if you do not blog it, they will not come
Wednesday 27 February 2008 | 2 cookies in the jar
• The not-so-hot-news: I have an iron deficiency/low ferritin. After blood tests last week, that’s the tentative diagnosis. This alone might be enough to explain crashing fatigue, inability to climb a flight of stairs without seeing stars, sore joints (knees and fingers, primarily), dry skin and falling-out hair—not to mention being more mentally interesting than even February might explain (meds possibly fighting an uphill battle against ironlessness). But there could possible be some species of thyroid problem, thus more tests are necessary, thus some minor wrangling with the health center—which, unsurprisingly, fatigued people DO NOT WANT to do. Alors, blog silence, most of my energy going to teaching and the little left over to basic hygiene and, now, cooking spinach in the cast-iron skillet whilst nibbling on dried apricots.
• The good news: the State School’s health center randomly assigned us to Dr. Harvard Cho (ambitious immigrant parents? I should have checked out the diplomas on his wall to see if their sympathetic magic worked). Harv definitely belongs to the class of those whom Mandarin denominates Hot Doctors. Not only is he Hot, he’s respectful, sympathetic, professional, and apparently likes to order tests. And, he didn’t hear the mental health history and immediately throw up his hands and say Well there you go then. We love Harvard Cho. We peed into a cup and contributed about six vials of blood without complaint.
• The really good news: The list of things I don’t have includes but is not limited to: HSV, HIV, Valley Fever (?!) and leukemia. And something else I’ve already forgotten, but anyway I don’t have it (cf. low-ferritin induced brain fog).
• Other news: Walt Whitman has asked me to be his RA in name only for next year….a weird situation in which he doesn’t actually need assistance, but wants to keep the funding stream flowing freely and thus, one comp section is gone BUHBYE desaparecida forever from next year’s schedule—all in exchange for my baking him vegan-holy-man muffins, or chauffeuring him to the grocery store in the middle of the night (of course he doesn’t drive), or whatever else I can think of to do in order to eliminate my guilt over accepting no-strings-attached funding. And also? In addition to teaching “Feminist Post-Apocalyptic Literature” in the spring, I’ll be TAing an undergraduate poetry workshop in the fall….further reducing the composition 2/2 load to a 0/1 load. This makes anemic people very happy (in a lethargic, feebly-pipping- hooray!-and-smiling-broadly kind of way).
• Aesthetic news: I write haphazardly but pleasurably, working on the long Maman sequence and other shorter nasty poems, and I remain deeply in love with fabric and color….the purple and turquoise Etsy treasury grows, I fear, daily. I try to read Robert Penn Warren’s Audubon and George Oppen, but there is a fair amount of ferritin-deprived brain fog and mostly I study rhetorical appeals, create handouts for same and try to explain them to my simultaneous 37 super-bright and dim-bulb students. We watch a lot of videos: Gretchen Wilson with Jimi Hendrix, Lee Greenwood with John Gorka, 
Public Enemy with Nina Simone. Barack Obama with Dr. King. Excerpts from Thank You for Smoking: “That’s the beauty of argument: if you argue correctly, you’re never wrong.” We go over it and over it: What is the argument? How is it functioning? How is this rhetor using logos, pathos, ethos? Still, like today, they stare up at me all worry and confusion. What’s kairos mean again? And I’m not deft enough to explain exigence, so I just keep saying, the right moment. Timeliness.
• Freakout news: The Brujo and I leave in about a week for a quickie Texan spring break (5 days, 4 nights) in which he will gamely Meet the Parents. Which will they hate more—that he’s not obsequious, that he’s blunt-spoken about his political opinions, or that he smokes a pack a day? (Oh I dare you to guess. Just guess.) Our two housesitters bailed and iron-deficient girl has to find another one via the State School’s employment board, pronto.
• Ambivalent news: I finally bought the bicycle of my DREAMS! But I’m mostly too tired to ride it. The Brujo heroically drives me to school most mornings and picks me up after he’s done with his own teaching. I have been to school on it two or three times and it’s divine. Now iron-deficient girl just has to sell the previously purchased mistake-bike somehow.
• Purely wonderful news: It’s almost March. It’s warm. And isn’t this pretty?
2 cookies in the jar
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THE REASON THERE IS FEBRUARY—
“It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.” —John Steinbeck (b. Feb. 27, 1902).
I invite you to commemorate John Steinbeck’s Birthday as celebrated since 1968 by joining in the ritual activities: (1) if you don’t have time to read Of Mice And Men or a short story, then check as many Steinbeck books out of the library as you can and return them the same day; (2) eat inexpensive Mexican food and—unless, like me, you’re sober—drink a cold beer; (3) have a conversation with a friendly dog; (4) go wading barefoot in the nearest body of water; (5) find a way to disrespect Authority.
hey, i am really sorry to hear that you are unwell at the moment. hope you’ll get better soon. hope harvard cho (!) can do his magic. would eating red meat help? i was a vegetarian for 14 year - with a few pauses - and they never wanted my blood (as a blood donor, I mean). I stopped being a vegetarian three years ago and have already donated blood now :-)