Better, and Worse

I went to the Cardiologist to see about the heart flutterings. Ignore them, he said. Ignore them. Do some yoga. Everyone is firing off odd electrical signals from the heart, he said. Ignore them. And so, thus ignored, they mostly went away, at least until Saturday when I got an email that my grandmother wasn't doing well. The nurse gave her a few days. A few days? I'd just talked to her on the phone. My mom had seen her last week. She was fine. My sisters saw her on Easter. Fine. I mean, not fine. She'd been downward-spiraling since October when she broke her ankle. She went to the nursing home for rehab. After a day of physical therapy, they put ice on her leg. But they put it on the wrong leg--not the one that had been working out--the one with the cast that absorbed the melting ice. The cast festered. Her leg festered. It got gangrene. She lost her leg below the knee on my birthday. When we saw her at Christmas in the hospital, she was out of it. If she'd passed away then, I'd have understood. But two weeks later when she got home, after Erik's uncle built her a ramp for her wheelchair, after everyone visited her at the house, after she had her cat back, she seemed like she'd be OK. But, she'd had diabetes for years. And losing a leg does bad things to your circulatory system. She wasn't digesting food well. She was not doing as well as I thought she was when I talked to her the last time. I didn't know it would be the last time. I guess you rarely do.

It's weird that I feel like I've been given back my good health with the word ignore it just when Grandma was losing hers. But it's not all about me. But death does weird things to perspective. You do think about your own death even though you try to focus on how much has gone from the universe now that she's not her. You do start paying attention to things--if grandma could see these lilacs. I should pay good attention to these lilacs.You never know when these will be your last lilacs. I got all morbid and told my students, poetry is the genre of death. We're all marching toward death. Poetry says, pay attention. It will all be gone soon. It's very unAmerican to think like that. Of death at all. We like fiction--the idea that narrative will take us on a train trip. We'll go somewhere cool and when it ends, and the book is dead, we're still alive. Take that, we say to the book. Poems try to slow us down. Looking at things slow might as well be looking at the best woods for caskets.

But my grandma herself. She will miss her cat. Her plum tree. Pussy willows. Her daughters. Her Saltines. Her Coca-Cola bears. Well, it's a long list. I'll write it up for the funeral. I'm glad I get to be there with my family so they can make a list too--even if it's a little like poetry.

Relax

It's the trying to relax that's the problem. Driving, car pulls in front of you, miss the light, miss the next light, miss the next light, try to breathe, it's only elementary school but in so breathing and rationalizing it's only elementary school, you realize you are breathing heavier, not more slowly and just because you're not screaming at the car the pulled in front of you or at the lights doesn't mean your heart isn't beating faster.
I went to the ER on Saturday. My heart felt all fluttery--like it was trying to swallow and I kept telling my heart, don't eat that, but it was, apparently hungry enough to make me nervous. So, extra nervous I went to the ER where I was told to relax and try not to be so nervous which of course made me nervous--am I nervous now? Are you hooking me up to what monitor? Are you sure I'm not dying? Are you asking me if I'm stressed a lot right now? It's the end of the semester. I have two kids. I'm going up for tenure. I have two books coming out. I need to make dinner. I need to make dinner that is healthy and won't kill me and is made from organic wild rice that costs $10.00 a pound and my account is overdrawn now. Every time my heart flickers, I think, am I stressed right now? As I read Pam Houston I wonder, are Pam's stories of near-death on plane flights stressing me out? Is the fight between nonfiction and fiction stressing me out? If I choose John D'agata will I lose all my friends? When will John send his essay for one of the books that's coming out next year? Maybe he won't. Maybe that's good. Maybe I should spend less time on Facebook wondering about nonfiction, less time talking to my students about nonfiction and write some nonfiction but I really should write some poems but I hate sending poems out because you have to put them in batches and write down the ones you sent and I forget and then someone wants one and then I have to withdraw the whole batch or more likely no one wants any and where are all these poems going to pile up? Where are the GTA's for my students? Why couldn't I get them all one? Why am I chair of a committee that has failed to get more for my students? Why am I the chair of anything? I should sit in my chair and write. I should write standing up, for my health. Typing. Typos. Spellcheck. Auto spell check on iPhone I didn't mean "nag" for Angie." Sorry, Ang.

