Fall

I don't have office hours on Friday, so I grabbed a few books from my office and left campus around 12:40 after my 101 class. There was only one problem: the EMA Moveable Feast (discussion of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover) was at 5 p at Linda Marie's house on 8th street downtown. To kill time, I decided to go by Walmart to buy deodorant and other toiletries; however, after I surveyed the parking lot-- strewn grocery carts, families of 10 children, and the like-- I passed Walmart and went into the Goodwill instead, where I scavenged the racks and found two amazingly cheap items: raspberry cotton blazer (from American Eagle!) and a BCBG khaki-colored skirt that falls past my knees (a big deal when standing in front of classroom of girls and boys). Hooray for cheap (dollar-wise) clothing!

But, the problem still remained: 3.5 hours until the Moveable Feast. So I called my loving boyfriend and discovered that he was on his way to Wendy's. Nothing says "I love you" like devouring deep-fried, crispy golden fries and diabetes-causing Mountain Dew together while the molecules in my body multiply, divide, and rearrange to generously cushion my derriere. A few weeks ago, I invented the "chicken nugget shot" for those of us germ-phobes that will not touch food after shopping for hours (esp. in a used clothing store): lick the sauce, tilt the nugget carton back, and "shoot" the nugget into your mouth. I'm a genius. But I ate my nuggets in relative normalness this time.

The hours until 5 pm closed in; I drove to Memorial Park (Brett had to go to work), parallel parked, and proceeded to read Janet Holmes's F2F for class on Monday. Just imagine: yellow leaves falling outside, the crisp autumn air seeping through the cracks in my doors, blue skies, and seventeen fat squirrels (yes, I counted seventeen!) frolicking around the park. . . as E careens through reflective ponds, attics, and hell. As I watched the corpulent squirrels (seriously, tuck and roll on the furry creatures!) dance and squeak and dig up random brown objects which they then jammed into their mouths, a flashback of Utah's Hogle Zoo prairie dogs entered my mind:


(Don't worry, little one, I know how you feel.)

The EMA Moveable Feast reminds me of how lucky (and perhaps stupid) I am to care enough about my dreams to forego "making bank"-- as one of my students puts it-- to sit around a table at Linda Marie's house, eat cranberry and apple muffins, and drink home-made grape juice while talking about an incredibly seedy and, frankly, disgusting novel. That's OK; I was in good company.

I hope you're well, doing something you love too.