I'd like to thank the academy, jen, and wine everywhere

Listening to the freezing rain clicking against my windows is not exactly motivating me to leave the house. But I want to buy a paper. Perhaps a walk up the street for a NYT and coffee will do me good? Or will it just leave me all ice-encrusted and unhappy? What a wimp I have become...

Jen & I attempted to support our favorite, failing coffee house last night as they tried to raise funds to pay some back rent they owe. It was a little too reminiscent of painful open-mike experiences from our past, all earnest folky boredom, I'm afraid, with a sprinkling of overwrought spoken word. It's awkward, because I feel like I should watch the person, that it's rude not to, but in my head, I'm rudely begging them to stop. Time just crawls in that situation; one needs a distraction. For me, the distraction was my infected cuticle on my second finger.

I used to be a master of distraction. In some high school math class, I got through the boredom of it all by systematically training my fingers to bend at the first joint, a skill which I have retained:

Anyway, in the past, Jen and I would suffer through this open mike bizness because we knew a friend or someone we liked a lot was coming up, eventually, but last night we had no such reason to stick around. We had our coffee and cookies, gave our donations, and went to the bar instead, where Jen put my life all into perspective for me. Or was that the wine? I think it was a little of both. Thanks, Jen. Thanks, wine.

mid-winter blah

Mid-winter break is quickly dissolving before my eyes, and I've basically done nothing of note. Actually, I did get my nerves tested, since my legs have been going all numb-n-tingly on me again. My nerves are fine, luckily. The test involved lots and lots of inserting of needles into my legs, while wearing giant, ballooning tarp-shorts. I could hear the sounds of my nerve and muscle activity, amplified by the machine. It was like holding a seashell to my ear.

I took care of my niece yesterday. She has a good sense of the absurd. I especially enjoyed when we played Evil Librarian. She wanted to play regular librarian, but I convinced her that Evil Librarian would be better.

Um, what else? Hmmm. Have been thinking about my summer, and what to do with it, and beyond that, the rest of my life, and what to do with it...

The nice thing about being a teacher is that as one break draws to an end, one can flip through the calendar and say something like this:

Six weeks to spring break!

eyes, eyes, eyes, yeah

I finally did it. I made the call. I set up the appointment. I carried my glasses in a little bag. I printed out the reimbursement forms and filled out the top section. I conquered years of terrible fear...

I went to the eye doctor.

I HATE going to the eye doctor. Give me the gynecology appointment, the dentist, the endodontist, the regular doc, any day! At those appointments you pretty much just have to sit there. But at the eye appointment, you have to answer questions, lots of questions, about what you can and can't "see." This is a very difficult emotional exercise for me; I feel extremely anxious about whether or not I'm getting the answer right. I feel it goes back to Dr. Fligman. Fliggy, we called him. His style kind of reminds me of Dr. Jacoby from Twin Peaks. Kind of kooky and evil. He judged me and my human worth by how well I could read those lines of letters, tsk-tsking, sighing agitatedly, and shaking his head alot throughout my exams. I was in sixth grade when I was subjected to a grueling regimen of appointments with Fliggy as he tried to conquer my shameful astigmatism. One day my friend, also his patient, called me as I was getting ready to leave for an appointment. "Are you still going to Fliggy today?" she asked. "Because I just saw in the paper that he died." We went anyway, and no one in the office ever mentioned that he had just died. The receptionists and assistants were chipper. A different doctor saw me that day, and from then on. I began slacking on the eye-exercise routine prescribed by Fliggy, abandoning the translucent red and blue disks and other psychedelic tools used to strengthen my eyes, and the new doctor didn't seem to care.

The dude who looked at my eyes yesterday seemed about ten years younger than me. He took one look at my glasses and could name the designer, style, and approximate year. He had zero sense of humor. "Can you read anything on the next line?" "Yes, I'm absolutely sure that those are letters," I said, in a clever display of wit. No reaction. He also wanted me to look at the red dot as he administered a puff of air in each eye. "I can't see a red dot," I said, in all honesty. "You'll see it in a second," he said. "Keep looking."

Reader, I never did see the red dot. But I did order new contacts and am excited about how my world may be about to change.

I CAN'T WAIT until Alice is a practicing opthalmologist and I can go to her! She always laughs at my jokes!

