Nikwalk

Books are different

2013-05-15T13:04:00.001-07:00

It has been fun. Too fun. Now that school is out and the book-release-in-Tucson-and-Flagstaff kerfuffle is dying down, I'm all antsy and excitable. I knew the fun times would be addictive. In Tucson, I got to do all of my favorite things: stay up late talking with my good friends, drink wine by their pool, get dressed up, go to dinner, watch everyone else drink Manhattans, read, answer questions with my new BFF Brent Hendricks (check out his amazing book A Long Day at the End of the World--about bodies, including his own father's, not cremated at the Georgia crematorium). Brent and I were asked questions after our reading like how do sex and death relate and how does the desecration of nature act itself out on the body? Brent answered in French, saving me. We also attended Ander Monson's class where Brent reminded me that all good writing comes from obsession. There are some moments in my life where I felt like a rock star/princess. This was one of them.
However, when I came back I realized how neglectful I have been when I host readings. I do think the writers I bring feel well-attended to, but I don't do enough to get audience attendance. It's hard to compare Tucson where they have the Poetry Center and an audience will come out even on a Monday night during the busiest time of the semester to hear someone read to Flagstaff where we have our readings on campus, in our Liberal Arts building which is tucked inside campus deep and there is no real tradition of a reading series. That said, I came back from Tucson doubly determined to make sure more than 12 people show up at Michael Martone's reading tomorrow night. I emailed everyone I knew in Marketing, at KNAU, at the local paper. They all responded with great ideas and helped spread the word and my chair bought a KNAU day-sponsorship and my colleagues sponsored scholarships for students to take the workshop and Seth Muller at the paper interviewed Michael and I hope beyond hope people come out for the reading because I want Michael to feel like a rock star/princess too.

When I returned from Tucson, I thought the rock star/princess times were over for me but then they were not. My friends at work through me a book release party that involved cake decorated as the cover of the book. They bought flowers. My students brought more flowers. People bought the book. 30 copies. All I had. The best part is, people seem to be reading the book. My son's day care teacher bought two copies--one for her daughter, one for herself. They're both reading it. I warned her it was kind of dark. She said, my daughter loves dark. When I picked Max up the next day, she said she was up all night reading the book. She loved the connections between childhood and places, or sex and death, as Brent Hendricks would put it, in French. Her daughter had already finished it. One of my friends texted me, "I was knocked by your words!" and another friend wrote "I love the strange connections. And how, now that you've made those connections for me, they are no longer strange, but magical and certain." It would be nice and all to get some press reviews but really, these four people, along with my mom who read it with such great generosity, are enough to make me feel not like a rock star/princess but like I have not wasted my life writing. And there was cake!

Now if only the Martone reading is full-to-the-brim, and he leaves Flagstaff feeling like a rock star/princess, I will consider the Taurus term of 2013 to be a success!

Clarksville to Nashville and back again

2013-04-19T11:37:00.000-07:00

I went to Tennessee because that is where my book is. The nice people at Zone 3 Press at Austin Peay State University worked hard to get the book out and they sweetly invited me to read. Since neither Erik nor I had been to Nashville, we decided to fly in, drive to Clarksville and then spend the weekend in town. We flew into a tornado with winds that could not compete with Flagstaff winds, but were apparently more spirally. And wind with rain is more intense than wind without. It rained like a downpour in Portland and a monsoon in Flagstaff and a cloudburst in Boston all put together. Double-speed windshield wipers as we drove through the limestone hills of Tennessee. Water poured off the rocks into tiny waterfalls and it has been a dry spring in Arizona so the water seemed like a gift but also a curse because no one goes to readings on tornado days with rain.

We met Barry Kitterman, the fiction prof, and Amy Wright, the nonfiction prof, along with two students for dinner before the reading. Erik and I arrived late and wet but we left dry and happy for the reading. The reading was not entirely without an audience. The audience who was there were attentive and kind and even one person said the reading was brilliant so I really required no other audience. I signed some books and then Erik and I hung out in downtown Clarksville. Downtown Clarksville isn't quite full of nightlife. It's bigger than Flagstaff but, Barry explained, because it's so close the Nashville, everyone goes into the city for dinner and music, draining the town of it's would-be nightlife. The downtown was cute but Barry was right. The bartender was windexing the table next to us at 9:45. She turned the TV off. We left before anyone flickered the lights at us.

So we too, after I went to Amy Wright's poetry class where the students were fun and lovely and smart and I remember that teaching/interacting with humans is better than reading from a book, drained the town of Clarksville of our presence and headed to Nashville. Our hotel (Wyndam resorts. Sales pitch in the morning at 10:30!! We wisely avoided) was by Opryland which is NOT close to downtown but we found our way there and began a three-day tour of tiny bars with lots of music. Some bars were big. Three floors. Three bands. Most of the bars were tiny--split-level galleys that still managed to host two bands between the set of 7 stairs. We stayed at the tiny bars and drank Bud Light since it's hard to drink anything else when you have to drink most of the night and day.

The bands are good. No one was bad. But they all played cover songs almost entirely. They played them well and I get it. The audience wants to sing along. At one bar, a group of women in their seventies who reminded me of my grandma's sisters, sang along to country songs. The covers were not bad. Sunvolt. Old Crow Medicine Show. Garth Brooks. A Carrie Underwood song that made me think I should listen to more Carrie Underwood (I had, before this, listened to zero Carrie Underwood). They played that "Don't call me darlin' darlin'" song a bit much. I heard some song I'd never heard but was obviously a cover about a heartbroken mama which I liked a lot. They covered Jane Says--possibly with a little too much first-had knowledge and Purple Rain--with perhaps a too little purple. Hank Williams. Merle Haggard. Songs we listen to on Outlaw Country on Sirius. But I was surprised how few original songs anyone sang. But band wants the audience to be happy and knowing the words makes an audience happy and a happy audience tips the best. But no wonder no one can break out of there. They move from bar to bar, singing the same covers but who is going to sign someone who sings someone else's songs?

I think about this and the reading I gave. It takes a lot to get the energy up to go to a reading by someone you've never heard of to hear her read an essay that she promises has porn in it but the porn within is probably too uncomfortable to enjoy as porn. No one would fly me out to cover someone else's work--to read Barbara Kingsolver or Jim Harrison, for instance. I probably wouldn't have made much on tips either (book buyers are giving tips, in a way, so I guess I did all right). But even if my book doesn't break out and get many readers or many reviews, it feels a little more promising than what I imagine it feels like playing bar after bar, so well, so beautifully, with such stage presence, and just hoping that one day you'll play your own songs. Still, they had an audience. A loud, singing audience. That would be nice too.

