January Lasts for 12 months

Three Januarys ago, Max was born. We thought he would be early. Zoe was so early, we thought Max would at least be born a few weeks before his due date. Or at least a few days. My mother and father in law came to wait with us. We waited. We had a solstice party. We had Christmas. We went downtown for the Pinecone drop in 9 degree weather. Still no Max. We waited. My in-laws had to go home soon. We waited some more. Finally, he was born on the 6th. That first week a January had a whole month in it.

The next three weeks--before I had to return to work--I read Wolf Hall. I read the whole book. The book should last a year. In this case, it lasted only a January. Babies are tiny and sleepy. By the end of January, Max had grown a lifetime. He was big and awake. By the time I went back to teach, it was still January. By then end of January, I had raised a whole son, read the whole of the Henry VIII's checkered past, begun and nearly ended entire classes, done all the press release work I could for my book of poems coming out in a month (in January? Another January month often called March), and watched all the episodes of Chopped on Food TV. By then end of January, January still had another month to go. 

This is Max's 4th January making him 114. He's way old, as he would say. His mom is way old. His dad is way old. His sister, the snow, the sun are way old. If you're feeling old, you should like January, for you can stay old as long as it gets. You can go to the doctor and get all the follow-up tests and scans and blooddraws completed to guarantee you will live until the end of time, or, at least, until the end of January. You can take time to proofread whatever books may or may not be forthcoming because they are due to be released in another January and you may not make it that long but for the time being the words will be double-checked and the white space and the squiggly lines too because January gives you enough time to look for even the typos (hear, here) you meant to make. January is long enough to be halfway through a semester and ninety percent done with the 7 year review that began just 7 days ago. It is long enough for you to read Hillary Mantel's next book. It is long enough to read all of Bill Carter's nonfiction. It's long enough to read 6 theses, 428 poems, 124 essays, and one hundred million emails. It is long enough for the good news to come and for the good news to go and the fact that you sent that book out a year ago and still haven't heard means really it's only been a month and you shouldn't be so impatient. It is long enough for your daughter to lose all her teeth and grow new ones like some magic, toothy Chia Pet. It is long enough for winter to have come and gone, spring to have come and gone and winter to have returned. It's long enough for Chopped re-runs to have re-run their whole Chopped Champions run. It's long enough for Hillary Mantel to write another 780 page book about Henry the VIII who is probably still alive because he was born in January and January never ends. 

I have a lot of problems

1. I can't seem to make an easy dinner. I do make tacos once a week but I can't quite just make spaghetti with a jar of tomato sauce and call it a day. Tonight I'm making Farro and Rice salad with roasted squash and fried arugula, thai chicken and fondue. Except for the lack of cohesion there, you might think that this is a good thing, cooking a lot. But it's not. It takes time I should be doing other things. It stresses me out what to make best next and new. All I want is someone to send me an email every day and say, make this. No questions asked. Nothing tastes as good as 3 hours of cooking tastes. I should just make bacon and eat that. Bacon tastes exactly as good as it takes long to cook.
2. Meetings. I can't go to them. I went to one this week and it begat another meeting and I had a panic attack in the middle of the meeting room. I wanted to just get the thing done, not talk about it. My boss said, you should write a Ben Franklinesque manifesto about how to get stuff done. Call it, stop meeting and write something. I guess. To the rest of the department, I look like the woman who won't ever meet.
3. Is there a job where I don't have to talk to people. I love people. Especially quiet people on Facebook.
4. I am never not running around late to something, probably because I'm too busy shopping for the 49 ingredient dinner and trying to write the thing we were supposed to meet about so I can follow my own Franklin-like aphorisms. But I also seem to have to pick up the kids every 9 minutes which makes for very short sessions and very too much driving even though I swear at least one of them is in school 4.5 days a week and the other is in school 3 days a week. I think the kids might be having meetings.
5. I am looking forward to buying Max socks this weekend. This is not something worthy looking forward to.
6. In not drinking wine so much, I've now become a tea addict. Yesterday, I had five cups of tea. This amount of tea reveals a) that I have an addictive personality, b) that I also have a compulsive personality, c) trying to decide whether I'm more addictive or more compulsive reveals my tendency for neurosis and d) I have to pee a lot.
7. I should not read the internet or blogs before I go to bed. Last night, the internet told me that the Republicans are planning to permanently rig the electoral college by dividing up electoral votes by congressional district, making the electoral college in presidential elections look identical to our current house of representatives. And the blog that said tenure will go away soon. I don't so much care about tenure but to me, tenure means research and if they get rid of research then that means they will fill that time that was once dedicated to research with more meetings.
8. Thank you cards.
9. Writing. I'm addicted to that too. If I don't write, I get all 1 through 8. If I do write, I want someone to read it. When I send it out, I wait around, thinking of course it is good only to realize 17 minutes later that I should perhaps not push "publish" on that button but I can't help it because I'm compulsive (and impatient. My fine friend told me the other day to be patient. I tried but then it drove me to drink more tea). And then I wonder if maybe it was fine just not quite that person's fine and then I find another person to read who does indeed love it but then I just wonder if they're being nice and the first mean person was right all along and that they weren't being mean, they were just being right and perhaps they too have diagnosed me with a lot of problems.

