flaneuse.org

hate. them. Can’t do much of anything when I have one, and I really hate feeling useless.

nothing is where it should be

the cat

asleep in the pile of warm laundry

hiding my keys.

the dog pleads with me to go outside

into the flowershine air

my sneaker dangling from her grin.

we slept this morning late

in a pool of sunlight

and woke to find the duvet

piled on the floor.

OK. So I’m a professor of reading. I not only have read but love the classics — Anna Karenina, all of Jane Austen’s work, Dickens, Eliot, the Brontes, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather — the list goes on and on. Our apartment is filled with books, many of them the kind of thing you’d probably expect to find in a professor’s apartment (and too many of them, I know, I know).

But right now, when I am busier than a three-headed politician, I don’t have the mental capacity to dive into the kind of reading I usually choose. I have Ahab’s Wife on my nightstand, along with the Age of American Unreason and Hard Times (Dickens), but in the last two weeks I have read not one but two craptastic mysteries. In fact the second one was labeled “romantic suspense” and I thought if Lisa Jackson, the author, wrote the phrase “her long, witchy wavy raven hair” one more time I would actually burn it in the kitchen sink. But, and this is a BIG BUT, I absolutely had to know how she got together with the man she thought was her half brother and all the simmering sexual tension…. you get the gist. It is spring, after all.

This is just to say that if I make fun of a book (and I’m pretty sure I’ve gone off on Mitch Albom at least once), I have no leg to stand on. There’s another one of these books at home waiting for me and as my to do list grows, I keep thinking about just reading ….

We’re on lockdown, more or less, since a threat was found scrawled on a desk in another building earlier this week. The threat specifically mentioned a shooting on April 10, so there are cops everywhere checking IDs and I have to say that I think the University’s response has been excellent. They’re doing everything they can do — and today is probably the best day of all to be on campus. Yet many students (most, I think actually) aren’t here and many faculty have canceled class. I didn’t, because I don’t want the bastard who did this to have that kind of power. To be honest, I’m not worried about today. I’m worried about 4/16 or 4/20 — the anniversaries of Virginia Tech and Columbine, and also the anniversary of Hitler’s death, the Oklahoma city bombing, and the Waco shootings.

There has been terrorism in this country since the Europeans found it, and very probably before. We have to be acutely aware of what we don’t want to think about — that shooters go for groups of people or situations where they can pick people off, so I don’t park in the garage but rather out in the open, and sitting on the stage at Convocation always makes me uneasy. April is nothing but anniversaries and on a bright beautiful spring day I am back, remembering those rainy days in Colorado almost 10 years ago.

When Willa farts and then looks around at her butt, as though she isn’t sure exactly where that came from (yes, oh yes she’s a farting dog, no matter what we feed her — sounds like a country song)

The moment before falling asleep at night. I am so overwhelmed with things to do and that have to be done right now, that all I want to do is sleep — and I am turning not one, but two alarms off in my sleep. This morning I didn’t get up until eleven, which is only OK because I am teaching until late tonight.

Cooking dinner and watching either Hardball (Chris Matthews is an idiot, FYI) or any stupid reality show I can talk Chris into. Last night we watched nothing but Law and Order reruns on different channels for four hours while I was grading papers. It was AWESOME.

Knowing that April cannot last, May will be here, and at some point things will slow down again.

Three trees so far, cherry I think, bursting into pink blossoms just over the weekend.

I counted 27 pairs of Ugg boots in my walk from my car at the farthest point on campus to my office. Why? I wonder, I really do. It looks like it’s going to rain, so the best thing to wear would be big suede boots, right? I have to say how much I hate these shoes. They make a grating sound when the wearer drags her feet, to me something kin to fingernails on a chalkboard (actually worse than the fingernails scenario). They smell when wet — I know this from classes full of Ugg boots worn in wet and slowly drying off. They smell like wet animal and feet. I know they must be very soft to wear, but are they durable? Why does everyone love them so much? Why is it important to wear what everyone else is wearing?

Maybe I’ve gotten too old to think about it much. Lately what to wear the next day is usually influenced by whether I will have to iron anything. I wear jeans as often as I think I can get away with doing, and that’s probably 3 times more often than I should. I like bright colors, and I realize that sometimes I wear clashing things, but I try not to. I don’t shop much, outside of either Internet sales or the occasional thrift store visit and I finally got a new pair of Dansko clogs after wearing my first pair for nearly 10 years, which wore down the soles and even the staples holding the leather to the sole were coming out. I’m just not all that fashionable — I like pretty colors and comfort. I only dress up when I really have to. I’m dangerous in heels — I think I carry them off better after a couple of drinks.

It’s probably a good thing that I am living in a time when fashion is so casual (see Crocs, the plastic shoes, for a good example). Maybe I need wardrobe help, before one of my family or friends turns me in to a reality show for a makeover (omg, could you imagine? I would not be happy to see the hosts of What Not to Wear come around the corner, I can tell you that).

My work email through the university has not been working for more than 24 hours now, despite test messages and a call into the help center. I am tense thinking about all the things building up, waiting like water to burst through the dam and into my inbox. I average at least 50 emails a day and now that I am coordinating a graduate program, many of those are dealing with admissions and grad issues and are often extremely time-sensitive.

I’ve also been battling a migraine — not surprising since it feels like an old sponge from under the sink outside. I just opened all the windows in the apartment wide to try and bring some sort of equilibrium between the humid air outside and the stale air in here. We live in a loft apartment in an old factory, so the windows swing out and are huge, looking out across the trees. One of the things that sold me immediately on the place was these windows, which can make it cold but still give a great view for a girl used to being able to see as far as the horizon. I think from my parents’ house we can actually see more than 50 miles to the south, to the jagged shadows of the Sangre de Christos in southern Colorado.