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Jonesing

This week is a momentous week in the cycle of the Bix Casita — switching from hot espresso drinks to cold coffee concentrate drinks. By rights we should have switched sooner, as the mercury has been creeping upward in the Vegas valley and we’ve already seen many days with highs in the 90s and it even hit 100 once, but we had made a substantial order of espresso beans when we bunkered down for the pandemic, and they are too oily to use for cold brew, so we’ve been just making hot coffee to use them up.

Once the last espresso shot had been pulled, Esteban made some of that Dalgona coffee that’s been a darling of the quarantine. He brought it to me proudly and I took one taste and absolutely died from the harshness. It looked gorgeous and the texture was amazing, but holy shit, so bitter. I tried another sip, working up my courage and nope. Nope. Nopetty nope. I hated to disappoint him, and he insisted that I go onto the internet and announce that I don’t actually like coffee — which I did, because honestly? There has never been any doubt of that fact.

But now it’s cold brew season and I couldn’t be happier. I love cold brew season so much — the cold extract is so much smoother and less bitter on my palate. I actually don’t like coffee very much, and in fact, most of my coffee situations are 95% Not Coffee and only a splash of actual coffee. Basically I like caffeinated milk shakes with a coffee aroma.

Our cold brew efforts are dead simple easy — here’s how we do it. Take a pound of coffee grounds, soak them at least 12 hours (we do this in the evening so that it’s ready for the morning), and then filter or drain them. That method creates a concentrated cold brew extraction (about the same ratio of an espresso shot) which you can then add water to for cold coffee, or you could create iced lattes by adding milk.

Folks in Louisiana have been doing their cold brew concentrate extractions in half gallon Mason jars for years, and you could do that too, doing the soak in a mason jar, and then affixing a cheap coffee filter with the Mason ring screw top, then let gravity do the draining.

If you don’t want to deal with that mess or just like a neater solution, there are plenty of commercial options available. We tried the Takeya pitcher first — it comes with its own filter and is absolutely the most elegant solution because when it’s done extracting, you just pull the coffee ground chamber out and it becomes its own vessel. However, it was imperfect — you can’t make new coffee while you’re also drinking coffee unless you decant it, which defeats the purpose. Also, we drink more coffee than this thing can make which meant we were constantly waiting for another extraction with zero coffee for our morning cups, so we went bigger and got a Filtron system. This was so great that when we lost the plug for the bottom during a move, we ended up buying a second system (and then only too late realized that you could buy replacement plugs), so now we have more production than we can possibly outdrink, as well as a second carafe.

We add chicory to the cold extraction because I really love the flavor of chicory in my cold brew. It just adds this extra something that is so fantastic, a depth of flavor that is absolutely delightful. We also reuse the grounds for a second round immediately after draining — refilling the water and letting it sit for 24 hours that time, and draining again for more concentrate.

We have a complete bar of coffee syrups to add to our morning blends — all sugar free, because that’s our business (TM Tabitha Brown) — that range from Almond Roca to Salted Caramel to White Chocolate to Peanut Butter. With cold brew, I tend to mix it with a caramel protein shake rather than milk because not only does it have fewer carbs than skim milk and serve as a filling and efficient replacement for breakfast, it tastes fecking delicious and hides all evidence of coffee from my persnickety tongue. However, I’ve also used flax, oat and coconut milks here as well. If I was feeling extra decadent, I top it with a little bit of creamer. I used to do fat free half and half, but then I discovered that Nut Pods creamer is so flipping delicious that I use that instead.

#bixquestions: What is your summer morning routine? How do you take your coffee? What is your morning deal breaker?

Underlying

When I’m stressed, my lizard brain decides to cry. The problem is that it doesn’t inform the rest of my brain that it’s time to cry — my eyes just start leaking, big rollers falling down my cheeks like a soap opera star facing her thought-dead long lost lover.

I can be thinking about something totally benign, and I mean, really thinking about something else — playing a computer game, shopping for moving boxes, trying to figure out which agent to query next for my novel, my cerebral cortex fully engaged in doing whatever that thing is — and my face will be slowly leaking tears the entire time.

To be clear, I am not actively upset while this is going on. I’m often not even aware that I have tears rolling down my face, so it’s not like one of those throat goes tight, you’re trying not to think of it, voice trembling kind of things. It’s exactly like someone has grabbed your hand and said “why are you hitting yourself?” when you’re not, in fact, hitting yourself. This happened while Esteban was in the hospital exactly seven years ago this month. It’s almost like I can fool myself 99% of the way into not reacting to the ongoing horror around me, but that 1%? It’s in charge of the wet works and it is going to work overtime.

