One Week!

Seven days until one of the best days of the year.

One day of listening to presentations and then grading papers.
A Saturday of grading papers.
A Sunday of not grading papers.
A Monday of maybe some adventure and grading some papers.
A Tuesday of not really teaching and grading papers.
A Wednesday of not really teaching and grading papers.
A Thursday of really, really, really not teaching and hopefully all the papers will be graded.

And then.  and then... and then... THE DAY!!  The double celebration of the last day of school and D-DAY will  begin.  The students are only going to be at the school for about an hour and a half, and they're only heading to their first period class.  Normally this is sort of a pain, but, wouldn't you know it, I got lucky enough to have first period prep!  That means I don't have ANY students the last day of school.  I get to spend the time entering grades, cleaning my room, and mentally checking out (if it's possible to get any more checked out than I already am).

Then, I get out at about two.  I rush home, I pick up donuts (requests?), I pick up soda (requests?), I pace around the apartment waiting for my friends who want to dread my hair to get off of work, I order pizza (requests?), I take a shower, I compulsively rearrange the furniture, I fret, I take a few last pictures of unknotted hair, I pace, I lay out every item of my dreadlocks kit, I watch the how to video, again...And then...the dreading begins!!!


For those of you interested in helping with, observing, or simply mocking, show up at my place next Friday.  The festivities begin at five, and continue until we're done.  Anyone's welcome, just send me a text, drop me a comment, facebook me, or send a flare.  They'll be food, movies, and the proud knowledge that someday, when my dreads look awesome, you were responsible for their beginning.

Vegan Day Three: The Social Not-Eater

I have now been vegan for over 50 hours, and I've already been offered several tasty things I can't eat.  I think that's going to be the hardest part of this whole vegan "adventure."  When someone brings cookies to work, I can't have any.  When a student offers me homemade baklava, I had to turn it down.  Today there were sugar cookies and donuts and chocolate cookies all available at work, and I munched on my carrot sticks, consoling myself by trying to muster up some feeling of superiority.  My superiority's pretty thin, however, since I've only been vegan for two and a half days and I don't think your diet is a good reason to feel superior to anyone anyway.  Vegans are better people in my mind, just more dedicated to an ideal most of us don't feel passionately about.

The only other hiccup in my vegan paradise has been the lack of chocolate and readily available dessert.  I've found a way around part of this problem by resurrecting a favorite dessert from childhood:  cinnamon toast.  I can't use butter, so I slather my vegan bread (I had to go to two stores to find vegan bread!  Stop putting honey in every single loaf people!  You're starving me!) with a little olive oil, then generously pour on the sugar, and then add a few dashes of ground cinnamon.  Pop it into the toaster oven for a few seconds and presto!  Dessert!

The inability to eat 99% percent of what people bring to share makes me feel both sad and guilty, however.  What do I do for the end of year faculty luncheon?  Pack my own sandwich and drink the soda?  What if I get asked on a date?  Do I explain that I can't eat anything, and offer to make him dinner?  Gandhi used to pack his own food or just go hungry if there was no food available that he didn't consider immoral/unwise to eat.  Since my veganism has only a dash of morality behind it, I find the prospect of watching all my coworkers eat while going hungry, or making a first date suddenly very awkward and giving him the impression I'm a rabid hippie.

On the flip side, the inability to eat 99% of processed food means that I'm going to be eating a whole lot more homemade items.  It's easy to make vegan bread, mustard, dessert, and meals.  It's a pain to buy them.  It surprised me to find out that there were a lot of animal products that weren't dairy or meat in most foods you pick up off the shelf.  Riboflavin, for example, is in just about everything and is usually derived from animals.  Carmine Red is made from crushed up beetles.

Other than hunting for vegan bread and refusing food others offer me, I've enjoyed my first three days of being vegan.  I'm looking forward to the next 37 days of dietary adventure.

The Immoral Vegetarian Goes a Step Further

Every year, my sister asks me what my New Year's resolutions are, and every year, I sort of mumble through an answer about all the improvements I'd like to make.  You know, the ones I'm always muddling my way through in a vague sort of way.  I'm not much of a New Year's resolution maker.  I could make up all sorts of excuses for this.  I could say that I don't like the idea of making a new start once a year instead of continually.  I could say that, as a teacher, New Year's always feels like the middle of the year and not the beginning to me, and I'm far more likely to make goals over the summer for the next school year than I am for the calendar year.  I could say that setting up a pass/fail goal is a silly idea, because once you fail (around February), you're done for the year with a goal that should have been the subject of continued progress.  The actual truth about why I don't usually make New Year's resolutions probably lies somewhere along the lines of I forget, it takes too much effort, and the dilemma of what goals to set.  If I set grand goals, I set myself up for failure, which is lame.  If I make easy goals I know I'll reach, then I feel like I'm cheating.  So every year I keep my vagaries, thank you very much.