****

It is mid-winter break, starting today. I have been craving beer lately, good beer, and so I bought a special India ale to drink last night. All the fancy beer comes in big bottles and I can't take them on on a school night. But I looked forward all day yesterday to drinking my fancy and celebratory beer. I started off strong around 7, grading a few book reports and sipping. I moved to the couch to watch the Buffy musical, sipping away like there was no tomorrow. I covered up with a blanket, put on Veronica Mars, and sipped from a prone position. Soon I was dead asleep.

I only drank half the beer. Damn!

sneeping bag

I knew a girl named Allison, my across-the-street pal in the first & second grade years. I was older than Allison. Wiser, even. Allison had not mastered things that I had firmly in pocket - for example, pronunciation of the words "sleeping bag." At my house for a sleepover, I noticed that Allison kept saying "sneeping bag" instead of "sleeping bag." At first I was disgusted, resentful at the way her babyishness was pulling me down. But somewhere along the way I realized my responsibility as her elder, and I wondered, how could I correct this terribly immature pronunciation of "sleeping bag" without crushing her spirit? I thought about it and chose my approach. All evening, I peppered my own speech quite liberally with the words "sleeping bag," slowing down the first syllable of the first word, hoping she'd make the connection. I wasn't really sure if she was getting it or not, until...

hunched into our sleeping bags, lights out, drifting to sleep, I heard...

Allison's voice whispering to herself...

"sneeping bag. sleeping bag. sneeping bag. sleeping bag."

She was trying it out, testing it, feeling the difference. I glowed and beamed in my sleeping bag, so proud of myself and, of course, so proud of little Allison.

Prom Queen Memories

So, the new schedule for the Detroit Film Theatre is up. Who is going to go see what with me? I notice that the last film takes place in the French Alps. I don't necessarily want to see that one, but I have memories of Chris's and my brief fling with the French Alps. It wasn't the most successful leg of our college Eurail jaunt...

We got into town early, so early. We knew the hostel wouldn't open for hours. We got breakfast at a place near the train station. "Don't worry," I told Chris, feeling like her sugar daddy, "I have plenty of francs. I brought them with me, left over from the other time I was in France. Get whatever you want." Soo cool. So, we drink our cafe and eat our brioche or whatever, and it comes time to pay, and I lay out my paper money on the table with a kind of swagger to my movements. And the waitress just rolls her eyes and looks disgusted, and keeps saying, "Non! Non! C'est mal!" Which I know means No, No, it's bad... I don't understand why though. She stomps off and we don't know what to do. It's not like there's a bank open. The waitress comes back with some coins and we get it then, that the paper money has been phased out and now it's just coins. We don't have any of those coins. We have just eaten an overpriced meal, extravagant for us, and can't pay. Merde! What to do? Luckily an old man in a cap (am I making up the cap? I like the cap, so I guess I don't really care) took pity on us and paid our bill. Merci! Merci! We were overcome with love.

Bellies full, we started the long, entirely uphill journey to the hostel. We had barely slept on the train; a couple had shared our sleeping car (couchette) and we had watched the man's legs dangle down and seen him take off his pants. He went right to sleep, but snored, and we knew he wasn't wearing his pants. Yuck. So, we hiked with little energy to the one youth hostel in Annecy, France. It took forever. We had to stop and rest. Finally we got there, and were greeted by a sign on the door: "Closed since May." We each sat on a rock, and we cried. Tired, defeated, wanting a shower and a bed, we decided to walk back to town and stay at a real hotel for a night. We found a cute place that wasn't too expensive, and flopped on the bed for a long time. Later we went to the beach and had fondu savoyard, the local specialty, which was too expensive for us. We got yelled at in a bakery along the way, too, when we stopped to buy bread for the next morning's breakfast. I can't remember what we did wrong that time.

The next day I was a walking allergy, a sneeze, an itchy eye personified. I was useless outside. I couldn't do a thing. I went to the pharmacy and got some medicine. I wasn't really sure if I had gotten the right thing or not. The medicine knocked me out. Did we stay a second night at the hotel? We may have. I know I ruined the day with my horrific state of itchiness. I know that the bedspread was flowered, because I spent a long time looking at it, knowing I was wasting a day away but unable to change things. I was either tormented by allergies or anesthetized by the medicaments....