Last night, we ordered pizza take out. It’s one of my perennial comfort foods — thin crust mushroom and extra cheese — and I’ve been requesting it probably more than usual. We took a drive to pick it up and also as an excuse to get out of the house and break from the monotony of constant inside-ness. Then we watched a bit of Last Chance Kitchen for Top Chef and then Esteban went off to play his game and I sat on the couch and watched Outlander until I realized that I had two loads of laundry sitting on the bed and I could watch it in there while I folded laundry. Then I just gave up and went to bed, which was, to be honest, the right idea, because I’ve been struggling with the line of demarcation for bedtime. When you never go anywhere or do anything, how do you know when you’re tired? If you’re tired all the time because everything is traumatic, how do you decide when you’re tired enough for bed? It’s a riddle wrapped in an enigma, soaking in a pandemic marinade.

This morning, we woke up early and got a jump on our plans before the heat of the day set in — a quick run to Costco to get gas in the truck, and then headed to campus to clean out my office there.

Being back on campus after two months felt wrong and apocalyptic — set into effect already by crossing the Las Vegas strip which is barren and all of the neon signs are black with white lettering reminding us Stay Strong and Be Safe and also, a tribute to Roy Horn, who passed away yesterday from COVID. I had been through the Strip a few times since the Shelter in Place was in effect, but today many restrictions were lifted commercially, so I expected to see more people out and about. Nope — not really, and campus itself was as empty as it ever has been. We drove the truck onto the pedestrian paths and parked it right outside the door to the literature building to make everything easier, and then realized that I also had to clear all of my electronic baggage from my computer there too, so the entire thing was a longer process than I expected. We took my rolling suitcase, since I had a ton of books and files in there — and I had also forgotten about the ton of other stuff too, snacks and gifts from students, and two dog beds from Ole’s visits to campus, and also a forgotten unopened bottle of Diet Coke in the fridge (score!)

I was surprised to see that no one had taken a small clear bag of basic medical masks that has been sitting on my desk since the first week in March. While I share the office with only one student, tons of people have a key to it and I absolutely expected something as valuable as a medical mask to be gone, but there it was. Faith restored in my fellow academics, I guess.

The building has been locked down since early March, but as a Fellow, I have a key that opens the outer doors. Aside from the emptiness, it felt like nothing had changed — the same video scrolls were still rolling on the flatscreens, the same “leave the lights on” lights were still on inside the Institute department where my main office resides. But there is evidence that time has moved on — Esteban pointed out the way that there is now a rust trail off the wheels on the golf carts that are usually parked and chained outside the back door to the building. And inside the back hallway, dead bugs by the dozens, moths, grasshoppers, things I tried not to look too closely at. This illusion that time is passing so slowly disappears and you understand how quickly things are moving while we bunker and hunker and shiver away from the spectacle of All This.

It didn’t feel final. None of this feels right. It felt like there should have been some kind of victory lap, some kind of parade, ticker tape or otherwise, and instead it felt a bit like a rescue mission, like we were thieves in the night. I took my mask off in my office while we packed, assuming no one had been in there exhaling recently, but of course, that’s how virus spread happens. You feel safe. You feel normal. You can’t see the tiny particles that hope to impregnate you into becoming their own movable spore delivery system. The greatest heist movie ever has such a plot twist — they never saw it coming.

After we brought all of my stuff home and stowed it in my office, we went back out and grabbed the dry cleaning from the no-contact dry cleaner, and then picked up our grocery order from a lady wearing a mask who was so sweet and chatty. Kroger has been paying all of its employees a $2 an hour “hero pay” but it announced that it will cease doing so next week, despite the fact that at least four Kroger employees have died from COVID, contracting it while working in the stores, despite the fact that they are putting themselves in harm’s way as essential workforce this entire time, so that people who are high risk like me can benefit from their services. Then we came home, unloaded our groceries, and then I wrote an email to Kroger asking them to pay their staff a living wage with full benefits and no medical co-pays to compensate them for this incredible service they provide at the risk of their own bodies and lives. How is two dollars an hour too much for this? How was it only two dollars in the first place? How are they no longer “heroes” because some other people decided that we’re not going to be afraid of a virus anymore?

My hair stylist texted me while I was writing the email — during the shut down, she lost her studio because she couldn’t cover the rent. Now that the governor has lifted restrictions for hair stylists, she was wondering if she could come to my house and perform services there. When all of this started, I had texted her and asked if I could prepay for services — she turned me down, and now I want to scream at her for being noble when she clearly had needed the money back then. Granted, my monthly hair services alone probably weren’t even a dent in her rent payment, but maybe it would have helped? She offered to wear a mask and a shield and I would also wear a mask, and she would do my hair in the house with a portable sink.

I asked her for another option — it really comes down to risking our health for vanity, which I have a problem with personally. If we’re not willing to go into a grocery store right now, which is a lower risk, it seems illogical to then bring someone into the house for several hours who shares very close personal space with a series of people who might be asymptomatic or even recovering from and still contagious with the virus, just because I don’t like seeing my natural hair color coming forward. Vanity is considered a deadly sin for a reason, no?

She’s going to whip up a DIY color option for me and leave it at the door — I asked her to charge at least what she normally would plus a delivery fee, which is only fair considering how much of an additional service it would be. She seems open to this, but I can tell from her tone that she is worried that other customers may have the same concerns but just have moved to drugstore box color instead.