But not this year.  This year, when my sister asked the familiar question about my goals, I was armed and ready.  This year I actually embarked on some measurable, definable, goals.  These goals I have, for the most part,  managed to keep going.  One of these goals was to be a vegetarian.  I've been a vegetarian before, but it's different this time.  Before, I was a strict vegetarian for one month, mostly because a friend had dared me.  Now I've been a non-strict vegetarian for five months all on my own.  Notice the key word there, non-strict.  Since I'm not going vegetarian for moral reasons about cruelty to animals, I don't feel the need to be strict about it.  I'm an amoral vegetarian.  An immoral one?  Whatever, a vegetarian for non-moral reasons.  I'm vegetarian out of a general concern for what the meat industry does to our planet, what eating that much meat does to our health, and a belief that when the Lord said to eat meat sparingly or in times of famine (D&C 89), he meant it.  So my policy for the last five months has been pretty casual.  If I make it or buy it for myself, I will make a genuine effort to make sure it's vegetarian.  If someone else is cooking or buying, or if Allie and I are putting together a roommate dinner or something, then I let it go.  I try not to even say anything.  I figure that unless I'm allergic to something, no one needs to work around my food preferences.  Sometimes I refer to myself as a "non-annoying" vegetarian.

http://www.topnews.in/people/mahatma-gandhi

I've liked this lifestyle.  But I'm still eating too much meat.  And while I'm eating too much meat, I'm also reading Gandhi's autobiography, during which he takes about a hundred pages to talk about food.  He tried several different diets for various health or spiritual reasons, and for most of his life he ate only fruits and nuts. He placed so much faith in vegetarianism and veganism that he frequently went against doctors' orders to consume dairy or meat products for his or his family's health.  He placed his life on the line for his dietary beliefs on more than on occasion.  He also makes a lot of intriguing arguments for a diet of restraint and self-control.

I am ready to experiment.  I'm not going rabidly vegan.  I'm not joining PETA or protesting chicken farmers or lecturing other people on their evil, animal-killing ways.  But, just for me personally, I'm going to give it a try.  I'm going vegan.  Gandhi at one point urges his readers to experiment to find what will best benefit them, and I'm going to take him up on it.  This will be an experiment only for now.  When it's over, I'll go back to my non-annoying vegetarianism, and will probably settle somewhere into non-annoying veganism.  But for the next little while I'm going to be strictly vegan in the food I consume (I'm not going to through away my leather shoes or my dread wax, though).

I was going to go vegan for a month, but then I decided to be more biblical about it and go for 40 days.  My 40 days begins today, and will last until July 2nd.  I'm making this public, so that I have to be accountable to at least the five people who read my blog.  I'll report back to you with the complaints, realizations, and any great spiritual transformations that happen along the way.

Day One.  I go vegan.  Geronimo!

Dirty Hippie Burn-out Bum

Or

Why I Want Dreads Part 2

After my initial attraction to dreads, years passed, and I didn't give them much thought.  And I have to admit, that when I first looked into them as an adult it was on one of those "Ugh!  I swear I'm going to just shave my head so I never have to do my hair again!" days.  Then it struck me that dreads were a good compromise.  I'd never have to do anything with my hair, but I'd still have hair!  It'd be like a living wig!

Then I did a whole bunch of real world research and realized they took effort, especially at first.  I saw that some people had really gross-looking dreads.  But then there were others who had beautiful dreads, and I just wasn't sure which category I'd be in if I tried it.  It was like chopping off all of my hair, something I'd wanted to do for years, but that I'd never have the guts to do because I thought you either looked good like that or you didn't, and there was no way to know ahead of time which one you were going to be.

But then I DID cut my hair, and I did dye it crazy colors, and now I DO have the guts.  And, despite knowing how much work they are, and despite there being the risk that they are going to look ghastly, I'm willing, eager, champing at the bit, to get dreads.

Because I love them.  Plain and simple.  Most people I know don't really like dreads, but I must be missing that gene or have an extra hole in my head because I think that they are wonderful.  I think they can look cool, attractive, sexy, neato, classy, different, and awesome.  There are gross dreads out there, but I'm willing to take a chance that mine won't be among them.

They're a commitment, I get that.  They take guts, I understand.  But you know what?  I'm into doing things that force me to have guts and commit to stuff right now.  The person I always wanted to be wouldn't be afraid to have dreads.  She'd go right out and get them regardless of the fact that her mother pretty much said she wouldn't be attracting any men this year.  I want to be that strong, fearless girl.  I think I'm going to love the dreads.  I think I have the personality to carry them off, and to ignore the fact that every one in conservative Utah is going to think I'm crazy, especially the parents of my students.  As Johnny Clean, spokesman for DreadheadHQ, said "Dreads are different, and the people who wear them are different."

I stole this picture from a friend's blog.  Maybe someday I'll have dreads like that.  

That's the dream.  That's the plan.  Are you ready for The Insecurity?  The Insecurity says that they're going to look awful.  Mair hair is still above collar length, and the dreads are going to make it shorter.  I'll barely have a couple inches of dreads, a sort of white-girl dread-fro.  For the first month there will be elastics in my hair, I'll look ridiculous, and it will take years of looking goofy and weird before the dreads look good.  Then, perhaps worse, The Insecurity whispers that I'm going to look like I'm trying too hard.  Like I'm some wanna be hippie who thinks a hairstyle will make her be unique and interesting.

But however this adventure turns out.  I am not getting dreads because I'm a "dirty hippie burned out bum."  I'm getting because I love them.  As much as my hair has been driving me nuts during this growing out process, I've celebrated every millimeter of length to add to my dreads.

The last question I get from people is, "What are you going to do when school starts in the fall?"  I'm going to keep the dreads.  I've already cleared it with my principal. I'm committed to them for at least a year.  They may last for much longer than that, I don't know yet.  But I'm going to "give it the old college try."

D-Day is in 12 days.  

