Dude, I *hate* when my kitchen floor gets so dirty...



So does anisodragnfly. Sometimes when she comes home from work, she finds it covered in kittens. Then she has to sweep them up.

Somewhere cosmic forces are laughing at me, i think.

This week I will have to bend space-time to finish all my grading by Friday. Also, my longtime friend Becca is driving through Pittsburgh on her way somewhere and wants to stop over and see me --on Thursday night, which is going to be heinous, schedule-wise. I must remind myself not to drink. Well, not too much anyway.

I am trying to remain sane by gardening. This year I have decided to abandon vegetables and concentrate solely on flowers. Instead of reading books (why give away all the answers) I decided to plant-speriment. On my seedling spree, I had purchased some ground cover (called tri-color sedum) that I wanted to put in my containers as an accent/offset to my gerberas, pansies, and petunias. When I got home, I realized it was a succulent. I thought "Hm, this might not go as well as I planned." So I planted it in only a few pots. I had also bought verbena for this purpose, so I didn't put sedum in all the pots. And I planted the sedum with the rosemary too, because I remembered seeing rosemary planted in succulent gardens when I visited California. I thought, well, at least this one box will grow well.

Just as I feared, it seems like the rosemary is the only plant (out of the ones I tried) that sedum plays nice with. It totally sucked the life out of my pansies, petunias etc. The stems became floppy and the flowers all curled in on themselves. I thought it was just a water issue, but the pansies, petunias, etc. that I planted with verbena or by themselves are doing fine. I bet if I had Read the Appropriate Literature, I would have known this ahead of time... but in a way it's fun to learn by failing.

So yesterday, after checking extensive student emailage, and feeling like every muscle in my body was connected to wires and the wires were gradually being shortened, I went outside and repotted everyone that was struggling. I put the individual sedum plants in small pots to keep them alive. The other plants each got their own big pot. This morning when I checked on them, they seemed to be doing a bit better. The stems seemed much sturdier and crisper (if that makes sense). Only 1 or 2 of the blooms seems to have recovered. Perhaps I will have to pinch off the other ones and just let new ones come.

Today, on behalf of the sedum, I am going to the library to check out a book on rock gardening in containers. Hey, why not, right? I think they'll be happy there. Maybe with some hens & chicks. And something else that likes to grow in difficult craggy circumstances.

Now we just need to put walls on the front porch so that I don't have to take it all down in the winter :) {waves at sui66iy}

So, life has been pretty hectic lately, but I've noticed a few things.

1. Today I am Very Very Old.
2. However, this is gonna be a good year; I can feel it. Double threes!!!
3. I'm really hoping that, included in the goodness, my book gets published this year.

4. I should probably be working EVEN HARDER on this though, and on poetry in general. My head hasn't been (enough) in the game this past year. I should be sending my manuscript to MORE PRESSES. I should be sending poems to MORE PRINT JOURNALS, so that even if the book thing doesn't happen, I could have enough print pubs to apply for an NEA grant. They want you to have published a book or 20 poems, except 10 of the poems have to be from print journals.

5. Working harder includes WRITING MORE POETRY DAMMIT. More second drafts will ultimately lead to more publications.
6. For more second drafts to happen, you have to have more first drafts.
7. For more first drafts to happen, you gotta be open to the poetry that is Out There in the universe, waiting to be written down.

8. I know this will probably sound fruity to some of you, but I think of the part of me that writes poetry as coming from the third eye chakra. I dunno why. Ever since I started doing yoga, learning about chakras, it just seemed to make sense.

9. One thing that keeps that eye "open," for me, is reading other people's poetry as much as possible.
10. Hence, the Magical Poetry Delivery Service! (You knew I'd get there eventually, right?)

So I thought of the MPDS idea when I was being all full of insomnia at my mom's over Thanksgiving. Even though I have Poetry Daily as my homepage, I *still* don't read it every day. Also, I hardly use my lj account at all any more, which is sad. So I figured, why not decide to post a poem from my personal library every day for a year? When I was in school one of my profs said that you can "know" a poem better if you write it/type it out in addition to just reading it.

Then I remembered that things I have to do every day for a year totally overwhelm me (a la the 365 days project). So I decided I would do it from the day I turned 33 to the day I turned 33 1/3 (April 2). Then, if it was going well, I'd keep going to the 2/3 mark. Etc.

This is for me, but it is also for you, my readers --if any of you are still out there. I know I've been lax. I also know that only a few of you would go out of your way to read poetry, but maybe more of you will appreciate it if poetry goes out of its way to find you. Feel free to skip it if it's not your bag.

