waterlog

Cleansing, later that day: "The horror!!"

2008-09-01T07:30:00.000-07:00

At some point during the afternoon of the cleanse, after I'd bolted the "salad in a glass," my stomach started to feel profoundly empty. My head started to hurt, and I got tired. I decided to nap; as I was also dogsitting at my parents' house during the cleanse, I had slept in a bed with a golden retriever, a springer spaniel mix, and my miniature wiener dog. I'm used to my 12-pound dog, but adding those other two big-uns really jacked up my sleep. A nap was definitely in order.

Sometime during what started off being a nap and ended up being a three-hour sleep, my brother came and was knocking at the door. I let him in, heard him peeing, and then he left. I don't recall if I said anything to him. Instead of feeling refreshed post-nap, I felt worse. "Perhaps I just need my allocation of green tea," I said to the dogs, who looked at me blankly, as dogs are wont to do. Sitting in my chair with the green tea, though, I started to feel really cold. My stomach dully ached. It dawned on me that I wasn't going to make it-- not only was I not going to be able to make it through three days, but I wasn't even going to be able to make it through one. I got up to make myself toast and had to lean down on the counter, my head on my hands, willing the toast to be done so I could eat and feel better. I felt the heat rise from deep within my core, my face flush, and beads of sweat form on my forehead as I smeared on the homemade strawberry jam. I'm not kidding; I have never experienced so rapid a turn in physical well-being. I gripped the plate of toast hard into the living room, and was only sitting for a second when I realized what was about to happen.

I'll spare you the details, dear reader. Let me just say that the vomit came so hard and fast that I burst a blood vessel in my eye. When I was done and was miserably chewing my toast, the shock of what had just occurred hit me. I had just made myself vomit by trying to be healthy. Now, what the hell is that supposed to mean? Am I really that unhealthy that when I try to do something good for myself, my body rejects it? I choose to believe that it was too great a shock to my system. When I told my roommate about it, the one who gave me the book with the cleanse, she was positively boggled. "I've heard of people getting weak and having diarrhea, but not puking!" she said. Well then. At least I'm unique.

I'm happy to report that after the toast, I had a diet cream soda and about ten tortilla chips and was essentially good as new. Yesterday I went to a Labor Day picnic and gladly dominated a burger and several different types of salads, and one piece of baklava. Today, still doing good. Perhaps the lesson is that, when I want to eat better, just eat the fruit and veg, don't turn them into juice to subsist on. Perhaps some of you already knew this, but at least I can say that in my lifetime, I tried a cleanse and puked. Now that's an accomplishment.

The Cleanse: Day One, lunchtime

2008-08-30T10:24:00.000-07:00

Let me just come out and say it: I'm doing a juicing cleanse. I know that it might sound a little silly and new-agey, but its nothing I've ever done before and was curious about how it might feel. After several conversations and some research, I found the "Total Body Stress Cleanse."

Right. So, the whole point is that I throw all kinds of fruits and veggies in a juicer and live on that for three days. There are different combinations, of course. This morning, I had a glass of water with one lemon's worth of juice and two tablespoons of maple syrup, a glass of juice with parsley, carrots, an apple, and 1/2 a beet, (yep. I drank that) and glass of carrot juice with a teaspoon of wheatgrass (that was absolutely dreadful. I will NOT be consuming more wheatgrass during this cleanse).

I can tell you that it hasn't been bad so far. But now it's 12:30, lunchtime, which means that I'm about to have a "Salad in a Glass." It's celery, tomatoes, cucumber, green pepper, lemon, parsley, and chives. I'm looking at it right now, and I'm telling you that there is a vaguely pee-colored liquid at the bottom and reddish-orange sediment floating on the top. I'm horrified. How am I, dear reader, possibly going to get that down my gullet? I'm kind of for the "rip the band-aid off fast" philosophy of action, so I'm going to take care of my "lunch" and then let you know what I thought.

* * *

It's 12:36. That was pretty awful. It tasted like... like salty tomatoey lemony water. Not friendly at all. I made the juice about an hour and a half ago and put it in the fridge, which was a smart idea because if it was warm, I might have gagged. Luckily, it wasn't a massive glass and after half a glass of water, there is only a vague aftertaste in the back of my mouth. Perhaps that is the taste of health.

Honestly, even as I type, it's like I don't really want to be talking about it. It's wierd how a morning's worth of fruit and vegetable juice has completely taken over my thoughts. All I can think about is how I can't wait until 2:30 when I can have a big mug of green tea (yes, it's part of the plan). Dinner tonight? "Potassium Broth." That would be exactly what it sounds like--broth from a bunch of veggies boiled together.

Yeah, there will be more updates.

First day: Terror

2008-08-25T12:09:00.000-07:00

The first day of class is here! I only have one class today and I'm thinking, "Yeah, this is going to be great. Super fun. No big."

Yep, five years of teaching full-time, and I'm still terrified to get up in front of those students and try to get them comfortable when I am NOT comfortable. And I like being the center of attention! But the first day... good lord. I start yammering about how the first day of class is like a blind date and everyone is looking around at each other and looking at me and wondering how it's going to be and if we're all going to get along, and then I have to take roll and slaughter everyone's names, and then we all do the "get to know each other" thing that no one EVER likes, and then I have to tell them things about myself, so I say where I went to school and how long I've been teaching and that ordinarily my hair is very straight and flat (I curled it today for the occassion) and that I have one small tattoo before I trail off and ask if anyone has any questions and a guy raises his hand and asks,

"So, do you think you're a better communicator in writing or when talking?"

Holy moly! What a question. I confessed that I was nervous and prefer talking in smaller groups and that writing is a different form of communication for me than speaking... right. I can't completely remember what I even said.

I'm through it now, though, so I can hole up in my office and do other work, work that doesn't involve standing up in front of a bunch of strangers with judging eyes. Give me a week or two and (I hope to hell!) I'll be comfortable.

Anarchy!!!

2008-06-05T06:37:00.000-07:00

I have this new friend that I met through some other friends, as happens at times. He's this nice peace-loving kind of guy, a vegan animal-lover who wears his childhood dog's ID tag on a long chain around his neck, which I find endearing. He's also a philosopher and an anarchist.

This makes me laugh. Not that he's a philosopher, and not necessarily that he's an anarchist, but the term "anarchy" has connotations for me that are amusing. I think specifically about a childhood friend of mine, Amy, who, along with her brother were adopted and then the mother died. My assumption was that her childhood was not idyllic, but not through any fault of her father, who looked to me to be about the most mild-mannered fella a kid would want to have around. His only problem was that he was perhaps a bit too permissive, and maybe there was a pervy uncle or something in the picture, or she could have just made some "bad decisions," but at any rate, around the age of thirteen or fourteen, when everyone is all fucked up by their awkward bodies and hormones, Amy took a wrong turn down the expressway of life. This was right around the time of the advent of grunge music, and Amy started smoking, wearing the same flannel day after day, shaved the bottom hemisphere of her skull and wore the rest up in a ponytail, and skipped school. Oh yes, my dear readers, I'm sure she started participating in sexual intercourse with older boys and possibly even smoking that wacky tabaccy. This is, of course, a sad state of affairs, and the last time I saw her was over twelve years ago and she was pregnant and playing pool in a smoky coffee shop. I have no idea if she's still alive.

This is, of course, no good, and nothing about the story I've told you is funny. Amy is, however, a major player in why I think anarchism is funny. She would write the anarchy symbol all over the place: you know the one, the capitol "A" with a circle around it. On her notebooks, in the bathrooms, on her locker, on her hands. I've also seen it on t-shirts, and the font is cliche-- jagged edges, usually in red. It's a symbol that screams, "I am an anti-establishment badass!! This anarchy symbol shows you how hardcore I am!"

I have to laugh. After several conversations, I feel like I have a basic grasp of what anarchism is, and there is absolutely nothing "badass" about it. My roommate said it best: anarchism is best defined when you don't realize that it's happening. Case in point: in a functional household, adult members of the household work together to solve problems. If there's an issue, they come to mutually acceptable solutions to running said household and getting along with each other. This is anarchism. Anarchists don't like "the state" (I like to think of it as "The Man," simply because I want to keep that moniker alive and kicking) because The Man imposes rules on the people rather than allowing the people to form their own rules. You might say, "We elect those people who make the rules, idiot, so if we don't like them, that's our problem, not the problem of The Man." Well, yeah, but as we all know, politicians often either are corrupt or are easily corruptible because they are, in fact, human, and what about the 50% of Americans who didn't vote for Bush but are still subject to his administration's shenanigans? You might say, okay, simpleton, but we all agree to live in this country and will abide by its rules, so if you don't like it, go somewhere else (which is ridiculous: no one else wants us!!), and I don't entirely disagree with that. The fact is, though, that the anarchists aren't fond of The Man and think we can best solve our problems by ourselves. Power to the people!! (Or whatever.)

Anyway, the point is, anarchism isn't badass. It happens around us, in our homes, every day, which might make the angsty teenagers feel like it's actually a little lame. The problem of the name still exists for me, though. Travis suggests that I call it "Libertarian-socialism," but again, there's the problem with label connotations with libertarians (I know this isn't all libertarians, but I always think about gun-toting hick uber-Republicans, and socialists are awesome, but tacking libertarianism to it seems wierdo). He then suggested that I go with what Peter Marin (sp?), co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, calls it, which was something ridiculous like "Peopleism" or some such silliness that I could never take seriously.

So I'm looking for a new name for anarchism so I can stop tittering about it and start taking it seriously as a philosophy. Perhaps we should go with humanist psychology...that seems a bit anarchistic. We could call it Rogerianism (from Carl Rogers, daddy of humanist psychology). Or maybe we could call it Symbiosis-ism. Insect-ism? Bugs are very small and are the majority of organisms, and without them we'd all be dead... I don't know, I can see the parallels. Anyway, if anyone has any good ideas for alternate labels, let me know, because I just can't seem to get past the branding of "anarchism."

Done.

2008-05-22T16:38:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday, I typed in all of my final grades for the semester. Since I started teaching seven years ago, I always put in the grades and then take time to look at each student and consider the grade that they're getting for the class before I click on the "Submit" button. The math says that they should get a C... when I consider their time with me over the course of the semester, do they deserve a C? It's always bizzare-o to me that math, my least favorite thing (next to avacados, mullets, and militancy, of course), accurately predicts whether a student, with all of his/her complexities, benefits, and liabilities, deserves a C or a D. This begs the question "What does a grade really mean, though?" which I shan't delve into at this point, as I have already entered my grades and am no longer interested in thinking about it.

The thing with getting done with grades, though, is that a person kind of has to keep it on the down-low. I finished on Tuesday, and grades weren't due until the following Monday. Coworkers' responses to the news that I was done with the semseter nice and early ranged from "Wow!" to "Hmmgrrph." I certainly don't think that I'm a big deal for finishing my grades early, by any means, but I learned quickly to downplay the gleeful tone gilding the edges of my voice. It goes something like this:

I say, "Well, Todd (no, I don't actually work with a Todd), how are you doing this fine finals week?"

Todd sighs deeply and/or rolls his eyes heavenward. "I'm working on it. I still have 5,492 quizzes to run through the scantron, and unfortunately, I asked twelve essay questions instead of two this semester, so I have about 140 hours worth of work left to do. How about you?"

"Huh!" I say. "That's a lot (it's critical to be appropriately impressed with the amount of work to be done. We teachers thrive on others being in awe of the awesomeness of our occupation). I'm totally amazed; I don't know how you do all that work. As far as I go, I have been positively swamped with work the past couple of weeks, and the students have really been on my case about hurrying up and getting the grades in; you know how it goes. I entered my grades today, but you wouldn't believe all of the filing and office cleaning I have to do because it's such a mess in there, and of course I'm finishing up my committee work for the year, too."

I stop, waiting for the critical reponse. Have I appropriately couched my stunningly wonderful news between awe and mention of the piles of work still to be done?

"Yes," Todd says gravely. "We work very hard, don't we."

Success!

So it's the end of a semester, but not just any semester, spring semester, which means that the summer is yawning before me. I stay up past 11:00 sometimes, and now that it's not randomly snowstorming in April, I can use my bike as my main mode of transportation (yes, this makes me feel very self-righteous. And buff.). I have also been reading through all of Jane Austen's books (yes, this too makes me feel self-righteous). What's fascinating about these novels is that it is sooo jacked up how propriety is postively critical to success in life. So I'm reading Northanger Abbey right now, and there's the heroine, Catherine, right? She's got this girlfriend who gets engaged to her brother, and believe me, when an engagement has happened at this time period, it's ON like DONKEY KONG. There's NO messing around. It's a done deal. So anyway, Catherine and this girlfriend, Isabella, are at this place where all the rich people hang out to talk and stare at each other, and Isabella is approached by this other dude (who happens to be the older brother of Catherine's sorta-secret love), and he gets all up in her grill about how she's teasing him and he wants to hook up with her. Catherine isn't supposed to hear, but she does. And what happens? She sits there, all disturbed, pretending that she doesn't hear, and over the next couple of days, it is practically eating her alive. Now, if YOU were Catherine and you had this best bud Isabella who might be screwing over your brother, wouldn't you be apt to sit her down and ask, "My dear, what could you mean by all of this carrying-on with Captain Tilney when your sentiments are already most agreeably engaged to my dear brother, James?" Please. Instead, Catherine hems and haws and finally brings it up with the not-so-secret love and brother to Captain Tilney, and because she's so totally in love with him (the brother, not the Captain), and he says, "Hey, sweet pea, don't worry about it. Everyone will get a good chuckle out of this little bit of sport in just a few months' time," she's like, "Oh, you're SOOO right; how could I be so foolish." It's just silly. Then there's this other guy who is a total jerkface who keeps hitting on Catherine, and she has to be very nice to him even though he's such an ass. Any other gal might slap this dude upside the head, but because he's a dude and it's 1700s England, we all have to maintain appearances. It's both insane and fascinating.

Anyway, sorry. I got a little caught up there. It's just that once I'm done with Northanger it's on to Persuasion, and then I'm done with Austen's books. I only had one break for Love in the Time of Cholera (I'd give it a 5--neither inspiring nor insulting). So it's been a bit consuming. If you haven't read any Austen, go directly to Pride and Prejudice, do not pass "Go," do not collect two hundred dollars. Then watch the movie... Colin Firth??? Delicious.

Whoops, sorry, caught up again. Let me end this post with a trite cliche lest I lapse into the almost Christ-like goodness of the main character of Mansfield Park:

I'm totally looking forward to this summer! It's going to be sooo much fun!!!!! I hope to talk to all of you soon! :) :) :)

Yep.

I got yelled at by a flight attendant.

2008-01-15T19:43:00.000-08:00

I went to Florida after New Year's with my mother, and this story comes not from the resplendent views of the Atlantic Ocean, nor does it come from the inside of Spaceship Earth (that's the ride that's inside the globe at EPCOT). Nope, this story comes courtesy of Northwest Airlines, somewhere between Detroit and Duluth.

It had been a pretty long day up until that point. We took a bus with a bunch of families (read: gobs of tired kiddies) from the hotel to the airport, and then had a flight from Orlando to Detroit that was 2 1/2 hours, and then we had to sit in Detroit for four hours, waiting, waiting. The flight was delayed and I had been sick with a persistent cold all week, so I was pretty much ready to be in my own house, sleeping in my own bed at that point. All that stood before me was a one hour, twenty minute flight on one of those itty-bitty commuter planes that only has one potty and one flight attendant, an older, balding, beady-eyed man named Hugh (that'd be the flight attendant, not the crapper).

From the start I thought it was going to be a decent flight. The plane was only half full, so my mom and I had aisle seats across from each other and an empty seat next to us until Random Fella comes and sits next to me. I move, of course, after some witty repartee with him, to the set of empty seats in front of my mom. Golden.

