1. It was a lot easier to bounce back from red-eye flights when I was in college.

2. It’s freaking hot here. Ridiculously hot. Like, I feel like I’m in an oven. A very wet oven. All the time, even inside.

3. We might be getting a hurricane next week. Or we might not. I hate hurricane season. I wouldn’t mind it so much if we weren’t homeowners. (In our last apartment, I think we paid $10/mo for renters’ insurance. Sigh. Remind me why we were so anxious to own a home again?)

4. The electric bill was a lot cheaper with only Jesse here. I now consider it my solemn duty to reduce our electric bill as close to sans-me levels as possible. We are also about to embark on another budget lockdown. So, if you’ve got any money-saving tips, I want to hear them!

5. We have too much stuff. An oppressive amount of stuff. And it’s not even nice stuff. It’s junk. Stay tuned for the Great Purge of 2011. It will be epic. (Sadly, this will probably not help with #4 as I don’t think anyone will want to buy our junk.)

6. Jesse bought me a memory foam mattress topper as a coming-home present. I do not know how I lived without it before, especially with my back. I also don’t know how I’m going to make it out of bed every day. I’m really glad we squeaked that one in before our lockdown…and I will probably save some money on chiropractor appointments now.

7. It’s not really August, right? Right?

Scene Two: Jesse has been gone for two weeks, and Erin is feeling more adventurous. On a whim, she decides to make a Walgreens run. (Well, “whim” and the fact that the apartment is out of toilet paper.) She hops on the train, which is ridiculously crowded, walks to Walgreens, buys the toilet paper, then stuffs her purchase in her backpack and goes exploring. She visits a local market, watches people chatting at a street corner while their children make silly noises at their feet, and then she moves on to other stores that interest her: a hardware store with a garden section out back, a natural pharmacy, another few groceries (she buys some fancy chocolate and some water). She meanders until it gets cold. She admires the fog rolling in, as she walks back to the train stop. She feels intrepid and happy and urban.

Then, she waits eighteen full minutes and curses said cold and said fog. She cradles the big bottle of water (that she found for 70-cents) like it was a wine bottle. Her hands turn blue. She wishes she’d brought her heavier jacket (its spot was currently held by toilet paper). She wonders if she should just go catch a bus. She knows as soon as she leaves the train stop the train will show up and then she’ll end up waiting another twenty minutes for the bus. She wishes she had a car. She wishes the train would just hurry up. She feels considerably less awesome, but still fairly urban.

• My semester is officially, definitely, without-a-doubt OVER. I had one last hurrah on Friday, when I participated in an information-gathering day of scoring student work according to a specific rubric. Now, let me give you every single detail about that exciting, thrilling experience! On second thought, how about I not?
• I also got my annual review on Friday and was very pleased! What a good way to officially start the summer.
• Friday night, we went to an outdoor concert with our friends of The Impossible Miss Z fame. We ate a picnic dinner of sandwiches on sourdough bread. The weather couldn’t have been nicer: warm air, with just a hint of leftover spring coolness, fresh air without too much humidity. The band was of the quality you would expect for an outdoor summer concert; they played an absolutely awful cover of “Folsom Prison Blues,” but I still enjoyed it. After the concert, we stayed in Barnes and Noble far too late, sitting on tiny benches in the children’s section while Z read books about princesses.
• On Saturday, Jesse and I had sore throats that we attributed to the previous night of trying to talk over the band. We rested, then spent the evening with Brandon and Kara. We all went to a fish market and picked out fresh fish, then went back to B&K’s place to grill said fish. On the side, we had grilled asparagus, kale straight from their garden (yum!), and field peas. Dessert was pineapple, and the evening’s entertainment was Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
• Sunday, however, we realized the sore throats were some kind of virus. Jesse got called into work really early to fill in for someone who was sick, and we spent the rest of the day just laying around, looking lethargic and boring. I read. I fussed over vacation rentals. We ate junk. (Mac and cheese for lunch, Ramen for dinner.)
• Which brings us to yesterday, which was far better. We were both feeling better and were able to work per usual. I booked a place in San Francisco and immediately freaked out (apparently I do have a fear of commitment, but it only comes out when money is involved).

