They are killing dairy cows now because there’s no money anymore in milk. 

I don’t even know what to do with that.  Raise the price of the stupid milk!  Are we going to stop buying milk?  We will, of course, when they’ve killed all the cows.  It’s too much, some days, the news.  Still.  On Facebook I said I’d Hug a Journalist, it’s Hug a Journalist day.  Trigger Treat, I’d cash in on this if I were you.

It’s also President’s Day, I’ve forgotten the whole spirit of the thing.  What am I supposed to do today, I honestly don’t remember?  Are we sad for dead Presidents, happy for living ones, am I supposed to hug one today, is my flag supposed to go up or down?  Will someone tell me please, I’d like to act appropriately.  I know that Maureen Dowd scolded our current President for acting in a condescending fashion to his Biden, and I have to agree.  Manners, BO, manners.  Joe’s put in the time, it’s why you picked him, he’s paid his dues.  You do not look all that cool when you belittle him.

I made broccoli-cheese soup yesterday, you can have some.  Today we’re making ricotta cheese — from endangered milk.  Then there’s a recipe for ricotta gnocchi I might try, we’ll see how long I sustain ambition. 

The line at the top is from this Bellow essay.  I’ll be boring you until the cows come home and get slaughtered because their milk’s gotten cheap, with Bellow.

There isn’t coffee, the heat’s too low and I’m looking for things I can’t find. 

And I’m gloomy.  There’s a knot in my stomach, it’s typical though, I’m reading up.  As long as I stay typical I think I’ll be fine.  And yesterday what I did, when the knot came and made me sad was I watched Joaquin Phoenix.  If you haven’t yet, you must. 

It’s not mean, it’s not schadenfreude (pronounce that five times fast) because it’s Letterman, really, you watch.  Or maybe it is schadenfreude, who cares, it’s beautiful either way.  E. and I gave thanks to it yesterday more than once.  It’s more delightful than bubble gum and popcorn.

A plane crash in the morning is a bad thing to wake up to.  Unless, of course, you’re in the news biz.  Scruffy is the cutest little pup ever, close-sitting and all.  I’ll give him that today.

Hasta tomorrow.

I’m tired and I’m drinking tea and The Atlantic is here and it’s thinner.  Papers, magazines, everything thinner. 

James Parker wonders if Guitar Hero can save Rock.  What do you think, can it?

I’m tired, I might have said that.  I’d like to sleep somewhere really plush for three days. 

I got work done today, pat my back for that.  I’m tired, though.  And just finished my tea. 

See you on the tree branch.  That’s not an expression, I don’t think, but I just made it one.

I have a dead plant hanging up outside.  Do dead plants survive?  I’m hoping it blooms big in the spring, how dead is dead anyway?  For a plant.

A lot of things are dead, but as I said … there’s the Spring. 

The mail’s here already, it’s early.  And it’s Wednesday so I’ve no drive to get it.  On Thursday there’s The New Yorker, plus sometimes Review of Books.   Wednesdays, though, are catalogs and credit cards.

I took care of soccer, in case you were wondering.  I called the coach, because I know her, because I have a relationship with all of the people in my children’s lives, I do that because it’s part of my job, because I’m a mother.  So where some people constantly question my ability as a mother, rather than provide encouragement and support – I’ll have you for the record know that I’m very good at it.  I might leave drawers open, but I nurture my children, and I listen and I care and I’m empathetic and I know every last detail about their lives.  I’m dialed in.  I am not mechanical with my children, I’m very real. 

In the end, I think that counts as much as socks perfectly folded. 

There is crazy in my life and it’s not mine and I know it’s not mine and I have to let it go.  There were times when I thought I could work with it, and then times, like now, when I think I cannot.   Sometimes the dysfunction hits a wall and you have to quietly let it out the door. 

Blue, I see blue today.  My favorite color, you know, is blue. 

Well, I just received my copy of Jill Krementz’ The Writer’s Desk and what it’s confirmed is that our minds are all disordered and oftentimes seized in hostile takeover.  Also, it seems, we all need a drink.

Jill Krementz was married to the late great Kurt Vonnegut, and of course you know the story about how my mother was talking to Kurt and, unrelated, A. said, “Look the guy from Back to School!”

I’m not fact-checking the movie name, I’m almost sure it’s that but not emtirely.  Still, there we were at the Council of Foreign Relations, in the old oak-paneled room and my mother was talking to Bill Whitworth and then to Kurt and Jill while I stared, gawking, and now I have Jill’s book.

I’ve been wanting this book for some time but never remembered to order it.  Updike gave the forward, and then it’s a book of Jill’s photos — photos of writers where they work, and a paragraph or two on what they do there. 

Because I’m on the Bellow kick, here’s what Bellow in ’95 had to say — he’s working at a tall uncluttered desk, by the way, standing up:

“I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos.  A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm.  I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.”

Yeah, I wasn’t crazy about his either, I’m just starting there …

I’m hungry.  I wasn’t, but now I am, and there’s only a banana which would be fine if I were having a banana day but I’m not, I want yogurt. 

That might very well be all I have to say, I’m short on words.  There’s a lot to do, and I just want to sleep.  I want to sleep for three days, I was going to do it here but I forgot, and now lots to do.

