Month: November 2020

There’s More Than One Way to Crack a Nut

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Jackson asked if we could get some nuts to use our nutcracker on. What nutcracker, I asked, perplexed. That one, he said, and pointed toward the mantle. Ohh, Jerimiah and I laughed, that’s not a real nutcracker, that’s a fake one. Why would there be fake ones Jackson wanted to know. Good question, I said. Then I explained that we have a silver, handheld nutcracker that does the job he wants to do and that the bearded man in buffalo check on the mantle is just for decoration. Then I went down a rabbit hole so big that I woke up yelling, Kurt Adler Nutcrackers!

Kurt Adler nutcrackers are the actual bees knees. I told my family this over breakfast. And if I had the money to blow on the one-of-a-kind Wizard of Oz one they sell at Macy’s then my day would be made.

My family looked at me with confusion in their faces and I had to agree, what the actual hell Missy?! But look at it though:

That’s one MFing cool nutcracker. Not like the ones I buy at Target on clearance two days after Christmas.

Anyway, if you are in the mood for a new nutcracker this year may I suggest you check out Kurt Adler Nutcrackers. You’ll find just what you are looking for! If you actually want to eat nuts though, well then, just throw a bag on the driveway and run them over with your car like my mom used to do. But wear a helmet, those suckers can fly.

Now let’s go crack some nuts!

M.

Christmastime is Here

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We decorated for Christmas, woo, what at time. Well, we partially decorated. It’s more like a decorating weekend around here. Not that we can’t do it all in one day, I just never know what I want to do, how I want to decorate, what new items I may need to incorporate, then we realize we need something because we misplaced an item or it broke (this year it was the star for the “big” tree) and Jerimiah has to run to Target, then there’s the whole Jackson gets bored and spends hours chasing the dogs around trying to put a Santa hat on them, and then it finally happens (only with Duke this year) and hilarity ensues. At that point we are hungry and take a break for dinner, then decide enough already and watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation to start the season off right. Yesterday was no exception. So enjoy the photos of the mantle, the family room tree, and the living room tree. That’s as far as we got!

Hope you’re feeling a bit of Christmas magic this week!

M.

Quiet Time

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I woke up yesterday from immense pain that my doctors have not been able to control just yet, but they are working on it. Anyway, when I wake up in that sort of pain I have to get out of bed and sort of start my day. It’s kind of like how when I was younger and my mom would go out in the mornings to warm up her old 1972 Dodge Cornett. We didn’t have a garage and this was back when it still snowed regularly in Kansas, and the car would have to run for a bit, get all of its bits and parts warmed, or we wouldn’t have heat, might not even make it to school and her to work without a jump start. My body is kind of like the old Dodge now and it isn’t terrible, but it also isn’t great.

So when I got up yesterday morning, it was so early the family was still asleep and I made coffee and took my morning ibuprofen, with food of course, then I sat down in the silence and started working on the family Christmas puzzle. We do a puzzle every Christmas season as a family. It sits on the kitchen island and whenever someone has some time they sit and work on it. This year it’s a Charlie Brown Christmas puzzle and the edges are almost done thanks to Jackson and me. Anyway, I got bored with that after the pain finally went away and so I sat to talk with Jerimiah who in the time it took me to get Snoopy’s feet together, had woke up, worked out, and taken a shower. He was sitting down at his desk when I meandered over to the dining room table to chat.

His office is right off the dining room so we usually sit, him at his desk, me at the dining room table with the laptop and get caught up on the morning news for a bit. Yesterday morning however I skipped the news for a coloring book that was on the table from the night before and I picked up the colored pencils and went to work on a geometrically-correct llama. Then suddenly I was transported back to fifth grade.

My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Coughran, would read to us every day after lunch. I think she called it “Quiet time.” She knew we needed a bit of a break, so we would filter into the classroom, she would saunter over and turn the lights off, and we would get coloring pages. She had a ton of them and she would let us choose whatever we wanted and we would take our crayons, or colored pencils, or markers and set to work on our pages, while the sun streamed into the windows, and she sat atop the old heater and read from whatever book we happened to be reading at that time. The Call of the Wild or Where the Sidewalk Ends, the books were as varied and interesting as her coloring pages.

