That's My Bix!

We started out the day with a trip to the dry cleaner — or rather, the storefront with a locker system where you drop off your drycleaning. There’s no one actually staffing the storefront — it’s basically like a bus stop for sweaters and dirty suits. Eventually the dry cleaning elves send you a text message saying “Come and get your clothes” and you do, no matter what day or time of day it is, it’s always open. It’s kind of magic — and another service I will miss desperately when we leave Vegas, since we used to plan our entire weekend around making a trip across town to nab the dry cleaners during the only four hours of the week when they were open and we had time to do it.

Of course, now that we can pick up and drop off our cleaning whenever we want, we still end up doing in the very same four hour window that we used to when we were limited. This is proof that humans are creatures who love predictability.

This week has been a frustrating week — between the Las Vegas mayor offering up a city of 2.2 million people as a “control group” and seeing friends and people I respected unleash their frustration on having the country “closed for business” at the moment.

I think it speaks to the human condition — whatever you think about the stages of grief, it does seem that people can easily blame governors or mayors for their frustration at not being able to do the things they are used to doing and think that since this is the only thing they can see that has changed, if you put everything back the way it was, things will be fine once more. Except a virus can’t be bargained with, of course, and it doesn’t play by any rules but its own, but that’s not what denial or the bargaining stage of grief is about. It’s about dealing with and accepting change. And like it or not, the world has changed. (That link is a good one if you’re similarly frustrated and trying to deal with people who obstinately believe that “it’s time to reopen the country” despite the fact that thousands of people are currently dying daily despite much of the country being in lockdown mode.)

Today has not been a very good one for my state of mind, friends, I’m sorry to say. Throughout this entire ordeal, I have noticed fits of disconnection and detachment, which tends to be how I experience the affects of my complex post-traumatic disorder. I keep trying to manage my anxiety by focusing on other activities that either make me slow down and center, like sitting out in the yard with the dogs, or writing a letter to a friend; or when my mind is reeling too much, I play a video game.

This weekend, my committee is reading my novel and also I have sent it to a few close friends who might be reading it and I’m getting really excited but also nervous but also ready to think about something else for a while. So I’m trying to focus my energy and build hope toward my dissertation defense on Wednesday and also thinking about how it will all be official then and I can legitimately be Dr. Bix for real, earned and stamped and sealed and final.

For right now, that’s keeping my anxiety sated.

Esteban managed his stress today by cooking a lot. A LOT. First he made steel-cut oatmeal in the Instant Pot, which was good rib-sticking fare. Then he continued his productivity by cleaning the kitchen and then making banana bread. We had each simultaneously saved a banana bread recipe that we were going to make in our joint recipe file — his was a gluten-free situation that used only almond flour, while mine was from Smitten Kitchen. First, he made the almond flour recipe and while it smelled gorgeous while baking (so gorgeous in fact that I didn’t realize what he was making and assumed he was making Tollhouse cookies), the taste was meh and honestly, not worth the calories. Feeling dissatisfied, he made the Smitten Kitchen recipe I had saved as well — the second one was far better, although excruciating that it took a full hour to bake and then had the audacity of requiring a long post-oven cool off time. The turbinado crunchy sugar topping, though, was sublime. I’m looking forward to toasting it tomorrow for breakfast and maybe indulging in a little smear of Nutella.

Now I’m craving zucchini bread though. I may need to buy some zucchini on the next grocery run — the Midwesterner in me feels that buying zucchini for bread is a crime, since clearly you make zucchini bread to use up the extra zucchini from the garden that you ended up with, or from the neighbor’s garden, or that someone dropped on your porch when you left it unguarded. Drive by zucchini-ings are a real thing in the Midwest, but I guess in the Southwest, you are forced to procure your zucchini through other means and it must be ferried here from elsewhere. Yet another moment of “What kind of fucking place is this” for this midwestern native daughter, is what I’m saying.

After the double banana breads, he whipped up one of our favorite recipes, Tater Tot Casserole. We didn’t have fresh mushrooms, so he used canned, and he couldn’t find the fresh thyme, so he used dried, but the result was still fantastic. This is one of the recipes he started making shortly after we moved to Vegas and were craving some Midwestern soul food and it is one that is most consistently requested by the friends who visit frequently. We ended up with a metric ton of it and his cooking has been outpacing our eating of said food, so we’ll probably do an angel drop at a singleton friend’s house with some of these leftovers.

