Chimera Song Mosaic
Thursday, March 18, 2004
Well, it turns out that today is my birthday, and I am 30, but I am holding up remarkably well. No crying. Maybe because I did so much pre-crying that there's no need for during (or afterwards). So you really can prepare yourself for anything with enough anxiety and fussing and a little bit of fret--anything inevitable, that is!
It's really sort of anticlimactic. Which is also a cliche, I think.
So, anyway, Happy St. Paddy's Day. Today is my birthday. Fuck Google*.
So I am maybe not going to grade today, but I am not going to be a bad girl either. I had fun with my students discussing Nickel and Dimed today, and they even forgot to ask me for their essays until the end of class (not in the middle of it, disguised as a subject-relevant question). I invited every stray student wandering the halls into my office. Today there were some major breakthroughs in campus miscommunication between faculty and support services. I have looked around my office, around my house, and realized that since I have been back home, I have really let things go. But today I feel capable of getting it together again. Or maybe I'll just go take a nap.
* Let it be known that I actually love Google--it's just that today when I saw her stripped of friendly green Celtic Cross, I felt a bit betrayed. Couldn't the owners of the techy job that every Gen-x-er envies pick a person at random and decorate this engine for his or her birthday? It's really not too much to ask.
Plus I just thought of another reason why this is a great birthday. Lance, who never writes poetry, wrote me a fabulous poem yesterday, to the tune of "Stop All the Clocks; Turn Off the Telephone." It's so cute; it's mine; I don't know if I could share it.
O! and someone just delivered flowers! They are so pretty, with Birds of Paradise and eucalyptus. They are from my in-laws! I can't believe this. I really do feel spoiled now. I am starting to think that the best gifts for lifting the spirits are the cliched ones. They are high impact and decadent (except the poem didn't cost much, but they don't, do they? Not unless you count economy of the spirit), but they really make a person feel special: chocolates, flowers, handmade and ceremonial poems (which I wouldn't read otherwise, of course).
I think I'd better stop now least someone suspect dementia.
What if--at the end of it--it turns out that the cliches were right all along?
