Spread

Time to find the chairs.

I keep forgetting to keep you all informed of my day-to-day. I do note, in my head, moments that seem blog-appropriate, but in the translation to a post, they seem to lose some punch. Like the other day when the cap came off my pepper when I was making scrambled eggs. I'm happy I can consider tiny disasters blog moments, which keeps me from being upset about a wasting a quarter cup of pepper (a lot of which I was able to scrape off), but that doesn't really mean any time I mess up is a good story. Or that any interaction I don't understand has Spread potential, like when my pouter student snapped out of some reverie and said to me, when I was standing in front of the class before we started, talking to somebody else, "Oh! Out of the corner of my eye, I thought you were a gay man." What can that even mean? I had this whole narrative built up around a mix-up I can probably summarize in two sentence: I got really excited that one of my graduating grad students had the same 70s owl mug as I do, and I had all these great plans to dig mine out of the cupboard and give it to him, only to have him remind me, "No, this *is* your mug." I'd brought in some extras from home to the journal's office to go with the coffee pot I put down there.

But I'm hosting a bonfire tonight for my student editors, an idea I got fooled into by some crazy-warm early spring weather, and today's high is only supposed to reach 46, so I'm pretty certain we'll all be at least a little miserable. Maybe that'll make for some news.

Maybe I’ll pay more for a better name.

My store-brand Special K cereal is called "Essentially You, with Red Berries." And I think *I'm* bad at titles.

Get off my porch unless you’re wearing a UPS uniform.

Two pretty pretty ladies just came to my door, way too dressed up to be from my neighborhood. The first one says, "Because of last weekend, many people are thinking about Jesus."

And I'm like, "Last weekend?" My mind went immediately to the earthquake in Indonesia, but I tried to think of some disaster that was more local.

So she laughed sadly and reminded me: "Easter?"

I said, "Oh." Anyway, I felt insulted, like she thought I was a bad person because I couldn't read her mind.

And she told her partner, "See, that just goes to show how different people are," and she started on this spiel about how people regarded Jesus differently – some as the son of God, some as our Savior, some as the Messiah. What a wide range of opinions we people have!

Anyway, I told them I had to get back to work. Pretty sure Jesus wants me to finish grading these papers. And the first thing he wants me to tell my students is that it's not the reader's fault if they don't understand you when you're being vague.

Brush with greatness.

I had to take a screenshot of UFR today. Because there's Cheryl Strayed – Dear Sugar – and then right below her, check out the first story under "Latest Fiction." That juxtaposition will never happen again. (Oh, and note that JDL in the nonfiction column is my student, my thesis advisee, though he wrote the piece in another class, so I can't take any credit for how good it is.)

I wrote this story a long time ago. So long ago, that it almost seems retro now, with its references to cordless phones and perfect bound literary journals. Though not retro enough to be the cool kind of retro. Like, it's hard to get nostalgic for 2006.

Well, I can get nostalgic for personal reasons: Noni reading the Little House series and peanut night with cards and my cats still kittens. But it takes longer than a matter of years for a story to feel like it represents another time.

Wake me up for May.

Not on my game today. Driving into my neighborhood, I slowed down before a left turn to wait for a guy on a four-wheeler coming from the opposite direction to pass. He held up his left hand, and I thought he was waving me on, so I turned in front of him. I saw him turn behind me and realized he was giving the bike signal for right turn. Lucky I didn't run him over. Then, I just put on some coffee – because all I want to do right now is take a nap but I can't – and my coffee pot read 9:20 and I thought, "That's not even a real time." Granted, it's the wrong time, but it's a time. Though I guess the whole day hasn't confused me – only the hours since class. I try not to blog about work, but I made a student cry again today, and another one pouted her way through workshop, and I'm trying to figure out if I can actually add a "no freaking out" clause to my syllabi from now on.

Anybody reading this, though, is probably saying, "What? But you're the queen of crying." Maybe I used to be, but only with close friends, or complete strangers, like librarians and people cleaning the bathrooms at Taco Bell. There's no crying in class, no crying in front of acquaintances.

And okay, since she's not going to read it, here was the argument. I'm like – the whole class is like – this story is very abstract. I took a poll of where everybody thought the story was set, and I got these responses: on a roof, on a beach, sitting in front of a computer, in a jungle, at a Starbucks, on an airplane. I said, stop saying my soul this, my spirit that, love love love, and tell us who's in the room. I said be concrete. The writer said, "What's more concrete than the soul?" I said, "Everything." She left.

I decided to take advantage of the bad day, to pile it all on together, and tell the pouting girl after class that she couldn't simply assume I'd direct her thesis, that she had to ask me, and that I was going to say no. She pouted.

Can't wait for Wednesday.

Inefficient.

The place where I give blood isn't filled with tech-heads. I mean, the women there seem to be on their game medically. But put any one of them – including the bosses – in front of a computer terminal, and they're a little lost. And lately, they've switched over to a new system, which means the person checking me in has to go to the doorway of the office and yell out some particular of my private data to ask where to type it in. It's a little annoying, though I don't balk at it since I think their larger project is a good one. But I wish some articulate computer chick would go in there and train them. First thing she'd do, I bet, is take down this always-empty file folder attached to the side of a desk, labeled, "E-mails to be done." Because, geez, how long must it take an email to get "done" if first you have to print it out and wait for somebody to come check the file?

Finally threw out the chocolate lotion.

Started my spring cleaning with the bathroom today. Tossed a dozen grimy nail polishes and a ton of makeup I don't even understand why I bought. Plus two curling irons. Who knew they were even there, given I haven't curled my hair since senior pictures? But in all the sorting, I discovered enough floss to wrap around the earth seven times. There were multiple samples from my dentist or a full pack from the store in every container on the shelf. I'm flush in the floss department for as long as I still have teeth. So, good enough day.

On lies, secrets, and silence.

On the Passages Facebook page, lots of our "friends" are posting about the passing of poet Adrienne Rich. (This news made me sad too. I saw her read in Detroit once, and if anybody could have gotten me into poetry, it was her. She definitely got me into trying to tell the truth on the page.) But Facebook is stupid. Because so many of the posts refer to her poem "Diving into the Wreck," the headline thingie says, "So-and-so and 7 other friends posted about Scuba Diving." Just not true.

Can’t pay bills right.

I got a phone call today from my township headquarters. It appears I dated the check I just sent them (my water/trash bill) "October" instead of "March." She wanted my permission to change that and cash the check. I said yes. But I can't figure out how I messed that up. It's not like 3 and 10 are even close. I hoped maybe I wrote the check on the 10^th of March and just transposed the month and the day, but nope. I checked my carbon copies, and I totally postdated the check as "10/21/12." Where was my head? And, crazy, I did the exact same thing on the next check to the electric company, so I'm expecting another call tomorrow.

Articles matter.

Just a tip: if you notice that Netflix streaming now has the first season of AMC's The Killing, and you remember being a little interested in watching the show when it aired last year, and never actually getting around to it, but you also remember that the hype seemed to die a little and you know that if you asked somebody if it's worth watching right now, you might not get a yes, do not google "what's wrong with The Killing?" and expect to find TV reviews. Google will ignore the "the," and you're left with a million links to places you don't want to go.