willing like magic
identity shifts and orbits
--another trick
to you, to me
to open actuality
we try to scribble it
here we are; there we go--
still hurt, counterfeit
It's a good evening at the end of a very busy day where both my computer camera and I stayed on all day.
I can't even attribute something expansive/altruistic/noble to the last jag. I've had an infected spot that remained even after a two-week course of antibiotics, and I'd made an appointment to see my doctor on April 20th, which seemed far enough in the future that I didn't have to worry about it for a while. Big A thought that was rubbish and said we needed to go to urgent care TODAY. That was terrifying. He promised his hand to squeeze if it hurt and to buy me Taco Bell if I went. So I went. (He wasn't able to be in the room--Covid rules--but I got lidocaine and it didn't hurt as much as I had feared it would.)
I've discovered Taco Bell late in my immigrant life. People were raving about the return of the fiesta potatoes on my social media and earlier this week, I finally understood their adulation. Fiesta (potatoes) forever!
[Pic is some rainbow flashes on the library walls from all the crystals in there.]
Woke up not at 100%, but knowing I just couldn't take any more time off. My email box was terrifying, and it took hours and hours to take care of things that had piled up in 48 hours away and get back to a zero inbox. Did I use my "BinBox"™liberally? You bet I did.
Getting things done helped me keep my energy levels up and I'm glad I work with caring/forgiving colleagues. Tons of advising, opining, advocating, celebrating, and mediating on the student front.
An invitation-only workshop that was postponed last July has been rescheduled for this July, and despite being vaccinated, I just didn't feel ready to commit. My response surprised me, because I thought I'd be excited about travel... I'm a mystery to myself.
Oh. And I made sure to enjoy the surprise hyacinths popping up all over the house from the bulbs I pressed into assorted planters at the beginning of winter.
Totally missed my 8 am meeting because I slept through it.
Did not expect to be wiped out for so long--I planned for Tuesday's set of classes, but what about Thursdayyyyyyy???
Rallied for bestie KB's talk, then back to bedddddddddd... (Full disclosure attended from bed.)
#Catchup Post
It was a fever haze.
Hearing "FedEx broke your Little Free Library, Puppy" did not make sense.
Also did not make sense: "I'm going to ask your mom to use her video to make it right" "What will you do for food in the holocaust" (Think that was meant to be "apocalypse" not "holocaust.") "Step out of your comfort zone like a kite live daringly." (Did not know "daringly" was a word, but no squiggly line.)
Luckily, I guess, only the FedEx thing was true.
So many neighbors offered to help fix the library though and that was lovely.
#CatchupPost
I wore a sari to work yesterday because I felt festive + I want to normalize saris and the difference they embody on my PWI campus. It was one of the intentions I had shared at the beginning of the term with my WGSS class, so when I showed up all floaty and colorful, they seemed quite happy and proud for me.
I may have tied it too high ("where's the flood?"--the snarks at my high school might have asked), but for the most part, I was comfortable and didn't trip. The tripping thing has been one of my most frequent excuses, so I had to re-evaluate why I don't wear saris to work.
Other Indian aunties are wearing saris to everything from construction jobs to yoga to designing spacecraft. Why don't I? I really do think it's because all the ones I have are gifts and meant for festivities and too shiny or drippy with zari/fake pearls/pompoms/gems/stonework. I need a sari wardrobe for work--but I feel weird buying stuff for myself so soon after a day when I got so many presents.
This one, BTW, is a 'house sari' discard from one of my mom's visits. In fact, it was from her first visit when At was a newborn, so it's nearly 22 years old. Very nearly vintage. Wild.
It turns out that ignoring symptoms for months on end doesn't make them go away and your doctor may freak out and send you for emergency tests when you finally show up after months of reminders. In between radiology and ultrasound there were about 45 minutes when no one needed to look at my body today.
I was so exhausted from everything, I curled up on the examination table, and somehow had one of the best naps ever.
I've managed to limp through my to-do lists: grades, student updates, and class prep are done. I even got outside, and it was chilly and windy enough that it numbed my pain about Nu for a bit.
I loved seeing all these robins vacationing chirpily--for a few moments it took me out of subzero temps and deadlines.
(Then my fingertips began to freeze in my flip-top mittens, so I decided to stop taking pics and honor my South Indian heritage by hurrying home and staying in for the rest of the day.)
My form is a machine My breath is punctuation
it will work all day pretending to be a landfill
on knots of goodbye of commas, frozen periods;
--going, going, gone-- it turns up the light, keeps
hard to say--if that's inky spaces of silence and
even--home? heaven? whispered sleep to myself
also, which way home looks me in the eye, parses
--the world is so small the dirge of a sigh, impresses
yet full with forgetting the stray forevers of my lips
Met Nu's new therapist 💕; fielded pandemic tech suggestions from my mom 💕; handled paperwork and planner work.
A loooooooong walk by myself (Wonch Park) was the best part of today. Reread favorite bits of Piranesi, started The Lost Girls, took a loooooooong bath, and fell asleep for a bit with Scout (and Nu and Huck) while watching Korra... There's an absolutely brilliant moon out now, and I'm glad what's looming is the weekend.
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.
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.
1) Inside, I've been finding it really hot, so we had to bring up the electric fans from the basement early this year. 2) In my email, ...