today I had the worst day in the classroom since I took over.  I stayed til six thirty sending emails,  and calling parents.     I feel like I spent the entire day reacting.      I don’t know why they were such punks.   But know this,  tomorrow, they(the punks) will spend the entire day reacting.      Coincidentally,  I aslo had the worst cafteria lunch of all time.   It was spicy fried chicken fingers, over pasta, with maranira sauce and cheese(cheddar).  There was a tiny stryofoam cup of green beans(canned), which i ate with a spork.  The pasta was apparently cooked(for four days) in dishwater.    I am pretty sure I will pack my lunch tomorrow.

For the next month, I am going to try to update everyday-just because.     I went down the lesbian dive bar tonight-because iappropiate bar crush man suggested I stop by on facebook.    As I spent the majority of this evening watching the tv movies of Tom Selleck with my mother,  I thought I should go out, and you know, see the world or whatever.   The band was bad, and inappropiate crushman was in a bad mood, and not very chatty.    I deliberately went late so we could talk- but my planned backfired when a couple of really chatty drunk people showed up and talked at length about the coming revolution in America,  and how when the guy dresses in drag,  he is pretty than his wife and his wife’s friends and how one day he looked in the mirror and wanted to date himself.   Of course, it could be that inappropiate crushman and I have nothing in common, and therefore nothing to say to each other.   Tom Selleck makes it all look so easy.   In the tv movies I watched,  he just said the women’s names over and over in conversation and then asked them to dinner.   Damn him and his mustache.   Still it begs the question-why does he suggest that I stop by, and then when I go, he  says next to nothing to me?

Thanksgiving,  I hate thanksgiving, it is my least favorite holiday-Christmas, sure it’s just as family intensive, but at least you get to wear paper crowns and get presents.   Thanksgiving is just about sitting around getting indigestion as you listen to your family say inappropiate things to each other while not realizing they are inappropiate.    Some it was was just weird, and I felt like I was listening to a monologue in sam shepard play-like when my mother told a story about how her great grandfather shot her sick kitten in the back yard-because there were no vets around-you know, in the 1960s.    Or my grandmother tlkaing about a neighbor and how he drinks too much, but how neat his yard is,a nd how you’d never know he was black.    And I think to myself,  why do I come here for thanksgiving?  Every year I swear I am going to go somewhere else and yet I never do.

Looking back, the guy running out with a giant screw driver in his hand should have been a clue that there was something wrong.   I remember thinking that he must have locked his keys in his car,  why else would be he be holding a giant screw driver?  I guess his facial expression belied this assumption, but then I was happy he wasn’t pointing the screw driver at me.   The next thing we know, people in the store were yelling at K and I not to go in.  Then I thought it was a gasleak, or a pipe bomb, because people were running out into the parking lot.   But then the wife of the store owner was crying and this hipster dude looked like he was near tears too.   We were just there to get cigarettes and beer and pick up our pizias next door for our cribbage night.  Kristen hugged the lady and i heard how her purse stolen–for a couple of minutes it didn’t register why that was so upsetting-until the misty- eyed hipster dude in flannel(damn, I should have bought that shirt) told us they ahd gotten his wallet too.   That’s when it finally dawned on me that my local liquor store had been held up- at gunpoint, and that we had missed being a part of the hold up by seconds.    In fact, K and I talked about how I had not stopped to pee or look for my keys, we would have been there, and what’s worse, we probably would have walked in on the armed robbery as it was happening.  We hung out for a while.   Tehy were shaken by having a gun pointed at them by masks strangers, and it took the police forever to come.  It was only 7 30.

On the drive back, we talked about what a lucky escape we had.  For once, my inablility to just leave really paid off.    So we told Unitarius about it and ate pizza and drank a lot of beer.

