Summer esque

It has been five weeks since graduation. Supposedly, my summer should have started shortly after the last student turned his last thesis in. But the High Altitude Writing Institute was coming up in only two weeks. The dean wanted to take me to Winslow. External reviewers needed tenure application materials and internal reviewers needed professional statements. I needed to pack for Portland. I needed to drive to Phoenix, fly, alone with Max to Portland. I had to have fun, damnit, in Portland. Portland should have been the beginning of summer but I kept getting emails about external reviewers and professional statements.  First proofs of Quench came on Wednesday. Interview questions came yesterday. A student getting funding from the tribal council needed a program of study filled out and faxed immediately.
But somewhere in the middle of Portland, perhaps over at Reed College where we saw the beaver tooth-sawing a tree for his dam, or perhaps at the coast where we made salmon and quinoa and salad in our hotel room after soaking the kids in 50 degree ocean waves, in 60 degree air temps, after helping Misty build a fortress of water and sand that she could submit for an application to urban planning school, should she decide to stop being an immigration lawyer (which she shouldn't. Because she's an awesome lawyer), after eating at Pok Pok and eating raw salmon from QFC and eating chef-sanctioned sushi on Hawthorne, after going to OMSI, after driving in the rain, after missing so much but remembering almost as much (blue house on Brooklyn. You are looking a bit thin), after thinking there is no way I can make the drive up from Phoenix to Flag, there is no way I can unpack, there is no way I can repack for camping, there is no way I can drive in the car another minute, we arrived at the end of route 231 overlooking Sedona and I sat down and realized, summer has been happening all along. This is actually going pretty well. The work. Well, an hour on tenure file, an hour on my designing my class, two hours writing, one hour emailing and program of study making, one hour of reading proofs is still only a 6 hour day and most of it, I can do outside, in the wind, with Max here some of the time helping me with his tools and driving around me or into me with his cars or convincing me that playing Lego's is more fun than organizing tenure files--it's not so bad. This is summer. I have successfully sat outside with my mom who stayed for a week and did too much work with rocks and weeds but just the right amount with Max and Zoe. I have sat outside with Misty and John and Van and Emily and Andy drinking wine by the fire and on their porch, even though it was only 60 degrees there too, and with Rick and El at their house around their fire, with Lis and her kids at my house for dinner and with Karen and Sam on the deck for writing group. I sat outside while camping and watered plants outside. I went running outside every day at 6:45. I am typing this outside even though the wind is annoying and that whatever hope I had of bringing rain home from Portland has been summarily dashed.
But I have found some water. After camping, we went down into that creek we had been overlooking the day before and got full-on wet in a swimming hole. On Tuesday, we went swimming with Lis and her kids at Bear Paw--the neighborhood pool. And tomorrow-- East Clear Creek with Emily with whom I will also sit outside tonight because she's visiting from Salt Lake.
We may be in desperate need of water here but here I have found some. And, I may be in desperate need of summer but apparently, summer has been here for awhile now.

Funk

It took me this long to come up with an appropriate title since last I posted. It's summer. I should not be in a funk. I should be swimming. But there is no water in Flagstaff and the water was too cold to really swim in in Portland and i had no idea how narrowly I had constructed my world and what gives with my tastebuds anyway? I need a publicist to make me seem famous and happy but instead I have funk.
The funeral was the first funk. Then, pneumonia by Z. Then a car accident with Z that wasn't bad but just expensive enough to put me in a funk. Work. In the summer time. When I'm supposed to be writing. Then, Max's daycare imploded. Then. Work with Max.In the office kind of work that I'm not getting paid for. In fact, I'm not getting paid at all until July 12th which puts me in additional funk. Then it was windy. Then Cleo the dog got so arthritic we thought she would die and we had to carry her inside on a bed sheet. Ibuprofen and she is much better and much less in a funk than I even though I take an egregious amount of ibuprofen.
Unfunk, I say to myself. Here's a list of unfunk:
I went on an airplane trip with the children and survived!
I saw the ocean.
I saw goats. Even baby goats.
I ate street raspberries.
I ate at Pok Pok.
I ate raw salmon (a lot. Possibly too much. A little off since the raw salmon eating frenzy of 2012).
I saw friends from before (who said the words 20 years a little too often.)
I realized that no one really cares about what I'm working on (which is a good and bad realization but an important one I think. It's important to think of work as just work).
I am still in love with Portland but not in that desperate way I used to be. Flagstaff is awesome. Especially when it's not windy. If only it had some water.
I am writing every day. Not here. But I'll try. This Hightouch post is true about how writing is the best, even if you don't have a publicist.

Here's a list of the nonwriting things I have to do before I can write all summer.

Section Introductions for Bending Genre

Website for MFA

Website for How to apply to grad school

               (We do need the form for current students interested in applying for GTA positions)

Tenure!

Faculty 180—attachments

1.      Find Sections student workers can scan

a.      Letters.

b.      Teaching summaries

2.      Write section intros. Upload evidence to CV.

Design Eng 573

               Upload texts, assignments, syllabus.

Book orders for Fall.

Book release business.

               Email Reed.

Acknowledgments for Quench

But here's the fact. 1 page a day of each thing plus the above list will make this a fine summer. Plus swimming. Plus, some anti-funk which I believe is swimming plus bike ride. 

