Full of Indian food and done cleaning up, I am monumentally tired.

What a good good good time. More to follow (perhaps).

To reiterate: so. tired. Jeezy Creezy.

History of the Night

Throughout the course of the generations
men constructed the night.
At first she was blindness;
thorns raking bare feet,
fear of wolves.
We shall never know who forged the word
for the interval of shadow
dividing the two twilights;
we shall never know in what age it came to mean
the starry hours.
Others created the myth.
They made her the mother of the unruffled Fates
that spin our destiny,
they sacrificed black ewes to her, and the cock
who crows his own death.
The Chaldeans assigned to her twelve houses;
to Zeno, infinite words.
She took shape from Latin hexameters
and the terror of Pascal.
Luis de Leon saw in her the homeland
of his stricken soul.
Now we feel her to be inexhaustible
like an ancient wine
and no one can gaze on her without vertigo
and time has charged her with eternity.

And to think that she wouldn't exist
except for those fragile instruments, the eyes.

-JLB




ps - Ben tells the best stories.

Jolly Indeed

Conquests are fun and silly and I really need to grow up about it already, but really. I mean, we mustn't forget ourselves here. Propriety and details and all of that.

So, Emily and Julie and Kat are coming here soon, and Annie and Jess are also coming here, and there will be fondue and dirty santa and possibly (probably) other dirty things as well. I'm looking forward to it immensely, but when they come, it will be the last fun thing that happens before school rushes back in and sweeps me away (don't even talk to me about New Years - we all know how I feel about that...). I've been terrible this break about counting down the days, and even though there are twelve of them, I'm not enjoying each one completely because in the back of my mind I keep thinking that there's one more day gone and here comes work again and it's awful because why can't I just forget my teacher-self for more than twenty minutes and immerse myself in friends and family and sleeping and cleaning and reading and baking. It just doesn't work. I'm broken. But maybe fondue and the Apartment Six girls will help fix things.

Also, I want to go to Prague. Like now. And Budapest. And Cordoba.

For Christmas (in case anybody was wondering) there was a new teapot that whistles, deluxe scrabble con diccionario, perfume, sweaters, soup bowls, a grill, an itunes gift card, a pasta jar (finally), a 2007 calendar, a white puffy vest, some chocolate, a haircut, assorted other apartment things, and a text message from Zach Tolstyka.

Why don't we use different toothbrushes when we're sick? Doesn't it seem like sticking all those germy bristles in your mouth twice a day would be detrimental to getting well again? Or is toothpaste strong enough to kill the germs? I bring this up because I've been ill this weekend. This is the first cold I've had since getting my nose pierced, and I've got to admit, it's kind of annoying. Good thing I don't get sick very often. This afternoon I'm committed to getting as healthy as possible, so I'm ignoring all of the friends pouring back into town for their ridiculously long college-type vacations and relegating myself to the couch with a glass of Sunny D and a pile of journals to grade. Plus I just discovered that the lovely people at TNT are showing the LotR trilogy all afternoon (and on into the evening...) so it looks like I picked a good day to sloth it up indoors. I just wish it weren't so sunny outside.

Living alone for the first time, I'm slowly discovering things about myself that I never knew before. For instance, this evening I learned that I can carry $65 worth of groceries up two flights of stairs in one trip. (Are you impressed?) I also managed to slice my finger open during the haul in which my grocery-packing prowess was evidenced, and I didn't notice until I saw the smear of blood on my fresh, new box of honey nut cheerios. Gross? Kind of. And I hate band-aided fingers. They're so cumbersome and stiff. I had planned on updating my hair color and making rice crispy treats tonight, but both of those will be noticeably impeded by a bulky digit. Luckily, I can still take out the trash and change the cat litter, so the night isn't a total loss. Oh no! And tomorrow is Christmas Wrapping Cookie Decorating Day. I wonder if I can train myself to tape and frost with my toes in the next twelve hours.

nothing everyone hasn't heard/felt/realized before, but...

I love how it takes me almost a week to get around to making unplesant phone calls home to parents, a fairly simple and straighforward activity, yet Emily, Julie, Kat and I can simultaneously coordinate our four (count 'em!) ridiculously busy holiday scheudles and successfully plan a multi-day get-together in less than three hours (give or take). Same rule seems to apply for how long it takes me to get through a stack of Ad Analysis papers versus the time it takes me to read Glamour from (back) cover to (front) cover. Huh.