Schedule confusion

I'm a basket of nerves in case full of baskets in the mornings this week since school started. I don't know exactly what's going on except for two changes in my schedule--I'm teaching earlier than usual and my advising center hours are right before I teach. Perhaps the changes make me more stressed than less, which is what I hoped when I changed the schedule and then promptly forget that I changed the schedule.
So, I shall make a very boring list of what I did today in an attempt to figure out why I'm rushing around like a chicken in a basket of full of cases in the mornings. Sorry for the tedium. Take caution, ye progenitors of future generations and would-be professors of future students. Generous anxiety seems to be the primary side-effect of good luck and happiness.
1. Woke up at 7 in a deep sleep, dreaming about how there are too many cassette tapes in a box by my bed.
2. There is no box of cassette tapes by my bed but Erik did tell me upon my waking that he forgot to tell me yesterday about a cool story. The chief of police had new-found evidence in a cold case. He came to Erik's work to see if Erik could fix a tape that had been damaged by water. The sound quality is very bad but if Erik can fix it, they may have a lead. The fact that the tape was a cassette tape a coincidence with my dream? I don't think so.
3. Find Zoe in the bathroom already dressed. She tells me how big her hair is. It's very dry and staticky in this arid mountain town. Zoe's hair takes up a room. She put on a headband.
4. I woke Max up who, upon rising, asked if we were going camping today. Any day that begins with a "no" and "you have to go to school" makes for a hard morning.
5. He wanted oats. Usually, I only make oatmeal on the weekends but as a bribe to get dressed, I said yes.
6. I started making oats. He said he'd get dressed, "in a minute." He helped stir the oats in still his pajamas. This is why I do not work for the state department. I have a hard time holding up my end of the bribe.
7. Finally I asked him if he got dressed in the kitchen, would he?
8. Another minute.
9. And then a yes. In the kitchen. On the counter. While he stirred the oats.
10. Lunches finished packing. Hats, coats, gloves on Zoe's dance shoes, library book in her backpack, Erik's lunch in hand--go, my people, go.
11. It's 7:30. I'm tired.
12. Email. So much email. Email the editor of a magazine about interview and photos. Email editor of Quench about editor of magazine hoping to get him an advance copy. Email list of reviewers wanting galleys. Email friend about manuscript. Email a different editor about paragraphs cut from Quench. Email students about new webpage I made on website. Email student about copy right laws. Email student about internship credit. Email about camping in the desert. So many emails. I receive no emails, which in some ways is good. Emails lead to more emailing but in some ways makes me think I'm possibly living in the void.
13. Read 28 pages of one student's 68 page thesis. Make notes. Do not send notes yet.
13.5 Find out spring break is not when I listed spring break. Perhaps my anxiety has to do with the course schedule that I roundly screwed up this year. What's the problem? I'll make a new one. No one does anything unless I email them to remind them anyway. Still. No typos in this syllabus. Just the wrong days and times all over the place.
14. Stop reading theses. 9:30. Where did the last two hours go. Time to run.
15. Run for 40 minutes. Even though it's not so cold as it says it's as cold as it was which was 7 degrees. The difference between 7 and 17 is not so much on the back side of 17 anyway.
16. Shower.
16.5 Load dishwasher. I almost forgot. Twice!
17. Make lunch: lettuce. Quinoa. Queso ranchero. Sunflower seeds. Poached egg. Eh. OK.
18. Write! I have 20 minutes. Start an essay about a restaurant in Portland called Der Rhienlander (is it still there Portland people?). Forget to write about polar bears (note to self. Write about polar bears.)
19. Send micro essays off to editor. Just thought to do it thanks to Facebook. Thanks Facebook.

I did have Facebook open 12 through 19 . Perhaps it is a problem. BUT! Facebook also gave me these great ideas: News about borrowing microbes in the someone else's healthy intestine cures many.  Polar bears and Alaskan huskies playing in the cold. And the idea to email the editor at #19 some micro essays.

It's noon now. I'm at school. I'm mostly relaxed. Perhaps I just needed to be a place where people could see me work instead of working in the void of the internet. Is this work?

I have my lesson plan planned for my undergraduate nonfiction class. I can't imagine what could go wrong? Perhaps that's it. There's the anxiety. The idea that I forget at the beginning of the semester what else could go wrong with the semester. But since I already disastered the course schedule, perhaps it is, as it is in the house Garp buys in World According to Garp (as I told my Poetry Workshop) pre-disastered. Shouldn't everything, now that everything's already screwed up, go perfectly?

If worse comes to worse during class and I feel like things are spinning out of control, I can always pull FB up on the overhead and explain how FB is really time-saving research.

Mouth. Smaller than it looks.

I'm developing a bad habit when it comes to break. It's called, "I'll do that over break." And then break is much less a break than a nonstop mad-dash to get it all done before the next semester starts and I can start making promises about what I am going to get done over the next break. This break coincided too with the final proofing stage for the Bending Genre book, which is coming out March 14th. We copyedited this book. Then we proofed this book. Then we sent proofs out to our contributors. Then we proofed the proofs. Then, in the height of my annoying times, I decided now would be a good idea to revise my essays therein (really, just the white space, but my god, didn't I have like 19 other chances? Push. Shove. Met.)

I was getting letter of recommendation requests on Christmas Eve. I'm not sure what's up with that. Never before have I had so many requests over break. Is it because the electronic systems now don't allow students to send requests until they finish their application? Of course students want to do their apps over the break. Why would a university have a deadline of January 1? Like they're all sitting around on New Year's Day, waiting for the apps to come in. Anyway, there were 19 letters to send all over the break.

I also had blogs to do. The blog post here took two full years to write. Then, the essay daily blog, which was so awesome and fun but I made it a pain by writing 4 pages. Then I wrote a blog of the Poetry Center Wordplay blog (my post not up yet but it's a great website for recommendations for kids' books) which is also 4 pages. I also wrote 4 pages in an answer to some interview questions for Mountain Living magazine. Apparently, 4 pages is my standard response to the universe.  I had grant applications due (also 4 pages), one nonfiction book manuscript, part of a novel, part of an paper for an scholarly journal to read for my friends (I'm almost done fine friends). Ander and I judged the annual essay contest, meaning we read over 100 manuscripts. Plus, I'm behind on normal Diagram duties. Oh the internet, you seem like fun but you are often work-like.

