Thursday, January 28, 2021
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Monday, January 25, 2021
Briefly
Everyone seems to need me today.
Must go!
Wednesday, January 20, 2021
At Last...
I didn't get to watch the inauguration in real time, but took in a few texts here and there and then a Zoom to toast the new admin so "things feel more real."
I really missed my WGS folks who have helped me keep my sanity in the last four years, mostly by making ad hoc traditions of marches and protests, and linners.
I so wish we could be together in solidarity and community again.
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.
Saturday, January 16, 2021
"Beam Me Up"
Big A was mostly experienced as a napper in various settings around the house (he's coming off a spate of nightshifts).
This "Beam-Me-Up" action in the sky is from a long walk with Nu and B.S. and it made us chuckle. Lots of talk, sharing, support, and a huge, delicious loaf of BS's banana bread that Nu and I loved (i.e. have almost finished) this afternoon.
Rumpus Room sleepover tonight with Nu, Scout, and Huck, because At left for college this morning and this is how we cope.
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.
Thursday, January 14, 2021
Pongal 2021
Most years we're already back at school before Pongal comes around and the usual celebration is something hurried when the sun is no longer high in the sky.
This year, we got to celebrate in the sunshine and make our offering at a reasonable daytime hour, with fragrant narcissus and paperwhites rounding out the pongal rice and jaggery laddu on the offering tray. To the millenary vedic sun salutation sloka*, which I was translating for the kids as I went, I added a prayer for enough Vit. D to help us through the pandemic.
Cousin P had sent the cousin groupchat a set of truly lovely pics of their traditional celebration replete with sugarcane, outdoor hearth, and silk-clad kids. So I sent this pic back to balance things out.
Not pictured: The very un-Pongal looking kids, one in the Phoebe Bridgers limited edition Punisher sweater they got from their older sib and the other human kid in the pink Mean Girls/Karl Marx mashup tee I gave them.
Tamorim Sarva Paapagnam Pranathosmi Divakaram
[You radiant as the Japa flower, heir of Kashyapa, the creator of days
destroy my darkness and all corruption I pray to you, O Sun.]
Tuesday, January 12, 2021
Bigger than me
Oh my little girl
All I ever wanted
All I ever needed
Is here in my arms
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm
In my head, the "little girl" became a reference to Nu who had just told their first lie and had been reprimanded, and was now sad.
Anyway--I was reminded of this because Tommy Raskin's life (yes, I haven't moved on) reminds me not of my own weltschmerzen, but of my children's and students' joy, their yearning for justice, for full lives, how the pandemic is the chief thief of joy RN, and their frustrations with the world... and it terrifies me.
(Pic from walk this afternoon with LB; Red Cedar River--the mallards followed me around!)
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 10, 2021
Spoke too soon...
Kinda like I did with this holiday card, which I had printed but didn't mail... and probably will never mail at this point.
Apartment Therapy's astrology section forecasts that I will have a "fruitful social life" this year, so perhaps not all is lost? Ha.
Saturday, January 09, 2021
Peace Out
Wednesday, January 06, 2021
Wednesday's Insanity
At 3:00, Nu was on their daily online-school-accountability call with Grandma S, and were told that they really should go watch the news. So we did. Watching the storming of capitol buildings by white supremacists was surreal, frustrating, and infuriating. Activists from ADAPT and BLM certainly did not get the 'I'll open the gates, hold your hand going down the stairs, and take selfies with you' treatment from the police.
By 4:00, I was in a meeting with one of the finance guys at work who wasn't interested in the news and kept referring to higher ed as "our industry." I can't help thinking this kind of obliviousness and corporatization contributed to the mess we're in.
Monday, January 04, 2021
Monday Memoir
I saw the cutest snowperson when I ambled over to L's house earlier today! Their bangs are like mine, but even that detail couldn't detract from their quintessential cuteness.
Nu's back in (virtual) school today, so everyone is back to waking early so we can have breakfast together and build each other up... apparently, we do this with cuddles, and riddles, and jokes, and teasing putdowns.
Speaking of school... I miss my students. There're lots of meetings starting Wednesday and I started today by writing to every one of my advisees. It's re-entry time for all of us although classes won't start until after MLK Day.
Speaking of days... It's my Boss Day! My dinner pick was poke, which we made together; my entertainment pick was Veep... again!
After everyone headed off to their rooms, I found the tribute Rep. Raskins and his spouse wrote for their child Tommy and I weep to think that someone who brought so much joy and goodness to people didn't feel enough of it themselves.
(Related: I think of Aaron Swartz frequently. Sometimes I think about them multiple times a week--especially when my students are doing internet research. I resent that I was introduced to Aaron Swartz through his obituary--it's a particularly downhearted way to learn about an extraordinary person. I thought I'd written about this before, but a quick search revealed nothing.)
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!
Saturday, January 02, 2021
There and Back Again
Friday, January 01, 2021
Beginning as we mean to go on
(Yes, it was just down the street to wish TB a happy birthday before curling up cozily for most of the evening--but I'm counting it as a tiny win for today.)
Thursday, December 31, 2020
Rising Up
As we close out 2020 (with LB's food exchange, SD's Zoom party in MD, and calls and texts from all over the world), I want for all of us to rise up in every way in 2021.
And I'd really, really like to see my sister and parents.
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
"But Different than the Day Before" (Part 3892772)
It was icy in the streets and a very homebound day scaffolded by all kinds of media.
A long yoga session on Mirror, hours of reading, syllabus prep, an adoring Prince retrospective online, and then stringing a video-list of Nirvana-Bikini Kill-Foo Fighters for Nu (the Nirvana and Bikini Kill were kinda for the WGS class). Nu has very limited screen time these days, so accompanying me on rabbit holes of 90s nostalgia is ok with them. (Evil parent laugh.)
Big A's "Impossible" spaghetti sauce for dinner, some Veep with At (from whom I received this puppy pic) and now I'm going to give Bridgerton a try by myself.
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
One down...
There had been a previous round for his ED, but in his typical way, he'd decided that since he'd had Covid and presumably had some antibodies, he'd wait for this later round and let colleagues who hadn't had Covid go first. 💗
Earlier this year--before the vaccine debuted--I wondered if anyone would be sending out holiday cards. I needn't have wondered. I think we actually got more cards than in previous years... there were nearly ten just today.
Alongside the photocards of cute cousins and niblings, was one from our college prez with a handwritten greeting to me + Big A and a kind note of thanks to me. Tenure means being able to say how warm and wonderful I think this is without worrying about sounding sycophantic. 😛
butte and beauty
We started the day with a sunrise hike in Papago Park and then I delivered Big A to his conference and took off for The Heard Museum of Amer...
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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...