simple pleasures

Yesterday was a day of luxury for me; my mom and I scrubbed out the kitchen cabinets, which were full of little piles of termite droppings and other undesirables. We packed away seven boxes of dishes, freeing up about one-eighth of the cabinet space for my stuff, which was more than enough. I'm not kidding about the day of luxury. To be alone with my own thoughts (and the occasional silly comment shared with mee-maw), free to go to the bathroom when I so chose, was delightful. To go through an entire day with complete surety that I won't be ridiculed, ignored, or trampled by football players is now my greatest source of joy.

Schmoopsie and I went to the beach today. Just kidding, I don't really call him that. Not often, anyway. ANyway, it was our first real day at the beach since we moved here. Horrifying, isn't it? We only stayed for a couple of hours because I got stung by a jellyfish (I guess). The welts have already disappeared, so what was the point of that? I was scared out of the water, but have nothing to show for it. For a few seconds, I thought I might get out of working this week. Now I'll have to hope I get chosen for jury duty. (I filled out the questionnaire last week, answering in a way I hope will make me the ideal juror.) I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Now I'm off to school. My dad is going to clean my room, since no one cleans the rooms at school. I have to empty the trash myself, and the floor has never been mopped, as far as I can tell. It's a biohazard.

Happy weekends!

other news

Our container arrived, and all of its contents have been lugged into the house. Ben's car made it to Hilo, where he picked it up along with some malasadas (Portuguese doughnuts) for me. Now all we have to do is unpack dozens of boxes, stop kicking ourselves for paying to have our crap shipped 5000 miles, and enjoy the accoutrements of modern living! (dancing gorillas, Target photo frames, and secondhand books.)

Ben started his job yesterday. He is working at our equivalent of the Alibi. Translated to Hawaii, that means it comes out every two weeks, is considered radically leftist (it does give a regular column to a pothead who wants to legalize it and runs for every public office there is), and instead of pages of kinky personals, will have a full-page ad placed by a very lonely man in its next issue.

Ben will be editing, writing occasional articles (he already has an assignment this week), and doing other stuff that I don't know about because I am so absorbed in my horrible job.

violating mine own tenets of the essay form

I am, for the first time, someone who lives for Friday. I used to live for Sunday, or sometimes Thursday, or Tuesday when I closed at the BookSnore, but never have I been so enslaved to a schedule: 8:20 is purgatory, 12:46 is the next one, and 2:30 on Friday is heaven. Catholics, tell me if I got it wrong. Which one is the inferno?

48 hours of freedom! Before Monday, I must decorate my bulletin boards with motivational materials, create seating charts for six classes, start reading 3 different textbooks and their matching boxes of teacher resources, internalize the discipline plan, and plot out every minute of the next week so I don't suffer interminable silences when I run out of material. But 16 hours of work will be two days at the beach when I can be alone with my own thoughts, free of the responsibility for 85 lives.

So tonight, Benicles and I are eating mahi-mahi and ono (leftovers from last night, pilfered from the parents' fridge) and watching a whole season of The West Wing (Dub-Dub if you're in the know). If the name or face of a student pops into my mind, I shall shoot it down with a shot of tequila. Just kidding. I am already twenty years older and forty times dorkier since assuming the mantle of teacher, or "Miss!" as EVERY SINGLE STUDENT at my school calls their female teachers. Last night I turned down a glass of wine at dinner, because I needed to wake up at 5:30 this morning and was afraid of having a headache. I'm a shell. (I changed my mind halfway into dinner, but still.)

And today when Bennifer picked me up from school, he was blasting Cypress Hill. I shrieked at him to turn it off...and I meant it! I am quickly losing my tolerance for profanity and insubordination of any kind. I mean it, and don't ask why. Because I said so!

They made the new teachers do a silly dance at the welcome back assembly today. That is all.

people who care...are people who share

A case of Kona Brewing Co. Pale Ale to anyone who can sing more of that Jem song! (You'll get it when you visit me.)

I'm at my parents' house for a blessed half hour break. Ben picked me up at school because I didn't take a lunch (we're just borrowing a car until his comes, so I'll always be trapped at work), and it felt like the old days when I would hide on the floor of a friend's car and sneak past security to go to Billy Bob's Park n Pork for lunch. I have a free period, which I just learned is rare and will not last for long.