And thus, using the magic of the intarwebs, the MPDS starts today. To avoid possible issues of copyright infringement, I'm going to make the entries Friends Only. If you read this and you are a friend of poetry, but not a friend of sundaygray, please leave a comment and I'll add you.

Okay, I know this is TOTALLY SILLY, but I am *so* anticipating the arrival of the Golden Compass movie. With bated breath. Hoping they won't mess it up. Anyway, the movie website is very pretty and flash-a-riffic. There is (of course) an online test to determine (what else) one's daemon. I immediately had to know, and ... who would have thought it... it turned out to be a crow. But apparently answering the questions oneself is not enough. One is supposed to ask one's friends to provide their opinions. So, opinionated friends, you can do so at my profile page. It gave me a pretty flash thinger to paste in instead of just a link but it wouldn't work. Anyway, I know this is very fan-dorky of me, but I also know that yinz are all into comix/anime/buffy/firefly/transformers etc. and you'll look past that.

JUST CLICK IT.


Note that my grumpy mood is in relation to some family drama that is boring to relate here, and has nothing to do with this quizzlet or the Golden Compass.

The other day my friend RainName and I were driving to the Waterfront and she was telling me how she was advised by her mechanic to contact local junkyards to find a mirror to replace the slightly broken one on her car. She doesn't like talking to strangers as much as I don't, and so we were commisserating about the awkwardness of having to call a whole bunch of junkyard owners. We speculated that their phone skills might not be the foremost in their skill set, and that having two parties being awkward on the phone would just lead to a lot of stomach churning anxiety. [I can imagine how, for people who don't have phone anxiety, this whole discussion might seem really odd, but bear with me] Then she said, "And I bet they'll have a wickedly strong Pittsburgh accent." We both admitted that even though we've lived here for awhile, that very thick native accents can still throw us for a loop, especially over the phone.

This brought us around to a discussion of accents in general, and RainName said that when she started college (in central PA), everyone around her was shocked at her harsh Great Lakes accent, but that the more she's been away from home, the less apparent her accent is. She told me she'd taken this online thing called "The Accent Test," and that it said she was pretty near to accentless-- "that generic newscaster voice." Having taken a few linguistics classes myself, I was curious about this. I always thought that I didn't speak particularly accented English, but I also knew that accents could be tenacious, and I wondered how an online test would rate me. So I googled for "accent test" and found "The American Accent Test." It's a pretty short quiz, but it was accurate in pinpointing the area of the country in which I spent years 0 thru 18. The thing is, hardcore Philadelphian accents sound really harsh to me, and not much like the way I speak. So the cheesesteak comment is a little over the top.

Mmmm, cheesesteak. It was the first meal I learned how to cook as a child. My family has a secret sauce recipe somewhere, which I don't use, because I don't eat beef anymore. Good lord, I can't believe we cooked the meat in butter. It must have been like 8,000 calories per serving.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: Philadelphia   Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you're not from Philadelphia, then you're from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington. if you've ever journeyed to some far off place where people don't know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn't have a clue what accent it was they heard.
The Midland
The South
The Northeast
The Inland North
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

When I was in high school I used to steal copies of my asshole-boyfriend's subscription to U&lc, a magazine that I'm not sure they make in paper-format any more. I remember unfolding its oversized leaves and being slightly overwhelmed at the beauty of it. Geez, that sounds dirty --which makes sense, cos the magazine is basically font-porn.

U&lc was a tabloid-format newsprint mag sponsored by the International Typeface Corporation. When I was reading it, computer-based typesetting was quite the cutting-edge thing. At my school, I worked on the newspaper. We had a partnership with our local city newspaper where they would let us design the paper at their facilities. This involved story-boards, x-acto knives, border tape, and affixing and re-affixing tiny pieces of paper via a sticky wax coating on the backs of them. And (I know! This is crazy! Totally sci-fi!) to get the printer to make your articles look like a newspaper, you entered them into this COMPUTER and put in certain CODES to make the typesetting happen. That was my job. I steered away from the layout and worked on that side only in a pinch. My severe visual impairment made others think I wouldn't be good at it, and I didn't have the vocabulary or assertiveness to tell them that, while I couldn't drive a car, ride a bike, or play basketball, laying out a page of the newspaper was something I could handle. In fact, I'm not sure I fully knew it myself.

During the latter part of my short-lived newspaper career, I convinced my mom that I needed to have a computer. She was against them --to her they were like TV, at best frivolous and at worst, "it'll rot your brain." I can see where she got this from. During the long, exhausting endgame of their marriage, my father used to disappear into the basement and watch tv/work on the computer for hours. She blamed the messenger, so to speak.