So, then, it’s official. I’ll be in San Francisco for the month of July. Which means I’d better get cracking on this book…

• Jesse and I put every Disney movie (the animated ones, not counting sequels) on our Netflix, in chronological order. We watched Snow White–can you believe that was released in the 1930s? I want to go back to school and write a dissertation about Disney movies and historical context.
• We celebrated the birthday of our dear friend Jessica with dinner her mom made (“Favorite Casserole”–YUM) and frozen yogurt. Her parents drove us around while we sang Florence and the Machine at the top of our lungs. That’s how you celebrate turning 30.
• We went to the dentist. Yay.
• We used our new dishwasher. Yay!
• We watched American Idol and ate dinner with the Kings–a Wednesday night tradition we are really enjoying.
• I balanced the checkbook and forgot to clean the litter box. (Blech. Gotta do that this afternoon.)
• I haven’t cooked dinner once, and won’t for the rest of the week (Favorite Casserole leftovers tonight, free pizza tomorrow at a thing we’re volunteering for). Oh well, there’s always summer.
• It is cold. And rainy. And yucky. I am surviving only by telling myself this is winter’s last hurrah and warm weather is on its way.
• I’m reading The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks and am really enjoying it.

Jesse looked up from his bowl of cereal. He hadn’t seen the mug fall. He’d just heard the noise and then saw me standing with half a glass in my hand. He asked what I’m assuming anyone who knows me well would ask: “Did you break that glass with your bare hands?” (???)

I told him about the mug and then I set the remains of the glass down and inspected my hand, fully expecting to see blood gushing from it.

Not a scratch.

Not one!

I broke a glass with my bare hands (i.e. had a coffee mug fall on me) and wasn’t cut!

Later that day, I got a stack of Christmas cards in the mail. While opening one of them, I got a paper cut. And it hurt. Nuts! I guess my luck ran out.

• This weekend, I saw three of my favorite ladies, Kirsten, Jessica D., and Visha, and I talked to Simona on the phone for over an hour while I peeled potatoes and chopped leeks and let the bread rise. Dinner that night with Jessica was an early Thanksgiving: apple-butternut squash soup (made with butternut squash from my parents’ garden), roast turkey breast with potatoes, green beans, and mustard pan sauce (this was Bon Appetit‘s “Thanksgiving Made Easy” recipe, and it really was easy), homemade bread, and pumpkin pie for dessert. After dinner, we talked over tea and had a grand old time.
• Tuesday, I voted, but for the second election in a row I wasn’t given a sticker. This disappointed me, even though I suppose it shouldn’t have. Do you remember when you stopped getting stickers at the dentist’s office? When you stopped getting lollipops when you got a shot at the doctor’s? Well, election stickers are the only thing we get as adults. To take that away…
• Monday was probably the longest day–EVER. By that evening, I could have sworn it was already Thursday.
• One of my favorite perks of teaching is all the free textbooks I get. Everybody gets them. Sales reps come by and just chuck books at you, huge literature anthologies, grammar books, books of essays. I so rarely get to buy actual books, since the library is free, but I deeply enjoy owning books. My bookshelf at work is finally filling up a bit. I love it.
• The colder it gets, the cuddlier the cats want to be. I love that too.

For now, a sneak peak:

Lobstah!

An upscale Piggly Wiggly--who would have thought?

This is life right now:

• We spent Sunday afternoon in Myrtle Beach, exploring, and we found two places we’d not been before. The first was a trashy flea market where we walked in the heat, melting, my long summer dress clinging to my legs, and looked at cheap guitars, gaudy turquoise rings, old cast iron skillets, pocketknives. A woman was selling used books for outrageous prices and as we drove away I complained (“You can’t sell a used paperback for five dollars. It just isn’t done!”) and Jesse remarked, “You sound personally offended,” and I paused and thought and said, “Why, yes, I believe I am.” Then we drove past the beaches and the beach hotels and ended up in a ritzy part of town, a new development it seemed, where we found, to our great amazement, a ritzy Piggly Wiggly. We immediately stopped the car and went in, and then spent probably a solid half hour wandering through the store, exclaiming things like, “A whole display just for imported Belgium beers?” and “Check out these cakes!” The Piggly Wiggly in our town sells beef tongue and smells funny. This Piggly Wiggly was the nicest grocery store we’d ever been in. We bought Little Debbie snacks and milk and ate in the parking lot.

