all-night garage sale of the mind

I just lost a big long entry. I think it's because my pinkie nail is too long. Something got pressed. I don't know.

Do you know the song "Billy Boy?" It's totally haunting me right now. In the constant loop it's playing in my mind, it starts as a chorus of cheery hay-riding children, then slows to a macabre horror movie high-pitched refrain. That's maybe just what happens when one of your job requirements is to dress up like a pioneer schoolmistress two days out of every year and teach readin', writin', and 'rithmetic to a bunch of kids dressed in knickers and bonnets at a one-room schoolhouse. Two. Whole. Days. Including fake beating them with fake hickory sticks. While wearing calico. Things go funny in your head. Trust me. Especially when you have a fever. Like me.

I'm feeling better, though, and I'd like to catch you up on what I have and have not been doing.

Recently, I have not been doing these things:
- having insomnia
- settling on a new master plan for my hair
- maintaining an interest in the small bit of gentle online stalking I normally do
- having planned or surprise thrillz
- the splits (but I just checked, and I still can)
- seeing Hot Fuzz
- cutting my pinkie nail
- maintaining communication effectively

I have been doing these things:
- admitting that I should do something about my hair
- eating frozen black cherries
- switching out the summer and winter clothes
- buying nail polish (next step: apply nail polish)
- dragging myself by the elbows through a desert towards my oasis, Friday, 3:10, which has now come and gone, leaving me much refreshed
- drank outside at mollie's a la summertime fun
- signing up for Lynda Barry class in Madison
- listening to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (at least right now I am)
- deciding that I want the summer to be all about people hosting and inviting me to barbecues of skewered vegetables and soy protein shapes, and beer.
- fondly reminscing about the crush i used to have at whole foods. anything seemed possible back then, in late summer of 2006, when any shortage of cereal or kale would get me all excitable...
- counting down the wake-up days until summer vacation.
- finding a list chris and i made called "A List of Things to Do on the Eve of the Summer Solstice: 1992 Edition." There are 27 options listed. Some highlights include: Flint Expo; home body piercing; visit pam; fix washing machine; balance eggs; shoot: guns, pool, and heroin; and all-night garage sale.

misfit girl doll

Tonight was my school's Family Fun Night. Or, as I call it, Family Freakin' Fun Night. Not that any freakiness really occurs. It's a school carnival, basically, with a cakewalk and games and stuff. Promises of fun be damned; we are always pressured to go, and it always leaves me a little depressed and misfit-toy feeling. It's actually held at my old high school. Around these families in a social situation, I feel just as misfitesque as I did back in the day.

Looking for this picture, I read some guy's opinion that the misfit toy girl, above, was a misfit more for psychological than physical reasons. Touche! (Sorry - I don't know how to do the accented e on my mac and am too tired to look it up).

This week: I got tenure in my district. I also got 1% retroactive pay on what I've made this school year so far - because we finally settled our contract. One percent didn't come to that much, but it's enough to buy a nice new piece of art... and I think that's a good way to celebrate a milestone... but I shouldn't... but I want to... and I have just spent hours looking at art online and pondering... but I probably won't... will I?

I saw a lovely $10,000 Japanese print and had to laugh. People don't really spend that, do they? I am agonizing over whether or not to spend less than two hundred dollars!

There's nothing funny or fun to report! I ate sushi tonight. That was fun. I had work obligations 4 out of the past 5 nights. Neither funny nor fun. Perhaps writing in the ol' di isn't the thing to do after that kind of week. I'll try to build up something to say before I write again.

Back in the day (junior high?) - Smiths "Meat is Murder" t-shirt and a magazine - Star Hits, maybe? My red folder has a Far Side comic taped to it. How zany! And there is a radio/tape player in my bed, just visible behind the blankets. I look really mad. My eyes look weird. Twenty years later, I still don't make my bed. I still have that t-shirt. My hair is not asymmetrical (which it was in those days). Maybe it should be. Also, I still sit on the floor with stuff around me. Sometimes in the midst of a project, I box myself in.