Q: What do my four English preps have in common with female roommates living in close quarters?
A: No matter what their scheudles were at the beginning of the year, eventually they're all on the same cycle.

Okay, that was awful, I know. But it's also true. Through no effort or intention of my own, this week all four of my classes are finishing up units, which means taking tests, writing papers, and doing projects. For the past three days, I have spent the 5 hours between 4 and 9 pm grading grading grading and then grading some more (with breaks to eat and blog, of course). And it's not over. Monday Macbeth projects were due, Tuesday Macbeth literary analysis papers and Word Journals were due, along with vocab. Today World Lit took an essay test on Siddhartha, and Writng for the Real World handed in their Ad Analysis papers. Tomorrow WftRW has a short test on logical fallacies and on Friday Eng 11 takes their sonnet quiz and Apply hands in their Macbeth projects. Oof!! It's just the pace at which things are rolling (what do we say about momentum? we hate it, right?) To put off any fo these assessments would gum up my schedule and make things hectic later...so instead they can be hectic now? At least they're only hectic outside of the classroom. And since all of this is happening now, my holiday break should be comparitively school-work-free which will leave time for social events when other people are actually around and available. So now that I've whined about it I guess I can step back and say it will be all right...as long as I don't die of paper cuts before the week is through.

Also, I've decided Tuesday is the worst day of the week. Fucking Tuesday I've begun to call it (only in my head and occasionally under my breath, of course). I'm always tired on Tuesday. By Wednesday the slide toward the end of the week has already started, and on Monday I'm still refreshed from the weekend. Tuesday is that point where, if one were to compare getting through the week to swimming the English Channel, you've come too far to go back, but there's still so far to go, and everything is cold and grey and wet and miserable. You have to paddle on, but you don't have to like it.

And Suddenly I'm Not Tired At All

Last night some city utility trucks parked on the street outside my window. At 7ish they started their motors and commenced to dig a giant hole in the ground and futz around (loudly). Amid the drilling, jack-hammering, clanging, chuffing, and generally making a terrible ruckus...surprise!...they turned the water off. The noise kept up non-stop until 5 this morning. I slept for maybe half an hour total, and spent the rest of the night tossing, turning, and running through alternative plans to shower and get ready for school if my water was still off in the morning, plus intermittently peering out the window waiting for this huge "snowstorm" they predicted to actually arrive and save me from a potentially fatigued, greasy, and generally heinous day.

The call came at 5:25, and that's all I'm going to say because nobody likes a gloater.

How school (in)appropriate is the tshirt that I'm about to buy?

It reads: I'm a sucker for diction.

I'm thinking it's perfect for Covert-Sexual-Innuendo-Casual Friday.

The moon is the mother of pathos and pity.

When, at the wearier end of November,
Her old light moves along the branches,
Feebly, slowly, depending upon them;
When the body of Jesus hangs in a pallor,
Humanly near, and the figure of Mary,
Touched on by hoar-frost, shrinks in a shelter
Made by the leaves, that have rotted and fallen;
When over the houses, a golden illusion
Brings back an earlier season of quiet
And quieting dreams in the sleepers in darkness -

The moon is the mother of pathos and pity.

-WS, Lunar Paraphrase

(perhaps this will be my November poem next year)

Things That I Do and Notice Now that I'm on Vacation

Tonight I had a superglue adventure. My cup and doorknob are fixed. I'm also missing a few patches of finger skin. And I no longer need an alarm clock because we have bats, or at least a bat, who likes to chirp at 5am. And I'm losing my hair in volumes sizable enough to make me slightly uncomfortable. Probably because of stress? Certainly not because I keep dying it (it's got a little red in it now...festive, right?). Whatever the reason, I wish it would stop. I don't want to be bald before I'm thirty. Maybe I should go get some vitamins or something.

Is it Tuesday?

This week is passing simultaneously very quickly and very slowly. It's hard to want lots of things and also want money in the bank. It's also hard to use every weekend to live the social part of my life and also use every weekend to get ready for the next school week. We're reading Macbeth in English 11 right now, and suddenly I'm seeing paradoxes everywhere.