I remember it plain as day now, because it was the first time I realized how relaxing it could be to just color. To sit in relative silence, only her quiet voice reading to us, and just focus on one thing, staying inside the lines. I didn’t have a quiet house. It wasn’t loud, it being just my mom and me (most of the time) but my mom always did have the television on and she was usually talking on the phone too. Sometimes I’d slip into my room, grab a coloring book, and color in silence when I needed a break. It didn’t occur to me until yesterday what a service Mrs. Coughran must have done for some of us, me sure, but even more so for the kids in my class that never got privacy or silence.

There were a lot of different kids in that classroom. A hodgepodge of Army kids and kids with dads in prison. Really smart kids, really funny kids. Kids who got to school way past our math class, kids who were dropped off to wait in the snow for 30 minutes, until the cafeteria opened up and they could grab their free breakfast. There were probably 25 of us in Mrs. Coughran’s class, and I don’t really remember anyone struggling, or not getting along, or being mean to each other, generally speaking.

As it sits today, there are two less of us in this world from Mrs. Coughran’s Fifth grade Class at Anthony Elementary School. One we lost to gunfire and one to a heart condition undetected by her doctors. They were both my friends. One was funny and silly, one smart and stoic. We all sat together in those quiet moments, as students, as kids, for that full year and we colored together in the quiet calm of Mrs. Coughran’s classroom, and while I wish we were a whole unit, and I sometimes wish for days that were as simple as those were, I am forever grateful for the time we had.

Hope you can find some calm in the storm today.

M.

Brown Friday

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I ate so much food yesterday that today will no doubt be a “Brown Friday” peppered with a bit of corn, and I think you know what that means so I won’t go any further. Listen, I hope you all had a great day with your immediate family and your immediate family only (unless you socially distanced in an outdoor setting) and I hope you plan on doing all the shopping you want to do today (online), and I hope that you decorate your Christmas tree while you drink hot cocoa and listen to Christmas music which is what we will be doing today, provided I make it out of the bathroom alive.

In short, I hope that the holidays have already touched your heart and that somehow, maybe overnight, you realized the importance of the CDC and listening to what they suggest. If not, well, there is literally no hope for you.

Love to the masses. I’ll see you on the decked-out-Christmas-tree other side.

M.

Giving Thanks to the Muskogee (Creek)Tribe

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Educate yourself: http://www.britannica.com/topic/Creek-people

The Muskogee Tribe lost the land that accounts for the state of Alabama and most of Georgia in The Creek Battle against the US in the 19th century. The people in that tribe, as well as other smaller tribes in the Southeast, were sent away in the The Trail of Tears to “Indian Territory” which we now call Oklahoma, and they lived happily ever after. Just kidding. As you probably know many of the Indigenous People in our country were forced into horrific conditions, had their land and their liberties taken from them, and then were forgotten about, murdered, exploited. If you don’t know that, stop what you are doing now and write your eight grade history teacher. Thank them for teaching you what they were told to, then ask them to kindly petition our American government to do more for Indigenous People who for too long have been marginalized and vilified by our government. Or, Google how you can help. Whatever makes you feel more productive today.

Perhaps you want to follow tags and groups and people like:

  • #DecolonizeMyself or @DecolonizeMyself
  • #DecolonizeYourBookshelf
  • @NativeAmericanArt
  • @NativeMovement
  • @ChiefLadyBird
  • @ShariceForCongress
  • @IndigenousRising
  • @RepDebHaaland
  • @AvisCharley
  • #LandBack
  • @IndeginiousClimateAction
  • @SeedingSovereignty

These are examples of artists, coalitions, politicians, and movements on Instagram (and other social media platforms) that can help educate you on the history, strength, and tenacity of the Indigenous People in our country, and what better day to do that than today, the day we give thanks for our great nation. The one we stole from these people and their ancestors.

