Syllabus #219

Yes, hi, hello, TMI alert.  I am just surfacing from the most severe bout of PMS I have had in a very long time.  How I made it through this week without a criminal conviction is anyone's guess.  I would apologize for the things I said when I was angry, but whatever I said was probably justified, and whoever I said it to probably deserved it.  PMS is the true story of seven strangers eggs picked to live in a house uterus, work ovulate together, and have their lives taped absorbed by a tampon...to find out what happens...when women stop being polite...and start getting real.  The Period World. 

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Are you a party host or an enthusiastic guest?  Can you maybe be neither?  Reluctant guest who will bring a bottle of wine to be polite, and leave as soon as is socially acceptable?  Person who avoids hosting because your house is weird and you are too uptight to deal with people who don't RSVP but show up anyway, or say yes and bail at the last minute?

One of these restaurants is in our neighborhood.  I haven't been there because they're only open for lunch a few days a week, and I'm not trying to wait in line for an hour to drop an eye-watering amount of money at a time of day when I could just as easily eat a peanut butter sammich and keep it moving.  

I guess we really did peak in high school.  I'm sure (I hope) I'll be dead by 2080, but part of me wants to pull up with a bucket of popcorn and watch the decline of humanity unfold.  

Speaking of people nearing the age of 100 and Doing It Right, Jimmy Carter, everybody!  What a mensch.  Give this man another bowl of peanut butter ice cream.  

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Analog Reading:

David Grann's The Wager was gripping and epic and well-researched.  The amount of suffering these shipwrecked men faced, even before the shipwreck (hello, scurvy), and the level of determination the had to summon to make it back to jolly old England, was astonishing.

Next up:  Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

Syllabus #218

This came to a 5th grade student through our interlibrary loan system, and I've never been more proud or ashamed.  Proud to know this student, who is apparently just as much of a weirdo as I was (and honestly still am), probably just typing 'farts' into the search box to see what came up.  Also ashamed to discover this glaring omission in my own library's collection.

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You can pry millennials' cultural relevancy from our cold, dead, immaculately preserved fingers.  

Speaking of a time when millennials were still young and carefree - what did any of us DO before cellphones?  

It's rough out there for teachers.  Relatively speaking, my job is much easier than that of a classroom teacher, and I honestly really like my job, but there's always a part of my brain that asks, what else am I qualified to do that 1) pays more, 2) is less politically threatened, and 3) is statistically less likely to put me at risk of experiencing a mass shooting?  I haven't come up with any answers to that question, by the way.  

I feel like the TV movie version of Danelo Cavalcante's escape ends with him making his way to Canada and becoming the leader of a Boy Scout troop, or pulling a Never Been Kissed move and disguising himself by enrolling as a 7th grader at a local middle school.  Dude is only 5 feet tall??  No wonder htey couldn't find him.  

Analog Reading:

Go read Ann Patchett's new novel, Tom Lake, immediately.  10/10, no notes, engaging, beautiful, only national treasure Ann Patchett could write such a beautiful pandemic novel that I would think, sure, that time wasn't so bad.

Sure, I'll Join Your Cult by Maria Bamford was the witty, whimsical reassurance we all need that there's always someone out there a little crazier than you.

Up next, I'm about to start reading David Grann's The Wager, followed by Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes.  

Syllabus #217

Last weekend was a mercifully long weekend, and we spent Monday hiking in Beaman Park.  I say 'spent Monday' rather than 'spent the morning' or 'passed the afternoon' because at one point, I thought that hike was going to be the rest of our lives.  Andy got bitten by a horsefly, and I got stung on the bridge of my nose by something sizable that flew directly into my face with such force that the impact hurt almost as much as the sting.  

What was advertised as a 6 mile hike turned into a 7.5 mile hike because the trailhead was located halfway around the loop of a shorter trail, and then it expanded into nearly 9 miles because we stupidly took the wrong side of the fork on the trail leading back to the car.  Back when we lived out west, a hike of upwards of 15 miles wouldn't have been out of the question, but it hits different when you're drowning in humidity, swarmed by buzzing and biting insects, and end up traveling 30% further than the hike you were prepared for.  

