re: BLA BLA BLA

As a savvy reader noticed, the previous post was indeed Ben. This is his idea of a good time, as is hacking into my Netflix queue to add 30 movies with the s-word in them (the word that starts with sp and ends with a sound that rhymes with "yder").

BLA BLA BLA

Bla bla bla Theo Bla Bla Bla pop culture reference BLA BLA BLA what's your favorite movie scene with KE-A-NU does something dreamy. BIG PRIZE FOR THE BEST ANSWER!!!

other dental news

I get to get a new appliance! Soon the sounds of my teeth-grinding, which Ben likens to popcorn popping or ice cracking, will not sully the night air. I have to get a custom-made device, for 500 clams, to wear to bed. Eh, I didn't want an ipod or a trip to the mainland for spring break anyway. I'd much rather my teeth not be worn down to nubs by age 40, which is the other option.

Will I EVER use this to write about things of consequence, or at least interest to anyone but my hypochondriac self? Tune in and see!

the hedonist approach to oral hygiene

I just returned from the dentist, where my teeth were prodded and scraped with sharp metal implements to within a millimeter of their lives, and I wish I could snuggle them in a fluffy, white comforter. The closest thing I can think of is to fill my mouth with marshmallow fluff. That ought to make them feel better, at least for the time being.

C'est la vie!

As I sat in front of the fuzzy TV screen, barely able to make out Freddie Prinze, Jr.'s simian features, and scoured my mind for the tu conjugation of "faire: to do," I realized: My capacity for procrastination is insatiable and revolting.

I was conjugating irregular verbs in my School Planning notebook, people. Recreationally.

Frenchies out there: it's tu fais, right? Maird. Come to think of it, I don't even know if faire is an irregular verb. But I know avoir is.

je vais nous allons
tu vas vous allez
il vails vont
elle va elles vont

Teaching high school provides endless and interesting navel-gazing fodder -- that is, when I have the energy to focus my eyes on my navel -- especially for an ex-nerd. Like, while conjugating, it hit me how much perverse pleasure I used to find in the drudgeriest of exercises, like trying to make my 8-segmented conjugation table perfectly symmetrical; how I'd dutifully check each spelling against the textbook, or carry around a rubber-banded pack of flashcards to drill myself throughout the day on my SAT words. They weren't even for the SAT, but for a weekly vocabulary quiz at which I became absolutely famous for beating everyone else in AP English, and wasn't about to relinquish my title to Leah Hill, thank you very much.

Good god, was I a freakin' dork. (You've heard about the "freakin'/freaking/friggin/fricken" embarassment, right?)

Why did I do this? Fear of parental disapproval if I failed, desire to get into A Good College so I could escape the island to which I'd then long to return for 10 years, the need to fill my mind with something other than how awkward, weirdly dressed, and non-party-going I was? Was I a nerd because I had a deep love of learning, the outgrowth of a beautiful mind, or because I had nothing better to do, and was afraid to be anything else, like a stoner or a band geek? Oops, I was also a band geek.

And now I'm teaching those very hordes of kids whose attention I tried to duck behind my copy of The American Pageant. As I conjugated my verbs and tried to weave "obfuscate" into my speech at recess, I was pretending I didn't care that I had no idea who'd slept with whom over the weekend, that I wasn't in the drunk pictures being passed around, that I didn't snicker when someone made a pot reference because I had no idea what they were talking about. Okay, I got the pot references. But the oral sex ones? Didn't have a clue.

At least I didn't get pregnant. But now, to return to the school that was the site of my most direly angstful moments, and to be thwarted in my attempt to minister to the nerds who I know still wander its halls, it's just frustrating sometimes, that's all. Somewhere in my school, there are teenagers studying for the SAT. If only they knew that the secrets to a fairly high verbal and middling math were within their grasp down at room F-102. Flashcards would be litteringthis school, motherbleepers!

in the teacher's lounge

When I'm not frantically running off copies (this is what you actually call it when using a Duplo, as opposed to a photocopy, machine) for the activity I have just improvised, or scarfing down a Pop-Tart hoping a student won't see me and ask me for half, I am having a leisurely lunch of microwaved chimichangas in the teacher's lounge, listening to other poor teachers make frantic copies a few feet away. In the toner-induced haze, I find myself in some strange conversations, like today's about the dental habits of the Marshall Islanders.

Our ESL teacher and a German long-term sub started talking about the behavior problems posed by the recent (past 10 years is recent here) influx of Marshallese, in our oh-so-tolerant rainbow society that is hardly influenced by the 19th century plantation dynamic. We did use their islands as practice bombing targets, so we can't, and don't, complain about the fallout when their natives come here to live; if you lived in one of the highest person-per-square-foot-densities in the world, you would, too. What we do do (ha! I said doo-doo!) is provide sad commentary, whilst shaking our heads.

The German lady has strong feelings about the Singaporean approach to discipline, but that's for another time.

