a snail named patient*

I had so many blog posts running through my head today that I chose to write none of them. Foolish, I know. But since that was the trope of the day, maybe I can tip my hat to it and move on tomorrow.

Work has been really hard the past few weeks. Not so much hard-difficult as hard-frustrating. It reached its peak yesterday/today when my long weekend in St. Louis got canceled, every idiot with an invoice over a year old decided to crawl out from under their desks, and. . . well, I try not to write about work here, at least not in more specifics. Part of it is that I don't want someone from work finding my evil rants online, and part of it is that I'm hoping that in a few years, this will all seem like a very odd dream. Not a bad one, but an odd one.

So St. Louis. And I know Anna and Brooke wander over here from time to time, so I hope they don't mind that I'm writing about this. We were supposed to crash the ACA/PCA conference in St. Louis this weekend. I found train tickets for $48 round trip, and I was going to take two days off work (today and tomorrow). B got sick--really sick--and without her, the trip didn't make much sense. My tickets were refundable, and I was literally going to just crash B and Anna's panels, so I'm not out any money--in fact, this means that I'll have more vacation days later in the year--but I was so ready for a break. The past few weeks--the past few months--have been long and cringe-worthy. I debated just taking a day off, but I'm worried that I'll need that day off in the near future for class work, so I'm holding on to it. Plus I found out that we're closing the offices a few hours early for Good Friday tomorrow. 3:00 p.m. is death lately, so I'm going to skip my way out of that building and into the sunshine.

Classes started this week, and spring quarter is going to be both awesome and deadly. I'm taking a poetry workshop that is focusing on ecological/nature writing and a video essay class, where we'll actually put together video essays. I've always like the idea of combining language/writing with other media--my favorite films at Final Cut were always the films that were centered around poetry--and I'm excited to learn this way of "writing." It's a new-er form, one that I think could set me apart from other PhD applicants, if I can learn to do it well. And I think I can.
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*Lauren told me the best story today. I gave Abby a board book last year about "feelings." One of the feelings is "patient." The picture shows a duck or a goose watching a snail on its way to who knows where. Today Lauren took Abby to buy a new shirt, and being the awesome mom that she is, let Abby pick the shirt. Abby chose a pink shirt with a snail on it, because the snail is patient.

(I suspect the snail-love is also genetic. Lauren used to catch snails in the garden, and then create "snail hotels" out of bricks. Each snail got its own room. Seriously.)