I didn't get a chance to write for myself yesterday and I felt cheated. This might mean that I'm a real writer and not just one who plays one on the TV show in my head.

Of course, this is not a real entry.

Okay. So as soon as I write about handy dandy schedules for myself and make loud pronouncements about productivity it seems that I'm floundering in the slough of despond.  Here I sit, at home, with my thumb up my metaphorical ass.  I opened the file for my novel and read a snippet and then thought about killing myself for a second.  Then I stared at the blinds until they started to move on their own, and shimmer with a hallucinogenic quality.

Now I'm typing this.  Life is good, ain't it?

I feel as if I want to eat all the time.  I'm going to manage to gain 10 pounds before I see all of my girlfriends for our high school reunion in July.  I'm already bloated beyond belief.  Please tell me this is another symptom of menopause.

Today I managed to limit myself to only one mini Reese's cup from the big ass bowl someone evil put in the faculty lounge (the faculty lounge located just three fucking steps from my open office door, I might add), but that was only because I knew I'd be making lasagna for dinner and I wanted to go wild on it.

Also, though I limited myself to a Smart Ones at lunch, when I got home I polished off all the remaining kettle corn.  Damn.

I had my lasagna dinner (which came out smashingly) and then went for a walk with Dave and Willow.  Came home and did NOT bury myself in cookies or ice cream. Limited myself to an apple.  But now my mouth is craving chocolate.  Did I mention that I had a nice big glass of red wine with dinner?

All of this attention to my burgeoning weight and every bite that I do or don't put into my mouth reminds me of college years, when I tiptoed dangerously close to an eating disorder, walking that razor line for years.  These are boring years that I do not wish to repeat.  Does the fact that I'm planning this high school reunion mean that I'm automatically flashed back to that nasty part of my life?  Please say no.

Please say this is just another (brief) phase of the ongoing "change."

Target is remodeling.  What that means, apparently, is that it's going to be even hipper and cooler, in June, to spend money in their hip, cool stores.

They've already remodeled their dressing rooms.  I went in there with a pair of jeans today and discovered a few things:

1.  They've "upgraded" their look.  Gone is the rank oatmeal carpeting and the industrial florescent lighting.  Now it's blonde "wood" paired with polished concrete flooring, mirrors in front and back, and doors that stretch at least 8 feet up and down.  An upholstered stool (red pleather) provides the stylish "dot" required.

2.  The double-mirrors and cool lighting might make the space appear more spacious and upscale but they also highlight the years' ravages to my pale skin and body.  The scale doesn't lie, much as I would like to think that it does.  Those extra 10 pounds?  They're not fucking muscle.

3.  I was smart to start wearing dresses and skirts last semester.  They not only "professionalize" my sorry ass, but they also help to hide it. 

Now I'm at home, in my new Target jeans (thank god I was smart enough to invest in the "curvy" sizing, and in the dark pattern), trying not to stuff my face full of sugar.  I'd come up with my own "remodeling" plan but I know that it's just the same shit in a new(ish) package ... like the "new" Target.

Vices I gave up this academic year (in part or completely):

Swearing in the classroom
Caffeine
Sugar
Diet soda

Vices I have added back by the end of this academic year:

Swearing in the classroom (and elsewhere)
Caffeine
Sugar
Diet Soda

I've decided that I'm too old to change my ways.  Furthermore, what's to be gained by giving up these simple pleasures?  (Especially the pleasure one or two cookies can afford a menopausal mother of a teenage daughter with a stack of final papers to grade?)  Will denying myself these pleasures make me a better person?

Arguably, yes.  If I stop swearing in the classroom, I will maintain a professional demeanor that will a) encourage students to treat me with respect and awe, as I deserve, and b) set me on the moral high road.  If I give up caffeine, the hamster in my brain will run a wee bit slower on its wheel, maybe even take a snooze or two in its plastic hut.  If I stop eating so much sugar, I'll maintain a relatively trim physique without having to work out for 2 hours every day, until my aging joints and tendons explode into dust.  If I give up diet soda, I'll probably stop embalming myself from the inside out.

On the other hand, if I swear in the classroom every once in a while, I a) get their attention and b) let off a little pent up rage.  This pent up rage might, if it collects, contribute to other, more serious, problems than, say, a lack of respect from a few students.  Those who don't respect me for swearing usually don't respect me for being a woman, a liberal, and a person who shoots her mouth off for pay.  While teaching literature -- let's not forget that crucial fact.  If I drink caffeine, I feel a little more peppy and my low level chronic depression is, however artificially, dented for a while.  Also, it makes my boobs a little bigger -- but wait. That's not a good thing. That's an annoying thing that contributes to a general feeling of physical malaise AND adds to the problem of not being respected 100% in the classroom.  If I eat sugar, I'm a lot happier -- at least for a moment -- with my life and the people around me who define that life at the moment.  And I don't look like someone who's trying really hard to take the moral high ground as those around her dive into the donuts/cookies/cake.  I'm not sure how to justify the diet sodas, except that I am not drinking the full-on sugar sodas.  They should just stop making diet sodas so that I'll stop soda period.

I'm trying to read Homer's Odyssey for the first time, I guess.  I mean, I've read parts of it, I think.  And I've read about it.  And I've probably discussed it in a few courses.  But now I'm signed myself up to teach it (for Intro to Lit next semester, monster theme) and so I've got to take the damn poem seriously.

I'm not sure how I feel about it, all of a sudden.  I mean, I'm committed to using it, I've ordered the book for the course, I've bought my own copy and am reading it, and now I feel a bit queasy.  I'm reading the damn thing and I'm thinking fffffffffuck.  Somehow, I thought the poem, at least in translation, would be more accessible.