Hopefully football at the Doom House (plus tacos and cake?!) this weekend will snap me out of this haze, and three whole days off next week will be very refreshing. Also, I get to try to make pie again for Thanksgiving. I figure I'm pretty good at following simple directions, so I should be okay. Just, somebody call me up Wednesday afternoon when I'm baking and remind me to cover the crust with foil before it burns. I always forget that part. And compared to apple, I feel pumpkin is a much more even-tempered, easy going kind of pie. Maybe that's why everybody loves it.

At the beginning of this month, I dragged a table up to my front board, climbed upon it, and wrote out the poem "My November Guest" up high where it was out of the way but still in plain view. Now I'm looking for a December poem to put up after break. I've already got one for April, and January will be The Snow Man, but honestly, are there any good December poems? What month did Y.B. Yeats die in?

We had our first department meeting today, and I started really loving my job again. I get so detached from the other English people in my room across the universe from the rest of the high school teachers that I lose perspective and descend into this scary pit-like place where most of my lessons are disappointing and I'm not connecting the kids with the literature as much as I should/want (I'm not sure if "could" is allowed on this list yet...I feel like the problem actually lies in the way I am doing all that I can, and it's not good enough). But talking with other teachers and discovering that they all feel that way to one degree or another, at least some of the time, gives me hope and a modicum of peace that my work-harried life had been lacking as of late. I have a great tangent about my perception of my performance versus my colleagues' perception of it, but that one will have to wait for another night, and perhaps a different journal, since it's past my bedtime and tomorrow is a school day. (I was telling my seniors today about the three-day weekends I used to have in college all the time when I got to make my own schedule. Sigh.)

Remember when I used to post poems that nobody cared about but me? I can't believe I haven't done that here yet! That's like living in a house without a kitchen table for four months.

So.

(you've all heard this one before...but I just started liking it last week)

I. CHICKENS

I am The Great White Way of the city:
When you ask what is my desire, I answer:
“Girls fresh as country wild flowers,
With young faces tired of the cows and barns,
Eager in their eyes as the dawn to find my mysteries,
Slender supple girls with shapely legs,
Lure in the arch of their little shoulders
And wisdom from the prairies to cry only softly at the ashes of my mysteries.”


II. USED UP
[Lines based on certain regrets that come with rumination upon the painted faces of women on North Clark Street, Chicago]

Roses,
Red roses,
Crushed

In the rain and wind
Like mouths of women
Beaten by the fists of
Men using them.
O little roses
And broken leaves
And petal wisps:
You that so flung your crimson
To the sun
Only yesterday.


III. HOME

Here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of:
I heard it in the air of one night when I listened
To a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry in the darkness.

Poems Done on a Late Night Car
Carl Sandburg

Sometimes I think ModPodge is more addicting than crack. My desk looks fabulous, by the way. Decoupage suits it. This weekend I did an astoundingly small amount of school work, however, my kitchen is now complete with a table and chairs, so the dinner parties can begin, as long as no more than three people attend, or guests don't mind eating in shifts.

When I got the table on Friday, I learned that I am (and will probably always be) hopelessly awkward at accepting compliments, especially when they are delivered by young male employees who are outside Linens N Things in their shirtsleeves in forty-degree weather removing pieces of my newly-purchased, fully-assembled furniture so it will fit in my car, commenting on my nose ring, and using words like "devoted". I should have just said "Thank you, Glen," and left it at that.

Also, this weekend I learned that soup is easier to make than pie. As my apartment is turning more into a home and filling up with all of the necessary items, I'm still occasionally surprised to discover that there are so many things I don't have. Like a cheese grater. Last night I had to improvise and tackle a block of parmesan with the veggie peeler (and discovered that I actually prefer peeled cheese to grated). I also missed a perfectly good opportunity to use my garlic press (because the only kitchen gadgets I do have in stock are the semi-obscure ones). Next time will be better, I'm sure.

Oh! And I almost forgot the most exciting part. I crochetted a garlic sleeve last night. I was afraid that I'd forgotten how to do all of those yarny things since it had been so long, and I was worried that I'd have to comission Emily to teach me to knit all over again (for, what, the fourth time now?). But last night I tested my skills and apparently my fingers still remember what to do, even though my brain's a little fuzzy about exactly what's going on down there. So now I have somewhere to put my extra garlic bulbs. And it's cute.