March seemed to move so slowly and then April flew by at record speed. I was talking with Esteban a few days ago about how it feels so much like the time “we” were in the hospital, the way that you start to acclimate to the new normal, figure out a routine, tell yourself little stories to keep yourself distracted. There was a cold shock when we finally got released from the hospital after 44 days and the physical residue took months and years to unravel, maybe still unraveling now.

So tears appear for no reason, seemingly no reason, for every reason, tears again. That tiny part of my brain is watching. That tiny part of my brain refuses to be institutionalized by this sameness. It constantly is pushing me to pay better attention, count these days and hours and minutes as they slip past, unnoticed. Unconsolable. Unceremonious. Understood.

The big bloop

Yesterday was a surprisingly busy day and I uncharacteristically slept late (9 am!) which of course was far too hot to bring the doggoes for their morning walkabouts. Anything over 75 degrees is really too warm for these smush faces to exercise in, even while wearing their auxiliary cooling vests under their harnesses. Which was fine, honestly, because I also had to teach my last class of the semester (and also the last of my graduate fellowship — damn) and I had some prep work to get done before the class zoom opened at 11:30 am.

Class was stellar and somewhat chaotic — I tried something new with the class which was breaking them into small groups to workshop their flash fiction stories. Because everything in my class is essentially “Do it if you feel like it” in response to the state of the world, only eight of the sixteen students submitted work. I had figured fifteen minutes of discussion for each workshop piece (augmented by the opening remarks they had already done on the discussion boards ahead of the workshop), and with eight pieces and an hour to talk about them, it worked out best to split the class in half and do four and four. In theory, that meant eight students per workshop, but in actuality, with several students just unable to attend right now for a variety of reasons, it worked out to more like six and six. I had assigned their groups based on whose work was being discussed, who typically shows up in Post Quarantine Life and who is a really robust contributor.

I had devised a way to break the class into small groups with technology — Zoom won’t let you have two meetings at once, but I set up a Google Meet and posted the link in the chat window and sent one group over there. The idea was that I would be on camera and on mute in both groups but they would lead their own workshop. Thankfully I had two students with really solid leadership skills in both groups (and every one of these authors are super interested and invested) to manage it. What I didn’t consider fully was that while I could mute myself on both calls, I couldn’t mute one call while still hearing another call, so I couldn’t pop back and forth between the windows, I could just endure two, three and sometimes four people talking at once. I kept idiotically removing one ear bud as though the sound from one group was coming from the left side and the sound from the other group was on the right side — that obviously didn’t work, and yet, I kept finding myself doing it. I don’t know, it did seem to help, the same way that it helps to turn down the car radio when you’re trying to figure out where you are.

We have one more get together next week, during our finals talk, where we will clear up some loose ends, listen to each other perform their work (and I might even read one of my pieces), and do pet show and tell.

After that, I did some work on my freelance project for Tech Giant Website. It was weird to be back in the groove, thinking about deliverables and measurable qualifiers after three years out of the game. In some ways, it was like remembering how to speak a language you haven’t heard in years. I can imagine this three years feeling like a dream if I dive wholeheartedly back into tech journalism — did it even happen, was I ever here? It’s also amazing how much bravado I have about this subject, and perhaps that speaks to the culture of tech itself — it response to confidence and bullshit. But also, I guess it comes down to the fact that I a) know I can deliver what I promise, even if I have to bleed for it and b) I actually don’t care very much about the project as a whole, so it somehow removes my own internal anxiety and fear of failure from the equation.

Imagine how much we could get done if we didn’t care if we failed? Sometimes I think that’s the secret to some of the tech bros — they’ve been praised so much for the infinitesimal successes their whole lives and have gotten so accustomed to absorbing the successes of others as their own success that it doesn’t even faze them if they fall flat on their faces.

Man, writing that out makes me realize how much a driving force in my life has been the avoidance of shame.

Once I got that Tech Giant proposal done, I researched a few agents, sent out a query, and then hopped onto a quick video kibitz with my bestie Michael. I jumped off that chat to grab dinner that Esteban had whipped up — pollock, steamed lemon asparagus and Brazilian tapioca cheese bread puffs — and then after dinner had another call with my gaggle of Las Vegas lady friends that we call The Coven. That was delightful and we made many eggplant and taco jokes, but after about 90 minutes, I felt the last of my social spoons, made my adieus, and had some quiet time reading for the rest of the evening, followed by a deep dive in YouTube looking for songs I loved in the 90s, until it was 11:30 pm and I realized that the latte I had during my 11:30 am class was biting me in the ass, so I tucked the dogs for their last potty break of the night and then went off to bed.

We did spot another house that came on the market yesterday, one we’re both quasi excited about. Unfortunately, our minions in Green Bay can’t get in to walk around it until Monday, and given the current swing of the housing market, it might be snapped up quickly, so we’ll see. It’s an imperfect house, to be honest — it lacks a lot of the things that we loved about our last house, like a wooded lot with lots of property, and a four season sun room, or even a third stall in the garage, but it is pinging pretty hard, so I’m trying to keep my emotional distance from it and recognizing how much of my excitement is probably linked to my desire to GTFO of Vegas.

