28.

Chalk Art

Over the weekend I went to the Chalk Art Festival in downtown Tucson. It’s pretty much what it sounds like: a festival of artists creating chalk masterpieces on the ground outside the public library. The artists arrived early with tents and every size and color of chalk. They had all picked out a piece of art beforehand, so by the time I arrived each piece had been carefully blocked out and was well underway. The artists were down on their hands and knees, some wearing rubber pads shaped like Armadillos, all of them lost in small clouds of dust. Their clothes were covered in chalk splotches; their hands had become a solid color and many of them had chalk streaks running all the way up to their armpits. They were recreating beautiful, dramatic art. A Botticelli woman, a war general, a silhouette of a pregnant woman. Hundreds of bright colors, perfectly blended and smudged on the brick ground.

And then, in one huge push of wind, the sky opened up and sheets of water poured down on us. Sideways rain swept easily under the tents, pulling the chalk up off the ground, creating storms of color. The images went from perfect Renaissance precision, to abstract chaos, to puddles of dark, dull shades of blue.

At first, many of the artists worked through the rain, continuing to blend and sculpt the color. One man refused to get up, even after all of the other artists had abandoned their work, this man stayed on the ground, hovering over the last remaining lines. People gathered around him to protect his work, their backs soaking wet.

It was one of those things that is both beautiful and horrifying all at one—Annie Dillard watching the life drain out of a frog. All of that fantastic color streaming away between the bricks.

27.

A Little Help

Today I rode my Rock Hopper (which is so smooth these days after Matt intervened in the tire crisis) over to Bentleys to get some work done. Bentley’s is close, but it means crossing Campbell, so I always dread the ride. When I got there today I realized that I had forgotten my wallet. I wanted to throw my head back and yell “WHHHHHHHY?” but I was very discrete. I simply packed up my stuff and headed out the door. As I was unlocking my bike, a woman who works there ran out and stopped me. She said, “Are you by any chance leaving because you left your wallet at home?”

Surprised me: “Yes, actually I am.”
Lovely woman: “Oh no, don’t go. We’ll take care of you. After all, you come in here A-LOT.”

Maybe it’s a little sad that I’m there so much, but really the whole exchange just thrilled me. It means I have a Cheers place (except they don’t actually know my name). Maybe I’m not known there, but I’m noticed. The place was really crowded, but she noticed that I arrived and left quickly and she wondered about it. I’m a regular and therefore I’m to be taken care of when I need it. So much of graduate school revolves around self-sustainability, building up walls and perfecting systems of self-preservation. Today I was reminded of how good it can feel when people step in and help me.

26.

Fits of Disappointment

I didn’t get the summer fellowship that I really wanted and really thought I deserved. It’s that last part that’s the hardest. I honestly thought that I deserved it. If I had just thrown the application together at the last minute, I would have something to blame and I wouldn’t have to feel so bad. There would be the “if only I had tried harder…” escape route. Now there’s just the knowledge that I threw myself into it and there were at least five people who were better. I’m taking it incredibly personally and for that I blame the dissertation.

For me, writing a dissertation has made my world increasingly small. The process demands isolation, but it also insists upon a constant narrowing of focus that systematically shuts doors to people and possibilities that were once available. The more embroiled I become in ancient Greece, the more I feel the parameters of both my academic and social worlds drawing in. Within such a space, with academics making up so much of my world, of course the fellowship news is personal. I haven’t insolated myself with enough distraction, so any sort of rejection goes straight for my guts.

In the moment of reading the rejection email, instead of having the wind immediately knocked out of me, I decided to fight it, to push back. I had been trying to fix my bike tire for days, so when I got the email, I went straight over and poured all of my energy into that tire. I didn’t want to be idle or passive or defeated—I needed to be doing something productive that had a clear and satisfying end in sight. After about an hour I had tried everything I could think of, used every tool I own, was covered in grease and dirt, and still couldn’t fix it. Finally, in a dramatic fit of disappointment and anger and helplessness, I collapsed on the ground—forehead against the wood—sobbing.

