The wind in the trees.

I've been working at home today. When I woke and checked the weather, it said warm. And then: cold. A sudden cold snap, I thought to myself, hopefully. "We're going to have a cold snap tomorrow," I said to the historian.

This morning, I was Skyping with a student who lives in Minnesota, and who had not accounted for the time change when she made her appointment, but we caught up with each other nonetheless. Like the every oldening person I am becoming, I asked her about the weather:

Yes, I may also be using terms from olden days, like whippersnapper and skedaddle and lickety split and cold snap. But I am counting on it. I am counting on the cold to arrive and to--with a plus or minus of a few degrees fahrenheit--stay. To snap, and then linger. To be here now, for good.

At breakfast time, I stood in the doorway from my kitchen to the patio, toast and strawberries in hand. The wind sounded gusty. It wasn't cold, but it was noisy. Windy, in point of fact. Enough so that I stepped back inside, to read the paper while eating. The door stayed open. There was a discourse between the still kitchen and the blustery backyard, but I was in and the bluster was out, and that's the way it had to be.

Warm, but with a prophesying wind. Sunny, but with prognosticating clouds.

Autumnal-ish, in a word (plus suffix, which means imprecisely):

ALERT there are bees in my kitchen.

Or something like bees. Two of them, to be precise. Plural: bees.

Why? Because I am chopping mint and making tabbouleh? Or because there was sugar out for the pie?

Bees, like spiders and moths, do not belong in the house, in my opinion. And mice. Bees, spiders, moths, and mice all belong in the out of doors where there will actually be more opportunities for them. Or, fewer opportunities. I am, actually, stony and hard of heart on the subject of bees, spiders, moths, and mice. Circle of life, my friends, circle of life.

[note: I do want there to be bees in the world. I am not without mercy. I am not killing the bees. But I can't believe that the two bees in my kitchen are actually doing the bee-world any favors. The future of bees cannot lie in hanging around my kitchen while I chop mint. That just wouldn't be sustainable.]

All I'm saying is that I was making tabbouleh, but the bees have forced a retreat. As in, I cannot be in the kitchen, tabbouleh, mint, pie or no, if there are also bees, end of story.

America: keep your bees outside, with the flowers and trees and heat and dirt and wasps and, hopefully, spiders, moths, and mice. I need to add the mint, parsley, red onion, garlic, salt and pepper to the tabbouleh, stat! It's like a Mexican standoff up in here, with the two bees and their stingers and me with my scaredy-cat ways.

Bees! Get out!

That is all.

Notes for September.

On cleaning out my office, in preparation for the big move to the new building:

1. If you put stuff in a box, and then you don't look at the box for one year or more, throw away the contents of the box, preferably without looking at each individual paper.

2. Magazines and newspapers = stuff to recycles. Why did you stack this on your shelves in the first place?

3. No need for self-loathing, now. 

4. HOWEVER.

5. Just get rid of it in the first place, for heaven's sake.

On the weather:

It is hot. This cannot be denied. But the weather is changeable in September. Today's high of 93 will turn into Saturday's high of 88. And then, as a colleague just pointed out, soon it will be snowing. We live in hope.

On things to look forward to:

New The Mindy Project! New The New Girl! Two Scandinavian novels awaiting me. More and more tomatoes and basil and squash and peppers. Soon: sweaters. And tights! A whole slew of great movies now and to come. Going to visit my daughter. A trip with my son and another daughter. A trip north in October. A solid revision of my (second) manuscript. 

On renewable pleasures:

So many of them: Walking every night with the dog. Watching television with the dog. Taking a walk with my tiny little shuffle, music in my ears. Watching the sky. Autumn dreaming. Sleeping with the window open. Feeling, actually, optimism.

The flight path.

Recently, I realized that we live pretty much directly under a flight path for Salt Lake International Airport. I realized this, because I spent much more time outside, a lot of it looking up, evidently, especially in the mornings and the evenings.

This reminds me of the time a few years ago, when I made an unfortunate wrong-airport ticket purchase on my way back to American from Scotland. This error necessitated the hiring of a driver to take me from Gatwick to Heathrow, which, by the way, is not as simple as it sounds. Pro tip: don't do that. I did, however, get this benefit: the driver, who knew the back roads of that small city, Heathrow, like a native, showed me how the planes stacked up, waiting to land. Even in the sick winter haze, I could see more than ten planes in the air, lined up, waiting waiting waiting for the signal to land.

This evening on my walk, I saw as many as four planes in a holding pattern, right above me. If we lived a few miles further north, it would be awful--so much noise and so constant--but where we are, we can see the planes clearly without too much engine roar. Holding holding holding, then each in its turn, surging forward. Then the next one, and the next.

Holding, holding, holding. Then the next, and the next, and the next.

I won't spell it out for you--that would be gauche--but this is a metaphor.

