picture pages!

I'm sorry I don't have a squeaking black marker to annotate these.

Here's our front door. It opens for thee! If you are reading this and you know how to reach us, it means you are our friends, and we love and miss you, and cannot wait to lug your wheelie suitcases up these lava rock "stairs."

And then, here's me sipping my birthday drink. I'm wearing the '80s knit dress that I bragged about a few months ago, and still haven't been brave enough to wear to school.

Back to the visiting issue.Where the heck are you guys? Please, please come. I promise you, we drink swanky drinks like these every night! And roast a pig every two nights in our backyard imu. At least, we will when you're here. Or go to Costco for a rotisserie chicken. EVERY NIGHT!

tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick

Sunday night is not easy like Sunday morning. Sunday morning, you sleep in and relish it, knowing it's the last day you can sleep in for the following 5 days. You may reflect upon what you did the night before. You may try to think back to Friday, and it (along with work/school) may seem so very distant. You can't even remember what it's like to work.

Sunday night, right when the sun sets, is when the theme "song" to 60 Minutes haunts me with memories of my tightening chest as I faced a weekend's worth of neglected homework. My mom would be blithely learning about the S-n-L scandal or Iran-Contra affair while she heated up the corn chowder my grandma had sent home with my dad when he took her trash to the dump, and I would be having a coronary as I opened my Al Gore binder. One night, I had to read The Once and Future King from beginning to end. Another, I had to do a project depicting the Culture Area of Indonesia (more or less) that I'd had all quarter to do.

What do I get now that I've slogged through [the Cliffs Notes to] As I Lay Dying, come up with a plan to save Social Security (in a group, to give props), and gone through other initiation rites of adulthood like posting bail, waitressing with a hangover, and racking up towering debt? The same Sunday night anxiety, times 100, because tomorrow I'll be doing it in front of 75 teenagers who would like nothing better than to see me unravel completely.

Naw, they mean well. But unraveling is the possibility at the back of every teacher's mind. At least mine.

My only consolation is the knowledge that none of my students are reliving my plight. No, they are out hunting boars and spearfishing, or lolling on the beach finishing up the weekend-long rager that will give rise to this week's "dramas," as they looooove to call them, or loading new songs onto their ipods so they'll have something to listen to during classes. To know that my years of heartfelt effort were not in vain--that this generation doesn't have to toil as I did, because of how I helped solve the world's most dire problems--well, that makes it all worthwhile. Rest up, kids. Enjoy your youth!

saturday morning live

Today I'm forgetting that I'm a teacher and devoting the whole day to things that to be my only concerns--planning a dinner party, shopping for a dinner party, obsessively preparing for a dinner party. I'm making red chile enchiladas, which I have never had the conejos to try. I know what conejos means, and I prefer to say that. But now that the real experts are so far away, and I am making these for New Yorkers and Philadelphians, I can muster up the courage.

I'm also helping my mom shop for new shoes AND cleaning the whole house! Yippeee! Seriously!

I'll save the panic attack for tomorrow. Deal, neuroses? Deal.

the claw

can't navigate mouse accurately. can barely type. went hog wild cutting shrubbery with clunky manual trimmers, and now hands are frozen, cramped, and trembly. tried to drink a glass water to calm my nerves, and my hand actually quivered like a little old lady's! i can barely hold onto anything.

also, yesterday i spent 3 hours typing recipes for the junior class cookbook for 3 hours, and my fourth finger spasmed for the rest of the day every time i tried to hold a fork or pen. i still have 90 more Cool Whip-, Campbell's Soup-, and Rice Krispies-laden recipes to go! and i've yet to find one that maintains a consistent verb tense all the way through.

i'm off to take a powder, drink weak tea,spritz myself to smell like lavender, and flutter my eyelids. looks like the change of life is upon me. time to draw the drapes if i can't even do old lady-ish yardwork.

seriously, do you think i might have a disorder of some kind?

my favorite gift of the day

This is the first in what I hope will be a regular series.

Today's gift is from Lucrecia. Two of the best movies in the world that no home library should be without:

1. Follow That Bird, starring Big Bird, featuring cameos by such diverse actors as Sandra Bernhard and Grover. One of my favorite Big Bird movies of all time. He does some of his best work when he's forced to play the "Bluebird of Happiness" as a sideshow attraction when he's birdnapped by carnies.