We also finally watched Birds of Prey, which I have to say was an absolute delight. I kept having moments thinking how absolutely spot on the dynamic was for women getting together and kicking ass — especially the little supportive pep talks and affirmatives they gave each other during fight scenes. The only thing that didn’t ring true to me was the decision to work together to solve a problem — there was a “Hey, we all need to work together” talk and I honestly think a bunch of boss ass bitches would just see the problem and start solving it. Anyone who has ever worked with a bunch of ladies in a crisis knows this kind of weird telepathy that happens then, right? There’s usually one person who kind of takes lead, but also is receptive to suggestions (because we don’t want to be a bitch) and everyone gets shit done in the fastest way possible. Think about a situation in a bar bathroom where someone has a stain on their blouse or needs a tampon. There isn’t a moment where the women know that they need to rely upon one another because THIS IS ALWAYS HOW WE HAVE DONE IT. Anyway, the scene very much felt like it was written by committee, and the loudest voice in the room wasn’t a woman’s voice, if you know what I mean.

Also, bitches get shit done. We need more movies where bitches band together and get shit done. Maybe I need to write THAT next.

Last night, another successful night with Ole sleeping off the bed and honestly, I got a great night’s sleep for once, so I’m thrilled too. Avi chose to sleep on the couch instead of coming to bed, which meant there wasn’t even a single 25 pound dog blocking various legs or trapping you under the blankets, much less two of them.

Today is officially Hot with a capital H and we have, as predicted, needed to turn on the AC. I still taught class outside again today — it’s a pretty sweet set up, honestly. I sit under the patio overhang and I have a rolling laptop cart that I can adjust to perfect camera height (aka not looking up my nostrils and also forcing a double chin situation) and there’s an outlet there so that I can plug in and not worry about the stream killing my ancient laptop battery. I usually take my breakfast/lunch out there and eat it while waiting for my students to arrive (for some reason I have to admit students to the Zoom — I haven’t figured out how to turn that off).

Today, one frantic student was already waiting when I got there ten minutes early and when I allowed her in, she was freaked and worried that she had missed class. “Doesn’t it start at 11 am?” she said. Nope, 11:30 am, always has, we’re now in week 12 and also, the campus literally doesn’t have any classes starting at 11 am to my knowledge — it’s almost like a high school with set classroom timeslots.

So we chatted while I ate my brunch glop — which is a mixture of protein yogurt, protein granola, fresh fruit (in this case blueberries) and usually a handful of dried fruit (in this case, craisins) for a little sweetness. Then more students arrived and we had a robust discussion about what makes something scifi, fantasy or horror, and what the tropes are that you can use to drive plot or break entirely in your stories.

After that, I watched the beginning of Deadwater Fell, which apparently is yet another proof that David Tennant is incapable of doing anything cheerful unless it’s fantasy or scifi (topical, since much of my class was spent deciding if Doctor Who counted a little bit toward fantasy too since it’s less interested in the technical stuff).

For lunch, I whipped up some leftovers from Esteban’s sous vide chuck roast experiment. He’s figured out a way to take bog standard chuckroast, tie it into a bundle, sous vide it with spices and garlic for more than a day and out pops the perfectly tender, amazingly rare cut of meat imaginable. Think prime rib, except it’s cheapass chuck roast. I sliced some ultra thin, toasted a hoagie bun, spread it with Trader Joe’s garlic spread, layered on some provolone and topped the mess with a flash sautee of the sliced beef. Unfortunately, thanks to my late brunch and later still meal of amazing beef sandwich, I may not be eating dinner tonight, or at very worst, eating it at 10 o’clock tonight.

After eating lunch, I read more fiction submissions for my job, trying to finish off the fall issue picks before I skeedaddle and graduate. Then it was time to go pick up our grocery order. This time, in efforts to find tater tots, Esteban tried ordering at a different grocery store — unfortunately, I had procured tots when I went to the grocery store/post office earlier this week, but this other order had already been submitted at that point. This new place was out of most stuff and didn’t have a mechanism for suggesting replacements for things, so we’re unlikely to go back if only for that reason but the process itself was painless enough. Alas, two more bags of tots, so we’re officially Tot Hoarders, but it means that there’s a Tater Tot Casserole in our future. But it also resulted in three giant bags of frozen bing cherries for my smoothie adventures. Also, thanks for the tip in the comments — I also scored some chopped frozen spinach which I will try and report back.