Well, hello. For better or for worse, I'm back.

In which I am interpellated by a state apparatus.

I'm discussing the D.M.V., of course.

The people, in seven days it will be my birthday. I'm telling you know so you can start to compose your wittiest birthday wishes for Facebook. Or in person, whichever. Actually, I'm only mentioning my birthday (in seven days) because I'm hoping someone will bring me a cupcake.

NO. In point of fact, I am only mentioning my birthday, which is in one week, because I'm reminding you that I had to renew my driver's license.

Which can send a person into a tailspin, if you ask me, what with the whole memento mori aspect of it all. Yep, you're getting older, tempus fugit, too bad that your diem hath already been carpe'd and soon you're going to die. But not before you have to go to the D.M.V.

Luckily, I have a friend who is extremely in the know, who told me, when I was moaning in this fashion about this very topic last week (on Facebook), that you could make an appointment at the D.M.V.! And it would be super speedy, snappy, and relatively pain free.

Well! I got on the internet and found the fake Driver License website, and then discerned that it was fake when its information was patently archaic, whereupon I found the one true Driver License website. Whereupon I made an appointment and filled out my paperwork online. Whee! Then all that remained was to locate and assemble all the billion documents you need to demonstrate that you are a real person who really is a citizen (or not) and who lives here, in Utah, really, and also that you are not a fake person who just wants to while away her days in the D.M.V. in the hope that she will acquire a Driver License, I guess.

Luckily--and this is huge!--I only had to look five places for the folder that I labed "DOCUMENTS" many many years ago. A folder is one thing, but the real question--I hope you're feeling the suspense--is whether the DOCUMENTS folder had, in all actuality, any documents therein. But it did! I only looked five places--four of them file drawers--found the folder, looked in the folder, and therein I found, and to wit:

• a certified copy of my birth certificate, speaking of memento mori
• a copy of my Social Security card 

If I had needed to, I'm certain I could have rustled up my passport. But I didn't need to, according to the instructions on the website, which were clear-ish on this topic. Even so, I brought a recent bank statement, just in case.

So here's how it goes: you walk into the D.M.V. with your documents in your hand. (You will already have wrestled with yourself about whether you will wear and/or display your reading glasses, which you do not wear to drive--you will conclude that honesty is the best policy, you don't after all wear them to drive, but you do in fact need them to read.) You scan the room and find the sign that says:

If you have an appointment, 

check in here.

 So you'll walk over and check in. They will then send you to the woman who takes the pictures. She will persuse your documents and stamp them and instruct you to sit in the chair, then look at the camera. "You'll see a flash," she says, helpfully. Which you will. She'll give you a number and you'll go wait in a chair for about 90 seconds before they call your number.

You'll talk to the guy and he'll be extra friendly. "Delaware," he'll offer, as a conversation starter. "The only state we see less than Delaware is Rhode Island."You'll chat about this, and then about the reading glasses, and then you'll take the eye test, which you may actually have dreamed about the night before. You'll lean your head against the machine, which will light up the screen. Yeah, you'll think, those letters on the left side are kind of ... flickery? Then you'll realize that you can't fidget. Your head has to lean up against the machine with steady pressure. Once you realize this, the letters on the left will swim into place, and you'll read the letters on the top row like a boss. Or well enough, anyway, because you'll get the license.

The guy will print out your temporary license. He'll punch a hole in your old one. You'll look at your new picture and reflect that you look simultaneously exhausted, truculent, startled, and--inescapably--older.

And this will temper your sense of triumph that you're walking out of the D.M.V. precisely ten minutes after you walked in.

The Megastore Recommends: Back-to-School Edition.

Serious Professor. From A Serious Man.

 

1. Start slow. Let me ask you, Professor So Serious: why are you in such a hurry? Are you afraid the kids won't think you're serious if you don't scare the bejesus out of them the very first day by having a rigorous, killer discussion and also throwing your professorial weight around, already? Hey, Professor: leave them kids alone, and while you're at it, cut yourself a break too. Is it not August? Is it not, therefore, still summer, if only the last remainder? So go in there, meet the kids, point them in the direction of a syllabus, do a couple of magic tricks, crack a joke, and hightail it outta there. They'll be all, my professor is chill. And you are: you are chill. You're chillin' with a couple of minutes to spare, because you took my advice. You started slow.

[parenthetical note: does the above recommendation make my ass look lazy?]

The Answer.

2. Sandwich. Is the answer to pretty much all the questions on the first day of class. For instance:

On the first day of class, what should I have for lunch? Why, a sandwich.

When will class be over? Just in time to go grab a sandwich.

Where shall I eat my sandwich? On the patio. Near the cafeteria. Where they make the sandwiches.
Do I need to buy the textbook--are you really going to use it? or can I just scam off the class discussions? I don't like your attitude, but I'll feel better after I eat a sandwich.

