vocabulary list manifesto

A few months ago, I found a list of SAT prep words on the internet. I've been picking the ten each week that I think are the most important for an adult to know, whether or not s/he goes to college. The stock "use these words in a sentence" has become most students' favorite assignment, and mine. It's easy, may teach them some new words, gives them practice writing, and is a predictable task whose expectations they know well.

Lately, I've started to examine the thought process behind my choices. I realized that I have sentences in mind as I choose the words. While this allows me to pat myself on the back for keeping it relevant to their lives, I've sensed a pattern, and am wondering if I'm foisting an agenda on my hapless studes.

I mean, the sentences write themselves. And often do. But is my subconscious word choice unethical? Am I pushing a leftist agenda when I give them smiley faces for turning a clever phrase that happens to be Bush-bashing or anti-development? See if you can tell what I mean:

1. amass: After they have amassed wealth through generations of privilege, retired haoles from the mainland enjoy moving to Hawaii and exploiting our island while contributing little to the community.

2. animosity: There is a great deal of animosity between locals and tourists.

3. bolster: While tourism does bolster the local economy, one could argue that it leads to a colonialist mindset and strip-mines the island for dubious profit.

4. deter: Most adolescent discipline plans rest on the hope that strong consequences will deter behavior that cannot be legitimately prohibited by any other means.

5. disparity: The disparity between rich (white) schools and poor (brown) schools does not escape students, who recognize that the acceptable standard for their school is not quite as high as some others. [Today when we discussed possible topics for letters to the editor, school lunches aroused the most passion. Seems like a typical, frivolous issue...until you hear one of the free/reduced-lunch kids say, "Our lunches are like prison food, but on the mainland, I hear they get to choose their lunches!" Granted, those mainland kids are eating french fries and drinking Coke, but teri beef patties with white rice aren't much better. And the heartbreaking thing about it was to hear a fifteen-year-old voice the truth--that in some parts of the public sector, fourth-best is good enough--while not being quite able to frame it in relation to larger ideas of how the world works. To him, our lunches are unfair, and McDonald's is the answer. It's also unfair, as the same boy brought up, that he signed up for Auto Shop expecting to learn how engines work, but instead has hammered out dents and done free paint jobs all year.]

Hmm. I think I've built up a sufficient soapbox with five words instead of the intended ten.

What are the chances that a challenging course on engines would have inspired this guy to push himself in science, math, and eventually become an engineer? Probably not high. If he does end up running a body shop, he'll probably make more money than I ever will. But isn't this attitude defeatist, and defeating, at heart?

I know that I am guilty of the very same thing. Teach them how to fill out a job application after the first quarter was filled with failed essay and literature assignments.

I guess what I'm thinking about, as I decide whether or not to even try to do this again next year, is am I doing any good? Should you teach them to make do with what they have? Or try to incite a riot for what they deserve?

a happy relationship is built on posing for pictures against your better judgment

I don't have time to write anything, since I'm behind as usual, but here's a funny picture of Ben. Don't be intimidated by our utterly original photographic vision and whip-smart, dry sense of humor. We don't think we're superior to you.

Don't try this at home!




And here's another idyllic (to me) scene from Waipio Valley. I wonder if my dream home would still have a rusty tin roof if I pictured it in a dank, weedy city block. Probably not.

This was the view from our "sleeping loft." I'd follow it with a view of my classroom to make a point, but it would be too depressing.

It's not so bad. Tomorrow begins the sixth-to-the-last week of school. In the past week, I've eaten at eight or nine good restaurants, spent two days that should've been spent at work unrepentantly reading, and enjoyed the adoring benevolence of my Benj. So I will just try to be grateful that I had some nice days off, and not compare them to the asbestos-clogged week on which I now embark.

Also, I could remember how there were termites in the cottage and my allergies made my nose grow two sizes. AND I was constantly afraid of being bitten by a centipede.

If only Dawber were here.

My work week ends tomorrow, thanks to the self-granted 4-day weekend. Ben's dad and stepmom are visiting us for 10 days, and we are going away with them for two nights to this place.

Now, this all seemed like a grand idea when it first came about. I've wanted to stay here since Ben and I were planning to sneak away from the booksnore in 2004, and I would show photos of it to everyone at work, all, "Look at where I'm going!" We realized we couldn't afford it, and chose instead to stay in my childhood bedroom.

So I was psyched to stay in this cliffside perch, with its purported sweeping ocean vistas and moonlit hot tub. There's only one bedroom, but a sleeping loft sounds fine! According to the website, four people have stayed here and had a great time. Bring on the backgammon.

Until I watched an episode of Coach over the weekend, and realized, this is a mid-90s sitcom plot waiting to happen.

Hayden and Christine, Kelly and Stuart go off for a ski weekend. They arrive at their cabin, to find (to Hayden's fury) that instead of two bedrooms, it has one bedroom and a sleeping loft. Stuart's humidifier, which he needs to combat the altitude, won't work in the sleeping loft, so he and Kelly get the bedroom. Great tension ensues, and eventually Stuart accidentally locks Coach outside while he's soaking in the hot tub.

This would be way more parallel if we were going away with my parents.But I thought I'd still try to make it work. My dad's not a Big Ten football coach, but he is a dedicated UH Rainbow Warrior fan. His relationship to Ben could totally be blown up to Coach/Stuart proportions. And we could convince our tall friend, Alan, to cut his blondish hair into a tilted bowl cut.

Maybe enough years have passed that I could actually sell the story again to someone in Hollywood.

four eyes...that's me!

Guess what? Now I wear glasses!

Pic to come when Ben gets home. This will also be a good chance to show off my Rachel 'do.

Oh, but I only wear the glasses while driving. If I ever go to the movies, I'll wear 'em then too. Maybe now I'll achieve the gravitas and hipness I've long craved.

discipline

It's what I need.

Maybe if I posted everyday, I would write with an economy of words, happen upon daily insights, and gain the trust of you, my readers, that checking my site doesn't hold an 80 % risk of being a complete timewaster (there's something about visiting a site that hasn't been updated since 2003 that makes me very, very depressed, and this happens to me a lot as a teacher).

