Spread

I rested during crane pose.

I went to yoga class tonight.

That's the sentence I found in this open document when I opened my computer this morning. Clearly, I meant at some point last night to tell you all about it. More clearly, I didn't know what, or I got distracted by cracked.com or bedtime. Ah, but it was really good and exhausting, and anytime I do yoga (which is rarely) what I am most reminded is that yoga is hard. But the teacher (one of my students, actually) was lovely and gentle, so that every time the thought "I am not good at yoga" came into my head, I knew that such thinking was not in the spirit of yoga and gave myself a break.

Mistargeted, kind of.

I won't even let myself go of on the privacy issues involved here, but according to my settings (if you click there, does it take you to your own Google settings?), Google thinks I'm a 25-34-year-old man, interested in brain teasers, cats, San Francisco, and reality TV. A little hit or miss there. Sure, I'm all about the puzzles, and if you post a funny kitten picture on my Facebook, I'll be happy for hours, but I don't google "cats" ever. (Oh, wait, maybe when mine get sprayed by skunks and I forget the best formula to clean them up.) And then I think, what kind of 25-year-old man is interested in brain teasers and cats and The Bachelor? I have never met that guy. Let alone been him.

Did you say snow day?

It's a snow day here, though I keep second-guessing that. It's coming down pretty hard, and they're calling it an "ice-snow" storm, so the cancellation seems legit, but I'm still paranoid it was just a fantasy, a dream I was having when my alarm went off, so I keep checking: the school web page, the text and email I got from school, the local news web page. But I think I've just now gotten to where I believe it already.

Though the school closings have been scrolling across the TV screen since I woke up. But it's one of those days – which happen occasionally – where TV6 has no sound. This keeps throwing me, since I usually have the Today Show on mute anyway, while I'm checking email, following twitter links, until Vicky Crystal comes on with the local news and weather. Because I really don't want to hear the Today Show details about the latest child-tragedy or how to choose the right purse or what house is on the market in Nebraska or what Star Jones has to say about much of anything. So each time I see VC out of the corner of my eye, I grab the remote and click to unmute, but it does nothing. I'll just assume the weather is really all the news there is around here right now.

I've got tomorrow's school day to plan for, but maybe that can wait a bit. So, ooh, which book to go back to bed with?

 

And the horse you rode in on.

So happy to have The Bachelor back on TV. Sure, Monday Night Football fills the gap in my heart sometimes, but at their best Mondays will be The Bachelor + garbage night forever.

Monday night's premiere made it clear what the show's been missing all along: more bisexual bachelorettes. There's simply no incentive for the women *not* to compete for the man. (Or vice versa, when it's the Bachelorette.) If there were potential love interests inside the house while the Bachelor was out hot-air-ballooning with someone else, well, that'd be fun. Really rooting for ponytail girl and the Maxim model to be roommates.

Have to say my favorite moment was Granny wiping away shy tears in the limo on her way home. I swear they just loop a video of that Sarah McLachlan abandoned-pet ad on some hidden TV back there to make sure everybody who gets in wells up.

And if the snow buries my neighborhood, I'll dig a tunnel.

Day two of the new year, and I'm snowed in.

Which, I know, sounds like a perfect opportunity to work on my syllabi for the upcoming term, but I think instead I'm going to lie around and read. Because the non-essential thing most likely to bring me to tears over the course of a semester is how I spend – between teaching and editing -- *so much* of my time reading bad stories. It seriously hurts my heart, how I'm filling myself with crappy sentences on a regular basis. And I know I'm a good teacher, and a good editor, and that these stories and sentences sometimes get better, but the percentage of writing that actually *needs* to get better is very small. The leap from incoherent and uninteresting to clearer but still uninteresting is not a leap that always needs making. So today: Aimee Bender and Kevin Brockmeier. People who never make me reach for a pen when I'm reading them.

Count it down.

I got a tarot reading in the summer of 2008, and the psychic said I'd start to pull my shit together in about three or four years. At the time, I wondered what would take me so long. But here it is, three-and-a-half years later, and while I've still got plenty that I stress over and that I'm sad about, and things I can't get quite right, I'm cuddled up on my couch on New Year's Eve pretty content. I even made the effort today to "fix" my mailbox, once again smashed into by the plowtrucks (I assume), before the new year begins, as a show of good faith to 2012.

So, sure, some of my shit may be only duct-taped together, but I'll go to bed tonight, after watching the split-screen ball drop, pretty content and with a Lions/Packers game to watch tomorrow, and chili to make, and a list of things to do after that which actually fit in with what I like and am good at. So that'll do.

Conversation?

Fun tweets from someone who thinks I'm someone I'm not.

@Chobsky the author of perks Of Being a Wall flower !

@chbosky i feel 12x smarter every time i finish a conversation with you plz write more i can read your novels over and over again =]

@Chbosky i think u are my favorite person 2talk 2 bkuz ur so freaking intriguing &crazy intellectual =]

@chbosky ur so amazing &blow my mind when i read ur brilliance how bout u mak me look a lil more like a mentally retarded chimpanzee eh? Ha

Anybody clicking on my Twitter link and coming to Spread to learn more about a successful (male) YA author is going to be sadly disappointed. All this chit-chat about going to the dentist and grading papers. Though I wonder: would I want to make anybody reading my stuff feel like a mentally retarded chimpanzee? Is that a goal of some writers?

Might as well search “words.”

How frustrating is it that the story by Lydia Davis I want to find online is called "Story"? Google has no idea I actually *am* being specific.

The worry room.

At my local hospital, the room where you wait to be called in for your yearly mammogram is the same room where you wait for your person while they're in surgery. It's a tough place, so many people so worried. I wasn't there long, but did watch one man get called into a private room for a report from the surgeon. (The volunteer who led him there was really savvy about complimenting his laptop, getting him from asking her questions she wouldn't know the answers to yet, and keeping his mind elsewhere until he heard the word.) And then he came out and called his daughter: mom's okay, make sure those dishes are done when I get home. I didn't mean to be spying, but it's clear you're next to people in an important moment for them and for someone they love. I couldn't help listening.

And every person who comes to the door draws all the attention. My mammogram lady called my name and I stood up and headed over to her. Every single person in the room, together, said to me, "You dropped your hat." I had.

Not just the guy next to me or the old woman across. The whole room was so ready for someone to come to them that attentions were just that on edge, I think. I picked up my hat and said, "Thanks, everybody."

I left when it was over, but part of me wanted to head back there, and sit with them and wait to see when people finally got to exhale. To get to hear the next person call home and tell their own kids to clean up the house because everything is fine.

Give me a better hint.

My fortune cookie last night contained three – three! – fortunes.

1. A pleasant surprise is in store for you soon.
2. You will enjoy doing something different this coming weekend.
3. You will soon be confronted ("confronted"?) with unlimited opportunities.

I don't know how the multiple-fortune magic works. Do all three apply, and if so, do they all apply to the same moment? I will be surprised and confronted and enjoy something this weekend? Bring it.

But until then, so begins the season when I take out the trash only every other week cause baby it's cold outside.