For the Bending Genre book, we have a 'marketing questionairre' to fill out. I tried to find good places to send the book to be reviewed and to get a few reviewers. I also have to think about Quench, which is coming out around the same time in March. My publisher was very sick last semester so things got a little delayed but I think are back on track. I have to think of marketing plans for that book too and make web sites for both. I think for the Bending Genre book, I'm just going to use a Word Press blog site that I can just update with new news and make some links. For Quench, I think I need a whole new "author" site, which sucks because somehow I lost my old one and now I'm flummoxed. Speaking of websites, I added a FAQ for the English Department and am still working on this whole fundraising mailing that no one wants me to do but damn it. I already ordered the business reply envelopes so that is that. Also, Michael Martone is coming for the High Altitude Writing Institute and Pam Houston is coming for the Northern Arizona Book Festival. It's going to be a busy spring and I may as well send a mailing out about it.

I had normal holiday tasks to attend to. I made peppermint bark. We decorated the tree. I bought presents. I stressed that I didn't buy enough presents. I cooked prime rib and every winter vegetable known to man--except the turnips, which we ate raw. We took down the tree. We also went to the desert desert to see my family where it was not even that warm. We had dinner at my sister's boyfriend's parent's house and now my sister and that boyfriend are getting married. Coincidence? Doubtful.

The best part though was when I stopped worrying about getting all this stuff done. Erik had 10 full days off thanks to holidays and flex time. Zoe and Max had two weeks off. On December 31st, Zoe and Max and I went hiking in the snow with Cleo. On January 1st, we went sledding. On January 2nd, we went cross country skiing for the second time this break. On January 3rd, we went ice-skating for the first time ever for Zoe and Max and the first time for me since I was 12. Max thought it was cold but Zoe liked it. On January 4th, we went nowhere and Zoe wondered what happened to our week of winter wonderland sporting events? On the 6th, Zoe took a private skiing lesson and Erik and I took Max out on skis for his very first time on his first birthday.

This week, I finished my grant apps, the Fall 2013 teaching schedule, and, my syllabi, in so far that syllabi are ever finished.

And now, today, on Sunday, we have finished the thank you notes for Max's birthday and for Christmas and I have written a blog so everything can return to normal which is sadly as busy as the break, but with less winter sports (I took Zoe ice-skating on Friday in an effort to maybe start a habit.)

Next weekend, camping in the desert!

Max is 3.

Lately, every night before bed, we read "Going on a Bear Hunt" three times a night. Max says that if encountered a bear, "I will find him and wrap him and tape him up." He is full-fledged rescue mode. Spiderman last week. Super Why this week. His grandparents got him Superman pajamas and, since he's never seen Superman, he calls them Super Why like that kids show on PBS.

He has memorized the book, "No David" because he likes to be the one telling people "no." "Put your toys away," he tells David. I try to convince him that he should lead by example, but he just looks at me and reads aloud, "Don't play with your food." Poor David. Always being told 'no.'

Max too should stop playing with his food and maybe eat some. He eats about four things, most of them involving oats of one sort or another, mostly granola bars. He likes pears. And edamame. And candy by the bucketload. I ask him if he wants to get tall like dad or tall like mom. I think it's a good threat, suggesting he may only be 5'2" if he doesn't eat his tortilla. But he says, "tall like Zoe" and runs away.  He does like quinoa. Quinoa makes you tall right? If you ask him to please eat a bite of cheese or perhaps some turkey, he says, "I'm fine. I'm fine" He's very polite, the non-eating super why guy.

He likes to sled and ski and ice-skate for about 7 minutes per. "It's too cold," he says. He's right. It's -5 degrees right now.

Right now he's playing wild cats with Zoe and watching Nancy Drew. I think having a big sister makes him grow up a little too fast but I think he also keeps her a little younger for awhile. He can talk her into playing "garbage truck," "fire truck," "ambulance" "recycling truck," "tools" and "paint."

I love that he thinks all danger can be stopped with tape. He still says, when he wants to be picked up, "Carry you." He's getting bigger but not too big for that.

2012: A Wrap.

I wanted to send a note to everyone I knew detailing what we did this past year. I thought, that will be pretty quick. 2012 was a pretty good year but a pretty mellow one. No new kids were born. Nobody changed jobs. We took no huge trips to Italy or Costa Rica. We didn't move. But that vision of 2012 was the vision from the mind of someone with a hazy memory because when I sat down to think about what happened this year, I remembered some things did happen. Some good ones and some bad ones and, for someone who claims not to love to travel, a lot of travel. 

Also. Max turned 2. Which was kind of the defining point of the year. 

In January, our friends Misty and John and their five-year old Louisa rented a house in the desert. It was plenty cold in Flagstaff and we hadn't seen these friends in  four years so we headed down to see them. Zoe and Louisa ate 36 Cuties (those possibly Genetically Modified Oranges that are so easy to peel. Zoe repeats the TV commercial 's tagline daily, Cuties are for kids. Although sometimes she lets me eat them too). The kids built a castle with a moat from water diverted from the Grand Canyon. We ate delicious salad and this is where Zoe learned she loved toast but really only if Misty makes it. 
Also in January, Erik and I went to see Social Distortion 
and I had a super long essay about microorganisms published in The Normal School.  That was cool because it was very long. For me. 