I won't be posting much (sighs of relief all across my vast, vast readership) since the sis, her husb, and THEO!!!!! arrive tonight, AND I have to condense four years of education training into one weekend. Just wanted to say that it's going okay, I guess, but I feel like I'm in over my head and should probably quit next week and try to be a beekeeper with Ben. (He's on his way to an interview now, my little worker bee.)

Teaching sucks, yall!

but i was such a NERD!

I got the call today that I had been dreading: the principal, telling me I start tomorrow. I’ve had two weeks to prepare for this; I knew I would probably have 10th and 11th grade English, and could at least have come up with my classroom rules, made lists of possible poems to study, found some curricula online, or shopped for an insulated coffee mug and adorned it with stickers.

Instead, as I mentioned before, I chose my timeworn approach of denial. It worked so well in high school (writing an entire semester’s writing portfolio in one night), college (writing a 30-page senior thesis in two nights) and my “professional career” (writing a crappy bookstore newsletter in an hour).

Teaching is not writing. Nor is it philosophizing, or theorizing, my faves! Here are a few brief reasons why I am wracked with anxiety over tomorrow, so much so that a bewildered Ben is tiptoeing around me and asking every five minutes if I’m okay:

1. My classroom contains one copy of a textbook, a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich in the rusty desk drawer, and a folder of mimeographed notes on certain students…
2. These notes, written by counselors, special ed teachers, and god-knows-what-other-deviant-behavioral-specialists, instruct me on how to handle the students, strewn throughout all six of my classes, and their assorted, um, traits: ADD, bipolar disorder, history of sexual harassment and inappropriate touching of males and females, chronic truancy, to name a few (chosen for maximum shock value, I admit). Among the tips for individual kiddos: call probation officer, don’t get too close when student gets aggressive, allow student to “walk off” her anger, call security sooner than standard school rules suggest.
3. My students range from freshmen to juniors, and are either level “Y” or “Z”. These are the two lowest levels of English. Something tells me the classroom demeanor I honed from college professors (sit in a circle, try to get the students to talk about "the text") won’t cut the mustard here.

I realize this is flawed logic, and tainted by a sense of entitlement that is unfounded and unjust, BUT. I was a nerd! I was never even in an “X” class, let alone Y or Z! I did all my work, was a Star Student (really, I got to go to McDonald’s with the principal and other SS’s for that), and hung out with teachers at recess. I want an Honors class, I want an Honors class!

showtime, synergy!

Has there been anything comparable to Jem & the Holograms in the last 20 years? I don't think there has. I watched a few episodes today from Netflix. All camp appeal aside, the show embodies the best legacies of the 80s: the charity was as big as the hair, and it encouraged girls to believe they could be both philanthropists and high-fashion singers. A world where a group of thin-voiced girls in torn clothing and wigs use their cachet to make a pro bono 'rock blockbuster' to pay for a blind foster child's eye operation? Only in the 80s. You will never see Lindsay Lohan put the deed to Starlight House on the line for the benefit of others. I am not ashamed that I organized my friends in 10th grade into a Jem club. Or that we adorned our schoolwork that year with drawings of Jem's earrings and held slumber parties expressly for Jem screenings.

48 hours from now, I will either be:
-promising a roomful of high school sophomores six packs and cigarettes if they'll be nice to me
-counseling migrant parents (mostly coffee pickers from Mexico) with parenting and learning exercises for their toddlers
-traveling among schools to observe special education classes and enter data into some sort of tracking system. I don't know.

I won't lie; the third one, with its promise of hours at a desk and lack of potential humiliation, is my favorite. Lately when I go to the bank, I find myself eyeing the tellers' candy jars, photo frame magnets, and giant insulated mugs of soda with envy. What a job, all from the comfort of a padded swivel stool. I'm sure that, like waitressing, the glamour of the profession will fade after the first few Splenda-fueled hours. But, like waitressing, I would probably relish it. Even after I'd poured my thousandth glass of iced tap water and cursed the cheapos for not ordering bottled, I got a little thrill from being entrusted with people's sustenance. They drank when I said they would drink! There is something essential about such work that allows me to romaticize this and other wage labor jobs I have held.

But, really, I'm just lazy and afraid of conflict, which I fear awaits me in the classroom. So if I can get an office-y job, I will take it. All of these possibilities come from my parents' connections through the teacher mafia.