Despite that desire to leave, the state of Nevada is lifting a bunch of COVID restrictions tomorrow, but your Intrepid Girl Reporter is still staying the fuck home, thank you very much. And if you can, you should too.

Leeward

I had a wonderful chat with my LV bestie Lindsay today. We turned over various plottings for Life After All This, and came up with a way to revolutionize the literary community and galvanize it in a way that solves the problem of both publishers and the adrift independent writers. The problem is that I absolutely could put my brain toward fixing that problem — the issue is that turning the million dials and levers to fix the problem will take all of my brain resources and I have begun to feel selfish about my remaining days left on this planet. I’m not entirely passionate about fixing the ills of the literary community, to be frank. I’m more passionate about working with individual writers and readers.

There’s an interesting analogy about how sailboats get where they’re going — they can’t really go in a direct line because the wind is rarely going in the same direction they are, so instead, you have to zigzag. Catch the wind one way, and then course correct and catch the wind slightly differently. I feel a bit like I’m doing that now, particularly in light of my pessimism about finding a university teaching job with benefits and seniority.

A four-year university in Northeastern Wisconsin announced this week that this semester is its last. They let both faculty and the students know during finals week — some students received the email as they were seated to take their final exams. Faculty found out that they don’t have a job in a few short weeks, some a little longer, but everyone will be done by August. Students found out that they suddenly need to find a new school to attend in three months, and oh yeah, most places only accept transfer students in fall, so get moving on those applications.

The university where I taught in Wisconsin has vowed to pick up some of the gap for those impacted — but for me, that means less opportunities too. When I left for Las Vegas, the English Department chair made noises about people in the creative writing team nearing retirement. There was a serious hint that he wanted to talk once I had doctorate in hand. It would have been nice, but also, it’s a solid hour’s drive from Green Bay and the roads were pretty shitty for half of that drive.

So we zig zag once more.

Today was a rare day when I didn’t really have anything specific going on — I didn’t have to teach nor attend a class, and my dissertation edits are more or less done now that the defense is over — so I focused on writing business stuff, researching agents and finishing up the formatting questions to the graduate college for my dissertation.

It hit 100 degrees in the Valley today and it definitely felt hot. I woke up and roused myself fairly early so that I could take a shower, get dressed and take the dogs for a walk before the sun had much of a chance to heat the place up. Avi needs to lose weight — she’s gained two pounds in three months, so hence the short walks. Also today I started her on her diet food, and brought Ole outside to eat his while I finished some correspondence for the Dearest Confinement Friend project and drink my healthy cherry/spinach smoothie, which was pleasant. I spotted the yard lizard again, which is now the highlight of my mornings.

The star jasmine is blooming in our little courtyard leading into the front door, so I’ve been enjoying the heady fragrance so much. It’s particularly intense right now in the heat, which will unfortunately cause the blossoms to fade fast, so I’m like a smell junkie every time I go in or out the front door. Tonight, Esteban and I spent some time in the front yard trying to spot the StarLink satellites as they were passing over the house, while talking about our future plans as well, and whether right now is worse or better than the night and week after the 2016 election. I personally think it’s worse because people are actually dying due to the fears we all had, while he thinks it’s better because this is a known enemy and he doesn’t physically feel like he needs to vomit. Probably not the conversations that the sailors of old had while steering their courses, zig zagging across the oceans, but not much far off, I suppose.

This is me beating on, boat against the current. Zig zag zig zag.

Sumo wrestler

My students are so amazing, every single day they just stun and humble me to the depths of my soul and I can’t believe how lucky I have been to get to talk to them as my “work” (it’s not work).

Today, was part two of my informal “here’s the truth about publishing” talk — the first day was all about how to submit to literary journals, because that’s what I know the best, but then on the second day, I opened it up to writing nonfiction stuff (which I also know a lot about but that’s not the point of a fiction workshop) and writing and submitting novels. And before I got started, I asked whether they wanted to get together during finals week, which is next week. Originally I hadn’t scheduled a class during finals week because typically I’m losing my mind that week, the students are frazzled and need some time to decompress, and also, I really thought we’d have people in town for graduation and also be really busy packing to relocate back to Wisconsin.

Plans. Such hubris.

So I asked them how they wanted to do things — we could just have this week be the last week of class or we could definitely meet one more time next week during our assigned finals slot. Many of them have other classes with real finals so we really couldn’t just declare a four hour Zoom party without excluding them — we were stuck in the weird timeslot that the university reserves based on when your class meets usually.

And one student piped up and said “What I care about most is that I have taken so many workshops, here and also through other organizations, and this is the best workshop by far. I want it to keep going as long as possible and is there a way we can keep doing class over the summer?” And in my Zoom account, I watched all of their earnest faces nod eagerly.

My heart!

The challenge will be not actually crying during our final official class.


