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Team captain.

If I had myself as a professor in college, I might have really been frustrated. I would certainly wanted more direction, and less loopy insistence on just messing around. I would have been mortified to workshop early drafts with so little guidance. Plus, all that talk about reality TV. "Please," I would have asked, "where are the Jesuits?"

Oh but today, I am feeling good about myself. My nonfiction students are starting to turn in revisions, and they are so lovely. One woman's essay made me cry, right here in my office, and the rest are just making me jump up and down. They're funny and open and humble and honest and tight. I want to take on the other section of this class, the one taught by the Zen Buddhist priest. I want to rumble, essay for essay. I think I've found my roller derby team, right here, under my Wednesday night nose.

Send me a dream.

If I play my cards right, I may be getting some planograms in the mail soon. They may even be suitable for framing.

(Just FYI, Wikipedia says, "They may also be referred to as plano-grams, plan-o-grams, or POGs.")

Prou forta com per una dona.

It's been a long weekend. Productive. I've had a ton of student stories and essays to respond to, other essays to score, and there's a novel manuscript on my desk (heh, I mean my floor) that I haven't even gotten to yet. I'm tired of my couch. But here's how I've handled it. I find the day's Top Model marathon. (Could be on Oxygen, could be on Bravo – you never know!) Turn it on, and mute it. Then I work until it's time for panel. I turn on the sound and see their photos. I mute it again, because I already know who's going home, and I get back to work.

Growing up, there was a guy down the street who was going to school for nursing, and he'd study for 45 minutes and walk around the block for 15, over and over. His is a better system, but until my toes heal (they are feeling much better already), I'm happy with my way.

Very important poll.

Georgia's little sister (due to arrive late August) needs a name. Click here to cast your vote. Their last name is Reed, so it's really hard to go wrong.

Jam.

I broke two toes being a klutz. Spent a day limping around campus and whining at my students, but this morning, I went to the clinic. The x-ray tech was very bored with my "I stubbed by toes" story and suggested telling everybody it was a roller derby accident. Hell yes. Except instead of a roller skate, I've got a flat-bottomed Velcro shoe. Guess that's how we do it on the Granite Street Magma. Go team.

Pigtails run in the family.

I put these pictures up on Facebook, but then I realized Sparky would never see them. G's reading Parenting magazine here, but she also seems to enjoy the Hammer Times.

Okay then, guys.

This is the year I've officially given up the fight against "alright," which I very much consider to be a misspelling. But Word accepts it, and it's in the dictionary, and students can probably find a million examples of its use. I'm still a staunch defender, however, of that comma before or after a name in direct address. Even though it's always left out everywhere, even in the Slumdog Millionaire subtitles. That one, I'm ready to fight for.

Happy equinox.

You should see the little fountain out in my swampyard now. The new holes in the pipe mean the water sprays up all pretty, like Disneyworld. The cats are going to have fun in it once they get back outside. But today, the first day of spring, was winter.

Nevertheless, I went for a cold walk on the beach. Just to remind myself why I live here.

Who’s Irish?

It's that time of year: my annual basement flood post. I will try to leave out the parts you already know – the water, the mess, the tears. But this was new: my line outside froze *and* the pipe inside burst apart, so water was spaying all over everywhere. I didn't know what to do. If I left the pipes apart, at least a lot of the water drained back into the sump pump hole and back out the pipe in another spray, like a very ugly fountain. But if I unplugged the pump to stop the spray, then more and water piled up everywhere. What's that called, a Hobson's choice?*

I try to handle things, and I was really worried about how much an emergency visit would cost, but I had to call somebody this time. They sent somebody over pretty quickly, and when he saw me, drenched and filthy, he said, "You poor thing," and seriously, I think I needed that more than anything. His diagnosis was quick. He wrenched the pipe back together, borrowed a hammer and nails and a shovel and put some new holes in the pipe outside. (He's actually laid off right now, so he didn't have any tools with him. Which I love because what they were really sending me then wasn't so much a plumber as it was a man.) The water started to go down. It's a temporary fix, he told me, and I should get my buddies to come reroute the out-pipes better. My buddies! Oh, I love the world I live in, I just wish I fit in better.

He called headquarters and told them they didn't need to charge me anything; it was easy. (Turns out he's the son of the owner, Tom Plumbing Jr.) But they insisted: $39. Which I would have paid for the kind words alone. I gave him two twenties and he left.

