I’m (very slowly) reading a new book about scientology even though I am pretty sure I know everything there is to know about scientology at this point. Update: still fucked up.

Yesterday, someone asked when I thought things would start to get back to normal for me and I’m still mad about it. To be clear, the answer to that question is: never. Normal is my dad being here. Everything else is not-normal.

It’s the golden age of streaming and I am currently watching the third season of a show called High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. They’re at summer camp this season and I genuinely don’t understand multiple significant plot points. For a show called High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Someone in this relationship is an idiot. It’s great when they burst into song, though.

This evening’s drug of choice is Cadbury Mini Eggs.

Today, I took a thank you card and a chocolate cake to the paramedics. My gratitude for them is infinite. And also, I almost said, “Thanks for saving my dad; it didn’t stick.” You can’t say things like that out loud but I increasingly think my after-Dad life will be organized around maximizing time with people I can say things like that to.

The thing about this High School Musical show is that I’m very invested in the drama of the main actors, who were in a relationship but now are not, and who are basically children. But I don’t have the resolve to read about it for any length of time. So I’m invested but not very committed, and I can’t keep track of the details, but I still try to explain it to other people.

My kiddo is obsessed with Pokémon and I don’t know anything about them except that there are so many Pokémon. My secret mom hack is that if you ask a kid to invent a new Pokémon they will talk for the next ten-to-twelve minutes without needing any additional input from their caregiver.

The dog says I have to go to bed. Tomorrow, we’ll aim for a coherent narrative. I promise.

Two. Kids these days are [fill in the blank here]. No they aren’t, you just got old, and if we’re lucky that’s what happens to the best of us. It would be nice if people tasked with educating the next generation didn’t fall into the same thought-terminating clichés as the last generation of garbage teachers adopted, but here we are.

Three. I don’t have time to teach [writing, grammar, study skills, etc]; my content is very important. If you evaluate for it, you have to teach it. That’s the rule. Otherwise, your course becomes an opaque mess of a game of “guess what’s in the professor’s head” and that’s not actually learning. Stop it. Oh, and when you outsource this work to your colleagues, recognize the specific skillset you are tapping into and stop treating so-called service departments like they are departments filled with your own literal servants.

Four. Accommodations are a workload issue / impinge on my academic freedom. I have empathy for the former — institutions download work onto those least able to resist, it’s true, and I don’t know of a single Accessibility Services office that would say, “Hey, we have enough money to do everything we need to do.” But access is a value and a commitment, and often by the time we get to the point of accommodations, there are changes in practice that would benefit the whole classroom (and, often, the instructor). The idea that accommodations are an academic freedom issue is a load of horseshit.

Five. Ranting about my students is a necessary catharsis. That’s an argument for talking about your rough day with your close friend or spouse, not for your anonymous social media account with 15.7M followers where you post excerpts of student writing, you absolute soggy Rice Krispie of a person. Students are humans who you should treat with respect. Why is that controversial.

Two. The worst part is telling people and the only worse worst thing is finding out too late that the person you’re talking to doesn’t already know. You will suddenly understand why everyone used to care about the obituary pages so much and you will wish you had a QR code on your forehead that people could scan for the necessary information.

Three. Being alone with your thoughts is overrated at the best of times but it really sucks when you’re grieving. Consider having one AirPod playing a fatuous podcast at a barely-perceptible volume at almost all times that you are alone. That way, you can learn about the history of birth certificates or the role of the gold standard or something instead of thinking about how the worst thing that ever happened to you has now happened and you will be forever changed. Because that is a real bummer.

Four. This is for those on the periphery of grief: when you deliver food to a grieving person (and you should), consider three things: portion, timing, and vessel. First, the portion should be proportionate to the size of the grieving family. Second, everyone will deliver food in the first two-three days and then never again, so consider waiting until week two or three for a visit (but maybe don’t plan for a visit-visit — a drop and run is an underappreciated gift on its own). The first and second point are interrelated (I have spent more time in a tetris game with our tiny freezer and/or intercepting deliveries than doing anything else). And finally, package your thoughtful and generous gift up in something disposable. I am sorry Mother Earth, but this is one thing you need just take on the chin. The washing and returning of vessels is a lot, my people. A lot.

Five. Also for my periphery peeps: don’t compare your grief. Even if you think the situation is so utterly similar to your own. Even if it is literally the exact same series of facts on paper. Death is simultaneously the great equalizer and a totally unique experience for each of us. When you tell someone in mourning that you know exactly how they feel, you risk making them feel erased in their most vulnerable moment. So just don’t do it. Save that for your group chat.

A corollary to five that is very important: this is not just like a thing that happened that wasn’t the death of a beloved person. It just isn’t. I know how much you loved that vase. I do. I beg you to stop talking.

Six. Whatever relationship you had to eating and caring for yourself before, it’s fucked up now. Sorry.

Seven. You will maybe be surprised to know that the dog is as sad as he is. The dog is so, so sad. The dog is incomprehensibly sad and the whole family is engaged in a project of distracting the dog. When the dog is distracted, he is himself. When he is not distracted, he is sad. Distracting the dog distracts us, too. This might be his MO.

Eight. You, unfortunately, are not a dog, and thus distraction can only work so well for so long. Eventually, you’ll need to do the work of processing this immeasurable loss. You can feel that need the way you feel something in your peripheral vision before you know for sure it’s there. Present and not-present. Schroedinger’s emotional labour. It’s not clear what this process will look like or when it will come. It feels like there might need to be guacamole? Or gin? The details are hazy. It’s coming, though — both a promise and a threat. But not, like, now. Now is still the time for distraction.

Nine. You can’t predict when you will dissolve. A song lyric. A line in a news story. A bird you don’t know the name of but he would. Other people being kind is the worst, and the least predictable. And then over and over and over again: that feeling that you should text him about this moment, send this picture, remember this for the next FaceTime. That recipe he would have loved to try. That person who would have made him roll his eyes. That overriding sense that there will be so many things — big and small and significant and foolish — that you want to share and a missing person to share them with.

Ten. You’re in this for the long haul.