After we took off, I was feeling a little queasy. I don't usually get sick from flying, but for some reason, my system wasn't feeling this ride. It wasn't turbulent, I just figured it was getting to be a long day. So when the plane started to even out, I needed to hit the bathroom, just to move around and blow off some steam (insert your own gastric disturbance here). On my way back to the seat, I see that Hugh, the Uber-Professional Flight Attendant, is handing out drinks. I land in my seat and as I am fumbling for my seat belt, out of nowhere appears the moon face of one Flight Attendant Hugh.

He peered at me through his coke bottle glasses. "Excuse me, ma'am, but I am going to have to ask you to remain seated with your seat belt fastened," he said, somewhat sternly, I might add.

I looked at him, holding the ends of the seat belt in my hands. "I... I had to go to the bathroom."

"Don't you know that you should never get on the plane having to go to the bathroom? Please stay seated. It's very turbulent."

What? It's not turbulent! It's turbulent in my stomach, but not on the friggin' plane. Okay, it's ON. "What am I, six?" I say. "I had to go to the bathroom, so I went!"

"Well, I'm going to have to go back there and lock that bathroom," he snapped. "I can't have people moving around the plane."

"Great!" I said. "On your way back there, why don't you yell at the guy who went in there after me while you're at it?"

"Maybe I will!" he retorted. (Oooohh, Hugh, good one.) Suddenly, he softens his tone. "Would you like something to drink?"

I admit that I am a bit taken aback. "Yes. Water."

"Ice?"

Ice? What's ice? I suddenly remember that I am mad at this man. "No, thank you," I say snootily.

He brought me the water, and I'm happy to say that there were no further incidents on the flight (unless, of course, he spit in my water, which would have brought our conflict to a breathtaking climax, but I didn't notice anything amiss). I might also add that my mom and the guy I was first sitting next to were both crying, they were laughing so hard at this exchange. Lesson learned? If I need to go to the bathroom, I am going to go, especially if there is a flight attendant named Hugh present.

My dog hates the weather

2007-12-09T08:27:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of my dog, Bean, standing on the sidewalk in front of my house. We got over two feet of snow within four days last week, and now it's been consistently below zero. She is NOT a fan of this (can't say I love it, either!!).

My Most Recent Craft Project

2007-12-09T08:12:00.000-08:00

Historically, I've never been a huge fan of wearing dangly earrings, but something changed as of late and I started collecting and wearing them. I was tossing them into a decorative box, but then it became a literal manifestation of the proverbial clusterfuck. Inspired by a similar display at my hairdressers, I decided to make a window screen earring holder.

Initially, I thought I'd get an old wooden picture frame from an estate sale, staple some old screen to it, and call it good. Then I realized that I'd need to add extra pieces of wood to the back of whatever I got because it'd be hard to hook the earrings into the screen if it's flush to the wall. Then I was rooting around in a stranger's wood shop at an estate sale and ran across some pieces of wood I thought would work.

I get home and immediately pulled out my staple gun (which is *so* fun to use) and stapled the wood into the frame you see (yep, all of this happened in my dining room. No woodworking room for me!). I then painted it white with acrylic paint. First mistake: paint the wood BEFORE stapling it together. I don't think it was the end of the world, but the painting was a little awkward.

I then made the little earring bar from a couple of smaller pieces of wood I got from the same sale. I knew I needed this particular feature for my hoop earrings. Yes, I literally used a steak knife to saw notches into the little pieces of wood to be able to break them cleanly, then out came the glue gun and the acrylic paint again.

When the frame was dry, I stapled the screen on and then nailed the back pieces onto the frame to hold the screen away from the wall. The bar got glue-gunned on, I used a pair of pliers to screw in eye hooks, and used a wire to hang it onto my wall. Voila! The results aren't professional, but they're functional and *might* qualify for (albeit unintentional) shabby chic. I was even able to get in some episodes from season one of Scrubs while I worked!

In hindsight, a picture frame would've been way easier. I was having a hard time finding one, though, and got impatient (seriously, my earrings were a mess). This was more work, but I feel pretty good about it. It looks much better, and it's easier to see what I have for earrings, too.

My New Hair!

2007-11-24T11:34:00.000-08:00

Yes, the hair is darker, but take note! I finally have eyebrows!! Oh, the miracles of modern hair dyeing techniques...

Response to the Overworked (http://fragmentedcontinuity.blogspot.com)

2007-10-07T09:45:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting at a conference luncheon, the kind where you eat chicken breasts and steamed and salted broccoli, drink coffee, and listen to a keynote speaker and pray to God that she isn't a droner (is that even a word? If not, it should be. You know what I mean.).

To mix things up, this luncheon had an awards ceremony component to it, too. One of the awards was the "Best New Teacher" award. They announced the winner and launched into a list of this young lady's accomplishments, which included teaching anywhere in the neighborhood of 27 to 5000 classes, developing technological advances in at least 75 percent of them, running the writing center, which included hiring and firing and supervising, advising the honors society on campus, answering all emails within three hours of receiving them, grading and handing back papers within a single class period, having all students both respect and love her as a professional writing god and a person, and having above-average dential hygiene. During the litany, one of my coworkers leaned over to me and said, "Wow. I'M tired, now."

I've been working hard this semester. In case you didn't notice, I hate that my boyfriend is in Iraq, but there he is. This means that I have lots of time to load my plate up with full-time classes (including one I've never taught before and another I've revamed for the semester), honors society advising, sitting on two committees, helping with the planning for a conference we're having here next year, serving on a search committee, chairing the college's search for our All-USA Academic Team students, taking belly dancing lessons through community ed., working on my portfolio for tenure, attending aforementioned conference, and also having above-average dental hygiene. I do this stuff for two distinct reasons. Number one: I love myself. Number two: I hate how I feel when I'm not busy.

Let's break it on down. Number one, I love myself. Specifically, I love how I feel when I'm in front of the classroom and students are getting it. I even love the challenge of trying to get the resistant students to buy in (not that it's fun or that I don't bitch because I do. It's frustrating, but I still thrive on the challenge). I love feeling useful, helpful. I love having the time to be able to say, "Yes. This is my priority right now, so I'm throwing my whole self into it." That self might be lonely or cranky at times, but with the bad comes the best of me, those parts that are selfless and fiercely committed and loving, even to strangers.

Hating how I feel when I'm not busy is actually pretty self-explanatory. When I'm not busy (read: feeling like I'm doing something worthwhile because everything I do I try to ascribe some meaning to), I'm not living. A friend of mine once told me that he "can sleep when he's dead." In a way, I feel the same. When I'm not busy, I will probably be dead.

What's the definition of work? For me, it is doing something in which I have not found inherent value. If that's the definition, then "OVERworked" is redundant, because any work is too much.

Listen, I'm no saint here. I do a lot of "work." I do, however, try to question why I'm doing what I'm doing, and how I can maximize the benefits that are hiding within these activities. Like that boyfriend said in "The Devil Wears Prada," "You're committed to the one whose calls you always take," I only answer calls that make me love myself more. An interesting effect of this is the more calls I take that most closely align with the love, the more calls appear that feed the love.

My advice for the Worked (who are capable of changing their lives through the privileged act of having the tools to make their own decisions): answer those calls that beget love, because you'll get more love... just like shit can only make shit.

What I do on a Sunday morning

2007-09-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

Stepping out the back door onto the deck, I could feel the chill of the night in the air. The garden is looking wilty, and if that isn’t a word, it should be. I hooked the Bean Dog to her rope and she ran skittering to the edge, leaping off into the grass like a kid jumping into a lake off a dock. I went inside and filled the teapot and clicked on the electric fireplace. The thermostat on the wall read 61 degrees.

When I was living in Grand Forks, I bought a house for next-to-nothing. It had cracked plaster walls that were covered with beige fake wood paneling and a dirt basement, the kind of place that I imagined a middle class family feeling pretty proud of having in the 1930’s. For me, it was the best of the cheap places I had looked at. My realtor was glad to be rid of me, I’m sure—he was old and long-suffering, there to open doors and stand around as I peered wide-eyed into closets and turned on faucets, a benevolent spirit. The great part of the place was its proximity to the downtown, something that people in Grand Forks seemingly find abhorrent given the growth far away from the city center. The fact that the Red River Runs through downtown and its tendency to flood might have something to do with it. Anyway, I was close enough in my house to bike downtown to the bar to meet my friends, for example. I could have an extra beer and the only thing I’d have to worry about would be going over the railroad tracks. The best part, though, was walking to the gas station three blocks away. One of the most badass parts of that part of the world is that every gas station sells Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Those doughnuts are so bad for you that they actually get into your stomach and suck up the nutrition present in other foods, but please. They were so good. Also, the gas station had International Delight flavored creamers for coffee. So, Sunday morning I’d walk over to the gas station with Bean. She was small enough at that point that I could tuck her into my jacket when I went in. I’d get a cream-filled chocolate frosted doughnut, a 16-ounce coffee with about three hazelnut creamers, and a paper. Then I’d go home, click on Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood, read the paper and imbibe in the gas station delicacies.

Today, there’s a gas station that is about four blocks away from my house. Unfortunately, that gas station is straight down the hill. The going down isn’t bad, but the going up, with a 20-30 degree hill while balancing a paper, a coffee, and some cheap ass plastic doughnut (there’re no Krispy Kremes here) is not my idea of a relaxing Sunday morning activity.

So I stuck around home this morning doughnutless, but I did turn on Sunday Morning. I love Charles Osgood. I don’t think of him as a grandfatherly type, and I don’t think he’s a sexy beast, but I would love to be his friend. It would be so cool to eat a Krispy Kreme with him (I bet he’d like a maple-flavored doughnut) and talk about artsy stuff. I feed Bean and pull out my bead collection, which has been housed in a red tool box. I bought several of those plastic boxes with all the little square organizational compartments, and it’s on like Donkey Kong. I learn about KT Tunstall on Sunday morning, and I separate the greens from the reds. I hear about the new electric cars from Tesla (priced at around the I’ll-never-be-able-to-afford-one range) and from one of the big American manufacturers (Chevy?) and separate the hemp cords from the elastic strings. When I am finished, I’m satisfied. My dad calls to see if I want to go for breakfast, but I want to stick around the house.

I wash dishes and open junk mail, shredding the parts with my name and recycling everything else. Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippet on MPR comes on, and her guest is a Chinese-American who talks about her life during the cultural revolution. As a schoolgirl, she was forced to denounce her most beloved teacher as a traitor to the party in front of the entire school, an act that has not left her and that the teacher never forgave her for.

By 10:45, it’s getting to the point where I need to shower. I did some hardcore housework the night before and wore the same shirt to bed, and I was feeling pretty grungy. I hopped in, shampooing and scrubbing away happily, applying a thick deep-conditioning cream to my hair.

This is a Sunday morning, one that's slow and quietly productive. It ends in a shower, as close to a celebration as this morning will get.

D-Day

2007-09-09T11:33:00.000-07:00

It's cold this morning, and I jump into my car and turn on the heat. The heavy lids of night are just opening to reveal the watery, unsure light of the sun. I own the road, so the drive to the airport doesn't take any time at all. I am walking through the short term parking lot at just after 5 a.m. Airports are like a time warp. There's no way anyone should be awake at that time in the morning when even the birds haven't yet started singing, but as the sliding doors shhhh open, people are walking around, checking bags and chatting on cell phones. I don't see Damien, so I go upstairs and get a paper. The lighting is terrible; florescence surrounds me and I know that between my fear and getting up at 4 a.m., I must look pallid, perhaps even a little green. It occurs to me that airports are purposely set up to look the same everywhere to lull one into a false sense of security. I feel that the familiar foreignness is made to shock one into dull submission, like playing Mozart in a slaughterhouse, so no one freaks out and everything stays orderly. I feel really fucking disordered in the back of my mind, but the strangeness of the airport that I've been in dozens of times mixed with my concentration on the lead story in the newspaper keeps me quiet.

There he is. He's carrying a four-foot long box. There could be a bassoon or a javelin in there. I know it contains an M-16. I smile and wave and he goes to the check-in counter. He's got his hooded sweatshirt on, and I know which pair of boxers he's wearing beause I helped him pack last night, watched as he set aside his clothes for that morning's plane ride.

His parents show up when he's checking in and so do some of the guys from his station. I cling to my newspaper and smile as the round of introductions commence. Guys shake my hand and I squeeze hard.

All of a sudden, he's done at the counter and is at my side, saying goodbye to the guys. His parents and I follow him up the escalator to the security gate. There is a tissue in my pocket that I know I'll use, and it occurs to me that it's one of those fancy lotion-infused tissues, and those have piss-poor absorbency.

Damien is not messing around. He hugs and kisses me, tells me he loves me. I watch him hug his parents. I am the only one crying. My eyes leak all over the place, and I rub the damn useless tissue under my eyes and try to set my mind. I make a lame joke about checking his "weapon." He's walking away, handing the TSA security guard the baggie full of travel-sized toiletries and stripping off his shoes and sweatshirt. Then he's through. He waves. His mother gives me an awkward hug. His dad doesn't know what to make of me. They leave, and I sit.

I call him on his cell phone to tell him I'm staying until the plane leaves. We have minor conversation. I can't see him, which is probably good since I'm so fucking weak, so messed up about all of this. I want something. A grand gesture, perhaps; something that shows me how much he loves me, that he understands how sad this is that we're being tested this way so early in our relationship. I want him to say something profound, something I can run through my brain, drink like a cool glass of water, anything that will flush the bitter taste that has been squeezing the back of my throat for too long now.

Before he boards the plane, I see him. He waves. And then he is gone.

Decisions

2007-08-28T16:24:00.000-07:00

The ride to the airport is quiet. It takes about a half hour, and it's a school day, so I'll have to have my mom write a note that excuses me from my English and math classes. I'm in the back seat of our Bronco II, a year before my mom rolls it on the Midway Road, fiddling with my backpack zipper and looking out the window. All too soon we are at the airport, and I trail along behind my mom and dad as they pick up one boarding pass and check one suitcase. When it's time, my dad walks through the security gate and, with a final wave, disappears down the jetway and into the plane bound for North Carolina. My mom walks to the big window overlooking the tarmac and stares out. I'm sixteen, and I've never witnessed a look of profound lonliness on the face of a loved one until that moment, when my dad left from one of his visits to go back to his job in North Carolina. My mom and I are still here, and she has that look on her face because we decided to let my dad go ahead of us until I graduated from high school. He's been making these visits for a year and a half. After I graduate and start my own life, they can be back together again, they who have been together since high school, they who have lived and loved together for over twenty-five years. My mom stares out the window of the airport, her face slack and pale, her eyes bright with tears and ready to spill over. I decide at that moment that my last two years of high school no longer matter. As a sixteen year old, I decided that it was better to sacrifice my own comfort than to have to continue to see that look on my mother's face, the look that masked the pain of being alone in a world. Later that night, as my mom got ready for bed, I would tell her that we needed to move across the country to be with my dad. I was ready.

What do you do with the truth?

2007-08-14T09:01:00.000-07:00

There have only been a few times in my life when reality has smacked me right upside the head, when all of my previously understood concepts of particular aspects of life are flipped on me, turned on my person like a thief who's gotten ahold of my pepper spray. One of those times was when I got out of high school, went to college, and realized that I was now a very small fish in a very big, cruel pond. Another was when I graduated with my masters degree and realized that English MAs are a dime a dozen, and no one was going to hire me simply because of my degree. I had to separate myself out from the pack, and that was difficult.

Speaking of difficulty, I have, within the past two days, been confronted with something that is, dare I say, life-changing. I know a guy who is going to Iraq. This guy is my boyfriend.

I know that this news is not impressive in and of itself. He's a firefighter in the air national guard. We're in a (ahem, ridiculous) war. That's what military people do. They go to war.

