Summer Reading

Right now I am in a small, but notable New England city (the setting for much of Jeffrey Eugenides novel, The Marriage Plot) on a family visit, which sounds like fun . . .

. . . yet, I've spent almost the entire day sitting in front of my relative's glorious desktop putting together the 5th-grade yearbook on Blurb.com, a service I've never used, and have now discovered that the book is not web-based--I must transfer it over to my unglorious computer in New York in order to keep working on it.

Computer issues can be so anxiety inducing.

But does all of this really matter?

I wish they didn't.

My new online class starts on Tuesday.

I feel like there are a lot of unknowns this summer, and I'm trying to figure out a way to live in the unknown and be fine with it.

Reading:  a quintessential summer read, Allison Pearson's novel, set in 1974, about a 13-year-old Welsh who has a David Cassidy obsession and the disgruntled ersatz journalist who pens the David Cassidy notes for a London-based fanzine.  I actually ordered this for one of my library's (the one that collects leisure reading) and I hope I won't be the only user to check it out!

Legwear:  Humidity wear, bare

Looking forward to:  Publishing the 5th-grade yearbook and handing it out at graduation.

Looking forward to:  More summer reading

Unperfect

This day had lots of promise, a lot of hours in which to get some grading and writing done, but one small oversight seemed to derail it all:  I forgot to charge my computer before leaving the house and then couldn't find a cafe that would let me plug in.  Housing Works had an outlet that had no power flowing to it.  Psych!  The volunteer counter gal told me she goes to Starbucks, doesn't buy anything, and plugs in.  Starbucks felt too far to go.

I sat and used the power I had.

Then, one of my bondings that I had put on my chipped front teeth years ago, fell off, which increased my feeling of being out of control.   So now I look something like this.  Not a good look for job hunting:

This is not my mouth.

I do envy your perfect teeth, if you have them.  (I chipped my teeth when I was eight on a Payson, UT playground, and they weren't fixed until '04.)

Then at home our wifi wasn't working.  I couldn't unlock the locked desktop keyboard, and my perfet minutes rushed by, dwindling.

Now I'm trying to rescue the shards of the day by finding a poem for my pocket tomorrow.  Like Simon and Garfunkle say:  "I've got my books and my poetry to protect me." Wish poetry could do something about my tooth.

And I'm also trying not to feel like the day was a bust.  Actually, after all this happened, I ran into a  friend, who told me she's doing really well lately, that things were getting more perfect for her.  I liked how happy hearing that made me.  No envy at all.

(And Lara, that should be my one of my daily practices:  refusing envy)