I am still alive, but the job is all encompassing.    The kids are calming down to normal, teeange urban youth-actually, they’re pretty enjoyable,  and sometimes, I feel really guilty for making them read Antigone.     Most of them are making a valiant effort to at least read it outloud.    I don’t know why it seemed like a good idea,  I guess because the  Greeks invented Drama(Do you know that Tragedy loosely translates to Goat Song? I didn’t, until I taught Greek  Tragedy).    Coming in some place, basically mid semester, I’m not going lie, you feel pretty desparate for curriculum.  All I know is I had to put them to work immediately, so they’d take me seriously.    Many of them claibut ram to still hate me.  Which is ok.  Because,  they can channel that angst into their scenes.  I have put of grading to embarassing levels.  That is the problem with assigning work, you have to correct it, which is awful.   On the other hand, I feel so free to be freaky, afterall I am the drama teacher. One of the first things I am going to do is to dye my ahir a new color, and also get a haircut.     Why not? I can look weird and artsy, because I am the drama teacher, not some dry,  sad English Teacher.  But a drama teacher.  Grammar and spelling no longer matter. Ha ha!

I met a guy who was single the other night.   Technically, he is separated and divorcing- he also teaches latin. I am actually reading this book called The masterpiece, by Zola- Idon’t know, Monica suggested it, and it seemed like I should read something other than novels about Vampires.   And basically, there’s this line about this woman “filled with the unconscious regret for the terrible things that might have, but had not, happened.”   He kind of reminded me of John Cusack, nervous energy, a cigarette, beer,  mildly witty and self depricating.    And then, at the same moment that  Pat said we should go ot the next bar, his friends cae up and wanted to go and get tacos.   And because we both seemed to be awkward people who lack basic social skills of exchanging numbers, nothing happened.   I realize, it’s not really about there not being single people, because there seem some at least once every couple of weeks,   but rather the wondering if anythign is going thappen or not.    I guess thigns worked out for the woman in the novel, at least for a while, until(spoiler alert) she dies.  I guess I should get better at you know, giving my number.

I hate when you meet someone who is cute and  kind of cool-and you definitely have this vibe, well maybe, at least you think you have a vibe, though a friend tells you their asking you to knit them a beanie is not flirtatious -and while you don’t search for their profile on myspace-and maybe you might have checked to make sure their facebook was locked-and because you google them, because you know, you were trained for eight years of your life to conduct research on incredibly boring topics, it just makes sense that you would  use it on soemthing that is actually interesting,  and through googling their name you may or may not find them on a random music website with a profile, and of course, OF COURSE they are in a relationship. BECAUSE EVERYONE IN THE WORLD IS IN A REALTIONSHIP BUT ME.  And e, you’re pissed at yourself because you looked in the first place so now you know, and suddenly this crush you had on this seemingly nice person takes on  more sinister dimensions BECAUSE YOU NEVER DEVELOP A CRUSH ON SOMEONE WHO IS AVAILABLE.   And maybe you’re coping mechanism is to sort of think this nameless person is a bit of douchebag for being so excited that they are in a relationship that they put it on this random music profile-like really why  does being a relationship have anything with a really lame hip hop band?   Right?  I mean really, how lame.   I think  you agree.    And you know what else?   I think he looks a bit like a mormon, not that being mormon is bad, but he has that creepy, clear eyed happy look.  But he drinks coffee.      I mean, ok, this moment I know is happening because I googled him, because I was wondering, and now I know and I really wish I didn’t know, because I wouldn’t feel like I lost something, which is really something I never had in the first place because somebody else already has it.   jesus christ.  REally,   Why can’t I get a bit of  a break?  you know, like one person?   And I am getting older and I had this bizarre conversation with mother earlier and I am having lady troubles and my hormones are going crazy-I mean really wouldn’t you be freaked out if your mother suggested you go to a sperm bank?  I told her I really had go because it the conversation ahd taken a dark and scary turn.  And now, I am sitting writing this stupid blog entry pissed because now I feel like a fucking parody of of woman in her thirties.   I am apparently an emotional retard who can’t quit smoking,  a wizard rock song just came on my playlsit, and it’s been so long since, well you know, that when I miss my period, it actually signals some sort of hormonal problem, which will lead to more facial hair, according to the website.     I guess objectively, my life is a success, you know, I have a job I love, a graduate degree, a car, Tons of friends,  I travel,   I live on my own, I have really nice perfume, things are fine-so why is it that I sometimes feel like a complete failure?  If  I were a 32-year-old man in my position,  I don’t think I would feel like a failure.  people would be throwing themselves at me , I’d be so fresh,  my phone would be filled with numbers.  This particular gender divide really, really pisses me off.    It’s even worse because I was a women’s studies major,  and I am sitting in some stupid quagmire of pity, for what?   Whatever.

