My theme song.

[huffing into the meeting of the seventh hour of the working day:]

me [to my colleague]: I'm so tired!

colleague: ...and why is that?

me: not enough sleep?

colleague: OH. That.

Dinner: three stories.

1. On Sunday, I made pad thai, three ways. I texted my son:

I like to run all my dinner plans past my sleeping son
by passive-agressively (?) waking him up with a text,
shortly after noon.

So noodles it would be. I bought limes and tofu and peppers. I used the grand proportions of Natasha's pad thai sauce:

maybe 1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/2 tsp stevia, juice of two limes, and tsp of curry pastealso sriracha a good squeezesometimes i use tamarind paste for sournessthere was the eqivalent of 4 cloves of garlic and 2 tbs of ginger in the saute, too

Soak the rice noodles and baste the tofu (and chicken. and shrimp.--these are the three ways.) in the sauce while the proteins all cook in the oven. Saute onions, garlic, ginger, peppers, and carrots in peanut oil. Add the noodles. Add the sauce. 

Finish one portion at a time: first the chicken, then the tofu, last the shrimp. Extra sriracha for people who liked it extra hot. 

"Want it extra hot, John?" my son asked the historian. He declined. For me also, it was hot enough already. And that was the first dinner, and it was pretty darn good.

2. On Monday, I made vegetables. My son came in the door, the smell of things cooking in the air. 

"Tonight, it's all vegetables," I said. 

"No, thanks," he said. Earlier in the day, he had asked if I would read his paper draft and give him comments. I agreed, if he would help me take down the Christmas tree. I figured: it's February, it's time.

"When do you guys think you'll be done?" he asked. Meaning, when will you be ready to help me with my paper?

"Twenty minutes?" I said. The little yellow potatoes were still roasting with olive oil, garlic, and salt. There were also green beans. Steamed, good but kind of plain green beans. And a lovely salad if I do say so myself: leaves picked over from the last of the Power Greens packet; sliced Napa cabbage; sliced purple carrot; an orange sliced into bites. Olive oil, sherry vinegar, salt and pepper. Also toast, sourdough toast, on the side.

We ate this--I had two potatoes smashed with some goat cheese and a healthy helping of the unassuming green beans and an even healthier one of salad. It was good. It tasted like the food of our forefathers, if our forefathers had had sherry vinegar and baby kale and a purple carrot. Also, and let us not forget, if our forefathers had had oranges in the wintertime, which they very well might not have.

Then we took down the Christmas tree, and I gave expert advice on a visual rhetoric analysis paper. And had an ice cream cone, because this is America.

3. On Tuesday, I considered my options all afternoon, up until the time I finally, finally got home:

• it was 6 p.m.
• it had been long-ass day already.
• the day's ass was going to get even longer, since I had evening consultations with students online ahead of me.
• leftover potatoes and green beans and goat cheese + eggs = frittata?
• be a pioneer! use it up, etc.!

I pulled up to the house. The historian got there just a moment after I did. 

"Let's go get burritos!" I said. And so we did.

On children and the past.

I ran across this photo as I was trying to do a little straightening in my study. There it sat, atop a box atop another box, under my table, a stray little rectangle. Two of my children, my oldest and youngest sons, taking a nap after church.

I remember when they were both younger, the oldest being such a kind older brother to the younger. Their closeness in this picture reminds me of that. That couch was a nap magnet, and the youngest boy, long and skinny but still small, could easily lay across the back cushions and fall asleep.

I had them. I had them as infants and for the years they were children and then young men.  And now, they are grown, and belong to themselves.

A friend and I were talking recently about having children. Her little boy is just a year and a half. The years when they were small I have only in memory, which is flickering and incomplete. I am grateful for those little bits of the past, honestly. It's never over, either, but there are moments that are over, so I'm grateful for the surfacing of a photograph, which can remind me of long Sunday afternoons when I was thinking about what to make for dinner, when they fell into sleep and I could see them at rest, with their own dreams and with each other.

My life in several lists.

I am trying to stay on top of things, as evidenced by my many, many lists. My lists are redundant, but at least I am using the strike through feature thoroughly.

The above list has the "write to Helen
feature, along with the "fix CV"
item. Also, I definitely need to "read
poems," as we will see.