How I Got This Way

Or

Why I Want Dreads Part 1

The story of why I want dreads begins in February 2001.  It was the first time I saw someone wearing dreadlocks, and I think that first impression has colored the rest of my experience with them.  (Which means, unfortunately, that if your first impression of them was awful, you will probably hate mine by default.  Sigh.  Nothing I can do there.)  I was a freshman in high school, fourteen years old, and at a debate tournament. I was doing a duo interp of a scene from Jane Eyre with a friend of mine.  At the age of 14, I nearly believed that I was Jane Eyre.  The plain Quakeress, firm and quiet and resolute, was my hero.  At the tournament, all of the contestants were dressed up: ties, skirts, suits, shined shoes, and best behavior.  A decade later and as a teacher, I think we probably looked adorable, a lot like when little kids wear tuxedos for weddings, but at the time we all felt very grown up and professional.

Except for my hoodie (I had already changed out of my suit),
this is what we looked like at debate tournaments.

As Jack and I went to our second or third round of the day, one of the teams of actors we were up against (interp is primarily an acting event) caught my eye.  Well, one of the contestants caught my eye, and not just because he was cute.  He was neatly dressed in a suit and had the careful posture we all were sporting that day, but he also had dreads.  They weren't long and dramatic; they were short, ear length or shorter.  What drew me to them is the way they paired with the suit to form a unique balance of professional and personality.  I got the same impression from those dreads that I got when watching one year's Miss America contest when I was probably seven.  We were sort of watching it by accident, having found it while flipping through the four channels we had to see what was on.  My sisters, mother, and I watched as all of the contestants strolled out on the stage like princesses in their evening gowns.  There were lots of pastel colors (early 90s) and bare shoulders and low necklines and big blond hairdos.  Then came one contestant who walked onto the stage with a big, genuine smile, brown hair in a sleek up-do, and a bright, neon green dress with sleeves.  My mom and both of my older sisters took one look at her and said, with obvious respect, "That girl's got spunk."  Looking from my older sisters and my mother to the screen, the little girl that I was, who had never read Jane Eyre, immediately wanted to have "spunk," too.

I got the same feeling when I visited Arizona last year and saw Saguaro cactus growing out of a rock in the desert.  "Wow, that's spunk," and then, "I want to be that tough and determined." I looked at that kid's hair and instantly fell in love with it.  At the time of that debate tournament I had no idea what dreads were.  I just knew that the boy's unusual but somehow fitting hairstyle had that mysterious spunk that I was always on the watch for.  Later, when I asked Jack what you called that hair style, he laughed at me and told me that I had just seen dreads for the first time.

It may surprise those who haven't known me since I was a preteen, but I didn't have much obvious spunk.  I was extremely conservative in person and dress.  The me I am now was in there, my friends can tell you I was just as random and weird then as I am now, but it was buried in there pretty deep.  It took me until my junior or senior year to feel comfortable wearing a hoodie to school; I thought they were sloppy and too casual.  When I was a freshman in college I saw a girl wearing  tie for a belt.  I thought that was awesome and bought a second hand tie to wear as a belt myself.  It sat in my closet for months waiting for me to get up the guts to tie it on and walk out the door.  It took me until I was 20 years old to have the chutzpah to get the perm I had wanted to try for years.  Before the perm, the most daring thing I'd ever done with my hair was to get bangs and cut it to shoulder length with layers.  There's a reason that, when I started wearing skulls and crossbones, the first bit of pirate-themed stuff I bought was underwear.  It wasn't to be sexy; it was because no one would see it.  I was way into pirates, but didn't have the guts to wear it on the outside.

The perm that made me feel like a rebel.

As the years passed, I started to get the hang of who I was and who I wanted to be and how to let all the parts of my personality show, the Quakeress and the hippie and the punk and the 5-year-old-little girl.  It helped to have friends just as quirky and unique who never seemed to be afraid to wear or say whatever their whims prompted to them.  Friends like Di, Anna, Lina, Amanda, and many others gave me examples of people who could wear whatever they wanted and have nobody care, because their personalities were more charismatic and eye-catching than the pixie cut, the crazy clothes, the shaved head, or the pink Mohawk could ever hope to be.  Gradually, I experimented on my own.  I wore huge skulls plastered on my back, I wore gypsy skirts to church, I wore feather necklaces, I wore knee high argyle socks under my dress pants.  I cut my hair into the pixie cut I'd been coveting since I was 12, and then I dyed it red, black, blonde, copper red, purple, and back to brown in a year's time.    When my puzzled mother asked if I was going through an identity crisis, I honestly said that it felt more like I finally gotten so comfortable with who I was that I could wear whatever the heck I dreamed up and it wouldn't change who I was.

So.  That brings us up to the present day.  All of that long back story is to tell you that after a journey that long, I am triumphantly making things happen now.  I am systematically going through the the wishes and whims and crazy ideas I've always harbored but lacked the guts to implement.  If a wish isn't harmful or wrong in some way, I'm making it happen.  I'm actively going after the things I want, and having dreads is on the list.  After taking that many years to get to this point of confidence, I am very attached to doing these things I always believed myself to be incapable of doing.

"So why dreads?" you may be asking.  What is it about them that captured your imagination so permanently?  Well, the answers to that are many and they range from the shallow and superficial to the personal and unpost-on-my-bloggable.  Which means you'll probably end up with an overdose of the shallow reasons and conclude that I, and my dreads, are rather pathetic and shallow.  Who knows, maybe you're right.   But, looking at the length of this post, you'll have to be right another day.  I'll talk about dreads specifically in an up and coming post within the week, promise no crossies.

