Winter Terms

It’s been s struggle. Just as I was starting back to classes for the quarter Wu got Covid.

That’s a long story. I dropped all but the nonfiction class because that instructor is just wonderful. The remedial classes it turns out I DON’T need to get into the MFA program are taught by grad students who look at me as if I’m some homeless person who crawled into the building from the railroad tracks outside.

About the time Wu was ready to go back to work Pup got it. We’d been avoiding him so we wouldn’t share. Turns out Amazon delivers—everything. Yeah, that’s where they both work now, life-altering and beautiful, hard work, and apparently covid central even vaxxed. They weren’t eligible for booster yet. Hubbin and I got them for Christmas because we are walking poster children for comorbidity. We didn’t get it.

Something else gets me. The medications are kicking my butt. I can’t even get a doctors appt before April 22, ironically my father’s birthday, the guy who gave me the DNA for the “Beetus” (hmph)

Very torn now. I don’t know if I have the energy to continue this thing. I need to focus on revision and writing. The education has been very enlightening, gives me a lot to consider, but it diverts me from the work.

And another thing…

The “ungrade” doesn’t sit well with me. If you show up, do anything, pay tuition, have a pulse, you get an A. I like A’s just fine but I can’t stop myself from working at stuff, actually putting in an effort. The ungrade is supposed to prevent a stifling of creativity. It’s bullshit. I can’t learn a lot from getting a grade for just sitting in a chair for 2 hours.

2 hours? I’m paying tuition for a class that offers 5 hours of instruction per week. The location and the time of night are so sketchy we all get let go after about 2 hours and can work on our own time – what? So I’m doing independent study? I’ve been doing that for 27 years. I don’t need to pay to go out in the dead of winter and dark of night to be told to go home and read or to write.

Then after I wrestle my anxiety into check and get to class the other students sit there like zombies. I don’t need to know what’s going on in my own head so I hold my tongue as long as I can (because I already usually know the answer) hoping somebody will say anything enlightening, interesting, different.

Add to that the fact that I missed the application date for MFA because the “Applehead” I was directed to for advising absolutely insisted I couldn’t get into the program without 71 credits of BS I don’t need…sigh…and maybe that one class I took last quarter as and into to creative writing was actually just the thing I needed at the time…but I don’t have the energy and this stuff costs money, real US dollars I could spend on other things if all I’m going to do is assignments that don’t get grades and teach myself at home.

I’m aggravated.

So I signed up for a poetry class with one more guy and not sure I’ll do it because he seems to share some ideas and interests that would entertain me but…poetry, is just not my jam. He’s already sent me an invitation to go to Yellowstone for a week to watch wolves. Very cool but, don’t I already do that? Seriously, I’ve done this stuff on my own. Maybe it wasn’t the message I was ready for on a day when I could barely lift my head due to anemia that doesn’t seem to have a cause. They’ve checked me stem to stern, can’t find anything. I’ve plugged in some iron, already feel my head clearing but moving so slow it’s comical. This is not how I get to West Virginia. This is not how I get into an MFA program. This is not how I get my 2 rental houses rehabbed by the end of summer.

Hubbin had a treadmill delivered today. I’m not against the idea but if the horse is tired “ride’em harder” really isn’t solving the problem. I love how people think Fibromyalgia is cured with exercise and pot. Oh, gee, thank you for the revelation, hadn’t thought of that at all…he’s autistic, he gets a pass for getting out of bed in the morning and slaying the dragon.

While I’m on that subject Delphyna texted me this morning and wanted to do something. She was totally unsolicitedly awful toward friend Buttercup when we saw each other for the 1st time in a year. I don’t know how to feel about that.

Then Erda texted me yesterday and wanted to know if I’d drive her to see Pax. Pax’s fella has cancer. I feel bad about that. What bothers me is the person who usually runs Erda around (the reason she hardly ever calls me anymore) doesn’t like Pax. The Erda lets slip she’d out of her place by June 1st. UGH! I only warned her about the likelihood that would happen about 5 years ago when I actually could have done something to help her. So now I see the sudden interest in PAX is not empathy but a vulture-like interest in the fact that Pax has somewhere to live and what if Mr. Pax isn’t doing too well could she horn her way into Pax’s life for some very self-serving reasons. Icky. I want no part of it.

If that weren’t enough I get the old home on Bang Bang Street back on June 1st. It needs a total rehab before we can put it back on the rental market. I can’t have her pothead no plan no money having stuff mooning over my hard work for needs to pay my own bills. I told her what she needed to do and she dug heels in, wanted her “lifestyle” and I can respect that but she never respected what I had to say when I actually cared and told her what would solve the problem. She doesn’t have the resources or the ability to keep up a place like what I’ve got. I’m not covering her “lifestyle.” I’m not heartless, I spent 3 years trying to house people until it nearly broke me caring about people who would just move illegal tenants in and lie that I was out to get them when I had to do my job for the sake of other people. I can’t be in that position with a “friend” whose eyes generally glaze over whenever I actually say there’s stuff going on in my life that is not so good these days. Oh, Bang Bang is also where her toxic Ex lives just a block down the street. Really bad idea. More to follow on that House, just don’t have the energy today.

So I’m venting here again and reading Gone With the Wind. Talk about a big old venture taking that on just before finals. Most of the movie is only the first 200 pages out of 1000. Yikes. Old books beat movies hands down. Poor old Wade doesn’t even get to exist. I kind of know how he feels.