Plumb tuckered out

An absolute knackering (knacking?) this day, what with the intensive cleaning of various ground-floor rooms. I have been dozing intermittently since 8:00pm. The boys, for the third or fourth time since the floor’s uncluttering, are running in circles, as in Alice in Wonderland’s Caucus Race. This is lively even by their standards – doubtless a spillover of last night’s mirth (we attended an “open house” at Samuel’s new school; I spent most of it chasing Daniel through the halls).

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I saw very little of the Olympics – none of it in “real” time – but was taken with this handballer’s story (NYT). He, too, has sleep apnea. Yes, this is what it’s like.

Earlier today I was slumped on the sofa, unable to remain fully conscious, while Samuel and Daniel crawled over me. I’d beg them to do a little cleaning. They wouldn’t. At last I rallied, was a virtual tornado for an hour and a half, and made the place spotless. The boys helped enough to earn some basement TV time. Then they came back upstairs, beheld the emptiness, and ran their first Caucus Race. Samuel tackled Daniel a few times. Daniel would urge him to stand up and keep running. High spirits.

I actually am the least tired adult in the house. Karin is pregnant again, you see.

Lord willing, our third son will be born the first week of December.

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P.S. The boys have been watching the infamous (but, to my mind, charming) Peppa Pig show. Samuel now calls himself Peppa; Daniel, he calls George; Karin, Mommy Pig; and yours truly, Daddy Pig. My parents visited; they are, respectively, Abuela and Abuelo Pig.

More sleep trouble (a cautionary tale)

You might think that the trouble is with Air Supply, my CPAP machine. Indeed, for a couple of weeks, the mask was too tight, and I was getting terrible headaches. But I fixed that problem.

No, the trouble is that our mattress is wrecked. It has been for years.

When we bought it, Karin & I thought we were being clever, trying out mattresses in the store and then using the Internet to order a model that was similar to what we liked. Well, the joke was on us. Now the springs are damaged and we sleep in enormous craters.

I awoke with a backache that would persist all day. It was the final backbreaking straw. A few hours later, we ordered a new, more expensive mattress. This one is renowned for its firmness and has a lifetime warranty. It also will require us to make a lifetime of payments (or at least a year’s worth).

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David Attenborough’s Our Planet – a Netflix production – is free to stream on YouTube. Samuel and I watched Episode 8, “Forests.” Samuel was quite taken with the animals. He squawked at the TV several times.

Hail, hail

Since I last wrote, I’ve had nights as of old, with frequent apneas and hypopneas, causing brutal daytime tiredness. Yesterday, I fell asleep three times. You’d think this would help me to sleep better at night. Alas, at 3:00am I knocked Air Supply off my bedside table, and in setting him upright I jostled his humidifier. Water traveled up the hose and sprayed out all over my side of the bed. Fortunately, Karin didn’t get very wet.

Like I said, this contraption will take some getting used to.

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It surely will interest my readers that italics have been made available for one of the best free typefaces – Source Serif Pro, published by Adobe and inspired by the classic book typeface Fournier.

Certain people have been waiting for these italics since, oh, 2014.

The typeface includes small caps and old-style numerals, as well as Greek and Cyrillic letters. It can be downloaded here.

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T-storms all day tomorrow. Woo hoo!

There was a hailstorm over our neighborhood earlier this week. It seems not to have affected anywhere else. But it occurred, and here is the proof.

A good sleep; July 4; Ennio Morricone; Hail, Caesar!

Thanks to Air Supply, Saturday night’s sleep was the best I’d had in years. I was so well rested that I went around the house doing various tasks as soon as I woke up.

The app awarded me a silver badge.

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Maybe I slept so well because I was worn out. Saturday had been terribly hot. I finished mowing before noon; even so, the heat made me feel faint, and I had to recover on the couch for several hours.

Around the time I finished mowing, I noticed thick, black smoke drifting over from across the street. Fire trucks arrived quickly. Neighbors recorded video. Fortunately, it seems no one was hurt. I can’t say what was damaged: I’m not even sure which building was on fire; it may have been a trash heap, for all I know.

This weekend, also, a notoriously flammable apartment complex in South Bend caught fire. No one was hurt – people occasionally die there – but some tenants lost their possessions.

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Karin & I took Samuel on a stroll around the neighborhood. What with all the firecrackers, it was rather dangerous. Samuel slept through it, though. He also slept after sunset when the explosions were very loud indeed. Karin & I looked out our window at the smoky haze.

