My old man is washing dishes and yelling jokes at me about things he’d like me to do in the new year
– turn off the alarm when I get up in the morning
– put leftover food in a tupperware or other container in order to save it in the fridge (’cause we can eat it later)
– keep a list of things that I should do, like the leftovers thing, or like how I should just go to the bathroom when I need to go, instead of holding it–put that on a list so I’ll remember
Then he said he is the “high-level administrator” in our marriage and that he’d like me to write up what I see as my role.
I think my role is twofold:
– telling my old man to “go to sleep” when we’re lying in bed at night and he starts talking about how “isn’t it weird we’re going to die”
– keeping track of when we need to refill the olive oil bottle
I can tell he is mad at me for donating money to MoveOn and the Humane Society but ever since he randomly wrote a $60 check to MassPIRG on our very first day here he knows he has no leg to stand on.
Hot Google Searches:
– “why does poop have different names”
– “can a dog take a chill pill”
– “why did chris rock get divorced”
– “definition of apotheosize”
– “alternatives to keeping vegetables in plastic bags”
– “basketball hall of fame hours”
– “French Republican calendar converter”
– “Slavoj Zizek spelling?”
I am looking at pictures of puppies online. We are joking about getting a puppy for our dog but I think deep down we are both kind of like, if the other person was being serious I would be serious about it too. Much like people who inexplicably have a second (or first, real talk) child probably. Like WHY would you do that??? And yet somehow deep down you kind of want to. Somehow the finger keeps clicking on the hot pup pics / the price of plastic diapers at Target
We got started talking about the word “dung.” Is dung a particular type of poop or does it refer to all poop? I said all poop but then realized that you wouldn’t say “fish dung” (old man: “Although it sure is delicious”)
Some googling has cleared things up as per:
Dung is the poop of animals
Guano is the poop of birds and bats
And the poop of insects is called……FRASS
fish poop doesn’t appear to have its own name but in trying to find out I discovered a Yahoo question asked by a 16 year old girl who says she smells like poop and everyone hates her even though she has lots of friends and boyfriends. That’s 16 in a nutshell I guess.
I have been in an incredible work zone, maybe like none I’ve ever been in before. Our roles have totally reversed–now the old man is making grocery lists and cooking elaborate stews and I am the one hunching over the computer from dawn til dusk. I feel like I could work forever. It feels great and I love it; I love working. I’ve been going to the coffee shop and sitting there for 8-9 straight hours non-stop working and I feel like a million bucks (except my body. My body feels awful). Really digging into these projects. Still feeling very behind on my x-mas to-do list but am checking some things off at least. Revising my book and really engaging with it for the first time since it was my dissertation–everyone says they are sick of their dissertation and I said that too for awhile but now I’m really enjoying getting back into this topic. Maybe it’s from spending a couple years on a new topic that I feel really really confused and untrained to deal with? So now returning to this thing that I at least BELIEVE I have more knowledge of, maybe that’s fun. Also, I do think it is easier to revise than to write.
I have really great colleagues too who help each other. One of them edited an abstract I wrote and made it so much better. Another one read the shit out of my book intro and I spent 3 days pulling it all apart and deleting vast chunks of it and forcing myself to reverse outline it and it felt so good, like climbing a mountain. You have to have a reading group or you can’t get through this crazy job, unless you’re a genius I guess, which I am not.
It’s crazy how everyone has different skills.
I’m a broad-strokes ideas man, and a fast writer. Then what’s hard is actually turning the broad-strokes ideas and the tons of prose into precise, clearly-articulated statements that anyone on earth would find compelling; this is where I falter. I’m more of a “throw a bunch of shit on the wall and see what sticks” kind of a thinker, which means I’m sloppy and lazy and need someone with a more precise mind to point at the shit and be like “that should stay, the rest should go, but also you need to craft it and mold it, don’t just throw it against the wall like that” and I’m like AW NUTS
While I’m writing it’s a wild ride and I feel exhilarated. Then people like my old man and my friend Andrea read it and are like “what do you mean by this?? Is this a real thing? What about this, this sounds like the ravings of a mad man. Also you use the same verb six times in two sentences” JK I would never do that last one
We are going to the basketball hall of fame to celebrate the New Year. And we might go to a place that is referred to as “the best pizza in the greater Springfield area.” Then we will eat chili and watch Beetlejuice.
RESOLUTIONS:
– exercise more is on every person’s list for all eternity. Does anyone actually ever exercise more? I bet 0.01% of people. I want to exercise more so bad but it truly is just so hard to motivate to do it, even though I just composed a funny tweet about it: “Sometimes I forget if I’m #pushinthirty or #pushinforty but then I look down.”
– don’t buy a yoga punchcard with an expiration date
– work more; work into the night
– write new book chapter by end of February
– keep baking awesome bread and being a total badass
– wear ray-bans and reboot on the chill side of life
– stop stealing David Rees’s jokes
– I would like to say “spend less time on the computer” but I don’t see how it’s possible. 2015 is all about REALISM, bro. I quit Facebook and I think that’s about as low as I can go, in terms of cutting down on screen time. 80% of my job takes place on this goddamn screen, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.
– 2015 is all about making sure we take one weekend trip to the Berkshires
– finally make a dentist appointment and a doctor appointment to learn about how advanced my hip dysplasia is; get another MRI where they inject all that radioactive dye into my leg, remember last summer when I did this and the doctor, the technician, and I all talked about Beowulf the whole time? And then that wise-cracking lady wheeled me around the hospital in a wheelchair talking about how nobody wanted to see me naked? Then I fell asleep in the MRI machine and the guy said I was the best at getting an MRI he’d ever seen, and he also complimented me on not smelling bad, so, you know, that was a pretty good day for yours truly
– buy a piano and play it every day
– actually learn to speak French
– just be healthier in general. For the first time I am really sliding into the particular unhealthiness of the academic. Academics, while conversationally vigorous, tend to be sort of physically slack and pasty with dark circles under their eyes. They don’t get enough vitamin d and their bones are stiff and sore. They drink too much, not out of depression but just out of the need to powerfully unwind themselves at night. It’s like the lifestyle of a coal miner but without any physical effort involved. But with just as much rickets. I am finding it really hard not to have wine every day with dinner e.g. and I am finding it hard to go to the gym even twice a week, which is bullshit. I feel haggard. Some of this is probably just wintertime.
– keep drinking coffee and loving it each day
– stop telling people how much I work
– spend more time sleeping with my head on the dog’s butt
– give up my dream of finding good mexican food here
– make a couple friends who make me laugh
– get the dog a puppy NO just kidding