This list seeks to lay out provisions.
People need to eat. Pad Thai,
for example. Several new items,
on the list, such as "review!!!!"
Also: have I forgotten about"Helen"
and "CV"? 

Some of the valentines I bought
for grandkids may be too scary,
so I will be buying backup valentines
tomorrow, and also packing peanuts
so I can send an item or two to my
daughter. New item: "grade x & y." (I'm
too tired to give them names.) (Also: "read
poems." And what about drafting
that "review"???)

These are the poems I'm going to read
tomorrow, at the Faculty Reading series
to commemorate International
Writing Center Week.

For the love of everything holy,
WRITe to HELEN and FIX YOUR
GD CV!

Lucky!

Tonight, we were at a birthday party, Mardi Gras-themed. It was so much fun. We had a King Cake, which is basically like a danish dough, iced and sprinkled with purple, green, and yellow sugar. It's traditional to eat it before Lent.

Festive!

It's also traditional to put a tiny little baby Jesus figure somewhere inside the cake (after it's baked and before it's decorated, I think? but I could be wrong about that). If you get the piece of cake with the baby, you have certain "privileges and obligations." You might be the person who has to bring the cake to the next party. And also, you might be the Queen of the party.

The people, I got the baby.

Mardi Gras King Cake Baby Winner!!! #flipagram made with @flipagram. See full video at flipagram.com/lisa.bickmore

A video posted by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on Feb 7, 2015 at 10:38pm PST

I am enormously pleased, I must say.

A few items have come to my attention.

We went to the theater and saw this, which I highly recommend.

The above film made me go on a mad search for 'What is Xanax?' I mean, you know, pharmacologically speaking. (hint: a short-acting anxiolytic.)

We ate ate a new hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant that has excellent entamalados in green sauce, or at least I thought so. Plus? easy on the way home from work access.

My fitbit, this 'slim, stylish device,' which I obtained courtesy of Middlebrow, who didn't want his anymore, thinks I walked more steps today than yesterday, even though yesterday I walked for 35 minutes and more than 2 miles on the treadmill at the gym. Still, I am fascinated by what it has to say to me.

I just bought this and am planning to wear it to work until I am no longer on any committees.

I am anxious to read this and this. Also, I need to read this.

I am mesmerized by this.

Soon, I will be here for the utter and absolute calm and the riveting beauty. (Although I am going to be careful to avoid infection.) (thanks, katherine of it all.)

Also, it would be better than amazing if I could somehow run into this person whilst there.

I think I'll listen to this while we're driving.

I think I saw this on Facebook, and I know I should credit someone, but I can't remember who--so sorry! But it is beautiful.

I think I finally need to get this. Can you imagine what wonders I might be able to compose? Well, can you?

Or maybe I'll just think about it a little longer.

My personal cinematic history: Pitch Perfect.

First of all, stop judging me.

Second, I am personally a sucker for movie in which there is (a) singing [viz: The Sound of Music], especially (b) ensemble singing [viz: "So Long, Farewell" from The Sound of Music], and (c) plucky heroines, especially if they sing [viz: Mary Poppins].

I saw Pitch Perfect after it had come to the dollar theater. That's because I was a little Oh, I don't know about the movie when it hit the more-than-a-dollar theaters, because the reviews were meh and maybe no one in this house was too fired up to see it [viz: the historian]. I figured I'd catch it one way or another, probably later on television. But my daughter was in town, on break from LSU, where they actually filmed a great chunk of the movie. Honestly, I can't quite remember how the decision got made. But my daughter, my son, my friend, and her daughter ended up in the dark with popcorn--I'm sure there was popcorn--and we watched it with great pleasure, so much pleasure.

Later that night, over enchiladas, the historian and I were talking over our movie options and somehow, we ended up seeing the plucky singing girls competing to win it all! at Nationals! again. Again, on the very same day. I love movies--I'm saying l o v e--and there aren't very many movies that I've seen twice in the same day (viz: The Last Waltz, Cabaret, The Way We Were). I also will not fully confess how many times since that I've re-viewed Pitch Perfect, except to say...quite a few.

