lifebythedrop

I cleaned my house to within an inch of its life today because the realtor was coming to look at it and help us set a price. It's a really fucking depressing process because my house is awesome - it is the very essence of South Austin - the place everyone comes to party and the first place people think of when they have nowhere else to go. It is an extension of my personality, and I feel like it is perfectly embodied in this song by The Mountain Goats:


This does not make it particularly "saleable." I need to paint fucking EVERYTHING, and fix all the things that, as a lifelong DIYer I of course WOULD FIX if I had the money and time. I do not. That would be why I am selling it. I have poured ten years of my life in, and I am exhausted.

Also, I have an interview with the school in India at 6am. I have no clue what they will be asking. Wish me luck?

So the school in India emailed me yesterday to see if my summer graduate program has any flexibility to release me early. WAAAH?!!? They were supposed to call me back in March to let me know whether I was shortlisted for the job. I never heard anything, so I assumed they had filled the position, and I told myself the very comforting fib that it was surely because of the conflict in grad school/work scheduling. It turned out to be Absolutely True. I should have followed up earlier because now we are all in a tizzy wondering if we can sell our house and all our worldly possessions by June 16th.

My brain has exploded in my braincase. I am absolutely useless at work. If they take another three weeks to respond to me, I expect my heart to burst as well.

I think I might be happy either way, but the suspense is k_i_l_l_i_n_g me.

When you watch porn in HD, you can see the razor burn.

One of the risks of the industry I'd not given much thought to before being, um, confronted with it.

Firstborn called me at 4:55 from school on Friday to see if I could arrange for three of her good friends to come home from school with her and spend the night. No pressure. I called and texted and got it sorted. They stayed up until 2 am, I think, playing Beatles Rock Band and watching movies. I went to bed at 11. They got up at 6:45, and BetterHalf blessedly made them breakfast. Then I dragged everybody to the community gardens to dig up grass for two and a half hours. My body is protesting loudly today. We went to Explore!UT after, which was an absolute madhouse. Thousands and thousands of people. FirstBorn twisted her ankle, and instantly de-aged, becoming a 4'10", 84 pound, emotional 5-year-old. While we were waiting for the shuttle to take us to the parking garage (twisted ankle), she said, "What are we going to do when we get home?"

I gave her the most murderous stare.

By the time she asked me again (two minutes later) I had calmed down enough to grit my teeth and say, "Nothing. We are going to go home, take a bath, and sleep."

She said, "Oh, OK. That's good."

Got up this morning and made cinnamon apple beignets with BetterHalf. Am now drinking black coffee and continuing to do nothing until the Oscar party tonight, which I will attend even though I have almost no interest in the Oscars this year.

"To strike a day too soon is as bad a thing as striking a hundred miles off." HDM

I'm really loving rereading this book with my children. And I've fallen down in my progress in Paradise Lost. I need to get back on the wagon because I know I'll see interesting crossover if I'm keeping up.

In other news: SNOW today in Austin, TX. Un-fucking-believable. It was impossible to teach as all any of us wanted to do was stand outside and stare. I still read chapters 5 and 6 of Night to my students, though.

Off to bed as the excitement of the day has worn me down.

Spent HOURS today trying to make my Wordpress site look right. It's still not even close, but progressing. It was a beautiful spring-like day here, and I was too sick to go out and play. Curses! But it is supposed to be miserable again tomorrow. Just like me! Bring on the pathetic fallacy.

Anyway, I'm planning on treating it as I always do: I'm going to pretend it's allergies for a couple of days until the pressure in my ear causes unbearable pain in the middle of the night, and then I'll pay $100 at the ER to have the doctor on duty tell me that my eardrum is just about to burst.

OH GOD. The French ice-dancing pair are wearing felt costumes, dancing to Dolly Parton and John Denver. Oh hell. Now it's the Cotton-eyed Joe. I think there was an instrumental bit of a Willie Nelson song connecting them. This might be the most horrible thing I've had to endure at the hands of television.

BetterHalf says, "I wish they would stop."

The USA team before them performed to Bollywood songs. Heh. Cowboys and Indians.

So. You've probably already realised that mostly I use this journal to ( rant. )

Everyone, GO NOW and get this movie. If you have Netflix, it is on the watch instantly list. It's perfectly pitched film noir. Now I want to reread all my Dashiell Hammett and watch Sunset Boulevard.



BetterHalf had knee surgery on Friday, and I got a pneumonia vaccine that I have reacted poorly to, so we've been sitting around like lumps watching movies. Clash of the Titans, Blues Brothers, Brick, and Road to Morocco so far.

So, my life is actually pretty cool, if not all that meaningful. But I'm feeling a bit down just now because the administration at my school is making it impossible for me to teach, and we just found out yesterday that my stepdad - who has been in the hospital since Thanksgiving, has a shattered femur, which means his hip can't be replaced, which means he is now wheelchair-bound. It is depressing. There is, of course, nothing any of us can do about it.

So we continue on with The Golden Compass. Tonight, Mrs. Coulter took Lyra away from Jordan College. FirstBorn speculated that maybe she wasn't doing a bad thing when she lured the little boy away in the previous chapter. (Ah! The desire to have a beautiful, knowledgeable, mentor! I feel it still.) But by the end, she had changed her mind. Pippin had wild theories that even he couldn't make sense of when asked to explain. They both wish they had daemons. i took a quiz once, and my patronus was a hedgehog. Am afraid to think of what my daemon might be.

Incidentally, I never saw the movie, but I liked the idea of Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel, and Nicole Kidman was all wrong for Mrs. Coulter. I always imagined her as one of the comp lit professors here at UT:


Not the best picture of her, but still. And although Sam Elliot seems the perfect choice for Lee Scoresby (whom I adore beyond all reason. There will be TEARS when I get to that part of the book.) I always imagined him as played by Chris Cooper:

I had a lovely dinner courtesy of my good friend bringthepretty and her sweet German boyfriend. I played my guitar for the first time in a year (I only know three songs: Wish you were here by Pink Floyd, Johnny Cash's cover of Hurt by NIN, and Gary Jules' cover of Mad World. I guess I know Dead Flowers as well, but I can never remember the words.), I donated $629.77 to the American Red Cross Haiti fund as a result of a coin drive that my girl scout troop in conjunction with FirstBorn's elementary school ran, I called in a sub for tomorrow afternoon because I will be without transport while BetterHalf takes students to Houston for a speech tournament - so I will catch the city bus to my children's elementary school and then ride it back home with them, and we are planning tomorrow to buy our airfare to London for the summer and then slum it for February. We will be eating at friends' houses all month.

All in all, not a bad day.