I have made myself so aware of my anxiety that now everything contributes to it. The fork? Am I shaking? No. It's just a fork. I dropped my water glass. I should really relax. I should sweep up the glass. My life is so full of dangerous glass however will I go on? Do I have any friends? Is Flagstaff the loneliest place in the world? Is that why everyone is so nice? Does the wind make my heart skip a beat in that hungry, not so good way?

OK. Here's what can calm me down: 15 vultures by the side of Lake Elaine (a little tiny lake mostly for the rich suburb down the street.) The vultures were all standing with their backs to the lake, wings open, wide and heliotropic like solar panels. A coyote that runs far enough away in front of the car, fast enough, that you believe no coyotes get run over, ever. The coyote looking back at you through the trees. A heron in Lake Mary. A heron in the desert. A running. No weird heart flutters. Perhaps I could run forever, nonstop. The best salad in the world: leftover ($10) wild rice, carrots, olives and toasted pepitas. I should live forever heart. Well, except maybe for the olives.

There are good things and bad things (mostly bad) about feeling fragile. The shimmer is good. The birch twisting their catkins in the angina-producing wind. The dog, getting old, still running through the forest, her camouflage almost as good as a coyote's. Max who says "yes" and "love you" as if loving everyone were old hat. Zoe who wants me to guess what and the guess what is almost always about a Cheetah or an Eagle. Now that she's been to Disneyland and ridden on the California Screamer, she's stopped asking why I like birds so much. Chocolate bar from someone who promises wine and chocolate are good for your heart. The bad thing is that it almost all threatens to break, like the notes for crystal. I don't like thinking about my heart or how fragile it is. I don't like feeling fragile at all. It makes me nervous.

Mister

Mister. Buckaroo. Little Man. Tiny Chef. Maxxa. Maxi. Maximalian. Bubba. Manchego. Max goes by these names and other ones I can't remember. He's 2 years and almost three months old and he's wearing Zoe's old converse that look just like Zoe's very old converse.

I don't know if I wrote about this before but Max. We called him stubborn, but that was us just trying to be nice. Max was a bit of a screamer. I did mention the "train. train. TRAIN" aspect of him earlier. He does like a cookie. Cookie. COOKIE. When we took his bottle away, he cried "more milk" and made the one sign he knew, the image of a milking a cow all day until his hand hurt. When he finally realized we weren't going to give in, he said fine. No bottles. No milk. He hasn't had a drinkof milk since.

But, sometime around his 2nd birthday I said to Erik and Zoe but mostly myself. "It must be hard, being Max. We're all so used to us be us, and us being us together. Max has his own plans, like trains and cookies, and, when they're not being our plans, we think he's being a stubborn butthead. But maybe we would think that less if, once and awhile, we could appreciate trains and cookies with him. Let Max be Max.

Since then, Max has chilled extremely. Maybe also he has chilled because he can talk. His talking is impressive. He's a bit of a myna bird. He'll say whatever you say. Usually, it's just the end of your sentence. "Max, you want to sit down?" "Sit down." "Can I have the keys." "Keys." "Should Zoe sit down?" "Zoe. Sit." He's a fan of the imperative form. It's fun to try to make him work and say, "delicious" or "inquisitive" or "serendipity." It IS delicious, his serendipitous inquisivity.  He can also very much make his own sentences, which usually take the form of demands: "Mama carry blanket," "Mama, juice." "Mama, I watch George." "Mama, I watch Gummies." "Mama, would you please give me all the TVs, computers, and iPhone in the house and put Curious George and that dumb gummy bear song on and leave me to it?" I hate it when I don't know what he's saying. Today, he said something like "Plate ceelio poon." Which, I finally figured out meant that he would like a(nother) bowl of cereal. On plate. With a spoon. And milk. I gave him cereal in a bowl.
There's something about his being able to talk and my being able to talk to him that makes all the bowls of cereal in the world easier to get.

