kerouac says

i called him today. he and my mom are camping on the snake river. by way of making conversation, i mentioned that i spent yesterday at the festival of books. i told him how nice it was to walk around in the sun and watch the kids, and that i got kettle corn. and he spontaneously waxed rhapsodic about how much he loves kettle corn, and i loved him so much in that moment that i thought it might come out my nose.

our adjustable mortgage just came due for its first adjustment, and it went down.

this possibility never occured to me. but, hey. we'll take it.

i missed a class today. for no reason, with no excuse. i forgot to go. this is one of the biggest no-nos in my field. departments are small, seminars intimate; you do not get out of jail for free. and it's a big deal. they don't meet that often, they're the core of the experience, they're you're highest priority, etc.

except, this wasn't a seminar. it was this semi-useless thing we have to do where everyone in the first and second years gets together and sit around a table and talk. it happens sporadically through the quarter, not every week; it's been on different days, at different hours, during each term. the meeting itself has no dedicated fuction; sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's useful, and sometimes--like this quarter, when my advisor started teaching it--it feels like the biggest waste of time ever. you know what was scheduled for today? seeing photos of a theatre being built in mexico and going downstairs to throw a surprise party for one of the administrative staff who i couldn't pick out of a lineup. fully half of what i missed was happy retirement cake.

Famous Feminist is old-school, and this was not the smallest infraction--i was mortified, truly--so i wrote an email of abject apology, telling her i'd send the office lady a personal note and asking if there was anything i could do to counter the effects of my considerable flake-out. her reply was exactly this long:


I am not pleased.



you know what? lady, fuck you. i take back the mortification. real things happened today, all over this world, and while i get that you can't act like a pedagogical no-no is as inconsequential as it actually is, some kind of functional response would have been appropriate. sorry i missed the fucking cake. i'm gratified to know that you have never forgotten an appointment, and that the useful thing i can do to make this right is to writhe unceasingly in my knowledge that i have misbehaved.




asshole.

that my insurance covers pregnancy, but once the kid is ex-utero, they're like, whatever. got a kid? your problem.

this is probably pretty normal, but we're already paying out of pocket for dependent insurance for the monkey. also, did i mention the onsite child care here has a massive waiting list, only takes kids full time and charges a tuition equal to our rent?

i mention all this only because. we are sort of. thinking about. maybe in the near future.

but seriously, not until after coursework. and really, i think, not until after my exams, which means not even trying until year after next. it's just very exciting and hard to conceal when it's all you can think about when you're not thinking about your scary advisor or postmoderism and the fracturing of the real.

in other news, episodes of weepy old-cat-ladyism are on the decline. for now. the monkey, god bless him, declared last night date night. actually, it was a triple-header date night: really good pizza, a movie, and bowling (and yes, i picked all three). it was possibly more money than poor people should spend in an evening, but we made judicious use of coupons. i know you're dying to know if he put out, but i'll never tell.

i wish i were joking.

right now is the time that makes people take too many painkillers. everything is fine, really, nothing is too scary, there's just so much downtime, so much alone. i can't tell if what's making it worse than normal is the monkey being gone with the car, leaving me stranded-feeling (like i was going to motor to west hollywood and check out a singles bar, oh yes) or that he's just gone, and not here in the evenings. except that's kind of creepy. who, at least of the childless, hangs out with their spouse every night?

um, losers. i keep thinking about how we're going, universe willing, to procreate, and how we will never again dress up and leave the house, and i get kind of panicky about how i should be doing this, leaving the house, talking to adults, having beers, laughing uproariously. and also, i miss it.

oh, sigh. it's just harder this time. i even went on meetup.org trying to think of some group of strangers i might want to share frozen margaritas with. yuck. you'll know exactly who i am when i say that the prospect of hanging out with a bunch of other people who had to resort to meetup.org to make friends makes me want to cut my tongue out.

it's approaching terminal velocity. just how many evenings can i spend alone? how many movies? how many emails, how many novels until i turn into david foster wallace's the depressed person? oh, lord.

we got a wedding invitation today, and the prospect of two nights of fun in june sent me over the moon. i think perhaps i don't have this much time to waste; i think this is the time that was supposed to be for something else. i think this was the harvest time, in which we took advantage of our many, varied and valuable relationships, when we enjoyed grownupness; not the time we sent too many emails and lost ten pounds because there was nothing else to do.

i know enough not to have any patience with the bored, and i'm embarrassed. but, oh. god help me. yarg.

new quarter started today. it's not the worst job ever.

the week with my parents in the desert was pretty great, despite a shocking inability, early on, to be nice to my mom. i mean, i wasn't a total dick, but everytime she said black, i said white. i noticed it and tried to undo, but it was disconcerting. i love them and don't see them so much and so want to spend as little time as possible being a dick. she can be hard to take, but then, that particular apple didn't fall so far from the tree.

and the monkey was so glad to see me when i got home. and so fine. i forgot what a week away does.