101 in 1001

I realize this is going to be my second list post in two days, but I was inspired yesterday by my friend Jaime's post about her progress on something called "101 in 1001." I was intrigued and looked into it a little more. The idea is simple: make a list of 101 things to accomplish in 1001 days. If there's anything I love, it's making a good list, and the mother of all lists is obviously the to-do list. What I liked about this project is that it gives you a time limit for the accomplishments, and it's also a great way to aggregate long- and short-term goals into one big list. So I made a list of my own.

I just finished the first thing on the list, which was to finish the list. And scarily enough, I'll be completing a second task on the list tonight: teach yoga. I'm going to be teaching my first yoga class this evening at Ambiente Gallerie in northeast Minneapolis. I'm both nervous and excited. I'll definitely keep you posted on how it goes!

Below is my list. What would be on yours?

101 in 1001: June 4, 2014 – March 1, 2017

1. Finish list of 101 things

TOGETHER
2. Read a book together

3. Spend nothing for two weeks

4. Create list of life goals
5. Go canoeing

6. Go to a scotch tasting
7. See the orchestra
8. Bike ride & picnic
9. See a live sporting event
10. Go to 4 concerts
11. Go camping
12. Go sailing
13. Visit a museum
14. Get a pet
15. See a meteor shower
16. Ride a tandem bicycle

HEALTH
17 Practice yoga at least 12 times per month

18 Take 30 yoga classes in 30 days

19 Hold crow pose for at least 5 breaths
20 Teach yoga
21 Participate in a race of some kind
22 Bike or walk to work when possible instead of driving
23 Work toward full splits on both sides
24 Try a new kind of exercise or class

TRAVEL & ADVENTURE
25 Go to my 10 year high school reunion

26 Get a passport
27 Go to France
28 Visit 3 new states (Maine, Alaska, TBD)
29 Go backpacking
30 Take a cross-country road trip

31 Visit a famous landmark I've never been to
32 See something that claims it's the “world's largest” of whatever that thing is
33 Do something that scares me
34 Go snowshoeing
35 Go skydiving
36 Visit the Boundary Waters
37 Go to the zoo
38 Meet somebody famous
39 Ride in a hot air balloon
40 Go to an amusement park
41 Visit the Mall of America
42 Swim with a dolphin
43 Visit a national park I've never been to
44 Go somewhere haunted

WRITING & LITERATURE

45 Participate in at least 4 poetry readings per year

46 Read at least 4 books per month
47 Write down all books read & movies watched for the duration
48 Get into at least 1 top-tier journal
49 Write at least 15 poems per month
50 Put together a solid full-length manuscript
51 Get 100 rejections per year (magazines, contests, etc.)
52 Get head shots taken by a real person instead of selfie-ing
53 Go on a writing retreat
54 Enter & win a writing contest
55 Take a class at the Loft
56 Publish another chapbook
57 Apply for a PhD program in creative writing
58 Write a short story
59 Attend at least 30 readings

ETC.

60 Try to buy mainly used clothing

61 Try 10 new board games
62 Do a new thing every day for 1 month
63 Go through my clothes & donate what I don't wear
64 Host a dinner party
65 Take a photo every day for a month
66 Get my weird tattoo covered up
67 See the Northern Lights
68 Go back to vegetarianism for at least a month
69 Sing Men In Black at karaoke
70 Throw something into a wood chipper
71 Milk a cow
72 Say yes more

MEDIA
73 Give up all social media for a week
74 Keep blog updated
75 See all movies on AFI top 100
76 Go to the drive-in
77 Watch all the movies we own that I haven't seen
78 Give up internet games for a year

KITCHEN
79 Cook 20 new recipes
80 Try being vegan for 1 month
81 Try 5 new foods
82 Eat something I grew myself
83 Be diligent about composting and recycling
84 Cook all my own meals for a month (no dining out)

HOME
85 Tackle the books
86 Organize the kitchen
87 Plant something
88 Get a huge bookshelf
89 Wall art
90 Get a new computer
91 Get real bedroom furniture (dressers)
92 Decorate the bedroom so it doesn't look like a prison cell

LOCAL
93 Try 10 new restaurants
94 Go on a brewery tour
95 Go to the Minnesota State Fair
96 Minneapolis movies in the park or music in the park
97 Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight showing
98 Go to the farmer's market
99 Go to 4 different summer festivals
100 Explore Minneapolis & St. Paul on my bike
101 Have dinner on a rooftop patio

Doing New Things

I recently made a pact with a friend to try and do a new thing every day and see how long I could run with it. The conversation came up while we were at Psycho Suzi's Motor Lounge in Minneapolis, because we ordered a huge drink that was on fire; something I'd never done before. I remembered having done a similar challenge when I was in high school as a new year's resolution and I've been thinking about that list ever since. Today, I found it, and I'm typing it up: all the weird stuff I did in 2004. I only made it to May, and the list is incomplete. Many days are missing, but this is truly too weird not to put up on the internet.