I Got Googled

Since I started posting on my blog more, I have begun almost compulsively checking my blog stats.  How many people read which blogs?  What times of day do my friends read blogs?  What search terms draw someone to my blog?  etc.  How on earth do those random hits pop up?  Most of my readers by far are in the US, but then they're the outliers.  Then there's the speculation about the outliers, is someone from Malaysia really that attached to my blog, or am I being spammed?  I usually figure it's spam.

Well, this week I got googled.  It was Dread Info #3 that did it.  Suddenly that sucker has 50 views.  That's twice as many as any post I've ever written.  That's about five or six times the number of views my usual post gets.  Look at my traffic sources, most of them are from different versions of google from around the world.  People in Canada, the United Kingdom, India, Australia are all getting google results that include my blog.  Goodness knows what search terms their using that lead them to that blog.  Samson?  Dread information?  Six of them found my blog by searching for "Egyptian art."  It makes me laugh.

Hello, lost cyber-searchers.  These probably aren't the posts you were looking for.  But welcome anyway.

On a side note, here's a link to the-burning-house.com, a website that asked people to post a picture of what they would take with them if the house was burning down.  It's actually really intriguing, and the photography's good, too.

Another First for Miss E.

I gave two of my students the link to my blog today.  I dont' know how I feel about that.  I've never intended this blog to be really private, but I've also never intended it to be a public, award-winning blog either.  This is still mostly a forum in which I use blogging to keep friends involved in my life, practice my writing, and write out and define my own thoughts.  Having students here means I might question what I say when I talk about students or student work, blog during class (guilty secret), or be all honest and vulnerable about my ideas or my life.

I wavered back and forth for five minutes or so before giving them the link.  They're starting a blog of their own, after the style of the ones we've been reading in The Gospel According to Larry, and I want to welcome them into the blogging world and community.  They trusted me with the link to their blog, shouldn't I return the gesture of good faith?  Besides, haven't I been working to turn this blog into a slightly bigger deal?  Posting more and more often?  Linking to it on my facebook?  Becoming an active blogger?  I read the blogs of other teachers who have students read their blogs, and the world hasn't ended.  And I've only heard about one lawsuit regarding what teachers say on their blogs...That's not a happy thought.

But really, I don't insult or rant about students on here, right?  I share the occasional, humorous story with the names changed, and I think I've shared a few haiku and funny quotes from papers.  Besides, what are they going to find out me they haven't learned from spending hours a week listening to me ramble on?  By the end of the year, my students and I have spent more time together and seen each other on a more consistent basis than a lot of friends I made in college.  They're going to find out that I'm getting dreads, that I'm taking classes for history and GT, and that I have had boyfriends and sometimes still do.  Big deal, right? So, whether they every read my blog or not, I've opened up the possibility.

My students could be here.  Any moment.  Watching you.  Watching me.  Watching...

Dread Info #3

The ancient Egyptians wore dreads.
And, if their art is to believed, they looked pretty good.
http://mihomeschool.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Egyptian%20Princess.jpg

I decided to stop calling this series of posts Dread Myths, since I'll probably end up confirming some of what you've heard.  I'm also going to start posting info as I think of it instead of very systematically.  Since we've covered the basics, how they're made and why they don't make you smell bad, I figure I can do this.  (If you missed them, check out Dread Myth #1 and Dread Myth #2 for the basic info on dreadlocks.)

So let's start with the questions I've been asked.  The first was about the name "dreadlocks."  According to wikipedia and some other websites I checked out (who probably got their info from wikipedia anyway), referring to the knotted cords of hair as "locks" has been pretty universal for a couple hundred years.  (Dreads are pretty old, thousands of years.  There's speculation that Sampson had them.  There are even a few brave souls that claim that Christ had them.  But I'll just say they've been around forever and have been worn by people of just about every major religion and culture at one time or another.)  The "dread" part, as near as I can discover, comes from the Rastafarian religion.  The locks were a symbol of a promise to live in awe and dread of the Lord.  Eventually they became known as "dreadlocks," or simply "dreads," or, if you're the internet, "dreds," "dredz," or even "mah dreddies," which is about enough to make someone sick.

Numbers 6:5 "All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no ^arazor come upon his head: until the days be fulfilled, in the which he separateth himself unto the Lord, he shall be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow."
http://www.i-heart-god.com/images/Samson_Jawbone.jpg

The second question was about removing dreads from one's hair.  The easiest method is to cut them off.  But, contrary to popular belief, the internet assures me that cutting my hair off isn't my only option for when I decide to let go of my dreads.  Several companies make some very intense conditioners and claim that if you let them sit in your hair for a long time, your locks can be untangled with a lot of patience.  I assume you're hair doesn't exactly go back to silky smooth and straight afterwards, but it is, at least, still on your head.  This also means that you could cut off all but the last few inches of your dreads and then untangle the remaining, leaving you with a manageable bob, instead of bald.

But, when it comes to my own hair, I think I'm far more likely to to lose my dreads than loose them.  First of all, the inch or so of hair, closest to your skull usually isn't knotted anyway, so cutting your locks off would still leave you with at least an inch of hair.  I've had an inch of hair before, and I liked it.  Besides, back when I was trying to decide whether or not get dreads this summer, my other favorite option was to shave my head (all the way, BIC it completely).  So if I end up cutting my hair off, I don't mind.  If when the time comes I do mind, I'll detangle my dreads instead.