I had a bit of a down brain over the last several days. Most of my frustration is around the housing market and also the fear of the pandemic in the pressure of “reopening the country.”

I kept thinking about the phrase “head shock” and how you can boil a frog to death by simply increasing the heat a little bit at a time. I kept doom scrolling. I’m using past tense as though these things aren’t going to continue happening, but let’s be real — they will.

On top of that, the biggest first world problems of all time happened and it kind of broke me.

I ordered stamps from the USPS about a month ago and I was weirdly really looking forward to them. Gwen Ifill! Muppets! Dragons! I got an email finally saying they were shipping in early April, so I thought it would arrive soon.

And it didn’t.

And it didn’t some more.

And then Esteban got the mail one day and I was sure that he must have thrown out my stamps accidentally so then I had to dig in the recycling bin but I didn’t see them and the bin was pretty empty so it was hard to get in there, plus dirty and gross, so I didn’t keep digging but then what if they were actually there? What if I had missed them?

And let’s face it, this is crazy thinking — it assumes that Esteban would mistake an envelope full of stamps for a piece of junk mail, and then it assumes that I wouldn’t have spotted them in a mostly empty bin. I logged back into my USPS account and saw a tracking number, and that said that they had been dropped at the mailbox on April 18th (!!!!). But of course, no stamps showed up, so I was certain that the mail carrier accidentally put the package in someone else’s mail slot in the neighborhood bank of boxes, and then the someone else opened it by accident. This has actually happened many times to us already — on both sides. We got someone’s passport once and had to go find their house and deliver it — our mail is delivered by third party contractors and they are frequently in trouble for stealing the mail, so as insane as this sounds, it has set my conspiracy theory brain going nuts but also, self doubt. I got upset about this and Esteban pointed out that it wasn’t worth being upset about $60 worth of stamps, and I pointed out that he was invalidating my feelings and basically the entire thing was awful and blown out of proportion inside my brain.

But the thing that finally broke me last night is this: I love sumo oranges. Like, LOVE them love them. I literally start checking out Whole Foods in November and December, since Whole Foods is the first place they show up and I want to have as many sumo oranges for as long as I possibly can before they’re gone. They’re only around for a few months and the season is almost over, but our grocery stores kept stocking them, so I keep ordering them in our pick up order.

So when I ordered five sumo oranges, it was with a hope that they’d still have a few in stock. At two bucks an orange, it’s a little luxury that I allow myself once a week, and I figure that I’m not going to Starbucks at all right now, so this is a cheap replacement for so many overpriced lattes.

So last night, I broke into the new batch of oranges and then noticed — fuck. There was one sumo orange and four Not!Sumo oranges in there. Our grocery store hasn’t been the greatest with picking things for our order — we get “whoopsies” a lot. Of course, sumo oranges are probably the most expensive orange, so not only did they rob me of my happiest snack, but they then overcharged me for bullshit generic oranges. Grumbling, I took two of the Not!Sumos to the cutting board to prep an afternoon snack before workshop and AAAAAAAAAH the Not!Sumos were the worst thing ever — Blood oranges. To me, blood oranges taste so sour that they might as well be grapefruit. I was screwed out of my afternoon snack so I went to workshop and just pouted for the first half of workshop. Then I checked Amazon Fresh and they had sumos, so I whipped up a super quick order full of some random bullshit to justify the order, tipped the delivery person ten bucks and set it to arrive between 9-11 pm that night, which was the only time slot available.

It was impetuous and stupid and while I’m weirdly embarrassed about having the minor (completely internal) temper tantrum, it also felt very empowering to correct the problem right then. Because otherwise it would have nagged and niggled and eaten at my brain, just like the stamps order, until it got totally blown out of proportion.

And the only person who suffers is me.

Mischief managed.

And these sumos are still worth every penny.

Happy hours

I come from a long line of alcoholics. When I was a kid, I swore I would never drink — mostly to hold something against the adults who were constantly assuring me that drinking to excess was a fine adult hobby but also because I saw exactly how those adults had personalities that morphed. Some of them became more loving and more expressive, but some — particularly some in very immediate proximity to Little Bix — became angry and hostile, frequently violent. Both of these extremes were scary. In some book or another, I had read the phrase In Vino Veritas, with the explanation that a drunk person will say the thing that they only think sober. So many of those truths came out, so many that were terrifying and scarring.

I still have an unreasonable aversion to beer breath to this day. It was a warning sign, often the first notice that things were about to get out of control. I learned to disappear, even if I was still in the room, shrink down and go hollow and quiet, their laughs echoing inside my skull.

I can’t even begin to imagine how many parties I “escaped” from by inventing stories with my Fisher-Price Little People. It was self-contained fun — I often tucked myself somewhere visibly blocked from the people drinking, maybe behind a recliner in the corner. If their gaze rested on me, if I drew attention to myself, it was rarely positive, but if I could just weather the hours, outlast them, things would be fine. Eventually we would end up home, through some divine intervention almost always guided by a drunk driver and yet, the car accidents were never while I was in the car.