The ESL teacher says that her biggest problem by far is that her kids miss tons of school due to toothaches, making it impossible to establish continuity, which is a necessity that kind of leads to....literacy. Yes, toothaches. I picture bald cartoon stick figures with big white cotton bandages wrapped around their heads. Or mouths, I guess. The uncomfortable silliness of this image helps me deal with the fact that in this day and age, thousands of years after the toothbrush was invented (trust me, I wrote an article for an in-flight magazine on this very subject once, and did exhaustive research), a child could miss school for multiple days due to a toothache. Which will probably turn into an abscess.

Honestly.

At first, I just took this into my bosom of "Things That Make Me Feel Better About My Own Classes." I chase boys old enough to sire children around the room to stop pencil fights, it's true, but at least I don't have to drive a girl home as she writhes in pain because her parents don't know this state offers nearly universal health care for children, and could stop her toothache with one free visit.

But then I kinda felt bad. Even worse when I told my mother, and she recounted how one of hercounterpart students (likely these kids' cousins) developed boils that became a systematic infection, and the school nurse couldn't communicate to the parents that he needed to go to a doctor.

Sorry for all the italics. But they seem necessary, to convey the...I don't know, "what the heck should I do"-ness of.......stuff.

If only The Bureacracy didn't keep us from solving the problem with its red tape. (Irony intended, reinforced, and shoveled on just there.)

Oh, so my funny point was: The German, eating her muesli mixed with water (I am not kidding), was lamenting the backwardness of the Marshallese, how they snack on candy and sodas all day, and that wouldn't be so bad if they knew to brush their teeth right afterwards.

"Eet is not so bad zat zey eat sveets! But zey do not brash zeir teece aftervwards, and zat eez ven your teece are under attack!"

It was at precisely that moment that I was opening up my Gladware full of Oreos. To be fair, they were Newman-Os, which are wheat-free cookies made of barley and oat flour, and probably organic sprouted sea kelp juice instead of sugar. But I felt that to point this out would only draw attention to my vice, which I could not keep from eating. Four of them.

Whatever, at least no kids have poisoned my coffee with Wite-Out, which is more than I can say for an infamous ex-teacher I know.

in re: Somebody named Dennis

I just love people like my old bookSnore pal, Dennis.

I meant to link to his January 11th post, "Change of Habit"--hope I did. The first sentence of his second paragraph? That's me. The rest of the post? Dennis to a T: self-disciplined, able to find hedonistic pleasure in the most dubious of "indulgences" (carob syrup?! come on, Dennisio!), and exuding what is commonly called a "zest for life," but is really a rare gift I would give my left arm to have. But not my right. That one I need for eyebrow-plucking and mouse-clicking.

Dennis is, basically, that guy you hoped you'd become by reading the Tao te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, and Emotional Intelligence, until you went back to your regular diet of E!Online and whatever pops up looking titillating: full of wisdom, aware of his place in the universe, possessed of enough restraint to order the granola cookie for an afternoon snack at Flying Star instead of chocolate cream pie, yet humble enough to work at a demeaning bookstore for a year so as to enlighten others, like me.

Again, I digress. I just wanted to respond to his post with a synopsis of my day. Woke up at 5:45, snoozed until 6:45, ate a frosted strawberry Pop Tart (they're left over from our White Trash New Year's Eve party, it would be wasteful not to eat them), nudged a few dozen teenagers closer to complete apathy with my half-assed teaching attempts, ate a similarly crappy lunch....am now waiting for Ben to drive up so I can scamper into the kitchen and submerge my arms into dishwater so he'll think I've been slaving away since I got home.

It's almost Friday! Yay!

Any suggestions for how to give structure and meaning to my week now that there aren't any Apprentices on?

I'm the real Mussy, yes I'm the real Mussy

Guess who's back?
Mussy's back.
Mussy's back, Mussy's back, Mussy's back, Mussy's ba-a-ack.

Do you ever say something, like a joke or pun or song reference, so lame that you cringe even before saying it, then blurt it out as shivers of self-loathing run up your lame spine? Then, after the inevitable groans, sarcastic "oh ha-HA"s, or pointed silences from your boyfriend, you keep getting an itch to say it again, and again? Even after your boyfriend threatens, then proceeds, to throw food at you?

That's how I've been with "Guess who's back" since last night. We were watching Season Five of The West Wing, and there was a climactic scene where Jed regains the legendary presidential-ness that has eluded him ever since he announced his MS, Zoey was kidnapped and the Republicans took back the House. You could tell from the swelling music and close-ups of his resolute jaw that, well,

Guess who's back?
Bartlet's back.
Bartlet's back, Bartlet's back...and so on.

Then the same thing happened with Josh, the aide who had been Bartlet's scapegoat in recent episodes, his legislative portfolio and self-worth taking a nose dive as POTUS blamed him for losing a senator. He got the fist-pumping, triumphant treatment by the editors, so I just knew, and had to sing,

Well, you know. I alternated verses between "Joshie's back" and "Lyman's back." When I added "raise the roof" motions and a goofy grin-face, Ben lost it, and I had to vow to never do it again.

But I know I will.

All of this was to say, I am back from my vacation-induced stupor, a hiatus if you (my three readers) will, and now that there's legitimate work to be done -- malleable minds to be malled, etc. -- I bet I'll have it in me to write more often.

Now, if I could just get past the titles and introductions and into the real world, I might eventually say something of substance or, at least, a little less shady.

Sorry! I had to!