3. Keep an outfit in reserve. "What shall I wear for the first day?" I asked the historian last night. "Comfortable shoes," he said, sensibly, although not entirely helpfully. (see #4 below for more on this point.) Shoes are important, but what about the clothes? Like every college professor in the land--okay, community college professor in the land--I have been stocking up on teaching outfits since before the weather got hot, so there is truly no shortage of possibilities. But it's August, am I

Or I could just wear this.

right? And thus it is still summer, if only the last remainder, so that means sweaters are for suckers. Ditto boots. Ditto anything that touches the body, basically. So the possibilities are not actually all that robust. As I considered the question, I recognized how I had been wearing, literally, the same four things all summer long, and my outfit assembling skills were thus a little rusty.

I'm sure you know what that means: black. Yes, I took the coward's way out and wore a black skirt, a black shirt, and black shoes. I tried to make up for it with badass accessories, but I'm not sure that the message came across--I might have been too busy contemplating the sandwich I was soon to eat when class was over to convey any simmering badassery.

Anyway, the point is this: even if my outfit today was a little predictable, I still have outfits in reserve. I have backup outfits. Today, I was perfectly presentable and pulled together, and I still have outfits yet untold. Outfits yet to be imagined! It's a good feeling, the people, a good feeling indeed.

The Lord help us if it comes to this.

4. Comfortable shoes, or shoes that live in the neighborhood of comfort. Recently, I have declared to many, many people that I will wear no more uncomfortable shoes forever. This is nonsense, of course, because I have so many, many shoes that are not comfortable. I am parting with them, one two three pairs at a time. (Pro tip: if you're in the "getting rid of uncomfortable shoes" game, I suggest wearing the shoes first, since the actual sense memory of how your feet feel just after you've worn them is a direct motivator.)

Anyway: on the first day of classes, you've got your walk in from the parking lot, schlepping your stuff. You've got your walk up the stairs. You've got your walk to class, you've got your walk back to your office, you've got your walk across the quad to get your sandwich. Your walk back, your walk to the car, etc. That's a lot of walking, Professor Fancy Shoes. So get real, and pack a pair of super comfortable shoes in your bag. You can put them on once you're done with the part of your day that calls for Fancy. That's what I did, and I call it genius.

The reminder.

Writing is hard. That's first.

The whole "everything you do is writing" notion notwithstanding, which I respect and honor, the actual sitting down to make a draft: hard.

Writing that draft can make you feel stupid. Stupid and stupider. Over and over again, for your whole life.

(Why do I do this, again?)

Yesterday, I finally plunged in, with all the brave bravery in my quiver of braveness, to wring a poem out of some notes that, truth be told, had been sitting around on their lazy, complacent asses all summer. "Notes," I said, "I will make a draft out of you or know the reason why!"

The notes did not even bestir themselves to look attentive. They were all, big talk for a person who hasn't written a poem in weeks. And they had a point, but I would not stand for that insolence. No! that insolence would not stand!

I disentangled a note, one with a small turn-of-phrase-of-possibility, from its slothful compatriots. I reorganized its syllables. I broke it in two, the better to form lines out of it. There, I said. A beginning.
Then did the same with another note. I discerned a form in the offing. Encouraged, I went with it: I constructed a whole draft out of two mangled notes and a nascent form.

Horrible.

I went to bed on the draft with this thought: I could reorganize the two settings and sort this from that, I could make it into longer stanzas instead of couplets. I thought, I'll work on it in the morning.

So I did. I checked out the entire internets and ate my breakfast (did I neglect to mention that I made a splendid dinner and cherry clafoutis last night? this is one of the side benefits of writing horrible drafts: inspiring dinners, with leftover cherry clafoutis for breakfast!). I re-investigated the entire internets to see if I might have missed something important. I forwarded a New York Times article to the historian and my oldest friend. Then I trailed, all summer and smoke--no, seriously, those fires to the east and the west are making my throat hurt and my eyes water--into my study, sat down in my big chair, and opened my draft.

I had to consider that my draft might, at this point, have the upper hand. What with its form and all. And its sheer presence.

But I opened another document, and started to sort this from that, to reorganize the two settings, to make longer stanzas.

And now I have a new draft.

So that's the second part: even a horrible first draft, wrested from indolent notes and bad formal experiments, can turn into a better second draft, as long as you're willing to let smoke, summer, weird dreams, roasted garlic and broccoli pasta with pecorino, cherry clafoutis, the entire internets, and your own sense of control (have you lost the header of this clause? Me too!)--as long as you're willing to let all of the above intervene.

Writing lesson out.

Oh, hello there.

