Lazy resolutions

Winter Break To-Do:

1. Make office into usable room

1a. Get a floor lamp

2. Hit up after-Christmas candy sales

3. Make shepherd's pie (Mmm.)

4. Play with Sculpey

5. Help sister with college applications

6. Produce at least one piece of writing, goddammit!

As with all of my to-dos, who knows what will be accomplished from this, but I've tried to set the bar low enough to actually tempt me to step over it.

Also--Christmas is way less fun as a grown-up. However, despite yesterdays failures and frustrations, I did manage to produce a couple pans of reasonably festive red velvet cupcakes, which were only a tiny bit burnt on the bottom. After burning the crap out of my hand trying to relight the oven, of course. No pain, no gain.

I'm dreaming of a white chocolate Christmas

There is no white chocolate available for purchase in this entire city.

This is a shame, as this was going to be the year I was finally going to make white chocolate peppermint bark for friends and family. Miraculously already having the supplies on hand, I was following my mother's recipe, which was simple enough: melt the chocolate, stir in peppermints, pour onto cookie sheet, let cool. I didn't have the fancy red and green peppermint chunks she always used, but she assured me I could just crack regular peppermints. I proceeded to do so, violently, with a rolling pin. Meanwhile, I was melting the chocolate. Inevitably, it was irreparably burnt. Drove all over town trying to find some damn white chocolate bark/chips--nada. Coming back, made a U-turn on a red light that may or may not have been monitored and in the process broke some of the eggs I'd just bought.

So, in conclusion, I have a three cups of toasted white chocolate in my garbage can, a handful of battered peppermints on my counter, and a potential traffic ticket which I cannot afford (and which is unconstitutional, if you ask me. Damn Big Brother). I'm afraid to even make the little clay figurines I was planning, lest my house catch on fire.

Happy bloody Christmas. I'm going make a sandwich.

School does not equal happy

Down the street from my house, there is an elementary school with a marquee which reads "WE TEACH THE HAPPIEST CHILDREN!!!" And every time I pass it, I just think, "Uh, so?"

Not that schools shouldn't aim for the happiness of children (as much as is feasible, I suppose. Schools by nature are anathema to children). But something about the wording of that sign always just seems off somehow to me. It doesn't so much say that "Our teaching makes the children the happiest" as "These children are (for some probably unrelated reason) happy, and we just happen to teach them. Yay!"

Silly, but just a little thing that is continually a twinge in my day. Also, one of my friends very briefly attended said school, and promptly transferred out after they spent multiple math classes discussing the result of multiplying by zero. So... yeah. Happy children, I guess.

Brain arthritis

At this point I have three different half-finished blog posts saved, all on different subjects, all written the past two days. My thinking has been weird, fuzzy and frustrated. When I try to get around to writing it down, I feel like whatever section of my brain is responsible for writing production has arthritis. This does not just apply to blog posts, but to my writing in general of late.

It was a rough semester, which almost justifies my sleeping until 1 for the last three days.

Also, dammit, the vowel keys on my keyboard are being infuriatingly non-worky. Especially "u". Not a major hang up, but (ARGH) it has been happening enough to make typing a chore. (This is more of a complaint than an excuse).

Submitted to delta. My poems are significantly better than the ones I sent in last year, but despite working on the staff, I am in no way guaranteed publication. This only means I have to see how people vote on my poems. I heard there was drama during the decision process last year, but I suppose that's inevitable when you have a dozen twentysomethings who fancy themselves poets getting drunk on cheap wine and reading each others' work. Looking forward to it! (Actually I really am looking forward to it, we have a lot of great writers submitting stuff this year. I really should have branched out beyond poetry. Less competition.)

I don't know why I feel so compelled to be simultaneously whiny and self-deprecating on here. Holdover from the LiveJournal days, maybe?

Anyway, I really need to get out more so I have more to write about. In general. I literally didn't step foot outside the house today. In my defense, it was a very gray, chilly day.

Goal: Wake up before noon tomorrow. Do something.

My philosophy of writing: The pleasure, the feeling, all through the words.

Frequently the only things in life worth hanging on to are those moments with good friends, good food/drink, and good talk, those moments that burn warmly in the bottom of your soul and make you cozy in your own skin. Language, for all its richness, is a poor medium to capture that feeling, those times made simultaneously of contentment and potential, but goddammit, it's all we have so we have to try our damnedest. Layer your words like flavors, slosh them around in your mouth like a good wine. Make them count; enjoy them. No plot, no thread of thought is going to capture on its own the tingling under your fingernails, the chemistry of interaction boiling over that is true life.

