Yesterday was my brother’s birthday. But he’s 59 years old and lives in Seattle, so it didn’t really affect my plans.
My plan was to grade. Oh my goodness, was I going to grade. I was going to knock those little essays straight outta the water with my grading. I have no idea what that even means, but it sort of captures my determined mood.
“What would you like for breakfast?” Don asked.
We were lying in bed, fending off the dogs, who had decided it was time to get up, up, UP! and were dive-bombing us with love.
“Oh, nothing,” I said, pushing Joe back with my left arm. “I’m ok.”
Pete saw an opportunity on my undefended right flank. I took a tongue to the eye.
“You can have anything! Pancakes? French Toast? Egg in a nest? Filet mignon? Frog legs? Sky’s the limit!”Don had Joe in a bear hug. Pete was pawing my ear.
“I’m going to grade all day today,” I said, apropos of nothing. And then, “Really, I shouldn’t. I’m not that hungry.”
Half an hour later, I was still in my pajamas and Don was making strawberry crepes. Crepes take a while. It seemed silly to start grading while he was cooking. I mean, after all, who knew when I’d have to stop? I wrote a long, meandering essay reflecting on the day before my brother’s birthday. I posted it to the internet. Why wouldn’t the internet want to know about my day?
We ate crepes. I thought about grading.
“I should go for a bike ride,” I said.
Don noted that it was very windy. I noted that if I planned to ride all the way across Iowa with him in July (a story for another day), I couldn’t just pick and choose the prettiest days to ride. Don conceded that this was true. On my way out the door, the essays trapped in my laptop whined to me.
“We’re lonely!” they cried in their little, weaselly essay voices. “Why don’t you love us? We’re full of comma splices! They itch! Help!” I thought about picking comma splices out of essays with a nit comb and shuddered. I grabbed my helmet and was gone.
It was very windy. Riding on flat country roads in the wind is a glass-half-full, glass-totally-and-completely-empty kind of situation. Riding south, I flew! Riding north, I…well, I don’t even know how to explain it. I was going to say “crawled,” but that’s giving me too much credit.
It was like being in one of those dreams where you’re trying to get away from a monster, but your legs don’t work. Or like one of those black and white movies where the hero is caught in quicksand. Just imagine the hero on a bicycle instead of a horse. I knew I was pedaling from the burn in my legs, but signs fifty feet ahead of me grew no closer. I put my head down and waved to a garden slug in the berm grass as he sped by me.
“How was the ride?” Don asked. He was wrestling an area rug in the laundry room toward the circular saw he had set up on the deck.
“Windy,” I said. “I should grade.”
It was noon. I started to grade. Truly I did. I got out my laptop. I opened up the first essay. I located a comma splice and highlighted it. I…I was very sleepy. That ride had really taken it out of me. What could it possibly hurt to lie down for just a few minutes? I thought about setting an alarm.
The phone rang. I fumbled with it and stared blearily at the screen. 3:30 pm.
“I took the boat out,” Don said. “But it was muddy. I’m coming home.”
“Erumph, ok.” I stumbled downstairs and forced myself to grade two essays. But then Don was home, and he made dinner, and on a whim we drove out to see a house at the end of a peninsula that we’re not going to buy and drove home in the dark along country roads listening to the wind.
I went to bed and woke up and now it is morning and I’m sorry, but I have to stop. I really must grade.
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