As we celebrate as a family today, we will be celebrating with the Muskogee Tribe in mind, as well as the Plains People because we are partial to the Great Plains of Kansas as well. We will be discussing their history, the food they eat, ways we can help them now. We will be teaching Jackson the real history of these people, which is our history, our country’s history, and like the rest of our history there are some horrific things to discuss, but there is also so much to be thankful for, starting with the people who lived here before us.

We hope you have a good day of thanks and we hope you remember and honor the people who made it possible.

Oh, and wear a fucking mask. But don’t wear feathers, and I don’t believe I have to say this in this day and age, but I have seen it with my own eyes so I do have to say it: DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT DRESS YOUR CHILD UP LIKE A NATIVE AMERICAN.

That is all, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

M.

Good Ombre

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I don’t make pies. I don’t bake. It’s not something I enjoy. I never have and quarantine has not helped me with that. I didn’t start a sourdough roll or learn how to expertly frost sugar cookies to look like Kamala Harris, though I do wish I had done that one. But I did google “What is the easiest pie to make when your husband asks if you want to make homemade pies for Thanksgiving” and this Apple Ombre pie popped up so I decided to try it.

All you do is buy varying shades of apples, thinly slice them, layer them in a pie crust (you can make your own if you’re that kinda person) then sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the top and bake it low and slow. Like for real, that’s it. I bought a pie crust because I’m easy and cheap, yes I mean that, and took a painstaking amount of time picking out apples the right shade of green, yellow, pink, and red, like too much time. Like, I spent too much time inside a Kroger during a pandemic picking out apples.

I used the largest jar of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cinnadust I could find at Sam’s Club, then I baked that beast. I ended up making two of them because they were so easy to make and we legit ate one right after I pulled it out of the oven with a dollop of vanilla ice cream on top. So yeah, good stuff, y’all.

So if you Google “Ombre Apple Pie” the picture you get will not look like mine because this was my first time, but I will make this pie regularly now, it’s that easy and delicious, and so I hope to get better, but for now look at this gloriousness.

Yum. That is all.

Also, I decided to do some more baking since I had all the shit out and I made my first cherry pie ever, while the boys worked on almond silk and pecan pies. Then I threw in some pumpkin bread before we called it a night. Yes, I did this all for the three of us a to eat dinner together on Thursday. I’m a mess, but at least I’ll be all carbed up that day!

Happy Pre-turkey Day!

M.

Hello, Karen?

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We’ve been phone banking for the Democrats of DeKalb. We live in DeKalb County Georgia. You’ve probably heard of us on the news lately, and hopefully they are pronouncing it correctly, it’s “Duh-Cab.” Anywho, we have over 500,000 registered voters in our county, but our population is about 800,000, so as you can see we have some work to day. DeKalb Democrats tries to get people registered to vote, it doesn’t matter how you register, which party you affiliate with. They also do phone banking to make sure people know they can vote in Georgia both in-person early (starting three weeks before Election Day) and also vote by mail, anyone can, you don’t know a “reason.”

That should probably explain all you need to know about how the state was flipped this year, considering you already know about Stacey Abrams and if you don’t then go ahead and Google her, or maybe read this.

Anyway, we have been phone banking and we let Jackson do it too. He actually really liked it. Might be illegal, might just be morally wrong, but he had a great time calling people and telling them how they can request an absentee ballot, he is a civically engaged kid, what a great way for him to learn about the voting process too!

So the other day while we were all phone banking, well Jackson and Jerimiah were, I did it one day then decided it was not for me (I am writing and sending postcards to voters instead) Jackson was getting some really lovely people on the phone, older ladies are his sweet spot of course, and they were chatting away with him, telling him all about their grandkids and what not. He ate it up, and can tell you all about Debra and her absentee ballot that she had to do because she’s been living in California with her grandkids for the last six months to ride out the pandemic. Anyway, so Jerimiah gets this really nasty lady on the phone and then we did something bad.