I'm not changing the way that I wrote anything down because it's just living proof I've always been super weird. Also, a lot of these things seem pretty unsafe, or they are just gross. Some of them I have no idea what they mean.

JANUARY
1. Ate paste
2. Gauged ears
3. Drank Dr. Pepper Red Fusion
4. Called the last person listed in the phonebook & told him he won six dollars
5. Made a collage
6. Walked on tables during College Composition class
7. Gave a dog a barnacle
8. Threw a full pop at the side of a moving train
9. Bought CD of a band I've never heard of
10. Drove home from work with my knees
11. Smashed an egg in my fist
12. Cut my eyelashes
13. Screamed "FOOD FIGHT!" in the cafeteria
14. Wore 21 shirts at the same time
15. Danced in the street
16. Ate a post-it note
17. Rode in the trunk of a car
18. Tipped Denny's waitress $50
19. Wrote all over my body with Sharpies
20. Punched somebody
21. Got a professional massage
22. Ate a spoonful of cocoa powder
23. Did our own Mystery Science Theater 3k @ Brad's house
24. Sat in cemetery @ night & watched stars
25. Busted a gallon of milk
26. Wrote my name in blood
27. Wrote a threatening message on the mirror
28. Danced about my my unda-wears
29. Wore a lampshade on my head
30. Naked snow angel
31. Went poo in a bag

FEBRUARY
1. Yelled YAHOO! real loud in a New York Walmart, danced with parking cone on my head
2. Snowboarded
3. Farted in a jar
4. Wiped dry-erase board clean with face
5. Got a swirlie
6. Took No-Doz
7. Won a cake, smashed Sam's face in cake
8. Pierced fingernail
9. Shoved a friend into a door
10. Read book backwards
11. Asked strangers for food
12. Played flute in hotel lobby
13. Went inside a Krispy Kreme truck
14. Dyed hair black/brown
15. Serenaded Melissa at her window at night
16. Drank toilet water
17. Won a pageant for Miss East Oak Harbor. I hate you Laura.
18. Took a sleeping pill
19. Received anonymous gift
20. Two hour Mad Libs
21. Lied & got away with it
22. Watched Aqua Teen Hunger Force
23. Wrote on Grant's forehead with marker
24. Told customer to have a bad day
25.
26. Depansted Alana
27. Took part in a successful surprise party
28. Witnessed a man leg waxing
29. Broke into abandoned insane asylum

MARCH
1. Stood under a helicopter as it took off
2. Sang Josh Groban song @ lunch while standing on chair
3. Wore nametag at work that said "Funk Master B"
4. Hardcore papercut
5. Saw MeWithoutYou, signed up for PETA
6. Scootered all over town
7. Knocked over toothpick container @ Denny's
8.
9. Dressed up like a secret agent
10.
11.
12. Sent mass amounts of letters
13.
14.
15.
16.
17. Box fort
18.
19.
20.
21. Freezer crisis
22. Got trophy
23.
24. Handcuffed to somebody while driving
25. Wore makeup that made it look like I was beat up
26. Acted in a play
27. Went to a bar
28. Told somebody exactly what I thought of them
29. Started a fight with a kid I didn't know
30. Got a tattoo
31. Read a comic book

APRIL
1. Ran down the street in the rain screaming
2. 50-person game of Mad Libs
3. Drove through gigantic puddle
4. House sat
5. Threw up orange soda
6. Made soup for a sick friend
7. Chased somebody like a zombie
8. Recorded a song I helped write
9. Shot a music video
10. Sat on the roof
11. Put candle out with fingers
12. Got accused of breaking into the high school (I did)
13. Took all the labels off a friend's canned food and taped them to the wall
14. Made 20-foot chain out of coat hangers
15. Interviewed kindergarteners, ate part of a crayon
16. Shook hands with John for five minutes
17. Pillow fight with myself
18.
19.
20. Franklin Park boobs
21.
22. Brushed teeth w/ grape soda
23.
24.
25.
26. Yelled at boss
27. Witnessed an explosion, filed police report
28. Changed pants in car
29. Showered with clothes on
30.

