Times I decided it was too much to wait to wrap everything up at the end of the year: 1
Nights I had gin and tonics with my brother, with a lemon twist provided by our great grandmother’s lemon tree, and, in reminiscing about childhood, discovered that I was mixing up a time we were robbed with a time we were almost murdered (but the man who was going to murder us was killed by his sister that night instead): 1
Times my (Grand)Daddy’s office had been dusted before he died 7 years ago: 0
Times I was able to breathe well when trying to find hardcopies of (Grand)Daddy’s autobio: 0
Parts of the autobio I was able to find: ~20
Parts of the autobio found that he wrote about taking me in when I was a toddler, which he’d let me read years ago: 0
Hearts broken: 1
Bottles of wine shared with my uncle: 1
Times my youngest relative almost took her very first steps, to me: 7
Times we found a weird newspaper clipping pile that made us wonder what (Grand)Daddy was up to: 1
Times we found porny things, meaning we knew what he was up to: 8
Times my cousin was trying to clean the wrap around porch, which had turned into a junkyard, & I heard my mother say, “Tessa, the dynamite box goes with the dynamite!”
Discovering which of my cousins’ kids will be the one to take over all of the ancestry stuff when I’m gone.
Steps onto the beach it took for my husband to realize why I’ve always been such a beach snob: 4
Servings of gulf fish: 5
Servings of fried okra: 3
Times I almost murdered by husband because he ate a serving of my gulf fish in the middle of the night and then threw away what would have been my fourth serving of okra: 1 (it’s one time, but it’s not over yet)
Relatives who wanted to make sure I knew it was my husband, not them, who betrayed me, since they know that fresh fish and fried okra is my favorite meal: 3
(Grand)Daddy’s paintings and drawings we found that we’d never seen before: ~24
Strange evidence of Florida weather encountered: 1
Eggs my mother boiled on a Monday morning, to be turned into deviled eggs: 12
Times a day, each day, that she would get up to go make the deviled eggs: 14
Deviled eggs made, by the time I left, 6.5 days after the eggs were boiled: 0
Times my cousin and Kelly and I complained that the well water back home didn’t taste like home anymore, which was terrible, because we love how our well water tasted, and then my mom’s partner said they replaced the corroded pipes, and Kelly and I realized maybe we love the taste of corroded pipes: 1
Extra suitcases appropriated so that I could bring back files, pictures to digitize, etc: 1
Flights to bring me back to California from a post-Christmas family visit in Florida: 3
Migraines: 4
Fall classes started: 4
Days taken completely down by a terrible cold/cough, which spread into pink eye and a nasty ear infection: 10
Health appointments (treatments) rescheduled or cancelled due to my illness: 7
Student comedy shows missed: 1
New recipes tried: 1 (Slow Cooker Parmesan Garlic Chicken and Potatoes)
Books finished: 5
Pages of Margaret Atwood Studies edited: 355
Day I picked to listen to my Chronic Pain: A Comedy video, since I need to revise it and perform it again next month: the 25th
Days I procrastinated & didn’t listen to it: 4
Presidents: 2
Presidents who shouldn’t have been allowed to take office after committing treason: 1
Days I’ve been able to listen to the news without wondering what new lows the other party and its leaders will sink to: 0
Severe close and extended family problems (mostly medical) that are stressing me the fuck out: 5
Miracles (when I realized I would need a new OSC for my Oxford course and then got a message from someone confessing she’d always wanted to do it): 1
Oxford AirBnBs, Stonehenge visits, and Wilton House visits booked for this summer’s Oxford class: 1 (each)
Times my car’s trunk wouldn’t open, and I was able to figure out that it’s because a reusable grocery bag’s handle got stuck in the mechanism, and I needed to fix it, but my car is a mini cooper, so it’s not really possible to get into the back seat, much less the trunk area, at least not without bruises, so I got bruises, but I fixed it: 1
What I’m watching: The West Wing*; Randy Feltface: Smug Druggles; Randy Feltface: Book of Randicus; Elsbeth; Futurama; The Conclave; Star Trek: Section 31; All Creatures Great and Small; Harley Quinn; Gladiator 2; St. Denis Medical; Your Friend, Nate Bargatze; Abbot Elementary; A Real Pain; Roy Wood Jr: Lonely Flowers; Vienna Blood; The Sticky; Seth Meyers; SNL; The Wild Robot; Jim Gaffigan: The Skinny
What I’m listening to: Various NPR shows, including This American Life & Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me; Savage Lovecast; Serial; Working it Out; Levar Burton Reads; Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend; American History Tellers; Radiolab; This is History
What I read every morning: Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters From An American”
*I restarted The West Wing on 1/20. I said to myself, I’m going to skip that stressful season when Zoe’s kidnapped. I can’t handle it when the Republican Speaker of the House tries to ram his stuff through while he’s in charge. While I remembered it as a season, it’s two episodes. Two very traumatizing episodes.