It lasted about fifteen minutes. A complete, though compact, meltdown that lasted fifteen minutes start to finish. I got up, wiped off my eyes with a wad of toilet paper, grabbed my books, and went to Bentley’s. Within about a half hour I found an Erasmus piece, two Renaissance emblems/epigrams, and a picture of a sculpture, all of which I had spent months searching for. In fact, over the weekend I spent an entire day searching for the Erasmus adage (there are 4,251 of them)—and then suddenly I understood what 1.7.70 meant and there it was. Within an hour I went from dramatic academic defeat to heart-pounding discovery and break through.

That’s just the way this process is working for me. And, if I’m being totally honest, I love the drama of it all. There’s a part of me that loved writing that sentence about how my “dissertation has made my world increasingly small.” It’s so completely melodramatic, and it’s sort of crap. My world isn’t really small. I tend to make it small, walling myself into routines that limit my movement to comfortable, worn spaces. Or I romanticize it as small because there is something really appealing (to me) about the image of the scholar tucked away behind walls of books, lost for hours in that state of fluctuating frustration and discovery. I’m exactly where I want to be—and that’s the real reason why I took the fellowship news is so hard. I want this so badly; I want to be good at this work, and I want it down to my core. The thought, the very suggestion, that I might not be good at it makes my legs buckle.

25.

Alarming News from My Breakfast Cereal

As I was pouring the milk over my bowl of Life cereal this morning, I noticed that the happy cartoon cow was informing me that this milk “Tastes fresh longer.” That’s horrible news, cartoon cow. I don’t want my breakfast treat to taste fresh longer, potentially beyond its true point of freshness. When the curdles are a-brewing, let’s be really honest about it—I WANT TO KNOW. That moment when you realize that the milk has turned and have to sprint across the kitchen to spit out the Frosted Flakes is a truly horrible moment, but ultimately you spit out the contaminated Flakes and move on with your life. Tastes fresh longer? Happy cow, I don’t want to lose myself in a world of pseudo-freshness. I want to be able to have a trusting relationship with my breakfast cereal. But there's a wall there now. My trust has been shaken.

24.

The Popular Girls

Today I had to go up to the La Encantada Mall, the fancy mall with perfect small squares of real grass and decorative pots full of flowers that magically exude soothing classical music. I was having one of those days where I’m strangely attracted to all things hot pink (happens less frequently now, but it was really a problem during my first two years of college – and thank you Julie for not letting me buy those shorts at Sportmart. You were right.) So naturally I found myself in the Victoria Secret, both drawn to and repelled by all of the bedazzled underwear. As I was standing at the counter letting a woman rub "crackling glitter body mousse" onto my left arm, I realized just how quickly I can be snapped back into my teenage body.

I was at the La Encantada Mall to get help with my .Mac account, basically to put an end to the 4 a.m., cold sweat, my-dissertation-is-lost-forever panic attacks. After 45 minutes with my assigned genius, Ned, my entire computer was backed up and I had learned how to insert ancient Greek letters and symbols into my Word documents. Ned fixed up my permissions, gave me plug-ins, and ordered me a new keyboard—it was liberating. So how does a person go from feeling genuinely elated over circumflexes to lacquered with crackling glitter body mousse?

The girl with the mousse intimidated me. She was Jaci Jaguer and Jenny Albers, Jessica Nobles and Megan Lutz, Lindsay Howells—all of those girls who have always been way cooler than me. I thought I was over being scared of the popular girls, but when the girl at Victoria Secret insisted that I shellac my arm, I simply pulled up my sleeve and agreed that the scent really was so fresh and light. In that moment I realized that there is a part of me that still wants, badly, to be Cindy Mancini in Can’t Buy Me Love.