It was disconcerting to see even fewer people wearing masks in the parking lot at this place. Now, maybe they put them on when they walked into the store and took them off when they were leaving, but it looked like the fear of COVID-19 is either waning or just not existing. And ultimately this feels a lot like the frantic lather of an unseen force the way it did in the months leading up to the 2016 election — we know for sure that the Chinese were behind the texting escapade earlier this month, and we also know that just one guy registered all of those Liberate Whatever websites.

You have to wonder — if much of foreign espionage is focused on disruption and chaos, wouldn’t a really efficient way be to use a relatively slow-moving natural disaster to continue to sow those seeds of disruption and chaos? If you hated a population and wanted as much trauma and death as possible, what if you could convince people that there wasn’t actually any danger?

What if you could convince your enemy to walk directly into the forest fire or hurricane?

What did we all learn from the death of thousands of Americans in 2001? That we galvanize and come together quickly and forget our differences. Remember the day after 9/11 when traffic was so courteous and gracious? There were no honks, no middle fingers. People saw each other as people. And here, amidst all of this tragedy, another opportunity to see each other as the fragile beating hearts that we all carry inside our vulnerable mortal shells, another opportunity to think for the whole instead of for the inconvenience.

If I were thinking in militaristic ways of attack, I’d be incredibly threatened by that strength and unity. I’d try to figure out any way I could to prevent it from happening.

I got myself caught up in it the other day, when I engaged in someone’s debate about whether or not it was time to “reopen the country”. First, it’s the epitome of privilege that we consider this “shut down.” This is not closed. This is limited, certainly but it is not “closed” or “shut down”. I can get liquor delivered to my house in 2 hours. While the supply chain for certain things is impacted (geez, you stress bakers, it’s not like they can just flip the switch and make more yeast instantly), there are still plentiful options for nutrition out there. Sure, you might not find the brand you want, you might not get your tater tots, but you’re still well fed.

But the argument I got caught up into was countered with the question that boiled down to thinking about people who are a paycheck away from financial uncertainty. This person, whom I very much respect, made the argument that sounded a lot like they were saying it was fine for more people to die if it meant someone wouldn’t “lose their house.”

Okay, let’s dissect that for a minute, and assume that you’ve lost your job and unemployment isn’t enough to cover it and the months and months of foreclosure proceedings have transpired — not owning a house does not indicate that you will be homeless. First, a foreclosure on someone’s 4-bed 3-bath ranch because they are out of work does not mean they step directly into a refrigerator box under the overpass. There are programs in place for this very reason (which, if I recall, the Republicans are still trying to dismantle) to prevent people from living on the streets and going hungry because that’s what a First World Nation does for their people. Second, renting an apartment or a house is often cheaper than owning a house in many markets — sometimes it makes more financial sense to do this, particularly if you might need to move in the near future (case in point: We chose not to buy a house in Las Vegas and have been renting this entire time, primarily because we didn’t trust the Vegas real estate market at all). Thirdly, maybe the actual problem is a system that pays people so little that they can’t plan for ever being out of work (again, the dismantle thing comes up here too).

Fourth, can we go back to the part where you literally just said that you valued property over a person’s life? What the what?

I was upset about the rationale for probably longer than I should have been. I mean, hey, when someone is making the argument that it’s more important to own a house than save any number of lives, I guess I’m not going to change your mind. Instead, I’m going to worry about your morals and if you were the good person I thought you were.

And also, I get it. Everyone is het up because things are scary right now and everyone is feeling lots of feelings. I mean, I am too. I’m about to have no income whatsoever in three weeks, and let’s face it, the job prospects aren’t looking great for me either. But also, what if this is all just to keep us shouting at each other instead of bonding together as one? What if we are being played?

What if we just remembered that in the end, kindness is never wasted? That no matter what you do during this time, if you acted in kindness, you made the right call.

Be kind, my friends.

I’m glad you’re here. Thank you for being here. We’re going to be okay.

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I missed updating the blog yesterday because between Sunday and Monday I spent literally 20 hours trying to get my dissertation to the correct format for the Graduate College to accept.