It wasn't an illusion--the inside was as nice as the outside!

• We spent that evening in a mall, talking about New York. It seems that the jobs I am both qualified for and interested in are all in New York. The fact that we’re discussing this both excites and terrifies me.

• In the event we do not move to New York, and honestly we probably won’t, I am exploring my employment options in North Carolina. They are few and far between. I’m applying for everything right now, including jobs high schoolers apply for, and this has been more of a hit to my ego than I expected. I’m three years away from thirty and have a master’s degree. I started to apply for jobs at Harris Teeter, but I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. I know this blog might prompt worried emails from family members, but I’m sorry, if you can job hunt in the middle of a recession in a city that didn’t have good jobs even before the recession, if you can do that without getting a little bit depressed, then I’m worried about you.

• Saturday was by far the worst—the day I almost applied for the Harris Teeter job, the day I got the most discouraged about my employment prospects, the day before we started talking about New York. That evening, I read a blog Sabrina posted about fried rice with SPAM and I knew instantly that SPAM was the only thing that would brighten my mood, so I dropped everything and ran to Wal-Mart (you can buy SPAM at Harris Teeter, but why would you?). It’s been years since I’ve had SPAM, and I wondered if I’d be able to find it, but as I looked at the signs over the aisles I realized I needn’t worry: Wal-Mart has an aisle specifically marked “Canned Meat.” In said Canned Meat aisle, I saw a row of familiar plastic pouches and thought, “Oh, what the heck,” and grabbed two packs of Ramen noodles. Might as well. And? Turns out I was right. SPAM helped.

• I am starting a new book and I’m pretty sure it’s about zombies.

• Yesterday, Jesse came home from work early and on the way home stopped at the grocery store to rent a movie. I had watched both A. and M. that morning and was exhausted. I didn’t mean to, but I had fallen asleep on the couch, and Jesse came in and woke me up with a kiss and a rose he’d gotten for me. I love that man.

Jesse goes to get his stitches out today. He had something removed from his back, a little persistent thing, and since the biopsy came back negative I haven’t thought much of it, except to put Vaseline and a band-aid on it every morning. I could not be a nurse, cringing at the sight of the stitches. I don’t know if it was the stitches themselves, or the fact of them on that back, where my stomach says they should not be.

There is the futon; since my in-laws left, I haven’t moved the featherbed off it, so now it’s folded up on the couch, lengthwise, and it dips slightly in the middle, making this perfect little nest, exactly the right thing to take a nap on. Which I did yesterday, a solid hour of staying in exactly the same position, dreaming about something I can’t remember anymore.

And of course, a bit of frustration with myself over the yard sale thing. Jesse got in touch with the lady, and she acted, I don’t know, confused? Said, the money’s in the account. And she was right. It was there. On the one hand, I’m glad I let Jesse handle it. He had what I lacked—compassion, a willingness to suspend judgment. So, letting him take over was the right thing to do. But on the other hand, I wonder, why is it I still can’t keep myself from jumping to conclusions? Why am I so quick to see the bad in people, to think the worst? Yes, it looked bad. I’ll give myself that. The bad phone number was what did it. And there still hasn’t been an explanation for that. But, goodness, I of all people should know there’s an answer for everything, there’s a reason, whether it’s obvious or not. So, I’m sheepish today over this, the fact that I couldn’t extend just a bit of grace and wait before thinking I knew everything I needed to in this situation. And, the story of the servant whose debts are forgiven, going straight out and throwing someone else in jail because of what he was owed. Ugh.

(But, Michael, what you suggested about the local crime ring is probably true, and once they knew I was hot on their trail, they aborted the mission, put the money back in the account. I’m sure that’s the most reasonable explanation.)

I saw a shooting star last night. Well, it didn’t appear to be shooting as much as it seemed to be falling. It seemed so close. Ridiculously fast. There in one part of the second, and gone in the next. Maybe it wasn’t a shooting star after all, though I’m not sure what else would make light do that. So, that is what I’ll land on today, my day of many thoughts to think, and while I do laundry I’ll try to get reoriented, to remember to have perspective. And, because I have too much to do, I will try very very hard not to take a nap.