Today, I took him running. Usually (please don't call Child Protective Services), I get him to stay in the stroller by giving him gummy bears or Skittles. (Let's face it. Skittles was one of his first words. "More" being his first). Today though, I told him that he could walk all the way home if he would just hang in the stroller. Now, I don't know if it was my sweet argument or the fact that he was full from eating 3 bowls of cereal that made him comply, but he sat happily in the stroller until the run was mostly over and we turned toward home. On the walk home, he pointed out every Skittle-sized bit of deer poop. "Poop!" He was so happy. He squatted down to investigate it. I had to say, "goodbye deer poop" for him to move on to the next deposit.

For some reason, the forest was full of garbage today. It has been windy lately. The snow had probably covered some of this up all winter. But the run turned out to be "remove plastic from the forest day." I got the plastic. Max picked up every rock, stick, and dirt clod (not poop, I hope) and asked, "garbage?" The forest would have been very, very clean if we had stayed out there all day.

For lunch, I made Salad Lyonnaise (again. I'm sorry for you who weren't here and for those for whom I've never made it. I'm getting kind of tired of it). Max was my best audience. He loved the bacon. And, Mister I don't eat veg, he loved the salad. And the salad dressing. After lunch, I said, I need to clean up before we go get Z from school. He left me to the dishes while he went in his room, gathered up as much as his little arms could hold from his laundry basked it and carried it to the washing machine. He put down the clothes, opened the door,  stuffed the clothes in and asked, "push button?" Max likes nothing more (well, maybe Skittles and Curious George) than pushing buttons.

Too Much Spring Break

Leaving town just one week after I'd returned from AWP was a crazy idea. But it was a good one too. We packed into the car on Saturday and drove west on I-40. Max watched as the trains choo chooed parallel to us and Zoe asked for more math problems. We ran into friends at the In & Out Burger in Kingman. (Erik's disdain for fast food does not extend to In & Out Burger) on their way to San Francisco. I was glad we weren't going that far. After we left that desert for the Mojave one, we did not stop. Max played Lego's for 1.5 seconds and Zoe ate the broccoli we packed because her disdain for fast food does extend to In & Out Burger. We turned left on California State Road 237 and drove up the back way to our friends' house in Angelus Oaks. We had to stop three times since it was the turnyest of roads and Zoe gets car sick. She lied down on various tree trunks until she felt better and then we drove on.

Our friends met us in the driveway and took us into their sweet house--huge wooden beams, big windows, a big bed with a memory foam pad that for some reason they always let us sleep on. We went to the park adjacent to their son's school and road around on some sort of perpetual motion cars. Max wanted to climb up the rock walls. Mostly, we spent the afternoon keeping Max from falling on his face--the forehead is his favorite crashing spot.

Then we went to dinner at a great Yucatan restaurant. Chile rellenos are my favorite food group--far better than the In &Out Burger burger.

The next day, we drove into the valley. Rebecca was at the hospital all day with her baby so Erik and I hung out with the boys in the backyard. We made pork chops for dinner and red bliss potatoes--all from the CSA/local farms from here. The next day, Rebecca and I went to the hospital for the day while the kids and the husbands went to the beach. The first thing that happened when we walked in was they told Rebecca they were going to extubate the baby the next day. Bek hadn't expected the baby would be removed from the vent for weeks yet. She about fainted, if fainting was something Bek was inclined to do. Instead, she did what Bek does best which is ask every nurse and doctor and respiratory therapist what was good about this, what was dangerous, what were the reasons to worry and what were the  reasons to take good heart. We went to lunch to celebrate. I had steak tartare. It was good, if a little overly cornichon-y. We were happy. We spent the rest of the day with the girl, telling her she could do it.