Oh my god, it’s complicated, but the worst thing? They literally made separate document in PDF for each step of the process, by subject, so I had to download literally 27 separate documents in PDF. One for the Title Page, another document for the Abstract page formatting, another for the Table of Contents page (that was a doozy), another for the Text, another for the Headings and Subheadings (aka for a novel, chapter titles), another for the CV section, another that is a checklist of everything that they look for in those sections (which contained different/new information than was covered in some of the individual documents), another for the process, another still for how to embargo, another for what and how to do the page numbers (you literally need this, because believe it or not, it’s fucking complicated) and oh my god, one of them actually had the instructions that went something like “This is easier if you do this before you start writing your dissertation”.

Oh really? REALLY? Well that would have been great to know in 2011 I guess. Where is the PDF that provides the detailed instructions for building a time machine so that I can go back and create this document from fresh?

It was so miserable that I ended up skipping my Monday afternoon class I’m taking (taught by one of my committee members) so that I could continue to work on the formatting, except I forgot that it is my Zoom account that they use and I have to be on it to start it and admit people to the room and then transfer ownership to someone else, so at class time, I had texts and IMs from everyone pleading to be allowed into the teleconference, so I felt like a complete asshole besides skipping class and had to make an appearance and plead insanity, and then show them my grief and also my junk pile of printouts that are worthless because they are wrong.

Yup, the worst part of this is that you are required to purchase archival 20 pound cotton bond paper to print your dissertation — which was fine, I purchased a box for about $20 on Amazon. We also bought new toner so that I could print it out and Esteban spent most of the day catching pages of the 424 pages of the novel as they started to become to heavy for the paper catcher thing. And then when I went through the check list, I realized, oh god, everything is wrong, everything is garbage, they want me to include a List of Figures for the love of god? My entire novel has a huge graphical component — literally some pages have six or seven tiny images. Each one needed to be notated?

Fuuuuuuuck that.

I ended up going through the text yesterday and literally deleting 1/4 of it rather than go through a 1) List of Tables, 2) List of Figures 3) List of Schemes 4)List of Algorithms 5) List of Plates 6) List of Abbreviations and 6) Appendix/Appendices. Believe it or not, the novel would have required ALL OF THOSE THINGS because different images were slightly different and fell under different categories.

You know what’s easier? Not including the things that require special lists. Mischief managed. They want the full version? They can buy a copy from whoever publishes this thing eventually.

After all of that, by around 6 pm, I was cranky and out of sorts and I sent a frantic email to one of my delightful committee members who happens also to be the Grad Coordinator for the English Department and said “Do I need a bibliography for a novel? OMG I am going to die, this needs to go out in the mail tomorrow” and I found out that no, it does not need to go out in the mail tomorrow and also I shouldn’t have printed anything until after my defense and oh, my chair should have totally mentioned that instead of saying “make sure to mail your manuscript by next week, it needs to be 10 days prior to your defense” and then I fell into a hump and swore an awful lot. So much swearing. So much.

I also got my second $20 box of special fancy paper, but I’ll probably do a dry run on the cheap stuff first. You know, for my own copy.

So I can put that off, but I also made an appointment with the reference desk to ask specific questions about what is exempt from a creative dissertation and have that appointment, so I guess maybe I’m ahead of the game?

My defense is next Wednesday. I’m oddly looking forward to it. Up until this weekend, no one had read the ending of the novel yet — well, my chair read kind of an incomplete version, and he knew what happened, but no one had read the actual ending. Now a few people have read it and all of the reactions have been positive, so I’m looking forward to discussing it in more detail with them.

I keep thinking dark thoughts though — like if I end up getting COVID and dying from it, at least I finished this fucking novel and some people read it and enjoyed it.

That said, it’s actually not done. If it were a cake, it would be baked and have the crumb coat on it, but this is the final ten minutes of Great British Bake Off where the bakers are frantically piping rosettes or sculpting fondant to pull off the final touches. I have half a cake decorated right now and I made the mistake of using molding chocolate, which everyone knows is impossible in the tent, just impossible. And yet, I dream big. Still some polishing here and there, and need to decorate the back of the cake yet, but it’s probably ready to shop out in the world next month.

Exhale.