On the one hand, there's something to be said for going home to my regular work and my students and my not stage life. On the other hand, I have another reading on Monday in Tucson and I will be wearing my cowboy boots and maybe do one cover song.

The Next Small-to-Medium Things

2013-04-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Marcia Aldrich at Back Hand Blog and Dr. Write for tagging me to participate in this blog-tagging thing called “The Next Big Thing.” All of the participating writers agree to answer a set of questions in common and then tag five other writers to put forward as the “Next Big Thing.” It’s a way to bring attention to writers in a friendly chain of tags.

I like the idea of this mob blog push. Everywhere I look, there's a next big thing. There are many things. There are many books. If the books were smaller instead of bigger, more books would fit. My book comes in at 136 pages. That seems small. Maybe medium.

What is the title of your book?
Quench Your Thirst with Salt. The small title is "Quench." Or maybe "Death and Water in Salt Lake" or possibly, "How to leave Salt Lake and come back" but that one gets big again.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Granite is hard, bodies are soft; water is soft, bodies are hard; the dominant culture presses down, the subculture pushes up; boys are everywhere, fathers are missing--no wonder the Wasatch Fault is so earthquake prone.

What genre does your book fall under? Essays.

Where did the idea come from for the book?
Growing up in a place where subduing the landscape is as practiced as subduing the people who live there is a hard thing. A person is shaped by that hardness. Is a person as malleable as a mountain? Is she as well-defined as cracks in the granite? Is she as useful as a valley of water pipes? Shaped by the dominant culture and by parents fighting against that subculture, taking the subculture to an extreme, escaping the whole thing, this book is about how I try to stand some ground in a shaky family situation on the dry edge of the Wasatch Fault.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Four years. Or maybe twenty.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
My dad who died and my mom who lived.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
The book is available now for pre-order at Zone 3 and will be available soon through Small Press Distribution and Amazon.

What other works would you compare this book to within your genre?
I am reading Amy Leach's The Things That Are. It's not much like that but maybe a little. Gretel Ehrlich The Solace of Open Spaces. Steve Almond's Candyfreak--my book is not about candy but is about concrete things that transport you. Terry Tempest Williams. Paul Auster. Nabakov's Speak, Memory. Jeannette Winterson. All her books. Yes. She's the first inspiration. Kathy Acker. Joni Tevis's The Wet Collection. The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. Nick Flynn's Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Ander Monson's Neck Deep and Other Predicaments. Pam Houston's Cowboys Are My Weakness. Steve Fellner's All Screwed Up.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Should James Gandolfini play my dad? Faye Dunaway my mom? I'd have my daughter Zoe play me as a kid but that is too much metaphor even for me. Charlize Theron can play adult me and my sisters to flatter us each, obviate sibling rivalry, and to complete the whole Adaptation/all people are one metaphor. Or maybe sandstone. Sandstone could play me--it is rock but it is pretty malleable, for a rock.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Utah's liquor laws, erotic fantasies, how to decide to have kids, sex offender databases, man-made lakes, oil, fish, Portland, Oregon, Salt Lake City, Utah, Bear River Bird Refuge, the Great Salt Lake, Chardonnay, red wine, vodka, Public Image Limited, VW Fastback, Jetta, Karman Ghia, flamingos, Mormons, Las Vegas, water rights, irrigation, wolves, cows, ranchers, snow, Hawaii.

Tagged: Tammy Stewart Greenwood. Lisa B. Steve Fellner, Ander Monson, Pam Houston, Steve Almond, Patrick Madden, Margot Singer, Steve Tuttle. Amy Wright, Matthew Batt and Mary Anne Mohanraj because I want to know what these people are working on.

AWP. A recovery.

2013-03-15T10:49:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine has abandoned AWP until it gets its head together and starts hosting a winter conference in a non-wintry place--like Hawaii. AWP claims (claimed? Once? I overheard through gossip) that hotel rates and conference space is cheaper in the winter in wintry places. Boston hotels, at $200/night, are twice as much as the not-too-divey hotel we stayed at in Phoenix in February. There's a reason Phoenix exists. For golfers and conferences.

Boston is like Siberia it is so far away from Flagstaff. Traveling from one cold place to another isn't usually so bad but since I always must fly by way of Phoenix, in March, I hesitate to get on the connecting flight. Why not stay in Phoenix. Phoenix is a sin but if you're already there...

Hundreds of flights in Chicago had been canceled the day before. I would learn later that hundreds of flights would be canceled in Boston on Thursday. But on Wednesday, the flying was fine. I arrived in Boston once again grateful that by flying anxiety managed to keep the plane from crashing into the deep blue sea (or, Lake Michigan, in this case).

I took the subway from the airport because I was already spending too much money on this trip. The subway always seems like a good idea until a shuttle and a transfer and a lack of escalators become involved. One time, at a similarly cold and east-coast conference, I dragged my suitcase and my 45 lb carry-on back and forth between Embassy Suites, trying to find the right hotel. I tore ligaments in my 45lb-bag-carrying-shoulder. This wasn't that bad. I could carry my suitcase up a flight of stairs. The prospect of a fine hotel room spurred me on.

The hotel room was only OK though. No bathtub! I like to take a bath in cities surrounded by water. I don't feel as guilty for wasting water as I do in Flagstaff (I still take baths in Flagstaff, I just feel guilty doing so). Plus, plastic cups? Plastic mini-blinds? Oh hotel of $200. Not so luxurious.

Skip ahead a bunch because no one needs a novel of anyone's AWP. I met students for drinks. Yay. I was in bed by 10 which was 8 in Flagstaff which made it seem like this would be one of the more restrained conferences. But that was Wednesday.

Thursday was the best day. Met with David Shields, Michael Martone and Robin Hemley--my nonfiction power mentors. Made a mental map of presses I had business with. Found Zone 3 booth--no books had arrived yet. The quick pre-release, pre-launch digital copies had come off the press (or out of the printer) all skewampus. New books were on their way. Good. Bending Genre books--looking good at the Bloomsbury table. Checked on Thin Air table. Students seemed organized and willing to spread the NAU MFA word. I found Dr. Write. We made laps around the bookfair.

