mimsy and outgrabe

So many things I feel like writing about this week. Partly wanting to apologize to the universe for the temper tantrum I threw last week in my blog post; partly wanting to reaffirm said temper tantrum and say eff you to the universe; partly wanting to talk about teaching and The Overwhelm and how I've felt more down this week than any week since A. left for Puerto Rico, even though nothing really has changed. Partly wanting to talk about writing and writers I love and things that make sense to me and my obsessive need to archive or hoard all of those things I love. I've just about come to the end of my latest journal. I keep a notebook for lists and notes on meetings and plans for work and homelife, but my journal is a combination of a reader's notebook and writing pad. I draft the beginning of poems by hand almost always, and so this is where the really bad stuff gets its start, and stays -- usually, but unfortunately not always. When I work on my play(s) I draft by ...

It's been a week of recovery! And Plan-Making Lite, meaning that I'm beginning to think of the best way to tackle all of the things I'd like to do with these next few teaching-free months. My summer class was under-enrolled and didn't run, which is probably more good fortune for me than bad: I'll have less money, but now I can use the next month (the one where my children are still in school) to do prep for the fall at a leisurely pace, and to work on the things that I'm feeling starved for, like reading and writing. And exercise -- even the simplest kind, such as walking through my neighborhood or stretching. And sleep. Lots of sleep. I've begun reading this week, as a kind of segue between Disaster Semester and Disaster Semester Prevention Planning, Lynda Barry's Syllabus . It's really marvelous. Lynda Barry is one of my new favorites. I discovered her via my colleague D.W., who studied with her at University of Wisconsin-Madison (and is actu...