Fertile at the garden center

After a lunch out with my mom and aunt recently, I found myself at this big garden center with them. They know their plants. They know their flowers. They know their soils, their mulches and seeds. They know their Latin names, even. They wandered around and spoke intelligently about the growing things around us. I wandered around with a little drool at the corner of my mouth, pointing and simple-mindedly saying things like "pretty," "nice," and "orange." I don't know my flowers, or my plants. It's sad, really. But I did see something that quite struck my fancy at the garden center that day. The suburban, upper-middle-class garden center. The golf-shirts-and-khaki-shorts garden center. I saw a dude. Not just any dude.

A dude dressed in a fancy white suit and a black shirt, like Nick Cave might wear, and a white tie.

A dude with a very dramatically long mustache, like Dali might have sported.

A dude with big ol' shades like Elvis favored.

Oh my god. What was he doing at the suburban garden center? So brave and bold. He could so easily have soiled - literally! - that suit! He was so dashing. I mean, Nick Cave-Dali-Elvis? Come on. I was totally ashamed of my own dull fashion statement. I could barely look at him. I NEVER see dudes I like. Almost NEVER. My mom was kind of giggling about him. I don't think she understood that my excitement was in no way ironic.

He was fancy yet manly, you know? He was Fanly.

I'd like him to accompany me to my end-of-the-year staff party. Him, or, of course, Danny Dollrod has an open invite.

Punto

Yesterday was the day that the fourth grade girls at my school found out from their trusted teachers that they will one day begin to bleed from their vaginas, and they will spend about a quarter of the rest of their lives in that condition. Yes, they got the changing-bodies-and-periods talk. After school, I saw the fourth grade girls walking around all dazed, with big-eyed shock all over their faces. They probably felt duped. Who can blame them?

In other health news, I can't seem to get a good stretch in my hamstrings. I don't know what it is. But those who know me well may know that my basic life philosophy is that the key to happiness is well-stretched hamstrings. So I guess I don't need to spell out my emotional state these days. That's part of why I haven't been writing. I also haven't been writing because of poor internet availabiltiy in the home, and because of grand adventures, etc., keeping me too busy. And my period.

scary post

Why do I get so mad when I get home and someone is parked in my space? The person might not know it's my space. But I know, and it pisses me off but good. I guess I just feel like, I don't have a washer/dryer; I don't have a place to sit outside; I don't have any windows in my kitchen; but goddammit, I have a conveniently located assigned parking spot!

So tonight, like other nights, I wrote a note and stuck it under the car's windshield wipers. A note along the lines of, "Hey, this is my space." Nothing crazy. But tonight, unlike other nights since I've lived here and found someone in my space, it's nice weather (the air right now is cool, but in an edge-of-warm way). And I want to open my bedroom window when I go to bed. I've been doing that, and feel just a little uneasy because I'm on the first floor, and the windows are low, and the parking lot is right there. And if I make the parking space stealer angry, he may enter my home through this window, right? It would be very simple to do.

So I just went out and removed the note!

This is how freaked out I am lately. I didn't realize how strong a psychological grip these low windows would have on me. I'm not usually one to freak myself out about living alone kinds of things. I'm only keeping the one window open while I sleep (cramping my fresh-air style), but still, I'm waking up to any sound with a start. I dreamed last night that someone came in. It is not helping that I'm reading A Strange Piece of Paradise, in which the author recounts being attacked while camping and hacked up by an ax.

Maybe I should pick out another book.

Also, I think I should get a piece of wood to wedge in the top of my window so it can't be opened wider from the outside. Or at least sprinkle some shards of glass on the outer sill.

P.S. I was going to put a picture of an ax on this post, but I started looking for one and got scared. I am not going to look for pictures of axes anymore. One picture that came up was of the Virginia Tech guy. That reminded me that I had a dream that I was supposed to meet him for coffee, but I didn't want to go. I was scared of him, and also I was afraid for people to see me with him, because I knew they'd all recognize him. But then again, I was afraid to not go, because now I knew how violent he was, and I knew he would come find me.

I'm not going to look at anything on the internet, read books, or stay up late anymore.

Open letter to inanimate objects everywhere

Dear inanimate object;

Should you find your way into my hands, consider yourself warned. I will drop you. I will not be able to sustain a grip, and you will clatter to the floor. Be you fork, phone, roll of tape, or apple, you are not safe with me, inanimate object. That's just the way it is these days.

xxx ooo merrichan

reading today

I am reading Ma Jian's "Stick Out Your Tongue." A few years ago, I read his memoir, "Red Dust," which I loved. In Red Dust, he writes about his time spent wandering, hiding from government censors in the remotest parts of China and walking, walking, walking. It was all very romantic, and I found Ma Jian to be very hot in a renegade artist kind of way. Today I started "Stick Out Your Tongue," which if I understand correctly was the reason he was running from the censors. The book consists of stories that all take place in Tibet, and they show a side of Tibet much different than the Hollywood Buddhist/prayer-flag version. Ma Jian writes about some horrible, horrible things in these stories. Think lots of maiming, rape, and congealed yak blood. It's a very slim book, and I just now lay in a patch of sun and read about half of it, but I need a break from the desolation. He is such a good writer, and I know he spent time in Tibet, so it makes me wonder how much is based on real events. Anyway, the Chinese government didn't like his take on Tibet, and so he was banned from ever publishing in China. Which I guess I don't really understand - the Chinese government isn't exactly pro-Tibet, so why was he banned over this? I think they just like to harrass artists and writers.