On my way to meet Peter for lunch, I found Steve Tuttle and Jeff Chapman and Robin. As usual, Jeff persuaded me to walk with them to their lunch. How does he do that? I kept walking with them even though Peter was meeting me in two minutes. I sat down with them at Pho. Pho came fast. I didn't order. I left to walk through the wind-driven snow to find Peter at the Salty Pig--The one destination meal I had in mind (thanks to Ali Stine). I had run past it in the morning on my first run in nor'easter type driven snow. I surely could find it again. I walked left. I walked right. I walked backwards. Eventually, I made it back to my hotel from where I forged ahead again. The Salty Pig, it turns out, was two blocks from my hotel. I made it. Peter made it. His cab driver had gotten lost too. I felt vindicated in my ability to get lost and then get unlost. We ordered the chacuterie platter--porchetta thinly last, pate champagne, homemade mozzarella (straccialettea?), pickles and olives and salad for $13! Boston was going to be a bargain! Also, Peter brought me Donald's new book and bought lunch. I owe Peter.

Then, I found Margot. We got ready for our panel. We did our panel. The room was packed. I was happy. Then, drinks with the Bending Genre crowd and finally saw Lisa B. She, Dr. Write and Margot and I had plans for dinner. Dave McGlynn and Jeff came along to Toro--a Tapas place. No seats! Very Spanish! We drank some wine and ordered some tapas. I, too, (see Dr. Write's blog), thought the bone marrow overrated. But the bones. They were big.

The next day, meetings and readings and some more good food with Dr. Write and Lisa B at Legal Seafood. I ate a lobster. It was good. Next year, the trip will be planned more in concert with these two for they know that going to the art museum and to the fine restaurants makes up for the too-long to a place-to-cold travel.
I was late for my readings. I regret that.

I missed dinner at the farm to table restaurant with Lisa B. and Dr. Write. I regret that too.

The Quench books that had arrived at the Zone 3 table sold out. The Bending Genre books sold out. Happy news there.

Saturday--a run across the Charles River in the sun. More meetings. Matt Batt! Atlantic Fish company for Dover Sole. Good meeting after that. Then. Hotel to collect luggage. Hotel bar for a glass of wine. Hotel bar very crowded for 3 o'clock on a Saturday. Boston all over was very crowded now that the sun had come out. But goodbye Boston. I saw you not so much. Some in the running. Some in the sun. Mostly in the subway. Back to the airport. Legal seafood again! At the airport. Salad with Crab. Most delicious.

The flight back was bumpy and my mental powers to keep the plane afloat seemed to falter a bit. I read books that Graywolf and Milkweed gave me. I watched Walking Dead over the shoulder of the guy in the aisle seat across and in front of me because I could see nothing else. I can't watch the Walking Dead! It's too scary. I have dreams about zombies. But, apparently, with the sound off, it's not so bad. I kept hoping he had one more episode. He only had 6. We still had an hour and a half of the flight to go.

My flight from Phoenix summer to Flagstaff winter was canceled. My student Chase kindly gave me a ride up the mountain. In fog. I have never seen fog in Arizona. I guess that compensates for the driving up to Flagstaff at 12:00 a.m. We got to my car at the airport at 2:30. Chase and I tried to sweep the snow off the car. It was frozen to the windshield. I think we both got frostbite. I drove home peering through the 6 inch hole we managed to scrape. A reason to park a car, similar to the reason to have the AWP Conference, in Phoenix.

It was a very long trip. When I got back, I taught like a puppet. I meetinged like a lizard. I am recovering right now and wondering what to do on a Friday with not a 100 meetings scheduleed. Perhaps the trip was too short.

Edited to add: Wait wait wait! Other high point. Seeing Stephen Burt. Kissing Stephen Burt's cheek. Talking to Stephen Burt about how hard it is to leave kids. He said, "you have to leave them so they know you come back." I was not cool at all when I met Stephen Burt. I gave Stephen Burt a t-shirt. I love Stephen Burt.

Retro Week

2013-02-04T08:52:00.002-08:00

I inherit the full-on dinner every night from my mother who I think was "encouraged" by my father to be more like his mother and cook a big dinner every night. Or maybe it was from her mother who got it from her mother who had to feed 12 people, her six still at home children, my grandmother who lived with her and her three daughters, including my mother, who ate a full-on dinner every night. I also get it from Mary Anne Mohanraj who cooks curries every night (except who in the comments says that her family gets by on Annie's Mac and Cheese and quesadillas half the time) and my sister who uses her new double ovens in her new house in Twin Falls to make turkey breast at 325 and roasted potatoes at 400 and on Chopped who every night makes delicious and crazy dinners in less that 30 minutes for an entree. Perhaps I read too much Facebook and watch too much TV to get ideas about dinner. But I don't like mac and cheese from a box that much and quesadillas are our go-to lunches. You can't have quesadillas twice in one day can you .(Can you? I don't know. There's so much you people, you television and Facebook and blog and double oven people, that you haven't told me.)
However, sometimes, my dad was out of town. And sometimes my parents went out and we had a babysitter and we had not a full-on dinner. Sometimes, we had TV dinners.
I'm thinking of having retro week.
Jiffy mix pizza.
Swanson's Pot Pies.
Swanson's Fried Chicken TV Dinners.
Totinos Frozen pizza.
Tater tots (my kids don't like tater tots. The traitors.)
Mac and Cheese (my mom used to keep the noodles plain for me, adding just butter and salt. The twins like the cheese sauce. She'd add that in later for them).
Spaghetti (no sauce again for me. She'd fry up some hamburger and serve that on the side for me. Butter and salt and pepper on the noodles. Don't judge! They say those with picky palates grow up to have refined taste. Which forces them to cook a full-on dinner every night).
Tacos. We had tacos every Friday night growing up. I do make tacos once a week. Maybe even tonight. (Pork belly tacos coming up on not-retro week.)

What did you eat then that you don't eat now that you wouldn't mind eating for nostalgia's sake?

January Lasts for 12 months

2013-01-30T08:00:00.001-08:00

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

2013-01-25T14:45:00.000-08:00

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

2013-01-17T11:43:00.001-08:00

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.

