Last week was my summer vacation, the only week until Christmastime when I don’t have one or six classes running.

Here’s what I did:

• Deep cleaned the downstairs, including taking every single Simpsons piece off the shelf and dusting it.

• Appeased my neighbor, while upsetting the cats.

Several months ago, a neighbor asked me to keep Thoth inside. He sometimes poops in her garden. He’s friendly, so he likes to say hi, which is why she thinks it’s him.

I’m not saying it’s not him, but the neighbor thinks Thoth is the only cat who ever goes into her garden, which I find hard to believe. We have many strays in this neighborhood. And unlike Thoth, who approaches every human, the strays don’t like you to watch them use the toilet.

We’ve been keeping Thoth inside for over twelve hours a day, encouraging the neighbor to spray him, to use cayenne, etc.

She sent a message recently to ask if we’d walled him completely off yet. In the last three months, she hasn’t seen him, but there’s been poop in her garden once.

Once.

In three months.

So I paid hundreds of dollars last week to have a task rabbit guy come into my house and put up chicken wire around the patio fence. Thoth is like a velociraptor in Jurassic Park. He’s testing the fence, finding the weaknesses. And he has found one, which we have to fix somehow.

He’s also crying and pouting. He really loves saying hi to the neighbors, which I know cause they text me from blocks away to say he’s hanging out with him and that he’s wonderful.

He’s beloved in the neighborhood, except for that one neighbor.

• I got myself a present.

A decade ago, when I lived in a place with a yard, I had a hammock, and I loved it.

I don’t have one now. Instead, I have a few feet of dirty concrete surrounded by chicken wire.

But I bought myself a hammock, and the redwoods give a lot of shade. Lying on it with me has been the only time Thoth is happy in the last few days.

Now that home is home, the office, the classroom, the restaurant, the gym, and cat prison, there might as well be a work hammock.

• I got a Covid-test, treatment for my bursitis, and an endoscopy. The third thing took way too long, and took too much out of me, and my hand is still terribly bruised, but as least all the tests were negative.

• I judged Prized Writing essays, I answered emails, I did some last minute prep for the class that started this week.

• I watched Keith Lowell Jensen’s stand-up.

• I saw my seniors do their stand-up comedy send-off fundraiser. And felt so proud I got teary-eyed.

• I made ribs three different ways. (Chinese-spiced sticky ribs were the best.)

• I let myself have the night off from cooking on Sunday.

• I anticipated my very first CSA basket ever, from the UCD Student farm, which I picked up yesterday.

My UCD classes start a week from today. I’ve been working like crazy and will continue to do so, but I have gotten quite a bit done.

Two of my three Winter classes are graded. My two Sac City classes are all prepped for this week, and I’m caught up on that grading.

I sent my reworked syllabi to my Spring UCD courses, though I still have to build the Canvas sites and make the videos and assignments for the first couple of weeks.

I have a meeting about moving the comp exam online tomorrow. And I’m scoring Literature in Translation exams for IB this month. At some point soon, Melissa and I have to approve the last round of proofs so our textbook is available for Fall classes.

My daily “breaks” consist of cooking–trying out new recipes. So we’re eating well. I made an enchilada pie last night and pork katsu with homemade sauce the night before. (The stores are out of sugar, so my son has forbidden baking. All of our sugar must be saved for iced tea.)

Thoth loves having me home, especially in the mornings. He gets up in my lap or on the desk and pushes me with his paw. Sometimes, he moves my hand off the mouse. Sometimes, just pushes my chest back into the seat. This subtle code means he wants me to lie down on the couch (I’m allowed to have my laptop out as long as I don’t move too much.) He’s conked out on my chest right now. He probably won’t move until Dante comes home. Thoth doesn’t like being caught adoring me; he has a rep to protect.

Dante and I are aware of our luck in still having jobs. He’s checking in on a friend who’s laid off.

We’re also aware of the risks we have. He’s working retail (Target), so he’s coming in contact with more people than is advisable. I had to go into a med center this morning for my asthma medicine. My asthma makes me at risk of Covid complications, so I’m in a bind. Going to the med center itself is a bad idea, but so is letting my asthma get bad if I go without the drug (it’s not something I can give to myself, unfortunately).