Why does this movie so do it for me? There are many passages that are really only passable, if that. I don't know if you can even quite call this movie-making, even, except that someone thought of it and scripted it, and out of a pastiche of charm and some excellent character acting--well, pretty good character acting--and wonderful if only that were a real thing singing and dancing, and one of the most successful impressions of improvisation of all time--out of all that came a movie that is as consumable and, to me, addictive as a delicious snack. Viz: popcorn.

I said to my musician son, I wish the riff-off could be real.

He said, I know. That's how it is in movies: they make something that would only be possible with wizardry and a ton of practice seem effortless, improvised, and in the moment. Like this:


Pitch Perfect - Riff Off by class_freak

One might say the pleasure of watching this film was in excess of its merits, except why? Why say it? Who can count the merits of this:


(oh, how adorable are they? Skylar Astin with his jacket quite literally kills me, every time.)  Or this, which I have not reached the end of enjoying myself with:

 

I was talking with my friend Ron the other day about the movies you can't really defend that you will nonetheless watch again and again. I've written about this before, the great pleasure of the re-view. There are some movies that have become ingrained in my family's history, so much so that they are almost as much our story as things that actually happened to us. This movie I shared with others, but I will watch it happily alone while I'm doing other things, pausing to give it my full attention at pretty much every musical piece. It still lifts my spirits, it still makes me smile. Tonight, when I was doing leg presses at the gym, the Barden Bellas' final medley came on my shuffle. I listened to it twice.

My little box of worries.

Dr. Write posted this article today on Facebook, about a strategy for managing worry. Ad Kerkhof, a clinical psychologist who works in suicide prevention, makes the case that while you can't not worry--worries, after all, "relate to real and practical problems in your life, so you cannot rid yourself of them altogether"--you can limit and manage the timeframe in which you worry:

Excellent advice, from Dr. Kerkhof.

Last night, when I was ostensibly working on 80% of a full night's sleep and instead found myself awake at 5 a.m. when, really, nothing good actually ever happens, since it's too early to bang around and make breakfast and it's too cold to go outside and so there's nothing to do but worry, I found myself--are you ready for it?--worrying. About this and that. Of course, since I had to wake up in time to make my 8 a.m. meeting, I might as well be extra and extraneously and superfluously alert, two hours too early.

In the article also suggests another strategy: "If you find yourself awake in the middle of the night worrying, with thoughts whirling round repeatedly in your head... this is where imagery comes in useful...Imagine there's a box under your bed. This is your worry box. As soon as you spot thoughts that are worries, imagine taking those individual worries, putting them into the box and closing the lid. They are then to remain in the box under the bed until you decide to get them out again."

Magnificent 1/12 scale Witch/Wizard's Apothecary, on Etsy, aka
My Worry Box.

This is the box that I imagine will be adequate to contain all the things I worry about, such as whether I will have enough time, in the procrastinated hour that I have allotted myself, to finish responding to student work; what I will wear; whether I am a nice enough, a good enough person; if I have prepared adequately; whether I will remember to bring my lunch; whether there are enough cut up carrots for the carrot portion of the lunch I hope to remember to bring; whether I am taking good enough care of the people I love; why, when it seems so dark in the evening, it is so difficult to want to do and accomplish anything but staying warm. Also, I'm a little worried that My Worry Box won't fit under My Bed.

This is not all of the worries, especially not the list-y ones, the long-term projects that I fret about finishing. I think I need a damn big box with lots of little cubbyholes to contain them, especially at five a.m., especially when I'm on the couch with the dog, thinking about the day to come which will be endurable but only just, because (another worry to put in the box) I'm getting a worryingly small amount of sleep.

Chaos, Inc.

Here are a few things I've forgotten recently:

1. my lunch.
2. my office keys, still stuck in my door.
3. a book I was supposed to bring for a student.
4. where my iPad happened to be stashed. Seriously. It was under my chair, and I had to use Find My iPad. It sang a soothing but persistent song to me from under the chair. Like, what kind of jerk leaves an iPad under a chair? but in dulcet bell tones.

Also, tonight when I was trying  to tell my son about a piece in USA Today about Kyle Korver, and the historian simultaneously reached for a handful of caramel popcorn and accidentally, gently, knocked over an empty soda bottle--nothing was broken--and also simultaneously Bruiser made a "let's go on a walk dammit!" noise of whatever kind, and also at the same time I noticed that my house was dirty and the Christmas tree is still up,  I almost lost it.