Jerimiah is chatting away and then we hear him get quiet and he’s all, “Umm, okay. Not sure what to do about that.” He called this woman, let’s call her “Theresa.” He called Theresa and said, “Hi is this Theresa?” And the white woman on the other end of the line decided to lose her shit on him about calling her. She said he had the wrong number, which is all she needed to say, she didn’t even know who he was or what organization he was with, she just flipped. Then said she was calling the cops, filing a police report, the whole nine yards. Jerimiah just politely hung up and then sat there in stunned silence for a moment before he told us what happened. He didn’t know what to do. Should he alert someone? Is there a no-call list? We shrugged. So he just marked her as “Wrong Number” in the system and hoped no one else would call her. Except…

Well I did call her. I asked for her number and used my Google phone number to ring her up. She answered and sounded like she was driving. She seemed to be a young, maybe 30s white woman with an attitude from hell, like I expected. So this time I said, “Hi, is Karen home?” And she was like, “Oh my God, you have the wrong number.” And I said, “So you are not Karen?” And she said, “Right.” And I said, “Are you sure you are not a Karen?” and we sat for a moment in silence before she hung up on me, and I gotta say, I did feel vindicated. Childish and immature too, but mostly vindicated.

I know, Michelle, I should have went high, but I just couldn’t. I’m all out of patience for people like that, and though y’all know I don’t prescribe to the whole “Karens are evil” thing, simply because I know some really nice Karens and I don’t think it’s fair, it is a social construct that does exist and I did exploit it and for that I am sorry. To all the other Karens, not that bitch.

Be safe and well, y’all.

M.

Fuck the Pilgrims

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We wanted to enjoy a nice “Fuck the Pilgrims” Thanksgiving this year, then our family decided they wanted to come here for the holiday, so we scrapped that idea and went all in with a regular old Thanksgiving. Then we decided that Covid has no chill and it was not a good idea to have a house full of guests this holiday, and probably any holiday until this shit is under control, so now we are back to a “Fuck the Pilgrims” Thanksgiving.

We aren’t really sure what a “Fuck the Pilgrims” Thanksgiving looks like, maybe we get pilgrim statues and hang them from their necks over the fireplace? Too gruesome? Or maybe we make a list of all the lands the pilgrims stole from the Indigenous People, and we donate five dollars for each land we come up with? Too expensive? Okay, maybe we just learn about the lands near us that were stolen from the Indigenous People, read about small box blankets and what not, and give thanks that the Native Americans are as resilient as they are? Perfect.

The point is Thanksgiving, like Christmas, is just an excuse for us to be with family, enjoy each other’s company, and eat a ton of good food. We don’t prescribe to the whole “Thank you” toward those first settlers who were monsters, and no, we aren’t grateful for them. I mean, I could be living in London right now, speaking with a British accent and going on about my business and not being led by one Donald Trump, so ehh.

Sure, I’m happy to be in America (sometimes) but I don’t really care either way because the truth of the matter is, you make the most of wherever you are, and that’s that. So yeah, fuck the pilgrims and their blooding and plundering, they didn’t do me any bloody favors.

Happy Fuck the Pilgrims Week, y’all.

M.

Bad News Bears

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You wanna hear some depressing shit? I know you don’t, but it’s Sunday and I don’t have a lot going on so imma tell you anyway. Last week someone, somewhere in my sphere of articles, books, texts, headlines, podcasts, television, or social media said something like this: “Why would we want things back to normal? Normal sucked. Remember when there were mass shooting like everyday?! Geez.”

That got me thinking, were there a ton of mass shootings this year? Were there more than last year? Were they just televised less because we have so much going on? The answers: Yes, yes, and yes. See, I told you, depressing shit on a Sunday.

According to the Ancient Scrolls of Wiki, the mass shootings are still happening, but less in schools and more in like, the open. But the numbers are roughly the same from 2020 as they were in 2019.