Better, and Worse

I went to the Cardiologist to see about the heart flutterings. Ignore them, he said. Ignore them. Do some yoga. Everyone is firing off odd electrical signals from the heart, he said. Ignore them. And so, thus ignored, they mostly went away, at least until Saturday when I got an email that my grandmother wasn't doing well. The nurse gave her a few days. A few days? I'd just talked to her on the phone. My mom had seen her last week. She was fine. My sisters saw her on Easter. Fine. I mean, not fine. She'd been downward-spiraling since October when she broke her ankle. She went to the nursing home for rehab. After a day of physical therapy, they put ice on her leg. But they put it on the wrong leg--not the one that had been working out--the one with the cast that absorbed the melting ice. The cast festered. Her leg festered. It got gangrene. She lost her leg below the knee on my birthday. When we saw her at Christmas in the hospital, she was out of it. If she'd passed away then, I'd have understood. But two weeks later when she got home, after Erik's uncle built her a ramp for her wheelchair, after everyone visited her at the house, after she had her cat back, she seemed like she'd be OK. But, she'd had diabetes for years. And losing a leg does bad things to your circulatory system. She wasn't digesting food well. She was not doing as well as I thought she was when I talked to her the last time. I didn't know it would be the last time. I guess you rarely do.

It's weird that I feel like I've been given back my good health with the word ignore it just when Grandma was losing hers. But it's not all about me. But death does weird things to perspective. You do think about your own death even though you try to focus on how much has gone from the universe now that she's not her. You do start paying attention to things--if grandma could see these lilacs. I should pay good attention to these lilacs.You never know when these will be your last lilacs. I got all morbid and told my students, poetry is the genre of death. We're all marching toward death. Poetry says, pay attention. It will all be gone soon. It's very unAmerican to think like that. Of death at all. We like fiction--the idea that narrative will take us on a train trip. We'll go somewhere cool and when it ends, and the book is dead, we're still alive. Take that, we say to the book. Poems try to slow us down. Looking at things slow might as well be looking at the best woods for caskets.

But my grandma herself. She will miss her cat. Her plum tree. Pussy willows. Her daughters. Her Saltines. Her Coca-Cola bears. Well, it's a long list. I'll write it up for the funeral. I'm glad I get to be there with my family so they can make a list too--even if it's a little like poetry.

Relax

It's the trying to relax that's the problem. Driving, car pulls in front of you, miss the light, miss the next light, miss the next light, try to breathe, it's only elementary school but in so breathing and rationalizing it's only elementary school, you realize you are breathing heavier, not more slowly and just because you're not screaming at the car the pulled in front of you or at the lights doesn't mean your heart isn't beating faster.
I went to the ER on Saturday. My heart felt all fluttery--like it was trying to swallow and I kept telling my heart, don't eat that, but it was, apparently hungry enough to make me nervous. So, extra nervous I went to the ER where I was told to relax and try not to be so nervous which of course made me nervous--am I nervous now? Are you hooking me up to what monitor? Are you sure I'm not dying? Are you asking me if I'm stressed a lot right now? It's the end of the semester. I have two kids. I'm going up for tenure. I have two books coming out. I need to make dinner. I need to make dinner that is healthy and won't kill me and is made from organic wild rice that costs $10.00 a pound and my account is overdrawn now. Every time my heart flickers, I think, am I stressed right now? As I read Pam Houston I wonder, are Pam's stories of near-death on plane flights stressing me out? Is the fight between nonfiction and fiction stressing me out? If I choose John D'agata will I lose all my friends? When will John send his essay for one of the books that's coming out next year? Maybe he won't. Maybe that's good. Maybe I should spend less time on Facebook wondering about nonfiction, less time talking to my students about nonfiction and write some nonfiction but I really should write some poems but I hate sending poems out because you have to put them in batches and write down the ones you sent and I forget and then someone wants one and then I have to withdraw the whole batch or more likely no one wants any and where are all these poems going to pile up? Where are the GTA's for my students? Why couldn't I get them all one? Why am I chair of a committee that has failed to get more for my students? Why am I the chair of anything? I should sit in my chair and write. I should write standing up, for my health. Typing. Typos. Spellcheck. Auto spell check on iPhone I didn't mean "nag" for Angie." Sorry, Ang.

I have made myself so aware of my anxiety that now everything contributes to it. The fork? Am I shaking? No. It's just a fork. I dropped my water glass. I should really relax. I should sweep up the glass. My life is so full of dangerous glass however will I go on? Do I have any friends? Is Flagstaff the loneliest place in the world? Is that why everyone is so nice? Does the wind make my heart skip a beat in that hungry, not so good way?

OK. Here's what can calm me down: 15 vultures by the side of Lake Elaine (a little tiny lake mostly for the rich suburb down the street.) The vultures were all standing with their backs to the lake, wings open, wide and heliotropic like solar panels. A coyote that runs far enough away in front of the car, fast enough, that you believe no coyotes get run over, ever. The coyote looking back at you through the trees. A heron in Lake Mary. A heron in the desert. A running. No weird heart flutters. Perhaps I could run forever, nonstop. The best salad in the world: leftover ($10) wild rice, carrots, olives and toasted pepitas. I should live forever heart. Well, except maybe for the olives.

There are good things and bad things (mostly bad) about feeling fragile. The shimmer is good. The birch twisting their catkins in the angina-producing wind. The dog, getting old, still running through the forest, her camouflage almost as good as a coyote's. Max who says "yes" and "love you" as if loving everyone were old hat. Zoe who wants me to guess what and the guess what is almost always about a Cheetah or an Eagle. Now that she's been to Disneyland and ridden on the California Screamer, she's stopped asking why I like birds so much. Chocolate bar from someone who promises wine and chocolate are good for your heart. The bad thing is that it almost all threatens to break, like the notes for crystal. I don't like thinking about my heart or how fragile it is. I don't like feeling fragile at all. It makes me nervous.

Mister

Mister. Buckaroo. Little Man. Tiny Chef. Maxxa. Maxi. Maximalian. Bubba. Manchego. Max goes by these names and other ones I can't remember. He's 2 years and almost three months old and he's wearing Zoe's old converse that look just like Zoe's very old converse.

I don't know if I wrote about this before but Max. We called him stubborn, but that was us just trying to be nice. Max was a bit of a screamer. I did mention the "train. train. TRAIN" aspect of him earlier. He does like a cookie. Cookie. COOKIE. When we took his bottle away, he cried "more milk" and made the one sign he knew, the image of a milking a cow all day until his hand hurt. When he finally realized we weren't going to give in, he said fine. No bottles. No milk. He hasn't had a drinkof milk since.