I got a job-almost full time.  This time, it is at a small  urban high school.   The kids are bouncing off the walls.    To give you an idea, their first teacher quit after four weeks.  Since then,  they’ve had a sucession of substitute teachers.  I don’t think the kids are bad,  and the other lady-well, it was her first time stepping into the classroom after being a human resources manager.    My  first day was awful.   You know what some of my classes were like last year-think of that and times it by fifteen.   I saw crazy behavior-  Kids were either screaming-SCREAMING- at me because they felt it was unfair i had class rules, or worse,  they were disregarding me altogether by just talking when I was trying to go over the classrules.     It was so bad, at the end of the day I called my firend and told them I had no idea what I had gotten myself into, and maybe I shouldn’t sign the contract.      I went out to dinner with some teahcer friends of mine to form a plan of attack.     As I said before, I don’t think the kids are really bad,   but they feel empowered because tehy got some poor, first eyar teacher to quit, and also there has been no structure or routine in their classroom-which, as you know, teenagers can’t handle.   Yesterday was my second day and it went a lot better.   I mean, they whined and complained and I kept them after class counting time everytime they interupted me.    I also assigned homeowrk, and wrote a single referral.     i think it’s going to be fine after christmas break.  But it is going to be a long, trudging path until then.

Then i got a nother job offer yesterday, at this other urban high school, but didn’t take it, one because it was less  part time and two. because I Have already signed a contract.

Friends, I am not going to lie,  I reached a new low this evening when I found out that my Loan Deferment hasn’t gone through yet, while simultaneously remebering a broken cigarette under the cushion of my couch.    While  I happened to have a lozenge in my mouth at that exact moment-all I wanted was a cigarette.    When I say the cigarette was broken, I mean it was broken in half, and also nearly flattened.     I took it out of the couch and put it back together again, to smoke it-which I did.  Outside.

Intellectually, I know this a new low- I mean,  I smoked a stray and broken cigarette  underneath the cushion of my couch for God knows how long.  It was next to a quarter, a receipt from Target,  some yarn, and also a candy wrapper.   What sort of person would smoke this cigarette?  I asked myself.      Clearly someone who really, really wants to smoke.     However,  I know I should feel shame in my soul, and yet I don’t.

I’ve been working as a long-term sub-which, in and of itself is a really funny story, but I can’t really talk about it.  What is really funny is that I ran into someone from the cultish high school I worked at that week, and then got laid off from,   and spent a weekend crying over.  Yeah.  That job.   I swear, people at that school have drunk some sort proverbial koolaid, or they’ve all taken the same classes from scientology or something.    I was upstairs at the large urban high school I worked at last year,  talking to an old collegue of mine,  when this guy walks by and says.

“Oh my God, Hi, didn’t you used to work at NamelessHorribleCult High School for about Fifteen minutes?”

Keep in mind, this dude was not a student, but an alleged adult in his forties.   I was stunned by his sensitivity to what was clearly the worst professional experience of my life, so I said.

“Yeah, that was me.”  yeah, that’s me, the person who lost their fulltime job in  a recession, the person who still doesn’t have healthcare, or enough money for sushi.

“How did you like it there?”   Honestly, would you ask this question?

“It was fantastic.”  By this point, I might have been conspiciously sarcastic.