Now he lives in London. I tried reading his novel The Noodle Maker earlier this year but couldn't get into it. Maybe i'll give it another try.

I love reading about China and reading Chinese literature. I'd like to study Chinese, and I'd go there in a second. I'm a little worried about the bathroom sitch, though. That's the only thing.

Inexplicable shame in paper or plastic

Will Ferrell is staying across the street from me at the fancy hotel. He's been eating at the bar that would maybe be my local if I wasn't afraid of seeing school people there whilst drinking too much.

Recently, I'm just kind of ugh. You know?

I got the new Trader Joe's catalogue in the mail today. I do love Trader Joe's, although a lot of the stuff I won't eat because I'm a snob who doesn't understand the logic behind "deconstructed burrito bowls." I don't really like pre-prepared stuff, I guess. See? I'm a food snob. It's just that it takes less than 10 minutes to make a real, fresh burrito, you know? So you just end up left with a plastic container to get rid of.

But there are some things there that I love. Like mango black tea!

Today I was there to get some mango black tea, it so happens, and Friendly Guy was all like, "Hey, welcome back! Great to see you! How have you BEEN?" Does he actually remember me from weeks ago, or is that just Friendly Guy's work survival schtick? He touched me on the arm, oh so comfortingly and supportively, and said, "See you again soon!"

Much different from Mean Guy, who forgot to read the section of the Trader Joe's employee manual about over-the-top friendliness. Recently, this cash register conversation transpired shortly after M won a bag of fancy stuff from her local Trader Joe's from the monthly contest you get to enter when you bring your own bags:

Me, holding out my brought-from-home bags: "My friend got a bag of fancy stuff for bringing her own bags - do you do that contest at this Trader Joe's, too?"
Mean Guy: "We don't just GIVE you that for bringing in your bags. You have to enter and win."
Me: "Oh, I know. Can I enter?"
Mean guy, huffily: "Lots of people enter, you know. Just because you enter doesn't mean you'll win. Some people enter every month and never win."

Yes, I do get the basic idea of contests, Mean Guy. Thanks for the inexplicable shame.

Help!

I have a problem and need advice. My students are doing biography book reports. They all get to choose who they do, but they have to be dead (this is my attempt to get them not to do a Detroit Pistons player, American Idol contestant, or George W. Bush; Reagan is now fair game, though. Damn!). One of my students really wants to do hers on a famous Asian or Asian American. I'm all for it, of course, BUT - I cannot find a single kids' biography book about a non-living person from any part of Asia! I've scoured online resources and my library's catalogue. Anyone have an idea or know something I don't? I hate that I have to tell her no, sorry, there is NO ONE from Asian history who is important enough for someone to have written a book about... I may just lift the "has to be dead" requirement and suggest Maya Lin, because there's a book about her...

Maybe this suggests a writing project for me!

cass corridor crash pad

People in my world often seem to have second homes of some sort. No one in my family does, but school-related people do, in numbers I find shocking. Usually these second homes are on a lake or an ocean, or near a lake or an ocean. For some reason they are not generally in cities. Tonight I thought about how I need a second home - or, a second rental - in Detroit, for use on the weekends. I have always wondered about this grandiose, abandoned castle on Cass. Here's what I found on the Metro Times website:

"Known by locals as “the castle,” the grandiose, turreted GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) Building is still there at 1942 Grand River on the corner of Cass, still boarded up, still owned by the city and still occupied solely by pigeons. Built at the end of the 19th century, the castle has been vacant since 1973."

Maybe I could just have one turret as my weekend crash pad? Hmm... Pigeons. Gross! Forget it.

See, I am trying to go out more, with Pam as my role model. I'm not really interested in going out around where I live. I drive to Ferndale or Detroit. Tonight Alice and I went to two places in Detroit I'd been wanting to go to. Both were great fun. Before tonight, I had never had a dude try to pick me up by telling me about the awesome new walk he tried out at his fashion show today. He is a model, you see. He told me about how he innocently took off his shirt one day at some fashion event, and within minutes was handed a different shirt to model and whisked onto a runway. Ever since then, he's been in high demand as a model.

He must have said "model" at least twenty times in less than ten minutes. I don't think I said it at all.

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...