Today I was at Whole Foods buying overpriced, well, everything. Happily, because there's nothing I like better, frankly. Not the overpriced-ness of it all, but the Whole Foods-ness of it all. What can I say? I just like the aroma of virtue all up in there. The eggs. The sugar. The super-expensive vanilla paste. Happy happy happy.

Not my point, however. My point is this: I got to the cashier, loaded my precious commodities onto the conveyer belt, got the total and wrote a check (hi! I'm old.), whipped out my driver's license before the cashier could even ask for it, and then I heard, faintly, as I was putting my pen back in my purse, a voice say, "This is about to expire."

I was all, now what's that? and thought maybe that was some other cashier speaking to some other patron, the way you think, are you talking to ME? when you hear honking nearby when you're driving. I looked up at him. He had my driver's license between his thumb and finger, ready for me to pluck and stow. And I was all, Right. Dammit.

Because he's right: my driver's license is about to expire. Like, at the end of the month. When it is my birthday.

This set in motion a series of mental events:

1. Where is that stuff the D.M.V. mailed me three months ago?
2. Probably in my study.
3. --but where in my study, exactly?
4. Wait: do I have to take a test? Because I don't want to be taking no test.
5. Eeek, what about an eye test!?
6. What should I wear? The last time I got my license renewed, I had new badass boots. What now? What outfit and/or accoutrements will protect me in my hour of need?

...and so forth. 


Like the rest of America, I dread the D.M.V., the people. I'm pretty sure you know the reasons why:

1. crowded.
2. stressful.
3. possible failure putting a critical American survival ability in doubt.
4. what if my eyes have crossed over from just needing reading glasses to needing actual glasses? and I didn't even realize it?

...and so forth.

Well, onward. At least I got some work done today before the bureaucratic state intervened to loom all over my happy bourgeois activities. Leave me alone, bureaucratic state, while I make a frittata and sulk!

Best ever hat trick.

Today started out kind of low-key. Because of a late-ish evening last night, wherein I lingered at my book group to chat with my friends, and then watched an episode of Justified, then chatted with the historian about our respective days, and took Bruiser for a walk, and look at that, it was 1 a.m.!, I did not quite finish a little chore for today's course redesign. So I got up and did it lickety split in the morning, then sauntered off to the redesign meeting.

Which was fine. Productive, as these things go.

Then I had a long overdue lunch with my friend, and after that, wandered around Target and was not overly impressed with anything. Sure, I could buy a mulberry lipstick. But I'm pretty sure I have, like, five of them already. Ditto everything else in Target. So I went home--

--and proceeded to conduct one of the very best naps of all time. I was reading some more of Beautiful Ruins, which I was supposed to have finished for my book group last night, but had not. It was good. It was great, and then I was sleepy. I took off my reading glasses and marked my place and fell asleep in an overcast afternoon that was so delicious that it, the nap, lasted for almost two hours.

Two hours is kind of a long nap, if you ask me. It's a possible sleeping-at-night disrupter. I woke up and thought two things:

a., Whoa. Long nap. How'd that happen?

and

2. I need to go to the store and get a watermelon, stat.

I hollered down the stairs to my youngest son to see if he wanted to come to the store with me, in case he had special food shopping needs, such as: buy tortilla chips, and while we're on that subject, buy tortillas, etc. Yes, he did want to come. So we moseyed on over to Macey's and grabbed a cart and discussed this and that while buying

a. a sugar doughnut
b. ciabatta rolls
c. fresh mozzarella (for caprese sandwiches)
d. tortilla chips
e. auxiliary chips of the potato variety
f. toilet paper
g. a bottle of Coke for the historian
h. Perrier for me, because I am fancy like that.
i. tortillas.
j. we almost forgot the ice! but didn't! and then
k., the best watermelon of the summer so far!

My personal superpower, if you want to know, is the ability to choose a watermelon that is not mushy but is sweet. So far this summer, my record is good but not perfect, because the watermelons, while not mushy, have not been quite as sweet as one might like, especially if one's superpower is watermelon selection. But this watermelon! I cut up half of it, ate some, and then scooped what was left in the rind, then scooped some more, and drank the juice. And so forth. And then had more for dinner. BAM the best watermelon ever! (this summer.)

And now, finally, I am duty bound to report that a couple of days ago, I bought a pair of jeans that should go into the jeans Hall of Fame. I am wearing them right now, while I write this blog post. I bought them at the Gap Factory store in Park City. They are a camo print, but dark navy and gray and black. You have to get up close to see their camo bona fides. They are skinny but not super skinny. They are fantastic. Seriously: you would not believe it. And comfortable, which only burnishes their Hall of Fame credentials.

Notes from underground.

It's August. Even though I think of August--always have--as still high summer, you can see the end in sight. I have made a note on my little calendar, counting down to school, that says, "*start preparing." That note is more than a week away. School starting is two weeks away. I am putting things off. I am trying to make these days last.

