Holy smokes! I haven’t blogged in a while! Truth be told, I was never going to blog again (but no harm, no foul – right?). Truth be further told, I haven’t had a moment to fritter away blogging. I’ve been hoarding my short bursts of free time, doing things like writing with a capital “w” and socializing and looking at art and making art.

Nevertheless, a miracle has occurred. I have a free moment and am too tired to do any of the aforementioned things and t.v. doesn’t amuse me these days (unless it’s “Check Please!”– fucking love that show). So here we are. Well, blog . . . this is awkward. This feels like when I was a kid and forgot to write in my diary for long stretches and then would frantically try to recount everything that had happened in the missing month . . . Speaking of which, my brother recently, during a visit to my parents’, found a diary I kept at the age of five. The diary was great – mostly filled by my attempts at spelling my own name and a retelling of a zoo visit where I wrote, “I saw a snack and ran away.” (A “snake” – kids don’t run away from “snacks.”)

Basically living at ef’s as I get my life back together post-grad school. She lets me live here rent free – but I do have to do things like give her cats medicine, and clean up after myself . . . you know, that shit. I’ve started referring to her apartment as “my place” – which is unhealthy. Occasionally, I move around the apartment and accurately identify things “ef’s COUCH,” “ef’s CHAIR,” “ef’s Netflix queue” – as a sort of reality check.

Speaking of reality checks . . . being a professor (while I quite enjoy it – especially the part where the students call me “professor”) is hard work. I thought my three-day-work-week would be that – but in fact, it’s a seven-day-work-week. An old prof of mine (whom I see, as I have a professor-ly gig at my alma mater) recently informed me that the profession will “take over your life if you let it.” Yeah. True. In the last three days, I’ve all but slept with Aldous Huxley (that’s how intimately I know him). I have become an authority on subject-verb agreement. I should be awarded an honorary doctorate in semicolons and, hot damn, I can quote motherfucking Plato. My “days off”? I research, read extensively and plan activities that might – just MIGHT -- make the students think in complex sentence form. For the most part, I’ve lucked out. My students (both in Wisco and Chi-Town) are super smart and engaged and engaging – but there is the occasional hiccup in our pursuit of wisdom and understanding. For instance, the day I explained Karl Marx’s theory of religion as “opiate of the masses” I had a student raise her hand (raise. her. hand.) to respond: “Uh, yeah. Well, I think this Marx guy is a total retard.” Agree to disagree. ‘Nuf said. Guess someone will be getting a big fat “C” for Thanksgiving! (I’m kidding – sort of.)

I eloquently told the student that when she introduces a term such as “retard” into the discussion “the level of discourse takes a nosedive.”

Speaking of “discourse taking a nosedive” (I’m all over the place – see what my profession, marvy though it is, has done to me?) This Mark Foley shit? Well, I think Wanda Sykes and Mark Acito (click “listen”) put it best.

Also, while I am hesitant to post this on my blog (as I will be ridding the item of its “coolness”) I am buying myself THIS. Love it. Love it. Love it.