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Speaking of “fistfuls of dynamite”:

R.I.P. Ennio Morricone, whose music I listen to every month, if not every week.

And speaking of spaghetti westerns: how about that pasta lasso by Alden Ehrenreich?

Feeding Samuel, I watched Hail, Caesar! in installments. I’d been putting this movie off for years. Well, it was delightful. Two days later, I viewed it again, with Karin, and it was just as good. In a way, it’s easier to appreciate a great director (or two) by watching their fluff than by watching something more substantial (you aren’t distracted by the gravitas).

There are lots of perfect little touches in Hail, Caesar! My favorites involved Ehrenreich, the singing cowboy, whom I’d never seen before. I liked his lassoing. I also liked his enormous plate of beans.

Mother’s Day; mowing day; conspiracy theories

I wish a happy Mother’s Day to my own mother – and, for the first time, to Karin. I’m not sure what gifts they’d like. For my mother-in-law, I’m ordering a couple of novels by Wilkie Collins (I persuaded her to read The Woman in White for her birthday, and she enjoyed it). She needs more books because she Marie Kondo’d her house not long ago.

Honorable mentions for Mother’s Day: my grandmothers; my aunts; my cousins; and Ana, my sister-in-law.

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This evening, I mowed the back yard again. The grass was much shorter this week, and so it took about half as long to cut. The air was cooler, too. I didn’t get as tired.

It’s been three hours since I last arose from my chair.

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The friend I blogged about last time has posted the notorious “Plandemic” video to his Facebook feed. Actually, he posted it twice: once with YouTube, and once with Vimeo. YouTube removed the first upload. Facebook tagged the second upload with a “false information” warning and linked it to this useful debunking. (The original video is here.)

My friend had written of the video:

26 minutes. You decide.
Lots of info packed into a short video.
If you’ve watched it, feel free to comment.

I watched it but didn’t comment. It’s very gratifying, now, to read the debunking, which does contain some useful information.

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But this will do little to keep conspiracy theories from proliferating like Hydra’s heads. What’s needed is education about what conspiracy theories are and why they’re bad.

Some friends have shared this essay addressed to Christians, which makes some good points and includes useful links to sources that deal with conspiracy theories about the pandemic.

For a more systematic treatment, I recommend this book by the philosopher Quassim Cassam. It’s brief and clear; I was able to read it quickly. It distinguishes between theories about conspiracies and what Cassam calls Conspiracy Theories with capital initials (I’d prefer the label “conspiracy theories in the pejorative sense,” since, on Cassam’s view, all such theories are likely to be false). I found the book to be intuitively correct and very helpful for starting to think carefully about conspiracy theories. It also attends to psychological and sociological findings.

Unfortunately, not all reviewers have received the book approvingly or even charitably. It turns out that most philosophers who write about conspiracy theories are themselves conspiracy theorists (or are sympathetic to conspiracy theories). Which often happens in philosophy: those who write about a topic are likelier than others to take an unpopular view about it.

Another medical test

The hospital called yesterday. They’d canceled my sleep observation, which had been scheduled for next week.

This was hardly surprising, what with the pandemic.

Still, it was dispiriting. Had it not been for a clerical mishap, I’d’ve been observed in January.

Who knew when the next opportunity would arise?

The hospital called again in the afternoon. Would I come in that night? Yes, I would.

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Karin and Samuel dropped me off at the hospital. I was led into a room with a large, comfortable bed and left alone to read Cold Comfort Farm until 10:00pm. Then the technicians fitted me with a CPAP mask. They attached many, many wires to my torso, legs, and head.

They turned out the lights, left the room, and instructed via intercom:

Look up and down ten times.

Look left and right ten times.

Grit your teeth.

Emit three loud snores.

After I’d done enough calisthenics, they let me sleep.

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The bed was much lovelier than my bed at home, and I didn’t mind the air blasting through tubes into my mouth and nose. What I did mind were the wires. They kept me from rolling over naturally.

But I did manage to sleep. Later, the technicians told me I’d achieved some periods of deep sleep.

(The previous test showed I’d been averaging 67 disruptive episodes for each minute of sleep.)

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I finished Cold Comfort Farm. Next to read is Chocky. My reading cycle runs from May to April; I need short books to fill my quota for the year.

I got a refund for the surplus copy I’d received of vol. 2 of the Strangers and Brothers omnibus. I again ordered vol. 3.

On the day of vol. 1’s arrival, I was all too eager; but when I tore open the package, it was a (now redundant) copy of vol. 3.