Other reasons why I need discipline:

* I spent Day I of my III-day weekend (Good Friday is a state holiday for some unfathomable reason I will not question) lying in bed unsatisfyingly until IX (I kept having dreams that I needed to wake up), watching the morning news (I detest Matt Lauer with the heat of a thousand balding, overpaid heads), and "helping" Ben at his paper. "Helping" because I was there for III hours, supposedly proofreading, and spent .V (how do you write fractions in Roman numerals?) of them proofreading, II reading a P.D. James novel, and .V picking at my fingernails.


* I've decided to quit junk food (a recent re-addition to my lifestyle after V years of stoicism), but today I both stopped at Wendy's AND bought a pack of powdered sugar donette gems from the gas station.

* I had to be formally observed by a vice-principal this week, and during the period she was there, three students came in late; I had to shout, "Hey, guys! Will you puh-LEASE listen!" at least five times; the same three students left class early without permission; and another ratted on me for selling drugs at recess. Just kidding about the last one. (Somehow, that is a writing "technique" I just can't seem to let go.) She said my lesson was great, but kindly noted that all first-year teachers struggle with classroom management. Yeah, it's the last quarter. I'm starting to realize that.

* I can't even maintain a lame-brained "theme" like Roman numerals for more than two bullet points.

* I can't restrain my use of parentheses (they make it so easy to write a run-on sentence that mirrors my thought process).

* This list sucks and I'm going to go watch Cheap Seats.

I beseech you

Does anyone have any ideas for studying lyrics with a rather remedial class of 11th graders? I promised them this assignment before spring break, and if I don't follow through on Monday, there could be a mutiny. Of course, I told them about it without thinking through how we would study their chosen songs, which are largely about hard core drug use (a 50 Cent ditty about heroin), recreational drug use ("Wrap it Up," a double entendre for both rolling a joint and fornicating), and whatever other kinds of drug use there are, without degenerating into a session of "listening to CDs." (No one in this class has an ipod, thank goodness.)

So, the parameters are: they get to choose their songs, I get to veto the really bad ones, and I need to make them study the words and write about the songs in some way. The goal is to learn that understanding and analyzing how language works can be fun! And you do it everyday without realizing it! And knowledge is power! And if they are inspired to lift me up at an assembly while singing "Lean on Me," so be it.

do the rachel

you stupid, no good, piece of crap haircut.

I have identified my problem. Gosh dang it all. I will never have another good haircut unless I move back to Albuquerque or Durham. Actually, the salon I'm talking about was in Raleigh, but the memories all live in Durham. Studio 929, husband-wife-duo Silvia and Brian, representin the 9-1-9, holla! Or as I like to say in Jewish circles, Challah!

I guess there always has to be a tradeoff. In Durham, I lived alone in a state of forced misery that I thought would confer the Legitimate Grad Student mantle upon me. I drank Tang, ate canned biscuits, and tried (unsuccessfully) to skip the occasional meal. But it was here that I had The Best Haircut I Ever Did, or Would, Have. I got the first one in December of 2001 and thought nothing of it, other than it was $45, more than I had yet paid for such a service. Until I was at a party with the girl who had recommended Silvia, and another woman came up to her and gushed, “I just had the bEST HAIRCUT EVER WITH SILVIA! OH MY GOD!” I thought she was just trying to be the next Sex & the City tagline, but it got me thinking. Could there really be a “best haircut ever?”

Turns out there can. And I've already had it. And don't have a chance of ever finding it again.

Also turns out I am always on a quest for the best [_______blank_______] ever. Best breakfast burrito ever? Albuquerque, of course, at either Twisters in the South Valley or Flying Star. Or Java Joe's. Or R.B. Winnings. Basically, wherever I'm the most hungover, that is where the BB will taste the best. Best eggs and grits ever? Durham, at Elmo's. Best makeup shopping? Mark Pardo in Albuquerque, where you can pretend to be looking for the 'perfect mascara' and get a free makeover by the best undiscovered queens the city has to offer. Best mall food? Walking by Gloria Jean's at Coronado with Lucrecia or Beth, then stopping at See's for a free sample, then giving in completely at Wendy's or Del Taco. Best waste of money? A day in Kona. At least that one is still applicable to my life. $4 for a cup of locally grown coffee? Come on.

Anyway. Living in paradise? The tradeoff is having your every haircut be a game of Russian Roulette. Where your stylist could be a woman named Paulette, who refers to your home island as “paradise” at least twenty times during the 45 minutes, and tricks you into confiding in her about your religious inclinations because you assume she is somewhat liberal, then turns out to be a Mormon from Utah who doesn't believe in living together premaritally. After you've told her you are living with a half-Jewish guy, and realized she's noticed, and expressed disapproval of, your bi-racialness.

AND CUTS YOUR HAIR IN THE RACHEL GREENE.

That is what I've realized. No matter how many pictures of the tousled, non-Rachel-styled bedroom look from Victoria's Secret I take in, how many creative verbs and adjectives and adverbs I use to describe my desired look (“I want the hair to cavort lethargically about my nape"), all haircutters, save Silvia, revert to their trump card from the Middle American Hairdos of the Mid-Nineties Deck: The Rachel Greene. They perfected it back then, so why not break it out at every possible opportunity now? Their careers between 1994 and 1999 were probably a facile assembly line of shoulder-length shags. When they see me walk in the door with my clueless look and obvious obeisance to the beauty industry, I am a flashing goldmine. Click, autopilot: Give her the Rachel, act like "it's about time" and jump ahead to lunch.

So when I've said I looked like Claire Huxtable, this is what I meant. I've had this haircut six times in the past wo years. Claire was a better, blacker version of Rachel, at least hairwise. The working woman's mullet.

Never again.

NEVER AGAIN.

dear reader(s)

Please stay with me! I have seen the error of my ways (communicating sporadically at best, being a sometime blogger, emailer, and caller) and have found my way back to the light. Here are some things that have happened since my last missymussion:

I. School let out for Spring Break. I now have one week (of two) left, and while I have to accomplish a great many things (planting a garden, reading five books, grading, spring cleaning, getting a haircut, doing my taxes, and starting an exercise regimen), I feel more relaxed than I have all year because there's only one quarter left, the State Assessment is over, and the end is in sight.

