Your Miss Montgomery

I really need some new clothes, especially for work. I don't know what happened, but I almost literally have nothing to wear. What the hell did I wear last winter? I don't want to know. Anyway, the same few pairs of pants keep reappearing in a rather predictable cycle, and I'm just waiting for one of my students to point it out. This is not an unfounded fear. Comments so far this year include, "Didn't you wear that shirt yesterday?" (I had worn nothing even remotely similar); "You wear those earrings a lot, don't you?" (So? They're just earrings. It's not like they have to be washed. Plus they're super cool earrings!); "You really like that outfit, don't you?" (No, not really); and "BLUE? You never wear blue! You wear black!"

I don't want to end up with a reputation like that of Miss Montgomery, of St. Andrew's College, the private school outside Dublin that my sister and I went to. She was the headmistress, and also taught some of our classes. And she wore the exact same outfit every day! I mean, we had uniforms, but the teachers didn't. Some were even almost stylish (I'm talking to you, Miss Kelly; your clothing choices almost make up for the cruel things you said to me during field hockey practice!). But Miss Montgomery wore the same head-to-toe-gray ensemble day in and day out. I don't remember other kids talking about it, but I sure as hell noticed. Or maybe my mom pointed it out. It still comes up in conversation to this day.

So, yeah, I'm trying to avoid that sad fate, a fate not quite as bad as the jumper, but comparable in tragic connotation. It's just overwhelming to need a whole bunch of clothes. Clothes are not cheap. There are about 5 things that I need in the $100-$150 range right now (including Windows for Mac; a haircut & highlights, already; a plane ticket that I'm not going to end up buying; some FLOR tiles for my home; and shoes, running and other). I've not managed to procure any of those, so a heap of clothes seems unlikely. Maybe I should just start with some damn pants.

everthing is lousy, except this children of the corn jumper, and it's pretty lousy too.

jumper wearers of the world, unite and take over

I really need to go to bed, but I've settled on tomorrow's outfit and thought you'd want to know. How could I have overlooked my puffy white blouse and my Children of the World jumper?

What would a Children of the Corn jumper look like, I wonder?

No more workhorse.

(from biologyreference.com)

I'm trying to think of anything non-work related right now and i'm drawing a mean blank. Yes, a mean one. Work is an amoeba and I'm the thing it's engulfing (shown above). Do you remember drawing pictures of amoebas engulfing things? I do. In high school biology, I guess. Or maybe work is a mass of green jello and I'm the pineapple trapped inside. That's more of a grade school cafeteria memory. See, all my memories relate to various schools! Who am I? All I do is work or sleep so that I can work or make lunches to eat at work or put things in/take things out of bags carrying work materials. Conferences again tonight. "Your daughter lacks intellectual rigor." "Your son smells my shoes."

There are amazingly few good pictures online of pineapple trapped in jello. This one will have to do. The jello sites make me queasy. They usually also involve a lot of mayonnaisey and cream-of-something soup recipes. I am grossed out by those things.

So, I do have an identity beyond school! Awesome. It's about food.

By the way, do you think I should wear my Apples-n-Alphabet outfit tomorrow, or my sassy "READ" overalls with accompanying turtleneck? It's so hard to make these decisions each day! Also, all jokes aside, you will, won't you, sit me down if this ever really happens to me?

my closet and other crazy shit

I think I may have a bona fide crazy lady as a neighbor. She is always dressed to the nines in flashy, fluffy, fur-trimmed, brocade clothing, no matter what the hour, and constantly recieves packages in the mail from clothing stores. Her car seems to be filled to the roof with bags and boxes - of clothing, it seems, and some children's toys in their regular packaging. Plus, I always think she is talking to me when we meet in the parking lot, and she is, at first, but then she's mumbling into her trunk full of bags and boxes, and seems to have forgotten I'm there. Unless I'm on my cell phone, when she tries to have full and complex conversations with me. Did I mention that the door to her place is almost obscured by boxes? It is. I worry.

She locked herself out on Sunday and knocked on my door to use my phone. Her hands were full of bags and clothes and, for some reason, a rug.

Why does the crazy lady scare me? There was a crazy lady who shopped at the food co-op in ann arbor. she would buy tiny litle dollops of things from the salad bar and make funny noises in her throat like she was choking, but she was well dressed, too. she scared me worse. i guess i thought, why are the crazy lady and i always here at the same time? am i following the same itinerary as the crazy lady? shouldn't our paths cross only very rarely? ok, and let's face it - am i someone else's crazy lady?

This one also makes me think about my closet. I do have a lot of clothes. The funny thing is, despite my generally chaotic approach to life and organization, my closet is a rainbow of color-coded harmony (well, a rainbow with more black and gray in it than most rainbows). I delight in it, I must admit. It's like a piece of art. I want to leave the closet door open when guests come. My cd's are also arranged by spine color. Here's what's organized in my life: My clothes, my music, and my books. My fridge is semi-organized. My paperwork and financial stuff is NOT ORGANIZED. So if you wondered what I care about in life, I guess that pretty much says it all. Here's what it looks like, at least a small slice of the side with shirts, a bit crooked because of course I took it with my computer (and I just drank some wine). Not shown: The other side, with dresses, skirts, and pants.

Halloween

I lived through another Halloween.

I used to like Halloween, but things have changed. It used to be that Halloween was an excuse to dress sluttier than I normally would. Now it seems to have become an excuse to wear pajamas to work. It was my colleagues' idea. I was all set to be a leopard, which would have consisted of clothes I already have plus a leopard thing on my head. But they wanted us to have a theme, and that theme is too embarrassing to plainly write; however here's a hint: it involved a pacifier. Ugh. So terrible. I am not a person who has a stockpile of adorable pajamas at the ready, and even if I did, I don't want to wear them in public under any circumstance. Somehow my coworkers all own one-piece zip-up fleece pajamas! I ended up wearing "sweats," which is another word I can't stand.

Some would say I don't know how to have fun. I do know how to have fun, but it's not your everyday kind of fun. It's very specialized. I can send you a brochure.

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Added a few minutes later:

I think that because of how public school teachers are viewed in our country, and how I constantly strive to present myself as an educated, intellectual professional, and how we are currently working without a contract, dressing like a b*&$ just seemed like the wrong message.

A leopard would have totally gotten the right point across.

I want to stay up all night

You know how there are holidays and days off, devoted to different things, like the founding of our nation and the remembrance of veterans?

I wish tomorrow was one of them.

I have so much to read and I can't keep up. I have piles - today's New York Times, barely touched; magazines, some from last month; library books... It's unlike me to be so neglectful in this way.

But I did crack open this Ikkyu book today. Ikkyu was a 15th century Zen master and writer of then-scandalous poems. Example: "don't hesitate get laid that's wisdom / sit around and meditate, what crap"

This one's less scandalous but I like it: "I love bamboo how it looks / and because men carve it into flutes"

I once wrote a bamboo poem. I was going to add it here but can't remember it exactly. So I got up to try to find it and realize I need another holiday/day off to devote to organizing my dozens of notebooks. Which one contains the bamboo thing? Aargh.

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There was a man who used to come into the record store where I worked in Ann Arbor and one day he said to me, "I'll know winter is over by the change in your clothing."