The cleanup part you know. I squeegied and mopped. I showered the muck off myself. I started laundry. (The flood didn't actually get to all my clothes this time, so I don't have to wash everything I own. Just the ten dirty towels.) I have yet to deal with the litter boxes, but I left the window open so the cats can go outside. I crossed "go for a walk" off my list because I figure hauling six gallons of water in a shop vac upstairs and outside over and over again takes care of my daily exercise.

But the magical part is that he came back a while later. He brought a drill and put some more holes in the line. He came down in the basement and checked everything out. He told me I looked better. He even brought back a dollar in change, which I tried to refuse, but he left it on the table. I showed him my flood censor, which sits on the floor near the sump pump and is supposed to beep if it gets wet. I told him I found it floating, quietly, over by the furnace when I came downstairs to get dressed for work. He said, "That's the censor, I guess. If it's floating, your basement is flooding." If he married me, I'd be an heir to Marquette's plumbing empire.

I called in flooded to school, even though it's not even that late and at this point I could still make it to my office hours. But I think I need to keep an eye on things here.

*Nope. Just looked that up, and what I had was not a Hobson's choice but a Morton's fork. Though until I called the plumber, I may have dangerously neared becoming a Burdain's ass.

My red-couch person.

If it's 50 degrees, it must be neighbor kid season. He just turned thirteen a few days ago. I need to get him a belated birthday present for next time he's over. A book, I guess. I just thought thirteen looked older than that.

But really, it's just like talking to any guy however old: He says, "Something something something." I say, "No way, and you know what, connected to that?" And he says, "Anyway."

Won’t you be my neighbor.

The house across the street from me is for sale, if anyone's in the market for a change. "Nice area, convenient location," the ad says. Especially if where you're headed is my place. It's almost bonfire time.

The reveal.

On the left, my new orange fruit bathroom. On the right, a picture I found on online that I was going to post instead. Really, it seemed close enough, except that bathroom has actual counter space for dolls.

It's really bright. When I was working on it, and in there for a significant amount of time, I'd come out into the kitchen and my eyes would have to adjust to normal light.

Woundikins.

Turn off your sound before you check out http://www.savethewords.org/, but do check it out. A beautiful collage of words that have fallen out of favor. They encourage us to adopt a word and help bring it back. I'm dedicated to the whole idea, but probably only cloakatively.

The squeeze.

I had my first mammogram today. Not because of any worries, but just because I am suddenly of a certain age. I was so nervous to have by breasts flattened. I imagined the pain like the pinch of my finger every time I try to use needle-nosed pliers, but over a bigger area. But geez, it's nothing. You could hardly even call it pain. It's just awkward and a little uncomfortable, mostly in terms of the tech nudging me around into the position she wanted me, like a sculptor, and the whole thing takes a minute. Maybe I'm particularly insensitive, or maybe bigger boobs hurt more. I don't know. But there are plenty of things that hurt more than a mammogram – stubbing my toe, or this piece of wood that seems embedded under my thumbnail. Missing Top Model for class. The grocery store running out of my Portobello mushroom soup. M-28 being closed Oscar weekend. Living a million miles away from everybody I love.

Seriously, if this experience is still in your future, do not expend any energy worrying about the procedure itself. You can handle it.

Tapped.

You know how people pocket-call you, accidentally dial you with their cell phone and give you weird, unrequested access to their current conversation with someone else? Hover used to do this all the time. I'd hear him laughing in the Scout, adjusting the dog's goggles or whatever. Sunday, I pocket-answered, somehow. I was on a walk in my neighborhood and Peter called. I didn't answer because, as Peter and everybody knows, I don't answer.

But I must have actually answered, because Peter wrote me and said he listened to my life for the next twenty minutes. He thought it sounded like I was washing dishes, which must have been when I crossed the footbridge over the creek. Just before that, I know I talked to a dog. He looked mean, so I used my sweet voice, and then I was embarrassed because I didn't realize the owner was sitting on the porch having a smoke. (I used my sweet voice to say hi to her too, just so she didn't think I was faking it for the dog.)

But otherwise, it must have been a pretty boring listen – me crunching on the snow, trying not to slide down the hills. Coming home and saying hello to my car. Sorry not to be more entertaining.