In the past, I'd teach anything -- a certain level of hubris, I guess, kept me safe from any form of semi- or total paralysis.  Maybe I'm getting old.  My cells have recycled many times over, and I'm now Laurie ver 6.9 or whatever (if we shed everything every 7 years, I'm getting up to ver 7.0), and this version might be more conservative, more risk adverse, a bit skittish regarding "the classics."

Sigh.  Back to Telemachus and his preparations to find his missing daddy.

*

On a completely different note, I changed my screen saver today to what looks like a picture of  a galaxy.  Is it the Milky Way?  Probably (because we're so freaking Earth-centric).  And it strikes me, looking at it, that it's a giant vagina. 

So much for the patriarchy, eh?

I still have a lot of stuff to do to prepare for tonight's Literary Awards.  (Okay, let me rephrase that:  I don't have too much to do, I probably have about an hour's worth of work, maybe 1.5 hours.)

But it feels like a veritable shitstorm.  Like about 5 hours that I don't have a handle on.

I wore some cruel shoes today and have exchanged them, for the time being, with flip-flops.  My toes are throbbing.

In order to calm myself, and to give my feet a rest, I should sit here and knock it out in the next hour, then spend my remaining time before my 3-5 class reading Mary Shelley's psychosexual group biography.

Ergo, I will now put my shoes back on and go to lunch at the cafeteria.

I got to campus this morning, my bladder full, got out of my car and discovered that I'd left all my shit (ie, my bookbag) at home. Drove back home, peed, got the bag, came back to campus. 

It's that kind of day.

I don't know what's to blame for this, but I'm craving sugar all the time now.  Could it be these diet sodas I suck down?  Could it be the pesky hormones?  Sugar and junk food.  I'm almost tempted to quit eating real food so that I can devote myself full time to ice cream, chocolate, and Cheetos.

The weather's pretty glorious right now -- sunny, bright, cool but not freezing.  The trees are leafing out in splendor (except for the tree in our backyard, which is mangy), puffy clouds are scudding across a light blue sky, there are less than 2 weeks left of classes, and I can see the end of the tunnel coming.

So why do I feel so pissed off?  And hungry.  Like I could stuff a few cookies into my mouth right now and chase them down with some potato chips.

Also, as long as I'm complaining, let me add that my lower back is killing me, that my feet are ugly, and that underneath my toenail polish my nails are yellow, ridged, and harder than rhinoceros horn. 

I think the weather's gotten into my head. It's gray and rainy, absolutely devoid of sun, the kind of wet cold that sinks through your skin and into your bones, right to their centers.

I woke up this morning at 4:30 AM to the sound of Dave in the basement, sucking down with the shopvac what must've been a new puddle in the basement we spent 2000 bucks this fall to waterproof.  Now that the old places of ingress have been sealed off or rerouted ("We can't get the water out," Chad from Basten Construction said.  "We just manage it."), the water comes in somewhere behind the dryer, where the sump pump pipe drills out of the house and attaches to a hose.  The hose likes to come undone, it would appear, or it's loose, as it was this morning, and water sprays out at the hook up, gets into the ground, fills the block walls, dribbles out of the cracks in the foundation and pools at the bottom of the basement stairs.

The sound of the shopvac makes me want to go on a shooting rampage.  But who would I shoot?  It's not as if I can run outside, track down Mother Nature, and shoot that bitch in the face. 

So, instead, this cloud of cold resentment, sense of futility and failure, soaks with the cold rain into my skin and down into my bones.  I carry it around with me.  It smells like mold and weighs a fuck ton.  It's black and sludgy and nothing good lives in it -- just those millipedes or silverfish or whatever they are that look poisonous, and bulbous spiders, and lung infections.

Perhaps it's this black cloud, this soul grunge, that's making me crave chocolate.  Since yesterday, I've been jonesing for chocolate with what feels like every fiber of my fleshy being.  And this is after not eating much sugar for months.  I'm on the verge of running downstairs to the vending machine for a Milky Way bar.  I'll stay here in the office and pretend I'm agoraphobic.

Today's classes can't be over soon enough.

I had good intentions when I came to campus today.  I thought I'd teach my classes, hold my office hours, and then go home and do some of my own work before having to come back to campus for a 6:30 presentation.

I'd go home, I thought, and walk the dog in a big lazy circle through the neighborhood, through the wind and rain, through the layers of neon green tree schmutz that sticks to the soles of my shoes like cosmic gism. 

After I got to campus, I saw that one of my colleagues was presenting a talk about his sabbatical, speaking on Nirvana as an in-the-world sort of experience.  Oh, I thought, I'll zip over to that and then go home.

Then I started to read poem revisions and, when I looked up, stomach growling, it was already well past the start of Professor X's address, and heading toward the end.  Damn me and the grading vortex. 

Now it's an hour later and I'm still not home.  But I have managed to finish grading all the revisions that were handed in. I'm caught up on my reading.  I've gone through all of my emails and dealt with the pressing matters, uncluttered my inbox.  I've met with a few students nice enough to show up at my office hours.  I've updated my calendars (spurred on by my ability to forget to do something as simple as stand up from my desk and remove myself to another part of the campus for a colleague's talk) to reflect upcoming changes in the routine.

I haven't had any junk food yet today and, as a result, my brain feels relatively clear, despite its ability to delete lately added plans to attend speeches.

I guess I'll go home, then, and rectify that situation.