I have, without exactly saying so, made quiet the object of my seeking. Without exactly acknowledging it, I have been unfolding, letting my mind wander. I think that's what the morning out in the backyard is about. This morning I listened to the traffic beyond the field, and a rooster that was crowing rather late, and the breeze, and the wind chimes. That's noise, but it didn't feel noisy. It felt still. Whatever business it contained was far away from me.

My son, the youngest, is leaving for China in a few weeks. "Twenty days," he says, precisely. He'll be there a year, and maybe longer. Without making a big deal about it, I want to be around to help with whatever would be helpful, but also just to appreciate the house, our household, with him in it. The flux of his friends coming and going. The chance to go to a movie or eat something together. I felt the same way about my older son moving to Tempe for grad school. Not that I was crucial to any part of their plans, but I wanted to be there to help, and to have the occasions to be with them. I count it one of the best parts of this summer that I could go with them to Arizona, to help get them moved in and to see their new place, the start of their new life. How lucky that was, to be able to do that.

When I think of this summer, I will remember that we went to Scotland and spent two wonderful weeks there. This is the summer I listened to Daft Punk almost all summer, on and off, in Scotland and England, here and in Arizona. This is the summer I visited my oldest friend in Sonoma County. This is the summer I drove to Arizona with my son and his family and my youngest son as well. This is the summer I watched The Killing and Top of the Lake and Justified. This is the summer I read The Woman Upstairs and Ender's Game. This is the summer I spent time with most of my children and grandchildren. This summer, I spent time with my friends, did some writing, kept quiet time nearly every day.

Between now and when I go back to work, I hope to work on my second manuscript, write a poem or two, and make a couple of video projects. I want to buy and eat more watermelons. I have been eating the most wonderful strawberries from the farmer's market--I hope there are more of those. I want to make a pie, and preferably more than one pie. I hope to sit on my porch every morning and dream a little. I like spending time watching Justified with the historian, and I hope to do more of that. I don't see any reason not to think of these last summer days as infinitely elastic: I want them to extend and expand to contain all the beautiful morning and evening light, the little gray bird that landed on a branch of the cherry tree this morning, the wind sifting in the chimes, the drift of my thought, the culmination of my efforts, and the steady hand of quiet that has sustained and held me all these weeks.

The rest of my life.

Yesterday, we took one of our granddaughters on a grand day out. It pretty much went to plan, although I thought--fancifully, as it turned out--that we might take her to Les Madeleines for a pretty, magical lunch-stroke-snack. In actual life, we went to McDonald's, of course.

the granddaughter, at the beginning of the day out.

Granddaughter: I want Chicken McNuggets, fries, and a milkshake.

Me: Chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry?

Granddaughter: hmmm...chocolate.

The historian: I'll have a medium Coke and--do you have those yogurt parfaits?

Crackly speaker: crackle crackle Yes.

Me: Medium Coke and large fries.

Crackly speaker: (do I sense a faint derision?) crackle crackle dollars at the crackle window.

Later, as we drove home, and I experienced a certain mild nausea stemming from my lunch:

Me: I think I've had just about enough of lunches made of Coke and french fries.

The historian: Yeah?

Me:  In fact, maybe I've had enough of McDonald's to last me for the rest of my life.

This reminded both of us of an interview once conducted with Ruth, of Ruth's Diner, wherein she was asked, at age 80, if she ever thought she might remarry. She replied in the negative, saying, "I've had enough sex to last me the rest of my life."

Now, what else have I had enough of to last me the rest of my life? Besides McDonald's, I mean:

1. Possibly syndicated episodes of Two and a Half Men. I had a spate there for awhile (several years ago, now), but I cannot currently drum up even the faintest interest. Certainly not in the Ashton Kutcher version, but also not in the old Charlie Sheens. That show is dead to me.

2. Possibly kung pao shrimp. It was once the best thing in the entire universe. Now: meh.

3. Almost every food you can buy in a convenience store. Is this sad? A little. Each road trip, however, edges me a little closer to closure on this point.

4. Maybe Doritos. But maybe not. But probably, actually (see 3 above).

My friend Ann says probably she's had enough

5. Slim Jims

to last her the rest of her life (see 3 above also).

I might have had enough of

6. uncomfortable shoes. But maybe not. But probably. Mostly enough, anyway.

Some things I have not had enough of (excerpts from an inexhaustible list): cherries. Peaches. Tomatoes. Watermelon. Cheese in its multifarious glory. Naps. Lazy afternoons. Sufjan Stevens. White jeans in the summertime. Justified. Poetry, despite the fact that it is lousy with frustrations. Literally rife. Eating breakfast out--other meals, too--with friends and family. The birds chattering in the trees. Morning. Bruiser. Grandchildren. Nostalgia. Evening. Cake. Sleep.