II. Carolyn and Scott, guests extraordinaire, honored us by spending their honeymoon with us. I've always hearted Carolyn, but now I heart Scott as well! He made a great playmate for Ben, too. Their stay was ideal for several reasons:
a) neither Ben nor I had to work;
b) Scott can't stand to have dirty dishes in the sink, and takes care of business; and
c) they share my attitude toward vacations, and life in general:
1. if ice cream presents itself, eat it.
2. Wal-Mart and Costco are perfectly respectable and worthwhile tourist destinations.
3. There's no wrong time to drink alcohol when you're on a sanctioned vacation.
d) they left me a little gift of Scott's rosemary-thyme body wash which I had been
coveting, though I tried to hide the fact that coveted it.

III. We had a par-tee at our house that, may I say, was our best yet. We invited the brothers, and they serenaded us with bluegrass music, silly ditties, and an old-fashioned sing-song broke out on the back lanai. The neighbors probably hate us now, but it was worth it. There is a hilarious anecdote about Ribsy that I am trying to figure out how to tell while preserving its hilarity.

IV. I got a ridiculous-looking sunburn that sealed my fate as a leathery-chested lady in the now-nearer future.

V. Ben scored tickets to a Chocolate Festival, where we were served about 40 different chocolate treats, coffee, wine, and champagne. I made the mistake of eating a 3-pound Portuguese sausage-omelette-fried rice at Teshima's just beforehand, and thus had my smallest appetite for chocolate ever, but it was fun all the same. I drank enough champagne to de-sensitize my fullness mechanism and managed to choke down some truffles.

VI. The Chocolate Festival, which was a fundraiser for the local Waldorf School, provided me with a new poorly-reasoned soapbox from which to pontificate. I need to work on the specifics, but I am pretty sure I feel strongly about it, and will start a viewpoint article for the newspaper that will never see the world outside my computer screen. More on this later.

Dang it, I can't get the spacing right on my outline. Please know that I do know how to write in outline form.

it's. a. duck blur!

We had lots of fun at the par-tee! Can anyone tell me what juvenile book that is from? It's the same one I obliquely referenced in yesterday's post about eating too much cake and barfing. Also, maybe the short party pants.

My hors d'oeuvres were a success, although I had to swallow my pride when I overheard a few people helpfully explaining to their mates, "They're little pancakes with guacamole on top." Avocado salsa, you rubes. There's a vast difference.

We had been instructed to provide entertainment for the birthday boy, and while I had a pipe dream all week of doing a comedy routine, we chickened out, so Ben recited some Ogden Nash poetry that had people in stitches.

The highlight of the party was when Ben and I were being miscreants out on the lanai with these two brothers who look like Jason and Jeremy London, while the others were still politely listening to the folk song performances inside, and somehow incited the brothers to sing the theme song from Duck Tales in its entirety. Ben and I chimed in rap-style on the words we knew at the ends of lines. Our chorus became so loud that we stopped the school librarian's rendition of "Scarborough Fair" (Faire?). I'm hoping the London twins will want to hang out with us again. They play the guitar and accordion, and maybe also the banjo. Imagine the '80s TV song possibilities!

and etc.

Okay, I'll admit, that last thing (Animal, etc.) happened a few weeks ago. I've been meaning to tell someone about it ever since. I kind of like being told I look like Animal. I mean, he's a party animal. But Shelley Winters? Her character in Lolita is one of the most pathetic in film history. Of course, Ben is proud as can be about his resemblance to the guy from Sling Blade when he adopts the right posture and mannerisms. So darn it, I will wear these similarities as a badge of honor.

Tonight Ben and I are going to a birthday party. I've got on my party dress, and Ben will wear his short pants and jacket. We'll be on our best behavior, and try not to eat so much birthday cake that we barf. I hope we get goodie bags!

Seriously, and bittersweetly, I am taking wild rice and scallion pancakes with avocado salsa. Sniff, sniff. Whenever I make anything that I first cooked in either college or Cimino Compound, I get emotional. Days gone by, caprice of youth never to be recaptured, etc.

Last night I dreamed I was visiting the CC dining hall, and didn't know where anything was, or where to put my dirty tray, and all the other kids were my current students, who tried to be helpful, but it was obvious I was an outsider. Then I had another dream where I was getting ready for school (high school), and felt that all-too-familiar teen panic of a wardrobe and/or hair crisis. I went back and forth between thinking I was going to teach class or attend it. I am awash in existential confusion, at the crossroads of adulthood.

But shouldn't I have come to this crossroads sooner, like maybe at the age of 20? I hate being a late bloomer.

non sequitur

I have been compared to Shelley Winters (watching Lolita, in which she is particularly whiny) and Animal (while doing my air drum in the car) in the same day by my boyfriend. Humph.

would you like to hear about a timeshare opportunity?

Today is one of those days when my old bookSnore job (complete with back strain and panic attacks) looks pretty good. Or my two-day stint as a shave ice stand-tender.

Let's see, have I been adequately demoralized today?

First, this douchebag writes a letter to the editor about how the state of Hawaii is punishing its students by hiring teachers without teaching degrees, who ruin lives and crush young spirits with every bumbling misstep in the classroom. Public disapproval of the endeavor to which I've devoted the past seven months of my life? Check.

Then, my students act like holy terrors all day. My request to have my room cleaned (it never has been)--which was met with a vow from the principal that yes, the seven-month accrual of spit, gum, cockroach droppings and dry-erase dust would be remedied ASAP (we're big on acronyms in the DOE)--went ignored for the third straight week. The three referrals I sent to the vice principal last week (referrals supposedly being the strongest action a teacher can take to discipline a kid) have never been acted upon, so the Mean Girls to whom I've been promising a come-uppance get off without a scratch for calling me a f-ing bitch and drawing a cartoon of another student as a crack whore on the board, among other things. Least supportive work environment ever? Check.