My glamorous friend, Lisa

Lisa apparently has a higher tolerance for pinchy sensations than I do.

Letter Proposition

Do they make pasta sauces in small, single-person sized jars? Or must one be coupley to enjoy waste-free pasta eating? I am tired of throwing away old uneaten pasta sauce. I remember for awhile one could find small cans of black and garbanzo beans, but I haven't seen those in awhile. Could this niche be the answer to my "summertime extra income stream" challenge?

Not wasting pasta sauce now joins "free rides to the airport" as reasons to be part of a couple.

Can you tell I'm on spring break? All kinds of time to think, in conjunction with ample fridge-cleaning opportunities.

This has been the craziest spring break EVAH!!! MTV should totally have a camera rolling in my apartment. Unlike every other break in recent memory, I have been crazy... PRODUCTIVE. Dudes, I am never productive. This is huge. The room with the monster has finally been exorcised, and it now can function as a proper office. What did I discover in this process? Well, I discovered that I have a completely inappropriate amount of stationery. I have a bunch of weird Japanese stationery; I have arty paper; I have homemade "Fuck White Supremacy" stationery; I have weird old travel postcards; I have too-bumpy-to-write-on stationery; I have more stationery than is in any way reasonable, especially considering that I don't write letters.

So here's the deal. Would you like a letter from me, Imaginary Reader? Just leave me a comment to that effect. You will have to give me your email address. Then via email, you will have to give me your real address. I know. It's weird. But if we go through all that, I will send you a letter on carefully selected stationery. Or, most likely I already know you and your address. Still, if you want a damn letter, you have to sign. No sending me a text message. That's just the way it is. Don't even TRY it, bucko.

digging deep

My eating life has been all about noodle soup lately. I'm on a "I spend too much money on food" kick, wherein I'm trying to go deep into the cupboards, eating what I have before breaking down and going grocery shopping. It turns out I have quite a lot of noodles (soba and udon), plus a bunch of soy-ginger broth, plus a ton of frozen edamame and other vegetables, and seaweed. Hence, noodle soup.

It brings back to mind my old idea for a cooking show called "Poorly Stocked Kitchen." The contestants try to make do with the slim pickins in a, well, poorly stocked kitchen. Chris would definitely win, no matter who she took on. She always could whip up some good shit from some mighty incongruent ingredients. That's how I remember our roommate-hood, at least. I would look in the cupboards and see a few blobs of mustard, half a can of beans, soy sauce, and old packets of yeast. Chris would see a delightful Pan-Asian feast, somehow, and it would be really good to boot.

I went to two movies on Saturday night at the DFT. I saw the Thai cowboy movie "Tears of the Black Tiger," and the Jonestown documentary. Both were good. I don't really like writing about movies, or books, even though I love movies and books more than I love most other things. I chalk it up to the art snob dude who exerted terrible control over my opinions for a few years. Yeah, it's still his fault, somehow. Why not? Anyway, I enjoyed a glass of wine before each film and did a lot of people watching. People kept smelling a certain way that reminded me of student co-op parties at U of M. Not really a pleasant smell - in the patchouli family, but different. I hadn't smelled it in years, and oddly, I smelled it all throughout that night. Then in my car, driving home, lo! I smelled it again. Only I was alone now. Which could mean only one thing.

I was the student co-op party smelling girl!

Damn Lush products! You know, I like the idea so much, and they are all so pretty, but this is the second thing I've bought from them that has left an unexpected lingering hippie odor!

I have been watching season 7 of Buffy again (thanks, Jen). As they talk about the impending apocalypse, and how something is coming, I keep getting it mixed up in my mind with April in general. I will have a spring break, then when I return to school I will be slammed with a near-apocalyptic maelstrom of events and stress-inducing obligations, all involving intense preparation and task-mistressing. I am not looking forward to it.

I look ahead in my calendar, feel a chill pass through me, and brace for it - from below, it will devour me. Or from above, or the sides. Someway, April is probably going to devour me.

See you in May?

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...

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.