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Last night there was some confusion about the dogs and in the dark Esteban thought Ole was sleeping on the bed when he came into the bedroom, so he snuck back out and slept in the guest room so there wouldn’t be an incident or fuss, but in actuality, Ole was sleeping in his own bed like a very good gentleman and Esteban had mistaken a dog-shaped pile of duvet for his Royal Potatoness. However, Ole needed to go potty at 4 am, so I took him out and since Esteban obviously had decided to sleep across the house with Jincy instead of the dog crew, I let Ole sleep on the bed for the remaining two three hours of the morning, and he acted very grateful and snuggled into my armpit and promised he was never an asshole, that was all fake news. Avi was on the bed the entire time, and we’re realizing that it is seemingly a problem triggered by Esteban walking into the bedroom and touching the bed. I don’t get it, but at least there wasn’t a potty regression today — maybe because he still got his snuggle time despite spending most of the night in his bed.

Today was a teaching day and since it was fairly warm, I taught class while sitting outside in the backyard which was lovely except frequently punctuated by the dogs barking at the neighborhood sounds. The birds are migrating through Nevada right now, so I heard many stereotypically northern birds, including killdeer, which is one of my favorite Wisconsin summer birds that always remind me of lazy days spent on the beach in Door County, or walking through grassy prairies in August.

My students seem to be dealing with the pandemic a bit better, although that might be due to the news of some states “reopening.” It’s been decided most certainly that the campus will not be holding in-class sessions this summer, and the assumption around the English department is that Fall will be entirely taught online. I think we’re getting into the swing of the online teaching — they use the Zoom handraises, mixed with physically raising their hands to the camera, which works fine with just over a dozen students. I’m not sure if it would work as well with 24, which is my typical lecture unit, but for the workshop, it’s fine.

On the downside, while I was sitting under the patio roof, my bare feet did get some sun and I think the tops of my toes are sunburned. 75 whole minutes in partial desert sun and these little piggies are roasted.

After teaching, I had to mail a package of jigsaw puzzles to my MIL June. We were also out of milk (and our grocery order isn’t ready to pick up until Thursday — which is still 4-5 lattes away from today), so I hit the combo of the USPS and Albertsons (there are a few Albertson’s in town with the USPS stall).

Mask adherence was spotty, and personal distance was even worse. Between both the workers and the shoppers, there were maybe 1/4 of the people wearing masks. I had my custom Gracie Designs original mask on, along with rubber gloves (and a very specific strategy for what I would touch with them on, which was my purse handle, my purse zipper, my wallet, cash and my driver’s license for the liquor purchase, all of which got Germ-X’d once I got back to the car). It looks like Albertson’s is letting their employees decide for themselves if they wear masks, as I saw most were wearing them, but some still were not (and those who weren’t wearing masks were SUPER not good about maintaining physical distance).

This was my first time out in a grocery store since the first week of March (or maybe even longer) so I was a little taken aback by the empty shelves, and particularly what kinds of foods were empty. I guess maybe it’s time to admit the value in Chef Boy-R-Dee canned pasta meals and ramen? I’m still shocked by how much frozen fruit is devastated though, so at least we’re all getting some vitamins in our confinement.

I usually do better with a liquid breakfast because of my stomach uncertainties in the morning, so when I commuted I relied pretty heavily upon pre-made protein drinks, but since I’m at home, I now have the luxury to make actual smoothies, using the blender, yogurt, whole fruits and nut butters.

I’d had been loving blending giant handfuls of baby spinach into my smoothies to get the bonus vitamins/veg serving, but then I had a really spectacularly horrible afternoon and evening with incredible nausea/vomiting mixed with torturous dizziness shortly after consuming one of my cheater cherry almond (and also secret spinach) smoothies. I stupidly hadn’t washed the spinach because the container said it was pre-washed and kitchen ready, but most likely that was a lie, since raw produce is the most common vector for food-borne illness.

Since the Afternoon Into Night Of Unspeakable Awfulness, I have been leery of eating raw produce again — although I admit that it might have been anything else, it FELT like it was maybe the spinach, so I put the entire Costco-sized tub into the trash. Besides, after being THAT up close to it as it made its resurrection, I wasn’t that ready to get up on the green horse again.

Since then, I’ve been focusing on the fact that a smoothie is still a good breakfast, if not for an easier way to eat yogurt and protein mixed with fruit, but I did purchase dehydrated spinach powder to see if that had any benefit. It’s fine, but I suspect that it’s just meant more as an ingredient to add to pasta and bread instead of a replacement/alternative to actual vegetables. There are also powdered superfood blends out there that are supposed to be adequate substitutes for those vegetable servings, but I have been less interested after reading the reviews that mention grassy tastes to my enemy words “bitter” and “sulfur-y”. Oh god. Urp.