Cindy Mancini had the best hair in the world. I have always had hair issues (starting way before the recent series of back-to-back bad haircuts). My hair’s always just been sort of bark-like and (before the haircutting spree) I never did anything with it. The sleep in French braids wavy look, Cindy Mancini's signature do, was about as stylish as I got. I remember getting up early one morning my freshman year of high school and working really hard to put my hair in a ponytail with a blue bow that matched my Gap plaid shorts. I was taking a risk, going for cute, but then John Spannagel came up to me first period and said, “Oh, Kelly, you really shouldn’t wear your hair up.” John Spannagel. It took me years to brave anything in the realm of up-do.

But here’s what I realized today: More than Cindy Mancini, what I really want is to be the person who looks at Cindy when she’s standing there with the glitter mousse and says, “No”—not in a jerky way, but in a really honest, that just sounds like a horrible plan for me way. “No, no I do not.” I image that I’d smile and maybe laugh a little when I said it—because really, I don’t want to be mean or judgmental, I just don’t want to pretend like I’m into the glitter and I don’t want to feel bad about myself because I’m not. It wouldn’t be a rushed, just trying to get out of an awkward situation “No” either. It would be a really honest admission of the fact that the idea of crackling mouse terrifies but also secretly sort of intrigues me, so I’m going to have to circle around the bra bins a few times and then sneak back, grab the bottle, and spray a tiny bit when no one’s looking. And it’d probably crack me up a little because the stuff really did crackle. I know enough about myself at this point to know that I am much more comfortable as the person who laughs out loud by the bra bins—not as the person who says, “Yah, it is totally fresh and light” while a stranger rubs cold, crackling goo onto my arm.

The problem is, when I’m in a situation like that, I tend to revert back to the me who was in awe of the popular girls and easily shamed. No matter how strong and smart and sassy I become, I still carry all of those old insecurities with me. Most of the time they are buried beneath all of the layers of personality and experience that I’ve built and am continuing to build, but there are still striking moments where I want nothing more than to be popular.

23.

Intersection

Okay, this whole contrast thing is just getting weird. I was driving down Speedway Blvd (one of the busiest streets in Tucson) and as I stopped at an intersection, a tractor pulled up in the turn lane beside me. An enormous John Dear tractor, right there in the middle of traffic. And the guy was just hanging out, cruising in his tractor, like I was the weird one for even thinking twice about the contrast between landscape equipment and mid-day traffic.

22.

T-Rex Chicken

With this entry I will have officially established a chicken theme. If I’m being perfectly honest with myself, I love chickens—cartoon chickens mostly, Muppet chickens and Chicken Boo in particular (“He wears a disguise to look like human guys, but he's not a man, he's a Chicken Boo”). Even the word “chicken” makes me happy, mostly because it reminds me of laughing with Meg about the time dad fell asleep in front of the t.v. and suddenly said “chicken”—completely out of nowhere, “chicken”—followed shortly after by “chunk.” But the real reason for tonight’s chicken theme is that I’ve potentially uncovered the secret behind the April Chicken of Doom.

It’s simple: chickens evolved from dinosaurs. In studying soft tissue that was recovered from a T-Rex bone found in Montana, scientists have discovered that dinos and chickens are “first cousins.” The proteins from the T-Rex match those in modern-day poultry—they are “evolutionary kin.” I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. I have been living in fear of the April chicken for years now. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but blood-hungry ruler of the prehistoric world just makes a lot of sense.

I know the risk I’m running here, Ab. It’s watching me, right now, and it knows that I know. But listen April Chicken of Doom, I’m totally okay with the whole T-Rex thing—so you’re part dinosaur, I’m okay with that. Tiny hands, mean eyes. And no, last week I did not draft designs of a small hat to glue over your head claw. I have nothing but respect.

21.

Ireland

With so many terrible things in the world, it’s nice to know that there will be music just around the corner on Tuesday evenings.

I arrived at the Rincon Market before the strings. The music was all flute and harp with one guitar. But slowly, over the last forty minutes, the band has filled in one-by-one, chairs scooting back mid-song to expand the circle. Michael is not here yet, so the shouting has yet to begin, but the sound is filling out, growing and deepening with each new instrument. That great, full noise echoing off the brick walls.