Let's remedy the situation.

Does anyone ever play this game? where you mention a book or a movie or whatever--a flavor of Doritos--to a friend, and the friend shakes her/his head and says, "I've never read/seen/eaten that." And you're all, Whaaaaaa? And they're all, I know.

Sometimes the game develops a defense/offense flavor, as in:

Me: You've never seen Rushmore??????

Friend: Yeeeeeaaah, but you've never seen [X].

and then you're all, Well-played, Friend. Check, and mate.  

But seriously, there are plenty of movies I should have seen and haven't. Books I would enjoy but haven't read. What are they? You know, probably, but I may not.

Here are a few that are on my mind:

1. my son feels strongly I should see The Weather Man, starring Nicolas Cage. He has been saying this for literally years. (He has also been asking me to read Ender's Game, which I have now accomplished.)
2. My friend (see above) feels I should have seen Closer and also The Door in the Floor. The first, I think we didn't see because it looked depressing and upsetting. My son basically pshawed this reasoning away this morning (we were driving around, getting stuff taken care of so he could send off his visa application so he can jet off to China in a month).

"You guys are weird," he said. "You see sad and upsetting movies all the time."

True enough, I had to concede. "But you have to gear up for them," I said (in our defense).

"That movie was probably in theaters for a month. You couldn't gear up for it in a month?"

He wasn't even trying to say that he thought it was that great, just that it was up our alley. True enough, again. Well-played, Friend. Check, and mate.

So that's three movies that go on the list.

In a related matter: I cannot reconstruct the logic by which we did not watch West Wing. Another friend is watching this now on Netflix and is admiring its writing and acting and pretty much everything about it, which I recall was what people admired about it--everything, that is--when it was on television in the first place. But nope, we didn't watch it. Why? I don't know. What else might we have been watching instead? Who can say.

Anyway, the point is this: what books, television shows, and/or movies should I watch that you think I may not have seen? I'm making a list. I'm gonna check stuff off of it. I need your help!

As a favor to you, I'm going to tell you that you should see The Kings of Summer, The Way, Way Back, and Twenty Feet From Stardom. All are currently at the Salt Lake Film Society (some of them are elsewhere), and you won't regret them. Plus: movie A/C, which is the best A/C, because there is a movie to go with it, and possible popcorn.

Don't forget: help me rectify my terrible, unforgivable oversights! In the comments!

The Megastore recommends: The Not Sleeping Edition.

The people, I feel as if it has been years since I slept enough, every night, on a regular basis. I could explain, but why? There's a whole orchestra of reasons, most of which can be summarized with the catch-all word du generation: S-T-R-E-S-S.

I feel a little poem coming on.

Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of melatonin
Try a little meditation counting up some sheep
Rig your pillow so the cool side stays cool
Each night after every night
Sing a lullaby, sure go ahead and
Sing a little lullaby, cause you're an idiot insomniac.

Doesn't scan, but it does the trick, more or less. That's the situation.

This summer, I decided, would be the summer of, among other things, the Sleep Project. I was doing pretty well, too, until The Great Summer Cold of 2013. Which, thankfully, has now concluded. It was epic, but it's over. The last few nights, I've been sleeping easily and well, and therefore I do have a few recommendations to make, in case you, too, occasionally have The Troubles. With The Sleep.

1. Make your iced tea herbal. We all have to face it, the moment when caffeine, too late in the day, is not your friend. The moment when you're trying to sleep but you can feel your blood racing around like a crazy maniac. A crazy, caffeinated maniac. I recommend drinking iced chamomile tea with lavender. You can find this at your local grocery store, if your local grocery store is reasonably well-stocked. You can also go with mint tea, and you will not go amiss.

2. Stop freaking trying to do so many freaking things. This recommendation is nigh unto impossible to actually carry out in, y'know, real life. I do know people whose lives are exceedingly well-regulated, who know their limits, and who do pretty much only the things that they find necessary and/or satisfying. Here's the thing, though. Even I, a big over-achiever (I don't use this word in a laudatory sense), can do better. Peel off a few things, especially when the opportunity presents itself. Stop inviting myself to meetings. Ask myself if what I'm doing gives me pleasure or satisfaction. If it doesn't, then I should see if I can stop doing it. And if I, big over-achiever, can do this, so can you.

3. Finish something. O the very joy of finishing something! Today, my colleague and I finally finished the draft we're sending off to the editors of this one collection. (I would give you details, but it might bore me to death.) Did it give me joy to write this essay? Define "joy." Actually, by most any definition, this was not joyous writing. It was a slog and for great swaths of the writing, it did not feel worth doing. But there were moments. And then a few more moments. And hits of elation and, yes, satisfaction. And now! The joy! So: finish something. I bet you will sleep the sleep of the blessed, as I intend to do tonight.