I might try raw spinach in my smoothies again at some point, but next time, you better believe I’m washing it three times first.

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For today’s #bixquestions: What are some good internet rabbit holes to dive down and distract ourselves from everything that is All This? Share your best kept secrets for internet diversions in the comments!

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Last night we tried Mister Ole off bed again. He’s good about sleeping next to the bed but without fail, every time he has a good night sleeping, he still ends up having a potty regression in the house at some point the next day. Also, when I woke up, I took them both outside and then let him come up onto the bed to snuggle/snooze for a lazy morning with Esteban, Avi and I, and at one point, I rumpled the duvet near him and he freaked out like he was being attacked again and went for Avi, who reliably freaked out and then everyone was upset, so that was the end of lazy morning snuggles for everyone. Oy.

Today I went to war with the bedroom. Ole had some destructive fun with a discarded tissue, a toilet paper tube and also some cardboard he pulled out of the trash, so there were confetti of varying shades and qualities around the bedroom and bathroom. I also have been trying to do the (fucking) laundry when the bin is full rather than waiting until I run out of clothes, because let’s face it, I will never run out of clothes. Actually, that’s not true — we eventually run out of clean bath towels and I run out of pajama pants (I wear them two days in a row and also am picky about my pajama pants, so I have a dwindling stock of boxer shorts that feel soft and don’t bind and are made out of cotton stretchy fabric), but that takes about two weeks, and if I let more than a week’s worth of dirty stuff collect, I WILL run out of patience while I suffer through the mountain of stank.

I also mopped part of the bathroom, filled two more bags to go to charity (although it occurs to me that there may not be anywhere accepting donations given the pandemic, so it may just go out into the garage for now), and vacuumed the bedroom. We bought a Dyson cordless vacuum as an early Christmas gift to ourselves during the Black Friday sales and oh my god, if you need any kind of cleaning motivation, the Dyson will supply appropriate feedback. The hair. My god the hair. I mean, I knew that the animals are constant shedders because you can see little tumbleweeds collect in the corners of rooms, so it’s hard to ignore, but oh my god, when you swoop the Dyson over areas that aren’t corners and boom, tons of hair? I feel like the most disgusting slovenly person in the world. Just what I needed — reinforcement of my belief that I’m barely functioning as an adult.

I also gave into my inner fussbudget and sorted some of my shirts by color. I’ve resisted this in the past, but good golly, I may never go back. The order! The choices! The ease of getting dressed!

Plus, if plain white t-shirts were currency, I would be a very rich woman. It helped me feel better about tossing two of them which have shrunk to be unflatteringly short, and one black t-shirt I’ve been holding onto because it has a cute zipper detail but it was a bad cutting error and is so laughingly disproportioned that I feel like I’m baring my bosom every time I wear it.

(Why do things always shrink up? I never notice t-shirts shrinking tighter/less roomy around but they always get shorter. I also have a pair of yoga pants that started as regular long pants and then gradually got shorter and shorter until they became cropped pants and now they are literally just below my knees. That’s weird, right? That shouldn’t happen?)

Hopefully I will continue my sense of purpose tomorrow and will tackle some of the finer cleaning, along with my skin care and beauty vanity, which is atrocious and also, dusty. The saddest thing is that I’ve basically reduced my entire regime down to face cleaning followed by two moisturizers at night and in the morning — hair goes into a messy bun at night, and a different messy bun or maybe a ponytail in the morning. Meanwhile hundreds of dollars of product sit languishing, drying out and oxidizing.

I’ve been trying to use UP stuff during this quarantine — it’s a good time to take a chance on various hair products and skin care stuff, shampoo and leave-ins. I went through a big wave of buying the bundles of smaller travel size curated collections for awhile, so I have probably three tiny bottles of Moroccan Oil, four different tiny sprays of the same Invisible Primer from Bumble and bumble, etc. I managed to kill a giant bottle of Kiehl’s conditioner (one of those half gallon jobs) three weeks ago and I’m trying to kill the end of a similar giant conditioner from Living Proof. Every time I throw another little bottle into recycling, I pat myself on the back but then I look back at the serious dragon’s hoard of bottles, tubes, tubs and jars and feel ashamed for the pitiful vain crone I am.

What are your mini projects this week? How are you keeping yourself occupied? Tell me how you’re doing in the comments!