For the next three weeks, most of my students are taking the Hawaii State Assessment, the battery of tests that will determine whether our school "meets standards" or whether, according to No Child Left Behind, it is a failing school and must be restructured. I don't know exactly what this would mean for the school, only that the results will be directly traceable back to me, and my competence judged accordingly. Oh, and since the kids found out it has no effect on their grades or graduation, they don't give a fig. In fact, I suspect many of them will choose to get stoned for the occasion, just to make it more interesting. Outrage with no avenue for action? Check-arooni.

Just before I leave school, I have a long chat with my favorite colleague, who tells me that the lines (slates of classes for next year) are up, and not only are there none open for me, the woman who came back this quarter to fill in for an English teacher with cancer will most likely get any spot that opens up. Wind sucked from my already flagging sails? Che-eck!

Then, finally at home, trying to unwind with my giant Hershey's Kiss (a student Valentine I've been saving), I open up a Title Nine catalog (fitness clothes for lesbi--I mean, women) and happen upon this caption, which would make a middle school yearbook editor cringe:

[over a photo of a black woman doing jazz hands]
"Shawn takes hip hop dance classes. Watch out folks, don't try this at home!"

I spend my weekends writing funny and topical vocabulary quizzes, study guides and friendly essay-margin-comments that no one ever reads; I will probably be waitressing in 3 months; and this hack gets paid to write the lamest captions ever, and probably gets all kinds of free sports crap to boot? This is irony. I guess I'll file it away to put on a worksheet someday.

Oh, wait. I won't be writing worksheets, because I WON'T HAVE A JOB.
I don't want to sound like I'm begging for sympathy. Eh, what the hell. GIVE ME SYMPATHY!

Or maybe this will be the kick in the pants I've long needed to start Jillding's Buildings.

it's just you

Maybe it's just me being a dud, but isn't it kind of a bad idea to drive while eating an ice cream cone?

a photo essay

Here's where I went when I cut school last Friday.

First, you climb down this:




Then, you get to this:




Pretty cool, huh? It's a green sand beach on the southernmost tip of the island (and the US, for that matter), where the sand is made up of lava rock and fine particles of a semi-precious green stone.

Too bad I was grumpy because the wind was like this:


Jon and Melissa (the lovely lady seen walking above), if you are reading this, I'm sorry I was such a sourpuss. Ben, sorry I wouldn't let you jump off the 40-foot cliff; something spooked me. Perhaps it was the conversation we'd had a few minutes before about how there is nothing between this spot and Antarctica, or how Melissa's guidebook said if you jumped off, the current would take you directly there.

To any future visitors, I now offer my endorsement to jumping off the cliff at the South Point fish ladders.

the longest post

Perhaps I have taken this retro thing too far.

Scene I just found myself in:

Splayed out on the sofa, feet up on the toy chest/coffee table, hair up in a disheveled bun, eating Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream from the carton as I watched THS: Paula Abdul; after six hours of housework.

A modern person would have achieved what I just did (clean the whole house from top to bottom) in less than two hours, using a Swiffer Wet Jet, Clorox Easy Wand, and maybe a vacuum cleaner and calling it a day. But not me! I am '50s housewife extraordinaire! I use baking soda, vinegar, essential oils, and I scrub the floors and baseboards on my hands and knees! I would pat myself on the back, but my wrists are in excrutiating pain and my back muscles are getting stiffer by the moment. Whoopsie.

The owners of our house are coming tomorrow (and there's a chance they'll stop by tonight) to look for an important document in the spare bedroom where we've been throwing all the crap that gets in our way. Considering how incensed and violated I felt when a sestet of twenty-somethings moved into my Grandma and Grandpa Risinger's beloved Loveland home, and I learned that they had turned the Game of Life family room into an extra bedroom, drilled a shower head into the butterfly-wallpapered Blue Bathroom, and put a sports flag over the front door, I was inspired to make up for the past seven months of neglect of this equally meaningful house.

Of course, it's not as if we have torn out the screen from the porch on which my golden childhood innocence was sanctified over Poudre Valley ice cream sundaes and fried chicken, or killed the raspberry bushes that were Grandpa's pride and joy. Oh wait, we have also let the yard go to pot. Well, not real pot, unless Ben's sudden interest in restoring the fountain is a cover for....

Eek. I'd better go.

***

Apologies. That was exactly the sort of cringe-worthy "stylistic flourish" I would have added to a letter or diary entry in 7th grade, thinking myself the cleverest writer of all time. And, like the "Guess who's back? Bartlet's back" incident, I cannot resist leaving it there.

The point of the ice cream, Paula-watching scene was to say: I am reconsidering my professed desire to be a housewife. It both beckons and repulses me.

Off I go to disinfect the kitchen!!!!! [another 7th grade throwback]

a new series

Ben's Outrageous Request of the Day

[Background: Ben got a free massage yesterday from a guy (don't worry, he's a massage therapist) whose dog he found on Mauna Kea on Christmas Eve.]

B: Give me a massage.

MM: Ha ha. No way.

B: Massage me!

MM: What, do you need one everyday now?

B: Yes. Massage me! Every day! You should massage me everyday and feed me beer, like the Japanese cows.

do not go gentle

My goal for today is to plan out the next two weeks in complete detail, so that I don't have to do a lick of work for the next 10 days, when Ben's childhood friend (trust me, they're still "childhood friends," no offense, Jon) and his gal-pal come to visit. I want to show them a whirlwind good time, and that does NOT include having them sit around uncomfortably watching my tear my hair out each night as I wrestle with my insecure-teacher demons. So I must plan. And what better way to fill two weeks than with a scary assignment like "Create a poetry portfolio that will make up 20 percent of your final grade?"

