I grew up surrounded by country boys, so my earliest crushes were all county boys, and I still have a thing for them. Most of the ones I knew didn’t wear cowboy hats but baseball caps, like the guys below.
BONUS: A country boy with a Jeep, two sexy things that just go together.
I had my second dose of the Pfizer COVID vaccine yesterday. For the first few hours, things went well. My arm started getting sore several hours after taking it, and as I write this, I am feeling some body aches. None of the side effects are too bad at this point. Last night, I was just hoping that I would feel fine this morning for my dental appointment. I hope that I can make some headway with my dentist about getting an earlier appointment. I’ll just have to see. Otherwise, today is going to be a pretty chill day since I am off work.
To celebrate getting my second shot, I made myself a nice dinner. I went by the grocery store next to the drugstore where I got my vaccine to get dinner for last night. I got some Brussel sprouts, corn, the store’s house recipe seasoned boneless skinless chicken breast, and some frozen Mason Dixie cheddar chive biscuits. I had never tried their house recipe chicken breasts before, and they were delicious and a bit tangy. I had also never tried any of the Mason Dixie products, but the cheddar chive biscuits had a pleasant taste, though they are much fluffier when I make them from scratch. Overall, it was a delicious meal and an excellent way to celebrate being vaccinated.
💉
Today’s the day. I’m getting my second COVID-19 vaccine. I’ve been told that the second shot is the one more likely to cause side effects, but so far, with the Pfizer vaccine which I’m getting, I’ve just heard that it made people sleepy. The Moderna vaccine seems to have a few more side effects. My dentist and his office took the Moderna and he said they all felt like they had a bad cold for a day or two, but only after the second shot. Then, they were fine.
🐾
I could handle a few days of being sleepy, if Isabella will let me sleep. When she decides it is time for me to get up, she’s pretty damn insistent that I get out of bed. There’s no such thing as sleeping late with this cat, and it’s not like she wants to be fed. She has a feeder and a water fountain, so she never runs out of either. Normally, she just wants one of two things: my warm spot in the bed or attention. She can be a bit of an attention whore at times.
🦷
I’ll be working this morning, but I’m taking off this afternoon and I have tomorrow off for my regular “use it or lose it” vacation day Fridays. Even though I have tomorrow off, I’ll be up and ready early as I have an 8 am dental cleaning appointment. I really hope that I can convince my dentist to either talk to the oral surgeon to let them know the urgency of taking out this tooth or refer me to someone else who can get me in sooner. We’ll see.
🌨
Other than that, I have no plans for this weekend. We are expecting rain all day today, and snow most of tomorrow. The last forecast I saw said we could expect 3-6” of snow, but the weatherman said that the ground is warm enough that it is unlikely to stick. It is expected to be a heavy wet snow. I hope it’s not too bad when I get up early tomorrow morning. I was really hoping I was done with cleaning snow from my car.
I wasn’t feeling great last night. I was just feeling kind of yucky. I had been working hard all day on a presentation I will be giving, and I was a bit worn out with a bit of a headache. I think I may be having some sinus trouble, as I have noticed some of the signs of sinus issues. I hope that’s all it was, but it just means that this post will be short today. I hope all of you are doing well.
Many thanks to The Closet Professor blog reader Rob, for sharing and suggesting this photo as a potential Pic of the Day.
After Graduate School
By Valencia Robin
Needless to say I support the forsythia’s war
against the dull colored houses, the beagle
deciphering the infinitely complicated universe
at the bottom of a fence post. I should be gussying up
my resume, I should be dusting off my protestant work ethic,
not walking around the neighborhood loving the peonies
and the lilac bushes, not heading up Shamrock
and spotting Lucia coming down the train tracks. Lucia
who just sold her first story and whose rent is going up,
too, Lucia who says she’s moving to South America to save money,
Lucia, cute twenty-something I wish wasn’t walking down train tracks
alone. I tell her about my niece teaching in China, about the waiter
who built a tiny house in Hawaii, how he saved up, how
he had to call the house a garage to get a building permit.
Someone’s practicing the trumpet, someone’s frying bacon
and once again the wisteria across the street is trying to take over
the nation. Which could use a nice invasion, old growth trees
and sea turtles, every kind of bird marching
on Washington. If I had something in my refrigerator,
if my house didn’t look like the woman who lives there
forgot to water the plants, I’d invite Lucia home,
enjoy another hour of not thinking about not having a job,
about not having a mother to move back in with.
I could pick Lucia’s brain about our circadian rhythms,
about this space between sunrise and sunset,
ask if she’s ever managed to get inside it, the air,
the sky ethereal as all get out—so close
and no ladder in sight.
About This Poem
“I wrote this poem while realizing how quickly my time in graduate school had sped by, and with it, much of the bravado I’d felt back when I was first quitting my job and leaving behind everything to be a poet. As scary as things got—and things got pretty scary—taking that leap saved my life.”—Valencia Robin
About the Poet
Valencia Robin is the recipient of a 2021 National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship. Her first collection of poems, Ridiculous Light (Persea Books, 2019), won Persea Books’ Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. She is a co-director of the University of Virginia Young Writers Workshop.
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The Closet Professor 