But, sometime around his 2nd birthday I said to Erik and Zoe but mostly myself. "It must be hard, being Max. We're all so used to us be us, and us being us together. Max has his own plans, like trains and cookies, and, when they're not being our plans, we think he's being a stubborn butthead. But maybe we would think that less if, once and awhile, we could appreciate trains and cookies with him. Let Max be Max.

Since then, Max has chilled extremely. Maybe also he has chilled because he can talk. His talking is impressive. He's a bit of a myna bird. He'll say whatever you say. Usually, it's just the end of your sentence. "Max, you want to sit down?" "Sit down." "Can I have the keys." "Keys." "Should Zoe sit down?" "Zoe. Sit." He's a fan of the imperative form. It's fun to try to make him work and say, "delicious" or "inquisitive" or "serendipity." It IS delicious, his serendipitous inquisivity.  He can also very much make his own sentences, which usually take the form of demands: "Mama carry blanket," "Mama, juice." "Mama, I watch George." "Mama, I watch Gummies." "Mama, would you please give me all the TVs, computers, and iPhone in the house and put Curious George and that dumb gummy bear song on and leave me to it?" I hate it when I don't know what he's saying. Today, he said something like "Plate ceelio poon." Which, I finally figured out meant that he would like a(nother) bowl of cereal. On plate. With a spoon. And milk. I gave him cereal in a bowl.
There's something about his being able to talk and my being able to talk to him that makes all the bowls of cereal in the world easier to get.

Today, I took him running. Usually (please don't call Child Protective Services), I get him to stay in the stroller by giving him gummy bears or Skittles. (Let's face it. Skittles was one of his first words. "More" being his first). Today though, I told him that he could walk all the way home if he would just hang in the stroller. Now, I don't know if it was my sweet argument or the fact that he was full from eating 3 bowls of cereal that made him comply, but he sat happily in the stroller until the run was mostly over and we turned toward home. On the walk home, he pointed out every Skittle-sized bit of deer poop. "Poop!" He was so happy. He squatted down to investigate it. I had to say, "goodbye deer poop" for him to move on to the next deposit.

For some reason, the forest was full of garbage today. It has been windy lately. The snow had probably covered some of this up all winter. But the run turned out to be "remove plastic from the forest day." I got the plastic. Max picked up every rock, stick, and dirt clod (not poop, I hope) and asked, "garbage?" The forest would have been very, very clean if we had stayed out there all day.

For lunch, I made Salad Lyonnaise (again. I'm sorry for you who weren't here and for those for whom I've never made it. I'm getting kind of tired of it). Max was my best audience. He loved the bacon. And, Mister I don't eat veg, he loved the salad. And the salad dressing. After lunch, I said, I need to clean up before we go get Z from school. He left me to the dishes while he went in his room, gathered up as much as his little arms could hold from his laundry basked it and carried it to the washing machine. He put down the clothes, opened the door,  stuffed the clothes in and asked, "push button?" Max likes nothing more (well, maybe Skittles and Curious George) than pushing buttons.

Too Much Spring Break

Leaving town just one week after I'd returned from AWP was a crazy idea. But it was a good one too. We packed into the car on Saturday and drove west on I-40. Max watched as the trains choo chooed parallel to us and Zoe asked for more math problems. We ran into friends at the In & Out Burger in Kingman. (Erik's disdain for fast food does not extend to In & Out Burger) on their way to San Francisco. I was glad we weren't going that far. After we left that desert for the Mojave one, we did not stop. Max played Lego's for 1.5 seconds and Zoe ate the broccoli we packed because her disdain for fast food does extend to In & Out Burger. We turned left on California State Road 237 and drove up the back way to our friends' house in Angelus Oaks. We had to stop three times since it was the turnyest of roads and Zoe gets car sick. She lied down on various tree trunks until she felt better and then we drove on.

Our friends met us in the driveway and took us into their sweet house--huge wooden beams, big windows, a big bed with a memory foam pad that for some reason they always let us sleep on. We went to the park adjacent to their son's school and road around on some sort of perpetual motion cars. Max wanted to climb up the rock walls. Mostly, we spent the afternoon keeping Max from falling on his face--the forehead is his favorite crashing spot.

Then we went to dinner at a great Yucatan restaurant. Chile rellenos are my favorite food group--far better than the In &Out Burger burger.

The next day, we drove into the valley. Rebecca was at the hospital all day with her baby so Erik and I hung out with the boys in the backyard. We made pork chops for dinner and red bliss potatoes--all from the CSA/local farms from here. The next day, Rebecca and I went to the hospital for the day while the kids and the husbands went to the beach. The first thing that happened when we walked in was they told Rebecca they were going to extubate the baby the next day. Bek hadn't expected the baby would be removed from the vent for weeks yet. She about fainted, if fainting was something Bek was inclined to do. Instead, she did what Bek does best which is ask every nurse and doctor and respiratory therapist what was good about this, what was dangerous, what were the reasons to worry and what were the  reasons to take good heart. We went to lunch to celebrate. I had steak tartare. It was good, if a little overly cornichon-y. We were happy. We spent the rest of the day with the girl, telling her she could do it.

Erik and I made carne asada for dinner. Not as CSA/local. The steak, the avocado, the tomatoes had probably all come from California, been driven to Flagstaff and then driven back. We did bring them some local (Phoenix) oranges. They weren't that good. Bek called the hospital that night. They were still planning to extubate. As we piled in the car to go back to our hotel (Hotel Angeleno--underneath the Getty Museum, off the 405--not bad), I told Bek that I thought the baby could do it.