So there you have the answers.  If anybody has more questions, post 'em in the comments and I'll get to them.  otherwise you'll be subjected to more of my ramblings.  I am working on a lengthy, probably philosophical post about why I personally want dreads, and I'll publish that as soon as it's ready.

Dread Myth #2

For any of these Dread Myths, feel free to ask questions in the comments if there's information about dreads you want to know.  I'll take responsibility for looking up the answer and reporting back to you.  I'd hate to bore you with a whole lot of information you don't want to read, so your questions can help direct the next few blogs.

Dread Myth #2
How You Make Dreads

After I tell people I'm not going to get dreads by just not washing or brushing my hair (see Dread Myth #1), most people then ask if I'm going to braid it, put honey/glue/dirt/wax/etc. in it, tie it in knots, or twist it.

All of these methods can work, although some of them are more gross than others.  Different methods of creating dreads work differently for different types of hair.  The two strand twist method that looks so fantastic works best on African American hair, so that’s not an option for my super straight Pantene ProV style hair.  What I will be doing (and what my friends who are coming to my dread party will be helping with) is backcombing.  I’ll wash my hair, let it dry, and then begin the adventure.  Because I want all the help and support I can get in making my own dreads, I purchased a kit from Dreadheadhq.com.  This kit includes a few things like “lock peppa” and “lock accelerator” that I’ll put in my hair before I get started, I think they are supposed to make my hair have a bit more texture and not be so slippery.

dreadheadhq.com

Then my wonderful helpers and I will divide my hair into about 100 rubber-banded sections.  Then we take these metal combs that came in my kit (you can use a regular rat tail comb, but they tend to break after a few dreads I guess) and gradually comb the hair towards the roots, forming a sort of cord/knot thing.  That will take about an eternity.  Then I’ll rub a small amount of wax onto each dread and work it in until it’s invisible.  The wax is supposed to help hold the loose hair in place until it starts to knot on its own.  After I’ve done that to all 100 dreads, I’ll palm roll all of them individually, and then maybe I can go to sleep.  

Contrary to what I initially expected, dreads are not always a low maintenance hair style.  Maintenance on dreads is actually really high the first few months.  Every time I wash it I’ll have to rewax it, and I’ll probably spend a fair amount of time every day working in loose hairs, palm rolling, etc.  Eventually the hair in the dreads will form much more secure knots and “lock up,” as it’s usually referred to.  After two or three months the amount of maintenance drops off sharply as the dreads “mature.”  It often takes about a year for dreads to fully mature, but when they do, you only have to spend about 10 minutes a week on them.  

So there you have it.  How I'm going to get dreads.  No dirt, honey, or tying knots involved.  Only three weeks and counting.  Wanna Come Help?  

That's Holy Miss E. to You, Puny Mortal!

"Miss E., would you like to be a GOD in my World?"  Poor soul, he said it so formally, and in such a loud voice, that the whole class stopped talking and started giggling.  Then he started blushing.

"A goddess?" I corrected.

"Yeah," he said, clearly embarrassed by the eyes and amusement of the entire class.

"Goddess of what?" I always double check.  I don't want to end up as the goddess of awful teachers, stupidity, or something unflattering.  I don't mind being the goddess of torture or homework or teachers or English--I don't mind playing the villain, but I don't want to be insulted.

He stood there stammering for a moment under the double scrutiny of the class and his teacher, then his eyes fell on the boxes of crayons behind me.  "Crayons!" he said, relieved.

"I'd love to be the goddess of crayons."

The class laughed and returned to their talking and working on their projects.  They're making up their own mythologies (which explains how this conversation came about in the first place).  As they returned to drawing their maps, I heard one remark, "That is the best pick up line ever!"

Recovering his confidence as he reached his desk, he began to enumerate on my powers as the goddess of crayons.  I will have a magical crayon that can draw anything. If I want to draw "a magical pony horse," I could draw it and then ride away on it.

I have been many things over the years, including the Cabbage Avenger at one point (but that was in high school), but I think this is my first time as Evana, the Goddess of Crayons, wielder of the Crayon of Power.

Dread Myth #1

I think I forget how much research I've done on dreadlocks.  I started researching them years ago, and so I forget how common some of the common misconceptions about dreadlocks are.  It always surprises me when I get a question from a friend that I thought everyone knew the answer to.  Then I have to remind myself that I am the only one of my friends who's ever wanted dreads, so I'm the only one I should expect to know that stuff.

As this happens more an more often, I'm beginning to realize that, given the information all my friends and family have about dreads, they are going to be much more alarmed about what I'm doing.  So, in order to foster the dissemination of correct information and an end to misconceptions about what I'm doing with my hair in a few weeks, I am going dispel a few of the most common myths about dreadlocks.  I'll spare you all the minute details I've picked up through my obsession, but I'll try and communicate the gist of my research so you don't think I've gone crazy.  Well, any crazier than I actually have.

Myth #1
You Get Dreads By Not Washing Your Hair...Ever...

Wrong.  Well, you can get dreads that way, and some people still do, but they are becoming the minority.  Dreads do not have to be dirty.  They do not have to smell bad.  I'll be dreading my hair clean--I'll shower right before we put them in.  Then I'll continue to wash my hair multiple times a week (although probably not every day) for the duration of my time with dreads.  My dreads will probably smell like shampoo, just like everybody else's hair.