Today is B-minus two. Tomorrow is my last B-free day. Yippee! Ben told me that he liked reading about himself (but seemed bored by the rest), so I will now try to mention him in every post. Gotta keep the man interested.

b minus three

The countdown is almost over. I miss you-know-who so much. It's surprising how much my happiness depends on being tickled, teased, and otherwise tortured for several hours out of each day. Life without him is dull indeed. No wet willies or Indian burns? No giggling, curly head peeking around a corner as I try to use the remote control whose batteries have been removed? Finding my journal in the same place every day instead of hidden in the trash? As Stephanie and I like to say, What's the point?

I have been drowning my loneliness in True Hollywood Stories (the best one so far is "The Price is Right") and home makeover shows. My mom and I are now addicted to "Brat Camp," which I am writing off as research for the teaching job I am both counting on and dreading. School starts on Friday, and I still don't know if I have a job. Everyone here is sure I will get one, and it's not uncommon for new teachers to be hired the day before school starts, or even after that. I should be scared, but will choose my typical response, denial and avoidance.

Actual things that have happened:
1. last night, had dinner at the home of Kona's old gossip columnist, the one responsible for "Taka," then played Scrabble with her daughter, a champion tournament player who got over 500 points.
2. today, went to a church picnic with my mom at an estate that once belonged to the Beach Boys.
3. talked to Benito, who has unloaded the cursed U-Haul and is now Oakland-ing it up with his friend, Jon, who drove out with him. From what I could hear during our conversations on the road trip, they are basically acting like third graders, which seems to happen whenever they're together. Well, sometimes they act like seventh graders.

As for the job situation, I am ensnared in the labyrinthine bureaucracy that is the Department of Education. I am terrified that I will be offered a job this week. What will I teach? I don't know how! More important, what will I wear?

praise be to the small town

Praise the Lord, and pass the dried marlin. While Ben is toiling behind the wheel of a depressingly fuel inefficient U-Haul somewhere near Barstow (seriously, he’s a travel ballad waiting to happen), I feel like I’ve just won the lottery. If the lottery is the perfect house for us, at an unbelievable price, with rental conditions so ideal I would not have let myself hope for them because it would tempt the fates a little too much.

We’ll be renting a three-bedroom house from my father’s childhood friend. It’s his mother’s old house, less than a mile from my parents’, in the subdivision where I spent the better part of my childhood sunbathing and eating peanut-butter-and-guava-jelly sandwiches on the Sasakis’ asphalt driveway after swimming at “Auntie Faith’s pool,” our ersatz country club. Just up the hill is McDonalds, South Kona’s only chain anything, where we would split a large order of fries four ways, dipping each fry in ketchup at least three times before chewing to make the deliciousness last longer. On the same street live: my third grade teacher (who’s also my great-aunt); my sister’s third grade teacher; my fifth grade teacher and her husband, once my elementary school principal; my sixth grade teacher; two of my dad’s classmates (married to each other); and my eleventh grade English teacher.

Luckily, the house is surrounded by every tropical plant you can imagine, including mango, banana & lychee trees. So we won’t have to worry about being on our best Japanese schoolteacher-approved behavior. The house was built in the ‘50s, in a style I shall call Kealakekua Minimalist Modern. It evokes nostalgia for Spam and rice, creamy Jello squares, and tatami house slippers, which I may require all visitors to wear.

And it has an organ, complete with a stack of hymnals and sheet music, so I can keep Ben in line by threatening him with the opening bars of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” There's a screened-in patio, tons of windows, and a tiled furo tub. The hardwood floors are perfect for tap-dancing, but I will have to limit myself to the carport so I don’t scuff them up and ruin our relationship with the owners.

Does it sound like I’m gloating? I am. The house is, in may ways, exactly what I was picturing for our life here. Once I got past the beachfront cottage fantasy. I was starting to panic as I learned more about the housing market here, and was spinning that into hatred of everyone who has moved to Kona since 1995 (when I left). Now my self-righteous resentment of change can go back to simmering beneath the surface, where it belongs.

We were able to circumvent the demoralizing house-hunting process through a method I will never scoff at again. Yesterday, my dad's pal called to say he was in town for a funeral. I heard him ask, "You know anyone who has a house to rent?" Within half an hour, the friend had talked to his sister, they'd decided to rent it to us, and this morning we picked up the keys.

Now, if I can just find a job on this island. Although with this deal, I can probably afford to work at McDonalds. And I can walk to work!

PS-sorry about the awkward use of pronouns. I am not sure of the protocol for using people's names on this blog, even if it's just first names, and even if no one reads it. Any tips?

