Random Bullets of Cranky Easter Morning

• What's up with the cold weather, people? 31 degrees Fahrenheit with an expected high of 40 degrees. This reminds me that every single May I vow to make plans for a mini-vacation to a very warm locale for the next May. I always pretend I will have the money or will somehow find the money to do this. I never do.
• Money. I don't have any. I don't care at the moment if it is incredibly crass to talk about it. It's an enormous struggle every single month. I am tired of it. It also occurs to me that it's RIDICULOUS that I am putting 5% of my paycheck into a retirement account when I have to panic and scramble right now to pay my bills. I have let my father pressure me into doing this. (And, yes, I suspect the reason I am woefully financially unsuccessful at this late age is because I have let my father continue to have a major influence on my financial decisions.) I am actually paying some bills with a credit card that doesn't charge interest until August, because by then I will be able to pay it off with a check from teaching summer school. Pathetic.
• I am teaching summer school. Boo.
• Paloma has invited me to a wonderful Easter dinner. She's cooking for her entire family and a few friends, all of whom I would really like to see. I know this should be a good thing and not a cranky-making thing, but I had no idea what she was talking about when on the phone Friday night she was "reminding" me of Easter this and two hams that and scalloped potatoes here and cobbler there, all at her house. She had thought she had told me weeks ago. Normally this would not be a big deal, but I am so so behind in my work. I was way behind before the weekend began, and the past three days of seeing out-of-town friends and going to papers at the conference that is in town has royally screwed me. I estimate I need about 10 hours each day today and tomorrow to get through the work and that may be a little on the conservative side. I can see squeezing in an hour tops for Easter dinner. That would be extreme eating and running, though. On Easter. Rude. What to do? Go for a bit? Say I am not feeling well?
• I actually am feeling sick. I don't know if it's allergies or what, but I am exhausted, achey, and, as is abundantly evident by now, cranky.
• There is a very large hawk in my neighborhood. I wish I could say something Thoreau-like about its mighty beak or the gold of its tilted feather in sunny flight (I heart Thoreau, in spite of myself, I really do), but as he seems to have taken a loud screeching interest in the Chalupa the past few mornings, what I will say is this: "Get within 100 feet of this yard in any direction, you filthy scavenging coward, and I will rip you apart with my own hands."
  
• I have been having these amazing dreams that I am in a reality that isn't real. I am not talking about lucid dreaming, which is standard dreaming procedure for me. I mean in the dream I am projected (for various reasons, by various forces, some friendly, some not) into a simulated reality, a holodeck-like projection, and have to navigate my way through it. At first, it feels like I am travelling through a muddy-feeling substance that looks like the world but has thick heavy mass and texture. As I learn how to walk, to breathe, to talk in this new environment, it begins to feel natural. I bounce around as I would in my normal environment, but there's no gravity. There is only substance around me, and I can walk through it in any direction--down into the earth, up into the sky, up walls and upside down on ceilings. I can find the substance is moldable and I can create things I need from it. Am I a) stepping precariously closer to the edge of psychosis; b) really getting into a certain something I am teaching right now; c) spending way too much time in virtual environments; or d) fabulously creative and brilliant?
• Have you noticed blog cliques? I have been branching out in my blog reading, and I have seen a few groups of blogs that seem to discourage outsiders and seem to encourage a certain exclusiveness--in posts, in comments--among a limited amount of people. I am not talking about those bloggers who have a combination of new readers, IRL friends, and readers from a certain community. What I see from those bloggers is an at least implicit generosity with all visitors, except of course those commenters who are hostile. What I think I am seeing are some blogs that are the virtual equivalent of the "cool kid" table in the high-school cafeteria. I do not comment frequently even on the blogs I regularly read and I have never commented on these cliquey blogs I mention, but I am fascinated by what it is that gives off this exclusivity vibe on certain blogs.
  
• How did I forget what a great movie Moonstruck is? I watched it last night before bed. Best forgotten line, between Olympia Dukakis's character and the NYU professor (played by John Mahoney): OD: I am not old for you. JM: I am too old for me!. HA! Think I actually told The Grand He that he was too old for himself once, not remembering that I had stolen that line. I do this constantly, by the way--steal lines from movies and forget they are from movies and think they are mine. A huge amount of them are from the 80s.
  
• Finally, in way of an apology for all of the crankiness I have just dumped on you: Happy Easter, Happy Spring!