My intrusive thoughts this week are less about the apocalypse and more about the possibility of being one of the casualties of this virus.

Have I thought about how I need to pack a “going to the hospital” purse, since if I do get sick, I won’t have the energy to do so when I need to? Yes.

I am trying to hold it together, so I’m refraining from tearfully apologizing in advance to my son about not being able to leave him any financial stability, and about not being able to leave an apartment purged of letters from long-ago lovers and sex toys.

I’m refraining from calling my mother to tell her that if I do die, responsibility can be traced back to everyone who voted for Trump. I’m mostly refraining because THAT’S EXACTLY THE KIND OF DEATH BED GUILT TRIP SHIT SHE WOULD PULL, and I don’t want to become my mother in what could be my last days.

I don’t know if anyone else got pulled out of class to talk about their essays. It was the beginning of the term, ninth grade. Our history teacher gave us a warm-up free write–what were we afraid of?

I should have said sharks.

But I had written about the end of the world.

HBO’s 1981 documentary/movie, The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, about Nostradamous, is partially to blame. The image of the man who will bring about WWIII, turbaned and entering a room through a Star-Trek door, is imprinted deeply in my mind.

I’d also been reading the Bible. I was trying to understand the religion I was being raised in.

My essay included a detail from the Bible–about how God would not spare anyone, not even women heavy with child. I’m not sure why I picture her running away from earthquake fissures, but I do. My small Conservative town had many people in it who thought abortion was the worst thing you could do (our town had one of the first abortion doctor murders). God, though, was willing to take the life of that unborn child.

We were all fucked.

My history teacher told me I didn’t have to worry about fleeing God’s wrath while pregnant.

My apocalypse fears didn’t go away, of course. I just talked about them less. My long-term boyfriends knew about them; my long-term therapist did too. Mostly because of the nightmares.

One of my boyfriends, when I was ending our relationship, tried to use this fear to persuade me to stay. “You’ll need me if there’s an apocalypse. And I would protect you. I would kill you before I let someone rape you.”

Note: People can survive rape; it’s not the worst thing I can imagine. It’s up there, but not the worst thing. Something happening to my child is the worst thing.

Also: The smart thing to do would be to use their distraction to figure out how to get us out of there.

Of all of my nightmares, one is the most vivid. Something had happened. I needed to pack a backpack and go, never to return. “How many underwear?” I remember thinking. I started to pack my pills, all the drugs that keep my alive. In my dream, I stopped packing and sat down beside the backpack on my bed. It was useless to flee; I was going to be dead in a month.

I woke up.

Therapy did help. The nightmares lessened.

Not surprisingly, I’m being triggered right now. In between the panic of having to get Winter quarter graded and keep my semester classes going, now online, and rearrange the whole way I teach for Spring quarter, and fears about the economy tanking so badly that I lose my job, I’m having lots of intrusive thoughts.

“What if this is the last time I have ice cream?”

These thoughts do not lead to a mindful enjoyment of any given experience.

I don’t know how to end this post.

I don’t know how things like this end.

For the last nine years, I’ve compiled a Valentine’s Day mix for my nearest and dearest.

It’s never quite about love, but about when love goes wrong. It’s about obsession. About stalking.

Here’s this year’s mix:

1. I Will Possess Your Heart—Death Cab for Cutie
2. Cactus—Davis Bowie
3. Honey Honey—ABBA
4. Settle for Me—Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
5. Why’d You Come In Here Looking Like That?—Dolly Parton
6. The End of the World—Julie London
7. Don’t Talk to Strangers—Jonathan Coulton
8. Titus’s Lemonade Song—30 Rock
9. Hell of a Way to Go—Kasey Chambers
10. I’ve Got You Under My Drawers—Brak
11. We Get On—Kate Nash
12. Satisfied—Hamilton
13. Cry for Me—Camila Cabello
14. Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home?—Louis Prima
15. I’m Going to Get You—National Lagarde
16. Cool—The Simpsons
17. Baby, Let’s Play House—Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
18. Overnight Observation—Olivia Newton-John
19. Nevermore—Queen
20. Pictures of Your Dick—Rachel Bloom
21. Love Me or Leave Me—Nina Simone
22. Are You Lonesome Tonight?—Elvis Presley
23. Is It a Crime?—Sade
24. It’s Me Again, Margaret—Ray Stevens

Almost all nine years of songs are on this Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4lNFkVYXu7VtWiDtLjGgxX.