A cancelation

I was supposed to have seen a doctor yesterday about what kind of CPAP machine to use. But a clerk decided I wasn’t properly insured.

I was, though.

He canceled my appointment without asking me first. Then he called: he had to, to tell me he’d canceled my appointment.

Had he called first, I’d’ve set him straight about my insured status, and he would’ve known not to cancel the appointment.

Now the consultation is slated for late March. I’ll sleep poorly for at least two more months. When I see a doctor again, it will have been five months since I first consulted my primary care provider about sleep apnea.

They say treatment in Canada is slow. I wonder if it’s slower than this. (Canadian readers: how does your experience compare?)

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Samuel smiles constantly now, and he laughs by doing one giant wheeze at a time.

Diagnoses

So, the clinic called today. The tests confirm that I have SEVERE sleep apnea. The clerk who relayed the news didn’t know how to pronounce “apnea” – hup-NEE-uh, she said – but I asked her to spell it, and A-P-N-E-A, indeed, is what I have. I was told to buy a CPAP machine at my pharmacy. Would I like to schedule a “titration” at the sleep clinic? Yes, please, I said, but what was I supposed to do first? Buy the CPAP machine, or have the “titration”? After more phone calls it was determined that I’d do nothing further before going in for the “titration” on January 20. (Really, the slowness of this process is baffling.) I’m still not sure I understand what to do; I plan to investigate further.

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Our coffee pot broke a week ago. Karin & I have been keeping awake with sodapop and storebought iced mocha. But by this morning, those supplies had run out; moreover, after two days of relative calm, Samuel decided to shriek and shriek. By the time I’d prepared his bottle and gotten him suckling, I could hardly stay awake. I dozed off watching a TV show about heinous Australian crimes. Samuel slept in my lap. I dreamed I was visiting certain professors in Ithaca – ones under whom I didn’t prosper. My dreams were vivid; my wakefulness, hazy; but, all the while, I was aware of Samuel’s breathing.

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Yesterday, I was more alert (I had two glasses of iced mocha), and I read a terrific essay by Nathan J. Robinson analyzing the memoirs of various staffers of Barack Obama’s White House. Robinson isn’t a columnist I ordinarily seek out. On several occasions, though, I’ve admired his work without realizing he was the author of something I’d admired previously (one piece I’ve highlighted in this blog is his assessment of Brett Kavanaugh’s judicial credentials). Now I’m attending more closely to how Robinson connects his political dots.

Interestingly, his condemnations of Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren (whom he used to esteem more highly) seem to hinge on similarities that he perceives between those candidates and Obama. Robinson really doesn’t like Obama’s political style, and I increasingly agree with him. (I put more stock in reasonableness than Robinson does – I’ve written a dissertation about that governmental virtue – but I also lament the manner in which Obama employed reasonableness as an ideal.)

The best thing about Robinson’s analysis of those fanboys’ memoirs is that it conveys what’s dangerous about the allure of a leader who styles himself as elite. Such a person will likely be a technocrat who considers himself above his electorate and his party, or else a panderer to financial elites who play him for a sucker (or both).

Read the article about Obama and his fanboys.

Weep.

Ask how we can do better.

At home with Samuel and the kitties

Karin returned to her job today, and I completed my first shift as a full-time stay-at-home father (of a human being). After 11 a.m. or so, Samuel never slept longer than 20 minutes. He kept me on task cleaning, holding, feeding, and burping him. Now his odor is seared into my nostrils.

I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so tired without being able to sleep. My Excessive Daytime Sleepiness, which usually makes me doze off, has been put on hold so I can wait on the Young Prince.

The kitties brush themselves against me, but I have only so many hands.

I’ve lost my copy of The Good Soldier Švejk just when I fancy reading it (not that Samuel would permit me to do so).

Karin keeps Samuel supplied with milk. Unfortunately, when she expresses at work, she has to go off the clock. This will significantly reduce our income.

Progress report

Two chapters completed; one deleted; two others and an introduction still to receive finishing touches (which will involve pages and pages of writing).

I am considerably deprived of sleep.

The good news is, on Tuesday, I did not have to serve on a jury. But it took the good people of the court until late Monday night to figure that out.

Mother’s Day

7:00am: I’m awake after a night’s sleep of three hours. At my first stirring, Young Chirpie Chirpington (Jasper) becomes hyper-alert and paces back and forth upon my body. He emits high-pitched noises.

Son, must you chirp so? Have you no dignity?