Is anyone reading? If so, I need suggestions for writing exercises that will lead high schoolers into writing poetry. Respond! Respond, respond, against the dying of the light.

a morbid new low

As Ben and I were cleaning the house for our next visitors (yay!), I found my little notepad of "things to tell people the next time I talk to them" and "inconsequential crap I could turn into a posting for my blog." I quickly scurried to the computer to try my hand at spinning this little gem into gold:

My new favorite song is called "Sanvean," a lush, haunting, religious-sounding wailer by Lisa Gerrard (formerly of Dead Can Dance) that I heard at the end of a particularly poignant West Wing. Of course I immediately looked it up on WestWingDorks.com, and bought the CD at Borders with the gift card my lone kiss-ass student gave me for Christmas. Since then, I've been drenching myself in its mournful, heart-stirring sounds....like ten times a day. It's a Tom Hanks with the aria in Philadelphia type moment. It's great, and is making me a better, more spiritual person, I'm sure.

ANYway. I'd been doing this in secret from Ben, 'cause I knew he'd make fun of me for a) liking such girly, Enya-ish music and b) buying a CD because one song was on a West Wing that made me cry. But one night I just had to listen to it while he was in the house. Feeling candid, I confided that this was a song I'd like to hear on my deathbed, if given the option. You know, like if I come down with consumption like Beth from Little Women and everyone gathers around to send me off into the white light.

I know, I should be committed for even thinking these things. But I can't help it! It's another itch I just have to scratch.

Here's why I love Ben. Instead of being deeply disturbed, or laughing in my face, he said:

"If I'm dying, I hope you play something really torturous, like 'Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time' by Paul McCartney, so I'll be grateful to die."

Then we sang it and danced around like fools. How did I get so lucky?

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!

where I've been

This is my precious nephew, Theo.


I want one! I want one!

Just kidding, Ben.

I need skills!

So I saw Joaquin and Reese on Oprah, and they said neither of them had ever sung a note before Walk the Line. Through voice lessons alone, they were able to emulate musical legends.

Yesssss!

My friend Stephanie and I have talked about the fantasy of shyly showing up onstage somewhere to wow the crowd, which usually includes ex-boyfriends and people who've made fun of us in the past, with our amazing guitar-strumming and singing skills. We'll also look much, much hotter than ever before.

Now, it seems it could really happen! At least the singing part. I just need to find the right voice teacher to believe in me, to turn what Ben calls "the sound of an old lady who's just woken up" into mellowed honey.

I love smiling; it's my favorite!

This week was fabulous in several ways. Yesterday was the last day of school, but we watched videos since Tuesday. Shh, I could get fired for that.

1. I have watched Elf and Napoleon Dynamite three times apiece. They've passed the litmus test for My Favorite Movies; the more I watch them, the funnier they become. Kids were turning around in their seats to look at me, astonished at how hard I chortled when Will Ferrell (or, as I like to call him, "Elf") does the splits on the escalator. At home, it's a kick to watch Ben seethe as I insist on saying, "Look at me! I'm being Elf!" instead of "Look! I'm being Buddy!" as he believes is proper. It's also nice to see the kiddos choosing the exact same lines of Napoleon's to mimic that I did.

2. My first period's Bob Marley Rasta Christmas door won first-place in the schoolwide door decorating contest. For two days, it was the talk of the school. Every few seconds during passing, I'd hear, "Ho, tight, da door!" and "Miss, your door is sick!" It's amazing how a giant image of Bob in a Santa hat can instill even the hooliganest of hooligans with the holiday spirit. Just kidding. I know they only like it because it helps them envision the ganja they're on their way to smoke.

3. I shamelessly bribed the kids and even more shamelessly drank in the sights and sounds of their gluttony as they smacked pizza, slurped soda, and, to a person, joked about my "hash brownies." As I savored the harmonious chorus of burps, I pretended they were feasting upon a bounty of knowledge only I could provide.

4.. This is the crown jewel. Two Hawaiian boys who hang out in my room at recess showed up wearing two-foot-tall Pope hats they'd made from construction paper, complete with crosses, in order to taunt their friend who doesn't believe in God. It was frickin' hysterical. They chased her around, giggling, "Repent! Repent!" I don't know why the fact that they're Hawaiian makes it funnier, but it does. Don't worry, everybody was laughing, including the heathen. Most days she's making fun of one of the popes for his dark skin. Just the fact that they took the time to plot and execute this was utterly delightful.

I guess my lesson learned today (and, indeed, this entire week, as I prayed no one would notice how I'd turned my room into a den of iniquity): it's so much more fun when I don't have to try to teach them anything.

Hello. I'm Missy Mussy.

I have self-diagnosed myself with Cinematic Over-Identifying Affective Disorder.

Does anyone else have this problem? Anyone over the age of 13? I didn't think so.

Last night Benoit and I saw Walk the Line. I loved it, but my love for it feels a little too preteen, a little too....much like my love for other films that have caused me to doubt my sense of self. Like Home Alone, when I totally thought I was the next Macaulay Culkin. As we walked to the car afterward, I felt a healthy identification with June Carter. I told Ben to disregard our recent “commitment” talks; I would be stringing him along for the next seven years in order to heighten the dramatic tension needed to turn our relationship from ordinary to legendary. No biggie. I'm sure tons of people make life decisions this way. It's got to be more reliable than horoscopes.

Here's what happened. I needed coffee to stay awake through the 10:00 movie, and I think they put ground-up speed in my iced mocha at the weird Japanese coffee shop.

A few hours after our return home, tossing, turning, twitching, and scratching at invisible bugs while Ben tried to sleep beside me, I felt dead certain that I WAS John R. Cash. I was right there with Johnny when he was going through his withdrawal from the black Mexican uppers. I know what he went through, man!

But I also wanted to be June, with her adorable, feminine outfits! Who can blame me for fancying myself a Southern Baptist divorcée who stands by her hard-living man? I've lived that life. Thus began an existential dilemma from which I am still recovering. How can I be satisfied being normal: Or, more truthfully, how can I be satisfied living a life that never gets made into a biopic? Or even a screenplay that has millions sunk into pre-production but never gets made, causing Kate Winslet to nurse a lifelong desire to play me, to the ruination of her career?

Someone famous said a life unexamined is not worth living; some things make me feel like it should be amended to the unfilmed life is not. I blame the E! Network, Oprah and Paris Hilton. Just not myself.