"Neglect" dreads, formed by never coming your hair and washing it really really infrequently take a loooong time to fully form.  Like a year.  When they do form, they are irregular (and probably smelly), forming in all different sizes and at all different speeds.  Let's be honest, I respect those dreads.  Those are gonna have some serious personality, but it's not gonna be my personality.  I can't stand to be that insanitary, and since I intend to continue to be a responsible professional and adult, I will be washing my hair.  The "hands off" approach to dreads can also leads to your dreads eventually beginning to "congo," or to combine into mega dreads.  Some people think this is awesome.  I think it's gross.

This is an extreme example, but it's still gross.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/217/nappyhairna5.jpg/sr=1

So I will be actively dreading my hair (hence the dread party), and I'll be maintaining it afterwards.  Purists, and there are a few out there, may feel like this is the sell-out way to get dreads, but I think the majority of dreadheads are beginning to move away from the smelly, hippie, all-natural stereotype.  And thank heaven.

Disappearing Act

Exactly four weeks until I get dreadlocks!!  That's not what this post is about, but I couldn't resist.  28 days!

This post is going to sound a lot like bragging.  It might be bragging, actually, but dang it I'm proud of myself!  I'll keep it short so that you will only be mildly disgusted by my pride.

ahem.

I have disappeared.

Well, to be more specific, 15 pounds of me have disappeared since December.  I'm lighter, I'm leaner, and by golly I am healthier than I was.  I can bound up flights of stairs, touch my forehead to my knees with my legs straight, climb a V2, do 10 man-style push ups, keep my balance in some crazy yoga positions, and jump rope better than I have since I was 10.

My roommates and friends are sick of the following phrase:

My pants don't fit.

They don't!  I shrunk out of the pants I bought this year, so I pulled out my old pants that were a trifle smaller.  I wore those until they hung on me like sack cloth.  Then I bought new pants.  Now they don't fit either.  I wore a pair of shorts yesterday that I never wore at all last summer.  They were too small.  Now I can slide them off with unbuttoning them.

Honestly, what I'm proud of isn't so much the actual weight loss, although I'm thrilled about that, but the fact that I did it.  I said I could do it, and then I made it happen in short order.  It took some work, some money, some dedication, and some doing of things I didn't always feel like doing, but I kept at it.  Keeping at things is not something I'm usually good at.  So I feel like this is not so much a victory over my waistline as it is a victory over my own character flaws.  That's what I'm proud of, not that I conquered my body, but that I conquered my mind.

I should mention that my new size does have it's disadvantages.  For example, my pants don't fit.  Do you have any idea how much money I have spent on clothes in the last five months?  I've kept my wardrobe light, not wanting to replace everything at once, and now the things I have replaced don't fit, either.  Large amounts of my clothes are now rather sacky on me.  Another disadvantage is that when I belay someone I can't keep my feet on the ground anymore.  If they fall I go up six inches.  Those extra 15 pounds were useful ballast that way.

For those of you who haven't already left this post in disgust, here is my 5 step recipe for success:

1.  Find things you like to do that are physical exercise.  It shouldn't be a punishment.  I don't like to run, so I didn't.  I went skateboarding, I went climbing, I joined a yoga studio.  It helped a lot that exercise was fun for me.  At the end of the day I didn't dread another of a strict and punishing regimen.  Instead I thought, "I get to go rock climbing again tomorrow? Score!!"

2.  Eat when you're hungry, not when you're bored.  Don't eat after 8 p.m.  You'll feel a lot like more like getting out of bed to go running or do yoga if you don't feel like an elephant crawled into your stomach and died.  Give up dessert.  If you can't give up dessert completely (and I usually can't), tell yourself you'll only take half of what you would usually take.  If you eat it slowly, it still takes as long and you get the same amount of that yummy taste in your mouth.

3.   Healthy snacks.  Since you're exercising all the time, you're going to be hungry all the time.  If you don't prepare ahead you'll head straight for the easy-to-access food that isn't so good for you.  I have developed a pretty severe hummus addiction.  I consume whole bags of celery, carrots, and peppers.  I eat sprouts now.

4.  Prioritize your exercise.  Don't be afraid to put it before your work, your friends, and your chores.  This will only make you a slight jerk hopefully.  Most days I do it before I grade papers, often before I hang out with friends.  "I'm sorry, I can't hang out because I'm off to go skateboarding by myself" feels weird the first few times you say it, and not getting your work done because you were rock climbing may feel like slacking, but hey, that's how you get healthy!  You're just achieving a different goal than work at that moment.  Your health is important.  Indulge in it.

5.  Speaking of indulging, you may need to spend some money.  In my case, a lot of money.  I can do that because I don't have a family to support.  Besides, it's my health and happiness I'm investing in, right?  Not to mention I'm picking up coordination, balance, and skills.  So the yoga membership, the climbing membership, the membership at the local rec center, the new workout clothes (turns out you can't make it on one sports bra and one pair of sweats when you exercise twice a day), the new clothes when your old ones don't fit, and the gallons of hummus are all worth it.  In my case I sold my iPod touch, and bought a shuffle and a classic.  It's probably extravagant to have two iPods, but I use both of them every single day.  I don't regret it at all.

And that's it.  If you happen to have a lot of spare alone time (I did) and some spare money (sorry savings account), anybody can do it!  What I mean is that I am lucky to be at stage in my life when I can do crazy things like this.

And I'm proud of myself.