I’ve never been an extreme drinker. I enjoy wine. I appreciate a cocktail. I love Malibu and Diet Coke like I’m fifteen and sneaking drinks behind the lifeguard shack. I like that feeling of light, almost giddiness that you get, the warm flush sip of bourbon on a cold day, the quenchy tang of an ice cold sauvignon blanc under the stars on a warm evening. The fact that there are vodka ice pops now delights me.

And here’s the thing — while I enjoy all of the fun social coolness of drinking, I don’t enjoy any of the after effects. Most alcohol makes my rosacea flair up like crazy for days afterward (likely due to my insulin resistance/PCOS and the blood sugar spike that comes from drinking alcohol. My rosacea also flairs when I eat too many carbs). I also feel like I’ve been hit by a truck the next day even if I drink in moderation. I rarely drink more than two drinks in a single day anymore for that reason, and then I have to ask myself — if it’s not enough to actually get tipsy and I don’t want the calories and the carbs, why not just drink water or diet soda?

In December and January, I was plagued by persistent migraines. We had chalked it up to stress since I was deep in the study for my comprehensive exams, but I had already slowed way down on my alcohol consumption at that point because I didn’t want to do anything that might tip a partial headache into a real honest debilitating one. In February, I finished my comps but I decided to just not drink, but I didn’t tell Esteban because I didn’t want him to feel like I was becoming a Carry Nation or judging his post-dinner dram of scotch. If he asked, I mentioned my concerns about my health and the headaches and it wasn’t, like, a thing.

Some friends I really respect and adore have for various reasons stopped drinking alcohol completely. Typically when I’m out with them, I try to show solidarity to their choices and opt for non-alcoholic beverages — not making it a big thing but also, it’s a relief. You start to notice a little bit of how much alcohol consumption really is so that you’re showing companionship to the person or people you’re with rather than actually desiring alcohol. (“I’ll have one if you’re having one” is a strange social contract when you think about it — why should you need someone to drink with? Is it to make it okay? Why can’t it just be okay by itself?)

I would be lying if I said that part of my reluctance to drink is the near absolute assumption that alcoholism is hereditary. I know damned well that I have an addictive personality — one look at my purse collection or even my eye shadow palette trove will confirm any doubt in that arena. But also maybe I never put a stake in the ground and declared that I wasn’t going to drink for awhile because I was afraid that I had been kidding myself about my reliance on alcohol from the start?

So I just decided to make it real and see how long I could go without any alcohol. Saturday, March 7th was the last social occasion I attended before we decided to stop leaving the house and exposing ourselves to potential viral infection. I was already thinking about reducing our wine cellar in preparation to move back to Wisconsin, so I had brought a few bottles of wine and my bestie Marycourtney — who used to be a wine rep and has exquisite taste and an amazing wine cellar — had brought a few bottles as well. I was driving both of us to the event, so I had roughly a single glass over a period of five hours, mostly just half ounce and one ounce pours when a new bottle was opened for a taste. And I reliably felt like shit the next day despite being so judicious about the amounts, which pretty much cemented my resolve to abstain going forward.

I guess I’m pleased that I haven’t really cared one way or the other, so any niggling worry that I had about a hidden alcohol reliance is absolutely gone. But also, we’re not socializing because of All This, so it was an incredibly easy thing for me to put aside. It feels a little like a cheat, like someone giving up peanut butter for Lent when they were already allergic to peanuts. I mean, I loathe the taste of beer and even the spirits that I do drink are things that I can tolerate rather than find actually delicious. I had to teach myself to appreciate wine, for instance.

But maybe in this weird time, it’s not bad to reacquaint yourself to the things you are in denial about. It’s one of the worst life hacks that no one can lie to you better than you can.

Anti social media

I have an unfortunate relationship with social media.

I can see the idiocy in this entire statement by the way, given that blogs are essentially a focused form of one way social media. But also, I am reminded of the adage that if a service is free, then you are the thing being sold, and that is absolutely true in terms of social media. Trust me, you would not BELIEVE the things you voluntarily give to people who are trying to sell you things or ideas.

For some time, I was doing a daily thread on Facebook that I called #bixquestions which was a discussion-based social thread. It started when I asked everyone which word they always mispronounced until they heard it spoken (or still mispronounce), and then grew from there. I kept it going for a few years — I had started it up seriously right after the 2016 election because it felt like people needed a focalizing point of community, to feel less alone. I had given serious thought to starting this blog back up at that time, but I didn’t want the trauma of the election to be about my own pain or to be self-promotional in any way. I wanted to do good and to make people feel good. Ultimately, I think it did that but also, inadvertently, it did so by strengthening the reliance on the tool I was using — Facebook.

The #bixquestions threads were long and legendary. Some of them had upwards of 300 and 400 responses, and one had over 800. Many of them made me laugh out loud and sometimes the answers brought me close to tears.