“I’m so glad you liked it, it’s great isn’t it?”   I mean, here’s the crazy thing about this guy, and why I think they are all members of a secret cult,  everyone knows what happened to me and how I no longer worked there, as I was introduced to them ALL as the new social science teacher.     Bearing this in mind,  and perhaps the tone of my vocie, wouldn’t you have picked up on the sarcasm?   But, no,  they are all so into that school and think that’s it’s so fantastic, that even though I was essentially fired,  I would somehow have happy memories about having the opportunity to work there, even though it was unfairly and cruelly taken away.  So I said:

“It was truly unforgettable.”

“Yeah, I don’t work there anynmore,  I’m VP at another school.  Hey, so are  you working here now?”

“No, I’m just subbing.”

“Oh, sorry, that’s too bad.   About what happened…”

“Yeah,  I’m mostly over it.”

I suppose the smart thing to do professionally would have been to be more chippper and upbeat about my unemployment and job insecurity, particularly to someone who’s a vp, but I don’t care.

What a Douchebag.

Recently, it’s come to my attention  that all of the really interesting/funny/nice guys have girlfriends.     I’ve been meeting a lot of cool guys lately,  men that can hold  discussions,  are funny and witty-all of them have girlfriends.  More annoying,   even the ones who are not funny, nice or interesting have girlfirends-like this guy who spit out his drink on my friend and nearly started a fight with a group of nerdy science graduate students- you know, the type of guys that solve equations on chalk boards in their offices and read Lonesome Dove in their spare time.  Isn’t it wild that some people have chalkboards in their office?   He has a girlfriend and everyone else hates him and can’t stand him.     I heard the story at wine club,  when this other firend of mine casually mentioned his girlfriend.   it’s really unbelievable.   how is it possible?    how is it fair?

It’s not like I’ve never noticed this before,  but lately, I’ve been hearing more about it.   One of my Canadian friends and I were just talking about this last week, and who can forget the creep who told me all the good ones were taken?   It made me that everyone I’ve met-excluding Said Man,  who pulls women from eharmony becuase they will do anything for a relationship, and Inappropiate crushman,  have a significant other.    I got so excited last saturday night because we  talked to this guy when we were smoking who seemed really down to earth and funny, despite the fact that he’s a grad student.    He seemed really single, and  maybe it was the huge glass of beer( or three) I had for octoberfest, but I got way too excited about meeting him.     I felt like Captain Ahab sighting Moby Dick in the distance,  or maybe how Jane Goddall must have felt the first time one of the chimps reached out and touched her hand in their own habitat.   I mean, I say he was funny and down to earth, but I only talked to him for four minutes, and really, he only made a commnet ilke “if you were to ask anyone outside of academia if we deserve to get  paid 15,000 dollars a year for what we do,  they’d say no,  so to Grad students I say chill out.”  Based on the strength of  this one mild witticism, I texted another friend of mine who also studies literature  to find out if he was single, and was sad when I came back from teh bathroom and he had left.   When I say I “texted” my friend,  I actually texted my frined four times about this guy.  Really, he hadn’t left, and alas he didn’t like me.  I heard him tell his friend that he had been trying to get with this girl and failed.

When I woke up on Saturday  morning and reflected on the night’s events,   I realized that I had gotten way too excited about meeting a guy without a girlfirend.   All these years, i ahve consoled myself with the thought that I would eventually meet somebody really fantastic,  that of course it would take longer because I’m so weird and people misunderstand my genius.   I’ve never doubted this fact, but here it  is-another impending winter spent alone in my apartment,   another holiday season and another new years spent with other couples, and when I lock myself out on the roof on accident on new years eve  because I am  smoking and the door accidentally blows shut  behind me, it will take a long time for anyone to notice that I am missing, in both a metaphoric and practical sense.     As I laid in bed reflecting on all of this,  hungover, it occured to me that my standards seem to be moving towards soley whether or not the guy is single.     It’s not that I am feeling old,   I don’ tknow, I feel like I’ve spent  all this time getting my shit together and being a decent, well rounded person  and treat people ethically and be nice to strangers- I feel like I deserve a reward for all of this.    And not just the reward of being a good person,  but have someone to share it with.  Someone to go on vacation with, so I don’t have to spend the holidays either, a. locked in small hotel room with my mother and grandmother-who has a boyfriend-or worse, sleeping on my brothers couch, waking up beause his dogs are panting next to my face.