Ziva, the shyer one, merely pokes at my feet with her claws.

This is why it’s better for Karin to awaken first.

Zzz …

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9:30am: One more hour of sleep, and then it’s off to our new church (we switched churches a few months ago). In Sunday School, the adults are slowly reading through 2 Timothy. As always, Paul is concerned that there shouldn’t be division among the believers, or useless arguing.

One woman suggests that there’s more useless arguing today than there was in Paul’s time – or even than when she was young. Today, people argue about things like politics. Or gender. Or the weather.

The weather? Karin & I are doubtful. Isn’t that one of the few safe subjects?

(Later, Karin’s mom suggests that the woman meant global warming.)

During the worship period, Karin & I watch over the nursery. (Due to Mother’s Day, the regular nursery worker is in the service.) This nursery has comfortable rocking chairs and a TV. Karin plays with the two small children while I download music from Spotify onto my phone.

We also view a part of Dumbo. As a Mother’s Day movie, Dumbo is appropriate, if sad.

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12:30pm: Surprisingly, it takes the better part of an hour to drive from church to Karin’s mom’s house. First we’re detained in an especially slow lane of traffic. Then we’re detained at a railroad crossing.

Calm down, Sweetie, I encourage Karin. Enjoy this nice, long, live version of “The Man-Machine” that I just downloaded.

Karin is not appeased.

1:30pm: We arrive at Karin’s mom’s house. The women sort through old photographs. I sleep on the couch.

3:30pm: We arrive at home. Karin sleeps in our bed. I sit in an armchair and try to write, but mostly I alternate between sleeping and sneezing (the night’s short rest has made me vulnerable to drafts).

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Tomorrow morning, it’s back to the office at IUSB.

Happy Mother’s Day, my dear Mom.

Towards elevator

Agatha Christie has a novel, Towards Zero, in which a murder is committed in a hotel by putting an “Out of Order” sign next to the lift (“lift” is British for “elevator”). The murder victim reads the sign, climbs the stairs, and dies of a heart attack.

I’ve recalled this novel often during the last few days. “Out of Order” signs have been posted onto the elevators in my building at IUSB, though at least one of the elevators seems to function well enough. The effect is that the students wheeze when they arrive to be tutored. (The tutors also wheeze.)

This tutor also snores when no students are with him (though he does so only for a few seconds at a time).

Indeed, in the last couple of days, it’s taken all my effort not to snore during the late afternoon. It isn’t even that I’m fully asleep; I’m quite aware of what’s happening, and I’m doing all I can to resist it. Still, the snores come out.

Karin thinks it’s because I’m a little sick.

The routines of beasts

If ever I use the toilet in the night, little Ziva follows me to my bed for a good petting. Last night, I didn’t use the toilet. Ziva showed up anyway, at 5:00 a.m., and so I gave her a thorough petting (I’m being trained for fatherhood, I tell myself).

At 6:00, I was still awake. I went to the living room to watch YouTube. I watched this nice video about the classic Scottish movie, Local Hero.

Ziva and Jasper ran around the living room, wrecking the décor. They often do this in the early hours.

Q: Why is it perilous to go into the jungle between 3:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon?

A: That’s when the elephants are jumping out of the trees.

Q: Why is the crab the flattest of God’s creatures?

A: The crab went into the jungle between 3:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon.

Karin was surprised by my early rising (she usually gets out of bed first). Tonight I’ll be too tired to go to the laundromat, I told her. But no, Karin won’t let me weasel out of going to the laundromat. Our clothes-washing routine is set in stone.

Ana & David have acquired a dog named Russell. Mary and I confer: Where would Russell stay if he were brought to Indiana? The options are meager. Because of our own pets, neither Mary nor I could admit Russell as a guest.

Our fear is that Russell won’t be brought at all. We’ll only get to see our nephew if we go to visit him in Austin (Ana & David are quitting Houston to live in the Texas capital). And then, what would our pets do?

Quitting, pt. 2

Quite a few of the teachers were screening the presidential inauguration in their classrooms. I stopped and watched it for a few seconds. It seemed a big deal.

“Today is your last day on the job,” said one of the teachers. “Yours – and Obama’s.” We stood a little while, shaking our heads, tisking.

My last shift wasn’t more strenuous than usual, but it wasn’t easy, either. One teacher asked me to digitally scan more than 100 pages of a hefty volume. Other teachers dropped off a great jumble of course texts – Scarlet Letters, Of Mice and Mens, To Kill a Mockingbirds – for me to sort and put away. Others made last-minute photocopying requests. Others, I had to train in the ordering of supplies.