Erik and I made carne asada for dinner. Not as CSA/local. The steak, the avocado, the tomatoes had probably all come from California, been driven to Flagstaff and then driven back. We did bring them some local (Phoenix) oranges. They weren't that good. Bek called the hospital that night. They were still planning to extubate. As we piled in the car to go back to our hotel (Hotel Angeleno--underneath the Getty Museum, off the 405--not bad), I told Bek that I thought the baby could do it.

And, the next day, as we drove home, she did. She's been off the vent since Tuesday. Today is Thursday. Everyday I send a note telling that girl to keep it up. And she does.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, Max and Zoe and I took Cleo walking in the forest. We painted. We went grocery shopping. We cooked dinner and hung out with Erik's parents. Zoe and I found a full set of dishes at the thrift store for 40 bucks. I have only bought individual plates before. I still have one from Pic & Save that I bought before I left for college. This set came with bowls and cups and saucers and salad plates.
They are white and very matchy. I kept that one from Pic & Save for back up.

Sam came over Friday night for corned beef and hash. Saturday, I tried to reproduce chile rellenos. They were pretty good. Sunday, 19 inches of snow and yet our friends drove over from the other side of town for enchiladas. Monday, an extra day of spring break because the University closed campus for snow, Erik took Max and Z sledding. Max took 4 runs and, after a spray in the face of snow, said, "I done." Z went off a jump and hurt her back on the last ride. Naps for all and the kids were recovered. We went snow shoeing and sledding again later in the day off the gentler her in the forest behind the in-law's house. I cooked for dinner something much like paella that was far more work than it was worth but with my father-in-law's help, much fun.

The return to school yesterday was rough. Department politics and the general sense that the semester should be over by now made it hard to trudge through the snow toward my office. But my students came to visit me in office hours and the essays we read for class were stellar, so I do think I'll make it through these last 7 weeks, especially because we're going camping this weekend with those same friends from Angelus Oaks because it's hot in the desert and there aren't that many chances to actually go places with friends and this town, though lovely in the snow, is returned to winter and I'm 100% ready for spring.

Yes, It IS Spring Break

How it comes at just the right time. Petty department squabbles over course caps, an office floor covered in crumbs from the reheated leftovers eaten at the desk, an inbox full of applications, of theses, of prospective incoming student questions, meeting meeting meeting requests. We travel westerly tomorrow to visit our friends in LA whose baby is in the hospital. Perspective. We also get to visit our friends who live near Big Bear. We're staying in a hotel that is not close to our LA friends. I don't know LA. I'm nervous it's too far from their house. What if it's a hellhole? I should cancel now and stay at the Culver Hotel where all the dwarfs stayed when they were filming Wizard of Oz.  I will go to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which is right across from the hotel, even if we're not staying in said hotel.

Speaking of hotels, I stayed in the hotel next to the conference hotel for AWP. What a dream. First, it was a very nice hotel. Second, the buzz and drama and anxiety of the book fair did not permeate through 19 floors to agitate me through the night. The whole AWP was good. I saw almost (almost) everyone I hoped to see. I had a great dinner with good friends and a great lunch with Big Bear friend (see her twice in one year, what luck is that?) and great drinks with the whole contingent of Utah grads--1999 until present (some key people keyly missing). It was a large party and I snuck off to the liquor store to store liquor in my purse and pour it not only more cheaply (not the point, really) but more quickly (indeed, the point) than the hotel bar staff could pour.

I must go to AWP Boston but AWP has become something, specifics above notwithstanding, that is a lot like work. AWP is not Spring Break but a good thing to do before Spring Break so you can work a lot at the book fair, at readings, at panels and get home, get all riled up by department squabbles and crumbs and inboxes, and then do something restorative like go to Los Angeles where you hope you can do some good.

A list

Do you ever, after going to the doctor, go on an anti-health kick wherein you eat cheese and pork products and fried foods for a day? I have a problem with authority.

I am cleaning the house. Every fourth inch of floor is covered in: dirt, sticky note, matchbox car, Thomas, book, book, orange peel, lego, lego, lego, train, pen, book, dirt.