(Spotify doesn’t have everything . . .)

Each year, I keep a desktop playlist of songs that might make it onto the next disc. Right now, there are 284 contenders for Stalkers 10.

Want non-spotify versions of past years’ discs? Hit me up!

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

I got myself a Harry Potter backpack at the start of the year. It tore almost immediately, and the tear is getting bigger.

Just this morning, I was thinking about how I should go back to my very old, but not torn, boring backpack.

Then:

Student A: Is that Harry Potter backpack?

Student B: I noticed it on the first day. It’s how I knew I had signed up for the right class.

Live Plays and Performances: 36

Antony and Cleopatra; Come from Away; Keith Lowell Jensen’s Not for Rehire; Kinky Boots; Metamorphoses; Slowgirl; A Winter’s Tale; Home; Two Pints; The Other Place; Keith Lowell Jensen’s What I Got Arrested For; A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge Theatre with Brianne of Tarth; Blithe Spirit; Small Island; Aaron Simmonds’s Disabled Coconuts; Heidi Kills Time; Macbeth; Wuthering Heights; The Lehman Trilogy; Weird Al Strings Attached Show; Hamilton; In the Heights; Hannah Gadsby’s Douglas; Oklahoma; Life Sucks; Sleep No More; Play Time; Margaret Atwood: Live in Cinemas; Between Riverside and Crazy; Fat Kid Rules the World; Ranked; Burst; White Noise; The Humans; Hansard; Present Laughter

Davisville interviews: 1

Podcast interviews: 2

Other interviews: 3

New books published: 1

Herniated discs: 1

Ligaments strained: 2

Surgeries and injections: 4

Incredible butt bruises from falling down in DC: 1

Times I went into shock after a blood vessel getting nicked during an allergy shot: 1

New doctors broken in: 7

Osteopath appointments in Oxford: 4

Times I got to fly in the fancy class across the pond: 2

Times our little blind kitten got himself lost: 1

Times my cocky little Thoth got himself lost, except the neighbors thought he was just out on his usual stroll: 1

Visits to the Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen: 2

Visits in which I was able to eat the amazing grouper at the Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen: 1

Times I cried in a German airport: 1

Times I found a bed and a chain in a bathroom at UCD: 1

Times I watched Good Omens all the way through: 3

Times I held a chicken: 1

Full books finished (not counting issue comics, magazines, online reading; counting rereads): 61

Lamentation by Ken Scholes; Lucy & Andy Neanderthal by Jeffrey Brown; The Rook and Stiletto by Daniel O’Malley; The Healing of America by T.R. Reid; The Secret Loves of Geeks by Hope Nicholson (ed); No Apparent Distress by Rachel Pearson; Nelvana of the Nothern Lights by Adrian Dingle; Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente; Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann; Fire and Hemlock and A Tale of Time City and Howl’s Moving Castle and Dogsbody by Diana Wynn Jones; La Belle Sauvage by Phillip Pullman; TransAtlantic by Colum McCann; Above the East China Sea by Sarah Bird; Meaty and Same Year, Same Trash by Samantha Irby; People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks; I’m Just a Person by Tig Notaro; How to Marry a Werewolf and Impudence and Competence and Reticence by Gail Carriger; Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire; The Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell; Among Others by Jo Walton; the four Murderbot Diaries books by Martha Wells; Fangirl and Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell; There There by Tommy Orange; The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris; Bitter Medicine by Clem and Oliver Martini; The Deepest Well by Nadine Burke Harris, MD; a book of short stories edited by Neil Gaiman; Heavy by Keise Laymon; first two books in the Inheritance Series by NK Jemison; The Testamants (twice) by Margaret Atwood, along with Alias Grace and Cat’s Eye; The Fellowship of the Ring; Alice in Wonderland; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis; A Discovery of Witches and The Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness; Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler; How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman; A Very Scalzi Christmas by John Scalzi; The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter and European Travel for Monstrous Gentlewomen by Theodora Goss; So, Anyway by John Cleese