I've always known this was a problem, but thought I had it under control. My worst bout was in 1994, after seeing Legends of the Fall, when I pined away the year believing my life would be worthless if I never drove a man (preferably named Tristan) so wild with longing (by marrying his brother) that he had no choice but to circle the globe on pirate ships, smoke opium, and name his daughter after me when he settled for someone else.

That was embarrassing, but I got over it.

Then there was the “Frida” Minesweeper debacle. If I could think of a way to describe it without appearing completely insane, I would. Equating carpal-tunnel syndrome with a full-body cast is pure hubris, but quite fertile for the old imagination.

Good thing I've stopped short of appearing completely insane.

I luv F.O.L.K.!

(Friends of the Library Kona). I got about 20 pounds of books, plus 3 videos (I still luv VHS) for $6, and that includes a generous $2 donation. Good thing we got there early, though. The clearance sale was set to start at 9:00; we arrived at 9:15; by 9:20, all the good books were gone. Because of me. I am a book-selecting MACHINE. Three non-consecutive years under an oppressive bookstore regime were not for naught.The wheat flew from the chaff with such alacrity, none of the other patrons looked up from browsing the self-help table.

Here's a sampling of my bounty:
-hardcover of The Corrections
-something on race by bell hooks (hmm! go figure!)
-a Baby-Sitters' Club or two
-assorted critically-approved teen novels, with either hot pink (for girls) or macabre black-gray-death-themed (for boys) covers

That last is for my one stude who reads a book a week, and recently asked if she could borow some of my books. Since "my books" were pest-eaten, mildewed 80s novels that my dad's teacher friend threw out when she retired, I felt kinda bad. I will casually position these next to Then Again, Maybe I Won't, and see if she takes the bait. Then I'll become her best friend and a heart-warming movie will be made about me that will be shown on airplanes across the country.

Who knows if I'll ever read any of the others (except for the BSCs, obviously), but with our library's draconian 50-cent-a-day overdue fees, which accrue even on days the library is closed for holidays no one else gets, this is the smarter approach to reading.

Twas a good day.

comment to your heart's content

How very arrogant of me. But just in case, I have made it possible to comment without being a member, having a profile, or whatever. We'll see how many offers I get for vinyl siding and low-cost editing.

I give up

Sorry about that last esoteric contest-gone-awry. I had a few specific people in mind, and they let me down. (Stephanie, are you still reading?)

The answer is Jem and the Holograms, of course. But then, I do have the advantage of being probably the first person ever to get Jem from Netflix and watch my favorite episode several times, the one where Jerica and the girls arrange a benefit video, and it's all on ice, and someone nearly dies. The orphan is an indeterminately Asian girl named Bah-nee.

Thus ends my sojourn into late-80s cartoon territory. I've realized that among the non-OCD, nostalgia for it is limited to the fuzzy images and not the intricate plot twists and character development. You know that Rio Pacheco had purple hair, but the fact that Danse was a fragile orphan who filled her need for attention with a love of performance? Probably forgot about that.

Tomorrow, I promise, I shall return to normal. Navel-gazing of my own navel, not that of defunct fictional characters.

Ooh, unless I can dredge up a memory of a choice tidbit from The Get-Along Gang. The Portia-Montgomery dynamic could be very resonant with today's political landscape!
After I get back from the Friends of the Libraries discarded book sale! Yee-haw!

p.s. The contest-within-a-contest is from Speed. Another area of ignorance no one should ever try to correct.

name it! NAME IT.

A girl is going blind. Her only hope? Some sort of operation, of course. But how will she pay for it, this ward of the state, for whom no one cares?

With a benefit music video, duh. And who better to star in that video but Danse, the aptly-named, rainbow-haired lithe dancetrix who looks suspiciously like our established heroine. Could they be grooming her for a takeover of the lead role? Or is she just a decoy, created for a few episodes, only to be sacrificed for the thrill of seeing a cartoon teen crushed by some misfit's crude sabotage?

This is a contest, FYI and BTW. What the hell am I talking about? What do you do? What do you do? (Contest within a contest: what mid-90s film does that last sentence reference?)

Prize: VIP seating at the premiere of Mercedes Benz, PISW, should the video ever resurface. Failing that, Ben and MM will sing a duet of your choosing at the bowling alley karoke bar, when you come visit us.

answer to sham contest

Napoleon Dynamite, durn it. Gorsch!

I'm running out of new ways to spell that.

If anyone is looking for a Christmas present idea for me, there's this t-shirt:

http://www.glarkware.com/securestore/c181846p16737910.2.html

If you're too lazy to click on it, it reads, "Good grammar costs nothing." It's a take-off, but edited for grammar, on "Love don't cost a thing." Get it? Eh? EH?



Ben claims I will be the dorkiest teacher in school if I own it. But I'm thinking a little dorkiness might not be a bad idea right now.

ben vs. missymussy, installment one

This is a series I should have started long ago. Like back in May 2004, when Ben was housesitting and I was there, enjoying the satellite TV, and he let me "use" the remote control for 20 minutes, getting more and more frustrated with its spastic and unpredictable performance, until I realized I had the remote for the stereo, and he was secretly changing the channels at whim with the real remote shoved between couch cushions.

Anyway. Those of you who have ever conversed with me have probably heard that story several times. It was, possibly, the catalyst that turned our fling into true love.

Today's Thanksgiving-themed episode finds us home from dinner at my parents', watching the 2-hour Apprentice we taped. Ben gets up to make a snack, won't let me into the kitchen to see what he's making, then returns with a mug of hot chocolate for me, which I refuse to drink, even though I am not quite sure what he's done to it. This does nothing to diminish his glee at crowing, "It's not hot chocolate, it's gravyyyyyyyyyyy! Mwah- ha- hahhhh!" as he pours it over his bowl of reheated cornbread stuffing.

He's already bragged about how he "almost made you drink gravy" twice this morning. I guess he thinks it's funny that I couldn't identify its graviness by smell. Garsh, what a boob. (Him, not me.)

shamefully begging comments with a sham contest

I know I'm behind the curve here, but name the movie this line is from for a super-cool prize!