I kind of stopped posting the questions when others started filling that gap with their own traditions and questions. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy asking #bixquestions — I did! But sometimes it made me feel creepy — like maybe focusing off myself and into the community and building a community was having some detrimental side effects too. For instance, by frequently posting questions that had big reactions, I slowly began to realize that it messed with the Facebook algorithm so that my non-question posts were showing up in more streams. Basically I was accidentally doing exactly the thing I was trying not to do.

So now I feel a bit conflicted about the entire affair.

I am still on Twitter, although I moved mostly off my That’s My Bix twitter persona and primarily use @wendywimmer since I’m now doing the annoying thing of “building a brand” there without a pseudonym. And I have an author page on Facebook that I maintain for the same reason, although I really only update it through Instagram, which I also converted off my pseudonym to wendy_wimmer. And the annoying thing is that all of this is necessary because publishing is in fact a business, so publishers assume that if you have 1000 people following you that you can convince 250 of them to buy your book, but if you have 4000 people following you, then you’ll definitely sell 1000 books, and all of that impacts how likely they are to bid on your book. After all, what is writing a book for if not to draw as large an audience as possible.

Sometimes I wish I had a time machine and could go back to really capitalize and operationalize my long ago popularity into something larger, but eh, if we had a time machine, I’d probably use it for better stuff than that. Like somehow making sure that Jeb Bush got the Republican nomination in 2016.

Now wouldn’t THAT be something to change the sands through the hourglass?

#Bixquestions: Have you ever been challenged by someone who didn’t realize you were an expert at the subject in question? How did you resolve it? (Inspired by someone asking Stephen King if he had even read The Stand)

Waiting to Exit Stage Right

Yesterday was a unique day in this constant sameness of day after day after day, but today we’re back to the real deal, but now with nothing to prepare for.

This is where the going gets tough for me mentally. I like having a thing to work toward, a goal, a mounting and additive process. To be honest, I also like the deadlines. I will always adjust my own deadlines but if an external force sets them? Blammo — different organizational principles entirely.

This morning I slept until I woke up naturally, which happened to be 5:45 am. I took the dogs outside for their morning constitutional and the sun wasn’t even over the mountain ridge yet, so it was very pleasant. Then I crawled back in bed and rested until Esteban needed to take a shower. The odd thing is that I wasn’t craving coffee, so I just made a hulking gloppy mess of a spinach cherry almond smoothie — and because I eyeballed everything poorly, it was too green and grassy from the spinach and then I countered by adding too many frozen cherries to it, which made the entire thing really thick, so I thinned it somewhat with milk, and by then I had made almost a half gallon carafe of smoothie that was really still too thick, but I toughed through it until I couldn’t anymore (about 35 ounces).

With record temperatures in the Las Vegas valley right now, we’ve been craving cold coffee, but that’s an ordeal and we’re trying to finish the beans in the espresso machine so that it can be properly cleaned and put to bed for the summer. I can always make a few shots of espresso and then dump them over ice, but I decided to make a hot coffee since I froze myself out with the smoothie, but then I could barely finish one latte and skipped the second entirely.

I taught my fiction workshop — this week we’re talking about how to publish fiction — and then immediately had to jump to an All Hands meeting which was notable only because a very famous poet forgot to change the public messaging on Zoom to private when they sent a very inflammatory message into the 35 person room. The bizarre thing is that everyone kind of pretended it didn’t happen, until finally someone was asked to speak about something else and said “I’m sorry, I’m still recovering from what we all just saw.” and I will forever love that person, because apparently everyone else was secretly talking about it via text and IM.

Friends, Zoom chat messages are not actually private. They’re on the chat log later after the session is done and the person who recorded the meeting gets them. It’s a shit show. Don’t do it. Not even once.

After that, I dealt with some of the administrative stuff with my dissertation — although it barely feels like I made any progress with it. Then Esteban and I watched the videos from a house walkthrough that I had asked my sister and brother-in-law to go check out this morning. Then I got depressed, which is what usually happens after thinking or talking about buying a house, because I don’t like anything that’s on the market right now, and everything just feels like making a tremendous mistake and being stuck with it.

We have agreed that we wouldn’t do anything until June because we wanted to see what the housing market would do, but I’m half ready to just say fuck it all and rent a house. Yes, it means we move twice, but I’d rather do that than end up in a house that I dislike or that is poorly suited for us. And also, is this insanity to plan a cross country move in the middle of a pandemic? All signs point to yes. I mean, I wouldn’t even want to get on a plane right now. But even though we agreed verbally not to do anything until June, we’re still looking at houses and we’re still mentally doing the fit check on each one and it’s doing a number on my well-being, to be frank.

The challenge will be to “just keep swimming” until the end of the semester, days counting down into the single digits now. Once I get my dissertation formatted, approved and submitted to the library special collections, then I can check that box and allow my brain to freely chew on this specific problem fully. Until then, I guess there’s always my Marco Polo addiction.