Oops

When I was in high school, I spent a lot of time with debaters.  I was one, and I hung out with the other debaters at lunch, before and after school, and at the long weekend tournaments.  Anytime I wasn't actively required to be somewhere else, I was in the debate room.  In the debate room, one heard vocabularies that few high schoolers possessed, but there was one word that was used more often than any other by the debaters on my squad:  Hooch.  We called EVERYONE hooches.  It could be a playful or a bitter thing.  If you hadn't seen someone in a while it was appropriate to say something like, "I haven't seen you in forever, hooch! Where have you been?"  If someone stole your chair at lunch, they were a chair hooch.  If someone ate a fry when you weren't looking, they were a fry hooch.  If you were really annoyed the tone of the word would change.  When someone lied to you they were a hooch, when someone did something squirlly in a debate round they were a hooch.  We called each other, friends and enemies, hooches at least a 100 times a day.

Years have passed, and I don't say hooch nearly as often as I used to, but today it came out.  Unfortunately, it came out in the middle of class as I was describing the 9th labor of Hercules: "...basically, all of this happened because Hera's a HOOCH!"  The two girls I was talking to nearly wet their pants they were laughing so hard.  One's fake eyelashes were in serious danger of being cried off.  Some of the other students asked me what it meant.  Then some other students thought I had sworn.  After much giggling, class got back underway.

Oops.

Student work:

The task was to come up with a word that uses the suffix -ship and use the word in a sentence.

Although this student did successfully use a word that uses -ship, the resulting sentence was pretty funny:

"The craftsmanship of the statue was gastronomical."

I don't think that's what he meant, do you?  :)

D-Day

Two years ago, after school got out on the last day of school of my first year of teaching, I went and cut off my hair.  My nearly elbow length, curly (permed) hair turned into the super short hair I'd been coveting since 6th grade.  Now, the last day of school of my 3rd year of teaching is approaching, and it's time for drastic hair action once again.  One month, only 31 days until D-Day.  Not the original D-Day of course, that's technically 34 days away (June 6th).  My D-Day is Dreadlocking Day.  The day I get dreads.  The day I've been talking about, researching, waiting for, and obsessing about for months now.  I've talked about it (well, babbled actually.  Saturday a friend of mine actually fell asleep on my couch while I gabbered on about it), dreamed about it, and blogged about it (three times, actually, for two years.  One, Two, Three).

My plan/hope is to get dreads the evening of the last day of school, June 3rd.  I've been telling myself I needed to tone down the obsession until my dreads were closer to reality--say, a month or so.  Now that they are only a month away, I'm going to be unleashing it with full fury.  I'm probably going to make the already annoying me look like a reasonable person.  I ordered my dread kit on Saturday.  I did spend $100, but getting dreads in a salon would cost at least four times that much, and the kit comes with enough supplies to help me finish and maintain my dreads for the next six months or so.  (Dreads actually take three months to get mature, and about a year to really fully be finished).  It should arrive this week or next so that I can begin to paw through it eagerly once a day until June 3rd.  It's also time to begin to reread and review all the dreading tips, instructions, and videos I've already seen twice.  It's time to begin mentally and physically prepping for my yet "unborn" dreadlocks.  Is all of that really necessary?  Probably not, but it gives me something to do while waiting impatiently for D-Day to come.  It's time to actually begin over preparing and planning for my Dread Party.

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_T08ujz0D0Z0/SNbMawY8ONI/AAAAAAAABj0/EjqfeGXk6Uw/100_1814.jpg

The Dread Party is the recommended method getting dreads.  Basically, you invite lots of friends over, provide instructions, all the supplies, plentiful food and entertainment (movies, etc., dreading can get boring), and get them to help you lock up your hair.  Since dreading your hair can take hours, the more hands you have to help, the faster it goes.  Luckily my hair is fairly short, so it shouldn't take more than several hours. (I've heard horror stories of 20 hours, but those from people who did by themselves, alone, and had very long hair.)  With my very short hair, and a few friends, it shouldn't take more than four or so hours.  Possibly less.  Which brings me to the matter at hand, I need some friends to help.  Anyone, male or female, bond or free.  I'll happily provide pizza, soda, movies, and long-lasting gratitude to anyone who wants to come and help.  The more people we have, the faster it will go, and the more fun it will be.  Heck, if you want to show up that day just to hang out, eat food, take pictures, and heckle, you'd still be welcome to come.  You do not need any prior experience with making dreadlocks.  I don't have any, and no one there will have any either, I'm pretty sure.  If my dreads look fantastic, you'll get the credit, if they look awful, I'll blame the fact that getting dreads was risky business in the first place.  Besides, I can use all the moral support I can get.

If you're interested, or if you know anyone who might be interested, let me know sometime this month.  Comment here, text  me, facebook me, email me, call  me, send a carrier pigeon.  This is one hair adventure I can't do alone.

gettyimages.com

Days 7-10: The Rest of the Trip

Let's face it, it's time to sum up.  It's been two weeks since we got back from our trip, and there's still four days to go.  Kudos to those of you who have been actually reading these insanely long blogs.

In case you missed them, here are links to Day Zero, Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four, Day Five, and Day Six.