The tables are full of people who come just to hear the music. Most of us are sitting by ourselves. Some people are on dates. All of us are swaying a little, even unconsciously, with the music--strangers coming together in moments of music, too many tapping toes to count.

Tonight Mom, in the midst of all this, with the fiddler practically leaping out of his seat as he plays, it’s hard to image how we wouldn’t pick Ireland.

20.

Vista Point

On Sunday I went hiking with Shelley. We scrambled up a mountain, through every kind of pokey plant, and over and around boulders until we were on the very top of the world. Just like that you can meet a wonderful person and stand by her side, looking out over the entire universe.

19.

Contrast

“A woman once told me that colored flowers would seem more bright if you added a few white flowers to give the colors definition. Every petal of blue lupin is edged with white, so that a field of lupins is more blue than you could imagine” –John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Somewhere just beneath the surface I have been thinking about contrast. I’m not sure that I’ve had a complete thought about it, and I’m certain that I haven’t had any sort of epiphany, but images of stark contrast keep popping up in my life.

I can’t shake two images that appeared on the front page of the newspaper last week. I opened the paper and there was a white-washed Wisconsin contrasted with a Tucson Palo Verde tree in a storm of yellow flowers. Two places that are so different and so much a part of who I have become, bright white and burning yellow both stirring things deep within me.

Yesterday on my run I daydreamed about Tucson in the snow. Palm fronds cradling white flakes against green walls; Barrel and Cholla and Saguaro cacti smoothed over; orange trees in full bloom, each orange capped with snow. I walked out my front door one afternoon and the world was suddenly different. I watched the snow through my bedroom window and ran around in my backyard, but after a little while it faded into rain and I went back to work. Only it didn’t stop and when I went outside again the entire world seemed transformed.

And then today I read an essay with the following:

“In Sunday’s New York Times David Richards reviews a stage performance by George C. Scott. To encompass it he proposes what he calls a ‘theory of contradictory impulses.” Scott excels in a mediocre role, Richards says, because before giving the audience one emotion, he gives a hint of its opposite: laughter before tears, hate before love. This works because it reflects how life is, each emotion closer to its opposite than to anything like itself.”

and

“As a child in Eastern Europe, fiber artist Neda Al-Hilali knit a lot of gray socks for the family, always gray. She lusted for color and when she once managed to get some bright yarn, she hid it as an American boy might his copy of Playboy, looking at it, touching, working in secret ecstasy under her bedcovers. Now she is internationally known for her mastery of color. And personally known as a wonderful cook—her classes usually end with festive party meals. When asked how she gets her colors so vibrant, she replies that she always puts a dash of the opposite color dye in the pot. ‘You know,’ she says, as if everyone does, ‘just like you put in a bit of an opposite spice when you cook’” (both quotes from Mary Paumier Jones’s “The Opposite of Saffron”)

If I had to guess, I would say that everything in me is seeking some form of self-sustainable balance, trying to heal in lots of little ways, all the time. And I think that I am both failing and succeeding a lot.

18.

Social

I was supposed to spring out of bed this morning and immediately start working. I was supposed to be instantly and completely overtaken by a dissertation-writing frenzy. Instead, I wasted the entire morning trying to pick a new hobby. I’m considering a yoga class with Katie’s friend James who she promises won’t make fun of the fact that I can’t bend. I was thinking pretty seriously about various forms of martial arts—don’t laugh, me and Tinka took kickboxing (“a new sport, but I think it's got a good future") and I was good. I took self-defense at St. Mary’s, with the fighting outfit and everything, and I had some pretty mean drop-roll moves. I’m going to take swimming lessons for sure over the summer and in June Milo starts therapy dog school (to cheer up people in hospitals – not Milo on the couch venting about how I won’t let him play with Flingshot)… but I need something that I can start right now. Even if I’m just telling Milo and Abe, I want to be able to do the whole “Well on Monday nights I have my ___________ and on Thursdays it’s ___________”. I'm really trying to be more social. Really trying. So far it's just happening in my head, but I have big plans for a real life social me.