2013-01-15T11:38:00.000-08:00

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.

2013-01-13T10:35:00.004-08:00

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.

2012-12-31T09:15:00.000-08:00

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

2012-12-17T08:16:00.001-08:00

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

2012-12-13T09:57:00.000-08:00

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

2012-12-05T10:06:00.003-08:00

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

2012-11-26T13:07:00.001-08:00

"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

2012-11-21T10:03:00.002-08:00

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

2012-11-19T12:41:00.001-08:00

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.

Sometimes Saturdays

2012-11-11T08:01:00.001-08:00

Can a day that begins with Play-doh ever end up not a total waste? Max is a creature of routine which means that he wakes up, pees in his Cars TM potty, eats breakfast and either goes to school or watches Curious George first thing in the morning. Yesterday there was no George. Knight and Day, I think was the show Zoe chose. Zoe, who also loves Curious George, has seen them all and now has moved on to Tom Cruise. Same idea, better hair cut (George). Breakfast came after movie. Then Zoe and Max had some run-around the house plan that seemed good at the time until I looked at the house and saw that all the stretchy bands from Zoe's oven-holder-making kit had been strewn all over the house. I think the name of this version of run around the house was called see-if-we-can-get-mom-to-freak-out-before 8:15. By 8:15, I was just staring at them like they had been recently released from the zoo. Curious creatures. Should have watched George.

The Play-Doh was the cheap kind. It's too soft. Zoe covered a whole kitchen knife with it and said, "I don't think we should eat with this knife for awhile." It is still soaking in the sink, 24 hours later. Max wanted the yellow Play-doh so I got Zoe the orange Play-Doh which then Max wanted orange. Zoe the diplomat gave him some orange but then she took some yellow in exchange which led to actually tears and accusations that Zoe "is so mean."

Max found some old pink and green mixed up Play-doh and made cookies for everyone in the kid's kitchen which were delicious but are still in the kids' oven, probably burned now, because Zoe moved on to copying facts about endangered animals out of the World Wildlife Fun catalog. "Zoe not play with me." Maybe you shouldn't have thrown a fit about the yellow, kid.

Erik didn't sleep well because of some pinched-nerve thing. He slept in so I'd been single-teaming. By 9:15, I was ready for it to be Monday but then I realized Monday is Veterans Day and the kids will be out of school which is why had no patience/they knew I'd be acclimated to their Play-doh ways by then.

At 10:30, I called to see if the woman who were were planning to donate one of our beds to would be there. She said she would be there until about 11:30. I said we'd be there by 11:00. Now we were on speed track but kids love a race. We all do! I think if we hustle, we can get it over to her in time. Erik is thrilled to get one mattress out of the garage!. Max, who routinely would be dressed by now, was not, which to his mind meant he got to stay in his jammies all day and therefore, there would be no changing of the clothes. Fortunately, I found a t-shirt with a tractor on it that had once been his best friend Ian's so it only took 45 minutes to get him dressed. Erik took the kids to his moms and exchanged them for some straps to hold the mattress down on top of Erik's car.

On the drive over, the straps made a chain-saw like noise against the plastic-wrapped mattresses. Erik pulled over to check the straps as he does every time we have anything strapped to the car. I argued that straps can only sound like saws, not actually effect any sawing, but we drive 20 miles an hour anyway. Somehow, we made it there by 10:59 on the dot which made me feel entirely productive but then we go back to get the kids who were eating potatoes with their grandparents and then collected all the blankets and pillows in her house in an effort to make grandma's house match mine in terms of cloth-products on the floor, which made it feel entirely unproductive. We had to bribe them to come with us. Thankfully, we still have Halloween Candy.

As we drove to our house, I reminded Erik we needed dog food. And, if we were going to to the pet food store, we may as well go to Home Depot to look for some hooks to hang the copper pots I spent last year collecting from thrift stores. Erik just looked at me and said, that project is never going to happen. But I convinced him we might as well look at hooks.

Max did not like this plan. We said we were going home. If a man likes a routine, then he definitely likes to know where he's going and to in fact go there instead of on some wild-hook chase.
And then we reminded him about the tiny carts at the pet food store. He agreed to go. For the tiny cars.
At the pet food store, Zoe and Max played airplanes with their carts, running into very few dogs or humans. We got the dog food. Looked at the turtles and the ferrets and then tried to go. Max cried. "Dog food store. Dog food store."
Erik said, do you think we should try this with Max at the Home Depot.
Fortunately, Home Depot has gigantic cars (not TM) carts that he can pretend to drive. Zoe likes these too and so into the cold cart they went.

We looked for hooks in the coat hook aisle. We looked in the shelving aisle. We looked in the plumbing aisle because it's not a trip to Home Depot if you don't go to Home Depot looking down every aisle for a one-inch thingy mabobber you'd rather not describe to one of the orange-apron wearing Home Depot workers. Zoe and Max got out of the cold Car cart and ran around the store, continuing to play airplanes without the tiny carts, making do with the wide aisles full of humans and boxes to steer around.

We picked three different hooks to try out and bought $20 worth of batteries.

At home, I made lunch for me and Erik since Zoe and Max had already eaten potatoes. El and Rick said they would come and pick me and Zoe up for the Navajo rug auction at 2:00. I said I couldn't go. The house was a mess. I hadn't written my NaNoWriMo words. It was snowing out. But El said that I should come which made me think I might as well. Erik would stay home with Max and make dinner. We could consider hooks at a later date. Zoe was in the middle of washing all the copper with Bar-Keepers-Friend because although she doesn't mind cloth-products strewn about the floor, she cannot abide green-going copper. She wanted to finish this and go to the auction. OK.

Going with Erik's mom to a Navajo Rug auction is awesome because you get to see 100's of Navajo rugs, the auctioneer knows most of the weavers and tells stories about them, and Erik's mom actually bids on rugs. There was one Chief's Blanket from 1890 that one of the Navajo women helping run the show put around her shoulders. If I had $6200 right then, I would have bought it. But I did not have $6200. Erik texted me in the middle of the auction. Could I stop and transfer money from savings? We were overdrafting in our checking account. I made Zoe sit on her hands so she wouldn't accidentally bid until she got bored/her hands fell asleep and she laid down on her grandpa's lap. I gave her my phone so she could play MindSnacks Spanish game.