I had facts and figures from government sources to share with you, but I accidentally deleted them when I was cleaning out my camera roll, then I realized you’re all adults, mainly, certainly tech savvy enough to find it out on your own, so go do that. Or don’t. Cause again, it’s depressing as shit.

On a side note, I just got published again and this time the topic is mass shootings in school and I think that is a good thing. I’ll let you know when it comes out, until then remember:

Mass shooting, still here.

Hmpf.

M.

Georgia, Please Vote

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The Georgia Run-off Election for two senate seats and a public commissioner seat is on January 5th. The candidates are that bitch Kelly Loeffler, ugh, against Rev. Raphael Warnock in one race, and a piece-of-shit-Gov.-Brian-Kemp-ass-licker David Purdue against Jon Ossoff.

It’s important to note that Kelly Loeffler was not voted into her current seat, she was placed there by that ass-hat Gov. Brian Kemp. It’s also important to know that both have come out in support of Trump’s outrageous lies about election fraud, which makes sense considering they both lost in the election.

To be clear, there is a state law in Georgia that requires candidates (other than the ones in the Presidential race) to receive 50% + 1 of the votes in order to win. None of the candidates in the two senate races were able to do that in the general election, though Purdue and Ossoff were the closest because it was only the two of them.

The other race had too many names to count. Several Republicans and several Democrats and maybe Little Wayne, who can remember. Anyway, even with those odds Reverend Raphael Warnock, the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church (MLK’s church) won the most votes with 30-some percent of the vote. Warnock even beat that bitch Kelly Loeffler. (By the way I keep trying to make her name lowercase because she’s that much of a bitch, but it autocorrects it. Did I mention she is friends with that crazy QAnon lady?)

So what can you do? Well if you live in Georgia please vote! You can vote absentee, anyone can, Jerimiah and I requested our ballots last week. You can also vote early in-person at any precinct, starting three weeks before the election with the exception of Christmas Day, or you can vote in-person on Election Day. If you wait until Election Day to vote, you have to vote at your assigned precinct.

If you do not live in Georgia you can help too! Jerimiah and I have been phone banking this week, which is really easy to do! We have been phone banking with an organization we are apart of, the DeKalb Democrats, which is our county’s Democratic group, but several groups are doing it. You can Google it and it will take you to a group to help out.

You can also send money to either Ossoff or Warnock, you can purchase items from their website, we have a Warnock shirt and a bad-ass Ossoff shirts that says, “Vote your Ossoff!”

So, why would you want to help? As you can see in the above, these two seats would swing the senate into a 50-50 tie (the two Independents vote with Dems, hello Bernie!) for control and guess who the tie-breaker is in the event it comes down to one? The Madam Vice-President!

With control of the White House, Congress, and the Senate, Biden can certainly get some good things done in the first two years, at least. So this is a very important election. It also is probably why you are super tired of reading and hearing about this great state of ours when you turn your tv on or open your favorite news source, but y’all, this is why it’s so important.

I implore you to help us out if you can, if you have the means, if you have the time. If you live in Georgia PLEASE vote! Vote like you did in for the General Election, vote like your life depends on it, because it does.

Be safe and sane, y’all.

M.

It’s Friday

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I’ve been waiting all week for it to be Friday! All. Week. Why? Because I’m officially finished with my first semester of my MFA program and I’m not gonna lie, it feels better than I thought it would. Like way better. This was a tough semester, y’all, in a tough year, with some tough moments, and I don’t just mean the political climate, or the pandemic, but I’ve had one of the toughest years in the last decade mentally and emotionally and physically too and I am so looking forward for reasons to celebrate. Today, I have one.

Woohoo! School’s out for one month!

Of course I’m reading for next semester already. And I’m reading for a literature contest, and I’m trying to learn to read for fun again, and I’ll be working on revisions from work I did this semester and I’ll be trying to come up with ideas for all my fictions classes next semester, but still, you know, no deadlines for a month! Woohoo!

