Mountains of Laundry, End-of-Week Minutia

At first I thought I hadn't really accomplished much with this week, but when I look back, I've done a little bit of everything except exercise. Well, once, I dragged my ass onto the treadmill. But I walked, because I was reading at the same time (I'm REALLY not coordinated enough to read and run at the same time), so it didn't feel like much of a workout.

I'm looking forward to all of this snow melting so I can run outside again. 

Anyway, I managed to read more of the mad Russian lady (Tsvetayeva) -- who isn't really mad, but brilliant -- I love the way you see her working out her arguments, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, in her essays (I'm on "The Poet and Time," currently).

I've also been working on the review of Paper Doll Fetus (by Cynthia Marie Hoffman), which I'll submit to Calyx later today or tomorrow for their Summer Issue (hopefully it meets their needs/specs and they like it).

And I managed to write an entire student rec (big deal, I have two more to go!) and also bang away at that poem I began two weeks ago  . . . which I suspect might be a big load of crap, so I'm going to put it away (I think) for a little while in the hopes of gaining some perspective. (It's about trying to drown out the noise of social media -- or rather, pick through the detritus of social media in hopes of finding something salvageable -- and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the references to contemporary  . . . people. But it's supposed to be good for you to work outside your comfort zone, right? Yeah, I still don't know if it's a good idea. Anyway.)

I have so much grading to do that I haven't been able to do when I'm physically, actually-at-work, that it's ridiculous, but I'm trying to keep my morning writing time sacred! As it was, I cheated and wrote that student rec one morning (it was writing, not grading, so I felt like I could justify it).

It's kind of amazing how much my own mind betrays me. While I'm in the midst of all this busyness, I started to think about promotion (it's difficult not to do so -- A.P. was just promoted to Full Professor) and then I realized I should probably present at a conference within the next two years, so I began to brainstorm possible conference presentation topics. BECAUSE I HAVE SO MUCH TIME AT MY DISPOSAL FOR EXTRACURRICULAR CRAP. 

So, that's my life in a stream of nonsense. You envy me, yes?

p.s. My basement has mountains -- literal mountains to Vampire Toddler -- of laundry in it. So household matters have not really been addressed this week. (It's amazing this place hasn't been condemned. Yet.)