The last few days of our trip were spent in Olympia with Allie's family.  After being friends and living together for nearly seven years, I'd still never been to her house or hung out with her parents.  It was time to fix that, time to get to know the people I'd been hearing about for all these years.  And I have to say, Allie's family are good people.  I thoroughly enjoyed staying at their house, hearing their stories firsthand, and getting know them for myself.  We even managed to get Sar her driver's permit while we were there.  I'm really only going  to cover the tourist stuff we did in this blog, but in between everything I mention there are evenings and home cooked meals and mornings spent just hanging out around the family that were some of my favorite parts of the trip.

Thursday morning Allie and I set off for some time in Seattle.  Our first stop was the Space Needle.  The Space Needle, along with the Golden Gate Bridge, is going into my list of landmarks and monuments that I never thought would live up to the hype about them, but turned out to be pretty dang cool in real life.

Allie and I decided to live in style and eat at the revolving restaurant at the top of the needle.  It turned out to be a fantastic idea because it was cold and rainy and windy, and we got to watch the city swing by slowly from the warmth and comfort of an indoor table while eating roast vegetable gateau.  Someone even came by to take our free picture that we could download and email to ourselves.

It's not the world's greatest photo, but it does prove we were there.

After lunch we did head up to the observation deck, where I learned a lot more about the history of the space needle that made it even cooler.  By the time we left, I was even considering buying some sort of souvenir from the place.  Almost.  Of course we did take one picture outside on the walkway, but it was cold and wet and we booked it back inside pretty dang fast.

From there walked a cold and rainy half mile through Seattle to Pike's Place Market.  We'd both been to Pike's multiple times in the past, so we didn't spend time at every single booth, but we did see some cool things.  My favorite was this guy.

Good ragtime music in the rain?  Count me in.  We also found the Chinese ring salesman who sold me the ring I bought on my last trip to Seattle almost two years ago.  When I'd bought that ring, I'd been a bit skeptical of it.  Sam, the energetic salesman ("Buy one for you; one for your boyfriend!") assured me that it wouldn't turn my finger green, go grey instead of silver, and would only be shinier with time.  All of that for only $5.  The man was right.  I love that ring.  I only take it off to rock climb, knead dough, and wash the toilet.  So of course I bought another one.

Friday we picked up Allie's little sister from school and dropped her and her dad off at the DMV for while.  This left Allie time to show me Olympia in all it's glory.  She kept calling it "small" and "dinky."  I kept reminding here that I'm from Idaho, and that Olympia was, in comparison, New York City.  The coolest part was the library, which was located in a freakin' forest, had bear statues out front, and looked like a cabin mansion on the inside.

Have I ever mentioned that I love bears? I do.  A lot.  They scare me, but I love them.

Since we had some time to kill while Sar picked up her driver's permit, we started playing with the legos.  I was about to suggest building the tallest whatever we could, when Allie suggests something real and something hard.  She wants to build San Francisco.  So she worked on the bridge, and I worked on the skyline.  In the end, it looked pretty darn cool, and we were very proud of ourselves.

After the library, we headed to Tumwater Falls, which has some of the coolest playground toys ever.  And pretty falls (3 of them).  Apparently we didn't take any pictures of the falls, just the playground equipment.

We'll be joining the circus soon

The fearless crew.

I'm all strong and stuff!

On Saturday Allie's Dad, Allie, Allie's sister Sar, and I headed to Priest Point Park and walked through some pretty toxic mud to look at the Puget Sound.  There were dozens of signs warning us to shower after touching the ground.  But it was beautiful.  There were so many sea shells that I couldn't avoid stepping on them, and the crunch crunch made my skin crawl a bit.

After so many hundreds of pictures on the trip, we were running out of creative picture ideas. 

Percival Landing was our next stop, and we walked along the docks for a long time, looking for loons and talking.  On the way back we stopped at a store called Archibald Sisters, where you can buy anything random (absinthe flavored gum, bandaids that look like bacon, etc.).  There I bought some Star Trek fridge magnets, some pins to put on the pirate flag in my classroom, and some candles that looked like joints for my Pot-free 420 Party.

Later that day we went on a long drive with Allie's mom, which took us to Boston Harbor, where we looked at sailboats, seagulls, and beautiful water.
The next stop was Burfoot Park, where we hiked down to the beach through incredibly green forests and I geeked out on the green, and then on the water.  This trip involved a lot of me just wandering around with big eyes and sighing at the beauty and wonder of the things I saw.  It also involved a lot of me climbing on top of things and taking pictures of me dangling over things, balancing on things, and generally making my traveling companions nervous.  Except for Allie.  Allie never worried.  Angie wouldn't look when I dangled over the waterfall, Allie's dad tried to talk me out of a few mossy logs on hillsides, but Allie never batted an eye.  Either she has great faith in my balance or doesn't care very much if I fall.

Sunday morning Allie and I took one last stop at Wonderwood Park, where I walked around and sighed some more.  And then I climbed on things.  Again.

I got this idea from The Jungle Book.  I get a lot of good ideas from that book.

After that came church, then dinner, then it was time to go.  Allie's dad and her sister drove us to the airport, and we took a short flight home.  Cuny picked us up and we drove back to our apartment, dumped our junk, put on clean pajamas (packing that lightly meant that we had very few changes of clothes...very, very few), and collapsed gratefully into our own beds.  Monday morning came much too early, with a return to school, only a week until state testing, and hugely long blogs to write about our trip.

So there you have it.  The last insanely long blog post about the trip.  There are more pictures on facebook, and I have about 800 on my computer, so I really did edit this waaay down for the blog.  Overall, the trip was fantastic, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.  Allie and I are already brainstorming about Memorial Day weekend.