17.

Parking Lot

Tonight, in the Trader Joe’s parking lot, a man ran over to me and said “What is that on your foot?” I had just come from running, so I was wearing my super-duper ankle brace, which I know is super-duper because it has velcro in three places, but I didn’t know it was run-across-the-parking-lot-to-comment-on-it exciting. His interest level was bizarre, but it was even more alarming when he asked if I had an artificial foot. Why would someone run across a parking lot to ask me if I had an artificial foot? WHAT IF I DID? What then? He didn’t seem to have any artificial limbs, so I don’t think he was looking to bond. After the artificial foot comment, he told me that it would be really intense if I had a brace on each foot (two artificial feet??). All I could come up with was, “Yah, cuz then double the awesome” and I jumped in my car and drove away.

(Side note: When he said "What is that on your foot," I did the Ab spider jump-back move: WHAT??, helicopter arms.)

16.

Flingshot Through the Heart

Me and Milo are currently fighting over the Flingshot Flying Chicken that came in my Easter basket. First of all, it’s totally mine—because I’m the human and because he already has a chicken. But even if he didn’t already have his own chicken, there’s no way I’d give up Flingshot. The Flingshot Flying Chicken can soar over 50 feet, letting out a chickeny call-o-joy every time he takes flight. I just tested it make sure that the sound really is a “chickeny call-o-joy” (which it totally is) and Milo made a dive for it, forcing me to yell out, “No. It’s MY chicken.” And now we’re not talking again.

The trick to Flingshot’s flight is simple: “Insert finger into the pocket under the beak. Pull back on the feet and release.” However, it’s all fun and games until someone gets a chicken to the eye (“Caution: Chicken may fly at high speeds. Aim away from people, pet, or breakable furnishings”). So you know what Milo, I’m doing you a favor here. The thing is, you’d feel bad about yourself because you don’t have fingers. And, to be totally honest, I’m not sure you can handle Flingshot’s speed. And I’m the human, so It's totally my chicken.

In other news, I killed Danny Wood. One sad little twig remains, curled up and leaning a little. I just gave him some more plant food and moved him away from the window. "Please don’t go [Danny], you would ruin my whole world. Tell me you’ll stay never ever go a-wa-ay…" Also, I re-potted Jordan Knight and put him at the front of the room--in the spotlight where he has always belonged.

15.

Zen and the Art of Crazy Person

“In his teachings, Kenzo refers to ‘enlightenment’ in two ways. The first way is kensho, a Zen phrase that means ‘See your nature.’ It can also be translated as ‘Look into your nature,” or simply “Realization.” The second half of the phrase, commonly used as an inscription on the paintings of Daruma, the Grand Patriarch of Zen, is jobutsu, ‘Become Buddha.’ From the Zen standpoint, kensho is a profound experience of insight that transforms a person. (Whether this happens suddenly or gradually has been a matter of contention for centuries in Zen circles.) Kensho has the connotation of one being actively engaged in some discipline that fosters such insight—usually construed as zazen, formal meditation, but in Kenzo’s case he stated unequivocally, ‘With each shot see your nature’” (Zen Bow, Zen Arrow 33-4).

I think that Zen archery might somehow connect to my dissertation. I read an entire book on it today and even though I have yet to experience my dissertation kensho, I got to spend an entire day reading about Zen archery. That makes me feel sort of awesome.

(Hey Shelley - do you think this transformation stuff might sorta connect... or am I sailing full-force off the deep end here??)

14.

Feeling Full

I spent most of Easter Sunday in the wilderness with Katie, Matt, and two Russian strangers, Alina and Zeb. The moment Zeb opened his mouth it felt like Easter. He could be a Salsman, John Salsman in particular, from both the sound of his voice and the bizarre information that he is all the time inserting into conversations. All day, no matter where we were or what we were doing, I felt like I was sitting between John and Uncle Tommy at the dinner table.

