I knew about the wrinkles and the aches and the pains. I even was prepared for one's big nose to get bigger. The sometimes not-so-subtle decline in energy, the been-there-seen-that attitude towards everything. But the beard and mustache? The teeth that break while you're eating a hamburger? Come the fck on!?!?!?!?!
Geez. Louise. I'm old enough to expect that every quarterly visit to my internist will be followed with a "Let's run some tests ..." remark sure to send me into an anxious frenzy about tainted blood and exponentially massing tumors. But waking up in the morning looking like a Snidely Whiplash avatar? I. Did. Not. Sign. Up. For. This.
When did I get old? All of which has made me consider how to best get into the classroom as a math teacher. Thinking now that I'll work towards certification so that at the pace I'm going (one class at a time) I should be finished by 63 years of age. (Driving around the other day in the big-ass Nissan Cuthbert bought, slowing down just enough for some 10 year old boys to get out of the street before they became human Mobius strips and one of them says, Hi Grandma! I'm done.) I am trying to keep soul and body together enough to be effective. (This summer's sojourn at the Fitness Center has been a life-saver. My blood pressure is astoundingly normal. It's so low that that I take my pulse to make sure I'm alive.) The semester begins in a couple of weeks and along with the premature September weather (except there's still August light) -- watch, it'll be followed by one hell of an Indian Summer -- and the V-wedge of geese I very much feel that the summer is coming to it's end.
99% of the grand plans I had for the summer remain grand, and undone. I've been working on the same short story for 3 months. I'm practically rewriting every sentence (with the ghost of Raymond Carver looking over my shoulder) yet it feels premature and illegitimate. Like putting lipstick on a pig because I don't think the story is fully baked, but without this kind of cosmetic attention I don't know if I'll stay embedded enough to figure out how to fix it. I am putting an artificial deadline on getting it done. I cannot, can't even conceive of doing fiction and doing combat with my next class, Algebraic Structures. (4 credit hours of begging the professor pull out my fingernails instead, I'm sure.) Off goes the writer's beanie, on goes the mathematician's beret. If summer weren't so hot I'd order another month, but 30 additional days would just be the Sword of Damocles over my head 30 days longer. So, it ends when it ends. The story and the summer.
There are 2 things that I did accomplish:
1. Strength-trained myself into better shape. Now when I raise my arms I don't cause a tsunami in Indonesia, and
2. made quite a lot of progress on my Front Yard of Eden (notice the pumpkin taking over):
Geez. Louise. I'm old enough to expect that every quarterly visit to my internist will be followed with a "Let's run some tests ..." remark sure to send me into an anxious frenzy about tainted blood and exponentially massing tumors. But waking up in the morning looking like a Snidely Whiplash avatar? I. Did. Not. Sign. Up. For. This.
When did I get old? All of which has made me consider how to best get into the classroom as a math teacher. Thinking now that I'll work towards certification so that at the pace I'm going (one class at a time) I should be finished by 63 years of age. (Driving around the other day in the big-ass Nissan Cuthbert bought, slowing down just enough for some 10 year old boys to get out of the street before they became human Mobius strips and one of them says, Hi Grandma! I'm done.) I am trying to keep soul and body together enough to be effective. (This summer's sojourn at the Fitness Center has been a life-saver. My blood pressure is astoundingly normal. It's so low that that I take my pulse to make sure I'm alive.) The semester begins in a couple of weeks and along with the premature September weather (except there's still August light) -- watch, it'll be followed by one hell of an Indian Summer -- and the V-wedge of geese I very much feel that the summer is coming to it's end.
99% of the grand plans I had for the summer remain grand, and undone. I've been working on the same short story for 3 months. I'm practically rewriting every sentence (with the ghost of Raymond Carver looking over my shoulder) yet it feels premature and illegitimate. Like putting lipstick on a pig because I don't think the story is fully baked, but without this kind of cosmetic attention I don't know if I'll stay embedded enough to figure out how to fix it. I am putting an artificial deadline on getting it done. I cannot, can't even conceive of doing fiction and doing combat with my next class, Algebraic Structures. (4 credit hours of begging the professor pull out my fingernails instead, I'm sure.) Off goes the writer's beanie, on goes the mathematician's beret. If summer weren't so hot I'd order another month, but 30 additional days would just be the Sword of Damocles over my head 30 days longer. So, it ends when it ends. The story and the summer.
There are 2 things that I did accomplish:
1. Strength-trained myself into better shape. Now when I raise my arms I don't cause a tsunami in Indonesia, and
2. made quite a lot of progress on my Front Yard of Eden (notice the pumpkin taking over):
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