some several things

1. We just got our contracts for next year, and Josh got a 2K raise for being promoted to Senior Lecturer. I am so happy for him! My salary is the same in this contract as it has been for the past two contracts, but I'm not complaining. Hopefully fall 2022, I will be able to go up for promotion as all my stuff should be in print at that point.

2. The termite inspection guy found a pinhole leak in a pipe under the house this week, so we had that repaired. So grateful it was found before it became a huge issue.

3. The drug my neuro prescribed is gluten free! Hurray! It's monafidil, and this is the second day I've taken it. I have to be honest that I am not noticing a huge difference. I think maybe I'm less tired? I definitely have not seen the increases in cognition and focus and etc that the internet suggests I may feel. Apparently there's a pretty big black market for this drug as a "smart" drug to enhance academic and job performance. I also saw online that neurologists often prescribe it for MS patients because it has anti-inflammatory properties, so that could also be a potential bonus.

4. I don't know if y'all remember a couple of years ago when Emma was having some medical issues that I am convinced are autoimmune but could never get diagnosed; a neurologist finally discovered that she had a severe (like really severe) ferritin deficiency, and for awhile, treating that deficiency eliminated a lot of symptoms. Over the last year, they've crept up again and are getting bad again. So I got her a referral to the neuro I'm seeing (the pediatric one she saw before which I really liked refused to see her because she's over 18, boo), her pediatrician has done some blood work, and I'm hoping we can get some answers for her. *crosses fingers*

5.

The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I feel like my English major card should be revoked; I tried so hard to like these poems, and I mostly didn't. I agree very much with the assessments made by Tim Kendall in that book of criticism that I recently read. The juvenilia and the earliest poems are very tedious to me because she's so committed to a rhyme scheme (and often a very clever slant rhyme and precisely mathematical meter) that she has to resort to tortured syntax in order to accommodate it. I am also uncomfortable with the way she uses the Holocaust as a metaphor for her feelings about her father and the way that she describes African Americans in casually racist ways.

That being said, I like many of the poems very much, and I often like isolated lines in poems I otherwise don't care for. For example, "every woman adores a Fascist" is a great line.

I was surprised to see how many nature poems she wrote; many of those I really like.

Here's a list for myself of poems I liked categorized by year:

1956
"Miss Drake"
"Spinster"
"Resolve"
"Black Rook in Rainy Weather"

1958
"Full Fathom Five"
"Mussel Hunter at Rock Harbor"

1959
"A Winter Ship"
"Man in Black"
"Medallion"
"Dark Wood, Dark Water"
"Private Ground"
"The Burnt-Out Spa"

1961
"Morning Song"
"Tulips"
"I Am Vertical"
"Widow" (opening stanza)
"Stars over the Dordogne"
"Last Words"
"Mirror"

1962
"Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices"
"Stings"
"Wintering"
"The Applicant"



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