I've always said I thrive on chaos. Which is kind of true, until it isn't. And then it's more like chaos is eating my brains out and also making a hella lotta noise while doing so, which means I might be losing my mind whilst also feeling mighty tetchy about it.

You know how this narrative is supposed to go. I'm supposed to figure out a solution. But frankly, on a day when I sent this text to my son:

because I had to conference with students at 6 p.m. and 6:20 p.m. and 7 p.m., and moreover tomorrow I have to be at work directly at 8 a.m. (what are we? farmers?), I have not one solution in mind. Literally: not. one.

I need:

(a) a cleaning robot with super-cleaning-robot powers. Like, the CleanBot 2000, with detachable Sorting Arm and an Executive Get-Rid-Of-That chip, for a 30% less cluttered home™.

(b) a DeLorean, so I can go back to the future, and make better choices about all kinds of things, including my Amazon purchases and my personal organizational habits.

(c) a full night's sleep.

Obviously, I'm not going to get any of these things. So basically, I'm going to try for 80% of (c) and see how that goes. Untidily, probably.

Angels and Platonists shall judge the dog.

We're watching television. An ad comes one, featuring a dog who's evidently also a policeman--he has on a uniform and wears glasses. Also, he walks on his hind legs. 

In this book, one of my

favorites, a dog lives his own 

doggy life, including the fact 

that he has a house, where 

he lives independently.

Me: Do you think that dog can actually walk on his hind legs?

The historian: No, no. No. That's Photoshop or something.

Mr. Dog has a friend, and
also goes grocery shopping.

Me: No. No. I think he can actually walk upright.

[The dog is speaking, I think, but we've muted the sound, so it's hard to say for sure. Who knows what this ad is even for?]

The historian: Really.

Me: I like to think that dogs have whole lives they don't necessarily share with us.

[What I really like to think is that dogs talk to each other, and sometimes to us, if we're really listening. Using words, I mean. I'm keeping that to myself, for now.]

The historian: Well, I've kind of wondered about that, what Bruiser actually does all day, what he would do all day when I was home all the time.
Me: Sleep like a mad dog?

Clearly exhausted from his rich
private life.

The historian: ... and go in and out. A lot.

Me: Right.

The historian: ...but maybe they do things when we're not there...

Me: Right.

The historian: ... maybe have their friends over?




"Dogs are Shakespearean, Children Are Strangers," by Delmore Schwartz.

Update on the "Just Enjoy It" Project.

A couple of summers ago, when my son was making plans to move to Arizona, taking with him his lovely family, including two grandson, I made up my mind that, rather than set a bajillion goals for the summer, as is my wont, which invariably leads to anxiety and a midsummer breakdown, I would make a project of just enjoying the summer. Just enjoying the time I could spend with my children and grandchildren. Taking a few days to drive down with them and help them get unpacked.

I considered this the only rational thing to do. When you teach all year long, it's easy for plenty of things to get lost--the ability to find your work to your writing, to finish a long lost video project, to, I don't know, improve your character in countless ways. Summer sometimes feels like the set-aside for catching up on all of this. Which puts a lot of pressure on summer, kind of making it the antithesis of what summer can be, in a way--pressure-filled, prone to disappointment, insomnia- and stress-filled.

All this is to say: at the beginning of January, I promised 2015 that I would enjoy my life. How's it going, you ask? Well, I just started a little list of things that were to be evidence of my success at my "just enjoy it" project. This list immediately began to depress me. It started to seem like an evaluation, which in turn made me feel that my own project was beginning to boss me around.

Oh, how I hate it, when my own project starts to boss me around. For one thing, it makes me feel ridiculous. Which, let's face it: that conundrum of the self bossing itself around? Absurd on the face of it.

So, for today: oatmeal, talking to my Scotland daughter and my soccer coach son. Writing, research, nap, reading a book of poems. Spaghetti with an excellent sauce. Lovely salad. Vegetable acquisition. An excellent flavor of Izzy soda. These are the little joys of today, and if I'm perhaps feeling, at the moment, a little Sunday blue, maybe I just have to sit with that, let it pass, and take it to bed and then wake up to tomorrow, where I'll again practice just enjoying it.

How Saturday feels.

