Bread and Bread

My self-care has taken a dive these past few days, as I was mired in the stress and absurdity of a federal grant while still working part-time. Also the aforementioned medical tests for me and for Dash, all of which had good results (knockonwood), but which sent cortisol pumping through my veins. Exercise started to seem like a distant memory, and soon I was cramming pastries from Elsa’s Bakery into my face the way Dash crams his (much more nutritious) hands into his. And I haven’t been writing anything that doesn’t come with an RFP.* Sweet, sweet pan dulce. I got over the most arduous hump of federal grant (I hope), and today I actually ate five servings of fruits and vegetables, and took a walk. To Starbucks, but still. On the way home from therapy today, I was listening to one of my new favorite podcasts, The Longest Shortest Time , which is pretty much a parenting-themed This American Life. I like it because it focuses on parents as people, which should be a given, but ...

Here is what happens in my favorite episode of Maron : Marc (a stand-up comic in life and on the show) goes on the road and checks into a La Quinta Inn. When the WiFi in his room doesn’t work, the clerk at the front desk (a deadpan Tig Notaro) tells him that sometimes the connection goes out between 8 pm and 12 am. And also between 12 am and 8 pm. But there’s a coffee shop down the street if he wants to watch his porn there. I've had good times and bad times at the La Quinta Inn in Fresno. Marc isn’t trolling for porn. He’s Googling “mouth cancer” because he has just discovered a large, suspicious black sore in his mouth. His imagination is already spinning out, and seeing internet images of malignant mouths doesn’t help things. He ruminates about death with his podcast guests. He sees a doctor who shrugs and says “I dunno. But black isn’t good.” By the time he takes the stage that night, he’s half come to terms with dying. In a nod to Tig Notaro’s actual “I have cancer” p...

1. fever isn’t such a new thing When I had my one-on-one consultation with Dani at Sirenland , I debated out loud whether it made sense to end my memoir with a celebratory chapter about Dash’s birth. “It’s a book about learning to live with uncertainty, and I don’t want to wrap it up too neatly. I think there should still be some uncertainty.” She answered more as a parent than as a writer. “Oh, there’s still plenty of uncertainty.” After B and I broke up, I tried to nail my world down, even as I let it open up. I asked my landlord for bars on my windows, even though I lived on the second floor. He told me to give it a few months. It was like he knew. Then I met AK and fell in love. The little storytelling voice inside me said, This is your happy ending. Two bad things happened to you: Your mom died and B broke up with you. But now you finally get to live happily ever after. I was twenty-eight. Pop off in case of fire. I wouldn’t have expressed it so sm...