Stir-Crazy

Have you ever felt as though you were living trapped indoors while outside the world was beautiful, sunny, and warm? Was it because you were trapped indoors while outside the world was beautiful, sunny, and warm? This is where I begin my blog. Typing in the lab at my office (beneath my office, to be precise) on the first 70-degree day of the year. I would say this place should be condemned, but it has been. The university, in their wisdom, just hasn't leveled it yet. After all, they don't have another place to put us.

This is a noteworthy week for other reasons. This is the week I scheduled to turn in my MFA poetry thesis to my advisor. It feels like my last chance to have "accomplished something" here in the Creative Writing Program. Looking over it, I am content with some work, and I can see how the work has changed while I've been here. As usual, the old anxiety arises: "What next?" Anyway, the only way to know what next is to stop asking and get to the next.

I took my friend to the doctor's office today to put her broken hand in a cast. I feel some of the discomfort most people associate with the doc's, but I express it by being really corny, unlike my friend, who expresses it through active hostility towards everyone there. The doc tried one style of cast and it wasn't adequate, so he had to cut it off and start over. She was grousing once he had left. When I suggested wearing the old cast on the left and the new on the right, and made a Power Rangers-esque gesture, she said, "Whose side are you on, anyway?"

I have been wanting for a long time to wear a white suit and a dapper hat and just sit on a porch on a warm summer's day. It may be a long time before this desire is fulfilled.