There You Are and Here I Am

The next time someone (one of you) who understands computers comes to Grand Rapids, I will handsomely compensate him or her for setting up the wireless feature on my laptop. I have been trying to make it work since August when I moved in. I've been through all of the set-up wizards and support lines, and I'm still sitting here plugged into the wall. Tonight I came closer than I've ever come before, only to have all of my heroic efforts and astonishing progress come screeching to a halt, ultimately leaving me back here at square one. I hate square one.

I may have given in to a pretty gross amount of self-pity with that last post. I guess somebody had a case of the Mondays. Today things are going much better. My mom sent me an insulting ecard and my students gave me a couch. How're those for Halloween presents?

When I am an older, better, more experienced teacher and I have something to tell a newer, younger teacher, I must remember that there are at least two ways (and probably many more) to give advice. One is to talk to someone like they are an ignorant, lazy kid who needs sharp words and scary eyes to successfully communicate a message, and the other is to remember that the recipient of my advice is trying to juggle about fifty things at once, all of which she is trying for the first time and admittedly pretty bad at, but she is still doing the best that she can given the circumstances, and address her accordingly. I really don't like being picked on, and when peers talk to me like I am one of their unruly students (ironically, reminding me that I ought to be acting more professional) it kind of ruins my day, because I'm never brave enough to stand up to them and tell them that I deserve to be spoken to more fairly. Instead I come home, (maybe cry a little bit), and pour it all out to this little box, passive through and through.

Right now Emily, Jess, and the boys are driving home and I'm getting ready for a monster nap. Or maybe I'll read until my eyes fall out, since our visit to the bookstore this afternoon once again paid off. (Because I really have time to read the Best American Short Stories of the Century, right?)

Though there was no Indian food on this particular weekend, Peter Uhl made a cameo, along with more Wolfgang's food than I can particularize right now. And that was only on Sunday. Saturday was really our banner day as far as gluttony goes. There were doughnuts, as promised, at the apple orchard, and the only thing better than eating fresh cinnamon-sugar doughnuts and cider on a fall morning is eating fresh cinnamon-sugar doughnuts and cider on a fall morning WITH BATMAN, which we did, because apparently he felt like putting on the suit that morning and mingling with kids and their pumpkins. And posing for pictures with ladies (but not fellows because all of the fellows stayed home to watch the Michigan game that afternoon) and not turning his neck all day long. All part of the official bat-duties - gotta earn that bat-paycheck and pay the bat-rent, you know?

So now Emily and Jess and I have run into people dressed up as Elvis, Zorro, and Batman, all in the most unlikely places. We must have really good karma or something. And speaking of karma (not really, but I need to get back to my story and I can't think of a better segue right now), we made it up to Rockford, fueled by doughnuts, chocolate pretzels, and wine (because not only did this apple orchard offer Batman, it had a winery too, with affordable wine tasting in which we partook) to try on clothes for an hour or two, until our blood-sugar crashed and we crabbed and grumbled our way home, aiming for sandwiches at the Cherry Deli which was tragically closed (tragic not only for us, but for any little children around who had to hear exactly how we felt about it being closed). Ultimately, we barely made it to Wealthy Street Bakery, and good, nutritious food, in time to prevent an epic meltdown in which all of us (but Jessica especially) would have degenerated into cuss-word-spouting, face-punching trolls. But we made it, so we didn't.

Then later (much later...many pitchers and G&Ts later) there were combat carries for everybody, and pizza rolls for some. I think the actual weekend was much funnier than the story I just told; Sunday night lethargy must be tarnishing my usually sparkling wit.

Finally, and on a completely different subject, I just want to say that I love losing daylight savings time. Falling back, and suddenly feeling like I'm sleeping in an extra hour and staying up an hour later, should be the only kind of clock adjustment there is. Let’s fall back in spring too, I say, and just keep falling back until we're all nocturnal. I really think it might be a nice change of pace.

Making Sense is for Weenies

Today was snack day in third hour, my senior writing class, and the designated snack-bringer brought me a Mountain Dew along with chips and doughnuts for the class. So I drank it. It was barely 9:30 in the morning. Then there was a big basket of M&Ms in the teacher workroom, so I grabbed a cupful (mini-dixie-sized cup) and took them back to my room to replace the Wheat Thins and apple I'd brought for lunch. By 6th hour, on a Friday with nothing but Mountain Dew and chocolate in my system, things got pretty wacky. Luckily no one passed out or lost use of any necessary faculties.

