And I'm rambling.

Once upon a time, I began my mornings around 3:30 or 4. I'd have a vat of coffee with Splenda (this is why I no longer use artificial sweetener) and translate like a motherf*cker until 9, when I'd head off to class. Each week I had five classes of my own (each met three times), three classes and three sections of the class I TA-ed, research for my advisor, and daily exercise. I always made time to exercise. I didn't make time to have friends, but I did stalk a very cute coffee guy at the Tuesday farmers' market, and I pretended that I knew the patrons who sat at my favorite cafe. I'd cook a small dinner in the evenings, work for a few more hours, and then I'd head to bed around ten, though I made sure to read one short story before sleep, just so I wouldn't lose all sense of propriety.

While I don't reminisce fondly about this particular interlude, I do frequently marvel at my former self. So driven! So regimented! So diligent!

I was just coming off this schedule when I met n.o.c., and six hours of sleep seemed like the ultimate frivolity - a selfish and slothful waste of time. Then we spent a solid month sunning ourselves and sleeping when the mood struck, and - *SHAZAM!* - that driven, regimented, diligent person decided that she was done with that shit, threw her book bag in the trash and cracked a beer. Last I heard, she was tanned like luggage and slinging cocktails in a seedy South American bar on a dangerous but beautiful stretch of beach.

Lately, I've been sleeping a lot - going to bed around 9:30, getting up around 6:30. I love it. In fact, it feels so good that I wonder if I might be happy just sleeping my life away. When I think I've finally gotten my nap out, I find that I can easily sleep for several more hours. I don't feel badly about this, although I do suspect that I'm being judged by some past me. I also feel a little duddish and phlegmatic when I come across someone like this, who is inhumanly productive and probably sleeps less on purpose so that she can do more. But, I was never into computers - or anything profitable, for that matter - so there's really no sense in comparing apples to wildly successful, techy oranges.

At the moment, I spend most of my time reading, writing, cooking, and sleeping. I'm basically a literate cat with culinary ambitions. And I think that's fine. I think. For now.

Piss Poor Performance

I've been a terrible blogger. A real shit. You deserve so much better, and I swear I'll shape the f*ck up. In the meanwhile, a few things that have given me happy in the past few days:

1) The Rog: "Hey darlin'. Sorry I missed your call. I was at Jim Shaw's with Mickey Mouse and Nut Bush. Hope everything's alright."

2) Poor, pitiful, mouth-breathing, bless-her-idiot-heart student: "So, like, is Judaism like, um, what the Jewish do?"

3) We. Get. Snorri. On. The. 26th. We're going to smother that little f*cker with love whether he likes it or not.

More tomorrow. Thank you for your continued, entirely undeserved support.

Singing Opera *

Sometimes life is staggeringly depressing. It seems so swift and pitiful, and I wonder whether the only things I'll remember at its end are those times when I was truly mean. I reflect on how I probably peaked at 25 and how pathetic it is that I'm relieved to see people older than I am doing impressive things - writing novels, finishing PhDs, publishing cookbooks - because then it seems like I'm still young enough to do something surprising, which, of course, most folks thought I'd do back when I was 25.

Thinking this way makes me a tool. Seriously, sometimes I'm so overcome by my own fruitlessness, I cry in the shower. What a loser. I'm blaming this particular bout of boring, self-indulgent, ridiculous ennui on a few things:

1) My second year of teaching. I generally stop doing dissatisfying things after one year. Something about motion feeling like progress.

2) n.o.c.'s heinous work life. When he's really exhausted and downtrodden, he starts thinking about could haves and should haves. This kind of talk generally makes me insane, but it is contagious.

3) Hormones. Bastards.

4) The end of the summer. This is somehow different from the beginning of the school year - it's melancholy and overextended and worn out by its own energy. I'm ready for a bit of crispness in the air, if you don't mind.

5) Various and sundry projects and aspirations that make me fear potential goods will be thwarted by lack of ambition. (See that? I'm even depressed by all the good things I have going on in my life! Could I be more pathetic?)

Anyway, I'm putting on my big girl panties and getting the f*ck on with it. Just wanted to hug it out, and I'm the only one here.

*When one participates in boring, self-indulgent, ridiculous ennui, The Rog says that they're "Singing Opera." You know, "Me, me, me, me, me!"