Two teachers, old men, were quite sad to see me leave. I offered to join them one day for a meal at their favorite nearby restaurant, the Oaken Bucket.

Then, very weary, I turned in my keys and left the high school. I stopped at the public library to visit Mary, who was working at the circulation desk. She was about to go to lunch.

I told her about my last shift at the high school.

“In honor of your quitting your job,” she said, “would you like me to buy you lunch?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“The Oaken Bucket,” I said. “No. Just kidding. Subway.”

After lunch, I went home, collapsed into an armchair, and snuggled with the kitties. From the indoors, I enjoyed the mist – my favorite weather.

The salt mines, pt. 841

Back at the high school: making copies, moving heavy textbooks. For this I receive, daily, a heap of praise. At home, I dredge the Internet for PDFs of other people’s dissertations. I read their acknowledgements, abstracts, and introductions; and if I decide, “I’m doing better than this poor sap,” I write for a couple of hours. Then I watch Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (Karin is present for some of this). Then I go to bed. This is the routine I foresee for the next nine months – along with tutoring, which I’m on holiday from, one more week.

I go to the school at six-something each morning, with Martin. Mary has retired from teaching. She got a job at a nice little public library. Next week she will go back to college to become a nurse.

“An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the Pacific Northwest. The question is when.”

Betrayal

I must be aging: this year it feels more tiresome to walk miles and miles to and from work, every day, in the bitter cold. … More tiresome and more tiring. During spare half-hours at IUSB I wander the hallways, searching for armchairs in which to sleep.

Today the Saudi students have taken the best armchairs. I go away. … I return. The Saudis have not stopped sitting. I wander remoter hallways.

Through sheer winsomeness I’ve coaxed my IUSB students to read their textbooks on time. (Earlier in the semester, hardly any of them would do this.) But at Bethel my students have regressed: a few weeks ago, when I assigned Descartes, they stopped bothering to read at all. So now I must coerce them with quizzes. Oh how they complain. I’m tempted to remind them of the Parable of the Two Sons.

It’s a feeling I must come to terms with as I walk those miles in the cold.

I feel betrayed, I say to my friend, the college administrator, at McDonald’s.

Betrayed! he laughs. They’re undergraduates. What did you expect.

Vegetarians off of the wagon, we comfort ourselves with double cheeseburgers.

Romaniacs, pt. 533: The coffee drinker

Rainy weather, and so I’ve decided to read A Wrinkle in Time. “It was a dark and stormy night.”

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Last night, after I wrote those lines, I promptly fell asleep. I’ve been falling asleep very early. The previous night, at around 9:30, I was on the living room floor playing with the cat, and I fell asleep.

At least I knew which day it was.

Cristian: “How nice to see you, John-Paul. Are we supposed to go out for coffee today?”

JP: “No, Cristian.”

Cristian: “When did we recently go out for coffee? Was it last week?”

JP: “It was yesterday, Cristian.”

Edoarda, Stephen’s gf, remarks that during her four years at Bethel she has watched Cristian become more presidential, i.e. more gray. I point out that this is due to his age, not to his lifestyle.

Even so.

Cristian pushes himself through life by drinking loads of coffee; maybe that’s why his emails tend to arrive at 3:00 in the morning. I couldn’t live that way. After my third or fourth cup I’d be a jittery wreck. On the other hand, I fall asleep whenever I try to grade papers.

As we share a French press, Cristian tells me of the habits of a certain well-loved metaphysician who didn’t have a lot of grading to do. “He used to read detective novels all morning, and then he would cheerfully write for a couple of hours; then his workday was over.” A hint of bitterness. “With such a routine, who wouldn’t be creative!”

Indeed. And with such a routine, the guy’s prose had better be damned good. None of this unnecessary formalism in his popular writings; no tiresome avuncularity. He owes it to those of us who have trouble staying awake, who are too tired to read what we truly enjoy.

A plea for candor

Lovely weather; more time out of doors. I’m getting a farmer’s tan. So is Kenny.

K: “Lara says that a farmer’s tan is the most disgusting feature of the human body.”

JP (rolling eyes, rolling up sleeves): “Then I’m going to accentuate my farmer’s tan.”

We devise a scheme for improving our farmer’s tans: using a tanning bed to darken just our forearms and faces.

Then Lara comes into the apartment and tells Kenny how to dress. (Today they’ll be posing for “engagement” photos.) Goodbye, Kenny.