Purses stolen: 1

Drivers licenses obtained, because the replacement license I had to get after my purse got stolen expired six months later: 2

Epic battles with the credit card company after they accused me of lying about my purse being stolen: 1

Epic credit card battles won: 1

Performance of my one-woman show: 2

Stand-up performances (other): 7

Museums and Exhibits: 54

British Museum, Sally Lunn Museum, American Museum and Gardens in Bath, Jane Austen Centre, Bath Abbey, The 9/11 Museum, Neue Gallery, Old Royal Theatre and Masonic History Tour, Wellcome Collection, British Library, Victoria and Albert food exhibit, Design Museum Kubrick exhibit, The American Writers Museum in Chicago, Bampfa in Berkeley, Native American Museum where I had bison, African American Museum, Natural History Museum in DC, FDR monument, MLK monument, Whiskey Museum, Little Museum of Dublin, Famine Exhibition, Dublin Gaol, Dublin Castle, Trinity College Library and the Book of Kells, EPIC Immigration Museum, The Divinity School, Natural History Museum in Oxford, The Sheldonian Theatre, Christ Church, Magdalene, The Oxford Botanical Gardens, The Harry Potter Studio Tour, Stonehenge, Prague Castle, Wilton House, The Acropolis, The Museum of Cycladic Art, The Acropolis Museum, Athens’a 1st Cemetery, National Archaeological Museum of Athens, MSU Museum, Sedlec Ossuary, Kupta Hora Cathedral, Brno Ossuary; The Church of Loreto in Prague, The Temple of Poseidon, Underground Market Labyrinth in Prague, Saint Charles Bridge, Uncomfortable Oxford Walking Tour, Trinity College Oxford, Wadham College; Bodelian Library exhibits; the Roman Baths

Attendees at this fall’s UC Davis stand-up club performances: Hundreds!!!

Non-California cities visited: 16

Chicago (twice); Washington DC; Anaheim; Cincinnati; London; Bath; Gerrards Cross; Oxford; Dublin; New York; Prague; Brno; Vienna; Kupta Hora; East Lansing (and Lansing–I can’t count this as two); Athens

Exciting new ice cream flavors tried: 2

(G&T and Black Currant and Clotted Cream)

Times Anubis ate rum cake: 1

Conferences: 8

The first jacket I’ve ever cared about, bought at WonderCon, which I think might begin a new era in which I care about clothes sometimes (my new prescription sunglasses make it a verified trend): 1

New nephews and cousins: 2

Gin distilleries: 2

Whiskey distilleries: 4

Ouzo distilleries: 1

New pubs tried in Oxford: 7

Times I couldn’t tell the difference between a packing crate and a shopping basket in Oxford: 1

Baby showers hosted: 1

Courses taught: 16

New courses taught: 1

Christmas ornaments I had the energy to put up: 2

Times I probably irritated Weird Al by making him sign his tiny gold record: 1

Trips to Nandos: 8

Times I got to eat fried okra in a hotel room with a view of the Acropolis: 1

Incredibly bad flus I currently have, which have knocked me down harder than I’ve been knocked down in years and that probably guarantee I’m forgetting some stuff for this list: 1

I’m gonna start this by saying it’s the absolute best time to get this sick. I’m trying to be thankful this isn’t happening to me during a quarter or at a conference.

Because I’m fucked up.

I was having an amazing time in Greece (more on that in a later post). It was my penultimate night (Saturday); I headed out for some seafood. But then, all of a sudden, I couldn’t eat the seafood. I hit a wall. I thought I was just tired from pushing myself so hard.

So I went home and put myself to bed. A few hours later, I woke up with a stuffy nose and a very sore throat.

In the morning, I went down for breakfast, to a lovely staff who knew how I took my tea. And then I couldn’t finish my breakfast or my tea.

So I spent the last day in Greece in my hotel room. I tried to have room service a couple of times, but it didn’t go well (who puts a whole bottle of mustard on a sandwich before sending it up)?