Oh, and the holidays at home with my people, just Jerimiah and Jackson and the dogs and me. This pandemic has pulled us all so close that I’m afraid what will happen when life goes back to normal. But, I can’t worry about that today. Today is for celebrating! And maybe eating pizza and ice cream, and certainly watching some old episodes of “The Gilmore Girls” or maybe a sad-ass crime documentary, I don’t know! There are so many possibilities!

Whatever you are doing today, do it with a little pep in your step, y’all because as Rebecca Black would say, “It’s Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday!”

M.

Dam Yam Hypothesis

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We cancelled our Thanksgiving plans this year, more on that at a later time, but instead of having a houseful, it will just be the three of us (five of us if we count the dogs, some days I do, some days when I think I might kill one of them, I don’t). Still, even though there will only be three, maybe five, of us eating yams we bought the biggest can that Sam’s Club has. Why? They are yams, damn it.

The point of this is that the can of Bruce’s Yams is now sitting on our kitchen counter, because where does one fit a nine-pound can of yams? And Jackson has taken a liking to showing whomever he Facetimes with, his grandfather, his friends, his school study group, the can of yams sitting on our counter, while saying, “Look how crazy my parents are!”

Yesterday another sixth-grader yelled, “Oh my goodness, my parents have a six-pound can of strawberries on our counter!” And much to my hilarity I was sufficiently absolved of my yam guilt as Jackson said to his father, “Daddy, you and mommy are not the only crazy parents! Andrew’s parents have a six-pound can of strawberries!”

And just like that the world righted itself.

But by this time the question of how many yams are in the can had presented itself, leaving Jackson with a long division problem that he didn’t want to do, but one that Jerimiah made him do. Turns out, there are approximately 11 yams in the can. At least according to the “Dam Yam Hypothesis.”

Stay strong parents! And get those yams!

M.

Flannery O’Connor

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So I have this term paper due on Flannery O’Connor and her collection of stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories and if you don’t already know this, then you haven’t been paying attention. I’ve been complaining about Flannery O’Connor since the moment I was assigned her back in August, even though it was my own doing, like, I picked her from a list of authors and books, authors and books I would gladly trade with a classmate right now because I swear to all the holy peafowl the name Flannery O’Connor is getting on my last fucking nerve at this point.

Whew. Okay, deep breathes.

My paper is due…ummm… yesterday? Today? Friday? Our professor has moved the due date because she is gracious and kind and because we are all, “Uhhh, umm, about the final paper…” Our professor is cool. I like her. I hate Flannery O’Connor at this point.

Lately I’ve been waking up arguing with myself. I’ll be coming out of that dreamlike trance one is in upon their dog licking their face first thing in the morning and I’ll be thinking, “Flannery O’Connor is a raving racist.” Then my dog will lick my face more, and I’ll be all, “No, Flannery O’Connor was commenting on racism,” then more licks and then, “Flannery O’Connor was just a victim of her time.” Then finally I’ll yell, “Stop licking my face, God damn it, Flannery! Err, Winnie!” And I’ll begrudgingly start my day.

Life is weird.

Anyway, I better go work on this damn paper. Have a pleasant, Flannery O’Connor-less rest of your day, assholes.

M.

Thoughts…

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I’m sitting in the parking lot of the dentist’s office. I’ll spare you the details of this visit, but just know it’s the last one! Woohoo! Well, you know except for my yearly cleaning and check-up but I don’t want to talk about that today. Today here’s a list of things I’m thinking about while I sit in my car at the dentist office. It’s like a flashback to “Thoughts in the Car Line” that I used to write back when I sat in a car line to pick Jackson up from school. The last time I did that was in the middle of fourth grade, so it’s been awhile, but we all deserve this. Enjoy!

