Don't Bother

Somehow Sideways Stories from Wayside School got knocked into the bathtub tonight, although how it even got into the bathroom is a mystery. This event is a fair synecdoche for how my life feels at the moment: hectic, illogical, all elbows, and damp. I have 8 of 11 grad school applications submitted, 22 recommendation letters outstanding, 5 days of work until a Mexico vacation, 3 snot-filled persons in my house, 17 holiday gifts to buy and/or mail, 2 cars that require inspections, 10 place settings worth of dishes waiting to be washed*, 8 books that I want to read on vacation but can't bring myself to purchase on the Kindle because I'm more of a checker-out than a buyer by temperament, 100 songs to put on the iPod for my husband becaue if I don't this will be the 2nd year in a row that I failed to really give him a Chanukah present, and 0 items packed.

Despite, or perhaps because of, this above-listed numerical impossibilities, I spent the 45 minutes I had free today during Nora's nap skimming The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. My intention was to read it fo reals, but the author, Aimee Bender, did me a huge favor by overwriting up some unfocused Los Angeles magical realism so that I wouldn't have that time commitment, at least.

*I mentioned to one of my students, in passing, that I don't always get to the dishes after dinner. She gave me a squinty look, so I said "Don't judge me." Her instantataneous response: "Too late."