February, there was still travel but this was by myself and so less fun. AWP was in Chicago this year, in February, if I didn't mention it was February in Chicago already. The highlights were seeing grad school friends. Like almost all of them. In the lobby of the Hilton where they always hold AWP in what always seems like February. The lowlights were February in Chicago but it wasn't that bad. Lunch at the Art Institute with Jenn Gibbs, Dave Hawkins and Cole Swensen made up for the cold. You can tell February was its normal February self for the lack of photos taken by either my phone, Erik's phone, or Erik's fancy camera. Poor February. However, it was brightened by the visiting of my sisters and my niece and nephews. This is a picture of the nephews. The nieces, once together, become wind-like and as equally hard to photograph.

March was hard. My friends' Rebecca and Todd's twin daughters were born too early in January. We wanted to see them. We didn't want to be in the way. We wanted to help. There was nothing we could do. Still, we went. First we stopped by Julie and Steve's house near Big Bear on the way to Los Angeles. Staying in the mountains of California makes you realize why people move to California. Also, my best friends live in California which is another reason to want to move to California. Also. The beach.

Erik and Todd took Bek and Todd's kids and Max and Zoe to the beach while I went with Rebecca to meet Andi, the new baby on a ventilator. That day, the doctors talked to Rebecca about taking Andi off the ventilator. It was a miracle and I feel so lucky to have been there. And, it made me feel like I wasn't entirely in the way. Bek and I went out to lunch at a French Bistro to celebrate while the kids were at the beach. Steak tartare and wine at noon. Another reason to like California. 

The real good news is though that Andi is doing so well. She's meeting her milestones and gaining weight and is almost one year old. One year! Progress!

Later that March, ,we met Julie and Steve and her kids to camp in the Muddy Mountains outside of Las Vegas. To see those folks already now three times, if you count AWP, in one year is a record. And it's only March!

In April, I thought I was dying from some heart condition but the ER doctors said it was just stress. I blame my job and the attempt to turn our MA into an MFA Indeed, once the MFA was approved, the heart pains disappeared. Also it snowed in April. But then, it was regular April and Zoe started Microsoccer  which made me write more microessays which you can find here and here. 

May was bad because my grandmother died. She had been doing totally well but complications due to diabetes became too complicated. She was 85. I miss her. We did get to go to Salt Lake for the funeral, for which I am grateful.



May was good though because my mom retired. She could visit more! I hosted the High Altitude Writing Institute, and since Max's day care had imploded, my mom came to the rescue. We also, that same week, ordered seven tons of landscaping rock, kind of a yellowish, pinkish, whiteish, brown rock, for the front yard. We only made my mom shovel 1 of the tons of rocks. 

May was also good because here, if you drive a bit, you can already be outdoor swimming. Our good friend Sam invited us and our good friend Beya and her kids to swim in Sedona. Thanks Sam!

Also in May, Ander and Megan came to visit. That was much fun as usual. They got us hooked on Words with Friends. We'll get some work done later. 

Sadly, I also got in a car accident in May. It was minor but a car accident is never a good thing, making May a difficult, if sometimes also great, month. 

In June,because we'd had so much fun with Misty and John and Louisa, we went to Portland for the longest, biggest trip we'd taken since Max was born. We went to the coast. 


We went to Pok Pok. We went to OMSI. We drove in the rain. I hadn't been to Portland for 5 years. I drove by my old house on Brooklyn Street. It looked the same. People's Food Co-op looked entirely different. We also visited our friend Van's new brewery, Gigantic Brewing. A microbrewery. If you're getting the theme here. There's Erik, standing next to one of Van's not so micro barrels.








I spent the most of July teaching an online class and working on long essays about Micropreemies and Microclimates and Microwine and freaking out about Max's preschool situation. The one preschool that I liked the best, required him to be potty-trained. The other one that I didn't like so much, didn't require him to be potty trained but they did require him to go five days a week. That seemed a bit much for a Max. It also seemed a bit much for a two year old to get potty trained, these days. But I bought a Cars themed potty and began to apply myself. Max, at first, applied himself not at all. But he did like to go walking in the woods with me and would sometimes there pee. Progress!

We also went camping with our friends Mara and Martin and Lis and Alex and their kids. We did not take pictures of that. For a glimpse of our camping spot, look at the picture of us swimming at Sam's. We camped up there on that ridge called Sycamore canyon. 

Zoe traveled more than the rest of us. She went to Montana for Erik's cousin's daughter's wedding. She danced until midnight. She went on a rafting trip. She got almost as many mosquito bites as she did three years before in Italy. Even so, it was hard to convince her to return. But, we were fortunate in that we could bribe her with a birthday party. Z turned seven. I turned 100.

We did get to go down to Phoenix in the middle of July and if you can't call that traveling, I don't know what you'd call it. Erik got us tickets to the Diamondbacks and his parents found an awesome hotel. We watched the Diamondbacks play baseball. Max learned to like coffee and Zoe learned how to be 17. 

Throughout the summer, Zoe went to Camp Invention, and two Discovery Camps--one Spanish and one Poderosa Explorers. She was signed up for another but we canceled because summer was already almost over. Zoe and Max took many swimming lessons. Zoe can swim across the pool. Max can get his face wet. Progress!

My friend Karen and I started a writing group where I finished (again!) Salmon of the Apocalypse AND made progress on the Micro project. Summer appears to be full of small bit of progress.




While Erik worked and worked at his job, making short films like What's Cooking which feature restaurants around town: Tinderbox, Brix, and Elote, to name a few and started remodeling Zoe's bedroom (scraping the popcorn off the ceilings, painting it green and purple, tearing out the carpet) the kids and I went up to Salt Lake where my sister Paige took them to bouncy town in practically Provo (so far from Salt Lake! And hadn't I just driven through?) and we swam every day and I ran up by the zoo and for the piece de la resistance? Lagoon. I love Lagoon but, unlike the kids, I need never go there again. 

