Syllabus #241

Greetings from quarantine!  Yes it's true, the virus so nice I've contracted it twice.  I feel mostly fine except for the sheer volume of what can only be described as ectoplasm issuing forth from my sinuses.  I definitely don't need to call urgent care but I just might call Ghostbusters.  

All I can do right now is go for walks, because I am a pariah unfit for entry into public spaces.  At least the weather has been nice for February?  Anyway, the other day I set out for a long and luxurious Snot Girl Walk (like a Hot Girl Walk, except nasty and infectious).   While walking the perimeter of McFerrin Park, I saw a person lying on their back in the grass in kind of a weird location, just a few feet away from the parking area.  There are vast expanses of grass where it's probably more pleasant to lie down and relax away from cars, so I didn't immediately clock this body as a sunbather.  Also, it's nice for February.  It was sunny but still windy and only in the low 60s.  If you're gonna lay out in a place like McFerrin Park, sorry but I'mma need to see obvious signifiers that you are sunbathing, please.  If I don't see a blanket, snacks, reading material and/or a boombox (or maybe a time machine, because who am I kidding?) I am going to have to ask myself:

Is this person:

a) sunbathing

b) overdosing

c) a dead body dumped in the park

d) astral projecting

I need to contextualize you, person on the ground!  I don't want to have to get involved, but I don't want to be the monster who just gawks at a dead or dying human and continues on my merry way like none of my business...

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This interactive story about homelessness in America hits pretty close to home.  It includes a lot of coverage of a tent city in Nashville.  I kept looking at the photos and wondering if I've ever seen any of the folks around.  I make it a habit to keep granola bars in the center console of my car so if I'm ever at an intersection and an unhoused person is looking for help, I can just hand them a bag.  

This interview with a sociopath made my skin crawl.  But it was also reassuring!  I often read descriptions of mental illnesses or neurodiversity and worry, oh god is that me?  Do I have that?  But I can say with 100% certainty that I am not a sociopath.  They don't feel guilt or shame!  What a luxury!  Can you even imagine the freedom?  Sometimes I wonder if there even are other emotions besides gradations of guilt and shame.

My old friend, the Presidential Physical Fitness Test.  I am arguably more fit now than I was in high school, but I bet not much has changed for me in this government-mandated shame vehicle.  (Am I crazy or did they also used to weigh us in front of the whole class?)  The only one of these tests I'd be able to pass, to this day, is the sit and reach.  I actually used to get yelled at in gym for being too flexible and showing off.  Have never done a pull-up in my life, and surely never will, but you better believe I'm gonna maintain the ability to put my legs behind my head until the day I die.  In fact, that's probably how I will die at age 107, and I don't even mind, because I actually just now decided I want an open casket and I want to be embalmed in that position, legs behind head, middle fingers raised to the sky.

Analog Reading:

Finished Die With Zero by Bill Perkins.  I get that he wrote this for a specific audience, but it just drips of privilege.  I thought it was going to be more practical about how to make your retirement savings last as long as you need it to, while also figuring out how to craft an enjoyable life instead of just scrimping and saving.  And it was sort of that, but it was also like, every dollar you don't spend on something epic is a portion of your life energy that you wasted, and also don't be a fatty because that makes your life less enjoyable.  Maybe I'm overly sensitive, but as I was reading it, I just kept thinking about all the people who don't have the luxury of thinking the way he encourages us all to think about money.    

I came and got Come and Get It by Kiley Reid.  After attending her author event at Parnassus, and learning how much research and scholarship went into this book that has such depth and nuance but is also just plain fun, I feel like an absolute little piggy snarfing up this entire book in like 3 days.  It's like when you toil in the kitchen for days to prepare a Thanksgiving feast and then your guests belly up to the table already filled up on cheese and crackers.  Also, they're drunk and finish eating in 15 minutes, and then don't even help you with the dishes.  I'm sorry, Kiley.  I really enjoyed your book, and I can't wait to see what you do next.  

