salt, and the bitterness of the endive. It was perfection.

My oldest friend who has impeccable and discriminating taste once told me that she found herself, as she got older, craving intense flavors, and she loved bitter flavors especially. I am finding this myself--some sharp taste in the mix of things makes everything more vivid. Even a possibly sorry, leftover salad. Even, possibly, the occasional bitter thoughts I try not to nurture in myself.

Not bitter: we saw Honeydripper tonight, John Sayles's latest. Wonderful. College daughter and I continued our pre-spring break schedule with a viewing of Step Up 2: The Streets (I dared her to say the entire title to the ticket girl, who was completely unfazed by this--why does it seem so funny to me, this title with a number and a colon and a pretty funny subtitle? Oh well, another opportunity for comedy missed, but what else is new?). It was fabulous, in the way that a good dance movie is fabulous--lots of dancing, not much pretense of doing anything other than the required plot moves, and then more dancing. The final sequences were rather electrifying. I thought of you, assertively unhip, and agree: this movie just made me want to step up and dance. And the final unbitter thing? The Jazz beat the Celtics tonight. Yeah yeah yeah!