We spent the rest of the trip being hosted by my sister who knows how to cook for 17 competing appetites. Paige and Val and I had another Iron Chef, this time, Iron Chef ocean. I made crab sandwiches and hamachi salad and cauliflower panna cotta with smoked trout. Val made whole roasted snapper, ikura three ways, paella and fun of an octopus. Paige made clam dip, mussels and shrimp bisque. We did leave a micro amount of fish in the ocean.

Zoe and Max got to hang out with their newest cousin, Blake, and who, is now one of their I-wish-we-lived-in-Salt-Lake cousins like Lily and Cam. 

Fortunately, in October, my mom will bring two of the three cousins to visit us, but we're not quite there yet. First, the kids must help their dad finish Zoe's bedroom 
while I spend the latter part of August figuring out the new data system for how-to-apply for tenure.
This is the first year you had to upload all your materials into Faculty 180, a software program designed to make you regret getting your PhD. Of course, I go up the year of the electronic upheaval. But between Angie, my friend and the department's associate chair and me, we figured it out. So far so good from the various and sundry thumb's-up-for-tenure-givers. 

September? What else happened? We went to pizza at Fratelli's and took this picture outside in the dry Rio de Flag riverbed.

This year, the river should have been running. It rained every day in the summer. From Zoe's birthday (see July) until the end up September. And not just the 1-3 in the afternoon monsoons but sometimes from 11 to 5. It was wet and good. A lot like our trip to Portland.

Although I told Zoe that she could do only one activity per week, she does four. Mondays are gymnastics, Tuesdays Spanish tutoring, Wednesday homework club and Thursday Ballet Folkoricio. Max made it to the potty-trained preschool! Good job Max. September is the month of figuring out the tenure schedule, the activity schedule and the remodeling schedule. 

People visited like crazy in late August and September. Emily, Erik's cousin and my good friend down for a too-short weekend (come back Em!) My father-in-law's mom and his sister Tippy and her kids Lynzi and Taylor came on Labor Day.  Then, Erik's aunt Joyce, his uncle Frank, and his uncle and aunt Harold and Becky came so they could go to the University of Utah game in Phoenix. It was hotter in September than in July. 

But the visiting that occurred in September paled in comparison to the visiting that occurred in October, mostly because the September visiting happened at my mother-in-law's house (did I mention they live 0.6 miles away?) and the October visiting happened at my house. Early in the month, Robin Hemley, my nonfiction mentor from the University of Utah came to visit. He did two things--inaugurate the new MFA and  to work on the film he and Erik had shot the summer of 2011 in Poland. Roast Beef in the Jews will be at a theater near you soon. Ish. Robin has to come back and visit some more (come back Robin!). 

Then, my mom brought my niece and nephew down for 5 days of I-wished-we-all-lived-in-Flagstaff. Then, my good friend Peter Covino, whose book The Right Place to Jump had just been released, came to visit my class and to give a reading at La Posada in Winslow, AZ. La Posada is the train station designed by Mary Colter and once had been a Harvey Hotel but then had collapsed into disrepair. Allen Affeldt, his wife, and Dan Lutzick restored. Julie Paegle brought her family to stay with us and read with me and Peter making this the 4th time I'd seen Julie this year. Erik's sister came to visit too. She stayed for Halloween. October visits made this year one of the best ever. 

Then, November,  I tried a modified NaNoWriMo writing 500 words a day. Tiny progress. For my birthday, Erik hung my wall of copper and

who, with his parents, took me to Napa

 where I stalked Geoffrey Zakarian 

and drank wine. 



















And then we came home from Napa. I wrote letters of recommendation and apparently, mostly, ran out of words for the year. 

December seems like it's full of Christmas but really it's full of letters of recommendation writing. We did go to the light parade in downtown Flagstaff which is just like the Fourth of July parade, but with lights. 





We decorated a tree and sang some songs

and spent the day with Erik's family where we made this prime rib. 

W met my family in an undisclosed desert location, making the year a circle of time, where indeed just last January we were with Misty in a different undisclosed desert location and yet also, forward we went, making some progress. Max turns three in a week. He has moved on from Thomas the Train to Spiderman. He likes to say "bootie." We like him not to.  He's reading his letters and likes us to read the book "Go to Bed" which somehow makes him stay up later. Erik is polyurethaning new doors in the kids' rooms and sneaking in to work today to work on the Roast Beef movie. I am stressing about books forthcoming (Zone 3 Press! Continuum Press!) and books forthwaiting and books I wrote and books I want to write.  I will try to unstress this stress by actually writing something this week. Zoe is drawing a tiger for her cousin Lily with the art supplies she got for Christmas. She is mad that we're probably not going to go skiing today because we just realized that half of Arizona will probably be trying to make it up the mountain today and it costs $65 for an adult day pass. Snowshoeing does not sound to her like an acceptable substitute.  Perhaps she will instead read a book. She is pretty forgiving still, even for a seven (teen) year old. (update. Erik's colleague's husband is firefighter. He has offered to let them slide down the firepole. The day is saved. Progress!)



Tonight, our friends Brian and Beya and Liam and Ian are coming over. Erik's parents, if they're over this cold that we've all had for 10 days, will come too. I'll make spanikopita (because the spinach leaves promise it will be a good year)  chicken souvlaki, greek salad, potatoes. We'll stay up at least until ten. And then, we will go to the Pinecone drop downtown where it is zero degrees and full of Flagstaffians who will do anything for a well-lit pinecone. 

Happy New Year! I hope for all of us, next year is full of tiny steps forward. 