Actually, maybe I realized this had happened in the back of my head, because I got paranoid last night in bed, when I said some far-too-familiar thing to one of the cats, the kind of thing a lonely girl might want to say to a person, and I thought, geesh, if anybody could hear me. How mortifying.

Scrapbook.

This is why Facebook is distressing to me. There are pictures of me like this floating around online. (Seriously, this one's kind of great, but the one of me and my 1988 boyfriend in a mullet? That, I can't even post.)

But then, I forgive Facebook when somebody sends me this. My very first love, looking all plaid and happy and awkward.

Illustrated.

I'm as we speak at the Boat Bar, trying to jumpstart my writing by working on some old things. (I've reworked the heart murmur piece in third person, which I do like, but it needs a better title. A little help?)

Someone has added to our dialogue in the bathroom, Ruby. Next to our sweet messages of love on the pizza cardboard warning us against flushing our tampons, someone has drawn a penis. At least I think that's what it is. It might be one of those Christian fish, with one eye, or a scud missile with balloon feet. Can't say for sure. I'm just happy someone is wishing us well.

Update: I'm calling on you all for more titles. (I'm so bad at titles.) What if you wrote a story about a surveyor, the neighbor kid, and a cat in a tree? What would that be called?

Fierce?

My plumber was supposed to come back this morning for another job, but he must have forgotten about me. So I read in bed all day, and tonight is the two-hour premiere of Top Model and a Kenny Rogers puzzle. Tomorrow, I promise to leave the house for something other than cat food.

Check.

The bathroom's done. You know, mostly. I got a new rack, which is great and sturdy and actually screwed into the wall. When I was at Wal-Mart buying it, though, I got run over. I was standing in the aisle, and this old woman who works there was pushing this huge cart full of towels my way. I scooched up close to the shelves to give her room, but she must have been playing some death race game, associate-style, because she sped up and veered toward me. I tried to stretch myself skinny but she plowed into me anyway. She whacked my arm and my back and just kept going. Usually, I'm the kind of person to say excuse me when someone else bumps into me, but this was kind of insane. I yelled "Ow!" after her, not that she turned around to acknowledge it.

Trouble is I wanted to look at towels too, but I was afraid to run into her again.

Anyway, I put together my new shelf, and I finished the trim, and everything was looking great. Until I brought the rack into the bathroom. It fits, I made sure of that beforehand. But I'm in the bathroom, all proud because it's all done, and I go to open the door to leave, and boom. My towel bar on the back of the door hits the standing rack and jams the door only half open. And the pedestal sink blocks that half open space, so I'm stuck in there forever. Genius. Well, I'm not stuck, I can kind of suck in and smush myself around the sink to get out, but I wouldn't want to live that way. So, the towel bar is out of the picture, and I'll just have to find a poster or something to cover all the holes I made in the back of the door. I'm thinking Nabokov's butterflies.

Maybe Billy Mays knows what he’s talking about.

So I moved on from paint to fixtures yesterday. But hanging a new towel rack proved tricky. It came with a paper template which was nice because I think the plumber stole my tape measure, but I promptly lost one of the plastic anchor thingies inside the door. I went to my toolbox to see if I magically had extras, but all I found was a dried-out tube of wood filler, and unopened bag of steel wool, and a toy snake. So I turned to the magic putty, and you know what? So far so good.

I hung the hand towel and t.p. holders with actual screws, and wonder of wonders, they're up there pretty solidly, if maybe a little tiltly. Whatever.

Today's project is about the wire storage rack. My bathroom is so small and there's absolutely no storage. I like the pedestal sink, but it'd be nice to have some drawers or something. Just for privacy. I mean, it's not a secret I'd have tampons, but I don't think my guests (my what?) need to look at them. So I checked out those little cabinets that go over your toilet, but in terms of storage space, they're really just decorative. They're like eight inches deep. My blow dryer won't even fit in there.

Which is to say I'm sticking with my wire rack. (Are you bored yet? So what. This is my spring break.) I unwrapped the ribbon it was covered in because none of it goes with the orange (what color goes with orange is something I really hadn't considered before painting), only to remember why I'd wrapped it up to begin with. The legs are all gross and rusty. So I tried painting it, but that's not working. So today, it's either new ribbon or another rack. We'll see. Oh, and I primed the trim so now I guess I have to paint it.

Sunshine day.

The orange fruit bathroom's coming along. It's pretty bright. Every time I walk past the doorway, I think I left the light on in there.