Case of the Mondays

I accidentally made rice instead of oatmeal this morning. So I am eating it (rice) with my coffee. So that happened.

Fall has sprung, and there are leaves of all manner of color and hue upon every inch of God’s great earth. I am having career-related panic but I am trying hard to hang on, emotionally. When I start fantasizing about just having a 9 to 5 job that I don’t care about, you know things are dire and copious positive thinking must be applied. I do not want that job, I want my job. I just don’t know if I can publish a book, is all. I have three years to do it. Other people do it; does that mean I can do it? I don’t know. Anyway, that is boring.

Two weeks until midterm! Time flies. What on earth am I gonna put on my midterm?

This glorious weather certainly helps buck a body’s spirits up. Crispest fall! So many cool apples at the co-op. I am enjoying learning different apples out here. Holstein, Gravenstein, and Snow are the apples I’ve encountered here that I’ve never seen before. There is also a vast number of McIntosh apples here, which you don’t see much of in the west. I don’t love a McIntosh but Gary says I should try these because maybe they are better straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. McIntosh to me seems like a basic, tough, workmanlike apple, no nonsense, no frills, very new england. I prefer your nobbled russets and tart leathery -stein apples. I made a pie to middling success (fucked up the crust). I will make another this weekend.

During my epic sprint of a 3-day work week I like to make a list of what I will do on my weekend. The list is varied. “Write book proposal” could be followed by “stare out window.” Staring out a window is underrated. I did it for awhile yesterday and felt drunk afterward.

Last night I had an anxiety dream in which I thought to myself “this is like one of those anxiety dreams I keep having! Oh I wish it were…” then I woke up and was relieved.

Being off Facebook so far feels great. And I have barely been on instagram/twitter too. Staring out a window, reading this weird book about spies, thinking about apples.

Today:
– prep for three classes plus a section
– grade a stack of papers I can’t find now
– make a quiz
– edit my grad student’s intro to his thesis
– email several people

That’s not so bad. Then I will go to my new favorite place, the YMCA, and lift weights.

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat! I have almost six weeks off at that time, my god. How the soy nog will flow and the books will be read! Plus our landlord says if we hire a chimney sweep we can use our fireplace. HELLO CHRISTMAS. I’m going to try to bake a loaf of bread using a hearth fire.

Snoopy News:

The snoopy has been to the vet several times because here there is great danger of tick-borne illnesses like Lyme disease. He has had a vaccination, a follow-up to the vaccination, and we switched him to tick-specific monthly topical medication. The vet also wanted us to get him a poison collar to wear constantly but we said, enough is enough, if his number comes up, then it comes up. I don’t get how ticks are such a big deal. Growing up Colorado there were always ticks and you just picked them off. Did they only recently start carrying Lyme disease, or were we just blissfully ignorant back then? Everyone here is obsessed with ticks. You are supposed to tuck your pant legs into your socks whenever you go outside, and check yourself religiously every time you come back inside, even though we are also told that the ticks are the size of a pinhead and you can’t really see them anyway. Last night I thought I saw a tick on snoopy but it was just one of his nipples. He didn’t like when I tried to scrape it off.

He goes to daycare every Tuesday and Thursday because otherwise he’d have to be home for 12 hours and that is too long to ask a snoopy to sit quietly without peeing his pants or getting upset. It has taken him four weeks but he is starting to warm up at daycare. He made friends with a dog named Sandy and finally deigned to play and wrestle and everyone was excited apparently. Wherever he goes, my dog shall become known as a great wiener and a scaredy-cat. We pick him up at the end of the day and he is panting and burning hot and as soon as he gets home he drinks two bowls of water. Tuesday Thursday we all arrive home exhausted in fact. We’re on campus 7:00-5:30 which is a long day by anyone’s standards, but check out Wednesday: I arrive by 10:00 in the morning and I leave at EIGHT THIRTY AT NIGHT. Gonna be great come January! I’m going to have that Wednesday schedule for as long as I have this job, too, which is odd to think about.

Other snoopy news. We got him a big rubbery tug rope made by the Chuck-It people and it is intense to watch his body go into tug mode. He scrunches up and his tail goes straight up and his eyes go blank and faraway and he tugs rhythmically and growls softly. If he accidentally bites your hand he is sorry.

I’ve discovered that he loves to play soccer. I walk him on the school grounds by our house when school isn’t in session, and often there are stray soccer balls left out. We play soccer together! I feint and pretend I’m going to kick the ball one direction and he runs that direction but then I kick it the other direction and he chases it barking. It’s too big to pick up in his mouth, so he just sort of jumps on it with his chest until it stops. Then he kicks it! He kicks it with his front feet. He’ll kick it away and then chase it barking. He kicked it into the goal at one point!!! Then trying to get it out he got tangled in the net and thrashed like a shark. One day there were two balls and he ran between them, kicking one for awhile and then running over to the other and kicking it.

AIR BUD BUT WITH SOCCER

I’m really missing “On the Bro’d.”

Dean and Dunkel shot some hoops on Bull’s halfcourt setup. I played too. We competed to see who was the most fit. Dean was off the fucking chain. He wanted to show us his vert, so we used a tiki torch as a bar and dude cleared like easy. Dude told us to hold it higher. We boosted it up so it was like five feet high and dude could still clear it like nothing. He had a long jump that was like twenty feet long, for real. Then we did a sprint. I can tear up the hundred like a fucking bullet, but dude still humiliated me. The way Dean ran with his sweaty polo, his calves jacked, yelling “Fuck yeah! Fuck yeah, let’s motor!” he looked like some sort of fast-as-shit god, running faster than like anybody. Bull busted out his paintball guns again and showed us where to shoot a dude to hurt him the worst.