That was the French Alps. Our French Alps. The guidebook described the town as The Prom Queen of the French Alps. I never did really care much for the prom queen type.

glowering, skulking neighbors

Another snow day! God, I can't even remember now the last time we had a full week. It reminds me of swimming class in high school, which I had first hour. I never once swam a full week. I'd find a reason at least once each week to lie on the bleachers and nap instead. It's what I was known for. Also, during the gym basketball unit, I was famous for never once touching the basketball.

The guy across the hall is awful. I like the crazy lady down the hall and the bowling ball dropper upstairs MUCH better. The guy across the hall drives a ridiculous, big truck, which I park next to. We barely ever cross paths, but when we do he completely ignores me. He has never once even said hello to me (or Pam, who was with me once). Yesterday he was cleaning snow off his car when I pulled in. It was all awkward to me as I got my things out of my car. Do I say hello because it's the normal thing to do, and risk feeling like an idiot, or do I just act like an asshole like he does? In my lame midwestern way, I chose being normal and said hello. He didn't even look at me, just glowered.

Glowered, people.

I had another neighbor like that once, though. I think his name was Breck. It was Ann Arbor, and I was living with Jen in the upstairs apartment on Division Street. Breck was really snobby, and did nothing to dispel the stereotype of snobby peoples' noses being all lifted into the air. His was all pointy and lifty and you could see right into his nostrils. We always seemed to get home at the same time and we'd both be unlocking our doors, and he'd just totally ignore me even if I said hello.

So then one day I was walking on campus and I saw him coming towards me with his pretentious trench coat and floppy hair. He started talking to me! "Hey! Um, have you talked to the landlord recently? I'm having a problem with...blah blah blah..."

And I just fixed my face with a blank look and cut him off. "I'm sorry. Do I know you?"

He got all stammery and said that he lived next door to me. "Oh," I said. "Really? I don't think I've ever seen you."

He got red and skulked away! It was awesome! After that we just ignored each other equally and it felt right.

two k's

This day sukked. That's right. Two k's.

It was a field trip day. The only days I like less are class party days. They are all so stressful.

I started writing the details and realized it's not interesting to most. I'll boil it down to two very action-packed, exciting, and interesting points: 1. I hit my head hard exiting a pioneer cabin and fell down dizzy in the snow, and 2. I almost threw up/peed/had a heart attack/bawled when a parent called to tell me her kid didn't come home on the bus - had we left him at the field trip site? I was pretty sure we hadn't, but... OH MY GOD. Terror. As it turns out, he fell asleep on the bus and missed his stop. He was exhausted, I guess, from the excitement of seeing his teacher fall in the snow with those cartoon dizzy lines around her head...

Also I had to listen to one of the moms talk about the 6-bedroom yacht with a captain and full crew that she spent a champagne-soaked weekend on in the Bahamas, returning just last night. Poor thing. She was so tired from too much champagne, so very cold in the snow...

food again

Did I tell you about how I was going to scatter some piping hot baked potatoes in my bed before getting in? It's an ole pioneer trick I have heard about. But I've decided that you should try it first and let me know how it is.

My "pink lady" variety apple today had the word "Crips" on the label. I like that my apple was grown in an L.A. gangland orchard.

You should make what I made: a cup of arborio rice cooked in fresh carrot juice and vegetable broth. You toast the rice and then add a half cup of each kind of liquid until, over the course of an hour, 5-6 total cups of liquid has been absorbed and you are left with carrot juice risotto. Really. You should. It's good and warm and creamy in the not-too-creamy way.

Even piping hot, though, I don't know that I'd want to scatter it in my bed. I don't think that even those fickle food-wasting pioneers would go for that.

Car wash therapy

No school again today! And being unable to have fun as I am, I'm freaking out about how behind we now are on this or that...

What are warm feet? I don't remember. Tonight I might try scattering some piping hot baked potatoes in my bed before getting in.

I went to the best car wash today. Well, maybe not the best. The best is either the combination car wash/soul food restaurant in Pontiac or the car wash in Detroit that doubles as rock show venue in the summer. But this one did offer a little free counseling, which was a nice bonus. See, I HATE going through the car wash. As a kid, I thought those long black rubber strips had something to do with witches, and that, of course, scared me - to be surrounded by witches and trapped in the car. Then as an adult, I once got kind of stuck inside a carwash and had to back out. Not good. So, the whole think makes me anxious, but I've been trying to do more of the kinds of things other adults do, like occasionally warsh the car, so I gathered my courage and did it. "Don't look so nervous," the guy at the front end said. "What's wrong?" "Well, I don't like this very much," I said. The guy stopped his bustling about. He put down his clipboard so as to give me his full attention, and he put his hands right on the bottom of my window. "What are you afraid of?" "Getting stuck." "What are you REALLY afraid of?"