And, the next day, as we drove home, she did. She's been off the vent since Tuesday. Today is Thursday. Everyday I send a note telling that girl to keep it up. And she does.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, Max and Zoe and I took Cleo walking in the forest. We painted. We went grocery shopping. We cooked dinner and hung out with Erik's parents. Zoe and I found a full set of dishes at the thrift store for 40 bucks. I have only bought individual plates before. I still have one from Pic & Save that I bought before I left for college. This set came with bowls and cups and saucers and salad plates.
They are white and very matchy. I kept that one from Pic & Save for back up.

Sam came over Friday night for corned beef and hash. Saturday, I tried to reproduce chile rellenos. They were pretty good. Sunday, 19 inches of snow and yet our friends drove over from the other side of town for enchiladas. Monday, an extra day of spring break because the University closed campus for snow, Erik took Max and Z sledding. Max took 4 runs and, after a spray in the face of snow, said, "I done." Z went off a jump and hurt her back on the last ride. Naps for all and the kids were recovered. We went snow shoeing and sledding again later in the day off the gentler her in the forest behind the in-law's house. I cooked for dinner something much like paella that was far more work than it was worth but with my father-in-law's help, much fun.

The return to school yesterday was rough. Department politics and the general sense that the semester should be over by now made it hard to trudge through the snow toward my office. But my students came to visit me in office hours and the essays we read for class were stellar, so I do think I'll make it through these last 7 weeks, especially because we're going camping this weekend with those same friends from Angelus Oaks because it's hot in the desert and there aren't that many chances to actually go places with friends and this town, though lovely in the snow, is returned to winter and I'm 100% ready for spring.

Yes, It IS Spring Break

How it comes at just the right time. Petty department squabbles over course caps, an office floor covered in crumbs from the reheated leftovers eaten at the desk, an inbox full of applications, of theses, of prospective incoming student questions, meeting meeting meeting requests. We travel westerly tomorrow to visit our friends in LA whose baby is in the hospital. Perspective. We also get to visit our friends who live near Big Bear. We're staying in a hotel that is not close to our LA friends. I don't know LA. I'm nervous it's too far from their house. What if it's a hellhole? I should cancel now and stay at the Culver Hotel where all the dwarfs stayed when they were filming Wizard of Oz.  I will go to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which is right across from the hotel, even if we're not staying in said hotel.

Speaking of hotels, I stayed in the hotel next to the conference hotel for AWP. What a dream. First, it was a very nice hotel. Second, the buzz and drama and anxiety of the book fair did not permeate through 19 floors to agitate me through the night. The whole AWP was good. I saw almost (almost) everyone I hoped to see. I had a great dinner with good friends and a great lunch with Big Bear friend (see her twice in one year, what luck is that?) and great drinks with the whole contingent of Utah grads--1999 until present (some key people keyly missing). It was a large party and I snuck off to the liquor store to store liquor in my purse and pour it not only more cheaply (not the point, really) but more quickly (indeed, the point) than the hotel bar staff could pour.

I must go to AWP Boston but AWP has become something, specifics above notwithstanding, that is a lot like work. AWP is not Spring Break but a good thing to do before Spring Break so you can work a lot at the book fair, at readings, at panels and get home, get all riled up by department squabbles and crumbs and inboxes, and then do something restorative like go to Los Angeles where you hope you can do some good.

A list

Do you ever, after going to the doctor, go on an anti-health kick wherein you eat cheese and pork products and fried foods for a day? I have a problem with authority.

I am cleaning the house. Every fourth inch of floor is covered in: dirt, sticky note, matchbox car, Thomas, book, book, orange peel, lego, lego, lego, train, pen, book, dirt.

I am making mole verde for dinner with pumpkin seeds. Pumpkin seeds might be my favorite food. I hope the counteract the pork and pate products I ate after the doctor visit.

Why is it when I teach my favorite books, they do not immediately become my students' favorite books? And why, when I see the books through my students' eyes, do the books' flaws become so suddenly apparent?

More and more, the only thing I'm interested in is self-awareness. It seems possibly the rarest human trait. I like it best in others but should probably try to focus  it most thoroughly on myself.

The Associated Writing Program Annual Conference is going to be work. It used to be nothing but fun. When did this change happen? I think when Erik stopped coming with me. Also, certain blogging friends are not helping adding to the fun times because they are not going. (This is one of my more selfish rather than self-aware moments--although this parenthetical. It tilts a bit toward awareness? Is saying self-aware over and over again the least self-aware thing you can do?).

The grant website I wanted to work on is down. Does this mean I'm done for the day? Does this mean I should stop bothering with the grant since obviously too many would-be grantees have tried to access the website and have broken the server.

How can I be on 15 thesis committees? Those fiction students. How did they find me?

Weekend. They say it will be 55 tomorrow. I would like that to be true. And I would also like there to be no wind.

My mom gave Max and Zoe each a cash register for Valentine's Day. Zoe has in the meantime figured out not only all about money--how many dimes and nickels in a quarter, etc., but, because the register came with a scanner and the food that came with the scanner came with bar codes, she's scanning and adding and I am now ready to send her to the grocery store and self-check out on her own. Max just talks into the scanner like he's BJ and the Bear. Possibly the Bear.

Edited to add. Grant website back up. But I'm vacuuming! I do think I'd rather vacuum.

Backyards

Yesterday morning, I woke up thinking of a blog post and then all day, I couldn't remember it. But this morning, I woke up at 5:42 and remembered. I can't go back to sleep if I wake up any minutes after 5:00. It's a curse, but in this case a gift, because that itchy feeling of can't remember finally got scratched.

