How are you?  You look fabulous.  I love what you’ve done with your hair.

So….yeah….

So there it is.  The full extent of my spring break shenanigans:  two minutes on the blog all hopped up on a heavily-sugared cup of coffee.  Sorry I’m so, just, all disheveled and shit, I just, if I’d known you were coming by, I might have bathed today (she attempts to re-tie her bathrobe and fluff her hair).  Ahem.  What?  No, I didn’t make any bacon today.

ANYHOO.

There’s not much to report except a growing sense of disbelief.  How can we be halfway through spring semester?  How CAN I be almost done with my first year of school?  How, god, HOW???

If you continue to drop your right hand like that when you throw your jab, you will continue to eat left hooks.  You look like you enjoy eating a lot, but we’re just sayin’.  Maybe you could keep that right up there and remember to slip and roll and put some punches together so we don’t end up looking like Mickey Rourke in a dress.

Love and kisses,

Your Face

But it’s so good.  School is so good.  I am learning things (I think).  About writing (I think) and about life (pretty sure).  For instance, I have learned:

1.  Just because you buy a parking pass for the student lots does not mean that you will actually have parking when you need it.  What?  Parking?  (deprecating laughter like a cascade of golf claps) No, no, no.  Silly girl.  Trix are for kids.  Parking is for faculty and important alumni who give us money.  Not you.
2. That sometimes what I think of my writing and what my teachers think of my writing differs greatly…in a good way.  Whoa.  Didn’t see that coming.
3. The cafe near my building on campus has bacon egg wrap thingies which are YUM.
4. David Mamet has a low forehead.  (more on this later)
5. Once again:  instincts are never wrong and they are never riled up for no reason.  Listen to them.  They know what’s what.

I’m outtie.  Hope all you faithful one or two are doing well out in the big bad world.

Also, first day of spring semester.  A rather auspicious day for beginning anything, I would think.

HOORAY!  HOORAY!  HOORAY!  Go get some Barack and Michelle!

Um.  Can you tell I haven’t been getting out much?  Not yet sure if it’s good or bad, the level of solitude I’ve allowed to extend through this winter break from school.  There always seems to be a point when my alone-ness creeps toward  self-indulgence, and then making the effort to see people, even people I really like, becomes a disturbance.  I have human contact inertia:  if I’m alone, it’s easiest to stay alone.   Is that bad?

2.  I hate finding a big ol’ ‘NO’ in my email inbox on a Monday,  Monday NOes are like a little stumpy toothless man crouched in the corner, shaking his jowls at me and laughing scornfully.  Pig fucker.  

3.  Halfway through my oatmeal and it hits me:  that play I wrote last fall, and rewrote, and rewrote some more?  That play is a pile of poo with a heart of gold.  That is to say, there’s something there, but it ain’t showing yet because it’s buried about a mile deep in yippy-yappy bullshit.  AGGGHHHH.

4.  Has Chris Matthews gone totally fucknut crazy?  I always thought of him as an irascible uncle, amateur historian, a bit funky-smelling but well-meaning and smart in his way, the kind that would grab you by the shirt collar at Thanksgiving and ask you things like “What did Neville Chamberlain do in 1938?  What did he DO??” – but now.  Whoa.  Just — okay listen, I really don’t want to think about Chuck Todd’s virginity – or lack of, or loss of – in any way at all, no way, no how.  Stop, Uncle Chris.  Stop.  Here – have another Guinness.

5.  I don’t want to dig through the poo.  (see #3)

6.  I wonder if it’s possible that I will ever sit down to work without having to spend at least 45 minutes hypnotizing my brain so that it is not consumed with the thought that a skid mark could write more and better plays than I.  

I will now go and attempt to calm my brain with a loofah and some crunchy organic peanut butter.  Thank you.

I confess I felt a giant EWWW, which is somewhat hypocritical, for I do not scruple to cook me up a pig loin.  But the loins are so much less…expressive. They’re like the Keanu Reeves of meat parts.  And that’s the way it has to be, I do not want my meat trying to emote, or express, or nail the scene.  The scene in which they look at me from their frozen plastic baggie with such horror.  Actually, not horror as much as…surprise and disappointment.  ”Why did you do it?  Why?  Did I not snuffle enough truffles?”

As a younger person, I tended to have the social boundaries of a golden retriever, just ready to play ball with anyone who sort of looked in my direction, and sometimes, when you gallop up to someone who’s not ready, they’ll want to put a boot in your neck.  And then I dated a man who NEVER wanted ANYONE to know ANYTHING about him.  Seriously.  I’ve never met someone who protected his privacy to this degree, and I had to learn to be very careful about what I said if it had anything to do with him.  No talking about him, his life, his projects, his work, NOTHING.  Now, I had already been experimenting with my own boundaries, and I think that keeping a certain amount to yourself can be a really healthy thing, not needing constant approval or validation from others.  So it was good, in a way.  But the intensity of that experience has left me wondering…..when does privacy become disconnect?