Not that I’d mind if a pretty young woman, say, Jennifer Lawrence from Silver Linings Playbook, came into my life and told me what to do. And I’d probably do most of it … though first I’d have fun arguing about it.

What I think people enjoy about the movie (what I enjoy about it) is that neither of the leads has a filter. They both specialize in saying uncomfortable truths. Oh, their honesty isn’t perfect: they strategically withhold stuff, and they tell lies. But their candor is exceptional. They don’t shy away from difficult subjects: they chase after them. They ask and say things that most viewers wish they themselves were brave enough to ask and to say. And they accept this about each other. And that is so, so rare. That’s what makes the movie a fairly tale.

People, this doesn’t have to be a fairy tale.

Be candid. Be accepting of candor.

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Lately I’ve been so worn out, I haven’t been able to take advice. … Criticism, I can bear. Advice, if it isn’t faultless (and usually it’s awful) leaves me anxious and annoyed. It keeps me awake at night. It drains me.

So don’t be all that candid. Or don’t be candid in a way that presupposes that you’ve figured everything out. Because you haven’t.

Larissa MacFarquhar

I made a Twitter account. I don’t care if anyone follows me. I don’t intend to follow anyone except for Kelly Oxford. I just wanna practice saying things in 140 characters or less.

For example: “When the moon is full, the tide is high.”

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From Boston Review, an interview with Larissa MacFarquhar, who writes about people who give to the needy as much as they’re able. They give effort … money … kidneys … etc.

[Boston Review:] How did you become interested in extreme cases of moral virtue?

[LM:] I’ve been interested in them for a long time, but one of the things I read that got me thinking in a more systematic way was the philosopher Susan Wolf’s essay “Moral Saints” [PDF]. She argues that our conceptions of perfect moral virtue (what she calls saintliness) and of a well-lived life are irreconcilable, so one of them has to go. She is basically anti-saint — she concludes that it’s our view of morality that has to go. I tend towards the other conclusion, but her essay was very useful in framing the question. It seemed to me, though, that you couldn’t think about the problem only in the abstract. If you want to consider the cost of making certain ethical decisions, you have to see how they play out in actual lives. So that’s why I decided to write about people who have a very demanding sense of moral duty and live their lives accordingly.

LM is trying to write about real-life “moral saints” who aren’t “kooks.” This fascinates me, because most moral saints I can think of are, in fact, a little kooky. But even if LM’s subjects were, too, I’m not sure how damning that’d be.

I think that if you’re doing something that’s hard to do and good to do, and that makes you feel proud, I just don’t see why that’s so terrible. One kidney donor told me that his donation made him feel better about himself — that it was one really good thing he’d done in his life, which he had otherwise made a pretty complete mess of. Some psychologists think you shouldn’t donate in order to feel better about yourself, but it strikes me as an excellent reason!

Feeling proud isn’t the same as feeling less awful about yourself. But whichever motive the guy had, I think LM is right to view it with some admiration, and with compassion.

Dreams

Happy Easter. At church-time I was in the nursery, distributing off-brand Rice Chex to the toddlers. I kept on yawning: “I’m tired.” They were skeptical. “Really,” I insisted, “I want to sleep.”

My night had not been restful. But I’d awakened after a nice dream: I was in Ecuador with my friends Brandon & Sarah; first I showed them my old dorm, and then the dorm changed into the soccer stadium. (In my dreams, I’m always returning to the soccer stadium.)

I also dreamed of Downton Abbey. Lady Edith had (clandestinely) been learning to smoke a pipe. She’d been practicing tricks, i.e. blowing smoke-rings. A visitor had discovered her doing this. “I daresay,” said the visitor, “you smoke better than I do.” Lady Edith batted her lashes at him and blew a smoke-ring. Of course the visitor was middle-aged, and of course he and Lady Edith began an affair.

I know, I know, people always think their own dreams are interesting when really they’re dull as dirt. Still, I’m rather proud of my Downton Abbey dream.

“The Semplica-Girl Diaries” is based upon a dream of George Saunders’s. It took him 12 years and 60 pages to build a story around that very simple dream. I didn’t like the story, but you can judge it for yourselves. At the mall’s Barnes & Noble with Stephen and Mary & Martin, I used up much willpower refraining from buying Saunders’s first story collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. It’s typeset in Cochin, which is pleasurable to me (though I prefer URW Cochin because the italicized, lower-case s isn’t in cursive). We also ate in the food court and looked at forlorn, expensive pets.