I remembered because the light from the neighbor's dining room chandelier fell into the bedroom like a sun coming up. It is strange to me, living in the rural town that is Flagstaff, that I've never had a nearer backyard neighbor. At least not since I was one and my parents and I lived in the Sandpiper apartments off Van Winkle Boulevard. My parents moved next to a house behind a mortuary. No one there left lights on all night or woke up early. We moved next to a house that backed a cemetery. No one there woke up at all. After that, we lived on a big block with a huge plot of land in the middle of it. Eventually, the Church built a Stakehouse there but the worst noise there was basketball on Friday mornings. My dorm room at Reed backed the Student Union but my room was high enough that the light from my room fell down on them, not the other way around. On 37th Street, our house was on a hill. Again, my light trickled down. On 7812 SE Woodstock, I don't remember the house behind us but it didn't matter because the house was lower than the fence and the windows below the weeds that grew tall in that backyard. On 26th Street--tall fence. On Cora, our big lot-sized garden grew outside my window. Then, when I bought the house on Brooklyn Street, the cherry tree and fig tree blocked the neighbor's light. On G. Street, in Salt Lake, the lot was double-long and the house behind was so far away that I was never sure anyone actually lived there. When we moved to Grand Rapids, the houses were close together. We shared a driveway with Beth, who lived next door. The light from her bedroom could have flooded our bedroom, but she kept her blinds closed. Our backyard again was far away from the neighbor's backyard, the houses infilled side by side rather than back to back.
It is strange, then that my current backyard neighbors, in this big-lot sized neighborhood, in a forest-filled town, are the ones who bug me. There house sits directly behind ours, matching window for window. We have no fence and the Ponderosa Pines are too tall to block any light. Thankfully, our big deck is on the side of the house, we we're not fully exposed but the backyard feels like their backyard. When they're on their deck, we can hear every word. They have no blinds. I have blinds and curtains in the bed room and yet, in the morning, and sometimes all night, the light from their 118,000 watt chandelier falls through the bedroom window, making me think the sun is coming up, which wakes me up for once and for all.

Running vs. running around

My thighs are Popsicles. I knew it was cold out from the weather report but I didn't know how windy it was. I wore my sunglasses to keep my eyes from freezing. Winter here is not regular Flagstaff winter--there is barely any snow, but this week, it's cold. The snow that is there hides rocks for twisting ankles. I fall on the ice and scrape my hands. The wind whistles into my ear drum, so far it makes my teeth hurt.

And yet! This is the preferred running. The rest of the day will be running around from my office on the first floor to the Comp office on the third floor where the grad applications live. Travel forms, letters of rec (still?), and essay proofs print in the English Department office, where I will run, down the hall, to pick up one by one (yesterday, I ran around too fast and sent a letter of rec to no one--I forgot to address the envelope). I'll run over to the grad college and over to Babbitt for the UGC meeting where I'll defend, I hope for the last time, the idea of turning our MA to an MFA. Also. We need coffee. Eggs. Run to the CSA. Pick up Max. Pick up Z. Run around the kitchen, chop up vegetables. Run into the living room because Max can't reach his train. Run over to Z to help her with her Spanish homework that already surpasses my Spanish-speaking skills so that running is completely useless. All this running doesn't make me skinny. It doesn't make me warm. It makes me nervous and frantic and feel a little bit like if I could spend the whole day really running, rather than running around, I would actually be getting more done.

Bald Eagle Again

On Tuesday, Zoe and Max and I were driving home from schol/work. It was cloudy out even though it was obvious no snow was coming. The light was that yellow gray that comes toward the end of winter, the beginning of spring even though we haven't had any winter yet. Last year, with a big winter, I saw almost an eagle a day. Not by my house but by the coffee shop off Highway 180 that leads to the Snowbowl where I had off-campus office hours while the Liberal Arts building was being remodeled. This year, the eagles, like the snow, haven't been anywhere near 180 or the snowbowl but there's at least one who is living by our house. As we drove down our street, to the left, in a different snag than last time, sat what I'm sure was the same eagle. I had to drive around in circles so Zoe and Max could each see it. It flew off. I feel bad if I made it dizzy with my driving.

I don't know about harbingers but I do have a policy of believing that birds of prey are good signs. Sometimes, they are just signs of themselves. That's the better belief. But, when something good happens around my seeing of the bird, I give the big bird credit and then I go out and look some more.

That baby-friend of mine is doing the very slightest bit better, I found out on Tuesday afternoon. Good work baby and thank you eagle.

Teaching Blogging writing Chopped

Both Jackson and Lisa B. commented on one or two of my last posts about the cooking and the teaching and the writing. Jackson quoted Janet Burroway saying that neither cooking nor writing are monolithic tasks--you take to them piece by piece. It's what makes me anxious about writing--the whole idea does hover around. If you let it hover too much, it gets in the way of the details. I remember one reviewer of one of my manuscripts saying there were redundant parts. Whole-sale parts copied and pasted from other parts showing up throughout the manuscript. This was a poetic urgency on my part--you get it, don't you? Let me show you again. The details were supposed to be holding up this whole notion. Why not use the same details again? But I was missing a key factor in what is pleasurable about reading. People like reading details, new ones, surprising ones, more than they like whole notions.

When I teach writing, I make my students write idiosyncratic detail, not just specific detail. I'd rather hear about the oceanic chair than the blue, velour-covered chair. But I don't get too picky about the kind of detail, as long as it's kind of weird.

This is where my beastliness in the kitchen is so much more bossy than my professoring in the classroom. In writing, I want students to explore and surprise themselves and do new things. In the kitchen, I want food to taste right. There is a right and wrong taste with food and while there are degrees of right and wrong in writing, the process, at least as a professor of writing, is the most important part. (When I'm an editor, it's less true. There is a righter taste).

When I was blogging Chopped last spring in an attempt to avoid other kinds of competitions, I thought a lot about how teaching and writing were a lot like cooking. But instead of thinking deeply about cooking, I thought more about the competition behind cooking. Who wins? The most creative? Rarely. The best presentation? No. Taste always wins. The judges admit so much. And, with three judges, you can see that there really is one right (or one more right) taste. The judges care about all three categories--taste, creativity, and presentation--but taste always wins out.

