Sunday, January 29, 2017
a brief history of my mental breakdown, or, I need more Tuesday and less Sunday
Friday, Jan 20: Denial and avoidance. Okay, semi-avoidance...found inaugural speech highlights on the interwebs.
Saturday, Jan 21: Feeling hopeful, buoyed by millions of protestors. Telling myself, 'we just have to be better and stronger, and we are better and stronger! We got this!'
Sunday, Jan 22: Optimism crashes and burns, slide into deep, dark, sucking abyss
Monday, Jan 23: Snarl at my students, grump at husband, binge-eat mint chip ice cream.
Tuesday, Jan 24: Join local NPR station, donate my raise to Planned Parenthood. Pull on reflective tights and go for a run, in the snow, in the dark, in 18 degrees.
Wednesday, Jan 25: Crying and drinking, general disbelief
Thursday, Jan 26: Birthday. Telling myself that 40 is as good a time as any to level up my badassery. Also, was serenaded by a clown.
Friday, Jan 27: Numb shock and exhaustion. How is this possibly really what is actually happening?
Saturday, Jan 28: Facebook is making me hyperventilate, but I can't look away...
Sunday, Jan 29: teetering over aforementioned abyss, keep it at bay with potato chips.
Thursday, January 12, 2017
starting 2017 in style
Went to school today with my sweater inside-out.
Who noticed?
The principal, naturally.
I'm, like, the consummate professional and stuff.
Who noticed?
The principal, naturally.
I'm, like, the consummate professional and stuff.
Saturday, January 7, 2017
stuff you probably don't need to read
Also read Catalyst by the revered YA author Laurie Halse Anderson. I haven't read anything else she's written, and will probably (okay, maybe) get around to some of her more acclaimed stuff, but then again I might not. Catalyst was fine, but it did not excite me at all in any way, and for God's sake, it's January, and the inside of my brain is starting to feel like the Donner expedition, and I need something that's going to light me up - like a story about sentient fungus!!
In the next room, however, my kids are watching Kubo and the Two Strings, which is pretty damn delightful (though, okay, would it kill anyone to have the Asian leads voiced by Asian actors? Show them how it's done, Book of Life. But if that doesn't bug you *too* much then it's a great story).
In the next room, however, my kids are watching Kubo and the Two Strings, which is pretty damn delightful (though, okay, would it kill anyone to have the Asian leads voiced by Asian actors? Show them how it's done, Book of Life. But if that doesn't bug you *too* much then it's a great story).
Thursday, January 5, 2017
It's a new year now, and here in Eagle County winter break was not *nearly* long enough...but today was a rare and coveted Snow Day! How can one not feel better on a snow day? If nothing else, the overpowering wave of skier euphoria is sweeping westward on the breeze (at least I think that's skier euphoria...guess it could be weed, too).
Anyway, I'm not paying attention to the horribleness today. I'm paying attention to the snow day. The snow forts, the gingersnaps, the hot chocolate, the magical childhood moments, the practicing of the One-Eyebrowed-Glare-of-Motherly-Disdain because so help me if these kids don't get out of the house and run off some energy we may none of us see tomorrow...
Luckily, the part of my brain that filters out background noise has quadrupled in size and efficiency since giving birth to boys, and also I happened to have a library copy of 2016's Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy burning a hole on my desk, so I read some things. The only writer I knew in the whole thing was Kelly Link, because obviously, and her story The Game of Smash and Recovery was weird and lovely, high science fiction (and here is my disclaimer that I have not completely gone over to the dark side yet, that the force of my English Lit background remains strong, and that thereby stories featuring sentient spaceships as protagonists have to work twice as hard for me to like them half as well)(yes I am a bigot; fortunately there are writers like Kelly Link to help me overcome my personal shortcomings), but deliberate and artistic too, and she does good work. Also there was The Mushroom Queen by a writer named Liz Ziemska; what happens when an unhappy wife, mid-dissatisfying-marriage, contemplates leaving but is instead subsumed into the underground mycelium web? It was every bit as weird as it sounds, but also real and excellent, and there was evil fungus and a really great dog. I had to read it twice.
Before all this I'd been reading On Writing by Mr. Stephen King Himself, a guy whose work I haven't read in probably twenty years (though at Eric's suggestion I should probably check out The Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption) (and he *did* write Hearts in Atlantis - I wasn't wrong about that!). Great book. Direct, entertaining, full of quotable one-liners and unfussy pointers on getting words on paper without sounding like a buffoon.
So that's what.
Anyway, I'm not paying attention to the horribleness today. I'm paying attention to the snow day. The snow forts, the gingersnaps, the hot chocolate, the magical childhood moments, the practicing of the One-Eyebrowed-Glare-of-Motherly-Disdain because so help me if these kids don't get out of the house and run off some energy we may none of us see tomorrow...
Luckily, the part of my brain that filters out background noise has quadrupled in size and efficiency since giving birth to boys, and also I happened to have a library copy of 2016's Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy burning a hole on my desk, so I read some things. The only writer I knew in the whole thing was Kelly Link, because obviously, and her story The Game of Smash and Recovery was weird and lovely, high science fiction (and here is my disclaimer that I have not completely gone over to the dark side yet, that the force of my English Lit background remains strong, and that thereby stories featuring sentient spaceships as protagonists have to work twice as hard for me to like them half as well)(yes I am a bigot; fortunately there are writers like Kelly Link to help me overcome my personal shortcomings), but deliberate and artistic too, and she does good work. Also there was The Mushroom Queen by a writer named Liz Ziemska; what happens when an unhappy wife, mid-dissatisfying-marriage, contemplates leaving but is instead subsumed into the underground mycelium web? It was every bit as weird as it sounds, but also real and excellent, and there was evil fungus and a really great dog. I had to read it twice.
Before all this I'd been reading On Writing by Mr. Stephen King Himself, a guy whose work I haven't read in probably twenty years (though at Eric's suggestion I should probably check out The Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption) (and he *did* write Hearts in Atlantis - I wasn't wrong about that!). Great book. Direct, entertaining, full of quotable one-liners and unfussy pointers on getting words on paper without sounding like a buffoon.
So that's what.
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