MAY
1. Played hide & seek in cars
2. Dance Dance Revolution
3.
4.
5.
6. Went to Chicago
7. Saw Blue Man Group
8. Ate at Medieval Times
9.
10.
11. Bandage arms!!!
12. Walked around with zipper down on purpose


That's where it ends. The new things I'm trying this year, ten years later, are a little less weird. Maybe.

The Month With All the Stuff In It

I feel like I'm always telling somebody that I'm about to become "less busy," but then it never happens. I just stay busy. I only finished grading all the essays from my spring semester kids a little over a week ago, and Tuesday I began teaching my summer term course. Honestly, it's just as well that I have a little structure to my summer. I go absolutely bananas without a normal routine. There's crying and lots of eating involved, and a good measure of comatose staring-off-into-the-distance, all of this paired with ceaseless streaming of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

This summer I'll be teaching just one Tuesday/Thursday morning course with only ten students in it--just enough to offer me some semblance of routine. I also plan to stay as busy as possible throughout the summer, and if this week is any indication of how that's going to pan out, I figure I won't have any problem at all.

Monday I had a meeting at St. Thomas for an exciting new class I get to teach there next semester. To clarify: the course isn't new to St. Thomas, just new to me. I get to teach the book Things That Are by Amy Leach, which is a beautiful and wonderfully neologistic lyric essay put out by Milkweed Editions. If you can get your hands on a copy, I highly recommend it.

Tuesday I taught the first class of summer semester and forgot everyone's name as soon as they all left. Then I had lunch in Minneapolis with some people from the Loft and Daniel Jones, the "Modern Love" columnist for the New York Times. How surreal, considering I basically only got to do this because I won a raffle.

Yesterday evening I went to the Master's Essay Presentation event at St. Thomas with my husband, who will be graduating on Saturday with a Master's in English. Somebody referred to him as "the man, the myth, the legend" so I'm wondering if he has special abilities I don't know about aside from being ridiculously brilliant. We went out for a celebratory drink and had to rush home by 9 so that I could participate in Write Fight--an online writing competition hosted by Revolver. My poem is up all day and is facing off against Meghan Pipe's piece, so if you have a few minutes before 9:00 PM (CST), go here and read and vote for your favorite one!

I just got home from guest-hosting a Spongebob-themed episode of What Did You Look Up On Wikipedia, which will probably be available for public consumption in the coming weeks. Spoiler alert: I dress up like Patrick and we drink Pina Coladas. We talk a lot about the implausibility and esoteric nature of the Spongebob Universe, and ask some really probing questions. I'll let you know when you can watch it!

For now I have to go and eat something that's not a french fry. (I love you, french fries. I hope you don't read this blog. If so, I'm not serious.)

Update: I'm Not Dead

Another semester is coming to a close, and I'm putting off the last of my grading by writing a blog post, listening to hip hop, and drinking the hell out of some coffee. The only good thing about grading as one of the biggest proportions of my job is that much of my job, in turn, can be performed in my pajamas.

I thought I'd give an update on my new year's resolutions, seeing as it's about a third of the way into the year already (oh crap oh crap oh crap). It's so funny how one of the longest, hardest winters of my life also seemed to fly by the quickest. From mid-February to mid-April, I was chest-deep in yoga teacher training, which is probably one of the crazier things I've ever done. Teaching two writing intensive courses and taking an eight week, 200-hour certification class? And teaching a class at the Loft? And meeting a five-day-a-week yoga practice requirement? And meeting deadlines for some serious grant proposals? And keeping my cool/not flipping my lid? That's definitely something I didn't live up to. My lid was constantly on the verge of being flipped or in total up-in-the-air MEGA FLIP mode. And my planner looked like a novel-in-progress.

But now I feel my life quietly coming back to me. Eight weeks of total chaos abruptly ended, and I'm no longer in yoga seminar ten hours a week. Then I met Garrison Keillor and he read my poem (I plan to make a real post about this later). Then the semester ended, and all I have left is to face some serious freshman paper grading. If I could beat the winter, I can definitely beat some freshman research essays. Though this semester I had the sense to put the kibosh on essays about legalizing marijuana or changing the legal drinking age to 18. 

Anyway, back to the resolutions, one of which was to complete a yoga teacher training program and become a certified yoga teacher. Checkmark! Done. My other goals are ongoing, and mostly writing related:

* Do four poetry readings (I've done three this year, actually!)
* Read at least 52 books (I'm standing at 27, though they're mostly poetry books, admittedly, and I read the majority of them during January)
* Write 200 poems (I've written 60)

* Work on a manuscript (I haven't done this at all--thanks for such an ambiguous goal with no tangible steps to tackle it)

* Get 100 rejections (33 so far--right on target!)