When I cook, I know how to make sure it tastes right. With writing, I'm getting closer. But I've been writing for a long time now and I'm barely sure now what details are the right ones, what ones lead to better taste and what ones just lead to better presentation or creativity. No one wants that much creativity or presentation (sure, a little is nice) but they really want things to taste right which is so much easier to gauge with the chemistry of cooking. Not too much salt. Evenly chopped onion. Cook the onions on low. If you do burn the onions a little, add some wine, deglaze the pan. Writing. Step by step? Maybe. Correctable? Of course, just add wine and revise. But sitting down to eat and knowing that it tastes right? Our palates aren't so different.

CSA Lunch Special

It's like the Blue Plate Special, but weirder.

Watermelon radish, diced.
Small cluster of cauliflower, diced.
Small cluster of broccoli, diced.
4 olives (think about dicing them, but they're not really from the CSA, eat on the side instead).
1 cup wheat berries, cooked (Thomas Keller calls them "Farro." They take a half hour or so to cook. Don't add as much salt as I did.)
2 eggs, poached.
Mix cauliflower, broccoli, wheat berries and radish with a little olive oil and vinegar. Top with poached eggs.

Hold on. Removing poached eggs now. Let's see if it's good:

Oh yes. My dream. I may live forever.

(The secret to poaching eggs? Use the freshest eggs possible, meaning, eggs from the CSA.)

Edited to add, 15 minutes later. I'm still eating. It's even better now that the eggs have seeped into the wheat berries. But my jaw hurts a little from chewing. When they say eat whole grains, you can't get much more whole than the whole berry of the wheat.

A little lighter

After sleeping most of last  night, not well, but way better than the night before, and after reading blog comments, and, after the editor's request to see Salmon, and after good news about my friends' baby in the NICU (oxygen sats at 99%!), I'm feeling a little lighter, light enough to change the subject, at least.

Before the semester started and before I heard the news about my friends' babies, I was in the desert with my friend Misty. She had rented a house smack-dab in the middle of it and invited us to join her and her in-laws for the weekend. So we did. It was an awesome house with a good kitchen and a huge dining room table. The bedrooms wound around a courtyard full of Palo Verde and possibly geckos. Each room had its own bathroom--possibly the best thing about any rental I've ever seen ever.

This place was good. So good, we didn't leave for two whole days. We came bearing carne asada and pickled onions, eggs for breakfast, 48 Cuties. We sat outside. We had a margarita. We had some wine. We grilled the steaks on a charcoal barbecue. The next day, it was a little colder but we still sat outside. We hid Cuties for Zoe and Louisa like they were Easter Eggs. Misty made toast and Zoe ate it like she'd never been fed before. Misty made more toast. Louisa and Zoe finished off the Cuties. Later that night, Misty's dad and her aunt and uncle were coming to dinner too. How to feed 8 adults and 3 kids in the desert? Mexican wedding soup. Erik did leave for the store and John (her husband took his dad to the airport. He had to go back to work) but Misty and I stayed. We hot-tubbed with the girls while Max slept. Then, when everyone came back, we hiked up the wash. The girls collected 75 pounds of rocks. Max insisted on walking--no baby-backpack for him.

That night, and this is the point of this post, Misty and I made dinner.  Misty is one of the few people in the world I can actually cook with. Or, rather, one of the few cooks who is willing to cook with me. My sisters and Misty and that's about it. Once, when Misty and I were first friends and we were at her parent's house in Spokane for Thanksgiving, we got in two separate fights over peels. She wanted to leave them on, first for the mashed potatoes, second for the apples for the pie. I won the fight for the mashies. She won it for the apple pie. This is why, and also why my sisters, can cook with me. Most people won't do it. Most people think I cook so much and that I care so much about it, that they usually just leave it to me. But Misty and my sisters: they don't back down. Misty cut the red bell peppers into such precise, tiny cuts, I thought, I've been cutting red bells wrong my whole life. She added escarole! Escarole to regular salad. Delicious. In the morning, she sauteed zucchini and cooked eggs on slow (she told me after reading Julia Child's biography that she cooked her eggs slow now). Delicious! She holds her own in the kitchen, ignoring me and my opinions. The best thing is, when I taste her food, and that of my sisters', because a) I already know its entire flavor components and b) the food because of their knife cuts, because they use escarole instead of lettuce, because their pinches of salt are different than mine, because they'll take a risk and leave the peels on, (wrong as that may be) it  tastes different than anything I'd make. It's always a surprise.

Hard Times Come Again No More

I recognize this is a highly histrionic title. I'm taking things pretty histrionically lately.

The mud! The mud Cleo tracked in, how can I go on?

The computer, the computer. My Dell laptop, my truest typer since 2008 is dying. It's working right now but the monitor flickers and then goes out and then the harddrive spins and spins.

The sickness. The sickness. Max was sick with two different diseases two weeks in a row. I kept waiting for Zoe to get the second one as she coughed through the first. I teased her one night, Zoe, if you have to throw up, get out of bed, throw up in the toilet and then go back to bed. She said, why do you get all the sleep Mama? If she only knew. I haven't slept in two weeks. And, in the histrionic mood I'm in, I say I haven't slept in two years. I'm in one of those places where everything seems dark. The babysitter: what does she do to Max make him so grumpy.  Why doesn't Max sleep? He shouts out, Ow! and Mama! and blankie! every ten minutes all night long. We sleep next to his crib in a bed because our only choice is to sleep upstairs far away.

This house. This house! Why is the master bedroom so far away from the kids? I could try to sleep upstairs but last time I did that, Max screamed loud enough to wake the neighbors. Even if he were to wake up normally and ask for his blankie, I imagine falling down the stairs to get him his blankie, or Zoe falling down them as she comes up to tell us Max is awake.