The truth, however, is far more complex than the mere statement implies. This whole business calls into question my ideas about war and peace, love, and what it means to commit. In a broad sense, I am displeased with this war, and it has become the quagmire than Dick Cheney himself alluded to in an interview in 1994 as then former secretary of defense (essentially, he said that removing Hussein's government, despite the fact that it is tyrranical, would create collateral damage within Iraq and among the people that we are simply not equipped to deal with). I have protested this war at the foot of the White House, outside the Pentagon, and at the mall in front of the Capitol. I am not messing around with my feelings about this war. It is, admittedly, not as easy as simply withdrawing all troops and letting the cards fall as they may. But I don't trust Bush and his cronies as far as I can throw them, so I certainly don't trust them to get us out of this thing as reasonably as possible. Yes, Cheney, you were right on at least one aspect: this is indeed a big, messy, ridiculous quagmire, and I stand in judgment against it.

But then I have a man who I love going to play a part in it, in a very real sense. My philosophy and judgment and distaste doesn't amount to a hill of beans when he's there. As far as he is concerned, I have to be support. My father said something really wise the other day: he said that the only thing I need to be concerned with is him. It's about me being someone who he can think about and feel good, someone whose love and full support is not in question. This doesn't mean that I need to change my feelings about the war, but it does mean that I need to shift my perspective and focus in on the reality that confronts me.

Another aspect of this that is kind of blowing my mind is the fact that we have really only been together for just over three months. That's obviously not a long time. He's leaving for four months. How do I deal with him being gone for that long? Is he going to change with the things he sees while he is over there? Am I going to become so focused in on my work and life here that I forget how much his love has nourished me these few months? Can there still be growth in the midst of absence?

We've talked about this, and he shocks me by his lack of worry and his immense trust in me and the relationship. In the face of what I would consider to be life-and-death circumstances, his assuredness buoys me. The simple truth is that bodily absence does not mean that the love is also absent. It also means that the hard work of the relationship continues despite that absence.

Which brings me to the last issue, which is that of commitment. I've always thought that I would be able to easily commit, that I am a mate-for-lfe type of person. At the same time, there are moments when I feel that the sinews of past relationships are holding me back. In short, relationships for me have become synonymous with leaving, and with that leaving, a deadening of emotions. How am I supposed to deal with him leaving me when the love is still very much alive and well?

I've been a bundle of emotions since I got the news that he's leaving. I have not been steady. Last night, after expressing my regret over my overemotional state (it's exhausting for me to be that way, and I can only imagine that it is tiring for him), he stated a simple truth: "The sky isn't falling in on us. Everything is okay." This reminds me of a fortune cookie years ago: "The stars appear every night in the sky. All is well." I always thought that commitment meant looking over the course of my life and saying "yes" to something for that entire timespan. The real truth is, though, that commitment is something I must do every single day. There are, of course, things that I say "yes" to over a time span, but those are mere words that dissipate like morning dew without daily commitment and nurturance. It's not about saying "yes" once. It's about saying "yes" even when, on any given day, I might feel indifferent or that I want to scream, "NO!" Commitment isn't something I'll get from someone, like a diamond ring or a new blender. Commitment is something that I must choose to do every day.

I don't know what's going to happen over the next four months, through fall and into the deep freeze of winter before I see him again. What I do know is the truth, which is far more simple than I ever could have imagined without living it.

My "Cringe" Offering, part one

2007-07-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

I was listening to "Weekend Edition" on MPR this morning, and there was a story about something called "Cringe Nights" at a bar in Brooklyn, NY. The Cringe Movement got started by a lady named Sarah Brown (http://queserasera.org/cringe.html), and the gist is that people go to this bar with their journals from when they were teenagers and sign up for times to go up and read parts of them to the crowd. Horror and hilarity ensues.

Being a horrifying teenager myself at one point, I was immediately drawn to the concept. Air out your "deepest" insights as an adolescent for laughs and empathy. Dig it. I immediately went to the plastic storage container in the closet in my back bedroom and dug out my journals. Submitted for your approval (or derision) here is an entry dated July 28th, 1996, with all of its logical inconsistencies and leaps in time intact. I would be 17 years old when I wrote this:

I sit in a tiny alcove off the main hallway. There is room here for two, but I am alone, facing the wall. The hallway is dark because it is summer, and the only light comes from the four vending machines against the wall. They hum, and it is the only noise I hear. I am alone, and my thoughts are my company.

"It smells like rain," he said, and I looked about me. True enough, the sky was gray. The flowers looked more fresh after their shower, and the water droplets were beaded on the windshield of the Escort. But it didn't smell like rain to me, which is a good, clean, healing scent. It smelled like wet asphalt, which strangles the earth.

I put my feet up onto the seat facing me and run my fingers across the smooth surface of the table. My pinky finger hits a ridge in the smoothness, a ripple in time, a chip in an otherwise perfectly manicured fingernail. I trace the words with my fingers as I look down at them thoughtfully. They read, "Fuck you."

We walk across the Arial Lift Bridge in Canal Park. It is warm out, summer, and I am feeling strange. My subconscious knows this beginning is wrong, but necessary. It knows I'm in trouble. I know I'm in trouble. But when has that ever mattered? He has picked me a small flower off of a bush and hands it to me shyly. I try to tuck it behind my ear, but it won't stay. I can't make it stay.

Why would someone write "Fuck you" on a table like this, I think idly. They were probably just angry. But at who? Me, personally? No. Probably the whole world. But the whole world won't see this. He probably meant to write "Fuck every single person that just so happens to sit at this table even though, chances are that I don't know a single one of them and they don't really deserve to read this shit." Yeah, that's probably what he meant to write, just figured that his hand would get too tired. So he kept it nice and simple-like. Generic. "Fuck you." Real simple.

I'm standing in the shower, the hot spray hitting my back. My shower walls are real strange, like green and white swirls. Sometimes when I'm in there, I can make out shapes of things in the swirls. A snarling bear, a screaming man. I never see birds or flowers or smiling babies. I wonder why.

I stand up and stretch, forgetting the obscene words yet holding them in the back of my mind. I am drawn to the humming machines and stand in front of them, silently looking them over. I dig in the pocket of my Dickies and pull out some change, dropping it into the slot. I am wearing a cat t-shirt I got in Japan, too, and my brown sandals I found in a motel room. I think idly that this is the outfit I want to be buried in as I take my soda from the machine. It suddenly dawns on me that pop machines are a lot like relationships. In some machines, soda costs 75 cents and is a rip-off. You give too much and get too little. At Wal-Mart, you can get Sam's Choice soda for a quarter. You think it's a great deal 'til you taste it, and it rots. You give too little and it seems real great, but it just sucks. So you go around, in constant search for the perfect 55 cent pop machine. Just like relationships. Wierd.

I hear footsteps coming from down the hallway and look up. A guy with long hair walks by. He catches my eye, and for a split second I can see a pop machine that says "55 cents" on it. Then I look down, and he is already halfway down the hall.

Glancing down at my soda, I crack it open and take a gulp. I start heading in the opposite direction as the guy with the dude length, and wonder what my mother is doing.

Stopping to tie my shoe, I set the half-empty soda on the ground. And I paid 65 cents for you, I think. I stand up and walk on. The soda is left behind to fend for itself. It's just something you gotta do sometimes. It's just like writing "Fuck you" on a table. It's just like being forced to buy a pop from Wal-mart. It's just stuff that life makes you do. Life is wierd that way.

You made it to the end! Congratulations. Yep, that's a little horrifying... it's nothing compared to the poetry that I found, though. Perhaps I'll treat you to that at some point, if I get the courage.

Summertime... and the livin' is easy.

2007-06-05T11:17:00.001-07:00

Something happens during the summer. Maybe it's the smell of the grass freshly mowed. Maybe it's the thought of doing yardwork and slathering on sunblock and having to bear ghostly white legs for the first time to the relentless rays of the sun. Or maybe it's the ease of knowing that I have the entire summer to get my stuff done for the next school year. Whatever it is, I'm in a friggin' good mood right now.

It helps that I've reeled myself in a big fish (read: A Man (!)). I'm looking at him now. He's real cute. He makes time slow down and the world look technicolor. I'm sorry for the cheesey-ness of that, but it is my reality right now. How sweet it is.

I just mowed this morning, and the aftermath, before the dandelions poke their heads up again, makes the lawn (what little I have) look gorgeous. I planted the garden last week, and there's something about getting really gritty that makes a shower feel so much better.

How about garage sales? How about going to a restaurant and eating outside? How about taking a road trip up to Grand Marais, rolling the windows down and letting your arm hang out to work on your farmer tan? How about ice cream that serves the dual purposes of cooling and deliciousness?

Yep. Summer. Good times.

Get your boat nerd on...

2007-05-10T19:33:00.000-07:00

Here I am in front of the bow thruster of the John G. Munson.

You might be thinking, "Okay... wait. What? Who??"

The Munson is a boat... a big ol' lake freighter. She's 768 feet long, which is exactly 245 feet shorter than the longest laker on the Great Lakes, the Paul R. Tregurtha. This photo was snapped mid-February (it's probably about ten below in the photo) at one of the dry docks in Frasier shipyards. Lakers like the Munson lay up for the winter for repairs. The Munson was getting some body work done, and I have a friend who works at the dry docks who got me down there.

How the boat gets in there is simple. It nestles into a slip of water mid-January, and then a big wall seals the slip up. The water is pumped out, and the flat bottom of the Munson rests on those wooden blocks you can see in the photo.

The bow thruster you see is at the front of the boat, and those propellers in there push and pull water through the hole. This allows the boat easier turning capabilities. The Munson only has a bow thruster, but newer boats also have stern thrusters (same thing, only in the back of the boat), so they can turn a full 360 degrees if they need to.

During the shipping season, the Munson will cruise around our harbor, possibly loading coal or taconite to her full 29,000 ton carrying capacity.

Man, do I love those crazy boats!

Wierdest Chapstick Incident Ever.

2007-04-29T18:45:00.000-07:00

I am a chapstick addict. Have been since high school. I've even come up with a nickname for the stuff: I call it "Chappy." It's fun and vaguely British. Anyway, I have tubes of it placed strategically around my house, and the tube involved in the incident in question is the one that is on my nightstand.

So last night, I'm getting ready for bed. I hop under the covers, reach over and apply some mint Chapstick, and do a little reading. When I feel my eyelids getting heavy--bingo!!--time to put down the book and fall immediately asleep. But when I turned to put my book down, I noticed that I didn't put the cap back on the chappy! What the hell! So I'm looking around in the covers, trying to find the cap, but there's nothing doing. I was perturbed, obviously, but I twisted it down as low as it would go and switched off the light, figuring that I'd find the cap in the morning.

The next thing I know, I'm having a crazy dream. No, don't ask me; I don't remember what it was about. I do remember that it wasn't all that fun, and when I awoke suddenly, I had something in my hand, but I thought it was something from the dream. But then I realized that it wasn't, indeed, something from the dream, it was, indeed...

The Chapstick cap!!

I'm dead serious here. Somehow, in my dream state, I found the missing cap! This wasn't a dream, either, because I consciously and fully woke myself up knowing full well that this was a story that was meant to be told.

I'm happy to report that when I woke in the morning, the cap was back on the chappy, confirming that at the most, I have an amazingly astute subsconscious mind, and, at the least, I had a terrible, restless night of sleep last night.

At the Amazing Grace...

2007-04-16T16:35:00.000-07:00

...there are still people who eat the muffins with a fork. When I was in high school, a friend of mine used to eat his muffin with a knife. Just the knife. What a moron.

The Art of Argument

2007-04-07T15:34:00.000-07:00

There is a bar in Grand Forks that serves peanuts-in-the-shell in those little white paper boats. It’s expected that you throw the shells on the floor when mowing through your peanut-boat, so I’m sure it was incredibly gratifying to sweep at bar close; a person would really be able to see the results.

I was sitting in just this bar with a few friends and a few more friends of those friends (it’s always weird when that happens, like two universes clashing) drinking something exotic, like Guinness (that crazy semi-warm beer! So dark!!), and throwing peanut shells on the floor. One of the women with us fit the blonde stereotype pretty well, yet she had an inexplicably strong political opinion. She was a die-hard Republican.

Now, despite the fact that we were in Grand Forks (North Dakota being a notorious red state) and conservatism was the rule, not the exception, you’d have to know the people I was with to understand just how much of a cardinal sin it was to be a Rightie. Of course, one of my friends starts grilling her. Why was she a Republican? How could she?? Her answers were thus:

1. Everyone else in her family is a Republican, sooo…
2. She likes her gun and doesn’t like people who don’t want her to have it.

Well, the family thing is annoying but understandable, but we didn’t get the gun thing. Like a hunting rifle? No, indeed; she had a handgun.

A handgun? What for?

Protection.

Do you have this handgun on you?

Nope, it’s in the car (parked about three blocks away in scary “downtown” Grand Forks).

Okay, well…yeah. I sat back and started listening at this point. I kept thinking that if she had a gun for protection, she’d damn well better be packing it now because there’s nothing stopping me from breaking my beer bottle on the side of the table and lunging at her with it, but I’m a lover, not a fighter, and that’s beside the point. I didn’t have to say anything even if I wanted to because my friend lit into her for me.

The problem was I didn’t like how he did it.

My masters degree is in rhetoric and applied writing, and if you don’t know, rhetoric essentially means “the art of argument” (or, the art of bullshitting—either way, it’s handy). This doesn’t mean that I’m personally a skilled arguer, but it does mean that I have been trained to be critical of argument.

Obviously, I couldn’t help but be critical of the argument that was going on in front of me. Unfortunately, what it turned into was a full frontal assault courtesy of my friend on this poor hapless young woman. The problem was that she was going by personal opinion, and only personal opinion. My friend, however, wanted her opinion to be backed up by research, literally. He kept asking her where she got her information, where she read that, how did she know, etc. He couldn’t accept that her opinion was solely her own. Unfortunately, she came across as an ignoramus and he came across as a pompous ass.

This entire situation reminds me of The American People In General. You’re either an ignoramus or a pompous ass, and the ignoramuses won’t read a friggin’ newspaper and the pompous asses cannot accept the fact that even an uninformed opinion might have some validity. Neither one of them can keep their traps shut, either, which is the real problem here.

One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn during my short tenure in life is that it’s cool to admit that I don’t know things. Sounds simple, right? Yeah, right. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard a controversial topic come up in different circles and there’s inevitably someone who says, “Woa, woa, woa, I’m totally not even GOING there” when, in fact, it’s not that they don’t want to go there because it might offend someone, they don’t want to go there because they probably aren’t all that sure and don’t want to admit it. Hey, I try to avoid conversations about Walmart because even though I know that there’s something icky about it, I only have some vague statistics to back up my feelings and those aren’t good enough to convince someone in a debate. Instead of admitting that I don’t really know why I don’t like it, I avoid the subject altogether. We’re a society of know-it-alls, and copping out is the biggest know-it-all thing to do of all because it is a pure act of ego protection.

So here’s my plan. The next time Walmart comes up, I will not run, and when I just don’t know something that I probably should know, I’ll admit it knowing that an uninformed opinion is enough and I can always research it if I want to. Perhaps being unsure is the greatest wisdom of all; at the risk of sounding like a tree-hugging hippie, it at least leaves the mind open to possibility.

Leave. Now.

2007-04-02T15:06:00.000-07:00

So, today I go to class with a plan. I’m handing back papers, and they were, unfortunately, not so good. Not that they were terrible. But they weren’t great. I went into the classroom, which has a bank of 25 computers at one end and the desks at the other end. There’s a random lady at the computers, which isn’t a huge deal. Sometimes people finish things up from the class before, so that was cool. I was getting stuff together to start class, thinking about these papers that I need to hand back, wondering if there’s going to be any rage from the students (there’s never rage, but the grim look of defeat is just as difficult). I notice that the random lady isn’t leaving, so when I tell my students to gather their stuff from the desks and move to the computers, I beat ass over to the random lady and tell her in a quiet voice that she needed to please leave the classroom. She starts to gather her stuff, and I think we’re kosher.