The defense

I had a hellish time sleeping last night and woke up bolt awake at 2 am. Then I was certain I couldn’t go back to sleep — I had physical pain and all manner of angst. Esteban decided he’d sleep in the guest room again because Ole has turned bedtime into a terror — we have a new open crate on order for him but who knows when that will get here (about the same time as my stamp order, apparently, which seems to be super lost). Then I did my mantra of “resting quietly while awake is still beneficial” which tends to be my method for falling back asleep. Then I woke up again at 4 am and then again at 6 am and just gave up at that point and got up.

Then I took a shower, defended my dissertation and completed my Ph.D. requirements. This is the selfie I took moments after I got off the call where all of my committee called me Doctor Bix.

There were an astonishing 20 plus people on the call, including one of my colleagues who is doing a fellowship in the UK. My sister was there, Weetacon folks, Esteban, my in-laws, so many of my besties, and lots of people from the program. It was completely unlike my experience at in the masters program in Wisconsin. This time I really felt like I was a rock star who jumped into the crowd and was lifted, weightless, by so many strong hands.

Also, the committee liked the book. Even though it is about a pandemic where everyone is sheltering in their homes, and even though it is funny scary sad and even though I took a giant risk with the ending, they liked it. One called it perfect. One said it was very much in the spirit of John Irving. One said she was in love with it. Then I had to step away and everyone in the gallery had to leave so that the committee could talk about the novel and my study privately and confer whether I had met the requirements of the Ph.D.

Reader, I did.

When I came back, they told me that it took so long for them to call me back because they were talking about how much they are going to miss me in the department and how much community I built while I was there. One opined that they wish they could have picked the people who took an extra year to complete their work, because they wanted another year with me. One said she was crying while I was out of the meeting about how much they’re going to miss me.

Here’s the text from one of the committee members, calling me back to the “room”, and then the subsequent texts after the defense was done (one of the settings of my novel is the Southeast Farallon Island during Great White shark season. The island is also a habitat for really annoying kelp flies).

After a bunch of phone calls, we ordered take out lunch from a neighborhood place, came back to the house, and then I watched an episode of Little Fires Everywhere. After three solid years of running as fast and as hard as I can, it feels so weird to stand still.

I recorded the defense although I guess it took the mode I was in, which is teleconference with tiny boxes so that I could see the faces of the committee members, rather than in Speaker View. I’ll probably rewatch at some point, or upload the file somewhere, but for now, I’d rather not have to listen to my stupid blathering. For now, I’d much rather remember the feeling, the sensations and the moment where this novel that has been inside of my head for so long was discussed by some brilliant people as though it actually is a real actual book.

Damn it. I guess this is really real now.

Force majeure

Yesterday was exhausting.

Partially because my chronic pain condition is flaring up and partially because it was a Monday and partially because this week is the week we had assumed that we would start packing/readying to move and partially because of my dissertation defense looming and partially because Because.

I will say this — I made a serious mistake opting to take a writing workshop in the same semester that I had comps exams, finish my dissertation and defend it. It doesn’t help that the pandemic happened, which is essentially a force majeure, but I take full responsibility in deciding to go against the PhD study plan and take a class despite People Who Know Better designing a program that did not require real classes in the last year. Because huh, turns out that it is maybe stupid to take classes when you’re doing all of this other stuff?

I don’t regret taking the gothic class last semester though — it informed many of my decisions and theories that fed into my comps exams and defense. It didn’t really inform my novel which was already well into motion at that point, but props for the comps help.

Monday nights are the meeting of that workshop, and I had zero fucks left at that point, which isn’t really fair to the people whose work was on the table. I’m grossly behind on my responses to them, although it seems like everyone has basically given up on their priorities too, judging by the responses I got for my last two goes workshopping my own work. Plus, it is three hours long — I started outside because That’s My Business (TM Tabitha Brown who is a delight) but it got too hot so I brought everything inside and did the rest from the couch, which was Ole’s signal that it was time to play and my classmates were treated to his impression of a pirate’s parrot.

I can’t even really point to anything specific inside my brain, other than the way I feel simultaneously overstimulated and also depressed. Perhaps it’s just a stasis feeling. Esteban last night said that he felt trapped in Las Vegas, and while that might be part of it, we actually are far better enabled here than we would be in Wisconsin. For instance, the weather is nice enough to sit out in the yard most of the time (although we have a massive hot streak going and it’s been too warm to last for more than an hour outside — Las Vegas expects to hit 100 for the first time in April either today or tomorrow because climate change is a real thing). We have a million places that deliver food and groceries if we wanted. We have a GIANT house to wander around in and also clean if we’re bored (turns out, we’re never that bored).

I think the trapped feeling is more one of feeling lack of progress. When I have a problem to solve, my brain chews and chews on it until it solves the problem, but this is a problem it can’t solve. I can’t magically make new houses appear on the Wisconsin market. I can’t brain a way to fix a pandemic. The only answer to solve all of these problems is time. Time has become our foe, except there’s no fighting it.

You just have to let it wash over you.


Comment #bixquestions thread: Is there a celebrity that you dislike for no real reason, you just know you dislike them? Share in the comments who, why and what’s wrong with their stupid famous selves?

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