One of the weavers had come to the auction. She was in nursing school. She brought her toddler-head who cried too and tried to bite his mom which made me miss Max a little, who was, thank god, asleep. She tried to sell three rugs and no one bid on any of them. The auctioneer said, this one rug will pay a semester of her tuition but the buyers of rugs aren't there for altruism. In fact, it seems to make them shy when the weaver is actually there. No one was bidding on anything over $1000, anyway. Some of these rugs go for ten times that outside of Flagstaff but Flagstaff is the first stop since it is the biggest town near the reservation. I love the idea that these women weave rugs, sheer the sheep, card the wool themselves, and sell these for enough money to pay tuition. Well, sometimes.

When we got home Erik was making a chuck roast for shredded beef. Someone had to go to the bank to transfer money. The online transfer system was down and three transactions were pending. I volunteered He was cooking. I needed butter (we had only a tablespoon of butter in the house. I don't think I've ever let it get so low). I said I'd get 12 of the one hook he'd chosen at Home Depot.

A second trip to Home Depot is the marker of many a wasted Saturday.

It was 5:00 before I got home. I hadn't written my 500 words. I went into the Living Room to write them. Zoe and Max followed. Max wanted to watch Curious George on the old, nearly broken computer, having gone cold-turkey that morning. Zoe wanted to play the iPad like a piano. The typing wasn't going so well but eventually I made it to 500 words. I also sent out a poem a student had turned in late to the whole class. Sadly, I sent it to the wrong class. I sent it to next semester's students. My creative nonfiction course. Twice. With the word "vagina" in it. Anti progress. I gave up computing went to help Erik finish tacos. They were delicious. Usually, the day is mostly over, but not this Saturday. Erik wanted me to come with him to watch football at his parents house which Zoe and I didn't want to but Max did and Zoe and I couldn't find a movie to watch, so we all went.

We found out the game wasn't going to be on until 8:30 so instead we watched Cinderella which I really can't like because it is very full of small mice-voice. A precursor to Alvin and the Chipmunks. But Max thinks it's hilarious when the cat scoots the necklace of beads around with his butt, singing "Butt butt cat butt" as the mice try to keep it together.

We read 5 books to Max when we get home to compensate for the screen time. Zoe is almost finished with Little House on the Prairie. I would like to do some Little House on the Prairie research. For instance, on just a rumor, Pa picks up to move, leaving behind the cabin he'd just built with home-made nails and the newly planted sweet potatoes, that the soldiers were going to kick him out of Indian Territory. He should have stuck around to hear how that all turned out. Indian Territory in Missouri didn't last long. A whole year gone to waste. The chapter ends, "What's a year Caroline? We have all the time in the world." And the rest of the west, eventually. A good lesson though, for white people. Pa doesn't complain about time seemingly wasted.

After I sang songs to the kids, I had only a movie called Tower Heist to keep me out of bed so I went upstairs to finish the book "State of Wonder" which made me cry because the kid in the book suffers and because this is exactly like my novel about the malaria cure and the fertility question and the jungle. Two thoughts: 1) I do not think Ann Patchett stole my idea. 2) If she did, she did it better and faster. I think I write too much. Which might be the point of this post.

Sometimes Erik and I sleep upstairs. Sometimes I sleep upstairs and Erik sleeps downstairs. Sometimes we both sleep downstairs. Last night, I went to sleep upstairs but it was so cold I came downstairs. Except then, in the middle of the night, it was so hot. The heat kept going on every five minutes. It was supposed to be 12 degrees last night but that was a lot of furnace. I woke up every time it went on. My legs itched from the dry air. I got up to put lotion on my legs and vaseline on my lips. Finally, I turned the heat down. Usually, when I go to bed, I turn it to 62 degrees. When I woke up this morning, the temperature was set at 67, which means I'd turned it down from 69! 69 degrees. The waste of the planet on top of a mostly unproductive day.
A wasted day is not a horrible thing. It is, I think, what you're supposed to do with Saturdays. But today, I'm finishing laundry and mopping the floors and writing the world's longest blog post as well as my 500 words before I go anywhere because even if the house is a mess later and the clothes are strewn all over the floor and the words are written into the void, at least it will feel like a Sunday because the wildness of Saturday is sometimes too much for me.

Microhalloween

2012-10-31T14:27:00.001-07:00

To go with the Microessays published today: http://www.waccamawjournal.com/

They were both orange—the pumpkin and the habanero—so that seemed an obvious choice to put together for a delicious snack. Although seeds, once denuded of their sticky entrails were not as orange as the flesh and the habanero, now dried, had turned more green and brown than orange, somewhat like November. Still, both seed and powder, signaled all the orange that is fall, all the orange that is harvest. Fall is hidden potential, sewing its future in the promise of spring. It takes half a year for April’s green sprout to earn their October colors. A tiny seed weighing half a gram can, in a year from now, gather twelve pounds of body, converting fruiting air into replicating matter, like a pregnancy gathering a new person. All these tiny things get so big. A single habanero registers 200,000 to 300,000 Scoville units. Scoville units are designed to give you a sense of how hot a pepper will taste. For example, bell peppers register zero on the Scoville scale. Poblanos, 1,000-2,500. Capsaicin is the active component in peppers. Police use pure capsaicin, in the 16 million Scoville unit range. Capsaicin, contrary to popular belief, cannot actually harm you. It doesn’t cause ulcers although if you’re at the wrong-end of a can of pepper say, I imagine “harm” is in the eye of the beholder. Capsaicin actually provides several health benefits. Endorphins are released, which would explain why I kept eating the pumpkin seeds, salted with habanero peppers, roasted at 450, even though they kept burning my mouth. Also, capsaicin blocks neurons transmitting pain, forcing the nerves to act like they’re getting burned, overwhelming them, stopping them from sending painful data. Thus, capsaicin is used for all kinds of neurologic diseases and also for people who keep eating the habanero-covered seeds to stop thinking about their sinus infection and the fact they only slept 4 hours the night before and instead to keep eating the seeds even though the burning. Capsaicin is renowned for its help with arthritis which is why, after I took my contacts out with the same fingers that had spread the habaneros on the seeds and had scraped the seeds from the cookie sheet into the bow and lifted the seeds to the mouth, I rubbed my hands with lotion and my legs with lotion and my back and my cheeks with more and more lotion to try to rub the habanero into my body instead of into my eyes even though I don’t now have arthritis, I can hope for the promise of its preventative. As my eyes were streaming vast oceans of habanero-spiced tears, I washed my hands and lotioned my hands and rubbed and scrubbed my hands to put the habanero someplace else because the tiny difference between harm and hurt is possibly, to the eye, a semantic one, similar, say, to the semantic difference between 70 degrees on an October day and 70 degrees on an April one. 70 degrees, as you fall into winter, is something you want to hold on to, but you know you shouldn’t. You should put your gloves on and keep your eyes closed and try to forget all about orange.

