Other careers I am considering, because my current career is currently stressing me out.

1. Baker. Or maybe, actually,
2. Patissiere.
3. Stay at home grandmother.
4. Writer of bon mots.
5. Poet with a benefactor of mysterious origins.
6. Owner of a scallion pancake food truck.
7. Mystic.
8. Power napper.
9. Mystery shopper.
10. Pundit.
11. Professional organizer. Because if I didn't have my current job, I would have time to be organized. Professionally.

Los Angeles, I can't quit you.

This evening, I spent some time revising a thing I had to write. Specifically, I added examples, broke up dense sentences and paragraphs, toned down the disciplinary jargon, and made comics. To wit:

nothing defines genre like a know-it-all cat.

And also

Social Media World, where all the text is too small to read.

I think this graphic might be nonsense, but to be fair, the explanation I made of it might be nonsense as well.

In other news, my friends are in Los Angeles, the night before AWP, living it up eating amazing pastries and going to the Getty and eating other fabulous food. Also, there might be shopping in the offing.

Right now, I am revisiting all my bad choices, the ones that led up to this moment, wherein I am revising a thing I had to write while the epic party is going down. In L.A. One of my favorite places in the WORLD.

If I were in L.A. right now, here is what I would do. I mean, besides eat pastries and go to the Getty and eat other fabulous food. Besides that, I would:

1. Go up Laurel Canyon, and maybe take a wee hike.
2. See Midnight Special and I Saw the Light in a double feature at the ArcLight.
3. Go to the LACMA and see the Mapplethorpe and the Islamic Art Now exhibits.
4. Eat tacos at a taco truck.
5. Go to The Broad.
6. Obviously, hear people read and go to amazing life-transforming sessions at AWP.

Ideally I would have a car, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to

7. Go to Palm Springs and hike around the palm oases in Andreas Canyon.
8. Go back to the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge.
9. Wander around Joshua Tree for awhile or so.
10. Drive back to L.A. for dinner, who knows where? someplace excellent.

Alas, I have lived my life as I have lived it. And thus I am not, nor shall I anytime really soon be, in Los Angeles. I am, however, giving a reading at The King's English tomorrow night. That is some pretty good solace there.

Plan/wish.

Right about now, I would like to skip over the part where we orchestrate the exit strategy of all the classes. Students would have turned in their final projects and exams, and the halls at school would be quiet. There would be no more events and all the meetings of the semester would be completed, the minutes taken, the action items nestled into their little bulleted lists.

Pies, Pies, Pies. (Wayne Thiebaud)

I would be happily grading. There would be a Christmas tree and it would be lit. I would have a warm beverage and I would be happily grading. When I had completed, happily, a swath of grading, I would bake something. Like, perhaps, a pie. Perhaps several pies. After the grading was entirely completed, I would bake so many pies that I would have become, in point of fact, a pie baker, a baker of pies. I would bake pies of all kinds and I would deliver them to people. After I had baked a zillion pies and delivered them to a zillion houses, I would open a shop. Or maybe I would start a pie blog. Either way, the endgame would be a cookbook, that I would sell on the internet. The cookbook would be called PIE, and it would sell a zillion copies.

And that's how my life would be transformed.

Alas, I am but a community college English professor, a professor of English. And, within this calling, there is nothing I make that is so delectable as pie (arguments? assignments?). Having recognized this, there is nothing for it but to orchestrate the final projects, to lift the spirits of the dejected, to take pleasure in the good work and not take the not-so-good work personally. To grade, happily, even though the halls are still teeming and the meetings still glower, and there is so much, so much work yet to do.

And cookbook or no, I will make pie within the week. You mark my words.

Magical household.

My washing machine did heal itself. Apparently, it just needed a little break from its job, much like the rest of us do. Shortly after I posted yesterday, and after I had tentatively switched a few breakers on and off like I knew what I was doing, which I patently did not, the washing machine drained itself and went into the rinse-and-spin cycles. Like the champ that it is.

Now, if my household would just

• vacuum its own rugs,
• clean out its own refrigerator,
• hang up its own clothes,
• sort its own excess,
• clear the kitchen table of its mail and books and whatnot, and
• do the thinking for me about my poetic project, so that I can
• revise my manuscript into the winner I know it can be,

then I would

• solve the debt ceiling crisis.

I don't think that's too much to ask.

Yesterday, I found this strip that I made a couple of years ago using strip generator, which Middlebrow found way back then (two years is, like, 12 web years). I was thinking I might make a new strip for a presentation I was developing for my composition course, which is a fancy way of saying "I was wasting a lot of time on the internets," which, if they gave a Ph.D. in that, I would totally be Dr. Internets.

Letter to summer.

Letter to summer

April 08

I am dreaming of you already, with your far fewer clothes
and longer light. I am driving already to Idaho
and the river where there will be fish I do not wish
to catch and in any case cannot. I am already in Seattle,
drinking iced tea and reading the too many books
I’ve brought piled upon the too many new ones
I’ve just bought. I am already sweating a little.
I am stepping outside at ten in the just-dark to hear
the little swell of crickets and perhaps to smell
the sweet phlox. I’m waking to a wet world,
to plants, to the cars and their surge on the highway.
I am filling my hands with herbs and leaves,
I am cutting flowers and leaving still more on the stem.
I am eating cherries from the tree because the birds
have spared them and I am up early to find the berry
under the leaf. I am in and out like the dog, like him
I want the sun and then I want to retreat
from it. I have already turned on the fan which whirs
over the bed. I’m sleeping with just a sheet.
I am writing to you, summer, to say, please save me
a space on your agenda. Do not overbook. Please plan
to take all afternoons off (also Fridays, and some Mondays).

Yours sincerely,