Shutting Down

It is hard to move. The end of the semester. The beginning of snow. I sit here at the kitchen table on my normal Monday morning mode without any urgency to move. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting is there any point in moving?
Oh, there is. Max is here. He can't find his hammer. He would like some juice. A smoothie. Some pistachios. I will get up and get him those things, look for his hammer, find another Curious George. Trey to stop crying although it doesn't concern him too much. The computer always makes his mama cry.
I should leave the computer. I should go sit and watch Curious George and drink a smoothie and stop looking at news that only makes me feel like no matter what I do, it will end in collapse. The mother. It's always the mother's fault. She's the one who kept the guns. She's the one who coddled him. Should I make Max find his own hammer? She's the one who didn't coddle him enough? Should I run out to the store to get a new hammer now that we can't find the yellow and orange one. And then there's the Huff Post article going around called "I am Adam Lanza's mother" written by a mother who feels threatened by the violence of her child. And then the internet finds her blog and tells her to read this particular book. They find her blog and say she's always threatening her kids with jail time. Either way, it doesn't diminish her call for better mental health care. Even if she's a terrible mother, there is still so little help for terrible mothers with sometimes terrible children. Who knows how terrible a child can be? Only a terrible mother would ask that question. Just love them. As if. Is love finding their hammer or making them find their own? Max is almost three. Maybe he should make his own smoothie. Maybe I should not let him watch George except George is the one who makes him want a smoothie, which is better for him than the Skittles I shouldn't have let him eat but did or the Spiderman I shouldn't have let him watch but did.
I told Zoe straight up about the shooting. Not to scare her. She should be scared but not to scare her. I let her listen to the voicemail from the superindendent of the school district so she knows how serious this is. And how common. It happens every day. Today, three new, separate shootings. The Sandy Hook massacre eclipsed the mall shooting at Clackamas Town Center last week. Zoe is now clued into the news the way we are clued into the news. It washes over like a Facebook scroll until you stop crying. Who looks at the pictures of those Kindergartners? People who cry in front of computers and do nothing to find the hammers of their children who may well need them to build something. Maybe they'll figure out to build something new. Because this is getting old. Older than the news. Older than guns. Older than mothers. Older than not knowing what to do.

Goodbye Forest

It's supposed to snow tonight at midnight. 6-12 inches above 6500 feet. Our house sits somewhere about 6900. The forest behind the house dips up and down but doesn't go below 6500. It's supposed to snow all week. The trails will be covered. Today was probably my last run out there.

Last year, it snowed so rarely that I could run every day. Not that I did run every day. But I could have. This year, when I have been running every day and found out I'm running farther than my bad Run Keeper let on, so I'm loving the running all the more, I don't know what I'm going to do. I hate running in the road. I hate the cars that come up behind me, threatening to splash me with the mud and the drivers thinking, she's still got a pretty big ass for a runner, and the people in their houses drinking coffee saying to themselves, didn't she run by yesterday? Or is it just that she's so slow, she's just heading home now? And, I have to pee when I run. The forest has a tree for me to hide behind. The neighbors do not like it when I pee on their lawn. And Cleo! She can't run on the asphalt or the sidewalk. She hates the leash. She will just drag behind. I'll go even more slowly. The run will become a battle of wills between me and the dog who feels the need to check out every pile of leaves, or, as it shall be come next week, every ounce of yellowed snow. (It wasn't me. I did not pee on the snow in the neighborhood.)

I don't mind cold. I love it cold. I'd rather be cold than hot. But I like snow less than I used to. It requires shoveling and not going anywhere and what feels like today, the severing of the link between me and my  best friend, the forest. Snow also makes me prone to melodrama.

I know we need the snow. Last year. Drought! Emergency! Apocalypse drought. But sometimes I think, a little climate change, won't kill me. In fact, it will make me stronger. Watch me run that 12 minute mile! My heart. My blood pressure. My running shoes. The neighbors with the yellow snow. They don't mind global warming.

Goodbye forest. See you in April. Maybe, if I'm ambitious, I'll dig my snowshoes out and come visit.

The Blog Insecurity

It's like the Bourne Identity but darker. There are so many things you can't blog about: specific students, specific friends, specific colleagues, specific husbands. You can't blog about money because you'll seem too rich or too pretend poor or about running because you'll seem still too fat or too obviously thin. You can't blog about how your blog will appear because you'll be a) too self-conscious and b) too boring.

And it is with this, self-consciousness and boringness that I will recap the semester while simultaneously wrapping it all up with the blog insecurity and its attendant dilemmas.

As often happens around the 8th week of the semester, I'm about ready for the semester to be over. That is a feeling that comes about 8 weeks too soon. It makes me feel like a crappy teacher to have these feelings. My job is awesome and teaching writing is awesome and my students are generally awesome but by week 8, the workshop model and the harping on the physical, idiosyncratic (saying it wrong nearly every time), the concrete, the specific, the scene, the image, the example, the argument makes me feel like I sound like a puppet. A puppetmaster mastering a very repetitive puppet. Who can't say the word idiosyncratic.

You can feel, as my students feel my reluctance, the whole class losing cohesion. If we were a boat, we'd be taking on water. If we were a class, we'd start self-consciously still asking for more scene by saying things like, I know I always ask for more scene but I really think more scene would be good here. Here's an example of scene you do well. Do it again. Here.

Even with the concrete example of an imagistic, idiosyncratic scene, some students just don't get it. And then, as I did once in a class with Karen Brennan, they start using horrible words like "reverie." One student used the word "intimated" as a dialogue-tag.

