overtired

This morning on my way to work, I almost ran over a mallard duck, which was standing stupidly in the road.
On the way home, I saw a frog hop right into the spot that my tire was about to occupy. I doubt he made it.

It was a bad day to be an animal in my way, I guess.

I keep seeing the same license plate numbers. I always make words out of license plates - you might call it a hobby - and at least five times in the last few days I've been behind a "bch." I make Bach, bitch, blech, and beach. I don't make broach, birch, or brunch, though I could. Which of those things do you like best? I do enjoy brunch. Birches are good, too.

Another one I have been behind a lot is BFG. There is a Roald Dahl book called The BFG. I think it stands for.... god, I don't know. I think "Big Fuckin' Giant" in my head when I read it to my students (I hope that's just in my head). I'm not sure what the F really stands for.... Freakin'?

I haven't read The BFG to this class yet. Maybe the license plates are giving me a message.

Come to think of it, maybe I was also getting messages today when I was behind "KLL DCK" and "KLL FRG."

dark sidin' it

I miss my old contact solution, which they no longer make. It cleaned without leaving any kind of tacky film behind.

I also miss the old days, when my contacts weren't all specialized, and I didn't have to pay $155 EACH for them, which I did the other day.

I miss these cool dark green vinyl boots I wore in high school, and the black two-piece goth-girl outfit with the notched collar, which the kids at school referred to as my priest, or maybe priestess, outfit.

I miss the topics I wrote about on my old Ida-Red diary, which were usually more along the lines of going to shows, drinking too much, polling strangers on topics of relevancy to me, and taking vacations.

As I have recently told Alice: I'm considering exploring the dark side of life. What do you think? I wish I still had that goth outfit. It would be a starting point.

the hunchback of fisherprice village

I feel really hunched.

When I was a kid, my method of playing was to hunch over something and play with it for hours. There I'd be, in the dark basement, hunched over my Fisher Price people or my Barbies or whatever. I still remember exactly how absorbed I would get, and how that felt. I was no longer a human girl in a damp basement, but the powerful architect of those little Fisher Price peoples' lives, with their little hospital and village center, their school and gas station. I wasn't aware of having a body, really. Hours, literally, would go by, until suddenly something would make me look up, and I'd be brought back to reality - that I was in the basement, and it was really quiet, and I was alone, and had been for a long time. The basement had suddenly become a terrifying place. I'd abandon my game and run up the stairs, a little rusty from having sat all hunched for so long. I imagine how I might have looked when I reached the top of the steps and burst into the kitchen: teeth all fangified and eyes all swirly, not quite returned to my full human form, a weird little badly groomed hunchback Me.

My back would be sore from the hunching.

My mom would ask if I'd cleaned up my mess.

Of course I hadn't. The basement was too scary a place to linger for such a purpose.

So here I am, decades later, with my back sore from hunching over about eight million hours worth of work (I literally did spend at least five or six hours today), the majority of which I did on the floor. I'm not exactly freaked out, a la the basements of my youth, but I have left a mess of discarded papers and stuff. I would clean it up now, but I should make my lunch and get to bed, right? It's already late. The mess will have to wait until tomorrow.

Just have to stretch out my back before going to sleep.

(P.S. You know that's not my couch in the picture, right?)

big city glamour?

This has so far been a Dave Eggers-themed weekend. Friday night, Lisa and I went to Ann Arbor to see him and Valentino Achak Deng speak at the public library. We lollygagged/dilly-dallied too long over coffee, and the lecture room filled up, so we had to watch their talk from the "simulcast" room upstairs, but still it was awesome. They talked at length about the civil war in Sudan and the current situation in Darfur, and also about the process of writing the book. They signed books afterwards. I told them about how my little students know all about the book and they acted like they cared, which is nice.

Then today, I drove back to Ann Arbor to attend a writing seminar given by Dave Eggers. I like Ann Arbor on a sunny day like today. There's always the pull of the good things in Ann Arbor, competing with the gross things: the Indian tapestries hanging askew in windows, the moldy couches on the porches, and the pizza boxes coming out of broken garbage bags onto the sidewalk. Today the biggest drawback, frat boys, was fully evident - bars overflowing with dudes in green. Scary men are everywhere, but a college town on St. Patrick's Day is one of those Scary Men Hotspots. But on the other hand, there are lectures and workshops and classes and books and people and films and Korean lunch counters, too. It feels like a real city, compared to where I'm living now.

The seminar today was really great. He had a lot of good stories and advice. His face looked really smooth and soft, too, by the way. I sat next to a nice 22-year old guy from Ohio on one side and a mentally unstable woman on the other. The mentally unstable always sit next to me. They sit next to me, then proceed to tell me about the minutiae of their lives... This one even chased me down on the street afterward! I thought she was going to ask me to go for coffee or something, and pretended not to hear her calls. Then she yelled out, all breathless, "I just wanted to tell you that you should read Teacherman by Frank McCourt!"

tomato chips

To set the scene for the quick story I have, I have to first tell you that this kid in my class, S, is a total walking mess. Every paper mysteriously rips in his hands; pencils disappear, and backpacks routinely are left on the bus, when he manages not to miss the bus. When homework is turned in, it's a rumpled, crumpled mess, barely legible. His writing notebook is no longer bound at all, but just a collection of loose papers in his desk. S. cannot make sustained eye contact. He fidgets like crazy. He has already been picked up by the police, and he just turned 9. He is traditionally not popular with teachers or other adults. He's hilarious, and he knows it. He routinely makes my day.