About to finish Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang, another author whose talk we attended at Parnassus when she was on her book tour.  I kept putting this one off because I had so many ebook holds flood in all at once, but this little involuntary vacation I'm on has given me an abundance of reading time!  This book came out of the author's very strange early covid lockdown experience, but I think it also comes from her own deeply rooted issues with food and, in my unprofessional opinion, disordered eating.  I am enjoying the book's darkness and quasi-apocalyptic context, but I also want to be like, has anyone asked this author if she's ok?

Later today, I believe I will start another book that promises to be unbelievably brutal, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.

Syllabus #240

I drew this for Andy.  The inside, as you might infer, says "You Picked Me"

I saw a post on the Nashville subreddit asking for recommendations on where to go for a first date on Valentine's Day.  

Let that sink in for a sec.  A first date.  On Valentine's Day.  That's a real masochist move right there.  Why set yourself up for that kind of pressure?  I think the sweet spot for VD (heh) is people who have been exclusive with their partner (any level of commitment from dating through marriage) for more than 6 months and less than 5 years.  

Too early in a relationship, and it's like, y'all probably don't love each other, so what are we doing here? (Says the woman who moved in with her now-husband of nearly 14 years after a scant month of dating, like a couple of hetero lesbians, and I mean that with all the love and respect in my heart for actual lesbians.). And beyond the 5-year mark, it's like, we know what we're doing here, no need to go out for an overpriced meal at the precise time of year when restaurants are slammed, and service/quality is guaranteed to be at its absolute worst.  Just stay at home and do something nice for each other.

Enter our Saturday night.  Actual Valentine's Day fell on a Wednesday, and for some reason when I was planning out meals for the week, I took no heed of that.  Didn't even consider that maybe I'd cook something halfway decent we could both enjoy.  I was just like, I tutored today and got home from work late, Andy, heat you up a hamsteak and microwave some broccoli, I'm off the clock, big dawg.

And then I felt kinda bad about that, probably because I always feel kinda bad about something, and I surely have a lot of internalized misogyny about what women are supposed to do.  But I also like to putz around in the kitchen when I have the time.  So I made the time.  And it capitulated with this:

Two-tiered chocolate pavlova looks like it belongs on a Garbage Pail Kids trading card, tastes like it descended from the heavens on the silky wings of an angel

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For Saturday's dessert, I made Smitten Kitchen's Chocolate Raspberry Pavlova Stack.  Of course I had to put my own spin on it, and by that I mean I am lazy and don't like to follow directions.  In the interest of time and because we are just two people who don't normally eat something this decadent, I skipped the raspberry curd and cut the recipe in half.  I made two slightly smaller meringue discs, and just used whipped cream and the chocolate drizzle on top of each layer.

But we all know, if you don't eat your meat, you don't get a treat, so first there was dinner.  I made sure to harden our arteries real good with the rest of the pint of heavy cream I had to buy for the pavlova, and whipped up Joy the Baker's Marry Me Chicken.  I served it over some butter and herb rice pilaf.  Chef's kiss.  For my plate, I skipped the chicken (duh) and had the sauce, tomatoes, and olives over the rice, and I kind of just wanted to make a big bathtub full of the stuff and climb on in.  I considered throwing in some tempeh strips for me, but I got lazy (seems to be a theme around here).  In the end, it wasn't necessary.  The creamy sauce, the savory tomatoes, the briny olives, plus the texture of the rice, ugh, damn, it was perfect.  If Andy says it's good, and offers no notes, you know it's good.

I'm reading this article on Slate about a new Peanuts special featuring Franklin, and I can just picture Charles Schulz poking a gnarled middle finger up out of his grave and his ghost swooping around over the headstone intoning "goooood grieeeeeeef."  Sounds like they really screwed the pooch with this one, and I ain't talking about Snoopy.  How did they manage to go backwards and tokenize Franklin more than ever?

I learned more about the craft of comedy from this NYTimes interactive piece about Taylor Tomlinson shaping her closing joke than I have from probably anything else I've ever read.  