I do this too when I get nervous. Use weird, formal language, usually inappropriately when I get self-conscious and insecure. When people say be more specific, have a point, draw us a picture, be more present, I shellac a wall of bad writing around me to protect me from my worst fear: that someone doesn't like me (my writing, but really, since I like to write and I like people to like my writing, it feels like not liking my writing is not liking me. Which it is, except when I'm writing badly because that is "not me" writing, that's some weird impostor that uses phrases like, "she sank into reverie." I don't like that person either but it's hard to get her out of my head when people are yelling about me about idiosyncranicity which I'm pretty sure is not a word.)

So goes the teaching where at once I feel their frustration, and, especially the first semester students, I feel their nervousness but I also feel like 8 more weeks of reverie might kill me.

Sometimes there are breakthroughs.
Sometimes the 8 weeks continue forth and I bite my tongue and let someone else say, "scene."

Of course, week 15 or so, I am panicking that they didn't learn enough and that they are losing all confidence and all they will do is intimate in my general direction so then I start with the platitudes in conferences about we love you and we just want you to succeed and we just want you to know what we mean by scene. Here, let me show you again. And I feel like I was too mean and I feel like I was too nice and I feel like I don't know if any of us need to put any more words into the world anyway.

And then I get notes like this: "Also, I would like to thank you for a wonderful class. I enjoyed it very much, and I wish I could have attended this last one. You were an awesome teacher (I shouldn't use the past tense here) and other poets were all amazingly talented. So in short, thanks."

So. OK. Not so bad. Maybe harping on the word 'scene' and 'image' didn't destroy my students' ears and all their confidence (confidence?) in the pedagogy of creative writing. And, you thought the other students were getting pretty good at their writing? You are a nicer person than I. It's OK to be nice.

And another student said, didn't intimate, actually said,, "this class has been so awesome. My other classes. They just don't put in the effort you do." Effort? I accidentally wrote "reverie" all over your paper but thank you for taking it with the full force of kindness behind it.

And so, there it is. the students are more self-conscious than I. And I should learn as they should learn and maybe we both have learned that if you get all worried about your writing that worry will come out in your writing in the form of reverie and in your teaching in the form of intimation and instead of writing anything interesting about the world or the words or the people or the pine needles on the ground that are itching to get inside your shoe and ruin your day, you will write a bunch of crappy, defensive bullshit that uses words like insecurity and self-conscious and "blog" and "publish."

So on days when I'm feeling all crappy with rejection and wonder about the way my students keep writing about how they are sad instead of giving me a scene about pine needles, instead of writing about the crappiness, I shall write about pine needles on the ground trying to get into my shoe or food because food is always present and immediate and useful and sometimes people will say,  yes! you can put hollandaise on lettuce and call it a salad. And there is a scene, right there. With egg yolk and butter all over the computer keyboard. A sticky "e" indeed.

The Failings of November

"I want juuuuuuiiiiiiccccce," says (says?) Max.
"Max. Just ask for juice. Juice only has one syllable. I will get you some juice."
Juice procured. Apple. Purple sippy.
"I want orrrrannnnge juuiiicce."
New juice procured. Orange. Orange sippy."
"I want orange juiccce in purple sippppppppppy." Tear. Big ones. Very loud tears. Very loud request. Very loud picking up of Max and putting him on the bed in his room. Very big cry for daddy. Who will wonder at him why he needs orange juice in his purple sippy.
We don't often understand the ways of the Max. He is loud. We are confused. Many tears shed by many people.

In the forest, running with Zoe.
"But my leg itches."
"Do we have to stop every five feet?"
"But it REALLY itches."
"Isn't that what running is for. To ignore the itching? I thought you said you wanted to go running. You used to go running with me when you were 6. Now that you're 7, you don't even like to run."
Zoe just stares at me, like my head popped off, came back and nestled somewhere on my shoulders but she couldn't be convinced it wouldn't just pop off again.
"Fine. I'll run."
She ran all the way home. Tears? Many. Shed by whom? Shed by all.

Dear Glossy Magazine,
I have no idea how to submit to glossy magazines. I believe I need an agent. Since I am currently without an agent, I am emailing you randomly. I imagine I will have great success with this plan. This is similar to people posting privacy notices on Facebook. Facebook is not going to care about your privacy notice. You don't get the system. You don't get the system at all.

In the car with Erik after picking the kids up from their 1 hour playdate.
"Now what are we going to do?" Erik asked.
"I thought you wanted to go downtown,"
"I just don't know what we'll do there."
"We can look at stores. Preshop."
"All the stores will be closed."
"I want sushi," Zoe says from the backseat. Max says he wants juice.
"Why don't you and Zoe go downtown. We'll go home."
Zoe and I head downtown, buy my friend some socks for her birthday, a bike bell for Zoe. Erik calls, "Max wants to talk to you."
"Tell him I will bring him some juice."

Dear Magazine that has had my essays for a year,
Happy Thanksgiving!
Response:
I don't know how to respond? I'm sorry to keep you waiting.
My response:
It's fine! I'm just glad to have you for a reader! Thank you so much!

To have you for a reader? There's no reading going on anywhere around here.

Movies watched: Spiderman, Horse Whisperer, Collateral (half), Brave, Spiderman. All night long, Max talks out his dreams, "Spiderman has no mouth. He has to eat his cereal before he puts his costume. I want a costume. I'll keep it in my backpack for when the lizard comes. I don't like big lizards." Parenting fail #3!

Gravy: Mediocre. Pumpkin pie: best ever. Why? Used puree from a can instead of made my own. Bites of dinner eaten on Thanksgiving? 5. Stomach flus: 3. Runny noses: 2. Hours of sleep: 2, 6, 8, 11, 11, 7. Leftovers consumed: most of them. Desire to make dinner tonight? 0. Weekends where expectations were too high? All of them.