By this time, my students are getting settled in their seats and I’m getting my stuff organized. What am I going to say to them? I need to be stern, but I want them to know that I take a small bit of responsibility for their difficulty. What could I have done better? It shakes my three-legged stool of self-confidence as a teacher when the quality of student work is low. Yep, I take it on. The lady has her stuff together and I mouth, “Thank you!” to her. She hands me a piece of notebook paper and walks out. I am literally mid-sentence: “Folks, I’m going to do something tonight that’s unprecedented. I’m going to give you back your papers at the beginning of class because we need to work through some issues I found.” I glanced down at the note, which I got the gist of before moving quickly on.

Later on, I read the note in full: “I’m sorry that I didn’t realize I was being disruptive. I wanted to let you know how much you hurt my feelings by so rudely kicking me out of the class. Thanks for putting a damper on my birthday.”

Okay, so maybe that’s not verbatim. But there were feelings being hurt and me causing a shitty birthday. Remember, I tend to take responsibility for things that aren’t my responsibility: I’m very hard on myself. So I am trying to think. Was I really that big of a jerk? Is it somehow rude of me to expect that a random stranger would leave my classroom when I was clearly going to start class? Was there a rip in the space/time continuum and I actually told her to get the hell out of the classroom before I called security, but didn’t remember it?

Then I realized what the problem was. I was not, indeed, nice. I wasn’t nice at all. I was, however, being professional. Businesslike. After all, I’m being paid to teach a class. When I’m in a classroom, that classroom belongs to me and my students. No one else. I tend to be protective of the particular vibe I cultivate in my classroom. The vibe is delicate. Random strangers screw up the vibe. So yeah, I wanted her out. So I asked her. I even said please. So I’m not to blame here, and the question then becomes, who writes a mean note, anyway? No one writes mean notes, at least no one out of high school writes mean notes. And this lady was middle-aged. I think when it comes down to it, we can safely blame this on social inappropriateness. That’s fair, right?

The interesting thing is, though, that this mean note still made me feel bad, bad enough to have the patience of a saint when I finally asked my students to rework their Works Cited pages because they were, essentially, bad. Man I was nice tonight. Really, really nice. As a matter of fact, it ended up feeling really good. Sometimes I am not as patient. Answering literally twenty questions (at least) about MLA documentation in about twenty minutes is not simple, and I am proud of helping everyone who needed it. And with a calm, patient voice. Sometimes nice pays, and some situations call for business, like when an outsider is trying to infringe on the sacred barrier of the classroom.

Seriously.

2007-03-24T16:30:00.000-07:00

Two months?? I haven't posted anything in two months? That's absolute insanity. I think that might give a clue as to what's been happening in my life... I've been crazy with work!! Right now I should be grading papers (I have six more to reach my quota for the day), and it's a Saturday night. It's safe to say that I'm looking forward to summer, but I know that it'll come flying on in soon enough. Where does time go? It's amazing what happens when you put your head down and plow forward, one day at a time. When you finally look up, two months have passed.

Don't worry. I still have a lot of smartass things to say and bitching about my love life to do (actually, that has been a little more interesting lately), I just don't have the time to do it right now. Wait for it, and until then, I leave you with a quote from Carson, the blonde guy from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy:

Carson (looking in between a poor straight guy's toes): That, my friend, is called toe schmegma. It's the wrong answer always.

I love smoking!

2007-01-27T07:59:00.000-08:00

The first cigarette I ever fully consumed by myself was so ridiculously cliche I am embarassed to lay it out in print, but here goes. I was in eleventh grade, and my friends and I had adopted a local coffee shop downtown in which to spend our time. There was a Chinese restaurant right next door, and a record shop and thrift store down the street, so a good day would involve some shopping, inevitably for a new polyester shirt or greasy sweater (as most vintage sweaters sold in thrift stores tend to be) and the latest Smashing Pumpkins release. We'd head over to the Chinese place and get a pint of pork fried rice for the six or so of us in the group, head over to the coffee shop for silver tea (water, steamed milk, and vanilla... as close to mama's breast as a nearly-adult person could get), and station ourselves up in the balcony.

It was in this setting, surrounded by good friends and the bottomless container of fried rice, wearing a pair of men's size 36 green pants that clung to my 130-pound frame with a wide leather belt, that I smoked a clove cigarette for the first time.

If you've never tried a clove cigarette before, I suggest you do. They're wonderful, really. Tasty. Very clove-y. I heard somewhere that they're twice the potency of regular cigarettes, but I'm not sure if that's a fact. I never owned my own pack of cloves, nor did I smoke them often; mostly, they were reserved for special occasions, like when we were trying to outcool each other.

Four years later, I am working on a regular cigarette (Marb Red, I believe) on the balcony of my college apartment. It's from a pack I bought, but I'm not addicted, I'm just pissed off at a boy. When I finish, I hesitate to throw it down into the parking lot. I have visions of tossing it down still lit, and it landing smack dab in the middle of a gas leak, which would snake its way to a car, which would explode, which would then cause the building to catch on fire and burn to the ground, which would result in me having to go on the lam, but I'd eventually get caught and go to jail because I wasn't smart enough to stay out of the local papers after saving a kitten caught in a tree. Instead, I bring the butt into the apartment, run it under the sink, and toss it in the garbage can. My throat hurts and from somewhere under my seething rage I understand that I am way too obsessive-compulsive to deal with where to put cigarette butts and the overriding guilt about smoking in the first place to make it a habit. I think I eventually threw the rest of the pack away, but only after I determined that they were "too old" to smoke, anyway.

So last night the folks and I were talking about the total smoking ban bills that are floating around in the Minnesota and Wisconsin state assemblies, and I've surprised myself in how truly indifferent I feel about it. MPR has spent time on the subject. Secondhand smoke seems to be the problem, and the Minnesota senator in charge of authoring the bill lapses into cliche when she says that no one, not even the people working in the establishments, should be forced to be exposed to secondhand smoke. The guy who's in charge of the bar league of Minnesota says that, of course, the bars will lose all their business if smoking is banned, and it's not really about secondhand smoke, anyway; it's about stopping people from smoking, period. When I try to take a stance on the issue, though, I can't. I see everyone's points.

There was a time in my life when I secretly thought that it would be fun to be a bartender, but I knew it wasn't going to happen because I didn't want to be in all the smoke. I wasn't heartbroken about it, though. It's a choice, and choice is good. On the other hand, I'm going to a bar tonight for a birthday party, and it would be great if I didn't have to choose an outfit that'll have to immediately be washed afterwards.

I wonder if this is another issue that is like the gay marriage one... people can try to stop it, but it's inevitable that smoking will, indeed, end up being banned. Either way, I'm not going to cry myself to sleep over it. I'll just remember the good times... my clove cigarette an' me.

Waiting for love is like waiting for death; or, it's another Saturday night and I ain't got nobody

2007-01-22T11:16:00.001-08:00

2:53 p.m. I call Pelof and Mary to see what’s going on tonight. They aren’t picking up, so I leave a message at the beep, and as soon as I hang up, my phone rings. It’s my sister-in-law, Dawn, and she and Jerimy want to know what I’m doing tonight. Nothing. She suggests dinner and we agree to talk about where later on. Excellent.

4:34 p.m. I’ve spent all day running errands, and I’m finally home when Jerimy calls. He wants to go somewhere where he can get a good dinner and a side salad. Very insistent on the side salad. He suggests The Shack, a supper club. I suggest a trendier pub. He wants to know if they serve side salads. I don’t know. We go back and forth, neither one of us liking the others’ suggestions, until I get frustrated and tell him to forget it. They can go without me.

5:37 p.m. My parents have an overstuffed leather chair where I’ve set up post under a blanket. My dog was at their house all day, so I headed down there to pick her up and ended up on the chair. I’m wearing a good outfit for going out, and I still have my bra on, even, in the odd chance that Jerimy will call and say that he changed his mind; the side salad isn’t all that important, after all. But I’ve hunkered down under the blanket, and my mom is asking me where we’re going, and when I tell her we’re not, she’s not happy. She tells me that I’m not going to meet anyone sitting at their house. I tell her that I’m not going to meet anyone eating a side salad at The Shack, where the average age of their patrons is 63.

5:56 p.m. The parents have gone to pick up a pizza and a movie. My job is to turn the oven on at 6:15 to preheat. I make hot chocolate, and then dump in some Peppermint Schnapps.

6:15 p.m. Top Chef on Bravo is rather engaging. Miraculously, I remember to turn on the oven.

7:22 p.m. Pelof calls, but I don’t answer. My parents have brought home the movie Click with Adam Sandler and we’re halfway through. When I finally listen to the message, he says that they’re heading to one of the fine local watering holes. I decide I’m too invested in the movie to go.

8:43 p.m. I am crying. The Adam Sandler character is dying and telling his son, “Family… family is what’s important…” and the tears are literally streaming down my face. I feel run over by a truck.

9:34 p.m. After running through several of the DVD’s special features, I decide it’s time to head home with the dog.

10:54 p.m. I’m tired, getting ready to do some recreational reading and then some sleeping. “The Jazz Image” is on MPR. In hindsight, maybe The Shack wouldn’t have been so bad. A 63-year-old is probably just about my speed.

Yeah, yeah, I know... 2007.

2007-01-02T09:12:00.000-08:00

If you read my previous post, you already know that I was at a friend's house for New Year's Eve. As soon as the clock struck midnight and we all bleated out our varying forms of "Whoopee," I took off. Listen. I didn't want to stay up late, okay? I know it's a little loserish, considering the fact that I didn't have to work the next day or anything, but I get behind on my sleep schedule and... oh, forget it. Suffice it to say, I went home and hopped into bed just after midnight.

As I was laying there, I had the sudden realization that it was now 2007. If you're a loyal reader, you also know that I made a deal with myself last July that I was going to avoid men like the plague until 2007. Six months of alone time. Self-inflicted solitary confinement. To be honest, the six months have not been without their small dramas. It wouldn't be me if there wasn't someone, however fleeting or lame, that I am pondering. But I didn't NOT get into a relationship, and I'm damn proud of that.

But now it's 2007, and suddenly I feel like the call is not just "Game on!!" but also, "...and hurry the hell up!!" As I was lying in bed that night, a slow horror washed over me. The search is now back on, and I am not entirely thrilled about it. My mom and I decided yesterday that The Guy is, indeed, somewhere in the area, it's just a matter of finding him. This makes me feel panicky as well. Don't get me wrong, I'm a chronic people-watcher in general, but suddenly I'm looking around suspiciously, like The Guy might jump out from behind a wall and kill me, like he could be anywhere, like he's a stalker.

I know this is contrary to any logic. I also know that, as they say, love comes when you're not looking for it (which is why I am refusing to join any of those ridiculous dating websites), so the fact that I am actually feeling paranoid about finding The Guy and getting into yet another relationship is a sign that, despite it being 2007, I am not ready for it all. There's more work to be done, both at my job and on myself. There's more to be learned about getting along in relationships; how the hell do people actually do it?? And I am in desperate need of a haircut. I'm not ready!!!

On the other hand, it IS 2007, and I am a romantic at heart, so... maybe I could do a date or two to start things off. Maybe.

Yeah, this is totally to be continued.

What's Happening to Me???

2007-01-02T08:50:00.000-08:00

Something strange is happening to me. Take right now, this second. I am sitting in a coffee shop that my friends and I haunted when I was in high school, in my hometown, drinking a cup of java and eating a blackberry muffin. My pants are from H&M in Washington, D.C. My laptop's open, I'm writing in my blog, and I have my headphones on. What am I listening to? MPR's coverage of Gerald Ford's funeral service. I wasn't even *alive* when Gerald Ford was president; when he died, I had to do a Google image search to remember what he looked like. I have since learned that he was the one who pardoned Nixon, he invited Emperor Hirohito to the White House when everyone was skeeved out by the Japanese, he got us, finally, out of Vietnam, and was generally a really nice guy. Knowing what I know, I started listening to the funeral at my house as I was eating breakfast, around 8:45, and it's almost 11 and I'm still listening. The church choir is singing. I haven't heard a church choir in a long time.

I wonder if other people feel this way, caught between two contradictory worlds, when they start to reach their late twenties and have their poop in a pile. I mean, I think I'm pretty cool still, and besides having a good job and my own house, I don't feel like I'm much different than when I was 20. But I'm listening to Ford's funeral, and that's not all. I was at a friend's house for New Year's Eve, and right after the clock struck midnight, I was out of there because I didn't want to go to bed too late. Another friend had a big party at his house, and I didn't go because he lives a half hour away and it had started to snow; I didn't want to get caught in any bad weather. If I stay at this coffee shop long enough, a bunch of dramatic high school students (probably no more dramatic than I was at that age) will show up and be annoying; I prefer the company of my 90-year-old grandmother and her friends.

The question hangs over me: what the hell is going on here?? I blame MPR. I am learning too much about the world to retain much self-interest that is the hallmark of the young. The more I learn, the less I'm sure about, including whether or not I am, indeed, still cool, and whether it's actually even important anymore.

The Friggin' Joy of the Season

2006-12-23T15:18:00.000-08:00

Something happens right around the 22nd or 23rd of December. My papers are all graded, the final grades have been entered, and a feeling I can only describe as "Ahhhh..." washes over me. I have taken to wearing my glasses and sweatpants all day. I don't shower until 10 or 11 in the morning. Craft projects and housework magically get done. And then I realize that The Traditional Family Christmas is coming.

I positively adore family traditions. They involve going to my Grandma Dorothy's for Christmas Eve dinner, sleeping at my folks' house and getting up early to open presents with the immediate family, and then cleaning up for my mom's side of the family, who are coming over for Christmas Day lunch.

Then, every single damn year, I remember another part of the tradition that makes my Christmases so flavorful and zippy. The dysfunction, as well as the bizarre, secret family traditions, secrets I am willing to divulge right now just for the sheer fun of it.

First of all, no one ever knows when, exactly, dinner is going to be at Grandma Dorothy's. We decide on a time, but inevitably, someone forgets, or someone starts bitching and sniping because they don't like it for whatever reason. Blood pressures rise. Veins in foreheads pop. We rant and rave among ourselves, not like the stoic Scandinavians we're supposed to be, but hot-blooded Italians.

Somehow, we all end up at Grandma Dorothy's, more or less at the same time, and once the pigs in blanket-induced stupor hits us, we do the gift exchange. It's one of those random ones, where you get generics and sometimes I walk away with a pair of men's gloves or sometimes, like last year, with an ass-kicking KitchenAid paring knife. One of the gifts, however, is a little something called the Rock of Inconsistency. This tradition started probably five or six years ago by my cousin Corey. He thought it would be a good idea if there was a really random prize that moved from house to house, year after year. My uncle David volunteered a certain rock with some holes in it, created when he tested some of his hydraulic tools on it. The thing's at least twenty pounds, and each year, the person who has it adds something new. For example, one year I glued a psychadelic-looking snail made out of polymer clay onto it. The next year, my aunt glued a syringe coming out of its shell. I am still wrapping my mind around that one, but that's the thing, see: it's inconsistent, so random is the order of the night.

Things actually proceed fairly smoothly after that. Christmas morning, I can always expect that my sock will be jammed full of goodies, and my brother will inevitably give me a stupidly hilarious gift from our past, such as a DVD version of "Clash of the Titans" or a photo album filled with all my horrifying haircuts as a child (yes, I have had both a 'fro and a mullet). I would, for the record, like to point out that he, too, had a mullet at one point in his childhood.

One aspect of Christmas Day that cannot be ignored is the family tradition of game playing. My mother's side of the family is competitive, sometimes to a terrifying extent. The same year we came up with the tradition of the Rock of Inconsistency, we also came up with the Spanking Stick. See, no Christmas is complete without a little violence, and my uncle Tracy, who always talks about how he's going to "spank us" in a rousing game of Backgammon or Taboo, decided to put the money where his ass is and came up with the Spanking Stick. It's actually a wooden oar of the cheesy craft store variety, about 2 1/2 feet long, that my sister-in-law Dawn painted green with a big blue hand on it that reads, "You Got Spanked!" The person who loses the year before gets spanked by the year before that's loser (it's complicated), which means that this year, I get to spank my cousin Jim. You cannot possibly imagine how awkward that is, but it's all in good fun, and afterwards we pull out the pecan pie and mint brownies and get our sugar high on.