Bliss, plus payback

2012-10-29T15:19:00.003-07:00

In the last week, I've seen some of my favorite people. My mom, her boyfriend, my niece and nephew, my good friend Peter, his boyfriend, Tim (whom I just met is already on my favorite list) and my great friend Julie, her great husband and kids. My sister-in-law too! My mom and co. left on Monday morning. I cleaned like a crazy woman on Monday. Tuesday, Peter and I went to lunch while Tim hiked Mt. Humphreys. Then, Peter came to my intro to poetry workshop and thrilled the students with his stories attending his poems and his gravelly voice. Tim and Peter came for an acceptable steelhead trout, quinoa, swiss chard dinner. Wednesday pizza and Zoe's Puente de Hozho celebration. Thursday, enchiladas at Rick and El's. Friday, Julie and family arrived in time for chile rellenos and chicken tacos. The feeding of the 12,000. Or. 12. That night, Julie picked up a draft of Salmon, the food/baby memoir type thing I've been writing for 100 years, In the morning, she told me she'd stayed up late reading the whole thing. Who reads a whole thing? Who says such nice and supportive things? Does she even need to? Staying up to read a book is the sweetest gift of all.
Julie and Peter came for a reading we put together at La Posada. La Posada is on old train station, designed by Mary Colter, that was completely abandoned. Allan Alfeldt restored it and wants to make it an artist destination. Peter, Julie and I did a good job at making it happen. The seats were full--mostly with my amazing students from NAUwho now also number among my favorite people, and our families, who are still my favorite people, but still, we filled the seats. Julie and Peter read beautifully and Julie read a poem dedicated to me and even about me which I think might be, nacrcissitically, the height of all poetry. I loved that poem. I cried. And then I had to stand up to read with tears in my eyes. My face was red but I didn't care. I read OK anyway. I think everyone reads well in a perfectly restored ballroom with a fire burning in the fireplace and the lighting looking like Tiffany himself designed it. Next to the ballroom is the hotel restaurant, The Turquoise Room. I think it's a bit overrated but there's adventurous things on the menu like elk and bison and corn creme brulee. 12 of us (again!) sat together and talked about poetry (I think Julie's son and Zoe even wrote some poetry to each other) and Frankenstorms and dreams of getting together again and again. On Sunday, Julie and co. and Erik and co. and I went for a walk in the forest. The whole forest was yellow and I felt as much at peace as I've felt in a very, very long time. So many people I love in such a short amount of time.

But I knew I would pay for it today. I wrote a list last night before I went to bed so I wouldn't wake up in an anxious panic in the middle of the night.
Diagram
Comments
Email Jeff, Lis, Deveroux,
Thank yous for La Posada.
Kelli's recommendation
Defunct needs bio
751 nees proofs
Start proofing Bending Genre
Grade
Laundry
Grocery store
Alissa Thesis
I'm making progress but I have to take my computer to Zoe's gymnastics class to get even toward the dream of finishing. Thankfully, my favorite people are taking some of my other favorite people out to dinner at my favorite restaurant to celebrate my favorite daughter's awesome report card. It's worth finishing the list so I can get back to my forest-walking, yellow churning, people-loving peace state.

The Nicest Visit

2012-10-22T11:06:00.001-07:00

Is the one where people come and your kids aren't home and, after they hug you, stare out the window, waiting for the ones that are small and fun. It's the kind where they eat your chicken and dumpling soup from Ad Hoc, Thomas Keller's supposedly easier cookbook, and love it more than any other chicken and dumpling soup. It's the kind where the kids go play in Zoe's bedroom, dolls and bears and Beanie Babies, all four of them together, while Erik and I sit in the living room with the in-laws who like my mom and her boyfriend enough to see us every day of their visit. It's the kind where we talk about books and music and politics and no one gets mad. It's the kind where your nephew wants to go running with you every day and talks the whole time, demonstrating he's in awfully good shape. It's the kind where we eat lunches out in Flagstaff even though it's crazy with Homecoming weekend and the dumb Tequila Sunrise tradition where the bars open at 6:00 a.m. and people are demonstratively drunk at 11:00. It's the kind where no one minds waiting Erik in the parking lot by the Skydome where the Homecoming game will be played, while, called in for the emergency, he fixes the computers and cameras for the Homecoming game. It's the kind where my nephew runs with me again and we go to the park and he pushes the Max on the swing AND convinces the kid that it's time to go home without tears. It's the kind where all 8 of us go on a two mile par course run/walk and everyone tries to climb the rope and some, (Lily, Erik) succeed in making it most of the way to the top and where we do chin ups and hurdles and sit ups like we're in the Army. It's the kind where I take all four kids swimming and niece Lily and nephew Cam spend 45 minutes try to convince cousin Zoe to go down the big tube slide at the Aquaplex and finally succeed. It' the kind where Cam can watch Max so I can go down the slide with Zoe. It's the kind where my mom and I stay up late one night talking and the kind where we can just relax and watch TV and not feel like we're not getting enough socializing done. It's the kind where my in-laws invite us over to dinner and make such delicious food and make hosting 8 people look so easy. It's the kind where we see downtown and the Rio de Flag and go enough places that it doesn't feel like winter but we stay home enough that it's cozy like fall. It's the kind where the kids are so good about putting their dishes in the dishwasher and putting Beanie Babies way after sliding them down the banisters. It's the kind where Max pretend-reads Jane Eyre and Cameron reads an essay of mine in a book while sitting on the couch with Erik, watching football. It's the kind where the kids play trains with Max and then just play trains because trains are fun. It's the kind where my mom and Bart go the the grocery store for supplies. The kind where my mom washes the breakfast dishes and Erik the dinner dishes. It's the kind where I can take a 2 hour nap and no one asks where I am, let alone feels "under-hosted." It's the kind of 4 days that when the idea comes up they should stay for one more, all anyone can say is yes, yes yes! It's the kind where Max takes the Bernstein Bears book to my mom and asks her to read it one more time.

