horribly moving to-do list
Sunday 21 October 2007 | someone left a cookie
Well, it’s moving to me; or anyway it’s certainly horrible. But I should explain.
So once, long ago, when I was still reviewing movies for the Alt Weekly, I received a press release which referred to its dull-sounding, badly made indie film as being “horribly moving.” The Brujo and I have been joking relentlessly about this ever since. Alors, my horribly moving stuff to do:
• Magical realism: 1) handout on Günther Grass; 2) rework surrealist thing to be an actual *object* then take/email picture; 3) poem on body part; 4) sobrenombres; 5) read more Borges, which sounds like some kind of slogan of the National Council of Borgesians, but what can you do; 6) translate “Las Golondrinas” and “Perfidia.”
• TA seminar: 1) write short paper on Ira Shor and bell hooks; 2) email instructors for suggestions on seminar paper readings.
• ENG 101: 1) read 2 emailed student drafts and respond; 2) revise revised syllabus; 3) prep for this week’s in-class activities; 4) enter grades.
• Workshop: write some kind of something for Walt tomorrow, who has hopefully by now recovered from gamely workshopping the entirety of Doe.
• Household/financial: 1) request hearing for parking ticket ($29 received for misunderstanding street parking outside own home); 2) balance checkbook; 3) pay State School $75 for spring preregistration fees; 4) pay water bill; 5) hassle Albuquerque collection agency/St. Vincent for continuing to fail to understand that hospital bill from February 2005 was paid two years ago by Santa Fe County Indigency Fund; 6) grocery shopping; 7) laundry; 8) hoover up horrifying amounts of animal hair, courtesy of black dog and black cat, both autumnally shedding; 9) finish edging last 15 feet of front lawn which I couldn’t edge because the Vorpal Blade ran out of battery charge before I finished; 10) IMPERATIVE: FIND HOUSESITTER NOW so the Brujo and I can flee to Mexico in January.
• Personal: 1) find time for three blogposts about a) the Barack Obama rally, b) how I am apparently the only person in the world who didn’t like Pan’s Labyrinth, and c) something I’ve already forgotten about the ancient brown micaceous clay pot I found halfway up a rocky mountain last weekend; 2) email oleoptene! 3) quit playing so much online Scrabble; 4) stop having this ridiculous menstrual period which requires me to lie in bed reading not only Grass and Borges but also Jim Crace and Denis Johnson and secretly enjoying myself; 5) quit brooding about failed marriage of 1999-2004; 6) forcibly disconnect from Facebook and freeze Netflix account; 7) actually write paper thank-you letters, all stamped and addressed in envelopes in the top right desk drawer but still blank pages since July; 8) do *something* with 60-75 unanswered emails which swell and ebb in TO ANSWER folder without ever getting actually answered; 9) call Persephone, call Rough Princess, call parents; 10) get the Brujo’s website up and running; 11) find psychiatrist and DBT group, which should probably be #1 in this list; 12) get AZ driver’s license and register to vote; 13) BUY BICYCLE! because it’s great weather now to ride; 14) read Jesus Land for online book club moderating I should never have signed up to do; 15) go by the Literary Magazine and pick up more fiction submissions to read, mock internally and reject with cruel photocopied slips of paper.
But all this is going to have to wait somehow, because today’s agenda is consumed with finishing my English special topics course application. I know, I thought I was already done with that; but the deadline was extended by three weeks which of course meant I had to retract my proposal so I could work on it more and make it better.
See? Horribly moving! [Immediately plays quick round of online Scrabble.]
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EDIT: Lie on the grass in the sun for five hours and watch the Brujo repot his cacti, telling him all about the uncanny, numinous dream I had the night before. Wander hand-in-hand around the neighborhood and the Desert Botanical Gardens and the Phoenix Zoo entrance (because we don’t want to pay $14 each to see enslaved animals, but we do like watching the turtles and the four-foot-long orange koi swimming under the bridge by the gate). Decide we are not eating cake frosting out of the can anymore and throw it away. Read up on sewing machines and daydream foolishly of a life spent seamstressing. Read more Denis Johnson and Jim Crace. Take naps. Make love. Get fish tacos and horchatas from Filiberto’s and weird pink Brazilian cookies from Sunflower Market. Carry out the trash, clean the house to within an inch of its life while the Brujo does yard work and stands thoughtfully over the piano making up insanely funky little tunes I wish he’d write down. Take another nap. Play Scrabulous.
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I do like the edited version ever so much more — hey we were also zoologically inclined yesterday! Only we did pay outrageous amounts to see the enslaved animals. Portland’s zoo does have a conscience-relieving conservatorial bent. It was raining lightly off and on (this is the first place we’ve ever lived where 20% chance of showers means showers 20% of the time!), but still a lovely zoo experience, perhaps for the presence of lots of very tall trees. The final experience was getting to hold little cups of juice in the lorikeet exhibit and having the birds land on your wrist and hands to drink from the cups and this was completely thrilling to my kids who are now going to grow up even more ecologically conscious, right?
And I am so delighted to be on your list but find communication by scrabulous so amusing that I hereby forbid you to feel beholden on the email front if that were to feel like one more pressure not to play word games. I also amuse myself by envisioning the ultimate in multitasking: using words to St. Vincents in a scrapulous game that somehow qualifies as your surrealist art object when you print it out and handwriting literary magazine rejections on photocopies of this with some explanation that this is the standard to which you now hold creative and literary efforts…