Ever since the hard freeze that turned the most beautiful yellow fall I'd ever seen in Flagstaff brown, I've been in a funk. Part of it is the university where do-more-with-less has become the motto and today we are all to be asked to join in the Pearson buy out of our name. One of my colleagues at work suffered a stroke; another one's husband was hit by a car while riding his bike and was killed. The drought is back in force after the wettest monsoon. Flagstaff is seeming pretty trappy. The four day weekend was spent mostly at home. Also trappy. 

Highlight of the weekend: The drive to lakes that we didn't know existed. Would like to go back to that Friday where everyone was mostly healthy, no one wanted that much juice and I didn't have to make dinner and Max had not yet known the dangers and attractions of the man dressed in a unitard with a mask with no mouth.

Not sleeping

Last night, around 11:30, Zoe started throwing up. I would like to question the universe, why cannot the children throw up in the day time? Is there something more enterprising about a stomach virus that requires the peaceful sleep of the whole household to truly activate? Does the virus prefer to be expelled upon the bed, onto the floor, into a drawer?
But there is no such thing as a one-time throwing up that begins at 11:30. So, I tried to go back to sleep but I knew I wouldn't which is the key to not going back to sleep. It was easier to get up at 12:30 and 1:30 and 3:00 then. But I was mad at myself that I couldn't make myself go to sleep. I tried to think of movies, like Contagion, but that just made me nervous of all flu. I tried to think of songs to sing but I could only think of "the secret to a long life is knowing when it's time to go." I got up to spray Lysol around the house a few times.
No matter why I have insomnia, I always start itching around 2:00 a.m. Why itch? What does skin have to do with sleep? Perhaps I want out of my body but what I really want is out of my head and there are no fingernails sharp enough for that.

Gratitude

If I were to go into all the details then this post would be as long as the last one and the longest blog post in the world is not the best blog post in the world.

For my birthday, Erik and his parents took me on a trip to Napa. Other people came too--El's sister Joyce and her two daughters (and my friends) Emily and Kathy, and Rick's sister Tippy and her daughter Lynzi, who area also my friends. We stayed in a great house in Napa. It was in a subdivision but you wouldn't know that from the backyard. Vines as far as you could go. We started the trip Friday night at the Robert Biale Vineyard with 6 delicious tastes of wine (we were only supposed to get 5, but we're charming. And people bought some bottles!) Then, we went to Dean & Deluca where more wine was bought. We also put dinner together from an array of cheeses and salads and roasted beets and the meats I bought: mortadella, sausicon de vic, pate champage, mousse pate, some salami similar to sopresseta, and prosciutto. We had grapes, bread, cheese at the dining room table and had one more glass of wine while lounging around the living room. Rick picked the house and it was perfect. A park across the street made it easy to run even if it was so pouring down rain Saturday morning my shoes still aren't dry today. Then we were off to Cakebread were Nancy (at 10:00 a.m.) gave us a tour and some more wine and told us how the Cakebreads bought the first 18 acres there for $2500. The barrels they house the wine in, once, cost $800-$1200 each. $2500 went further in 1969. Then, off again! This time to Inglenook/Coppola/Rubicon (it keeps changing hands). We had 4 delicious sips here and Erik bought about bottle of Inglenook 4 lot to go with the bottle of 1985 Inglenook Larry Chatacombe gave me when we worked at the Oregon Winegrowers Association together in the 1990's. It is sometimes only in retrospect that people have been so generous to you for so long. Speaking of generosity, Tippy bought the tasting at Rubicon/Inglenook/Coppola for my birthday. It is so great to be loved by Californians who love great wine.

In the parking lot, before the tasting, we ate the rest of the chaucuterie and cheese. Picnicking appears to be illegal in Napa wineries. We called it tailgating and ate from the back of the car. We were not arrested.
We had hours! (an hour) to kill before our next tasting at Opus. We went to Turnbull Cellars whose wine wasn't that great but their showing of original Ansel Adams photographs was. Then to Opus which was annoying because for $35 you got half a glass of wine but you did get to see what it looks like (and imagine what it costs) to grow grass up the slopes of your building.

Then, to dinner at the Presse! I do not get many oysters in Flagstaff. Here, I got oysters, lobster and shrimp on the cold seafood platter I shared with Erik. We also shared a Wagyu Flat Iron steak which was delicious but maybe not quite as good as the one from our local ranch where we get most of our meat--Flying M. So, it's a trade-off. Oysters for steak.

But then we were all exhausted, as if somehow drinking tiny sips of wine all day was hard work. We sat and stared at a football game for 10 minutes and then went to bed.
Sadly, the other folks had more tastings on Sunday but Erik and I thought we shouldn't make the kids or the babysitter stay together for three nights so we packed up in the morning, drove through the town of Napa, and made our 8 hour trip home.

But this is also what I'm grateful for. Ali, the world's best babysitter/housesitter/dog sitter. We got home. The house was clean. The kids had eaten and she had put them in their pajamas, teeth brushed. The dishwasher was empty. The dog was fed. The sheets Ali had slept on she had washed. Zoe's lunch was made. It was like coming home not from a vacation but to another vacation, one where the kids were peaceful and happy and bathed. It was a dream to come home to and reminded me how rare it is to truly get a full-on break and she made it so the vacation was the truest vacation. I am so grateful to her and to Tippy and Rick who put the whole trip together and Erik who bought the plane tickets and the rental car and drove through crazy Oakland traffice on Friday  and El who gave me for my birthday the outfits for me to wear on the winetasting.

It's so impossible to say how grateful you are over and over to people, filling their cups with these words of gratitude because the cup gets full and they get it and one thank you is enough but they have no idea how deep in the marrow of my bones where I mix my metaphors and make my tea of gratitude how grateful I am to everyone who seems to give me so much for no good reason.