Anyway, eventually I got a used Amiga 500 and then a desktop publishing program for it. I remember being nearly paralyzed at the possibilities. Suddenly words became art, and I didn't have to leave my room to make it happen. The stuff I wrote in my notebooks gained power when it was expressed on the screen this way. I used to spend hours in my room fooling around with it. Of course, I didn't have a printer, so I couldn't really bring any of my new ideas to fruition. But it felt like God had opened a little door in the universe that wasn't allowed to me before.

The only reason I didn't try for a double major in graphic design at CMU was lack of confidence. Let's just say that I didn't have the validation of surrounding influential authority figures. During my years of floundering after college, I actually considered going back to get a second degree from PItt in graphic design. I remember having the pre-application interview, fingering the gorgeous matte brochures. Because they didn't have that glossy layer, you could feel it where the ink changed the texture of the paper. Then I realized that you couldn't get student loans for an undergrad degree if you'd just gotten one from somewhere else. Silly government, expecting you to get it right the first time.

Not to say that I got it wrong, completely. I majored in creative and professional writing. It's just that when I got out of college I realized that PR work was a soul-sucking, anxiety producing tedium that allowed my cynicism to flourish like ivy eats a brownstone. And CW and design would have been a sweet combination.

These days, you can learn a lot about design without having to go to school for it, if you have the discipline -- not implying that I have it. My knowledge is full of huge gaping holes. But the ability to publish snazzy stuff has gone from rarified to not-quite- egalitarian. U&lc is online now. I think it loses something. Slate had an article on Friday that discussed certain famous authors and their favorite fonts. I was happy to see that my fave, Hoefler Text, was represented. They attempted to make a correlation between method-of-first-learning-how-to-type and font preference, i.e. if you learned how to type on a typewriter, you liked Courier, or one of its variants, but if you learned how to type on a computer, you preferred something a little more fancy.

That brings me to a new thread about how I compose poetry, and how Courier and Friends is simply a bad choice for it, which makes me think of how poetry has come so far from it's oral/aural roots and now a lot of the process of composing has to do with how it will look on the page. But I'm a little tired. I haven't had an lj workout in awhile.

What's the word, not deja vu but deja-dreamed-it-before?

...two poems by Henri Cole, the person picked by OSU to replace my dear David Citino.

At least he doesn't suck. I wonder if he's a nice guy.

.... but I was never known for my punctuality. We're married! We've been married! And eventually it hit me: this *is* different than it was before. Though our daily routines are not. Just knowing that it's legal, that there was a ceremony, in the eyes of the law, nature, whatever (G)od(ess) watches over us, makes there be a subtle psychological change. This didn't hit me until after the honeymoon, until we were home for awhile. I've been avoiding blogging about it because I didn't really know what to say, how to encompass this moment in a discrete amount of words. This moment is what it is, and is also, at the same time, much greater than itself.

So, for everyone who was like "Holy crap, you're getting married in a week," I just wanted to let you know: we're eloping. It wasn't exactly secret, but it wasn't really well advertised either. ;) I will send a link to wedding photos when they are up, which should be on March 7.

And, in the meantime, I'm going slightly mad. Midterms are this week. Frantic studentia. Frantic me. Poorly written papers making poorly conceived arguments on literature that I care about. Bah.

However, some of my girls did get together and take me out to brunch yesterday. anisodragnfly, danitapgh, beststephi, MidwayWorlds, and RainName. It was really fun and surreal at the same time. We went to Zenith, which RainName had never been to before, even though she is a vegetarian and lives two blocks from it. As always, the brunch was stupendous. It was a very peaceful-Sunday atmosphere. We stayed for 3 hours. No one wanted to leave. I wanted to preserve that moment --where I was on the edge of something, where everything was more potential than actual, where I was surrounded with good energy and right then, had to worry about nothing.

So the place where I got my wedding dress altered sent me this little card in the mail:

Dear sundaygray,

Our boutique would like to thank you for your recent business. (In appreciation we would like to offer a 15% discount on your next bridal purchase.

Thank you,

The Staff


I'm getting married in less than a week. They basically sell foofy dresses, and expensive sparkly things to put in your hair --both of which they know I've obtained already. Are they trying to tell me something?

So I haven't lucidly dreamed on a regular basis in a long time. When it happens now, it feels like a beautiful, unexpected gift. This morning I got another one of these gifts --possibly the best one ever. I had control, in the dream, of stuff I would never have control over in real life. In the dream, I had been practicing this certain skill since I was a kid-- a sort of, not quite flying, not quite floating, not quite levitation. Basically I was able to maneuver my body in space, in defiance of gravity, just using my will. I started off just hovering a few inches above the ground. Then I could move myself across the room and control when I stopped and started. Then I could spin around a vertical axis. Then I could spin horizontally, like somersaults. Toward the end of the dream, I was able to do other things via mind control... I was practicing turning my iPod from play to pause by just thinking about it. My alarm woke me up and I was like DAMMIT.