Now they're gone it's kind of sad and super busy. I have more company coming on Thursday so I'm doing the laundry and recycling the wine bottles, putting away a couple of the long-long Beanie Babies and sending 900 emails and turning in mid-term grades and making plans for feeding another 8 or so people this coming weekend which will be so fun but won't make me any less sad that the previous visitors have already left.

Relaxation

2012-10-14T16:59:00.002-07:00

I was talking to my colleague last Monday as we watched our kids in gymnastics. His daughter and my daughter are in one level, his son and my son are in another level. Strangely, we never hang out with these people socially. (Perhaps I will fix this.) We were talking about how busy we had been with grading and etcetera but that our lives were in general pretty sweet what with the good jobs and good Flagstaff but that we still had too much work to do. I had had a guest writer in town the weekend before. The guest writer left on Sunday morning, meaning the rest of the day was mine (and ours, as weekends are). What did I want to do to relax? I asked my colleague. Not really read because I have to remember stuff to teach from it or remember stuff to write about it. Not really watch TV because TV is getting stupider. Not really watch movies because they cleave my heart in two. The only thing I find truly relaxing is writing. I can't tell if it's my dad's workaholic sickness that says unless I'm being productive, I'm not happy, or if the puzzle of writing is more fun than Scrabble or that I just do it enough that it's my comfort space, but it's true. That Sunday, I didn't do any writing. Zoe, Erik, his parents and I (with Max on my bike seat) went on a 9 mile ride out to Fisher Point. That was relaxing in that exhausting way.

We have company coming for the next two weeks so today was the only day where I had nothing planned or scheduled. So I should have relaxed. But instead we (we means Zoe in most cases) woke up at 6:45, made oatmeal, went to the Farmer's Market where I couldn't stop myself and bought another case of tomatoes so that when we went to Fry's for a few more groceries I could pick up Mason jars so when I got home I could run the dishwasher with the new jars in it to be sterilized so while the dishwasher ran we went on a bike ride (not 9 miles. More like 5. With Max and Erik) and came back to find the dishwasher mostly done so we could boil the skins off the tomatoes and plunge them into ice water and peel the tomatoes and house them in some super-hot Mason jars so that we could boil the jars and the tomatoes (again) forever at our high altitude. During our forever, we had to empty the dishwasher so we could fill the dishwasher so we could have room to make pumpkin bread and pumpkin muffins which I had promised Zoe I would make her all weekend long. The muffins were good. The bread fell apart (too many extra chocolate chips?) but still tasted good enough to give us the energy to go to World Market where we bought new drapes (20% off!) to hang upstairs before my mom comes since the old blinds tore the drywall and Erik, the ever-drywaller, could re-drywall and re-texture and re-paint so we could hang new blinds from World Market. We also bought him a gigantic bottle of Chihula to thank him for his efforts.
This was not exactly relaxing. I did not write anything except for copying a script from Wikipedia about botulism. But my plan is coming together. 14 jars of tomatoes. A pile of pumpkin muffins. A fridge full of farmer's market goods and extra stuff from Fry's. Drapes to be hung. Monday may, after my meeting with the dean (for which I've been summoned), allow me to actually write something about botulism and the end of the world which will be as relaxing as can be.
Also, my sweet in-laws invited us over for dinner and my sweet friend invited us over for pizza on Tuesday. I may not see the kitchen again for a couple of days.

Attack

2012-10-10T14:23:00.002-07:00

I always feel so sorry for nature. Humans build houses all over the forest, dig holes into the ground, pump crap into the skies. It is a victim! It deserves rights and protection and advocacy!
And yet, yesterday, when I went running, a wasp stung me right through my shirt on my underarm. Twice! Nature, does, at least in the form of bees, stand up for itself.

Thus began a crappy day of attacks coming from, seemingly, everywhere. I was on the defensive. The bees wanted me gone. Hurt and gone. My colleagues wanted me taken down a notch. Even Erik wanted me to feel sorrier for him that he used someone else's toothbrush. I drove. I hit all lights red. My phone wouldn't download my mail. My water bottle leaked all over my bookbag (which is really a grocery bag of the reusable variety). It was on the one hand, nothing, and on the other hand, everything. I know there are days like that but I just hate it when they're mine. But who owns days, really? Nature? Humans?

The point, though, is that the bees do have a lesson. Sometimes, you have to stand up for your rights. Admittedly, I was just running through the forest, minding my own business and the wasp seemed to chase and follow and sting me, (twice!) but those wasps didn't know I wasn't there to stomp out their existence. I'm sure they've had wasp-friends who have suffered similar fates.
Erik once poked at a hole the drywall of our ceiling. Out flew twenty hornets. I ran into the laundry room and shut the door. Erik got stung twice. I was hiding. Erik was on the phone calling the pest control company who came out immediately (after they heard we had a dog. This company loves dogs and doesn't want them stung), climbed up on our roof, dug through the shingles and smoked those hornets to death.

My point is this. The bees standing up for his territory. So was Erik. Sometimes, I'm too quiet. Sometimes I don't say the thing that needs to be said. Sometimes, I just send Obama $8 instead of making phone calls. But, in this political season, I should probably stand up and say something. And not just to my friends on Facebook, who already agree with me. Attack bees!

Words around the house

2012-09-07T10:45:00.002-07:00

Erik told Zoe that all he had to do was finish painting her window and her room would be done. "But then I won't be able to see out." Zoe is a bit of a literalist. She also likes to fill out forms. On Saturday, she spent two hours on the computer filling out Submishmash and the other submission manager forms. She came home from mushroom hunting Monday morning asking if we could fill out some more forms. You know, send some stuff to those places. Because it's fun. (I warned her about the rejection element and the lack of fun there. She seemed unconcerned.)

Upon installing Zoe's new closet organizer, Erik tells me he's installed "hundreds of these." He has many talents. A new one is revealed to me on an almost daily basis. "Closet organizer installer" is one of the most useful. I plan to turn my whole house into a closet.