So, as you can see, I am not just going to enjoy a Christmas with my loving family. I am embarking on, as Clark W. Griswold says in National Lampoon's Vacation, "a quest for fun." It's sometimes uncomfortable, it's always delicious, and it's sometimes even painful, but it's my tradition, dammit, and I'll be there... with sweats and glasses on.

There's only one reason why I'd do this...

2006-12-19T16:04:00.000-08:00

...and that's because I don't feel like grading! Yipee!

I found this on my friend Amy's blog (http://amydusek.blogspot.com), and yes, I had to do it myself.

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
I'm literally drinking hot chocolate right now. Wierd.

2. Does "Santa" wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
First, yes, Santa still comes. He always just lays them out like a gluttoneous mass of Christmas goodness. I love it.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
I'd have to say white lights.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
I don't allow men in my house.

5. When do you put your decorations up?
I don't. Buzzkill, eh?

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?
Pigs in a blanket. It's a Christmas Eve tradition at my grandma's.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child:
All those times I wasn't able to sleep, being so excited about Christmas day. I honestly didn't get over that until college. I sleep better now, but I still get really excited.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
What's the truth about Santa?

9. Do you open presents on Christmas eve?
Heck, no! You gotta have the anticipation for Christmas day.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree?
I don't have one (I know, buzzkill again).

11. Snow - love it or hate it?
I *like* it. Not a fan of shoveling it, love looking at it.

12. Can you ice skate?
Yes, but very poorly, and since I hate falling, it's not on my list of favorite things in the world.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
Oh, man. There was one year when I was in high school and I got BOTH a papasan chair and an acoustic guitar. BAM! That was sweet. I was also thrilled to receive the My Little Pony Castle as a kid.

14. What's the most exciting thing about the Holidays for you?
No school and participating in the family traditions, including, but not limited to, the aforementioned pigs-in-blankets, the Rock of Inconsistency, Christmas morning present frenzy, the very stuffed stocking, the "You got spanked!" stick from our family board games, and the Angelica.

15. What is your favorite Christmas Song?
"Feliz Navidad" by Jose Feliciano. Oh yeah.

Okay. Now to those papers...

An Ode to Paul

2006-12-02T13:16:00.000-08:00

When I went to college, I was in the Honors Program, and when I decided to live in the dorms, I ended up on the Honors Floor of one of the dorms. There were two Honors Floors, actually. The girls were on 8, the dudes on 7. There weren't enough Honors guys to fill 7, though, so they put some regular guys down there. One of those guys was Paul.

Paul is from the southern part of the state, and he actually went to high school with one of the other Honors guys, James. He's got dark blonde hair and these big doe eyes: brown and soft, framed with long, curled eyelashes. (Note: I was never attracted to Paul. I am merely giving the facts.) Paul's claim to fame as a freshman was blaring ABBA's "Take a Chance On Me" from his surprisingly loud stereo (I think it was the hallway acoustics that allowed the song to permeate the walls up to the 8th floor, where we'd hear it like a siren song and come running). Not only would he play the song, but he would gallop down the hallway in time to the beat of the music, slapping his ass with one hand and holding onto the "air reigns" with the other. Paul was (and is) an amazing singer (especially of the Neal Diamond favorites) and played a mean game of baseball, too, but I'm afraid that ABBA and self-ass-slapping was his legacy.

Paul lives in Rochester (a.k.a. The Crotch) now. (Sorry; the only good parts about Rochester are Paul, the Savers store, and their corn-on-the-cob water tower.) I don't see him very often, but when I do, we manage to bond again within thirty seconds. The last time I was down there, I stayed at his place. He's got a big leather couch, a big TV, lots of sports memorabilia on the walls and no real groceries to speak of, but when I went to the spare room to climb into the bed, he made sure there were lots of blankets and pillows. We went out to eat and he paid. He brought me to Savers and didn't mind that I spent an hour there. That's the kind of guy Paul is. He's a brother.

The Past in 3-D

2006-12-02T12:54:00.000-08:00

As most of you probably know, I moved back to my hometown a year and a half ago. The Big Lake called and I answered. I'm thrilled to be here, and I can say without any exaggeration that I positively ADORE living here. Nothing makes me happier than being in this place, right now.

One thing that skeeves me out, however, is seeing ghosts from my past. I went to the same school my entire life, and when I see people from high school who I haven't seen since playing basketball in the gym with them during our post-graduation senior lock-in, something strange happens. I get freaked out. I pretend to not see them, though I can't help but look and, dare I say, scrutinize. Some people who I have seen, such as Chris H., have been incredibly friendly and quite the pleasure to briefly catch up with. I see others, however, and I am stunned to realize that I am feeling tension that is ten years old, hostility wrought by a shared history that amounts to very little. How do I see a guy who I first met in preschool and today all I can think of is what an asshole jock he was? I certainly wouldn't want my high school classmates to see me today and judge me based on my overdramatics as an 18-year-old amped up on hormones.

It's tough to get past. Amidst all the stupidity, I see friends I am thrilled to reaquaint with; I'll be getting together with one of my best, long-lost high school friends tomorrow. She has a husband and a baby, and I'm quite curious to hear about how she was able to solve that life secret that has easily eluded me these years.

I'm sure that, as we're meeting over hot coffee and smiling at her baby, the subject of our ten year class reunion will come up. She'll want to know if I'm planning on going, and despite all of my strange misgivings, I know I'll say yes.

Jim and Ang

2006-11-25T10:37:00.000-08:00

You could smell their place from the hallway. It was a mix of the oils Angela used in her freelance massaging and cooking smells, most specifically of garlic and olive oil. It was a lovely smell, guiding you down the garish pink hallway to their door.

The place itself was tiny. Open the door and there’s a small hallway with a bathroom off to the left. Keep walking (just a few steps) and to the left you’d see the pass-through to the 6’ x 6’ square kitchen with cupboards that went almost up to the ceiling. To the right was the living room. Since they were on a corner, two of the living room walls were tall windows, letting the big sky and sun in. Their bedroom, large enough to fit their double bed and a dresser, was behind the living room wall that was not windows. Of all the time I spent in that apartment, I had only seen the bedroom once or twice, even though there was no door. This proved the mastery Jim and Angela possessed with their space; it was both a gathering place and a sanctuary, a true nest.

Angela made the most amazing salads, fixed with greens and an odd cheese she’d picked up while working at the co-op, dried cranberries and oranges. I still regret not asking her at the time what dressing she used, as it was light and wonderful and I’m sure she wouldn’t know now if I asked. Jim spoke of rhetoric and the lighting in a film as if it were the most important thing in the world, which it was as it was his art. Angela had plastic spread over one of the walls, canvases splayed out, brushes and paints in various glasses on the floor. She had ceramic dishes that she made herself; I am lucky to own a glass of hers that is in frequent rotation, that I sometimes hold in both hands to channel their spirits from across the ocean.

One of the first times I was there, Jim pulled a green bottle with a yellow label out of the freezer and filled a small ceramic container in the shape of an elongated tea kettle, the spout reaching down to the bottom and arching out, no more than four inches tall. He handed it to me, telling me to sip from the spout, allowing the liquor to play out on my tongue and to breathe in, letting the air cool back into my throat. This was my first experience with Becherovka, a Czech liquor Jim had become fond of while in the mist of an overseas teaching stint. I only buy around a bottle a year (it lasts me that long), but I have not been without one since.

When the Cheneys came to town to give a speech at Cabela’s, we gathered at Jim and Ang’s to compare signs and write protest slogans on t-shirts before marching across the bridge to wait for the Cheney limo to start yelling. When we wanted to see the premiere of a locally-made film at the Empire (a film that included the infamous line, “I love her! But I hate her. But I love her!!), we met at Jim and Ang’s for dinner, an organic roasted chicken. Before we went to the drag show we met at Jim and Ang’s to have a few drinks and turn the music up; their stereo was old, but the acoustics were perfect and the night sky was so close through their windows. When it was time for them to travel away from us, as happens in this life, we met at their place, their small amount of stuff packed up, where we took pictures and hugged. They left, my friend Adam left, and I left, and the words “¡Viva la revolución!”, said over coffee in a small town, still ring in my ears.

Left Alone

2006-11-25T09:59:00.000-08:00

My ears strained. It wasn’t completely dark in my room; a nightlight shone through a wicker chair, creating a spider web shadow on my yellow walls. I rolled over on my back and opened my eyes, watching the spider web and listening.

It was always so quiet, and my room was in the top corner of the house, far away from the possibility of noise filtering up the stairway. My hand drifted up to my mouth, forming a loose fist and thumb sticking out, not to suck, but to chew. I found a hangnail on the side and began working, slowly pulling a small ribbon of skin away, still listening, the house still silent. I spit out the skin and started again on the millimeter ridge left by the previous tear.

What would happen if I went to sleep and when I woke up, everyone in the world had disappeared? I pulled my thumb away from my teeth and bent it towards my palm, using the nails on the other fingers to pick away. What would I eat? Who would take care of me? Would there still be water? I gripped my brown Pound Puppy closer to my body, and as the tears started to come, I put my thumb back to my mouth and tasted blood. Who would I talk to? Why would God do that to me? My chest tightened, and I understood the concept of personal hell as the tears slid down my face.

I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I sat up, quietly got out of bed and crept down the hall and down the first couple of stairs. I knelt down, peeking into the living room. Nothing. The light was on but the T.V. wasn’t, and the tears drying on my face were cold. I strained my neck, quietly panicking, to see down the hall and into the kitchen. Nothing… but then, there! Dad walked through, heading back to the basement. He didn’t see me, or he’d want to know why wasn’t in bed. Relief washed over me; for that night, anyway, I was safe.

Teeth

2006-11-14T10:03:00.000-08:00

My aunt had all of her teeth pulled out except for her front top four. She had to have them pulled because she has throat cancer, and apparently it can cause a great deal of dental problems when someone is getting chemo and radiation in the mouth and there are teeth in the way. She had all of her teeth pulled out a couple of weeks before she started her chemo and radiation, which she calls rat poison and sun tanning, to give her gums time to heal. She’s like 65, but she had all of her original teeth.

I wonder what I would say or think if I had to have all of my teeth pulled out, teeth that had been with me for so long and had nothing wrong with them. I think about the holes that would be left, and the stuffing that would fill those holes, and the nerves that would have to be subdued, and the diet that would consist of liquid or near liquid foods for the next year, because that’s how long it will take before she can get dentures.

I think about going into the dentist, sitting in the waiting room, running my tongue along my teeth, loving my teeth, feeling every contour. Going into the dentist’s chair, making sure that they give me laughing gas and Novocain, and plenty of both, to keep me loopy and not caring what was happening with my teeth. Coming out of it and not looking at what was left. Can I keep the teeth? What the hell do I want them for? Thinking about the big picture: they didn’t remove all of my teeth to be cruel, they’re helping me live. The big picture would have to be the focus; thinking about the day-to-day living would create insanity. No teeth, save the front four. No teeth.

When I think about that, I go upstairs and load up my toothbrush and brush quietly, thoughtfully, thoroughly. I concentrate on all surfaces of my teeth, brush up and down, sideways, and in circles. I make sure I hit the wisdom teeth that are quietly and slowly emerging in the back of my mouth, make sure I get the back of my bottom front teeth. I scrub gently. I spit and keep scrubbing, and rinse. I thoughtfully floss, making sure to really scrape each side of the tooth, rather than my usual hurried dip into the gum bed and onto the next set. I use mouthwash, and Listerine, no less. I swirl for a long time, a minute or more, and my eyes are running and my tongue shrinks onto itself, and when I spit and inspect, the teeth glow and my pink gums, the ones that my last dentist called “so lovely,” which was about the best compliment I had gotten in a long time, gripped onto my teeth, mooring them in place. Brushing never seemed like an act of respect until now.

A Sovereign Nation

2006-11-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

This past spring and summer I had the pleasure of spending my time with a real hottie. He had gorgeous dark eyes and a shaved head, and we had a good time. I swore to myself that if I couldn’t make a go of it with him, I needed a break from relationships.

Listen. I have a lot of stuff figured out in my life, but romantic love is not one of them. It’s amazingly easy to accomplish goals: create a set of steps and work your ass off until you get what you want. Applying that simple rule to another person, however, is proving far more difficult.

My lack of relationship is not for lack of trying, nor is it for lack of variety. My mother has consistently said she has been stunned by my ability to pick all kinds of guys. I’ve dated older guys and younger guys. Republicans and democrats. Never been married and divorcees. Guys with kids. Guys who ARE kids. One guy lived halfway across the country. Two guys are now gay. Fat and tall, short and small. Relationships have lasted anywhere from a couple of months to three years. Some are now friends. Some are, essentially, dead to me.

The fact is, though, I’ve never purposely taken time off from the dudes. So when the shit (inevitably) hit the fan with the most recent guy, I made myself a promise: No relationships until 2007. This was the middle of the summer; I figured six months was enough time to clear my head and focus in on what I really want.

The problem, however, is that I’m four months into my Sovereign Nation status and I still have no idea what I want. I’m starting to think that the reality is that there is no, cliché as it sounds, Mr. Perfecto. As a matter of fact, I’m SURE he doesn’t exist, and that my general rule for goal accomplishment would, indeed, work for relationships. It’s simply a matter of finding a guy for whom I am willing to work my ass off.

While I’m currently going out on random dates, nothing serious is happening. Sovereign Nation status stands, but come 1/1/2007, the Great Wall is coming down, and I’m sure I’ll find another completely different guy to have fun with. Maybe I’ll let my parents choose the next one… until then, as my friend Mike says, “I believe in the power of one.”

The Hub

2006-11-10T09:23:00.000-08:00

“Well, what we’re really talking about here is vagina dentada and penis elongata.”

I almost choked on my Amber Bock. Brian, his buffalo burger halfway to his lips, froze. Bjorn was mid-puff on his corn-cob pipe, and the smoke curled slowly towards the water-stained ceiling panels. He busted out laughing, slapping Kerry on the back.

“What?” said Kerry, feigning innocence. “That’s really all it comes down to.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “Could you repeat that?”

“It all comes down to vagina dentada and penis elongata.”

I cracked up. It’s a typical Dead Cow night, and I’m surrounded by guys who are at least ten years my senior. Coworkers. The bar is downtown, or what is called the downtown. We’re not in some sprawling urban city, though; the reality is that this place has apparently become better after the flood (which is really hearsay; I wasn’t there for it), but it’s not great. Like Anyone in Anycity, America, I had found my few haunts: the co-op, where they cook up a mean curried beet stew; the coffee shop, where the coffee gave me indigestion but the location made it convenient, and this bar. I don’t know that I can say I was a real Regular there, because the bartenders didn’t know my name, but they definitely recognized me, which was, as far as I was concerned, good enough.

The bar was smallish, tables on one side, bar on the other with tables and a dart board in the front and tables, juke box, pool table, and bathrooms in the back. The menu was small but surprisingly diverse; I was surprised to see a Chef salad, quesadillas, and buffalo burgers all on the same menu. My favorite was the grilled chicken, though, with fries, cooked to the perfect tenderness. Top that off with a couple of Amber Bocks and you’ve got a gut bomb for sure, but well worth it.

These guys helped me keep my sanity in a city where I truly did not belong. It’s a place that you love because you were born there; you stay because you’ve married someone who doesn’t want to go, or you resolve to “stick around until…” and then you’re dead. I wasn’t born there, I had no family there, I was not married, but it contained my livelihood, a teaching job, as well as a school full of wonderful quirks, not the least of which were this group of dudes surrounding me now.

If you’ve never moved to a place that is completely foreign to you and where the people are strangers, I encourage you to have that experience. I don’t know where else I could discuss the virtues of Joseph Campbell, sub-zero winter camping, Norwegian language, and the newest weird student excuse within the same conversation. The commonality among us was certainly not our ages, genders, or even the school in which we all taught; it was, in its purest sense, the perfect mix of personalities. We argued, we laughed, we vented, and dammit, you don’t find that with just anyone. I love where I’m at right now. But I miss those guys and their pipe-smoking, beady-eyed vegetarian teasing, flannel shirt wearing, liberal-loving ways.

