Can I just go hibernate now in Ma-jick Mo-ments (November 2019)

I’ve been crying all day. Doesn’t matter what it is, anything will set me off. I just cried a couple of tears over popcorn a second ago. There’s nothing wrong with the popcorn. It’s very buttery and very salty, and that is how it ought to be. Cue the waterworks anyway.

I spent all day in tears. So I did a dumb, and I wrote a note to the campus pastor. I don’t even believe in God. She can’t do a thing for me. But I’ll go anyway, because what the fuck, right? I can’t get to therapy because the campus office is overwhelmed, and I can’t get to my therapy because I only get a visit like every six weeks, and I am falling apart. The latest crisis is the usual one - so much month, so little money - complicated by the fact that I made my car payment.

And, speaking of the car, I had a little accident. Literally little. So little I did not NOTICE it. But the police called and told me that I had done a hit and run! I…don’t even remember it. I went out and looked at my car, and all I have is like a scratch. I’m only getting a warning, because I told the officer I was pretty sure I was trying to merge right because I heard a fire truck for the larger accident that had caught the traffic in a bottleneck. The fire truck was super loud, and I guess if there was a bump, I just assumed it was me hitting the curb, you know?

So that’s how you have a collision without even knowing you did....

Tonight, I’m really worried about food. I know that’s an odd thing to say aloud, although this isn’t loud, this is pretty hidden, I hope, but that’s my big worry. We did okay last month and September because we had leftovers from the school checks, but that cushion is gone, and the kids are still eating like their asses are on fire, and the roommate’s kid is still SUPER fucking picky, and I am SO tired of that. And of course, they’re two months behind on the “rent,” but…hey, they have like four new video games for the PS4. And I’m providing all the basics: toilet paper, laundry detergent, dishwashing powder, all of that. And the electricity, wi-fi and water and all. I’m getting angry. Plus the gas when they wander off on a shopping spree, natch.

But yeah. I’m worried about food, and Dick Face took ALL weekend to call for help, and now I’m down to my emergency dinners but I can fix that Thursday, I think. Except Thursday I have class. I don’t want to take his Volvo boat and he can’t, because it stalls randomly, and you cannot randomly stall on a highway while people are going 70 and survive. You would definitely notice that collision.

Anyway.

I gave my St. Martin’s talk. It went well. One of the monks (because it’s a Benedictine abbey, did you know? Very pretty. It has a graveyard. So I was in a graveyard on the first anniversary of my dad’s death, go me. Just it wasn’t the right graveyard (because he wasn’t buried. Cremated. Right over there, actually.) Anyway, the monk, who is very old,. poor dear guy, asked if I had considered publication. Of course I have. But no one wants to publish you now unless you’re famous, or already successful. Still, he’s the second person with a doctorate in English to say to go try this year. At what point do you listen?

Creative writing teacher used to be editor of a magazine, and he said he would have published short-story-1, with some edits, naturally. But it would have been in his magazine, which was not a low-publication one, but I am not mentioning it because then you would find him, and then, you might possibly find me. And we can’t have that, since I tell this dumb diary shit that people haven’t heard yet (or ever.) Is that a win enough to make a chance worthwhile?

I would try the campus lit mag, but its prose contributions have to be under 1300 words, and Spring Fever is like 6000 in its first edition. I could cut and rearrange, but I don’t think I could get the whole thing in under a fifth of its length. It’s already pretty bare-bones, because I had a 20 page (doublespaced) limit, and that is not long. That is very not long. I already have to cut to expand the parts that the workshop said had to go in, plus I have to swap out the ending. Apparently, suicide is not an option. Alas.

Because I really think I could make that shit work, ya know?