On Monday, I got up at 3 a.m. and took my sick ass to the airport. On the first of my three flights, my eardrum perforated, making the rest of the day even more awful. About 24 hours later, I was home.

I keep thinking that I’ll wake up feeling better. But everything just keeps trading off. The better the sinus congestion gets, the worse my throat does. The better my ear congestion gets, the more I get pink eye.

My headache is extraordinary–my TMJ is totally triggered by the congestion and the ear pain and having go breathe through my mouth. Right now, I feel like something’s trying to squash the whole right side of my face and neck. My back keeps reminding me that it hasn’t enjoyed six plane rides and a week in a strange bed.

Writing this blog is the most my exhaustion has let me do.

I’m not sure what I have. All the signs point to flu, except I don’t have a fever.

Just to top it all off, I’m having my period, although my lady parts doctor says on my birth control, they’re not periods, they’re just break-through bleeding (that happens just like periods do). I don’t have an acronym or a cute name for that.

And I’m too exhausted to figure one out.

I’m going to have to lie down after finishing this sentence.

Today, I go to Greece.

This has been a dream since childhood. Now, thanks to a perfectly timed conference on Myth, I finally get to.

We read some Greek Mythology together in elementary school.

I was hooked, reading more and more.

This is surprising, since the mythology was used against me. The boys started calling me Medusa. When they were playing this game, they had to freeze on the playground when they locked eyes with me.

I assumed that I was hideous. I remember consciously making the decision to embrace being smart. I won’t ever be loved for beauty, I thought. But someday, there will be a guy who will love me for being really intelligent.

I took Athena as my patron goddess, although I did eventually (and the details were really hazy here) want a romantic relationship.

I wore owls and prayed to my goddess before tests.

I was too young, of course, to understand that Medusa was actually a gorgeous rape victim.

Greece never lost its allure for me. I routinely found ways to find all Roman history, art, and social structure lacking in comparison. The Greek gods factored in heavily when I taught comparative mythology (Dionysus=Osiris=Jesus). My degree in Theatre–and Theatre itself–owes everything to the Greeks.

Strangely, I’ve felt really numb leading up to this trip. Like I’m in shock.

Like Zeus will see my hubris and send his lightning bolt to fuck up my plans.

Dear Athena, I want to have an amazing time in your patron city. Tell your dad to leave me alone. And if something awful happens there, don’t turn my hair into snakes. Roomba (aka Sisyphus IV) and the cats just wouldn’t know what to do.

My union posted this: “During bargaining this week at UCSB, the UC’s chief negotiator Nadine Fishel said this about Lecturer positions: ‘No one says it’s a gig you want to sign up for.’ WOW. You may ask, is that how little she respects our contribution and commitment to teaching and to our students??

“To her, we say: We consciously made the choice to become teaching faculty at UC. We teach 30%+ of the student credit hours across the UC. We are proud of our students and the work we do everyday. #WeTeachUC“

I’m offended, of course, at the lack of respect the UCs are showing to us. But it’s not surprising, since they’re trying to change our contract to remove the word “faculty,” to take away our offices, to make it impossible to get a merit raise (it’s only nearly impossible now), and to fire us without cause or warning.

But here’s why you should be offended, especially if you’re a student or if you care about students.

Lecturers teach 30%+ of the courses across the UC, and remember that we’re the only teachers whose primary job is teaching. The other classes are taught by research faculty and graduate students.

Now, some of those people are good teachers. And many of them are not. Some aren’t just bad at it; they hate teaching. Most have no training in how to do it. Some graduate students don’t speak English well enough to answer students’ questions. But it doesn’t matter. And once someone has tenure, they can fail their teacher evals, and nothing will happen to them.

We are hired and retained based on one thing–our ability to teach.

The UC representative just re-clarified the UC position–that those of us who prioritize teaching, that those of us who are required to prove we are “excellent” at it, are losers who have signed up for a job in which we shouldn’t even expect to be treated well or fairly.

The UC is admitting that we are treated poorly. They’re saying it’s a feature, not a bug.

Students, you should be insulted that they consider teaching you so beneath them that they actively oppress those of us dedicated to it.