Waking up once, when it's still gray. Lightening, but still gray. Sorting out the first-thing calculus, what day it is, what there is to be awake for. Realizing: nothing but the day itself. And sleeping again for another hour, hour and a half. Whatever strange dream has happened in the interim, stepping out of bed to know that it's nothing, that the most pressing concern is breakfast.

Breakfast.

Writing an imitation of a Tomaž Šalamun poem, then adding notes to the thing, the words, that might eventually become a poem, nominally titled "Riding the Metro in Beijing." Adding a couple of lines to a poem, maybe a poem, about cosmology. Talking to the daughter in Scotland who has just purchased a yellow jacket, that miraculously has appeared in the very same Zara where she and I once considered a different yellow jacket, but decided against it and have regretted it ever since. Considering this fine shopping miracle.

Walking very fast for almost two miles, then doing chest presses and pull downs and rows. Listening to Jonsi and Jack White and Brandon Flowers and Ben Folds, and watching Chelsea and Man City play out the final 30 minutes of a match, while doing so.

Showering, then racing across town to watch a grandson play the last basketball game of the season. Chasing a granddaughter around, giving her fruit snacks and drawing her a frog and a dancing girl.

Coming home, taking a little nap.

Going to a party, chatting and laughing and celebrating and eating with friends.

Walking the dog under a cold, clear sky.

Things of which I do not approve (and a few things of which I do approve).

1. Scorpions.
2. Episodes of television shows in which scorpions prominently appear, especially when said scorpions are on the loose, and are not contained by episode's end. In other words,
3. Narrative chaos, but mostly only if it is scorpion-related.
4. The current cookie-less state of my household, and all that this implies.
5. the fact that, to get the Christmas tree which is currently occupying a corner of my living room taken down, I will need to make taking the Christmas tree down a priority over other things, such as potentially making cookies, or writing, or laying around daydreaming, or taking a nap.

That is all.

I do, however, approve of:

1. A Most Violent Year.
2. Enchiladas.
3. Friday night.
4. The prospect of Saturday and Sunday.
5. The new issue of a literary magazine that arrived in the mail.
6. the bowl of oranges in my kitchen.
7. the fact that I am going to make and eat pancakes tomorrow morning, as God is my witness.

Very short thank you notes.

Dear little cough,

Remember last night when I vowed to get more sleep, like farmers and country folk? I like how you skewered my hubris at approximately 12:42 a.m., reminding me that I don't actually decide anything, really, about my own life.

Thank you for helping me live in reality,

htms

*

Dear yesterday's second orange,

When I unpacked my lunch yesterday, there you were, second orange, along with the first orange and the Icelandic yogurt (peach) and the carrots. A redundant orange, packed in the first place because I forgot I already had an orange. Except for the fact that you stuck around for today's lunch, when you were precisely what I needed to go with today's Icelandic yogurt (spiced pear) and carrots.

Thank you for completing my lunch today, and thus being not redundant at all, but rather comme il faut,

htms

**

Dear new sweater,

When I wore you today, you made me feel like a character in a French movie. Understated, perfectly fitted, very warm. That's you I'm talking about, sweater, although actually: me too. So thank you.

The matching scarf didn't hurt, either. Not one bit.

htms

***

Dear bed,

Thank you for waiting so quietly all day for my return. I sensed, when I lay down between the softest, coolest sheets in all of bedlinendom, that you knew I would need you, especially after all that after-midnight coughing.

And so, when my husband said, "Go to sleep," and I replied, "Maybe," you knew: you knew I would close my eyes in the gloaming for a half an hour, and I would be the better for it.

And I did, and I was,

htms

The Megastore recommends: the Take Your Own Advice Edition.

1. More sleep.  You know it, I know it: I don't get enough sleep. Maybe you don't, either. I need more of it. Preferably in this configuration:

a. Go to bed whenever I want to. You know, 1 a.m. or whatnot.
b. Get up when I wake up. Like, you know, 8 a.m. Or 8:30. Or let's splurge on 9 a.m., shall we?
c. Do this and that until 11. Try to speak to no one.
d. Get to work in my super productive style.
e. At an appropriate juncture--after lunch? sure!--take a little nap. Just 30 minutes. Okay,  45 minutes. I've earned it.
f. Work some more. Then:

REPEAT.