My True Feelings: Gay Marriage

2006-11-04T15:37:00.000-08:00

I'm a huge fan of Minnesota Public Radio. Yeah, yeah, I know that it's a bit fluffy and CNN-esque, and I know that it has its journalistic issues, but since there are no subscribers to Pacifica radio (that I know of) in Minnesota, I blast MPR while I'm showering, while I'm getting ready, when I'm cleaning, when I'm in the car... I'm a little obsessed. I even contributed to the capital campaign they had last week, which is almost a miracle since I'm a thrifty gal.

Anyway, it was through MPR that I really started thinking about Morals. Of course, it is never so simple as morals themselves; often, the conversations on MPR that set me to a'ponderin' are those concerning the Conservatives, or, more specifically, the "Moral" Right (quotes intended to provide subtle snarkiness). The M.R. is convinced of their spiritual aptitude, which is usually (loosely) based on interpretations of Christianity that are probably pissing God himself right off.

Now, listen. I'm not going to get into some stupid rant about how they've got it all wrong about x, y, and z issues and how ironic it is that they call themselves the moral right even though they're not, yadda yadda. Instead, onwards to what has really got me thinking, most specifically about gay marriage: aren't they simply trying to slow down the inevitable?

When I think about all the progressive human rights issues that have been raised in the past centuries in our country, especially those issues that have "movement" attached to them, how many of those have NOT resulted in the group receiving the rights it has sought? I don't claim to be some huge history buff, but I'm hard pressed to think of movements that have not at the very least caused some sort of positive change in the lives of those affected. Let me be clear, though; the issue that my thinking is focused on is gay marriage, and for two reasons: it gets my blood boiling, and the GOP will be using it to drag out all the homophobes to the polls (was that a bit harsh?? Oops.).

So, despite popular resistance, GLBT folk have enjoyed more openness, acceptance, and quality of life than they have in the past, at least from my perspective. This is good. What I can't help but wonder, though, is if the GOP is trying to stop a wild horse (that'd be gay marriage) with a single twist-tie-- isn't it a bit late? Perhaps they will be successful in getting some Constitutional amendments banning gay marriage in some states, but do they actually think that would stop the momentum? It's possible that, twenty to thirty years from now, issues such as healthcare, the minimum wage, and retirement might be deemed slightly more important than limiting people's personal freedoms, and the Moral Right will look back and wonder why they wasted so much energy on an issue that would so quickly become moot anyway.

I remember during "Decision: 2004" when I was living in Grand Forks. One of the conservative senate candidates had an ad against gay marriage. It showed scenes of happy brides and grooms with a voiceover describing the sanctity of marriage. Then, the voice became lower and deeper, stating, "...but SOME people think that a marriage could be between people of the same sex...", and we see a picture of two smiling grooms (the horror!); the voice then goes on to say, "If this happens... who knows WHERE it would end!" and the last scene shows a picture of a goth bride, groom, and GOAT.

Needless to say, I was positively gobsmacked. More importantly, though, this example illustrates the ridiculousness of the Moral Right's argument. The reliance on logical fallacies such as the slippery slope and appeal to tradition does not an effective argument make, or, more to the point, the Moral Right is simply too late. The seed has been planted, and it might not happen today, it might not happen tomorrow, but some day, gay marriage will be no biggie, and instead of posting on my blog about it, I'll head out to the DQ and partake in a pumpkin pie blizzard. That'll be a great day: human rights AND ice cream.

(P.S. That's for you, Joel. Thanks.)

Trip to "Missourah"

2006-11-01T13:28:00.000-08:00

I haven't been anywhere cool lately. I want to get that out of the way, right away. Any trips I have taken in the past year have been in the area or for conferences, which put me in the middle of Nebraska last year, and this year slapped me down in St. Charles, Missouri.

If you've never heard of St. Charles, don't fear. I hadn't heard of it, either. It's about twenty minutes outside of St. Louis, and if you didn't know that it's where Louis and Clark shoved off or that it was the first capital city of Missouri, well, now you do. Instead of waxing on about the conference, though, or my distaste of keynote speakers, I'd like to focus on a special aspect of St. Charles. It's called "Old Main Street." Sounds a little cliche, huh? Generally I would agree, but this Old Main Street is actually on the national register of historic places and was, true to its name, historic-y. (Yes, I made that word up.)

Old Main Street has several buildings that are original, e.g. from the 1700's, and the others are newer, but maintain the historic flavor. There are gas lights that line the street, and the road and sidewalk are an uneven brick. Stores and restaurants are housed in these buildings, and the Missouri River runs parallel to them, a block away.

Sounds ambient, right? Right, until you actually go in the stores. I was hoping that I could use words like "funky" and "eclectic" to describe them, but I am afraid that these stores had all manner of country kitsch. You know, lots of painted wood and raffia. Very distressing. There were a couple of decent places, though, and I managed to score some beads and a pair of socks before I had to wander back to the hotel.

More important than shopping, though, was that I got the chance to see a new place, and a place I would never think of visiting were it not for the conference. It helps convince me that there are plenty of great things to see right here in the good ol' U-S-of-A, which makes me feel better that I haven't gotten to Morocco yet, or even my newest desired vacation spot, St. John's, Newfoundland (that'll be another post).

My Plagiarized Halloween Costume

2006-10-31T16:56:00.000-08:00

My friend Bjorn kicks ass. He's the master of the pun, and he teaches psychology, and he's got a big beard. It makes perfect sense that he would come up with a Hallosween costume idea that was so cool, I actually had to steal it. Thankfully, he lives five hours away and won't be able to lay down the smack (too bad) on me.

I, therefore, give you my Halloween costume for this year: Beelzebubba. I should note that I also had a cowboy hat with horns I sewed onto it, but it was hot so I had the headband horns as well.

Halloween is not my best holiday. It stopped being cool right around eighth grade, and though I dressed up a couple of times since (kitty and flapper, most notably), I've mostly avoided it since. It seems awkward and silly, and a lot of work. My friends Pelof and Mary love Halloween, though, and I must admit that their enthusiasm started rubbing off when I was invited to their Halloween bash last Saturday. I had to think of a costume, and quick!! I considered a Washington D.C. War Protester (yes, they do have a certain look to them), but in the end, it was Beelzebubba that won out. The party was fun, and despite my curmudgeonly attitude towards Halloween, I actually enjoyed putting the dark stuff around my eyes (scary!) and drawing on big freckles (hick-like!!). Thank you, Bjorn!!

The Wedding #2

2006-08-09T12:42:00.000-07:00

Here's more wedding pictures!

Here's Dawn, looking statuesque as ever. I'm quite certain that my grandma, Dorothy, approves.

I'm helping Dawn out as she tools around the yard. Her dress is the most gorgeous satin; one might describe it as being "like buttah."

Here's Jer... this is also the point where I started crying. He's watching his bride come down the aisle.

The vows, which they wrote themselves.

The receiving line (I am in the house at this time, taking in the A/C... yeah, it was a hot one!)

And, of course, Nana and I doing the polka!

Another piece of the dog poop puzzle...

2006-07-24T10:52:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I posted about the bags of dog poop I kept seeing on the back of a maroon Cadillac near my house, and I have exciting news! Just the other day I saw the dude who owns the car (I saw him sitting in there, remember?) walking a Large Dog, holding none other than a yellow bag of dog doo!! So it is the owner himself who puts the poop on his car. Now we know who, but the question of "Why??" still remains. Why wouldn't he just throw the poop away immediately? Does he throw it into his outside garbage can, or does he bring it somewhere else to throw it away? If he brings it somewhere else, does he put it in his car, possibly right there on the passenger seat beside him?

The Wedding #1

2006-07-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

My brother, Jerimy, just got married on July 1st. It was quite nice, and I wanted to share a couple of pictures. There's a ton more, but they aren't on my computer. I'll get more up at a later date; consider this a teaser!

Here's the happy couple, post-wedding. They're listening to the speeches. Isn't Dawn gorgeous? Her dress was amazing. I'll have to get a better photo of it put up. My mom and dad are in the background, as is Eric Sparring, a friend of theirs who was actually the minister that married them (no, he didn't wear the cowboy hat during the ceremony).

There I am with my cousin, Corey. I was the maid of honor, he was the best man. We're giving the toasts. This is before I got all teary (I can never give a speech at a family function without getting emotional!). Like my hair? It reminds me of a topiary, but at least it was out of my face!

More to come...

Paper Assignments; or, trying to understand the student mind

2006-07-18T11:39:00.000-07:00

I am working on my classes for the fall; specifically, I’m looking at my Composition I classes (I have three sections of that) and, even more specifically, I am looking at the Compare/Contrast assignment I give for their second papers, and it’s really starting to piss me off.

My Compare/Contrast assignment has always been based on advertisement. The introduction to the assignment reads:

“…it’s safe to assume that the media have a profound affect on our culture as a whole, as well as on individual minds. During this unit, we will be looking extensively at advertisement specifically and how it works. Advertisement speaks to us, and presents a chicken-or-the-egg paradox: Is advertisement a reflection of our culture, or does advertisement shape what our culture is? These are the two fundamental questions guiding our study for next couple of weeks.”

I think this is brilliant, of course.

Anyway, the assignment goes on to ask students to find two ads that are related in some way, do a thorough analysis of them, and write a 2-3 page paper based on their findings.

To my surprise, students pretty much hate this assignment. First off, they don’t know what the point is of doing ad analysis when they claim that they never pay attention to advertisement anyway. Secondly, they have a helluva time knowing what it means to look beyond what is there in full color on the page. Many simply won’t make the leap from what’s there to what it means. To help them out, I show Tough Guise and Killing Us Softly III (one is about the portrayal of men in the media, and the other is about women’s image in advertisement) as a way of looking at larger cultural influences and how they differ between the sexes. I do this to help, I really do, but many have apparently viewed my showing these films as a not-too-subtle suggestion that they must choose men/women ads to compare/contrast (and they must side with the women!!) if they are to do well on the papers. This could not be further from the truth, and at one point last semester, I let them now outright that, and I quote, “This could not be further from the truth!”

So here I am. The summer more than half over, and I need to make some decisions. I don’t want to let go of my ad analysis, but how do I get students into this assignment? Perhaps it is a matter of getting them interested in the material, the broader philosophical and socio-economic issues that are in the ads. That certainly won’t make things any easier, though. Another difficulty will be letting students know that they have the power to look at ads and participate in the exploration of what ideas they present. It’s simply ridiculous to think that ads don’t represent anything in our society (which is also a card students will play: “This doesn’t mean anything!”); though they are fake realities, they are realities that we literally and figuratively buy into. And that’s worth looking into.

"My eyes are burning!!" or, local happenings

2006-06-14T11:05:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, my mother and I were driving to the gym and we saw a car stalled out by the side of the freeway. Two men were working on it; rather, one man stood idly by while another was down on his haunches, fiddling with a tire iron, his ass crack hanging out a good six inches.

I was waiting at a red light on 5th Street, and for the entire light, I watched as a lone construction man gripped a jackhammer. He vibrated away on the concrete, his ass crack shucking and jiving out of the back of his jeans.

The other day, a coworker bent down to grab something, and she came frighteningly close to showing off a great deal of her ass crack to the line of public waiting behind the counter.

Just today, a salesgirl was helping a young guy at a shoe store, and as she bent over to remove the paper jammed up into the toe of a pair of Pumas, a good four inches of her butt hung out of her pants. The guy, I'm sure, wasn't going to be too sure about what shoes to buy for a good while.

Now, I know that butt cleavage has been talked about, over and over. With the massive popularity of the thong, it only makes sense that if a woman is willing to have a piece of fabric cutting into her buttcrack all day, she might be willing to show off the top of the thong (thank you, Ultra Low-Rise jeans!!). The next logical step is straight up showing off the crack, no underwear involved (or "low rise" bikinis involved, which lend themselves perfectly to this troubling phenomenon when the woman wearing them fails to hitch up her pants before getting down on her haunches).

But now, the trend has obviously come home to roost. We have ass cracks running all around Duluth, coming out of hiding, letting themselves be seen (and aired out), and not just by portly guys who forgot their belts, but also, more commonly, by young women. And now, the owner of the old Norshor Theatre, Eric Ringsred, wants to turn it into a strip club. The humanity!!

For those of you who are out of the loop, the Norshor is the historic theatre in downtown Duluth, and it's been abandoned, reclaimed, sort of fixed up, closed down due to fire code violations, opened up to show movies and have raves (and other random events), closed, opened, closed... it's obnoxious, really. And now, after the Norshor has been closed for a good while (fire code violations, natch), the Ringsred has come out with a new business plan: strip club or bust!! (No pun intended. Honest.)

Of course, people aren't pleased by this. They don't like strip clubs. Women get naked in them. Seedy people want to see the naked women. Seedy people drink and watch the naked women, and their testosterone gets all whipped up into a frenzy, and then drunken and disorderly behavior occurs out on the sidewalks, scaring the little old ladies who are leaving the Fond Du Luth casino after spending their monthly pension checks on bingo.

Thankfully, there's some sort of random state law that the city attorney or one of his lackeys digged up to squash any hopes Ringsred might have had for turning the Norshor into a bona fide bordello of bare body parts. Mostly, though, it reassures the pius Duluth citizens (ahem, their wives) that no man will be able to see naked boobies and have their testosterone whipped into a frenzy. They'll just have to go down to Canal Park's Club Saratoga, or head online to do a Google search for "Naked Boobies." Wait... they're already doing that? Noooo...

As for the ass cracks, we'll just have to wait for the trend to pass. Maybe those high-rise 80's jeans will come back in style... hello, stone-washed Gitanos!!

The Penis Balloon

2006-06-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

I'm standing in a fairly long line at Michaelangelo's Coffeehouse in lovely Madison, WI, waiting for my honey to get done running a half-marathon in scorching 80-degree heat. A shorter guy, probably Bangledeshi, is standing in front of me. He's wearing a subtle tropical-print dress shirt (if tropical-print can indeed be subtle) and green slacks-- an all-around clean-cut kind of guy, well-groomed and all.

I notice, however, that he is holding a penis balloon in his right hand. It's one of those mylar balloons, and the kicker is that it is the exact shape and size of an actual twig and berries. It's also flesh-colored. The manufacturers were definitely going for "realistic" with this thing. I couldn't help but wonder where it came from, and why the guy was holding it on a Sunday morning at 8 a.m. in a coffee shop.

When our part of the line passed the little creamer-sugar counter, the guy put the balloon on it... and kept going, like it wasn't even his, like I totally didn't see him with the balloon and didn't know it was his. For a few glorious minutes, I watched out of the corner of my eye as various people saw and commented on the penis. Two ladies had a rapid-fire exchange in Spanish over it. Another younger guy saw it and did the classic double-take. I ordered my coffee and paid, and when I turned around, the balloon was gone. Did someone take it? Was it simply swept into the garbage like so much trash? As I was dumping creamer into my coffee and pondering these questions, double-take guy brought his girlfriend over to show her. The disappointment was clear in his voice as he said, "Man... it was just here!"

Gross Things #2

2006-05-22T19:36:00.000-07:00

I live on a somewhat busy street that goes up and then down a big hill. It's a house-lined, urban street, so there are always lots of cars parked along the road.

I have noticed something intriguing and, yes, gross, for awhile when driving along my street. I don't remember when I first noticed it, but it has since become a fairly reliable sighting whenever I pass by.

Four or five blocks away from my house on the other side of the street, a maroon, full-sized Cadillac sits in front of a two-story house. It's a rather unremarkable vehicle; it is neither new nor old, neither dirty nor clean. Nondescript...

Except for the bag of dog poop that is habitually sitting on the trunk.