Max says a lot of things. "Zoe. I'm working with daddy. It's too dangerous for you." And, "Mama, I paint like daddy." (Not really Max Daddy gets a little paint on the walls.) And, "I need a helmet." Pretty much all the time, that's true. Some days, the narration of his day takes as long as the drive from preschool home. "And then I played the computer but then I couldn't play the computer because it fell on the floor. Crash. And then I cried because the computer was on the floor so I went outside and I drove the car. I opened the car door and closed the car door and then it rained. Then we couldn't ride cars so I went back in to play computer which was on the table. No crash. Just type." Max has a stronger sense of narrative than most. He is also a bit of a yeller. If Max were a cartoon, his dialogue bubbles would be in all caps. At sushi the other night, Max says, "I USE MY CHOPSTICKS MAMA!" Zoe says back to him, "Max, you don't have to yell. Mommy's right there." I nod my head. It's true. I'm like six inches away.

Things I say to myself, quietly, when I'm home alone: Fall semester is so much less stressful than spring semester I almost feel like I'm cheating. I've been writing during the week. Even on teaching days. I'm sure this will stop. It probably should. I'm nervous I'm forgetting something. I'm sure it will all become too busy soon--guest writers descend in early October and come and come throughout the month--and then I'll actually be forgetting things and I'll feel a lot more like myself. I probably spend to much time home alone. It's what I always desire most but after hour 4.5, I start to miss the stories. I drop the computer on the floor and paint the windows just to get some narrative happening around here.

There was some summer in that summer

2012-08-24T15:18:00.002-07:00

But not much. This was a working summer which I guess I should learn to expect of summer now that the house is permanent, the kids are permanent, the job is almost permanent. With permanence comes maintenance and I maintained but did not do quite the Nestea plunge that signals a perfect summer. I'll need more California in my summer for that to happen. However, there was work. And it was productive if not necessarily successful or successfully over in some cases. Summer is over. I just uploaded syllabi to BB Learn. Time for a review of goals that were made early on and once you make goals you have to do some work to reach those goals even if those goals were indeed to give a moose a muffin or a pig a party rather than a deck a remodel.
In review, then, a work-like list.

Write a YA novel. Half a check. Wrote 20,000 words, then August happened.
Write enough of the Micro Project to send out (also part of grant for summer so required, in a way of speaking). Check! Sending out next week.
Clean the laundry room. No check. Not even a little pencil mark. In fact, laundry room may be dirtier now.
Stain the deck. Checkish. It rained a lot. Deck still not done. I'm not thrilled much with the deck project.
Website for MFA program. Check but just as of today which means it hovered over my head like an annoying deerfly for most of the summer. But now, webpage for MFA comes with attractive visuals which is more than I can say for most other areas in my department (although I did clean up the other area's pages a bit. Shh. Don't tell them. They will find something wrong and want me to fix it.) Second parenthetical (Why is making websites so fun? I used to do it for a living. It's so tedious. So arbitrary. Frustrating. But I love it. A kind of tedium that I can usually fix, unlike deck projects or student-based concerns. Again. Shh.)
Swimming lessons. Checkity check check check. This constitutes the primary fun times of the summer. Swimming places included Bear Paw, Flagstaff Athletic Club, NAU Aquaplex, Mom's pool, hotel pool in Phoenix and some ocean wading in Oregon. If water is summer, then this summer was wet.
Wet summer. It was a goal. I hate droughts. I like rain. It rained every day since July 16th. It rained like Arizona is a rain forest rain. It rained like an ocean. It rained like Oregon. However, this did indeed affect the deck project and would that the deck project had been finished more "fun" in the form of hanging out on the deck would have happened. In fact, I do believe I define summer fun more by deck-hanging out than water and thus the feeling of no summer, more an Oregon that happened to me.
Rain barrels. I still have not yet bought. Fail. Demerit. Take a check mark away. Who is keeping all this rain for the dry October season. Not me said the ant to the grasshopper.
Zoe's room remodel. Similar to the deck, not as much fun as it sounds. Still halfway. I bought flooring today. Erik has painted the closet, the ceiling, one wall. (He also denuded the ceiling of it's popcorn. Only two rooms left to go.) Still, there is much furniture from Zoe's room in every other room in the house. How does one small room hold a whole house full of stuff? Progress toward spatial understanding? Minimal.
Seeing my Salt Lake people for more than ten minutes each. Best Salt Lake trip ever but not 100% check. I missed some people I very much wanted to see. However, I did spend almost 24 hours a day with one or the other member of my family who I never see enough so I'm giving myself a check even if it's not with a Sharpie.
Taught a new class. It was good. Check.
Clean the garage. Two checks. And yet, still a mess. I blame Cleo. And Erik. But Erik blames our mattress situation. A wealth of mattresses does not make for a wealth of garage space for proper tool-organization, is the theory. Still.
Yard revamp. We have a big front yard of useless space. It used to grow useless weeds. Now, those weeds have been replaced by useless rocks. Still, very attractive, those 7 tons of rocks. Thanks Mom, Rick, and, obviously, Erik to moving those rocks from the driveway to the yard. But I wheeled a ton, literally of rocks myself so check that.
Speaking of tons, I ran every day. I did not lose a ton of weight but maybe 1 pound. Still, running is good. Also, almost 40 push-ups. Almost. Check-like.
Editing of Quench and Bending Genre. Double check thanks to the people who edited and read them. Covers for each on their way. Almost to press. Spring 2013! Book release season.
Scanning and uploading of documents for tenure file. We have moved, if I haven't complained yet enough, to an electronic annual and tenure review system. I have carpal tunnel. Check.
Learning to poach the perfect poached egg. Check. Come over and see.
Speaking of cooking. Iron chef Ocean. If it's not catalogued here, it will be forever forgotten. Clam dip, clams casino, salmon roe and taramasalata, shrimp bisque, roasted shrimp, cauliflower panna cotta with grilled trout, whole red snapper, mussels and frites, paella, hamachi with ponzu, and crab sandwiches. Too many checks. My sisters and I may have learned our lesson. Don't kill the people with too much food. Especially seafood. At least we omitted the octopus. He was hard to cook after we made a puppet-friend of him.
Submitted. nothing, published nothing. No checks. Check removal. Bad checker. Rather work on websites than submit. Ew.
Speaking of submit, pushed submit on tenure application button today. Hopeful? Dawn of a new era? Better hamachi? Better than rain? Better than a remodeled deck? Probably not, but a good thing to have finished, nonetheless.