Thoughts in the Dentist’s Parking Lot

  • Why?
  • Where is Waldo? Like for real, Southern Cali?
  • Is cereal soup?
  • Dolly Parton donated all that money to Vanderbilt to come up with a vaccine so shouldn’t we name it “The Jolene Vaccine”?
  • Do people get paid to come up with conspiracy theories? If so, how do I get a job doing that?
  • Is cereal a soup like chili is a soup?
  • My first conspiracy theory would deal with Waldo and where he is. Like, “News Flash: Waldo, the beloved children’s book character from the ‘Where’s Waldo’ series, was spotted in an alley behind the Kum ‘n’ Go smoking meth from a shared pipe with Pippi Longstocking. When approached Waldo and Longstocking told reporters that they were in fact the ones responsible for climate change, having sailed the high seas all over the world putting small amounts of calcium chloride into the water. When told that calcium chloride is just salt and the water already has salt in it, they fled on foot while screaming, ‘We shot JFK!’ Neither Waldo’s mother, nor Longstocking’s father could be reached for comment.”
  • If people would read news headlines as suspiciously and critically as they do on April Fool’s day, we wouldn’t be in this “Fake News” mess.
  • If I could morph two animals into one animal to make a super animal it would be a puma and an elephant.
  • Fuck, Marry, Kill: Donald Trump Sr., Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump (Super easy: Kill: DJT, Fuck: Little Donny, Marry: Ivanka)
  • What is the internet?
  • I think there are beings on other planets in other solar systems, but I also think they watch us on CNN and are like, “Nah dog, let’s not make contact just yet.”
  • Gonna teach the dogs to read this week.
  • “Don’t kid yourself” is a great slogan for birth control pills.
  • Children’s book idea: “Good’ay Roo” about an Outback kangaroo named Roo who goes around punching bowls of mush and old ladies, much better version of “Goodnight Moon” which is just full of bowls of mush and old ladies.

That’s all. Wear a mask. Don’t travel for Thanksgiving (or go to relatives’ houses), wash your hands, if you live in Georgia make a plan to vote in the run-offs, and FUCK THE PILGRIMS! Have a great week!

M.

Back at It Like a…

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You know the rest. Well, if you listen to Run the Jewels you know the rest. And if you don’t listen to Run the Jewels, why not? Killer Mike scare you? You need some culture in your life, brah. Anywhatsit, it’s Monday. And I can’t for the life of me figure out my school schedule. I think I have only two days of classes left this semester, then finals next week. But since there are no finals in grad school, it just means I have to turn in about 489 pages of typed, double-spaced, original thoughts and that’s just as scary as a final.

This semester has been good, thanks for asking. In fact, when I first applied to a low-residency program I was a little nervous, though it fit best with my life right now, I was concerned about how this might work. Now that most colleges are sorta virtual now, it’s been nice to be at a school that has been doing this for years and they didn’t even bat an eye. Of course I didn’t get to actually go to Columbus, Mississippi this semester, which was a bummer especially because I have friends I wanted to finally meet in person, but there’s always next year, and probably knowing my grad school track record, there’s always the year after that too…

We did have a residency, which was actually the virtual Eudora Welty Symposium, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but trust, it was a lot. A lot of reading (four novels, one memoir, and several books of poetry) in preparation. Then there was the class which was great, albeit on Zoom, then there was three days of the Symposium, also on Zoom, while talking to people who have done the real thing (and it sounded so fun) and well, it was a bit depressing. But the thing is, I felt even more connected to those people when we were done. I told Jerimiah it was like going through boot camp and making it out the other side. You feel good about yourself, you have this group of people who know what you went through, and more importantly you are much more physically fit. That last part is a lie, obviously.

Aside from residency this has been a good semester. I worked on the staff of Ponder Review, which is our lit magazine (it goes to print next week!) and I learned a ton there. I took a Southern Fiction class that gave me nightmares, and I took both a workshop and a form class for creative nonfiction, and so far I have had one piece published from my workshop. I’m also judging a competition with CLMP over the holidays which will allow me to gain even more experience and, you know, add to my CV. So I think the semester went well, provided I can get this Flannery O’Connor research paper out on time. Flannery, I swear to God, you are getting on my last working nerve…

So sure, there are a couple of days left and I’m possibly hanging on by a loose thread, but as you can see it is a successful thread. I think. Right? Sure.

Be safe, y’all! Get those term paper in on time!

M.