A toast

I just skipped grading papers to read The Gospel According to Larry in one sitting. I don't regret it at all. That's my advice. Smile. Drink in rain and tears because each drop is a private moment between you and God. Smile because you can.

Hurrah for snow!

I like living where I do. I don't mind the twenty minute commute to work that much, and I like being able to go to the grocery store or the coffee shop without running into my students. But today, as I watched the glorious snow fall in soft but determined globs all around me and turn brown as it hit the slush filled freeway where cars moved slowly forward like cows wading through mud, I wished I lived closer to work. It took me forty minutes to get there, and I barely made it by contract time. Looks like I'll be leaving earlier tomorrow.

But still, hurrah for snow! Maceys is collecting a letters to Santa, and for each one that it receives it will donate $1 to the Make a Wish Foundation. Because my students have been reading letters, and because we've writing letters to the editor today, this morning's warm-up activity is writing letters to Santa while listening to Christmas music and watching the snow drift past the window of our classroom.

Hurrah for snow!

My favorite literary device

"Caution: Slow, Ironic Twists Ahead" was the sign on my friend's door growing up.

"Isn't ironic, dontcha think?"

"Life is funny; life's a mess. Sometimes a curse sometimes a blesssing."

"Roll the bones. The night has a thousand saxophones so get out there and rock and roll the bones!"

I think my love for irony is a defense mechanism I have developed so that I can laugh at my life.

As I told my students the other day, "Real life can be so much weirder than fiction."

If someone were to write a book about my weekend, they would probably be criticized for making things "too coincidental," for having irony almost too perfect to believable. It has to be the trick of the filmaker to make them movie better. But no. Ladies and gentlemen, this exercise in irony is my life.

Transportation Woes

Last Monday:

A split hose caused an incontinece problem for my car, Gigi the Jeta, and she "peed her pants" all over the parking lot. I limped her to the mechanics and was able to get it fixed the next day, for the easy price of $115.

Friday night:

Someone steals Gigi the Bike.

This Morning:

Another door has broken on Gigi the car. It wasn't even cold this time. Now I have two doors that don't open from the outside, one door that will break anyday, and a driver's door that doesn't open at all. Soon I'll be crawling in and out of windows. I'll have to stay at school until everyone leaves in order to not to damage my dignity.

But apparently I have it easy. My mom told me this story:

We had a car like that just before (and after) Aaron was born. After strapping Isaac in through the window, I climbed in myself, 9 months along. I tried to go out when noone was around!

wow. :)

Just now I returned home a friend's house to notice that there were more bikes than usual chained to the stairs outside my apartment. Absentmindedly I studied the little crowd of bikes while I fumbled for my keys. Then I realized that Gigi the Bike was not in that crowd. Gigi the bike has been in that crowd since May. I quickly checked around, thinking that somehow my bike had been in someone's way and so they had magically unlocked it and moved it. Then I noticed that there was one more lock dangling from the staircase than there were bikes. My lock. Cut. My bike. Gone.

Worth calling the cops at 2:30 in the morning? Probably not. Gigi the Bike is gone I think. Yes, I'm angry. Mine wasn't even the nicest bike there, just the most convenient. Wouldn't it have been easier to go steal someone's bike on campus where they have less chance of being seen. Oh well, poor Gigi won't get them much drug money, or help them pay for their new entertainment center or college. She wasn't that nice. But she was a lot nice than any other bike I ever owned. Well. I guess I don't need to worry about the fact that her back brakes don't work anymore. It is now someone else's problem.

The Readiness is All

"We defy augury: There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?"


No, I'm not thinking about death tonight. I'm thinking about something totally different. But this quote means a lot to me.

I'm luckier than I deserve to be, and far happier than I ought to be. But I do have a dream that I am now forced to acknowledge as most likely doomed. It's not that I can't hold on to it any longer. I could go on like this for quite a while. But holding on to that dream, no matter how fond it is or how closely it has intergrown with my life, personality, and happiness, well, holding on to it will never bring it a day closer than impossible it seems. So, if I let go of it now, I won't let go of it later; if I let go of it later, I won't let go now, the readiness is all, but I am far from ready.

Anniversaries are ticking by. Two weeks and one week. Years and days are passing. Am I leaving this dream betimes or belatedly?

I am luckier than I could ever hope for. But I wish on every single one of the trillion stars in the sky that things were different. Except one. On that last faint star I'm wishing that I even knew how to begin to give up.

*sigh* It's 2 a.m.

Hurry up please it's time.

Goodnight moon; Goodnight lamplight;

Goodnight sweet ladies, goodnight.

Stepping Back

Today I did my hair in a bun! Surprise! I do my hair in a bun nearly every day. In fact, today was the fourth bun in a row this week. I think Monday was a ponytail. But today, I reached back into the deep and distant past that most of you don't know, and pulled from it a hairstyle I haven't sported since my earlier high school days: the complex braided bun. I think only two people in my readership know I mean by that. Let me assure them, it was a simple one, not one of those crazy eight-braid, four twist, strung together with ribbons and old-fashioned yarn kind. You see, I used to be the queen of buns. I had long, perfectly straight hair, and I could do buns with twists down the sides, buns with braids down the sides, buns with ribbons, buns made up of old fashioned brades that looked like woven hair, big buns made of little braids, etc. So today, as I searched for a hairstyle I could wear that wasn't my usual bun, I suddenly remembered, that, if anyone knows how to do a bun, it's me. So I quickly whipped up a couple of braids and twisted them into a bun, feeling much better. Of course no one noticed. Let's be honest, there's actually not that much difference between a braided bun and a regular twisted one. But still, it felt nice to do something different. And like I was channeling a previous edition of me for a few minutes there.

Last night I went to a choir concert. I think I may have forgotten what a renewing experience a beautiful live concert can be. By the end, I felt like I had gotten some kind of emotional tune up, and some of the blockages and grime that were backing up my system were simply dissolved away. It was like stepping into the past, when I used to go to things like that all the time.

Tonight I made another smart decision that I probably wouldn't have made a few years ago, way to go me! That's a step forward. But then I found myself on a rickety set of wooden stairs way past my bedtime having a conversation that was nearly identical to more than one conversation I've had in the past. The same reasons, the same lines, the same reaction. Years pass and people in my life come and go, and yet I can't really say how many times I've had this same conversation. Four? Five?

There's a line from a Rush song that goes: The more things change, the more they stay the same.