Squeezing oranges

I wanted to write a little note before Thanksgiving about cooking and writing, but I still have to finish the cranberry sauce (yes, I know, I cooked it last week, but it’s a different family holiday now—can’t just have one Thanksgiving, now, can we?) and I’m pooped, so I’m posting an email I wrote to my friend Lisa instead. Yes, Lisa is a real person and not my split personality. Did you know, by the way, that Lisa was the most popular name in the country the year I was born? And, yes, I know you can’t see the poem. I can’t post the poem, or I won’t be able to publish it later. I did, by the way again, finally get an acceptance for one poem last week after the awful string of rejections. Did I mention that one of the rejections had the little handwritten note that means we liked your poem—just not enough? I just to enjoy getting those—the good rejections. Now I want all or nothing, thanks. I guess that’s how a lot of people feel about cranberry sauce.

From: Lisa
To: Lisa
Date: Wednesday - November 24, 2004 11:56 PM
Subject: what do you think?
Attachment: Squeezing Oranges.doc (20992 bytes)
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Hey Lisa. This poem is either awful or very good. I can’t tell yet. What do you think?

Sorry I missed you this afternoon—I had gone on into work to try to get caught up. Did I tell you I have jury duty the week of exams? Which means that I have to be completely finished with everything before exams, and no fudging around, and I have to provide rather extensive written directions for the two proctors I’ve had to arrange for my composition classes—a student who knows Blackboard to help people submit files correctly and to check that they’ve turned everything in before they leave, and a faculty member to sit around and look stern to prevent cheating.

So I worked until about 8:00 p.m. and have been cooking for tomorrow ever since, until just now when I had to come work on this poem. I’m not one of those waiting-for-the-muse-and-inspiration type writers; I am generally a little more methodical than that, but this particular image hit rather abruptly as a solution to an idea I’d been trying to work out . . . and I was most fortunately between recipes anyhow. Although now the zest of the orange in question is lying on the counter turning brown.

Well, I hope you and Jim are either enjoying one more night at home because the snow was coming down too hard to drive, or that you’re safely there already (and by the way, it’s 60 degrees here now). I’ll try to call you Sunday, but if yall aren’t back yet, I’ll talk to you Monday night and tell you all about how the lawyers mysteriously do not want feminist English professors on their juries . . .

Happy Thanksgiving.
Love,
Lisa