2. Party Girl, one of my favorite library-themed movies of all time. Or at least of the '90s. I must try to find a way to work the "sound of a cat puking" scene into my classes, because I would LOVE to show it to my studentés.

If I may list retroactively, my favorite gift on Friday was my awesome new digital camera. Thanks, Mom, Dad, and Sis! Just as soon as I work my helpless-with-computers shtick and get Ben to hook it up for me, I will post all kinds of fabulous photo essays.

waiting for the hunger to come

Ah, how I love the hour after getting home from the restaurant, as I watch the gauge on my stomach move from Sickeningly Full to Slightly Hungry Again. It's such fun to rip into the take-home box and watch my companion's disgust rise as I scarf down the congealed chicken fat and wilted vegetables.

Actually, I'm getting hungry already.

(I know Stupid Rachel enacted this very scene in a Friends once, but it achieved its resonance only because small-stomached women everywhere had done the same thing millions of times before.)

We just got back from our Birthday Observed Dinner, and I wanted to post to all the world how very much Benji and I would love to have any of you come visit. Many of you came up in our erudite, romantic and illuminating over-the-candles discussion. To learn whether you are one of the many, you must email or call me personally. Off I go to eat half of my birthday cake and (I hope) watch Ashlee add insult to injury atop the failed Simpson name.

only in hawaii pt. 2 (or any other coastal place)

On a post-it note in the copy of The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor I just picked up from the library:

"Sand in book before patron Missymussy checked out."

How kind! I know sand isn't really any different than a smear of jam, which would be gross, but still, I love it!

Oy (Tues) Day!

This week, I have learned a lesson. Never look forward to a measly week off as if it's some sort of nirvana where time will cease, human limits will shatter, and a lifetime legacy of chronic procrastination will be shrugged off in a burst of unprecedented accomplishment and creativity.

In other words, it's Day Four of the week I've been dreaming of since school started, and I have done jack squat. (In the words of Christopher Farley.)

I have, however, turned the spare bedroom into a totally cute office, lined with my favorite books and appealing fabrics. It's exactly the kind of place Martha Stewart would sit down and write notecards in. "Dear Missymussy, you just don't fit in." Signed, professional teachers everywhere.

Benicles attended Rosh Hashanah services (or, as I like to call them, church) last night and this morning. And he made friends! Real, Jewish Friends! We are going over to their house tonight for dinner. They're from New York, so I will wear all black and scowl a lot.

channeling debbie downer

Okay, I give up. I just realized that I dilly-dally and don't post anything for days when there are no comments on my previous post. I suppose I am trying unconsciously to punish you, the reader(s): "Nothing to say, hmm? Then I've nothing to say either!" (pronounced "EYE-ther," of course.)

Is anyone out there terrified of the avian flu, which has been predicted to mutate into a human virus and cause a pandemic on a scale never seen before? I am. Or I was, until last night on SNL Debbie Downer mentioned it. If you haven't seen that skit, find a clip online right now. BWah-bwahhhh! Anyway, Ben has pointed out that my social skills bear a slight resemblance to Deb's, so I have been trying to cut down on the fear-mongering. Here are a few examples from actual conversations:

Scene 1: A recent dinner party we attended

Cute surfer boy guest: I went surfing at Pine Trees yesterday and caught some killer waves, dude. [Or something like that]

Missymussy: Did you hear that a developer bought Pine Trees and is turning it into an exclusive resort? [ignoring frowns of dismay] Yeah, construction is starting next month. I guess there won't be much surfing happening there soon.

Wah, Wahhhhhhh.

Scene 2: At dinner with the couple who threw the previous dinner party

Waitress: And our fresh catches tonight are ahi and opa.

Male companion: Mmmm, I'm getting the ahi.

Missymussy: Huh. I try to limit my ahi consumption to twice a month, as suggested by the FDA. Those fish are chock-full of heavy metals and can cause mercury poisoning, which mimics, perhaps even causes, Alzheimer's.

Luckily for the fate of our evening, I went over that one in my head, and decided not to say it. But boy, did I think it.