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My lunker day kind of is turning into a lunker week.

I’m finding it exceptionally difficult to rally and honestly to care about stuff. I don’t know why the fellowship thing is bugging me as much as it is — I guess maybe because I had allowed myself to imagine it and to believe the administrators who kept telling me that I had such a good shot at getting one of the biggies. Ah well. I’ll get past it and recenter my energies toward something else.

That something else is, at the moment, just keeping busy. Today I taught my class — we finished the last story in our current round of workshops and did some focused writing. It’s weird to watch them on Zoom all writing in their notebooks but also, delightful. I love watching their writer faces, their brows furrow, they make fun expressions. After that, I asked them to flip back into their older work and practice reading aloud to the class to learn from the experience of reading something you haven’t practiced. It was a good exercise for everyone and I’ll need to remember it if I ever get to teach a fiction workshop again.

After my class, I took a meeting with a CFO of a big deal tech website. You’d think I would have learned my lesson, right? And yet, no fellowship and no possible job opportunities and someone needs to keep the Frenchie in the manner in which he is accustomed (which involves many shipments from Chewy.com containing beef industry by-products upon which he meditates nightly). I probably suggested too little pay but also, it’s doing something I’m really good at and I know that if it’s too much money, I’ll twist myself up and keep doing it even when it sucks. I got the gig and the guy didn’t trip off my creep radar, so we’ll see how it goes.

After that, I rounded up the pug for her annual Senior Lady bloodwork. However, Mister Olepants refused to let me leave with the pug — he insisted he was also going, so I clipped him up and brought him too. That’s when I remembered that the AC in my car isn’t working very well and the car had been closed up in the 80 degree afternoon — immediately the two short snouters started panting. I cranked down the AC and tried modulating the temperature as best as I could but never really succeeded. And due to All This, we couldn’t actually leave the car once we got to the vet — they asked you to call and let them know you were there, they came out and retrieved the animal from the car and then after awhile, the vet called back to discuss her status — gained two pounds in two months, yeah, me too Avi, me too — and then took the payment over the phone, after which they brought her back out.

Doing so much (ha!) in one day after the lulls of living in Pandemia was a bit of a kick in the pants. I also chatted back and forth with a new potential agent, who is very interested in reading my full manuscript (which isn’t ready for real professional eyes! Close but not yet!) and also arranged for our agents in the Motherland to go check out another house. This one, I dare say, feels very much like The One. It checks basically every box and has many of the design things that delight me. Ultimately it’s not only more money than I’d like but actually far more house than I’d like too — I’ve been complaining about the giant-quality of our Vegas quaint ranch out here in McMansion Land, and this new possible house is even bigger. To the tune of almost double, which is, let’s be honest, very ridiculous for two people and three tiny animals. That said, I could have every little weird area I need, including a vaulted ceiling writing studio with a view of the yard AND its own fireplace, PLUS a pottery studio in the basement, while Esteban could have a dedicated Dorkathalon space with its own kitchenette AND a giant second garage space for his wrenching and hammering occasions.

It sounds like a lot of people are jumping on it, from our realtor’s impressions, but we’ve sent my sister and brother-in-law to go check it out tomorrow and if it doesn’t smell like someone’s been hiding bodies in the attic, we’ll probably put in an offer. Ultimately, I’m refusing to get het up about how perfect this place is, though, because if we don’t get it, then meh, it was too much house for us anyway, and if we do get it, man, I’m glad I talked to Big Deal Tech Website and am about to be their new best Swiss Army Knife.

Tomorrow is another weirdly busy day — mostly because I flaked on answering my students back for their requested one-on-one meetings until today, so I have three of them tomorrow, PLUS I have to go pick up our grocery order, which is great because today I had to pop a can of evaporated milk and use it in my second latte. How bad could it be after all of that dark Jack Mormon espresso and a ton of sugar free Torani syrup?

Not recommended. Not recommended at all.

Tomorrow, I’ll be rigging up some iced coffee with my patented survival trick of adding the cold brew concentrate to a Caramel flavor protein drink. (I do not get kickbacks for pimping this particular protein shake but I with iced coffee concentrate it tastes JUST like a melted Frappuccino, I swear.) It’s delicious and also has the added benefit of following one of my own rules to survive the Panicdemic.

See what I did there? How are you doing on your own restabilization plan? Share your story in the comments!