Syllabus #127

Got my Pfizer booster on Thursday because I spend every weekday surrounded by tiny not-yet-vaccinated humans who can't keep their masks over their formless little noses to save their lives (literally).  Friday was deeply unpleasant.  Saturday was great.  Somehow I find myself this Sunday feeling like the garbage truck that ran me over on Friday threw it in reverse, backed over me, and is just idling the engine and leaking trash juice all over my battered body.  

Could be vaccine related, could be my regularly scheduled period migraine, could be a conicidence-cold, definitely couldn't be the three alcoholic beverages I consumed over a span of nearly six hours yesterday, with plenty of water and food.  If we're at that level of can't-hangability these days, I'm deeply ashamed.  On the Can't Hang scale of 0-10, zero being John Belushi in Animal House, and 10 being a Mormon nonagenarian, that puts me at about a 7 - ET getting blitzed on Coors.

Wow thanks good to know.  I always forget to use the other attachments. 

Good help is so hard to find.  Can you imagine the audacity of this dowdy spinster librarian trying to have Frank Lloyd Wright build her a house?  I can't even find a handyman with an extension ladder to scrape leaves out of my gutters, and she's all, Hello, Dr. Fauci, I have a splinter, do you make house calls?

Not the little free libraries!  Rig them up like those demented cookie jars that oink at you when you open the lid, except when you open the door to the little free library and take out more than one book, it shushes you and stabs you in the hand with a knitting needle.  Too much?  Just enough?  Maybe I'll self-publish some terrible fiction and print-on-demand a few dozen copies to stuff in a little free library.  Best seller list here I come.  Best stealer list?  

Talk about a clickbait headline:  My Dad's Homemade Fish Balls are Tender, Bouncy Perfection

Spooky season?  I never gave it enough thought to even consider whether it's an irritating concept.  I think the reason it's such a thing is because when you're a kid, you do get super excited for your favorite holidays, and start anticipating and planning and dreaming about them months in advance.  I have kids asking for Halloween books in the beginning of August, and they've been asking for Christmas ones for almost as long.  Consciously stretching out Halloween, the way most of Western culture already does for Christmas, is an excuse/reminder to indulge in all the nostalgic, comforting aspects of the holiday you love as a kid without waking up hungover on November 1st and being like, 'Shit, I went to Party City yesterday morning, bought a pair of cat ears, got drunk on pumpkin beers, and blacked out at 4 PM so I didn't have to hand out candy to kids.  I didn't carve a pumpkin, I didn't watch Hocus Pocus, I didn't eat my weight in candy out of a pillowcase for breakfast...being an adult blows.'  

Analog Reading:

Finished Sally Rooney's Conversations With Friends, which I enjoyed almost as much as Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You?.  Reading this, her first novel, after her more recent two books, it's interesting to see how her craft has developed.  Also, this book is told from the first person by one narrator, which puts some constraints on the story and also seems less natural somehow, compared to her later books that are largely from the third person perspective.  All of Rooney's protagonists seem to have a rich inner life but also be emotionally stunted in terms of relating to other people without a lot of friction.  It's easier to accept that about the characters when we are reading about them in the third person, but when you're supposedly getting a character's interiority and they aren't giving you much, it makes them less sympathetic.  Which is maybe the point.

Started Intimacies by Katie Kitamura.  I'm not sure about it yet.  I'm having a hard time adjusting to her prose style, but I'm interested in the basic premise of the book so we'll see.

And, finally, indulging in A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris.  I'm forcing myself to read just snippets at a time, as the title implies, because I want to savor it.  I'm really good at that.  Y'all, I have a fun size Twix in my pantry that's been there for like 6 months and every time I think about eating it, I'm like, 'But what if I really need chocolate some other time and I've already eaten this?'  And then I remember that Twix have caramel in them, and I hate caramel, and then I also remember that I am an adult human woman with disposable income and the ability to visit a store to procure more and better sources of chocolate, and yet there the Twix sits.