My job: how will I stop the accumulation? The rejections, the essays to grade, the essays to edit, the essays and poems to write and send out. It all seems so dumb. And dark. I'm reading Eugenides' "The Marriage Plot." It makes me wonder if I'm bipolar. I presume it makes everyone wonder if they're bipolar. But that's  the dark, depressive view.

But maybe things are turning around. It snowed. Maybe we won't all die of thirst. Margot and my book "Bending Genre: Essay in Creative Nonfiction" got picked up by Continuum Press. I finally got that internal Faculty Grant. Three microessays got accepted today. My friends' baby's oxygen levels were almost 100% yesterday--She is turning around. My old agent sent me a publishing idea. Maybe Max will sleep in the night. Maybe Zoe won't throw up. Maybe, this weekend, instead of cleaning the house and handing out tissues and washing sheets, we'll go snowshoeing. Maybe what seemed like the punishment of living will abate and seem like just another January and February will turn this year around. Maybe tomorrow I will write the blog post I wanted to write that is light and happy and full of good food ideas. I will. Write it and it will be true. Maybe I'll write two posts in one day just to prove it's true.

Cough

This is also not the post I was planning on writing because coughing, like working, gets in the way of most things good around here. On Monday, Max came down with a dry, barking cough. It wasn't croup but almost. He was really sick for days. He was cuddly and thirsty and not sleepy but not in horrible spirits. El and Rick kept him home from day care and I tried to be home more than usual. The rest of us drank Emercen-C by the gallon and prayed for the best. Especially Zoe. When Erik was throwing up and Max was coughing, Zoe said she really didn't want to get sick. If she had to get sick though, she'd rather have Max's cold than Erik's throwing-up disease.

She made it all the way until Friday. A four day incubation period. She thought she'd made it but that morning she too had the dry bark of a cough and bags under her eyes.

After dinner, she was coughing almost nonstop. Her inhaler seemed not to be having any effect (she doesn't have asthma, she has "reactive airway disorder"  which means when she gets a cold, it sucks worse for her. Or at least it did. She barely wheezes anymore) so I got out the old nebulizer.

She asked, what is that?

This is your nebulizer. You used it every day for a year from when you were one and a half until you were almost three. Then, every time you got a cold, you used it four or five times a day. You don't remember it?

Why does it have this chicken for a mask?

It's supposed to be a dinosaur.

So you put in on like this? How long does it take?

She used to do this every day. She knew how to do it herself, put the albuterol in the cup, twist the cup into the mask, turn on the machine. Now, not even muscle memory.

She slept off and on last night. Erik and I went in to give her treatments in the middle of the night like we used to. Our muscles remember.

As I think about my friends whose baby is still in the NICU, I worry mostly about my friends. The baby, I believe (I have to), will be OK. And, although I knew that babies forget, it wasn't until yesterday I realized how completely babies (and two, three, four and five year olds) forget so fully. I hope that gives them a bit them a bit of relief.

Dreams

I would like to write a blog about something else than what I have to do today but since I went to sleep stressing about a student, woke up at 4:30 with a headache, re-stressed about a student and then about all the stuff I should do today, I should probably write a blog post that reminds me to work instead of watch Curious George with Max and look at Facebook as a means of avoiding the work. The work, when it is thick and wide and tall as a concrete wall, can be mistaken for a fog that settles everywhere, and therefore, nowhere.

Perhaps beginning at the beginning of the week will shed some light on why Friday is a large pile of too much.
On Monday, Max woke up with a terrible cough.  I had a conference call with a potential publisher of a new book so Erik took Max to work. I went to get Max from him an hour later. We went to New Frontiers. Twice (I forgot the celery).  It's supposed to be a writing day but Max isn't one of those babies who likes to sleep and watch TV when he's sick. He likes to play trains. Adamantly and often. So the writing didn't happen so much but some major emails were sent, some reports filed, some plans for dinner made. That's the night I made the chicken and dumpling soup. Thomas Keller makes you boil the celery, saute the carrots, and pouch the pate a choux dumplings separately. Also, make a roux. It takes forever. Perhaps I should not follow the Keller on a Monday. 

That night, Erik was sick. Max was sick. The next morning, I had barely time to pick up ginger ale for Erik after I dropped Z off at school before making it to the advising center--5 students came in for advice plus prospective students. This was not conducive to commenting on student in class writing so that got squished between 11 and 12:45. I taught and then had a thesis meeting with a student.

Wednesday. Why Wednesday? I'm trying not to go in on Wednesdays so I can get some work done but this Wednesday? All in.  Max in the morning, meeting with Associate Dean about program fees at 10, meeting with Dean of Grad College at 10:30, meeting with Assistant Dean about online application at 10:40. Lunch with Associate Chair and Chair (with request for lecture line!) Faculty meeting at 11:30.  Big Grad Studies committee meeting at 12:30. At 2:00, another conference call with a different publisher which was not nearly as fun as the Monday call. At 3:00, pick up Z, pick up Max from Rick and El's (what would I have done without my in-laws this week?), homework with Z (lots of homework, drawing with Max, and the making of the tacos which are quick and very-non-Keller in their workload distribution.

Thursday I tried to read and comment on student essays with Max but that was going nowhere so I took him to El's, went to school, wrote comments on the essays, prepared for intro nonfiction, read book for grad nonfiction, met with a current and a previous grad student about  their futures, taught until 5:30 and then fell into the booth at Fratelli's where the first piece of pizza was awesome but the next one had diminishing returns (as the Keller says happens after the third bite) and the third piece of pizza was just maintenance.