4. When all else fails, have your Insomnia Kit ready. There are going to be some nights, let's
face it, when you're going to find yourself awake. Maybe you guzzled Dr. Pepper with your Thai Fried Rice. Maybe you have, despite your best efforts, a meeting in the morning. Maybe classes are going to start in a few weeks, but you have to worry about it right now. In this case, my friends, I recommend that you have your Insomnia Kit (TM) ready to go. For every person the Insomnia Kit (TM) will have different items. For me, it includes

• a sheet (blanket in the winter)
• my reading glasses
• the current book, or possibly
• the crossword puzzle I'm in the middle of.

Knowing where the Kit is makes it easy to take a break from not sleeping, and, after I've read a chapter or filled in a few puzzle squares or worried a little bit more or made a list, the Kit also makes it easier to slip back into bed, and with any luck, into sleep. 

Progress.

1. the chapter draft is about 40%. Forty percent of what? I don't know. I just feel like we've got 60% more to do. But 40% is better than what we had three days ago.
2. I'm feeling much better. About 97%.
3. Sadly, we have a deficit of fresh vegetables in the house. 
4. I am not going to measure how much summer is behind us, or how much is ahead. That way madness lies.
5. With the recent replantings, 100% of our plants are alive.
6. We went to zero movies this weekend, mainly because of all the recovery I had to do. 
7. We, did, however finish 100% of The Killing, seasons one and two, 100% of Mad Men, season six, and 100% of Top of the Lake. All highly recommended. 
8. Now what shall we watch, though?
9. Through a fluke summer, which included extensive traveling and illness, we have gone zero times to the Farmer's Market. Zero. I really can't believe it. 
10. I need to write a poem for my writing group tomorrow. I have zero ideas.

 On this mid-July Monday, I feel pretty optimistic, actually. I give this progress report a B+, with an E for citizenship.

Coughing at midnight: an open letter to my summer cold.

[NOTE: this is yet another installment in the saga of my summer cold. I noted to a friend last night that this cold felt both karmic and punitive. Yes, I am ascribing motive to my ailment. Anyway.]

Dear my summer cold,

Things that keep you up at night can feel like a curse. I have often felt, when in the grip of an insomnia, that my own body is not my friend. I've tried, though, to shift that point of view, to see the occasional sleepless hours as a gift of quiet, time to think, a clear space. The last two nights, though, were not gifts, my summer cold, when you and your fits of coughing, brief but epically intense, tore me from my bed, and sleep, and needed rest.

The first night, I read several chapters in a spy novel and drank more ginger tea. Last night, I thought I would prepare by gargling with salt water (time-honored home remedy) and keeping a couple of lozenges by my bedside. But no. Same coughing, same intensity.

I got up. Bruiser lay on the couch on which I wanted to rest. We did not, precisely, come to an accommodation. He allowed me to settle in, then we sat/lay there together. Which was sweet, but not particularly restful. I coughed a little and read some stuff. He sighed and slept.

I went back to bed and fell asleep, but woke this morning feeling like I hadn't slept enough, because, in point of fact, I hadn't slept enough. I went back to sleep until 9:30.

My summer cold, I wish I could understand why your coughing seems to confine itself to the late, then early, hours, when I should be, want to be sleeping. This brings me back to the point: is my body trying to punish me? Is it trying to teach me a lesson? If so, what lesson? If it's trying to tell me I need to take better care of myself, I know this lesson already. I am trying to spend the summer enacting it. But a cold that lingers like a doom does not help in this regard.

This is the problem with your rigid law-and-order, eye-for-an-eye mentality, my summer cold. A little mercy is in order sometimes. It's more productive.

I'm begging you,

htms

Drinking ginger tea and thinking.

I would like to have an earth-shattering argument to make. Right now it doesn't feel that way. I would like, then, to have a modest argument to make. My modest argument feels like pfff. Too small. This is, I'm sure, a matter of perspective.

My cough, which I believe is getting better, feels simultaneously like the last throes of a cold and also like I have the husk of a popcorn kernel stuck in my throat. Neither of which I am enjoying, particularly. Hence the tea.

I love an overcast summer day.

I need some paragraphs, stat. Preferably paragraphs that constitute an argument with a theoretical construct to frame the argument.

Now that I have purchased a gray cardigan, I feel I can probably find my way to those paragraphs. I hope.

I need to check on my tiny potted plants. They are too tiny, really. They dry out in a day, which means you've got to remember to water them or they're goners. I just replanted them yesterday. I am hopeful--hopeful that they'll thrive, and hopeful that I won't forget them.

Luckily, there is leftover panzanella. I could just read a couple of chapters of my spy novel.

"A compositionist walks into the curricular room, a room in the house of English Studies."

Plant this sentence in a small pot, water it, maybe it will grow. 