Bow to your sensei. Bow to your sensei!

For some reason, I keep thinking it.

some things i miss about living on the mainland

• being able to go to the 'Dyne without fear that the next day, someone will call out, "I saw Miss going into a bar!"
• appearing in public without fear that the next day, someone will call out, "I saw Miss with her boyfriend!"
• going out to eat after 8 pm and not feeling like a degenerate
• Old Navy, Charlotte Russe, and other purveyors of cheap knockoffs so I don't have to go to Macy's for expensive, less-cool knockoffs
• Cost Plus World Market
• no geckos in the house
• friends, obviously. GOSH.

Move over, Alanis

What better time to catch up on my posting than when I've just sat down to write a lesson on compound verbs?

It's times like these that I realize I am not an English professional. I am not a grammarian, as much as I like to act like one. I don't even know all the verb tenses, which is, like, 4th grade stuff. It turns out I coasted through my academic "career," such as it was, on an instinctual grasp of English gleaned from voracious but narrow reading. This means that I can, if pressed, write like a 1950s schoolgirl, or, as more often happens, string my thoughts together in cheap run-ons imitative of the mysteries I reread as a nerdy teen. Perhaps because of this reading, and the fun I found in doing my schoolwork, I can pick out the mistakes in a church newsletter, restaurant menu, or eavesdropped conversation like that, and I'm always right.

But "teaching" grammar? It blows! When pressed to explain why a fragment is a fragment, I fall back on, "You can just tell, because it sounds bad." And teaching kids to interpret literature with graphic organizers (flow charts, pie charts, Venn diagrams), which is all the rage, goes completely against my technique of staying up all night until the meaning comes in a flash of coffee-buzzing intentisty and desperation, then turning it furiously into a paper.

I've also had to start professing a false allegiance to such bunko high school "literary terms" as rising action/climax/falling action, and my nemesis, theme. And, last week, I think I taught 30 9th-graders the wrong definition of "irony." (According to my textbook, it turns out it really is like a free ride when you've already paid.) If only I had a strong, caterwauling voice with which to profess it across the pop radio airwaves! I could do an entire album on vaguely erroneous literary-theory ballads, then live, moderately, on the proceeds for the rest of my life.

this is how our world now turns

Here is what we do for fun 'round these parts.

[Truth be told, I'm the one who carefully carved the doggie-door from the box, trying to fashion a box for shipping an ukulele to Albuquerque. Ben was quite disgusted with the result (I don't know how I thought it was going to work)].

It's funny how it's come full circle; some of my best childhood playthings were made from reused boxes. My series of playhouse-forts; the Barbie house Beth made for me (yes, I spurned it at first, but it was a feat of Hawaii-sodden cardboard, bbq skewers and crochet--I'm sorry, Beth!); the sled upon which we slid down grassy knolls at Konawaena. The miniature golf course we tried to fashion from Crest and Sun Flakes boxes. I could go on.

And now, look at me. Still finding joy in life's simple pleasures, and passing on that joy to my domestic partner.

This is what Benj said as he revealed his handiwork: "Maybe if I dress up like a television, Missy Mussy will pay more attention to me!"

To all of Benji's friends who once knew him as a radical, rabble-rouser, channeler-of-all-his-energies-into-world-changing-pursuits, non-TV-watching-book-reader, I apologize. He has come over to my side now. We take turns: I watch The Apprentice for an hour, he plays Grand Theft Auto for an hour.

the mullet returns

Vote for who you think this looks like. From the front, the sh-long effect is especially pronounced and Little Richard-esque. The layers around my face sproing up and make my head look funny-shaped.

If you tell me it looks like it always did, I'll be sad! But I will probably feel the same way in a few days. In the meantime, I'm straightening it with my CHI IRON for which I shelled out 140 clams over 2 years ago. I'm finally getting my money's worth.

Coming soon, the Ben and Missymussy follies in photos.

my ugly, ugly haircut

Sing that to the tune of "Hungry, Hungry Hippos." It's the soundtrack to my life this week. I miss Julie at Mark Pardo! And Silvia at Studio 929! The executors of the greatest haircuts I've ever had, and now it's all undone in one over-priced hour at the salon I chose at random from the phone book.

I also picked it because it sells Aveda, which has always led me to skilled scissorhands in the past. Not this time. My head looks enormous, yet the hair is too short to be put into a ponytail, or even a claw clip. With the right styling, I could pass for an early Claire Huxtable. With no styling, I look like Little Richard.

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.

it's a nerd's world after all!

I just ordered a book called The English Teacher's Survival Guide, and I'm more excited about this than I was when I got my first Cabbage Patch, Terrence Bruce. More excited than when my mom and I bought the Get-Along-Gang train set for my friend's birthday present and I begged for her to buy me one too, and she wouldn't, and I threw a tantrum, and later found that of course, she had bought one for me and hid it in her bedroom closet. Boy, was I ashamed of myself. But also excited! Like I am for the book that eight of eight reviewers promise will save my life!

Starting Friday, I will be a free person again, for 9 glorious days! I plan to spend three days working nonstop, scaring Ben with my frantic, coffee-fueled hummingbird movements; then, I'll throw myself into the activities of adulthood I have neglected for too long. Staying up past 10:30, cooking meals, going to movies and not feeling guilty. I cannot wait!

I hope my impatience and defeatism, having given up on imparting any knowledge this quarter, aren't too visible to the studes. I wonder if they've noticed that while they're enjoying their "study periods" leading up to this Thursday's test, I am reading recaps of shows I've already seen! I doubt it.

only in hawaii

Would your landlord come to town and bring you a box of pastries he'd carried on the plane from Maui. Delicious, flaky manju crust filled with apple, pineapple, coconut or blueberries, cleverly impressed with little glyphs in the dough to tell you which filling each one contains.

In the interest of full disclosure, this was my dad's friend, who gave my dad the box with instructions to give half to us. So it's not like he came all the way here to visit us and give us goodies. But still. Omiyage rocks!

That was my first link. I hope it worked. Scroll down to the post entitled, "Ah, Hawai'i Nei...here I come" if you would like to read a hilarious ethnography of this practice (obligatory gift-giving).