I’m wearing a black sweater today.  That’s how you’ll know it’s me.  If you see me in my black sweater, wave.  I’ll wave back.

And, well, that’s it.  Yogurt, a sweater, lack of sleep.  I’ll aim higher tomorrow. 

M. will be on Facebook, kids.  It’s now just a matter of days.  I’ve picked out a very special Octopus to throw on his first day there. 

Someone at the State of Oregon enjoys reading my blog.  I’m flattered.  Someone sitting at a computer with an IP address registered to the State, enjoys reading my blog quite a bit.  Searching, too, for alphabet letters.  R’s and A’s, for instance.

Ironic, isn’t it?  That my tax money is paying for my State of Oregon fan to read my blog.  Nevermind the other things of mine she helped herself to.  Yes, ironic.   

I have entirely too many applications running — six, if you must know, instances of Explorer alone and that’s only because I closed two.  Oh, don’t look at me like that, you’ve got your own things that you do, I know it.  Don’t you? 

Some days I think I’m the only one on earth flawed.  Do you have days like that?  I think I’m the only one not pretty enough, not thin enough, not nice enough, not fun enough. 

E. is reading Faulkner and I am reading Bellow, reading Bellow — and slowly at that — is the only thing I’ve been able to do for some time.  Oh, well, you know, besides the basics –showering and flossing, feeding the kids and dog, etc.  Though I’m not doing the last two right now, I’m in a hotel.

This is all temporary.

So, again:  E. is reading Faulkner, me Bellow and I have lunch in an hour or so with G.  It’s pizza today, which for some reason sounds awful.  I’ll pick up soup perhaps on the way.  G. will make me go to recess after, which means I’ll get roped into the swings.  If you go to the swings at lunch you end up pushing the whole damn school.  Some of the kids are heavy, that’s all I’m saying.  Sometimes recess feels very long.

It’s gray outside, I wish it were blue.  Blue, I haven’t told you this, is the color I prefer. 

I’m in a hotel and everything’s great about the room save the outlets.  Can you believe this?  It’s never happened before.  Lousy outlets.  They’re loose.  How can outlets be loose, don’t they make them all the same?  But they are, they’re loose, the plug keeps falling out.  And before that I was congratulating myself on how well it all was, but now the outlets.

I was in need of something, desperately, and I didn’t know what it was but it was this.  A room of my own.  Without reminders or baggage or someone telling me I’m not the same woman he married.  A quaint observation, by the way, don’t you think?  Is any of us the same after ten years and two kids and the usual knocks and worries and fleeting moments of bliss that fill our time? 

No.

So my hotel room doesn’t talk, it reminds me of nothing, there was noise I had to escape, and except for the outlets, I might find peace here.  However small.

Noise, yes, there’s been too much noise, too much buzzing in my head.  Here’s one that kills me, though if it hadn’t happened I’d fixate on something else.  My husband introduced his girlfriend — Racquel Dixon, a Craigslist trolling whore — to my mother-in-law, his mother, when he took her with him to New York in September. 

It’s going poorly, me getting over that.  I wonder if his girlfriend liked them, my in-laws — she got to meet most of them if not all.  Of course she liked them, they’re charming.  What’s not to like?  I’m sure my father-in-law kissed her cheek, I’m sure H. told her one or two of her wonderful stories.  H. has a brilliant sense of humor, I wonder if Racquel enjoyed it. 

I wonder if she (Racquel, the girlfriend) enjoyed screwing my husband in his mother’s apartment, in his mother’s bed.  Probably.  It’s a great apartment.  The location is fantastic, and I’m sure they screwed after attending a show of some sort, or a club.  They were probably screwing all the times that I called and A. didn’t answer.  I bet they looked at the phone and laughed.  Whee, what fun! 

And on top of it, no kids.  When A. and I stay at the apartment we usually have kids, our kids, the kids we had after we married.  But this time, what luck, A. and Racquel got good uninterrupted screwing time, completely alone.  

Bravo R. and A.  You pulled it off, you crazy loons.   And now, R. and I have both had sex with the same man in the same bed, in New York.  Talk about a small world.   Six degrees of women who’ve fucked A.  (In his mother’s bed.)

I made it all happen, too.  I deserve applause in this.  I encouraged A. to go, I watched the kids so he could do it.  I watched the kids so that my husband could screw his girlfriend in his mother’s apartment, in his mother’s bed.  I’m a pretty damn good catch, don’t you think?   

But fine, that’s all fine, it’s happened.  Kudos to Racquel Dixon for answering a sex ad.  Kudos to Anthony for placing one.  We’re all big, no one gets hurt, it’s just sex and lies for two years for God’s sake, right?  I mean we’re all grown-ups.  Nobody died. 

But the outlets, that’s a problem.  My plug won’t stay in the outlet.  I might have to insist on changing rooms.  You don’t think, do you, that they’re like this on all four floors? 

(I’m in a small-town hotel.  Four floors means I’m at the fancy one.)

The line, you may have guessed, is Bellow again.  Humboldt’s Gift. 

There are breasts in this photo and you’re welcome to look at them, but it’s not why I’m giving it to you.  It’s the outfit on Mickey, that’s what I want you to see.   Take note.

[Mickey Rourke]