One must ask oneself: Why is that dog poop there? (I didn't actually realize that it was dog poop until I started paying attention. As a matter of fact, it might not actually be dog poop, but I'm pretty sure it's some kind of poop. It's the right size and shape.) Who put the dog poop there? (It is often in different-colored bags, so I know that it's not a single bag of dog poop that simply gets tossed off and then put back on.)

The car doesn't just sit there, either. There are times when the car is not there, so it gets driven. I actually saw the guy who drives the car, too, just tonight. He's a middle-aged dude, fairly nondescript (not unlike his car). Strangely, though, I passed him as he arrived at his spot, and I went home, screwed around for fifteen, twenty minutes, and then headed out again... and he was still sitting in his car when I went by. Perhaps waiting for the dog poop perpetrator?? The world may never know.

I'm shrinking...

2006-05-10T13:22:00.000-07:00

Well, it's May 10th, and that can only mean one thing: time for me to get weighed and measured at Curves. I had some anxiety going in because I've been eating poorly lately; the stress of the last few weeks of school has really gotten to me, and my constant friend Food has been, well, my constant friend. There were also several days that I missed workouts, and with all the rain, I haven't spent as much time outside as usual. (Wow... those are sounding a lot like excuses, aren't they??)

The news was good overall, though. I stayed the same or lost minimal amounts in most areas. My weight, for example, has stayed the same. The major triumph was the loss of three inches in my thighs. Not three inches combined, either. Three inches each, and besides my gut, they're my "problem" area. Not too shabby, eh? Now, if it'll only start being a little nicer out so I can do some hiking (and continue to firm up!!)...

Gross Things #1

2006-05-09T18:35:00.000-07:00

It seems that I have been witness to many gross things lately. Dear reader, I have decided to share one of these things with you now, mostly because it's fun.

The other day I went to UMD to their Annual Massive Bookstore Sale of Insanity (I don't remember the real name) with my mother. My aunt was working there, so it was a regular family affair. Now, they don't have the sale stuff in the bookstore. Oh no, it's down in the basement ("bargain" basement, if you will), essentially in an area roped off from the hallway. People were bustling around, as people do during finals week, and there were lots of folk at the sale. (They were doing book buyback just down the hall; sell your trig book, buy a bargain sweatshirt.)

I'm not really into college apparel, especially apparel from a college I've never gone to, so I didn't get anything, but my mother did. She was standing in line, and my aunt and I were chatting it up off to the side, when all of a sudden, as if compelled by a force beyond sight or sound, both my aunt and I looked up. (Here's where the gross part happens, if you need to cover your ears.)

There, about fifteen feet away from us, was a woman walking rapidly down the hallway. She was a middle-aged woman with a nice older-lady haircut, glasses, and a nice older-lady outfit. She looked real put-together, except for the whole vomiting thing. I knew she was trying to make it to the bathroom, but it was way too late. She was puking, but she kept walking. She tried to catch it with one hand, but of course you can't catch puke with one hand (as any drunken kid at a frat house could tell you), so trying to catch the puke only resulted in the puke spurting out from between her fingers, creating the classic projectile vomiting action. She just kept walking, and when finally out of sight, my aunt said, "She must be sick."

I said, "Yep." I hadn't even started my day yet, really. You'd better believe I still have that image in my head.

My favorite thing in Rochester, MN

2006-05-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's the Seneca corn water tower. I had to find this image on a website because I didn't have a camera with me... but it always makes me smile.

(Image found at: www.nibbod.com/megan/roadtrip09.html)

The Grand Portage Trail

2006-05-04T10:13:00.000-07:00

A couple of weekends ago, I had the pleasure of going tramping around the woods. I’ve never considered myself much of an outdoorsperson (allergies have often precluded my participation in outdoor frolic), though my regular doses of Claritin along with my recent foray into healthy living has caused me to spend more time Out There.

So, on Sunday I went out to the Grand Portage Trail, which winds its way down through the woods to the St. Louis River and into Jay Cooke State Park. The Grand Portage Trail was used by fur traders hundreds of years ago, so there’s the cool historical aspect of it, but there’s also the sheer beauty of the trail, the woods, and the river itself that makes the trip worthwhile.

The trek we took was four miles long. We winded through the woods and down to a small creek before emerging at a road crossing. Beyond that was the St. Louis River, which spread out before me under the sun, teal and turquoise and green, flashing and flowing over the rocks. On the distant shore, pine trees blanketed the steep hill. Sitting on a flat rock and letting the sounds around me calm my brain, I realized why people need to spend time outside.

The hike back was, admittedly, difficult. All of the winding downhill at the start ended in having to wind uphill, and yes, I was exhausted. My throat burned and my legs ached, but after I got back to the car and I was driving away with the windows down, I knew I’d be back… and it also helped to have a cute guy along for the ride.

Yipe! Who knew they do this on blogs, too??

2006-04-27T08:47:00.000-07:00

I was "tagged" by my high school friend Amy D. ( http://amydusek.blogspot.com ) to answer these questions. I've never actually heard of "blog tagging" before, but I'm game. It's like one of those email quiz things, only fewer questions. Watch out... I might've tagged you!

Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Ice-cream scooper
2. Party balloon blower-upper
3. Thrift store clerk
4. Student

Four movies I would watch over and over:
1. To Wong Foo: Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
2. The 13th Warrior
3. National Lampoon's Vacation
4. Revenge of the Nerds

Four places I have lived:
1. The Cloud
2. The Red River Valley of Insanity
3. My parent's house
4. A pseudo-retirement community

Four TV shows I love to watch:
1. Law and Order
2. Law and Order: SVU
3. Gilmore Girls
4. Grey's Anatomy

Four places I have been on vacation:
1. Beantown
2. D.C.
3. Seattle
4. San Fran

Four websites I visit daily:
....
I actually don't visit websites daily!

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Mmmm... Chipotle burrito...
2. Eggs with feta
3. Ice cream
4. Curried Mock Duck

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. At my house
2. On a certain flat rock on the Grand Portage Trail
3. Savers
4. Venice, Florida

Four Memorable Restaurants:
1. Olive Garden in Maple Grove
2. Famous Dave's in Hayward
3. Sharkey's in Venice, Florida
4. At Sara's Table/Chester Creek Cafe in Duluth

Four friends who I have tagged that I think will respond:
1. Jill ( http://fragmentedcontinuity.blogspot.com )
2. David (http://dbjorn.blogspot.com)
3. Jerimy
4. Ma

It's not unusual to get bogged down...

2006-04-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

I have several teacher-friends whose blogs I like to read. It's the end of April, and I haven't seen anything new on them for several weeks, which only means one thing: they are getting slammed at work with work from their students, work that they assigned. Teaching is the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy, and at the end of the semester, the prophecy comes true. Speaking of, there are some paper revisions I should be looking at...

The Revolution

2006-04-10T17:07:00.000-07:00

Let's not mince words.

I was feeling like total shit.

My general life for the past couple of years has revolved around doing school stuff. Planning classes. Drinking coffee. Teaching classes. Sitting in my office, doing research. Talking to students. Going home. Grading papers. Then, under the guise of my brain being tired, mindless T.V. watching, or, less mindless but still sedentary, book reading.

In case you were wondering, I've always been tallish (5'9") and, until recent history, pretty slim. My once highly athletic body began to soften up, though, in grad school. Okay, that's fine. I'm just getting older, and that's what happens, I thought. So, go up a pants size or two. Whatever. What's a size, anyway? All those manufacturers are making the sizes smaller nowadays. I hated it, hated the way I looked, but I obviously didn't care because I would try to get moving and it wasn't happening. Like my old speech professor once said, "Trying to stand up looks a lot like sitting down," and sitting on my ass I certainly was. I didn't forsee change.

But then, miraculously, I went to the doctor this fall and got weighed. When I was an undergrad, I weighed a svelte 150 pounds. Last year when I went to the doctor, I weighed 160. This fall, the scale told me 167 pounds.

1.

6.

7.

Listen. It's not like I was scared straight right then and there. But it did scare me. It was a big number, and seven pounds in one year is positively horrifying. So I stewed on that for, oh, about six months, until the middle of March when the revolution occurred.

My mother is, as anyone knows her would attest to, fabulous and strong-willed. She got me to go to Curves with her to check it out.

I walked in and felt a bit shy, a bit superior. I felt shy because working out is horrifying to me. I felt superior because there's no way these machines and a half-hour a day could work for me.

If you don't know what Curves is, it's an all-women circut-training health club. There are different weight machines you use (I believe there are 12 of them) to strength-train various parts of your body, and between those are recovery stations, where you run in place, do jumping jacks, hula hoop, or whatever (my personal favorite: karate kicks. Very stress-relieving). You spend 30 seconds per station and do the circuit twice. Stretch afterwards, and you're done.

Believe me, I came up with every excuse in the book to NOT do this. Too much money! ($31.18 per month. Not a bank-breaker.) It'll get boring! I won't go! No! You can't make me!! My mother finally laid it out for me. She said, "Kelli, it sounds like you've got a lot of excuses." Simple, yes, but it clicked. Don't think, just do. So I did, and do, five days a week. (Just so you know, those machines aren't as easy as they look.)

I weigh myself every week and essentially eat the same things that I always have. It's been a month, which meant that I got measured on Friday. (When you start, they do head-to-toe measurements, a body fat analysis, and, of course, they weigh you.)

Guess what. In one month, I've lost over four pounds. I've lost over eight pounds of body fat, and the inches are coming off. Most thrilling are the FOUR AND A QUARTER inches gone from around my abdomen, my number one trouble spot. I lost inches everywhere else, except my arms, but that's only because I'm getting some pipes.

The best part is that I'm active now. I go for walks, and just yesterday I went canoeing with a good friend for close to 2 1/2 hours. I feel like a badass. I feel happy. And I'm not stopping because it's only going to get better.

God and Research: Teaching #2

2006-03-15T13:19:00.000-08:00

My friend David has a great blog ( http://dbjorn.blogspot.com) where he wrote a couple of weeks ago about a student with religious tendencies who wrote a paper condemning the use of alcohol, the irony being that he had just sat down at a restaurant with a glass of Chianti to do some grading. David’s post made me laugh in recognition, but it also got me to thinking about why students choose to use religion as a basis for argument.

Being an English teacher, I have read a lot of papers on a lot of different topics. Argumentative research papers are always the best because students don’t understand the concept of narrowing down to fit the page requirement; rather, they try to go as broad as possible so they have enough to write about in the vast expanse of Eight Whole Pages (never mind the double spacing). As a result, and before I came up with my “Banned Topics” list, I have read papers on how America is not a democracy (this one wasn’t too bad, actually), creation versus evolution (yawn), why pregnant women should not smoke (I tried to dissuade, I really did), and the existence of God (not just one, but literally about four or five over the years). The ones that have been the hardest to grade, though, have been the ones on, say, gay marriage or abortion, which base their arguments on religious beliefs.

It seems that the difficulty behind writing an argumentative paper based on religion gets down to the “it’s a free country” cliché: how can a person make a logical argument based around a philosophy that not only not everyone agrees with, but also that even within members of a particular religious community, gaps in belief still exist? I wouldn’t presume to speak for the entire teaching community, but I feel comfortable in saying that teachers generally discourage students from making logical arguments based on religious belief. There’s just too much gray area.

When I think about it, though, is it really wrong for a student to base an argument on religion? Take the gay marriage example. I believe that people who are against gay marriage are actually against homosexuality in general, and that idea comes from a religious belief. One cannot really argue with a person’s beliefs; generally, they are what they are, and if a person believes in her heart of hearts that homosexuality goes against the Will of God, who am I to tell her, no matter how much I might want to, how ridiculous that is? Religious beliefs are powerful, sometimes mystical forces that are difficult to refute and difficult to work with, because they work in absolutes. For the most staunch, things are as they are, period. Not a lot of wiggle room there.

The problem with that is that it doesn’t allow for the questioning, the thought processes, the turning over of an idea, examining it from all sides and all angles, because the results are always the same, and always focus on what God says.

The question, still, is if this is an ineffective way of approaching an argument in writing. Is it incorrect to argue that abortion should be outlawed because it is murdering a baby, and murdering babies goes against God’s will? Is it wrong to say that we should not be dabbling in cloning because we are playing God? Is there room for people to include their religious beliefs in a clear, well-thought-out and appropriate way? Or does religion create too much clarity, so much so that one can see no other way but The Way of God?

The Lump

2006-03-08T07:30:00.000-08:00

I have a lump in my bed every night, and she has a name and brown fur and sweet paws and gentle brown eyes. The lump starts off on top of the covers, and in the pre-dawn gray that creeps through my window, she wakes, moves up the bed and noses her way under the covers, worming down to settle next to my legs. Bean is the live-action stuffed animal I never had as a kid, and I remember my friend Rob telling me when I was trying to decide if I even wanted a dog that, though having one doesn't make life easier, they sure do make life better. I couldn't agree more.

Take a Kurdistand!!

2006-03-01T11:19:00.000-08:00

As some of you may know, I have spent time in Washington D.C. the past few years volunteering time at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker house. A passion for human rights has arisen in me because of these experiences, and it was during one of those visits that I met a man named Kani.

Kani is a Turkish Kurd, and he lobbies Congress through his organization, the American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN). Currently, the Kurdish people are the largest ethnic group in the world without a country. Kurdish areas exist in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and, in Turkey especially, Kurdish people are greatly persecuted, unable to speak the Kurdish language, practice Kurdish cultural traditions, or even say that they are Kurds.

Kani visited Minnesota a couple of weeks ago for speaking engagements in Minneapolis, and he drove north with another mutual friend to visit me. He brought a film with him called Good Kurds, Bad Kurds
(http://www.kevinmckiernan.com/doc.html ) which is a) excellent viewing and b) a powerful depiction of the Kurdish struggle. If you've heard about the Kurds before, or haven't until now, I suggest seeking out this film and watching it. Check out AKIN's website, too, at http://www.kurdistan.org .

Porcelain Gods

2006-02-27T11:22:00.000-08:00

I was in a place that everyone has been. It is a place of convenience, where our most intimate moments play out for the world.

It is the public restroom.

I was in one today, and as I sat there, I realized that someone is paying for the water to flush the toilet, the toilet paper, the paper towel, the soap to wash my hands… and, of course, there’s someone being paid to clean up after everyone is done using it.

What would happen if there were no public restrooms? Trips outside would be much shorter. We would be forced to get straight with our priorities, because taking that side trip to check out the Yellow Dot clearance racks at Younkers one more time might result in a squirmy drive home, the discomfort of the bladder growing over every bump in the road. We would probably get to know our bodies better, too, learning the fine art of Holding It through watching Titanic on the big screen and then the subsequent drive home.

I hear that in some countries, they make people pay to use a public toilet. Some might find this outrageous, but as a person who has had to clean out bathrooms where, literally, the shit was everywhere, this would seem like a reasonable penance to pay for the convenience of a clean place to do our business when away from our comfortable commodes at home.

The Beard

2006-02-26T15:27:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I see friends after a period of time, months or years, and they look exactly the same. More often than not, though, they are not the same. This can be disorienting. I saw my friend David for the first time in eight months at a conference on Friday, and he shocked me by his bushy beard. It wasn't some piddly pseudo-beard, either; it was a full-on, cover-the-face-and-hang-down-to-the-chest Man's Man BEARD. I grabbed The Beard immediately, like a little kid grabs Santa's beard. Thankfully, he was pleased enough to see me that he wasn't annoyed, or didn't show it. It looks nice, by the way. More importantly, though, it looks warm. Bravo for The Beard, David.

4:30 a.m.

2006-02-26T15:08:00.000-08:00

It's 4:30 a.m.

It's 4:30 a.m. and I am awake, on purpose, and it is still dark out.

I'm showering for the day and it's 4:35 and it's still dark out; lights are not an option, but a necessity. It's dark outside, and the sun won't rise and the sky won't lighten for another hour and a half and I am awake, but barely.

My eyes hurt: puffy, dry, a little bitter, and the hot shower water at 4:40 does not help.