Who knows?  maybe I am getting desparate enough for Said Man.

Some time last week,  I reached my 8th anniversary of blogging-eight years, and if you include my old blog,  nearly 900 blog entries.   In looking over my blog-particularly at this moment in my life,  I am struck by how good everything turned out.   I’ve had a lot of fun-and maybe drank and smoked a bit more than I should have, or maybe a lot more than I should have.   Yeah, things are sort of shitty right now.  But, at least I  know what i what I want to do.   And thank god, I am not living with my mother, and I’m not an alcoholic, which is amazing, considering how many gin and tonics I’ve drank over the last eight years.   And I’ve even quit smoking-mostly.   Though I am not going count the one I had last saturday night when I was out drinking.  e

Things have been plugging along here.  It’s been hard to blog, because I can’t smoke, and nicotine lozenges are not the same.   I haven’t gotten used to writing without a cigarette, though I do love the nicotine lozenges almost as much as I love smoking.   I’ve been subbing a lot at my old high school,  and I only make 100 dollars a day.  Which is, you’d a gree, a shitty wage.     After union dues,  and taxes, I’m making less than I would on unemployment, which is to say not very much at all.    I am only doing it to stave off another major depressive episode brought about by being at home all the time, watching Maury Povich.    To say that I am frustrated is an understatment,  but I am trying to have faith that it is all for some bigger, cosmic reason I just don’t understand yet-or failing that-it will all turn out the way it is supposed to as it’s always done,  or failing that, because maybe htere is no meaning,   I at least get to laugh, daily as it turns out,  when I watch all the newscasters talking about how the recession is over.    Bullshit.

No developments on teh man front.  I had dinner with this friend of mine the other night who told me some stuff about Said Man.   Said Man was a groomsman at her wedding-and she cliams that he is not dating me because  “She is not desperate enough yet.”   Apparently Said Man only goes after desperate woman who expect nothing from him,  he told my friend that e haromony is great for that, becuase the women on eharomony are so tired of being single that they will “do anything.”     My friend told me not to worry because Said Man smells bad anyway, because he has dreads and no longer washes his hair.     She claims that Said Man said that I was too together for him(what?)   and smart and whatever.   You know, the same thing like I have this great personality, etc.       I would “expect too much” .     Yeah.  Like a phone call.  And dinner.    And several dates.   And some Semblance of human emotion. Crazy.

Inappropiate crush man-you know the one in the band?  the bartender at the lesbian dive bar?  sent me a message on facebook and invited me to his show this weekend-if I was in the area.     I am thinking about going- though somehow being friends with crushman on facebook and reading his status updates, has made him lose some of his lustre- like this gem: “crushman’s phone now accepts picture text, so if you were considering ’sexting’ him a spicy pic, feel free… Um, if you’re one of my relatives, let’s pretend you didn’t read that..: What can I say?    Apparently, I”m not the only  one immune to his charms,  like six girls have responded to say something witty. On the otherhand,  his immaturity is one of the reaons why he’s so hot.  On the otherhand,  the last time I went to one of his shows, I hit a deer on the way there.   Decisions.

I think I met a serial killer on a dating website.  He lives in a basement, and the number one thing he cannot live without is duct tape.  Number four were golf clubs.   He was also pictured holding a bunny rabbit.  He was a blond with a big gaping face,  an obvious mouth breather-and with his bunny, he looked like Lenny from Of Mice and Men.    His opener to me was ” Let’s face it,  we’re both old, all the good ones are taken, and we’ll never meet anyone half decent.  At this point, everyone has a kid and a ton of baggage.”   He asked me what was wrong with with his profile,  I pointed out that the duct tape made him seem like a serial killer and he tells me of how useful it is,  and how if you put it on an mole, the chemicals in the duct tape break down the mole. Which, while this is not as disturbing as being a serial killer-is still gross.