All writing will be in earnest

I hate blogging already. The word "blog" makes me think of a toy based on suction cups, like a green rubber frog that climbs the walls and then turns sticky and dumb.
I just made the mistake of revisiting a few of the blogs I used to read compulsively, like Que Sera Sera, then made the bigger mistake of clicking on their links lists, which led to an endless spiral of shame and despair. So many hip, uber-ironic people out there, with web-design skills and the catalogic knowledge necessary to riff on celebrities, fashion, underground writers (I guess), and items like the Roomba -- whatever consumer good is the newest thing that's cool to covet or ridicule. I don't even know if the word "cool" is still used to mean "cool" in the same way as it was in the late 90s, when my awareness, and hence ability to be post-post-post-modern, fell into its deep and eternal sleep. Now I know how adults in the 80s felt when "bad" really meant "good!" Ack!

What I'm trying to say is: I am a dork. Not in the cool way in which it was (in the late 90s, at least) cool to be a self-aware dork. I'm a Jean Teasdale dork (see "Ack!" above). In the sense that I have not turned my dorkre into lucre by becoming a programmer or graphic designer or wry social critic, or one of those people who talk on "I Love the 80s." In the sense that I know it was recently cool to address inanimate objects or institutions in essays ("Dear Retail Clothing Industry, get a clue," "Bath poufs, you're the best"), but I don't know what the current mutation of that is, or where to go to find it. In the sense that I enjoy watching Access Hollywood, and adopt the opinions of Salon.com as my own because they feel so right.

Ben was right: I am lazy. I lack the wherewithal to calibrate the proportion of irony, ennui, and ripped-off street slang presently in vogue.

So I hereby announce that I will do away with all meta-commentary, and blog in earnest. My lady friend Lucrecia knows what I mean. Earnestness has served me well, and I will trust it. This blog will be strewn with adorable photos of my nephew, Theo; crooked self-portraits of Ben and I arm in arm at sunset, holding cans of Coors Light (in our other arms); hand-wringing over real estate prices and the constant, creeping decay of the tropics; and trite anecdotes about work and family that will be interesting because they're about me.
I hope that's okay.

hot hawaiian nights

Tonight after dinner, Meemaw, Peepaw & I will go to Long's Drugs to pick up prescriptions, then stop at Wendy's on the way home for a Frosty, or perhaps Mickey D's for a sundae (you have to say Mickey D's to be in the right frame of mind). It is precisely for moments like this that I moved back here. That, and the fact that my father bribed county road workers to extend the guardrail they were fixing above our house (someone crashed into it yesterday morning) with pineapple plants he dug up from our yard. I am especially excited because they now offer mix-ins to the already perfect Frosty! To my mind, this is a far better change than mandarin oranges as an alternative to fries.

A sidenote, to those of you who are making plans to visit us: we may not have pineapples if you come in the next six months.

With a Butterfinger Frosty under my belt, I'll be on my way toward looking more like a teacher and less like a pre-teen. My friend-since-preschool, Lori, and I visited her grandma the other day, and she told me I look like a freshman. I took my mom straight to Macy's (Kona's lone source of clothes other than hoochie surf shorts and aloha wear) and bought what I thought was a respectable outfit, black microfiber pants & a sleeveless turquoise & black v-neck top. Over the past few days, I have picked apart all the ways in which my students will be able to make fun of me for my outfit, and nicknames they might spread around the school inspired by my skinny, hairy arms; frizzy hair (seriously, I'm like Monica when Friends went to the Carribean); lack of a tan; and of course, diminutive stature. After college, I gradually learned to live with my physical shortcomings, even to relish them, but I have regressed into my high school self, which was essentially a walking bin of self-loathing. Cameron Diaz claims she was traumatized by being called "Skeletor" in high school, but she lies! One day my math teacher brought in a toothpick with a grape stuck on it, showed it to the big group of kids with whom I played Connect Four in her classroom at lunch, and said, "This is what Jill would look like if she got pregnant!" From then on I was known as "toothpick with a grape stuck on it." Very original.

Clearly, I have some confidence to build before I start work. Good thing I'm not doing anything like living with my parents and hanging out at McDonald's to compound the dorkiness.

the new, better me

Well, a better color scheme anyway. True to my nature, I chose too quickly, then became dissatisfied with what I had as soon as I saw my friend Dennis's blog. Dennis has always incited envy in me, first with his impeccable filing method at Bookworks, then with his orange car, now with his minimalist blog and its freedom from banner ads. Thanks, DP! I hope people won't be too mad at me for making them sign up for the prototype before. Please don't leave me!