Litany of small pleasures.

1. The daily walk. I am sorry to say that I am not yet at full strength, but this morning I decided to take the walk anyway, and it made me feel so much better. Just moving.

2. Two awesome songs in a row. This has been an endless joy to me, back to the days when you mostly just listened to the radio. That also happened to be the days when radio djs actually programmed their own music (which still happens, I believe, on BBC radio, which is yet another thing that makes the UK awesome). Anyway, today on my shuffle, on my walk, first this awesome song by Robyn came on [warning: language!], then "This is Not America" by David Bowie and Pat Metheny, one right after the other, and I loved it.

3. Eating my breakfast on the patio. Where the birds are singing and the breeze (not to say a hot wind, not yet anyway) is blowing and the wind chimes are making their music.

4. A whole day ahead of me, wherein I can do what I want and need to do.

5. Toast.

6. Waking up to the light.

7. Bruiser hopping up on bed between us for a small pre-arising-for-real snooze.

8. A slow morning.

The people, I hope that your day has many small pleasures in it. For that matter, also large pleasures.

Return of the repressed.

Last night when the arson, I mean fireworks, started, I felt a sudden tickle, not to say scratch, in my throat.

I thought, am I getting sick? I coughed a few times, experimentally. Then not so experimentally. I coughed phenomenologically. Or perhaps existentially. It was a for real cough, not a trial.

The historian asked, "Are you coming down with something?"

I said, "I don't know." I thought about it. "I think it might just be the smoke." Because, as you know, the people, in a patriotic suburban neighborhood such as my own, the fourth of July is Fireworks City, and we're not just talking about a few sparklers.

We went out into the night, late, with Bruiser. We navigated the smoke like Aguirre in Aguirre, the Wrath of God navigating the Orinoco River on a misty morning.  I coughed a few more times.

I went to bed and thought, I'll wake up in the morning, the smoke will be cleared, I'll be fine.

the view from Sick.

But when I did wake up this morning, my head and eyes heavy, sneezing, I thought, shit. And took a DayQuil.

(Parenthetical: The people: I need to see a movie today. We have had all sorts of important and fun activities, many of which have kept us away from the SLC on the weekends. We are behind in our movie-going. This, despite the fact that I have made many efforts to see movies such as the Joss Whedon Much Ado About Nothing, Frances Ha, Oblivion, Man of Steel, and others I can't remember at the moment because of my heavy head and eyes. I was and am counting on this weekend to make a dent in that deficit! Is that too much to ask? I ask you! I mean really.)

After the historian's bike ride, and my second DayQuil:

Me: ...but I want you to know, I'm going to try really hard to feel good enough so we can go to a movie this afternoon.

The historian: Well, please do your best.

Me:  I'm going to give it my best effort.

You have got to be kidding me.

It's noon already?

I have only accomplished the following today, on this lazy, pyrotechnical holiday:

• waking up late
• thinking about my family scattered hither and yon
• taking my regular long walk, but later than usual, but that was okay because: not so hot
• blueberry pancakes, making and eating
• pulling spent blooms off the nicotiana
• making a desultory list of stuff I could/should/might do today
• sitting on the patio and reading a few pages
• admiring my back yard

--all good things, to be sure.

I woke up this morning around four to hear the sound of water. It didn't sound like sprinklers. I feared that it might be a swamp cooler malfunction. I lay there and considered it. I got up and looked out the window. It sounded like rain. I went out on the back patio: rain indeed. So I stayed outside to be in it, sort of--on the chaise looking out at the world, the light still dim. Then there was a muffled burst of lightning, which sent me back indoors. Because my patio roof is metal, and I'm safety conscious like that.

Why don't you cry about it?: a miscellany.

1. Things that have made me cry recently:

• the father-and-son scenes in Man of Steel
• a Shawn Colvin playlist my son put on while I was making a salad 
• stuff my grandsons did and said
• getting on the airplane to go home
• a video chat with my son and grandson
• various parts of several episodes of The Killing I watched last night when we went home
• getting ready to go for a walk with the dog last night
• some other things that I cannot really talk about right now.

2.  Things I could not care less about:

• writing a draft of this chapter that's due on the 15th
• exerting myself in any way shape or form, especially mentally.

3. You should really check this out:

•  Next Draft. I heard about it through kottke, who said this:

 

 Of course I subscribed. And it's true: I find a daily dose of happiness in just scrolling through the links that Dave Pell curates, with his dry and hilarious commentary. I often click through to a few of the articles. It's timely and smart and always good stuff. You might find some of it on your own--but you might not, and since more uncertainty in these dark times might just push you (or "me") over the edge, you'd better subscribe too.

4. What I want to eat/drink:

--just

• salad,
• watermelon,
• and lemonade. Or limeade.

In related news, I have only one of these items in the house. Woe.