* Practice yoga 200 times (I have a sticker chart for this, and it is as motivational to me now as it was in 2nd grade. I've tracked 78 since January 1st)

Those are my big goals and I feel good about sticking to them. In addition to the 33 poetry rejections, I've gotten ten acceptances, too, including one from the Potomac Review this morning! I am definitely digging this acceptance-to-rejection ratio, but honestly it's really mostly luck, I feel like. If I've learned anything from being a poetry editor, it really depends on my mood when I'm reading through submissions. But here's to another eight-ish months of writing and reading and doing more things I really love. Life is pretty cool sometimes. Like, being alive is nice.

Lit Readings and Candy

I feel like I have so much news to report!! As the first order of business, I have definitely used up my quota of exclamation points for the year, and it's only February. That means it's gonna be a good year.

Aside from the fact that I just scarfed down four "fun sized" candy bars (they are so scarfable), I have been a busy little beaver (are there busy big beavers?). It seems that the more I read and write, the more interested I am in participating in the wider community of literature. One of my goals at the current moment is to continue to actively use my planner, which is great, because I enjoy writing things down (and crossing things off!), and because I'm less likely to forget about appointments or events I'd like to attend if I have written them down. While I sometimes use the calendar feature on my phone, I prefer writing my life down. It feels more satisfying to me that way. All this to say, I checked back on the past few weeks of my life and saw that I attended three poetry readings.

Will and I went to a reading at the Triple Rock Social Club called Irregular Readings, and got to see John Jodzio and Matt Rasmussen read. It was a relatively small gathering. John read a hilarious story about a kid with a job at a drug testing facility (there were lots of stories and poems about drugs).

I just ate three more candy bars.

Here is Mark being a badass poet guy.

The second reading was Mark Wunderlich's book launch at The Loft with Graywolf Press. His new book, The Earth Avails, is gorgeous and haunting. My favorite poem he read was a long, dreamy elegy for a home that no longer exists, and which is aptly titled "Driftless Elegy." I had Mark sign a copy of the book, and the rumors are true: his penmanship is almost literally to die for.

The last reading I went to was at a little place called Maeve's Cafe. I guess there are readings there every other month or so. From what I can gather, they seem to showcase a wide variety of local talents. It was so wonderful to see Kristin Fitzsimmons of Our Flow Is Hard read her poems.

Oops I just spent 45 minutes watching videos on What Did You Look Up On Wikipedia?, the website that Kristin co-owns with somebody else named Sally.

I have other things to report, but I will save said other things for another time. Right now I have some more candy/videos to attend to. And I should probably do some actual work, too, but we'll see how much of this candy work I get accomplished first.

January Wrap-Up

January's gone, so I thought I might do a January wrap-up post where I talk about some of the books/movies I've consumed this month. I read 18 books:

Jack Gilbert Collected (technically one book, technically six books)
- Views of Jeopardy
- Monolithos
- The Great Fires
- Refusing Heaven
- The Dance Most of All
- Uncollected

If you haven't read Jack Gilbert, you're seriously missing out. There's this way he has, of making small observations about humans, and making them really count. Or he will paint a small scene and put you in it. He can write a poem about cooking fish with lemons and it's perfect. It also makes me want to eat fish with lemons.

I traveled throughout the first week or so of January, and I got to see Russ Woods and Jeannette Gomes. We played a lot of Mad Libs and drank a lot of tea, and Russ gave me a few books to read:

NODS - Carrie Lorig
Root Poems - Carrie Lorig & Russ Woods

These are worth reading. In Russ's words, he said, "I feel like we're almost daring editors to like us."

You can probably tell that I read a lot of poetry.

More Books I Read in January

Among Women - Jason Shinder
Rare Earth - Bradford Tice
Sleeping With the Dictionary - Harryette Mullen
Ghost Fargo - Paula Cisewski
The Pajamaist - Matthew Zapruder
Last Night Was Worth Talking About - Gregory Sherl
Chapbook - Zach Haber
Thin Kimono - Michael Earl Craig
Bird Eating Bird - Kristen Naca
The Vital System - CM Burroughs

Of these books, the ones I loved most intensely were Among Women, Sleeping With the Dictionary, Ghost Fargo, and The Vital System. I wrote a whole post about Sleeping With the Dictionary a week or two ago, so I won't say any more about that aside from READ IT. I will say about the Shinder book that it broke my heart, and I just finished The Vital System a few days ago and I'm still thinking about it. Ghost Fargo is exactly the kind of book I needed to read this month--it's about love and loss of a physical place as home, as a place for memories. It made me so sad, wistful, made me ache for the place where I grew up, which is great because I'm trying to write about that now anyway.