The working world was not made for people like me. Last night the historian pointed out that science has proven, via its science-y ways, that exercising in the morning before you've eaten is actually better than all the other timetables for exercising, like when people who follow the schedule above exercise, which is on their way home from work.

Well no thank you, science, for this awful insight into how even biology is apparently in on the conspiracy against me and my kind.

Even so: from this moment forward, I am going to try always to go to bed by midnight, instead of 1 a.m. And then maybe I will roll it back to the bedtime of farmers and country folk, 11:30 p.m. That's probably about as much as I can do. Take that, biology.

In conclusion:

Outfit of the day manqué.

My outfit was good today, if I do say so myself, and I'm going to have to say so myself, since I would show you my outfit selfie, except for the following reasons:

• in the photo--both photos, since I took two--I appear to be standing in a dank, darkened place. Such as my gym, in the entrance to the ladies' locker room. Though it's bright in the room, I'm standing in the entrance, which is dark, as if I had had to come through an uncertain and dim passage before bursting into health and fitness. In other words, you really can't even see my shoes. Which, trust me, were cute. I wore man-shoes, brogue-ish, in a cordovan leather. In the picture, you could maybe see a glint of light off the toe of the leather.
• All the textures are elided in the bad light and, it must be said, the bad photography. There is velvet (skirt). There is a voluminous, romantic cardigan, dusty rose, with different knit stitches. There is a lilac pink sweater with zips at the shoulders (gold). Navy blue tights. All these textures are as nothing, because the photograph (photographer?) did not deliver, not remotely.
• I felt rushed. There were ladies coming in and out around me. I thought I could take the picture quickly and it would be all dashing and devil-may-care. No, instead I looked fretful and concerned and sheepish, all at once, as if I were standing in a doorway, while ladies were streaming in and out and they were all, why is she standing there, taking her own picture? Does she not know this is a gym? She should get on her yoga pants already and get busy. Which: I totally was, I totally should have, and, in the end, totally did.

You're just going to have to trust me when I say: the outfit was good.

Thankfully, I did not bungle a photo of the sky, which was also beautifully dressed:

Planning: a love story.

Planning: a love story by lisab

Office snapshots.

This is how a perfectly lovely weekend comes to a close:

with rubrics...

and Excel spreadsheets...

...and assessment samples.

I should, of course, have finished this last week. But oh well.

*

I am assuming that next week, which will represent the end of this project as well as the end of many other such obligatories, will be less rubricated. Not to mention less Excel spreadsheeted. 'Spreadsheeted' sounds like a prank somebody might play on you at camp, right? A mean, mean prank. At Assessment Camp, which is--you know I'm right--the worst camp EVER.

What am I doing at midnight?

--still digesting the Panang curry I ate for dinner (with a half a doughnut chaser)(don't judge), and  just having finished watching 13 Going on 30 and am therefore reminded that ugh, movie industry, don't signify magic by glittery swirly dust! and maybe just stop making time traveling/timewarp movies? (and also Mark Ruffalo was SO CUTE in that part). 

And remembering that last night I watched the first 25 minutes of How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days which might be the stupidest movie ever made. Although maybe it gets better after the 25 minutes? Somehow I don't think so.

Thinking of a blog post. 

Listening to the historian making paper-rustling noises while sitting at his desk. 

Looking for a cover image for my upcoming book (!!!)(anyone? a cover image for a book called flicker?). 

Lying next to the dog. 

Thinking about the day and a half worth of work stuff I need to do tomorrow, i.e., in one day. 

However, thinking also that I will make pancakes in the morning, so: some things are more important than others, yo.

Not sleeping: a field guide.

Here's the bed. Perhaps tonight, I'll get in it,
with the lights off, and fall asleep.
Like normal people.

Or maybe I'll feel sleep taking me, and I'll

close my eyes, lay there for a few minutes 

or a half an hour, then open my eyes 

and think: nope. And I will have missed 

my sleeportunity.

Maybe the unfinished crossword puzzle will 

be calling my name. And maybe I will answer 

yes.

Maybe I will need to keep reading something,

such as a literary journal. Or that Japanese book 

about tidying. Maybe I will need to write

a list of things, such as the things I need 

to tidy. Maybe I will need to fret about a few things. 

Like how tired I am certainly going to be, because 

I'm not sleeping.