I am making mole verde for dinner with pumpkin seeds. Pumpkin seeds might be my favorite food. I hope the counteract the pork and pate products I ate after the doctor visit.

Why is it when I teach my favorite books, they do not immediately become my students' favorite books? And why, when I see the books through my students' eyes, do the books' flaws become so suddenly apparent?

More and more, the only thing I'm interested in is self-awareness. It seems possibly the rarest human trait. I like it best in others but should probably try to focus  it most thoroughly on myself.

The Associated Writing Program Annual Conference is going to be work. It used to be nothing but fun. When did this change happen? I think when Erik stopped coming with me. Also, certain blogging friends are not helping adding to the fun times because they are not going. (This is one of my more selfish rather than self-aware moments--although this parenthetical. It tilts a bit toward awareness? Is saying self-aware over and over again the least self-aware thing you can do?).

The grant website I wanted to work on is down. Does this mean I'm done for the day? Does this mean I should stop bothering with the grant since obviously too many would-be grantees have tried to access the website and have broken the server.

How can I be on 15 thesis committees? Those fiction students. How did they find me?

Weekend. They say it will be 55 tomorrow. I would like that to be true. And I would also like there to be no wind.

My mom gave Max and Zoe each a cash register for Valentine's Day. Zoe has in the meantime figured out not only all about money--how many dimes and nickels in a quarter, etc., but, because the register came with a scanner and the food that came with the scanner came with bar codes, she's scanning and adding and I am now ready to send her to the grocery store and self-check out on her own. Max just talks into the scanner like he's BJ and the Bear. Possibly the Bear.

Edited to add. Grant website back up. But I'm vacuuming! I do think I'd rather vacuum.

Backyards

Yesterday morning, I woke up thinking of a blog post and then all day, I couldn't remember it. But this morning, I woke up at 5:42 and remembered. I can't go back to sleep if I wake up any minutes after 5:00. It's a curse, but in this case a gift, because that itchy feeling of can't remember finally got scratched.

I remembered because the light from the neighbor's dining room chandelier fell into the bedroom like a sun coming up. It is strange to me, living in the rural town that is Flagstaff, that I've never had a nearer backyard neighbor. At least not since I was one and my parents and I lived in the Sandpiper apartments off Van Winkle Boulevard. My parents moved next to a house behind a mortuary. No one there left lights on all night or woke up early. We moved next to a house that backed a cemetery. No one there woke up at all. After that, we lived on a big block with a huge plot of land in the middle of it. Eventually, the Church built a Stakehouse there but the worst noise there was basketball on Friday mornings. My dorm room at Reed backed the Student Union but my room was high enough that the light from my room fell down on them, not the other way around. On 37th Street, our house was on a hill. Again, my light trickled down. On 7812 SE Woodstock, I don't remember the house behind us but it didn't matter because the house was lower than the fence and the windows below the weeds that grew tall in that backyard. On 26th Street--tall fence. On Cora, our big lot-sized garden grew outside my window. Then, when I bought the house on Brooklyn Street, the cherry tree and fig tree blocked the neighbor's light. On G. Street, in Salt Lake, the lot was double-long and the house behind was so far away that I was never sure anyone actually lived there. When we moved to Grand Rapids, the houses were close together. We shared a driveway with Beth, who lived next door. The light from her bedroom could have flooded our bedroom, but she kept her blinds closed. Our backyard again was far away from the neighbor's backyard, the houses infilled side by side rather than back to back.
It is strange, then that my current backyard neighbors, in this big-lot sized neighborhood, in a forest-filled town, are the ones who bug me. There house sits directly behind ours, matching window for window. We have no fence and the Ponderosa Pines are too tall to block any light. Thankfully, our big deck is on the side of the house, we we're not fully exposed but the backyard feels like their backyard. When they're on their deck, we can hear every word. They have no blinds. I have blinds and curtains in the bed room and yet, in the morning, and sometimes all night, the light from their 118,000 watt chandelier falls through the bedroom window, making me think the sun is coming up, which wakes me up for once and for all.