Alina and Zeb are visiting from Chicago, so we all drove up Mt. Lemmon for a little Easter hike. I’m full of cuts and bruises (typing is excruciating with the thorn wound on my right index finger) from scrambling up rocks. Me and Matt were fighting about which of us would win the Rock Scrambling Olympics and I was sure that I was the clear winner, but then he did this flying leap from one rock to another that basically stopped time, thus sealing his victory.

On our hike I learned that Matt donated his plasma twice a week so that he could afford to visit Katie when they were separated during college.

For dinner we made pierogies from scratch—okay, Katie made pierogies from scratch. I tried to make a Betty Crocker strawberry cake with fun-fetti frosting, but it turned into a horrible pile of hot pink goo.

And now I’m stuffed, happily full of handcrafted pasta pockets and doomed cake. I missed my family every moment but was happy to be part of a group of people who were busily trying to create a sense of home.

13.

Easter

It has taken everything in my power, but I haven't opened the Easter basket my mom sent. I'm going to bed now, but the second I wake up, I'm going straight for the basket. In fact, I might get into bed right now, "sleep" for 5 minutes, and then open my basket--I'm that excited.

12.

The Cookie Sheets

My foot was crushed by cookie sheets today, two of them. Out of nowhere the cookie sheets launched themselves out of the cupboard and onto my left foot. Attack cookie sheets. It’s really painful too. My entire foot (ok, my entire big toe) is purple and I’m walking with a slight limp. I guess you never really know when the bakeware might turn on you.

11.

Very Little Movement

So as I was leaving for my 6:00 class tonight, my neighbor threw open his door and exclaimed, “You’re alive!” He was a little out of breath and clearly relieved. Apparently there was very little movement from my side of the house today, alarmingly so. My car didn’t move, Milo didn’t bark, the newspaper was neglected—which all added up, in my neighbor’s mind, to my untimely death. He was actually convinced that I had dropped dead; however, he wasn’t going to knock on the door until tomorrow. Give it a day. “Then the body would have had time to gel.” He used the word “gel.” The body.

I was just reading.

10.

Precise

There’s an old, sparkly-eyed man who is always at Bentley’s. Some days he’s reading and other days he’s slowly writing on binder paper with perfect penmanship, always double-spaced and on one side of the page. He writes pages and pages and pages. I think he’s writing a book and I want so badly to know what it’s about.

We had a moment of silent connection last week when I overhead him talking about the picture of Saturn’s hexagonal north pole that was in the day’s newspaper. Apparently we had both been drawn to and strangely inspired by the photo. I think he wrote about it. I just did my thoughtful nod and moved on.

After weeks of wondering about him, he suddenly leaned over and started talking to me today. He has studied Latin (why not?) and was intrigued by my book of emblems, which is half English, half Latin. He was entirely thrilled by the book. I wished that I knew something, anything, about Latin. I started skimming through the book I was reading, looking for Latin words so that I could keep the conversation going. With no Latin and very limited knowledge of emblems, I just asked if I could borrow his pen. Turns out, he really likes Latin and the emblematic tradition, but he loooooooves the Precise V5 Extra Fine Point Pen in purple, pink, and turquoise. At this point, I know everything there is to know about purchasing the Precise V5 Extra Fine Point Pen in the Tucson area. I don’t know the guy’s name or what he spends all that time writing, but I do know where he stands on pen tips and ink flow, so that’s something.

9.

"When Irish Hearts are Happy"

I am surrounded by Celtic music, just like that.

Before leaving for New York, I ran all over town picking up stuff and tying up loose ends. I went to Safeway to get some food to leave for the house-sitter, seeing as all I had in the house was the weirdo stuff I like. I bought her frozen pizza and ravolis, stuff for rootbeer floats and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but as I was driving home I realized that I didn’t have any pasta sauce. I didn’t want to go back to Safeway but didn’t feel good about the sauce situation, so I stopped in at the Rincon Market. I was in power walk, super errand mode but stopped dead in my tracks, frozen in the doorway. The entire place was a-fiddle. I ran over to the deli counter, only to find out that they practice there every other Tuesday night. And they are fantastic. They are toe-tapping, bop in your chair good.