OK, here's the quick story. I felt bad for this kid today when, during science, he was trying to tell the class about the history of potato chips (of course, our lesson was on soil erosion, but...). Apparently, the king wanted his potatoes done differently for a change, and he demanded the cook to do something new. The cook was tired of being pushed around by the king, and so decided to let the potatoes get really crispy. The king loved it, and voila! The potato chip was born.

Except S. kept saying "tomato chip," and the class kept giggling. He didn't catch on at all, and kept saying it: Tomato chip, tomato chip... Finally I had to save the poor kid. "Do you mean 'potato chip?'" I asked. He had to think about it. "Yeah, whatever, tomato chip. Potato chip. Uh, What you just said." The class just laughed, and, well, who can blame them? It does sound funny, and he does usually make them laugh on purpose. This time he just looked confused somehow.

So, I just looked it up, and according to this 1997 article, tomato chips were considered to be just over our snack horizon. Did they ever show up on the shelf? They sound good to me. I hope they become popular, for this kid's sake. He has enough going against him as it is.

but I can kick my leg clear over a parking meter...

Great Sports Moments of my Past:

1. Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, early eighties: There I was, the first day of third grade hockey, on the field with my brand new hockey stick. I wore my very short, pleated, blue school-issue "hockey skirt." I had only the barest notion that there was something known as "hockey," and no one seemed to think they should explain anything about it to me. Miss Kelly, who was of the sadistic gym teacher mold, sensed my confusion and had me start the game, which involved a complicated and mystifying ritual of hitting my stick against the opponent's stick, in a criss-cross pattern, and maybe with some words? Then we had to kind of tussle for the ball. But I didn't tussle. I stood and felt the cold dew from the grass around my ankles, shivering from totally bare legs, and let the other girl do whatever the hell she felt she needed to do with that ball. Jeers and disgusted slurs followed.

2. Same school, different season. Tennis. I had at least some prior knowledge of the game, although I had never actually played it. Oh, perhaps I'd carelessly swung a racket once or twice when my dad played at family reunions. Anyway, I had never been expected to make ball/racket contact, and was unable to do so when told. "Bounce, hit," chanted Miss Kelly, "Bounce, hit." All around me the balls bounced, and girls like me hit it. Miss Kelly trained her beady eyes on me. "Except for you," she yelled, and all the girls turned to watch. "For you it's bounce, miss. Bounce, miss. Bounce, miss."

3. Last spring, fifth grade vs. staff kickball game. I'm up to kick. I feel ok, because I am good at kicking; kicking is a skill that I have. Ask me to kick my leg over a parking meter sometime. I am really good at that. OK, so, I kick and get to first; I'm also not bad at running. Then the next teacher is up. I yell to my coworker Andy to please tell me what I need to do after the next person kicks. Tell me if I should run or stay put, or what. I have no idea what to do if someone doesn't tell me. Sure, I can run and kick, but I can't follow the progress of a game. I just can't. Andy promises to prompt me towards small personal dignity, but then the teacher's kick is so phenomenal he becomes transfixed and forgets all about me. I'm still waiting for a cue from Andy, so I just stand there, when I should have been rounding bases. I ruined the whole inning for my team, and, well, it wasn't so good.

4. Egg & Spoon Race at Field Day, fourth grade: Almost to the finish line, I stumble. The egg tumbles out of the spoon. I recover it and still manage to snag third. Still, a first place ribbon is what I had in mind. Luckily I was paired with a very athletic girl for the three-legged race, and damned if we didn't get first! One of my life's most victorious moments.

)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

On a totally unrelated note, I'm glad Salon has an article today about that stupid new agey book "The Secret." I find this whole philosophy to be so freaking odious. More and more, I hear people imply that you just need to make it clear to "the universe" if you want or need something, and you will be taken care of. Oh, but you have to really MEAN it, or the universe won't give it to you. Such an arrogant way of thinking. Are you one of the BILLIONS of poor people on the planet? Well, I guess you just haven't been asking the universe hard enough for wealth, so it's kind of your own fault! Sick with cancer? I guess you just haven't really let the universe know that you'd prefer to be healthy. Bad things happening to you? Well... what have you done, or not done, to make them happen?

haven't written since Jeff was a pup

Have you ever played Guitar Hero? I am not a video game girl. I actually hate video games. I don't get the appeal at all (except, when I think back on it, I did really love my hand-held yellow arcade-style PacMan game from fourth grade...but, see, I was in fourth grade!). But my 2 coworkers are really into Guitar Hero, and they talk about it all the time. "You have to try it," they said. "I will suck at it," I said (due to being grouchy, which I was from Monday morning through Friday at around 9:00). "It's fun," they said. So to kill time before a board meeting on Monday, we went to R's house and busted out the two plastic "guitars." They played a few songs together, then handed a guitar to me. I wasn't really expecting to like any of the songs, but dude! I warmed up with Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight, and that was exciting, even though my much-younger colleagues didn't know about Spinal Tap. I then moved on to a super smoking hot take on Sweet Child o'Mine (also a preferred karaoke number for me). But it was War Pigs that got me standing up and rocking OUT. My colleagues got to see a new side of me. I don't think they ever expected to hear me say, let alone sing, the words, "Satan, laughing, spreads his wings," especially not with such passion. But now they know about me.

The thing I still don't get is that each of them has spent dozens of hours on this game, yet neither is any closer to knowing how to play an actual guitar...