Let your tongue run free, revel in the pleasure. And no, it doesn't have to make sense:

A typhoon of octopus. A glacier of days. Aerodynamic aeolian aesthetic. Drowning challenge. A paragraph of stairways. Glockenspiel (in any context). Simpering sundials, a ton of crocodiles. Sticky checkbooks. Aphids for sale, in-laws for rent. Lapping at sounds like you're drowning in deafness. Fuzzy navy beans.

Jarring carousels, haranguing hula-hoops, a melange of melons. Overtones of overcoats, slithering staircases, offended petticoats. The unceasing demand for doldrums.

Live it!

The Gate is dead, long live The Gate.

So passes another season of the 13th Gate, among the greatest of America's haunted houses. We who work there must have strong hearts and will, for it asks much of us, but so to us does it give much to us: a soul-camaraderie, a delirious glee, pride in striking unbridled fear into the hearts of customers. Truly, it is a boon for those willing to accept and appreciate it.

This year, it almost broke me. My body grew weary, my steps faltered; for a time, I was laid low. Though I am not yet what I once was, I rallied back to carry out the end of an era, to help hoist the show over its final edge. Well, until next year at least.

Seriously though, it was a great year and I had a lot of fun, but I will greatly enjoy having spare time again, and finally getting to do all of those things that I had to put off wistfully until "after the Gate." Like having other friends. Or sleeping. It may, however, be difficult to suppress the manic miming, twirling, etc. that has become a habit--I find myself moving through the Chimes like it was the mirror maze, which is possibly hazardous, and inadvertently sneaking up on people. Also giggling silently with exaggerated gestures, which I may never in fact stop doing.

So, scare ya later!

Um, I like words?

Oh, hi there personal writing. I forgot you existed outside the graded, deadlined sphere that has devoured my life.

Speaking of which, it's National Novel Writing Month. That is but a wistful glimmer in my writer's eye this year due to crazy busy schedule and other writing obligations, but perhaps a miracle...

Current high point of my life: giant bags of Halloween candy sitting in my pantry, bought at discount the day after Halloween

Low point: the mucus-y demon living in my throat and lungs. Oh, and the complete lack of anything other than Halloween candy in my pantry.

Seriously contemplating going to grad school for linguistics rather than an MFA or something of that nature. Career options would be a little better, perhaps (though still hella gloomy probably). Of course, my linguistics professor hasn't actually shown up for class in about a week, so maybe that's God trying to send me a message. Or just get me home an hour earlier. If it is the latter, I sure do appreciate it.

I think that my social-interaction synapses have been misfiring more frequently than usual lately (something about that string of words seems odd, but oh well), and I may have crossed the line from "slightly awkward" into "eccentric". Example: A girl sitting next to me in my short story writing class complimented my story, which we had workshopped a few days earlier.

Girl: I really liked your story; I thought it was really well written.

Me. Oh. Me?

Girl: Um, yes.

Me: Oh. I didn't want to take a compliment not assigned to me, you see.

[awkward pause. blank stare on both sides.]

Me: Um. Yeah. I like words?

The stilted delivery of this, coupled with (that's not precisely the right word, either, but the sentence sounds the best) my glazed stare and the uncomfortable closeness of the desks in the classroom probably contributed to the awkwardness, along with my failure to follow this up with the usual context/explanation surrounding the phrase (i.e., My real interest is in words, what they mean and how they fit together to create different layers of meaning and experience in people's minds, rather than in a narrative or story-arc. That is why I tend towards poetry and linguistics rather than traditional fiction.). No major harm done though, I think. It is, after all, a class for aspiring writers.

Planning on taking 18 hours next semester, which in the fall would be suicidal for me but in the spring is merely ambitious. I guess I don't really need all of the classes right this second (or in some cases maybe not at all), but I'm afraid to not take them lest the chance slip through my fingers. I figured out that I can pull off my pie-in-the-sky triple minor and still graduate a semester early, but it would be by the skin of my teeth. Seriously considering abandoning Philosophy, but I'm going to try to talk to an advisor first. It would make my life a bit easier though, and I would only have to take 12 hours my graduating semester (knock on wood). For next semester, I'm looking at

Pidgins and Creoles, Brit Lit I, Chaucer, Symbolic Logic, Intermediate Poetry Writing. Oh, and Old Irish.

So much reading, but my days would be much less grueling than the 930-430 schedule I'm pulling this semester. We'll see.

Now, to write and revise poetry. I'll be reading tomorrow in front of actual people again, and I don't want to look like a total fool.