Mid-song the leader, I think his name is Michael, throws back his head and yells things like “pick it up!” or “one more!” During the breaks he calls across the circle, asking various band members how they’re feeling and what they would like to play—“Richard, pick one!” "'The Irish WasherWoman' it is." There are fiddles and mandolins and violins and guitars and I couldn’t be happier.

And now they’re singing. Just when you think life can’t get any better, the Irish folk start singing.

8.

NKOTB

I am suddenly responsible for five plant lives. I went from zero plants to five plants in two days. I was supposed to buy one small houseplant to go on my new shelf, but then the one I bought for the new shelf looked better by the door, so I needed another one for the shelf… But then that made one side of the room really plant-heavy, so the other side needed a plant to balance it all out… And it couldn’t hurt to get a wee plant for the kitchen, which brought me to the badly neglected small plant section, plants that were certainly going to die, so I had to buy one of those—rescue it, give it a good home (which is exactly why me & mom aren’t allowed to go to the pound anymore).

I already know that the rescue plant isn’t going to make it. After transplanting it, I decided that all it really needed was some sunlight, so I put it on my back porch. In the middle of the day. In Tucson. And it’s fried.

After getting to know them a little, I've decided to name them after NKOTB. Donnie is the big one by the window, the leader. Jordan is the tall attractive one on the shelf. Jonathan is the one over in corner that's leafy like the tall one, but shy. Joey Joe is the wee one in the kitchen (this is NKOTB circa Joey-Joe's rendition of "I Still Believe in Santa Claus"). And the one that's barely hanging on is Danny. No one really liked him and the band could have totally gone on without him.

I really want to be the kind of person who can have a house full of healthy, thriving plants. I’m trying not to see the already-fried plant as somehow symbolic of my personality. I bought plant food, a watering can, and the good dirt that the Home Depot guy recommended. I even marked my chicken calendar so I’ll know when it’s time to feed them again. I want to do this well. I know that I got carried away, should have eased in. I have a bamboo plant that’s been alive for months now, blurring my long history of plant death—all those leafy bodies on my conscience. But I have the plant food and the watering can and the good dirt. I learned my lesson today with the whole scorching sun thing. Step four Danny: I can give you more.

7.

April

I ate about 15 tons of oatmeal cranberry white chocolate chip cookies today. I have been thinking about the oatmeal cranberry white chocolate chip cookies for weeks, maybe even years. In particular, I’ve been thinking about Anne Bramblett’s o.c.w.c.c.c., the cookies that shattered the Wookie Cookie empire. I couldn’t admit it at the time, but the truth is Anne’s cookies were better—they were just better. Jesse had the tiny M & Ms going for him, but overall Anne made a better cookie. There it is. I said it.

I attempted Anne’s cookies today for my tea party. We drank fancy flower tea and ate small food and I entertained lil Helen with my Muppet puppet collection and assortment of Play-Dohs. Jeb and Ceilo came over, so the dogs had their own party outside (which involved a lot of whining at the door and tormenting Milo’s soul by eating the bone he’d been hiding and visiting, hiding and visiting for three weeks).

So it was a fine day, had fun, really like my new grown up house, blah, blah, blah—but really all I can think about is the chicken that is STARING AT ME RIGHT NOW. Ab sent me the new extraordinary chickens calendar, and though there are few things I love more than those chickens, April always scares the shit out of me. It has this horrible bumpy awful head and this year the photographer really zoomed in, so there’s just no escape, nowhere to run. To make matters worse, the chicken is peeking at me, positioned on the right side of the page, leaning in. I put the calendar in my kitchen on the wall above Milo’s food—on the wall that is directly diagonal to my happy nook where I sit everyday and write. It’s watching; I cannot escape that horrible eye and knobby head-claw. It’s too terrible. But, as Ab knows, you have to be very careful with these chickens. I can’t piss this one off—not this one. Not April.