A teeny-tiny life hack for me: It was also the day I seem to have realized that my lonely desk-picnic lunches needn't happen on breakroom napkins. My contract doesn't preclude me from bringing bright things to keep me company as I scarf my lunch down between classes. Ha. And actually, not so lonely today as there was a KCP virtual lunch.
Thursday, January 21, 2021
Desk Picnic
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Let's Goooooooooooo!!!!!
Sunday, January 17, 2021
Side Eye
Talked to At on Twitter and chat today; and gosh--I miss him fiercely. Spent some time settling things in his room and ended up clearing out a decade's worth of video games, Popular Science, and Make Magazine. We've been in this house only four years and only four years in the Alma house before that, so this stash somehow made it through three moves. Yikes.
Also yikes, as I leaned to get another piece of mail from behind At's bookcase, I twisted something in my knee and it has felt progressively weird. It feels... feeble now, although it didn't when it actually happened.
Finalizing all the syllabuses and diagnostics for first week today. And I'm laughing at myself because the smallest things get me excited sometimes. My latest tweak is so superficial--I changed all the font to Garamond--and I'm so inordinately chuffed about it.
Friday, January 15, 2021
Snapshot
Here I am, bookended by the two human babies who showed up randomly in their matching Christmas jammies for some Olympic-standard cuddling.
Monday, January 11, 2021
yes but also no
The instructions surprise: perhaps I will solve gravity or simply realize how unready
"pour the saliva" they say chorus my saliva's spectacle how random, how to unbait sighs
I once described a snake exist/lament/impact/about the junction of having breath back
'pouring' itself down a hole the scratching exhaustion having my back, trusting offspring
the kids were so freaked out of dying on tv every day to try to sidestep the cracks
Sunday, January 03, 2021
Notes from the Weekend
- Here are At and Nu in their matching new year shirts from a unisex brand--I love the silky patterns and their very distinctive cut and fit.
- I started Duolingo-ing Spanish this week--I'd like to keep it up. And I'd like to walk the Camino de Santiago someday...
- I downloaded WhatsApp to my laptop and can now send pictures and links SO easily to mom and sis.
- Big A built me a long sofa/console table to store projects, books, and work material so I can take meetings in the living room. I love our communal study/rumpus room, but sadly, we can't all be in meetings in the same room.
- And.... I had a poem accepted today. This one! about the people in this photograph!
Monday, December 28, 2020
Ruminations in a very minor key
2) Nu announced it was National Card Game Day, and we played Rummy, Coup, and Smart Ass at various times in the day to observe it 'properly.'
3) A couple of weeks ago I gave myself some terrible bangs, but I must have decided they weren't terrible enough, so I gave myself more bangs around 1 or 2 am. Big A worked last night, and when he came home this morning, I spent like 20 minutes repeatedly yelling "Don't LOOK at me; DON'T look at me." He offered to cut my bangs next time, but we're at least four-five weeks away from being able to attempt repair. I miss going to the hairdresser, and I'm bored with my hair.
4) I can't believe I haven't brought in the hammocks and throw pillows from the backyard yet... it's not that I'm that lazy, I'm just awfully prone to wishful thinking.
Friday, December 25, 2020
Monday, December 21, 2020
I used to do it for hours in fancy (yoga) pants...
Made a winter solstice meal (stew, roasted veggie salad, biscuits, and apple cider hot toddies with brandy) to share with BS and EM for good cheer. We'd planned to build a fire in the firepit, but it began to hail, so we lit some candles indoor instead.
LB and TB were having their own solstice celebration and I was supposed to head over after dinner, but I stayed home, had a long boozy chat with EM and then Zoom-ed into JL's book club meeting of Mexican Gothic. I hadn't read it, but no one was talking about the book anyway. We haven't met in so long and everyone's hair was SO long!
I'm inordinately excited about yoga, and hangouts, and the two minutes of extra daylight we'll get tomorrow.
Saturday, December 05, 2020
Early to Bed
So here's me putting myself to bed with my chocolate and hot tea before the sun goes down.
(I'd made dinner early. AND took some over to L&T. AND showed the kids how to serve themselves around 5. And then, I left everyone to their own DEVICES. Haha.)
