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.