So today is the finishing work for what happened this week. Write to contributors. Send Tuition Waiver Language to Tuition Waiver person. Ask Doug if he wants a link to PIE. Arrange room for Creative Writing meeting on Wednesday. Begin report for grad online app. Ask Yvette to let you know how many GTA apps are ready for review on the 1st.  Send micro essays. Input scratch marks indicating student participation from paper grade roster into BB Learn. Enter grad comments into BB learn since apparently the grad students wont' turn them in if I'm not grading them like undergrads. Read for Diagram. I would like to clean the house, go to the grocery store, go on a run, and finish an essay I'm working on but I don't think any of that is going to happen...

because now I must go play Lego's with Max which will be more fun than the work list but won't be as fun as it could be if I had already finished the last paragraph of my life and could move on to the blog post that I want to write.

Desert Living

In the past ten days, we've had the chance to go to the desert twice. The first time, further South, where the Saguaro actually live, and yesterday, to the close desert of Sedona. Neither of them is balmy right now but compared to the snowy mountaintop, it was warm. One could sit outside for an hour or two. One could watch the clouds roll over the Central Arizona Water Project. One could refill the aquifer, if one were Zoe or her friend Louisa, by turning on the hose and making a fresh pile of mud in the sand on the driveway.
I'm sure it's my protestant, Weberian background that makes me believe one must fully experience four full seasons but one benefit of Flagstaff is that I get my Protestant Boy Scout Badge by bearing the snow while still occasionally being able to dip down to the hotter places. Not hot enough to swim but hot enough to be outside.

In the desert, you can eat, if you are Zoe and/or Louisa and/or Max, forty-eight Clementines. You can splash in the hot tub. You can wake up before everyone else and sneak down to the wash to see if last night's rain made a flood. You can take a bath and then run around naked after. You can make mud. You can change your clothes on the patio. You can eat nuts that fell into the sand, if you dust them off first. You can play hide the tangerine, practicing for Easter Egg hunts. Or, in the closer, red rock desert, you can ride your bike down a slickrock trail at 25 miles an hour, making even your dad scream, "slow down." You can cry a little afterward, all adrenaline filled. Or you could choose to ride in the carseat on the back of your mom's bike going "woah, woah, woah" over the rocks. And then you can come back home and sit by the woodstove and wait for dinner. Perhaps, the next night, you mom will make chicken and dumplings with the dumplings pate a choux style.

Sometimes, even when it's probably in my best interest to check out other places and other jobs, especially ones with water, I wonder if I should bother. It's nice to have the hot so close even while I suffer the winter of my Protestant/Weberian self. And, Erik says we live on top of the one of the world's largest aquifers so perhaps there's more water than I think.

So far in not cooking

I have made granola:
Oats, wheat bran, flax seed, oil, honey, cooked for 1.5 hours at 250 degrees. Stirred every 15 minutes. Added cashews and almonds after cooking. Zoe and Max helped make it so it doesn't count as cooking.

And I made salad Lyonaise because we had: eggs, bacon, lettuce, mustard, vinegar. The eggs, bacon, and salad were on grown locally. The eggs, so fresh, made the best poached eggs ever.  Zoe ate salad dressing for the first time. The bests and firsts compensates for the not.

But I'm holding out for dinner.

Another Train of Thought

Why is it without Max here, I still go around saying, "choo choo"? There must be something comforting in the repetition.

On Wednesday I vowed to cook never again. I cooked for an hour and a half, making some Thomas Keller farro, squash, rice, and spicy greens salad. It took an hour. Why does cooking vegetarian take so much longer? Steak. Grill. Done. Between helping Z with her homework, letting Max "help" me cook, and sauteing, then baking, the squash, I had a semi-decent salad that Max wouldn't eat and Zoe only sort of liked. Then, while Erik bathed the children, I cleaned up. While cleaning up, I declared that that was it. From now on: noodles and hamburger. And, I haven't cooked since. Last night, I picked up pizza from Fratelli's and tonight we're going to Erik's parents for carne asada. The only problem is, I have 1/4 pound of a pig I bought from a local farmer. 2 hams, 8 pork chops, 3 lbs of sausage, a roast and a sirloin steak aren't going to cook themselves. I got a note from the farmer: "the hams are smoked but not cooked. Cook them. And they'll need salt because we didn't use nitrates to cure them." My curiosity might get the better of me.


I have the song "You Light Up My Life" stuck in my head. If god wanted a sappy song written about him, he wouldn't let babies die, so suck it Debbie Boone. If there is a god, he would prefer Social Distortion, who is coming to town. Erik bought tickets for us. Very exciting.

And yet the song continues to play in my head. I should share, "You give me hope/to carry on/ you light up my days/ and fill my nights/ with/ song. How can it be wrong/when it feels so right/ cause you/you/ you light up/my eye eye eye/ life."

Which then turns to "If lovin' you's wrong, I don't want to be right."

I do think, overall, I was lucky to grow up in the seventies. Maybe Debbie Boone is a product of the early eighties.

Erik's pictures are up at Anderbo. http://www.anderbo.com/anderbo1/aphotoessay02/aphotoessay-02.html
That is good news.

They're surveying the street behind our house. Surveying is never a good thing. It leads to strip malls and housing developments.

I taught the first nonfiction grad workshop yesterday. I went through 6 versions of an essay I was working on to show them how much revision some essays might take. The highlight was when I turned to version 4, which was an entirely new essay, having not one word in common with the other 5 versions. I found  itilluminating. I'm not sure they did. But the first day. They are always pissed if you don't just pass out the syllabus and let them go. I don't blame them.

My friends' other baby (my friend had given birth to twins) is doing better. I heard from her in a broadcast email today. She is one of the strongest, most amazing people I know. She wrote so beautifully--"I can't write words for my grief. It will be my partner the rest of my life." But she went on to say, speaking of the outpouring of love and support: "It is confusing and profound that times of such tremendous weight and hardship would paint so vivid a picture of what is good in the world." She's the true writer, artist that she is. Anyone who can be that eloquent in so much grief is probably going to be OK. They're an amazing family. I am lucky to know them.

I do believe that bald eagle lives in our neighborhood. It flew over my father-in-law's car yesterday. That is a good thing. May the surveyors stay away.