The highlight of the hike was crossing paths with a group of four Nature Nuns.  Out of respect, I didn't take their picture, but I thought I was hallucinating when we first spotted them through the trees.  They were dressed in white habits, either owing to the heat or because they were wearing them one last time before the good Lord sayeth thou shalt not wear white after Labor Day.  

At first, I assumed they were bachelorettes dressed as sexy nuns, because that seemed a much more obvious explanation than encountering a group of actual Sisters just tromping through the woods.  However, when we crossed paths with them, they were genuinely polite and looked too wholesome to be hours away from getting turnt on Broadway or flashing their jugs from a pedal tavern.  They yielded the trail to us and did not once ask us to Venmo them money to buy the bride a drink, so I am fairly confident they were legitimate nuns.

Guard cat/resident gargoyle

 

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Speaking of people of the cloth, have you heard about our comedy Lord and Savior, Danny McBride?  

It's too bad America can't have nice things.  These public pools in France look lovely.  

Lol forever at this fraudster not getting hot vegan meals, and being released on bail to play video games at his parents house.  I'm sure my mom would take me in if I was in dire straits, but like, wouldn't I at least be grounded or have to do chores if I had to move back home while awaiting trial?   Oh and he's having a sad because he ran out of Adderall.  So has everyone else, apparently!  (Srsly, ask any teacher!)  But also, what do you have to concentrate on in jail?  I would think jail would be less oppressive if you were literally unable to dwell on how much it sucked because you can't pay attention to any one thing for long enough.  

My condolences to the family, but maybe this kid just needed to get good.  I can totally relate to the crippling stomach pain following the consumption of extreme levels of spice on an otherwise empty stomach, though.  I did almost have explosive diarrhea on the streets of St. Augustine after just such a folly, so it happens to the best of us.

And here I thought there were no moops.

 

Analog Reading:

Finished The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt.  It picked up towards the end, and the stark and sudden reversal of fortune felt appropriate.

Read, Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick deWitt.  I think that's the end of my deWitt kick for a while.  In fact, I may have now read all of his published books.  It was a strange one, to be sure.  deWitt seems to like to genre-hop just like Colson Whitehead, but he's nowhere near the master that CW is.

Just started Tom Lake, Ann Patchett's new book.  It is utterly enrapturing, as usual.  Ann Patchett is a national and Nashville treasure.

Syllabus #216

Every year, when the South goes back to school at the beginning of August and every teacher I know in the Northeast is just hitting peak summer break, I'm absolutely ill with envy.  Now that it's Labor Day weekend, and schools up north are just bracing to rip off that summer bandaid, I feel, not quite schadenfreude, but something like the wise older sibling who can look back on say, puberty, and tell the younger sibling how much it's going to royally suck at first, but you'll survive.  It's going to get ugly, but it'll eventually get better.  Maybe.  Probably not.  Honestly, the best is probably behind you, but it was fun while it lasted, right?

 

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A Cuban enclave in Kentucky?  Who knew?  Might be a reason to visit Louisville, actually.  

Permission to smoothie, if you do it right.  It doesn't have to be an undercover milkshake.

Martha, Martha, Martha.  I'd be more concerned about wtf particles and microbes were bound up in that glacier ice than whether it's tone deaf regarding climate change to pluck a lil' ice cube straight from the ocean. 

In praise of laze.

This book sounds good!  If my list of pending holds from the library were an actual stack on my nightstand, you might soon find me on an episode of Hoarders.

Analog Reading:

I finished Colm Toibin's Brooklyn.  It was a good book, but I hated the ending, not for how it was written but for how realistically unsatisfying it was.  The main character had these flashes of agency, but mostly just let other people determine her fate, until she was left in a position of having to choose between two equally terrible options.  Sometimes it bes like that, but we don't have to like it, either.

Had kind of a stalled week of reading with Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers.  I'm not enjoying it as much as I did The Librarianist.  It's not terrible, but the chapters are very short and kind of choppy feeling, and it makes it hard to get really absorbed in the story.  I have also fallen asleep within about 2 pages every night, so it's taking much longer to read than it should.