I know that you’er wondering about Pita and how she is doing.  I see her almost every day now that I am at the school again.   I go to lunch room and she sees me and says.  “Uberfrau! Uberfrau!  Who are you doing?”  “Mr. Collegue is sick, so I’m filling in for him.”  “No, I mean in your personal life.”

Here is my first blog entry:

9/23/2001

My High School teacher Mr. H once told me that you can never go home. And now I realize it’s because all the best parts have irrevocablely changed, and the bad parts(ie. your mother waking up and complaining int he middle of the night because the single sixty watt light bulb you have on in the living room inexplicably wakes her up despite the fact that she falls asleep to the light of the television everynight) Have stayed the same. Then there is your grandmother’s plantive cry as she knocks on your window and asks you why your bedroom isn’t “finished yet” and when can she show it to her friend. etc. Even though you haven’t gone back in time the act of moving home is remiscent of one of those star trek episodes with temporal time warps-it is as if you have entered a black hole and have turned into the angsty 19 year old that you once were, but with the devasting self awareness that you have culled from you college philsophy classes.

Given the test subjects: the obese dogs and the emotionally crippled cats-it is obvious what will happen to you if you stay at home for too long. Moreover, if the pajama bottoms that you’ve been wearing for the past two days are any indication, you are goign to get there sooner than you thought. In the afternoon you tell yourself htat you should leave the house, yes leave the tv, the email you’ve checked fifteen times already, the messy room and the unfinished laundry, the yellowed swiss cheese left to rot on the counter. Leaving the house is more difficult than it shoudl be. And suddenly you relaize that this is what is known as depression, but since you have a fancy schmancy college education, you like to call it existensial angst. You are weighed down with your friends lives, just opening hteir emails, reading about their bohemian studios in Italy, their well paid jobs in DC, their wonderful boyfriends and girlfriends, their weddings and engagment parties and housewarming parties and all thew hile they tell you how aboslutely happy they are in their relationships, so often that you begin to wonder if they are just trying to convince themselves.

But then you feel guilty. Why shouldn’t they be happy? Meanwhile, you own frustrated dreams stifle you and waft about everywhere, as pugent as a cats fart.

Just because you are single and twenty four and living at home with your mother and next door to your grandmother, still lving in the same clutter you created when you were prepuberscent, still finding the odd note written in junior high and a tiger beat in a forgotten cornor of your closet Dosn’t mean that you are somehow more philosphically enlightened than the rest of your friends, though you wish that it did. And then you try to come to terms with the fact, that, were you to meet the male version of yourself, you wouldn’t date him because you’d think he was a loser. And there you are, negotiating the uneven terrain between free spirited artist and loser-the line between the two being very narrow and easily transgressed.

While you were in college you tried to keep your expectations low, it’s not that you ever deluded yourself into thinking that after graduation, someone was going to walk up to you on the street adn offer you a makeover, an apartment in london and you dream career, justr because they could recognize your ture brillance from far away.

But what you are surprised at is your utter and complete lack of marketable skills, which might have been a badge of honor in college, but is no longer amusing. You begin to contemplate “What did college teach me anyhow? Besides the ability to make myself feel shitty and being able to quote Nietzche at the same time.” Maybe there are jobs for people like you. Ha ha. YOu wish your inner child appreciated Sarcasm.

So you go downtown, to some cafe, to cling to your pretentiousness in an appreciative setting because your arrogance ahs taken the last train to some better destination. It is all that you have left that cocoons you and seperates you from the women with poofy hair, insipid giggles, adn tight bedazzled teeshirts. If you stop for a second, you too will end up at a manicurist getting pumpkins and christmas trees airbrushed onto your nails. Adn so youw alk farther, pretending to theorize about postmodernism and consumer culture when really you think that pair of clogs in the window are just really cute. You wish that you could ponitificate somewhere-but there is no place for that. YOu like to think that you are somehow going somewhere, unklike the other small towwn poeple around you, but you’re not sure if you are and even if you were, you don’t have access to your checking account.

And there is always icecream.

.