Our weekend was good. Continuing in our surely unhealthy practice of complete co-dependency, we spent the whole thing together, unencumbered by the company of anyone who doesn't speak our language. The fact that I just say "we" and assume you'll know who I mean is itself unhealthy. Eh.

Dinner at the parents' house followed by a little Rainbows volleyball and the season premiere of Supernanny. A drive to Waimea (aka Kamuela) and Kohala (aka Kapa'au), where I bought my new favorite dress! A teal-and-maroon-striped jersey dress with a wrap front and shirred bodice. I can't describe it, other than to say it is almost exactly like a shorts jumpsuit I had when I was six, only a dress, without the sticky snaps at the shoulder that once caused me to pee on the bathroom floor as I hopped around, trying desperately to unsnap them.

It's sooooo cute! now, if I can just get up the nerve to wear it without irony. Clothing risks are a lot more difficult to take here. I could be ruined. Ruined!

Tomorrow is "Nerd Day" at school (homecoming spirit week), and I'm afraid one of my students is going to say, "Miss! You dressed up for Nerd Day!" no matter what I wear. I have a few who would do just that.

Sorry this post has no theme. Incidentally, I have become that teacher I vowed to never be: the one who teaches that stories have "themes." I might as well have gone to graduate school for an MBA.

in the center ring...

True to my avant-garde nature, I am now going to experiment with dialogue.

J: I hope you realize that storing the 20-pound sack of potatoes from Costco on the kitchen counter is not a permanent solution.

B: Okay! I know just where to keep it! [scampers off]

J: [rolls eyes]

two hours pass

B: You must be tired. Why don't you lie down? Really. You look tired.

J: [raises eyebrows]

B: Seriously! [chases her into bedroom, pushes down to the bed]

J lays her head down upon the pillowcase, from which pillow has been removed and replaced with bag of Russet potatoes.

And, scene!

my first list

Here are some words that have crept annoyingly into my vocabulary.

- disrupt
- respect
- productive
- tardy
- attention (pay)
- worksheet
- correct
- try

Soon I'll be joining the war on drugs and watching nothing but 7th Heaven and Supernanny.

dilly-dallying

I'm just posting this to remind myself that "dilly-dally" is a SUPERB verb! It evokes ice cream, southern gentility, and silliness all in one nonsense word.

REAL night fever

Last night Ben and I saw The Brothers Grimm. It warn't bad. But I can't figure out why the bros, who were German (right?), spoke with English accents. Heath Ledger's character, a bumbling scholar of folk tales with a slight speech impediment, is my kind of movie heartthrob. I can't say I would have a crush on Jacob Grimm as played by Wallace Shawn; what I'm saying is that jocks dressed up as nerds, who then dress up as ladies in bonnets, are HOT.

In the middle of the night, Ben woke me up and claimed to have heard a prowler in our backyard. We spent an edgy hour or so with our ears cocked at various windows and, ridiculously, refusing to turn the lights on or speak out loud. Were our exaggerated lip movements supposed to allow the guy to enter the house, so we'd have something to charge him with? I can't explain our logic.

I'll now take every opportunity to poke fun at Ben for being brainwashed by the movie into dreaming up our own Evil Forest. It's entirely possible that someone has built a fort in our backyard, camouflaged by vines and ti leaves, but I hold to my belief that it was a wild boar. I prefer to reserve my hysterics for predictions of volcano eruptions, WMD attacks, and giant meteors destroying the earth. Things against which Heath's square jaw and bulging biceps would be utterly useless.

night fever, night fee-VER!

Tonight, B-ho and I each checked our blood pressure on the free machine at Longs' Drugs. Or is it Long's? I should know these things so I can drill them into the head's of my "Student's."

In the scheme of our social calendar, that would rate a "Best Bet."

cotton candy coated weekend!

Ah, me. The kids at school are abuzz with excitement over this weekend's "carnival." It's actually the county farm fair with a few rusty rides and rip-off games thrown in, but has been called "The Carnival" since I was a kid. The traditions are still alive: kids expect their parents to spend a week's wages on the same polyester stuffed toys and plastic fruit-shaped sippy cups filled with sugar water. And the tube-topped teens preside over it all.

Ben wants to attend the Carnage, probably to see if he can befriend any carnies. Exactly one year ago, we were visiting Kona and spent an afternoon (and 20 bucks) there. We rode one ride, The Sizzler. The next week we learned that an identical Sizzler in Baltimore had malfunctioned and tossed a few people to their death.

Tonight some people we met through Ben's job are coming over for dinner. We went to our first "company party" the other night: 10 people at the beach, eating grilled fish & drinking beer. It gave us hope that we might yet have friends beyond each other. I'll try not to scare them off tonight with trivia games or circle-sharing of hopes and dreams.

gloating

Two months ago, as one of Jennifer James's acolytes, I attended a "water-tasting seminar" pitting Fiji bottled water against Albuquerque tap, was paid, then worked three hours for the amount of money I now make in a 12-hour day. Today, I'm facing a three-day weekend, and I'm psyched at the prospects: scrubbing mildew from the bathroom (a tile enclosure without adequate sloping is a terrible thing), combatting our growing ant problem, then trying desperately to think of ways to motivate my students (in some cases, to learn to read) as I question my worth as a human being - child's play! That, and maybe having a margarita with Ben. And sleeping past seven o'clock one day.

I know, this sympathy-begging tune is becoming tiresome. I am embracing my triteness.

And of course, today, I am listening to rain on the tin roof: not falling, like lame Norah Jones would describe it, but cascading, drumming. The rain will probably give way in a couple of hours to a glittering sunset, and maybe it will be cool enough tonight to sleep with the bedspread on, and I can curl up in it and feel all cuddly. That wouldn't have happened in Albuquerque. Take that, nostalgic yearnings!

I realize it is poor form to bliss out about rain when this benign natural phenomenon has created a living hell for millions of people. I'm sure I'll be punished for it in some way. But since I have no insight to offer, why not be happy for what I have?