When I lived in Spain, I wrote a poem called “La vida en la flanera” or “Life in the Flan Pan.” I sumbitted it for a contest for Americans writing poetry in Spanish, and I didn’t win. The guy who did win wrote a poem called “La Bonita Espana” (Beautiful Spain) or something like that and though it was not avant garde in the least he won the sweatshirt.

The moral is obviously: people who wear sweatshirts write bad literature.

All of this is immaterial. In Spain, we ate flan from the grocery store. And that was fine. Because homemade flan tastes like bland, tough eggs, and is gross.

Nevertheless sometimes I attempt to make it, especially on Thursdays when we speak Spanish in the house.

I never know at what stage something is going to go wrong with the things I cook. Needless to say, flan has never gone right in my kitchen.

In this case, it is that instead of caramel, I succeeded in making hard candy, which in addition to being nearly impossible to remove from the pan, tasted burnt.

Student: The syllabus has this assignment due on a Monday, but class meets on Tuesday.
Philosophy Professor: All days are Mondays, except Friday.

Today I talked to the Helpful Secretary, who always has plenty of information about all topics. Here is what she had to say:

Helpful Secretary: Then you go to the left, to the left, to the right, to the right, and her office will be right there by the burgundy carpet.
Me: Ah.

My schedule for today is as follows:

10:00 AM: leave house
10:30 AM: 5 minute meeting re: independent study for photography
11 AM: 5 minute class re: painting
3:30 PM: 5 minute class re: aesthetics (whatever that may turn out to mean)
5:30 PM: 5 minute class re: modern art
6:05 PM: return to house

Oh, Tuesday.

Today I was discussing the American educational system with Someone Wise.

While it annoys me when people go on about how the American educational system is messed up, nevertheless they do have a point.

A transcript:

Me: It* reinforces my theory that the world is full of crazies.
Someone Wise: That’s hardly a theory. It’s completely true.
The world is overrun by 1) crazies; 2) stupid people; and 3) stupid crazies.
Me: (laughter)
SW: Sometimes laughter is the best way to deal with terror.

* educational system mishap

Last night we watched Like Water For Chocolate, which was insane and enjoyable. Magical realism, baby.

Her flatulence eventually killed her.

I have an overwhelming urge to drizzle very wet paint- well very thin paint- on burlap.

So I bought some burlap today. I had to exercise extreme self-restraint not to also purchase metallic gold paint at Lowes. I don’t want the burlap paintings to be quite that garish and déclassé.

That you really DO live in Southwest Virginia.

It might be the obsession with trucks. Or it might be the woman smoking at the gas station.

Do you ever feel like shouting, “Unsafe! UNSAFE!”

Cos I do.

Today I purchased art supplies for next semester, including, as you can see, 10 200 ml tubes of Titanium White.

You can never have too much Titanium White, is my motto.

Team Titanium lives on!

In addition to burning your field, you could either:

1. plant rye without clearing the dead corn
2. let cattle graze on the dead corn

So I’m expecting startling and great things from this field. Maybe a housing development?

Good deed for the day: none
Bad deed for the day: also none so I guess that evens out
Internships applied for: 1 (National Gallery of Art)
Internships not applied for: 1 (1 specifically, also surely thousands that I did not research. Metropolitan Museum of Art too complicated, too much stuff to send)
Thank you notes sent: 5
Thank you notes not sent: 5
Christmas cards still not sent: 5 (!)
Trucks too expensive to fix: 1 (probably)
Trucks too expensive to purchase: all other trucks (evidently but I do not allow myself to be deterred by economic realities)
Truck search: ongoing
Truck mourning: wretched
Weirdest truck fact: 4 runners are no longer made with stick shift (why? stupid lazy country should demand stick)
Obvious truck fact: 4 runners are most beautiful trucks
Another truck fact: Jeeps are cheaper but have been hit with the ugly stick in recent years and are therefore not buyable despite affordability
A third truck fact: Toyota Highlander gets excellent gas mileage but like jeeps is hideous… er this is actually the 4th truck fact

I have made this plan before and never followed through.

But let me expand my resolution to stop living in filth.

Not only will I no longer live in filth, I will ‘purge apartment of all extraneous matter*’ as well as hideous furniture and inhabit a beautiful Zen apartment. A Zen apartment like… a Japanese hotel corridor. White. Simple. Empty except for beautiful yet durable furniture which cannot be harmed by cat claws, cat urine, dog slobber, dog diahrrea, etc.

If I cannot find Zen furniture I will do without.

*you know where this is from

This year’s motto is SIP.

Stop Inhabiting Pigsty

We went to see Gerald Ford today, well we saw his casket and the changing of the guard outside it.

Why did we go? Well we went because I dragged the little lady. Why I wanted to go, I am not quite sure. But I was glad we did, because it was pretty cool.

It was strange going up on the Capitol steps because I remember a few years ago before this whole terrorism mess began, normal people could just walk up there without going through security. And maybe some of the security is just there for the funeral. But I bet a lot of it is now permanent. And that is sad. Because really that way of life is just gone.

But. Moving on.

What I would like to say about the changing of the guard is the uniform of the Merchant Marine is ridiculous. Moccasins- ridiculous. Giant scarf thing- ridiculous. At least I assume it was the Merchant Marine uniform.

And what I would like to say about the line is that it was long and we kept running into the entertaining people pictured below:

This woman got separated from her husband when she went to pee. Finding her husband was a major production as he had left the line looking for her and he had her cell phone. OK.

Quite a few people became involved in the search, from the police to the earnest tourists. Not us. We stared at her cynically. We gave her the look of death. We wondered if it was all a ploy to cut in front of us in line or what. We wondered how anybody could possibly have to pee that bad and if so why they wouldn’t just go in the street. We muttered skeptically to each other.

We lost track of them for a while, then as we hunted for the car- on the wrong street- we found them.

As you can see, he was holding both their umbrellas and her purse.

I had a teacher once whose husband carried her purse. She was named Mrs Sherwood. This could even have been her.

Holla, Mrs Sherwood.