In Colorado

It's midnight in Illinois but only 11 p.m. here in Denver. This means I have another hour and forty five minutes until my flight leaves. Being sleep deprived in general just kinda sucks. Being sleep deprived in an airport is worse. Being sleep deprived in an airport where all the shops and restaurants are closed and everyone else looks like a zombie too is worse still. Being sleep deprived in a closed airport that smells like a urinal cake is the worst indignity of all. Seriously Denver, what's your damage? Why do you smell like this? Aren't you relatively new and space-age? Detroit's airport smelling like a bathroom wouldn't be any big deal. O'Hare smelling like one of Larry Bird's used sweat socks would make sense. But Denver? I thought everything here was all high-mountain and crisp and clean. Then again, maybe they're trying to make it smell like Boulder and what I'm actually smelling is pot and patchouli.

I have a ton of papers to grade. They're in my bag. I wish they would go away. I wish I would open my bag to find that they've all magically already been graded. Then again, I also wish I were asleep in a large comfortable bed right now and that I'm resting so well because I just got done counting my millions of dollars. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, knowwhutImsaying?

I always feel like I'm going to run into someone I know when I'm in airports. (Okay, the three thirty-ish BFF women sitting a few seats down from me need to shut the hell up. Whatever it is they're laughing at, I bet you a million dollars it's not that freaking funny. Shut up, laughing women! Shut up!) Anyway, I have never run into anyone I know at the airport except for that time I saw Jeffrey R. Holland getting off a plane - and it's not like I know him-know him. It's not like I could say "Whussup my homey?" (Which, btw, is what I say to all my close friends. If I haven't said it to you, perhaps we're not close enough friends? Think about it.) But for some reason, I always feel like some old high school buddy or college girlfriend is going to come around the corner. Weird. (Okay, laughing women got up and left. Good. I hope they spread their obnoxious brand of middle-aged camaraderie somewhere else - like Tulsa.)

Aaaaaaaannnnnyway. Those papers are still in the bag. I can feel them leering at me through the flap of my messenger bag. They're saying things like, "We are full of errors, buddy, so you'd better get to it." and "Man, did you not teach these kids anything? They don't even know what kinds of titles to put in quotation marks and which to italicize. Have a good time with fixing 900 titles." and "Why, no, we won't grade ourselves so you can sleep. Do it now. DO IT NOW!" If the papers were people, I'd kick them in the face for their behavior and backtalk.

Parker is sick at home. Apparently, she threw up a six ounce bottle of formula plus peas from earlier in the day. She managed to get it on Suzanne, the couch, the throw pillows, and the floor. Like father like daughter, I guess. My brother David was asking me to retell the throwing-up-at-a-school-assembly-in-fourth-grade story. I was telling him to shut up and leave me alone.

Maryn was sad that she didn't win the Young Authors contest. It would have been her third year in a row of winning so I don't feel too bad for her. And yet, there is something in me that always wants to be the winner too. A girl I know from grad school just got a really schmancy tenure-track position at an elite liberal arts college in North Carolina. It's not like she doesn't deserve it and it's not like I don't have a full-time tenure track job too - it's just that I want to be the best at stuff. Is that so wrong?

Is this post getting too personal? Maybe I should stop writing and get to those papers. (Or I could try to find a place to sleep - I find the scent of urinal cake very soothing late at night.) Meh. Enough. Maybe I'll post again later in Detroit. (Or maybe I'll sleep.)