(When I woke up later, I found they'd put the leftovers away and started the dishwasher. 💕💕)
Friday, December 04, 2020
"Respair"
Thursday, November 26, 2020
Just us
Sunday, November 22, 2020
Out and about
maybe something something being in community
about being connected and continuing
About holding my arms out like a tree even when empty
(stop that!) about sending all my pain to the sea,
where it's already salty
By day I will read something lofty, edifying, clear
At night, I will watch stars that seem cold
and know they're really quite fiery
Alert with my intention, my asylum of inattention
I sling myself to beauty, ignore summer's
pillows smattered with snow
Saturday, November 21, 2020
Friday, November 20, 2020
Thursday, November 19, 2020
Within Without
Please hold my head as gently
as a bomb labeled 'headache'
knowing the earth is waiting
feeding time under the loam
who is it who knocked on the door (we didn't hear)
who is it who wants to come in (we can't really see)
howling into the cusp, dreams away from disaster
learning the circuitry of sadness, the lineage of loss
For in a different world
I lost many months ago
my tongue a tombstone
fingers clawing worms
Friday, November 13, 2020
The stuff of horror
Tomorrow is Diwali and I want to get this down in the hope that I will be able to set it aside for a little bit. I've been carrying it around since yesterday when I read a thread on Mona Eltahawy's Twitter (since then, I've seen a few news outlets calling it the "Kashmore Tragedy"). The details are so horrific I can't say them out loud without choking and I don't really think I could pass it on to anyone else.
But the story keeps going around in a loop in my head, knotting now and then around the old nodes: the precarity of being a single mother; how difficult it is to love and grow a girl child in this fucking patriarchal world; the horror of captivity and unending rape; lives where people move across the country for a job that pays about 250 dollars; knowing people are out there victim-blaming--saying things like 'bad choices' and 'where is the father?'; what care and support are available to the mother and child; why support wasn't available to them previously; the courage it took for the mother to go to the police instead of prolonging the cycle; if the police treated her with respect; the bravery and compassion of the ASI (assistant sub inspector?) using his wife and daughter as decoys to catch the rapists; were the ASI's wife and daughter given a choice in the matter; worried for the ASI and his family now that his name and likeness are all over media; knowing there's so much more abuse I'll never even know from within safe spaces in families, communities, and professional + emergency services. Why are so many men/humans such trash?
On the Enby parenting group, one parent recently asked what our own lives might have looked like if we had the freedom of gender choice we support for our children. I know I've always wished for genderlessness, especially in professional settings. And in so many other settings, I'd have loved the possibility of having what Wanda Sykes calls a "detachable pussy."
Thursday, October 29, 2020
My Panel / My At
Yet apparently, it didn't stop people from watching the panel discussion as though it were a prize fight at the MUN House (per At). If I look amused in the top right corner it's because At was asking some cleverly self-deprecating question online. The corner of the laptop abutting the screen is his! Togetherness! Yay!
(OMG, I love that fellow. I have to admit, I lost all professional composure when a late arrival rehashed the "statues are history" tack in Q&A and At's deadpan riposte on the event chat was: "I got my history major by staring at a bunch of statues.")
Sunday, October 25, 2020
"Global crises can only be solved globally."
Thursday, October 15, 2020
These shoes weren't meant for walking
So I walked over to At's (I'd just been thinking I hadn't seen him since Nu's birthday... and writing that I realize it's been less than a week, but it has been a long week!). He tried the door too, but nothing. So we made the call, and Big A got on the road to bring me the spare key, Nu in tow since it was dark and I didn't want Nu to be home by themselves. (Big A initially demurred about having to drive all the way, and I was instantly mad thinking about all the times I drove into NYC with little At and Baby Nu to get him after a late shift at Bellevue. But he quickly did the right thing, and no one got yelled at. Ha.)
So an hour till reinforcements arrived, and my sweet At offered to feed and water me and sit with me on the MUN House porch (outsiders aren't allowed into student housing to minimize Covid exposure) to keep me company. But I was too keyed up, so I asked if we could walk around, and borrowed some socks from At, and we did. I kept telling him he should go back to work on the delayed deadlines and midterm extensions, but we kept walking and talking, and then Nu and Big A were there, and there was a teensy family reunion in the Heritage Parking Lot.
It's beginning to feel a lot like... Spring!
A full weekend! Lots of people: foraged for more morels with work friend TR; met Baby R with the whole gang of girlfriends today at lunch; ...
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Friends and old neighbors shutting it down in honor of John Crawford. _
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I have the feeling that I’m going to succumb to the season and put out a list of resolutions soon. Just wanted to establish this heads up th...
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At had us pose for this pic up at Aunt R's place on Lake Huron so he could put it up in his dorm. "Don't tur...