Analog Reading:

I have about 20 pages left of The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis.  It's v good.  I like the pacing and the various perspectives.  The perspective of the main protagonist, an 11-year-old boy, is particularly moving, because he's wise for his age given all that he's seen and experienced, but there's still so much he doesn't know about what the adults in his life are really doing.  Seeing through his eyes as an adult reader, it's clear that he's being buffeted by the whims of people who are either mentally ill, on drugs, or blinded by magical thinking, but he doesn't have the context for that yet.

Up next, I'm going to switch gears entirely and read Die with Zero.  It promises to be more financial philosophy than specific financial advice, but I'm curious about the concept of spending down your money in meaningful ways before you die, or get too old to enjoy it.  I took a life expectancy quiz and based on my lifestyle and demographic info, I might live to 96, which sounds horrendous and I honestly don't expect the world as we know it to exist by then, so we might as well fiddle while Rome burns make hay while the sun is shining carpe the diem, I guess.

Syllabus #239

It's like the universe knew we had too much downtime in January, and to punish us, they made the last two full weeks of school as arduous as possible.  Also, I sometimes feel that I  get punished for being healthy and responsible, when I am forced to do other people's jobs just because I showed up for work and they didn't.  

My favorite thing is when I'm pulled to sub, and I'm like, hey kids, I'll be your teacher today, and they're like, yay.  But then they ask to go to the library.  And I'm like, WHO DO YOU THINK IS GOING TO BE IN THERE?  I'M STUCK IN HERE WITH YOU!  And then not twenty minutes later, another kid will be like, hey I forgot my laptop at home, can I go to the library and get a loaner?  Again.  WHO EXACTLY DO YOU EXPECT TO FIND IN THE LIBRARY??

Outwardly, I'm calm.  I'm practically dissociating from my body.  Inwardly, I'm SCREAMING.

My copy editor doesn't know how to spell.  This might be a little rough.

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You can probably infer why I was drawn to this article about edibles this week.  Are they safer than smoking?  Probably, which is the answer that I was rooting for.  Honestly, I got a whole tray of brownies in the freezer that I wouldn't let go to waste even if this article told me that edibles would make me grow a third nipple in the middle of my forehead.   

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Analog Reading:

Finished American Girls by Jessica Roy.  It was intense.  I very much identified with the sister who was back in the States trying to rescue ISIS-wife sister.  She had big "kid who does all the work in the group project" energy and I feel that to this day.

Just started The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis.  The writing is beautiful and the plot is unfolding slowly to reveal a story full of intrigue and intergenerational trauma.

Syllabus #238

When I open up this blog editor on a Sunday, usually I find a mostly formed draft that I've dropped little bits into throughout the week.  Today I found a blank page.  I was not Very Online this week.  It was a very analog week, stuffed uncomfortably full with after-hours work obligations.  

We did manage to venture out of the house on a Saturday evening, for the first time since probably December.  We went to Parnassus Books to see Kiley Reid speak about her new book, Come & Get It.  We both thoroughly enjoyed her first novel, Such a Fun Age, and it turns out she's hilarious and brilliant.  The amount of research and scholarship that went into a book that, on the surface, promises to be a very fun read, is remarkable.  We bought a signed copy of the new book, adding a couple of highly anticipated inches to my TBR tower.

Turkey and the Wolf collard melt.  I ate this over two months ago and I'm still thinking about it.

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I'm not going to pretend here.  I have no links this week.  Some days I didn't even open my laptop.  

Analog Reading:

I finally finished Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.  It was stellar.  A highly engaging narrative about a deeply upsetting topic.

Speaking of deeply upsetting topics, then I moved on to the sunshine and roses of American Girls by Jessica Roy.  No, not the dolls.  The subtitle of this journalistic non-fiction is One woman's journey into the Islamic State and her sister's fight to bring her home.  It's about these two American women, about my age, who were raised by strict Jehovah's witnesses, and rebelled in their early adulthood.  One ends up married to a dude who eventually is like, sike, I'm not a regular guy, I'm actually gonna move us and our kids overseas and become an ISIS fighter.  And so she goes along with it at first, and then decides, mmm, not for me?  I assume that's where this is going, anyway.