(This next part is mostly for me - the list-making, cataloguing part of me. Feel free to skim/skip it)

And then I came home, and worked, and, as of 10 o'clock tonight, I am officially done planning until after Thanksgiving break. The first 11 weeks are completely squared away. In the past three days I've had hardly any grading, so I've managed to reread Macbeth while preparing reading quizzes, vocab worksheets, and daily lessons. Then I planned the mini-unit on Indian poetry for World Lit to get ready for Siddhartha, wrote the assignment sheet for the seniors' next writing project, and made a test for Oedipus Rex. I snuck online and managed to reserve computers for a week, so the seniors can research and write instead of whine and throw paper balls at each other, which is always refreshing.

And now I'm writing a post at 11 on a Friday night because momentum is a tricky and sometimes cruel thing. I can't stop. Except that my body is about to shut me down. The edges of a cold have been encroaching on my throat all week, and if it weren't for the daily doses of multi-vitamins and Sunny D, I'd probably be dead right now. Seriously. And I can't afford to be sick with all the plans Emily and Jess and I have this weekend (and I guess Tim and Aaron will be here too?). Pumpkins and wine and lots of giggling. That's the MO. Oh, and doughnuts. There will also be doughnuts.

The Earth Moved

All this week the sunset has started coming through my front windows, and for about twelve minutes every day my walls have been streaked with long grey shadows and the soft kind of orange light that's warm but tired after a shining all day. I wish you were here to see it.

I need to remember to stop and look at things sometimes.

I think it's kind of funny that here it is the end of October and the secretaries and custodians are just now coming around to ask me about the furniture situation in my classroom - if I have enough, and the right kinds and such. I mean, if I've been getting by for two months and you haven't heard about it, secretaries and custodians, things can't be too bad, right? Still, I scored a new work station and a big curved table for my ever-growing piles of hand-outs, so maybe I shouldn't complain. Wow, does it feel refreshing to be able to say stuff like that again. Please please please, no one tip of The Man (read: the crafty tech guy from school who outted me back at the old site) that this site exists. If I don't have somewhere to dump all this stuff, I'll suffocate.

And another thing - oh shoot, I know there was another thing. Oh yes. The World Lit book I'm expected to use is ridiculous. That's my second job-related beef for today. They devote approximately one hundred fifty pages of their thousandsome page book to all of Chinese and Japanese literature. Now, first of all, these two decidedly distinct cultures should not be lumped together in one place - especially not in a classroom in a school district where acknowledging diversity and celebrating the slightest nuance of uniqueness is always encouraged. And then there's the time span; the editors have chosen to use texts written from 1300 BC to 1800 AD. One hundred fifty pages for more than three thousand years of two different cultures. No accurate picture can be painted with that kind of broad focus (oxymoron, I know...but you know what I mean). I think of U of M where whole semesters are devoted to a fraction of that kind of material, and I sigh longingly. But, because it's all we can really do and because we have to, we'll read some Confucius and some of the Tao te Ching and some Haiku and pack it all into a week or two. I'll do it...but I won't like it!

I'm such a negative Nancy tonight. I'll cut it out and go grade some quizzes - now that I've purged, maybe I'll be a little more generous with the points

Party in Grand Rapids this weekend! Anyone who's cool should come!

Everything's Different and Nothing's Changed

Apparently this is the year for moving into new places like classrooms and apartments, so it seems like an appropriate (and necessary - I was feeling very restrained and claustrophobic back at the old site since many of my students discovered I had a facebook account from which they could find the xanga) time to open a new blog. So here I am, hopefully back to my old candid self. Plus I like the set up here a little better, as far as comments from non-members are concerned.

Meredith came home for the weekend, and I have stories about that - mostly explaining how I probably caught pneumonia yesterday. And Emily and Aaron (and maybe Tim and Jess?!?) are coming next weekend, so there will inevitably be more stories, and probably tons of eating as well. But presently I am going to go grocery shopping while the rain has let up, so hopefully as not to have to haul food from the car to the fridge and get soaked in the process (yikes, I hope the syntax police are off duty today).