I saw Bradford Tice read from his book in November at the New Rivers Press event where my friend Joe Stracci's book, Whitney, was also released, and I had to buy Rare Earth. He uses such a rich vocabulary, which can sometimes be distracting for me in poetry, especially if I don't know what certain words mean (I have to look up a lot of things all the time), but the richness of Tice's vocabulary isn't at all distracting. It beefs up the flavor of the poems, to use a phrase I hate ("beef up").

In addition to noting the books I read this month, I also wrote down all the ways I wasted my time watching a screen. Here are the movies/TV shows I watched in January:

Inside Llewyn Davis
Fargo (rewatch)
The Story of Film (we're ten episodes in, five to go)
Veronica Mars (Season 1)
Return of the Jedi
But I'm a Cheerleader
The Graduate
Kissing Jessica Stein
Pickpocket
High Fidelity (rewatch)
I also watched a few stray episodes of X-files, Supernatural, and Undeclared.

I could rewatch High Fidelity a million times. It's definitely on my top five desert island list of movies. Fargo is pretty good, too, but not on my top five. Maybe top twenty.

Watching The Story of Film is very interesting. At first, we turned it off because the narrator's voice is so grating. Everything he says sounds like a question, and sometimes he'll go into bouts of metaphor spewing (he really likes calling Hollywood a "bauble") that are somewhat obnoxious. But his critique of films is spot on, and he knows his stuff. I've put a number of movies on my list to watch based on his analysis of the films and why they're important. This is a big reason we watched Pickpocket, which Will described as a cross between The Stranger and Crime and Punishment. Very good.

Read Things! Or, Listen to Me Go On and On About Sleeping With the Dictionary

I'm coming strong into my fourth week of quitting internet games cold turkey. No Candy Crush. No Bubble Safari. I blocked all games and game request features on Facebook and I am too dumb to figure out how to unblock them, which is definitely for the best. I told Will that if I say something about internet games, he has to come and forcibly remove my computer from in front of me. I say this because the past four weeks have been productive in ways that I wasn't productive last year. I'm sick of wasting my time doing things that don't serve me.

Since the first of the year, I've already read thirteen books--which, shamefully, is just under the total number I finished last year. I don't want to jinx myself, but jinxing yourself is a chance you've got to take sometimes--high jinx!

Of the ones I've read so far this month, I'm still inwardly (and sometimes outwardly) flipping my lid over one of them: Sleeping With the Dictionary by Harryette Mullen.

The way I came into this book is magical in itself. I was on the phone yesterday with Erica, who's at her very first residency out at Bennington's MFA program (!!), and she told me that one of their workshop prompts was to write a poem in the style of Harryette Mullen. I said to her, "I don't know who Harryette Mullen is." As she was saying these words: "Harryette Mullen wrote a book called Sleeping With the Dictionary," Will came scooting into the bedroom and tossed Sleeping With the Dictionary into my hands. It took me a second to realize what was going on; it was one of those strange moments that is simultaneously mundane and mysterious. Will had checked the book out of the library while I was away a few weeks ago. I took it as a sign.

I spent all day with the book, and it took me a few poems to catch on to what was happening there. The way that Mullen uses language made me literally scream a few times. I read most of the poems aloud, and I didn't want it to end. I'm not surprised at all that Sleeping With the Dictionary was nominated for the National Book Award when it came out in 2002. And about that: how did you, my friends, let me go so long without reading this? Shame on you all! Shame! (I have used up all of my exclamation points for the year in this one blog post.)

The poem I liked most is called Kirstenography, which I assume is written for Mullen's sister. The whole poem is written like the game Mad Gab, or like a child who is imitating language she hasn't quite picked up yet, or like a secret language between the sisters:

When her smoother and farther wrought her chrome from the hose spittle, her cistern fought the piddle ably was a girly heeded bawl. 

It's a story of a family, of two girls. The prose poem goes on like this for a page and a half. I can't even tell you how many times I read it. Over and over.

You should definitely read the book for yourself. Mullen uses language in so many surprising, inventive ways, I felt as if I were being let into somebody's secret world, which is probably just one aim of Sleeping With the Dictionary.

Anyway, I'm done rambling about this book, though I could say much more. Find it in your library or buy it from a bookstore. I'll probably end up purchasing it for myself sometime in the near future.