I remember the state of mind in the dream with which I was able to accomplish these things. It was much closer to the girl in the Golden Compass with the alethiometer than Hiro on Heroes when he concentrates so hard it looks like he's gonna stroke out.

Anyway, it was so freaking cool. I wonder if the fact that I had to will myself back to sleep this morning, after having woken up two hours before my alarm, had anything to do with the control I achieved in the dream. Often I have found myself in the position of having to will myself back to sleep, but I'm not very good at it. I give up too easily. I let my brain wake up all the way and start fretting. Then I'm just like "oh hell" and I get up. This morning I was very persistent and, not only did I get an extra hour or so of sleep, but also this amazing dream. It was like a lucid dream and a flying dream combined. I hardly ever have either, and having them both together was so incredible.

... to obtain a copy of Disney's Beauty and the Beast on DVD to show my studentia? Not me, because I procrastinated looking for it until the very last minute.

I've been making rantlets against Disney to them all semester, saying how Disney ruined fairy tales by taking out all the sex and violence, how making the transition from an oral to a written form already was perverting them from their original state, but then going from written to animated removed yet another huge layer of authenticity. But of course the tales that are authentic to them are the Disney versions, so we've been having a bit of a go-round about that. They are SHOCKED that the originals were so graphic and "obviously not meant for children" (their words).

Anyway, so I wanted to show them a movie on the day they turned in their rough draft of the midterm --kind of as a break and kind of to prove my point. They've been reading the tale type "the search for the lost husband" which includes the Beauty and the Beast story. So they'll have a few different written versions in front of them and then the Disney version on screen and I hope the contrast will make itself apparent.

But I can't FIND the stupid thing. Netflix doesn't have it, and I'm not sure where, without going to the 'burbs, one can find a Blockbuster any more. No dice with iTunes either. Amazon used wants $42 for it, which I'm not willing to part with. Finally, the Record Exchange says they have it for $25 used, which is a bit more reasonable but still kinda spendy for a used DVD... it's out in the 'burbs as well, but sui66iy agreed to drive me... as long as there aren't any more untoward snow events. Ha.

In other news, we also have ( tea )

and ( catz made stir crazy by winter )

...to not want to go outside today. Here I am sitting at the dining room table. Washed, dressed, brushed, avoiding. It's going to be cold as fuck out there. It's quite sane to want to be not-cold.

Work is stupid. The ungrateful little pissants will be complaining that I'm not going to move certain assignment dates back because we had to cancel class two times in a row. And when I explain how that's actually counterproductive, to move the assignments back, they won't get it. Because the world revolves totally around them, and around whatever particular moment they're in right then. Someday I will not have to teach freshmen. But not someday soon.

So like I said, it's makes sense to stay inside. Ruskin, who likes to go out on the back porch and explore and sniff things in most weather, heard the screen door scraping against the mini-wall of ice and snow as I pushed it open, and he ran the other way. It's self preservation to want to stay inside.

Do Not Stand Underneath

...that I found in a jacket I'd hadn't worn in awhile. And inside, it said:

The rubber bands are heading in the right direction.


Speculations as to what this means?


ps - I recently stopped the 365 Days Project, so I should be back on livejournal more. I hope. This is my goal. But as history has proven (one of my students recently used this argument in a response paper), as history has proven, I'm not so great with the follow through. Some friendly nagging, now and again, might help. I need a professional nagger, on retainer. I would get so much more done!

The magazine Breath & Shadow has nominated two of my poems "Crows" and "Suites for the Modern Dancer" for the Pushcart Prize.

{swoon}

So, administration wants us to submit midterm grades by Friday, October 13. We only have to submit them for kids who are getting a D, F, or something called N. I don't know what N is, but the little darlings better not push me or I'll start handing them out.

I'm feeling a bit grumbly about the fact that we have to do extra work on behalf of those kids who have decided that they don't feel like doing extra work.

It is my favorite season. All the leaves are about to show their true colors. You can see a hint of claret around the edges of the green. Apparently, it's the season for me to be accident prone. I messed up my knee yesterday on the way to work, cutting it open and straining the ligaments. Wound pix will likely be on flickr; whether you see that as a warning or an invitation is up to you.

Work (school) is kicking my ass, and now it's also kicking me in the knee. So, speaking of flickr, the 365 Days Project is what I'm putting much of my free-time energy into right now, as far as the "things requiring a daily update" category goes.

As a consolation prize, here's a penguin in a sweater.




more about the penguins.