What else is new?

I managed to spill disgusting swamp water, percolating under Steve, the Christmas tree, all over the living room floor last night. (For full, gory details, check out drmacd_snc.livejournal.com.) That was last night, at 10:10, when I should've been going to bed.

Now I'm sitting in the living room with the laptop on my, well, lap, and I'm trying to think of what I need to do--other than get up and go to the bathroom, change pants, practice qigong, (can I just insert how much I loathe the standing postures? the pine tree, sitting at a desk, and holding the basin for 5 minutes each? ugh. i can't get my brain to stop leaping all over mundane, idiotic things like a squirrel in the back yard), think about bathing the girl (who is sitting in front of the boob tube watching a very bad movie on Cartoon network and I'm letting her), set up the dishwasher, make the proper bibliography for all the critical articles I want my Intro to Lit students to read (ha and double ha to that one, Batman--they'll read those articles when Hell freezes over), moisturize my hands...

Or I could read those books that are collecting on me. I'm in the middle of Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud, still. Now I've got three more books to read, all of them about raising strong children/daughters. Lizzie's past her crisis (the latest one) with the kids across the street but I've invested over $30.00 on the books and, by God, I'm going to get my money's worth. Eventually.

Today I went into campus thinking I'd spend the day working on my own writing. What did I do instead? I can't rightly say. But I burned up the entire day, all the way to past 5 PM, and I don't have a single line of a single story or poem or essay (except this, and what's this?) to show for myself. In the middle of my time sink, I tried to update my vita, looking for those "forthcoming" poems--the ones that So and So journal promised to publish in 2004 and then absolutely nada, the silence of death. So I tracked them down, or tried to, leaving voice mail messages and emails, sprinkling my electronic crumbs around the internet. The net result is that I ended up deleting a line from the vita. So instead of accomplishing anything, I really de-complished something.

This will depress me if I think about it long enough, so I won't. I'll change my pants, practice qigong, insist that Lizzie soak her rear end, and read a chapter of EL&IC.

But what about the bibliography for the articles you want those kids to read? Eh. Maybe you should just delete that paper from the syllabus.