So I broke down in tears and poured out everything, every twisted fear and worry I harbor in my soul, and he said, "It's going to be ok, I promise."

Except I didn't really break down in tears or bare my soul. Still, it was the most supportive and encouraging car wash experience I have ever, ever had. As I was being pushed through all the various components, I did feel a little fearful, I can't deny it. I felt assaulted and trapped. But the soothing voice of the guy who took my money? It helped, at least a little.

Dear Jim

Dear Jim Jarmusch;

On those nights spent lonesomely googling yourself, I thought you might enjoy stumbling upon this. This is a box my friend Mollie made me some years ago. Jim, I keep my most personal items bed-side in this box. Items like chapstick, dental floss, heart rate monitor, and Macbook remote nestle in its furred interior. By the grace of this box, I am reminded nightly of all we have in common. We are both from Ohio, after all; in fact, we are both Finns from Ohio. We are both artists. OK, maybe I don't make art, exactly, but still, we have tons in common.

Anyway, this is my Jim Jarmusch box. I hope this made you feel a little less lonesome.

Never look back, except just a little

I just wrote a big long post all about a) how there's no school today, due to low wind chill factor, and b) how I have a new car battery because you can only call AAA for a jump so many times before you have to face it, and c) how I watched the new Alexandra Pelosi documentary, "Friends of God" and it scared me, and d) how I am slowly re-learning how to have a couch, and my ratio of sitting on the floor to sitting on my couch is beginning to change.

I lost the post and can't go back there. If you knew the wit and style which with I described the above! But I have to keep moving forward.

bicycle safety camp

Oh my god, I can't believe this is on YouTube. I have to show it to my class every year, and every year I forget how amazing it is. Please watch it. Please watch the whole thing (of part 3, which is what i posted). The rap and dance moves are incredible, as is the clown and the cow and the main guy, Sam. The kids' hair and clothes are pretty awesome. Today after we watched it, we "discussed" it. The class was completely flabbergasted by how bad it was. Anarchy was the basic result. I was all like, "Yeah, it's really weird, I know, but it does have some important information about bike safety. What is something you learned?" A kid said, "I learned not to pay attention to a clown standing on the sidewalk," and all the kids started imitating the clown. I couldn't help it then. I started laughing the kind of laugh that can't be stilled. I was actually doubled over and crying. It was quite a moment. I was all weak from laughter and my face was bright red, and I didn't really care anymore. Some of them were laughing with me or rolling theatrically on the floor; some looked kind of alarmed. I don't know what to say, except - why pretend? That's my new teaching philosophy. They know. I know. So why pretend?

P.S. when i watched this just now, I had the gories playing. it made a pretty cool background addition. just an idea.

communication breakdowns (always the same)

- The scavenged wireless connection is surging in and out these days, dropping me in the middle of my daily stalking routine and other important business.

- My phone keeps cutting me off mid-call.

- My students keep talking over me like I'm not even there. Which is fine, since my head is badly gunked up and i don't really want to be. The 29 of us are trying to forge a new society inside a giant tissue box.

- And the dude upstairs (the apartment above me, that is; I'm not referring to god or anything) has been perfecting his bowling ball dropping technique at all sorts of wee hours lately.

I'm asking myself, why do I subscribe to podcasts that I never find time to listen to? it's depressing to see them build up. It's like that giant stack of back issue new yorkers in the home of everyone i know who subscribes to the new yorker. i have thought about subscribing but fear the pile. i pick it up now and then based on cover art and headlines or writers. even then they pile up to an extent.

Actually, the unlistened to podcasts are more depressing. no cover art.

how do other people keep up? i can't give up actual reading, my commute is too short, and i don't have a proper ipod anyway for listening in the car. i fall asleep if i listen too late, or too early. i can't listen while i work. maybe that's the difference.

i feel like a grouchy, cold, technophobe spinster of winter who just wants to curl up in her giant tissue box already. enough with all the communication breakdowns.