Why am I so slow? I can't move fast at this time. I understand that I will be late, because the earlier I have to get up the slower I am, but I just can't get myself to move faster.

It is 4:45 and I am toweling myself off, swabbing myself gingerly like an open wound because I don't feel clean yet. It's like when I brush my teeth in the morning before I eat. My teeth do not feel clean, really clean, and at 4:45 a.m. in the dark I am not clean, even after the hot shower.

Yeah, tea. Oolong, lots of sugar. It's too dark and I'm too tired to bother with the coffeemaker.

It's nearly 5:00 now, and I am trying to come to terms with the morning, but I can't help but feel like it's actually 5:00 p.m., which throws things off even more, and the tea isn't helping and it feels wrong to be putting on dress pants this early. My legs are actually a little pissed off, wanting not wool blend pants but a pair of shorts and some well-worn sheets. I don't bother with makeup.

My coworker will be here soon; time to kick it up. I am now moving in normal speed, not in slow-mo. Lights in the driveway, I walk down the stairs and attempt a trot to the kitchen to grab a muffin. It is 5:20 a.m. and I am out the door, it is still dark out, and the base of my skull feels numb. I think of my grandma, who regularly gets up at 3:30 a.m. This is wrong on many levels to me, the most wrong being that it is just too damn dark out at 3:30 a.m., and still too dark out as I run halfheartedly to the car and hop in.

3 to the 3rd power

2006-02-21T17:17:00.000-08:00

I’m having a birthday on Saturday. This is the first time in eight years that I won’t have to drive at least several hours to be around my family for my day. Other than that, this birthday will be fairly unremarkable.

I’m sure that I’m not the only one who thinks about birthdays of years past when, inevitably, the time for another birthday swings around. I remember my fourth birthday. I remember getting a towel that had a fairy on it, and I thought it was fabulous (what a little Suzy Homemaker, eh?). I’m sure I got other presents, but that one sticks out, maybe because that towel stuck around for at least fifteen years. Another birthday I remember, and probably one of the last Big Birthdays in which the people having them actually enjoy, nay, seek out, celebrating, was the 21st. I was at St. Cloud State at the time, and my birthday was on a Saturday. It was a fun weekend…

Nope, birthdays just aren’t what they used to be.

At least, that’s what I thought, until I had a conversation with my brother.

We were chatting at the folks’ house this past weekend when he asked what the plans were for the birthday. The conversation devolved into my age, which will be 27.

“Ah!” Jer said. “Three cubed!”

Suddenly, my birthday became more than “just about thirty” or the age my mother was when she had me (scary, especially considering that she also had a four-year-old Jer by then, too). I will be three cubed. Two squared is four, too young to appreciate. Four to the fourth is… well, a lot (hey, math isn’t my strong suit, okay?), so I’ll be dead by the time that rolls around. But three cubed? I think I’m just old enough to appreciate that.

Things I saw at the Eel Pout Fest in Walker, Minnesota

2006-02-19T14:56:00.000-08:00

1. More snowmobiles than is necessary for any one Minnesota city girl.
2. A man in a snowmobile suit with a Schlitz in one hand and a hot dog in the other.
3. Six seemingly sane individuals dressed as Smurfs.
4. These same Smurfs doing the polar plunge, jumping into a 8x10 foot hole in the ice to the frozen depths (okay, it was like four feet, but I'm sure it was unpleasant anyway.)
5. Eel Pout Bites (fried chunks of fish) for nine dollars a basket.
6. A fish house with a twenty-foot daisy sticking out of it.
7. Snow rugby.
8. A window sticker in a Large (probably Ford) Truck that read "PETA: People Eating Tasty Animals."
9. 100 pairs of Sorel boots, fifty pairs of leather chopper mittens, 30 flourescent pink and green Kawasaki jackets, ten pairs of camo pants, four Lab dogs of various colors, and a green and black "touk" hat sitting proudly on my head.
10. One bigass lake.

Fun? Who said you were paying for fun?

2006-02-19T14:12:00.000-08:00

I recently received a paper from a student about the reasons why his cell phone is important, including keeping in touch with people and having the ability to call for help should he end up in a snowbank out on Rural Route 9. The final reason, and the reason for this post, was this: he liked to be able to play games on it or text message, especially if he was someplace where he had some spare time, like in a waiting room or a boring class.

If you've ever been in school, you recognize that boring classes, boring teachers, boring subjects, boring books, and boring classmates exist, and sometimes simultaneously. Before the advance in technology that allowed for portable phones, perhaps you did things while bored like (hand) write notes to friends (on paper, with a writing implement like a pen or (perhaps mechanical!!) pencil), zone out, or sleep, especially in an auditorium class. I recall being bored in some classes. I also recall, especially in college, taking notes. The paradox was this: the less interesting the class was, the more thorough notes I took. I had to in order to stay on point.

Does this make me sound like a Major Nerd? My transcripts could probably offer more evidence on that issue, but that's not the point.

Now, not too many years after I myself was a student, the roles have reversed and I'm up in front of the class. What this student's paper said to me was that students need to have fun in order to learn.

I realize that this is not earth-shattering. I'm sure many studies on educational practices have confirmed Having Fun=More Learning. We are a society that likes to have fun. We dislike being bored. But if a student isn't having fun, it seems to automatically mean that they aren't going to try harder to learn; instead, they just give up.

We are a restless society, one that perpetually strives for More and Better. For teachers, this ups the ante on our delivery of the same messages that have been delivered to students since the advent of the modern school system. I teach comma usage in class, but instead of lecturing on it and requiring demonstration of knowledge via quiz, we play a game for a prize (points), and they need to use commas correctly in their papers thereafter.

I don't think that either way is "right" or "better." I think my students like my way better, because it's probably as fun someone can have learning that a comma has to come before a coordinating conjunction when it separates out two complete sentences. My question, and the point, is, WHY?

Perhaps I am lamenting the loss of learning for learning's sake, students going to class, dutifully taking notes, and studying outside of class because that's just what students do. Why do I feel the pull to be entertaining in my delivery? Is it because I know that students will shut down if bored, and I care about them learning the material? Is it because I personally enjoy teaching in a "fun" manner? Or is it because students put on teachers the expectation to make it fun or they will deliver the ultimate in irritating punishment, not paying attention?

And, most importantly, why are students bored, anyway?

These are large questions, and I realize that I've dissolved into a lament that is unproductive. The issue remains, though, about what currently constitutes "good" teaching. It's no longer enough to be able to deliver information; as teachers, especially college teachers, we should know that students pay for the classroom experience and the direction the instructor provides. Another large, frequently unspoken undercurrent that is present, however, is the expectation of entertainment, which cannot be underestimated if we are to provide a complete experience for our students.

Like it or not.

The Tree (a short story)

2006-02-19T13:55:00.000-08:00

It must have been first or second grade. It had to have been. God help us, maybe third grade, but not older than that. We were out on the playground, of course, and spring had just started hitting the big tree at the bottom of the slope in the corner of the playground. That tree must’ve been 25 feet tall, and all of its branches were far out of reach save one, and that one was about four or five inches in diameter and stuck out about six feet. It was a perfect monkey bar, its offshoot branches worn off by kids’ hands swinging. By the time I reached sixth grade, the branch had begun to splinter by the trunk because of our merciless swinging and had to be cut off.

As kids do, we made up games to play because our playground wasn’t a fancy production. There was the redwood set, replete with monkey bars, a slide, and a tire swing, two large sets of swings, and, literally, three concrete sewer pipes about four feet in diameter and eight feet long set down together like spokes on a wheel. I think they were using the “box-is-more-fun-than-the-hundred-dollar-toy-inside” theory with that one, and it worked. We played all kinds of games on those pipes, and when we were older, we snuck into the playground after dark and made out in them.

One of the games we played was a combination of Hide-and-Seek, Marco Polo, and Tag. One kid, who was “it,” would stand by the chain link fence under the tree and start counting with his eyes closed. The rest of us would hide within a designated area (the patch of grass between the sidewalk and the redwood set), and after the “it” kid was done counting, the rest of us would start counting to sixty while the “it” kid wandered around with his eyes still shut. After the sixty seconds were up, he could open his eyes and find us, but he would have to tag one of us in order for his turn to be over. It was fairly ingenious game, actually, for a bunch of little kids to have made up.

That gorgeous day in March, Jimmy was the first one to be “it.” There were maybe twelve or so of us playing, which was a fair number in those days. He started the count, and it only took about three seconds after we had finished counting for him to open his eyes and tag Christopher.

Christopher was one of Those Kids. In elementary school, you were either Normal or one of Them. Those Kids’ deficiencies ranged from being a bully to being nerdy to having greasy hair to compulsive nose-picking. Maybe in some other schools, Those Kids ended up being islands, isolated from the rest of the pack as well as each other. In our school, though, Those Kids sometimes paired up in the most bizarre ways.

Christopher and his love/hate relationship with Todd was one of these anomalies. Christopher was a Nerd to the Nth degree. He was a little bit fat, short, and pasty. He had bright red hair and an unforgivable smattering of freckles. He had these weird-looking brown eyes and was Smart. He loved outer space, and one time he did a big presentation in front of the class about Mars that seemed to last forever. I think the teacher wanted him to do it to help his self-esteem out, but it didn’t help him get along with us better. Probably the worst thing about Christopher was his nervous tic. Whenever the kid was nervous or frustrated or just plain pissed off, he shook his head. And not in a “No, that’s not right” sort of way; more like in a “Shit, I’ve got a spider on my head!” sort of way. Real fast. I’m sure it rattled his brain some, and if he didn’t have that tic going on, he could’ve probably been a Rhodes Scholar at seven. Things being what they were, though, he was just regular Super Smart, and that was enough for us to blacklist him.

Todd, on the other hand, was quite simply the class bully. He was a big dark-haired dude, and was pasty in the same way Christopher was. Todd was in our lives to punch guys in the stomachs and push girls into snowbanks. He didn’t try to kiss us, mercifully (that job was delegated to Randy, the creepy Casanova), but he struck fear in us nonetheless, not just because we didn’t like getting pushed into snowbanks, but also because we would feel bad when he would beat up another kid. And the kid Todd was the worst to was Christopher. It seemed like he was constantly terrorizing Christopher, chasing him around, catching him, and throwing him on the ground. What was weird, though, was in our collective hatred of both Christopher and Todd, they were often paired together in class projects, where they actually worked quite well together. Once we got onto the playground, though, anarchy ruled.

Todd was playing our game with us that day, too, not because we included him, but because he said he wanted to play and we couldn’t say no. By the way, Christopher was playing probably because one of the girls felt bad enough for him to invite him to play. So Christopher dutifully stood by the tree and started to count after he was tagged.

We all knew that Christopher being “it” was going to be bad. He wasn’t a fast runner, and based on experience, we knew he would run around helplessly after us as we would dart away just out of his reach like he was fishing with his bare hands. He would get tired, he would get frustrated, he would start shaking his head, and with a mixture of derision and pity, we would laugh at him. He would cry and walk away, and we would continue on with our game.

Knowing what we knew, we didn’t bother hiding, or even really moving all that far away from him. We all stood about fifteen to twenty feet away from him, waiting. Suddenly, Todd snuck up right behind him, grabbed his magenta velour pants (part of an 80’s style jumpsuit he always wore), and pantsed him.

His pants weren’t the only things that came off. His underwear went, too.

For a few glorious and horrifying seconds, Christopher’s white ass and tiny boy penis hung out there in the wind for all of us to see. It was like a bloody traffic accident; we didn’t want to look, but we had to. In hindsight, what was almost as disturbing was the fact that he didn’t realize what had happened right away, so his junk was Out There for a bit too long. We all got a good long look before he opened his eyes, reached down and yanked his pants back up.

Some of us were laughing as he turned around, but most of us were just straight up stunned. I was one of the latter, though I recall a sick feeling in my stomach. I was sensitive to other kids being bullied, but not enough to put my own ass on the line. Todd was laughing like crazy, of course. He was doubled over so all we could see was the top of his greasy head.

Christopher looked over at him and started to cry. This was to be expected. But he started to walk over to Todd, and the closer he got, the more our laughter subsided. Todd’s didn’t, though. He couldn’t shut up. I think he was crying, too, he thought it was so hilarious, so he didn’t even see it coming.

“Tooodd!” Christopher intoned, his nasally voice cracking. As Todd straightened up, Christopher kicked him square in the nuts.

There was a silence that followed, the likes of which hadn’t been heard since Lisa Billing told us that Santa Claus didn’t exist. Todd immediately doubled over, then dropped to his knees, and eventually to his side, gripping his kid-nuts just like they do in the movies. His mouth was wide open in a silent howl.

For the first time, Christopher stood over him. He looked down, shaking his head, and, wiping his nose with his sleeve and sniffling loudly, he stalked away. He sat next to the wall the rest of recess, his knees drawn up to his chest.

We left Todd on the ground. You couldn’t help a kid like that, even if his balls were just crushed, and even out of pity.

That afternoon, Todd and Christopher avoided each other, even during art when we were supposed to help each other make our popsicle stick houses. As little kids’ memories go, we had pretty much forgotten about the episode by the next day. I still can’t forget Christopher’s shining ass, though, and Todd’s silent scream. I’d like to think that, since that episode, I actually stood up for the kids who were getting picked on. I just continued on, though, like any other kid trying to survive elementary school and the weird things that happened. When they tore down the old tree after I graduated high school to make room for an expansion, I thought about Christopher briefly and what he might be doing today. I’m sure he’s a computer genius or something and Todd is a used car salesman making a decent living in Oklahoma or somewhere, and this memory has balled up with all the others, mixed into collective playground legend.

What We Do

2006-01-29T13:04:00.000-08:00

One day last week I asked my dad about work. He's a jack-of-all-trades type, putting in his working time at an industrial supply company.

"Do you go home after work and think about things that you should've gotten done, or things that you should've done better, or just about work in general?"

"Oh, yeah," he said, "All the time."

I'm a teacher by trade, and I'd like to dispel any myths out there about how teachers are super-duper lucky to be in the profession we're in because we get all that time off. We might indeed be lucky, but the time off isn't the reason. I'll speak only for myself when I say that school is constantly on my mind when I'm not in class, though I'm sure my teacher friends would agree. "Time off" doesn't really exist.

I don't know why I was a little suprised when Dad so easily responded to the affirmative to my question. He's not a lazy guy; to the contrary, he might work too hard. Then he said, "I think anyone who cares about their job or has a sense of integrity about it thinks about work when they're not there."

Makes sense. Maybe this is why, when I was in college and working a thrift store, I cried out of frustration when an old woman wanted to use her buy-one, get-one-free coupon on silverware. She had a bag of matching silverware, sold all together for $4.99, and a handful of loose unmatching silverware, priced at 19 cents apiece. She couldn't understand that if she used her coupon, she would get one piece of silverware for free. She wanted the entire handful of loose silverware for free. A stickler for the rules, I wouldn't do it. The woman got downright pissy with me, but I didn't budge, and neither did my manager when she had to be called up. At the time, I didn't realize that people who act like assholes to retail clerks do so because they are beat down, literally or figuratively, in other areas of their lives, and clerks are helpless strangers on whom they can vent their frustrations. I didn't realize that it actually didn't matter if the old lady was mad, or that I didn't get paid enough to care even if she was. I didn't know that in the big picture, my trift store job was a matter of convenience, not life or death. All I knew was that I had to go back to the break room after she left and cry, because she was yelling at me as I was trying to do my job (and do it well).

So it should come as no suprise that I worry about my students and their successes and failures. If the old lady at the thrift store made me cry, I can and will think a lot about teaching, even when I'm not in front of the class doing it. And Dad's comment about his work shouldn't have surprised me, either. Some people glide through their jobs, effortlessly putting in their eight hours and then going home without a second thought of it. That's not Dad, though. I see the hard work when I stop by the folks' house at night, in his face, in his hands. Yeah, he doesn't leave work at work. Maybe that's okay, though, because what I see is not just worry, but also integrity personified.