a playlist that should be called "sickest, saddest sap in the whole wide world wallowing in self-pity"

I recently scrounged up a new charger for my old laptop.  And it's such a happy thing because now I can access all the music that's on that one.

I laughed the other day when I found my "cheer up" playlist.  I made it four or five years ago, the first time that I had a really intense depressive episode.  It was horrible.  And I listened to "cheer up" so much.  (Sorry, Jess.)  I remember Moe coming to visit and being like, "Why the hell is this called 'cheer up'"?

Whatever, I still like it.

1.  The Mermaid Parade – Phosphorescent (When he says, "Yeah I found a new friend, too, and yeah she's pretty and small, and... goddamnit Amanda, oh godaamnit..," I just feel for him.)

2.  How to Fight Loneliness – Jeff Tweedy

3.  You Are Not Alone – Mavis Staples

4.  Slip Slidin’ Away – Paul Simon ("She said a good day ain't go no rain / she says a bad day's when I lie in bed and think of things that might have been."  Crushing.)

5.  At This Point In My Life – Tracy Chapman

6.  Cocoon – Jack Johnson (You know, what?  Just lovely.)

7.  Forgive Them Father – Lauryn Hill

8.  Skinny Love – Bon Iver

9.  Power of the Gospel – Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals (The intro times a million.)

10.  Torn - Natalie Imbruglia (Don't even care.)

11.  Night Falls On Hoboken – Yo La Tengo (I even used this one for a mini-lesson on quoting song lyrics in an essay.)

12.  I Get Along Without You Very Well – Nina Simone

13.  I’ll Fly Away – Alison Kraus and Gillian Welch

14.  I Remember You – Steve Earle and Emmy Lou Harris

15.  Either Way – Wilco
16.  Angel From Montgomery – Susan Tedechi (So good: "How the hell can a person go to work in the morning / and come home in the evening and have nothing to say?")

Amy, you're next.

long distance hang

Jess reading, me knitting.  Both sitting in bed.

okayyyyy

"please god don't let someone come outside right now." "please god let someone!"

Last night as Jess and I were about to get out of the car after dinner, Delilah played The Pretenders' "I'll Stand By You." So we didn't get out of the car. She turned off the engine and the lights and turned up the volume and we sat there in the dark behind our apartment building singing.

It reminded me of a time about twelve or so years ago when I was coming home from somewhere with my Dad. It was nighttime that time, too, and we pulled into the garage just as Elton John's "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" came on the radio. We did then exactly what Jess and I did last night.

Weird parallel memories. Not afraid to admit to liking both of those songs.

(This video is ridiculous, by the way. Ridiculous but awesome.)

I made this!

Yeah, it's a Scottie dog bookmark. I started making them in grammar school when I got this book. I musta made dozens of these Scottie dog bookmarks.

Okay, I need to go back to work. Seriously soon. Obviously, I'm losing it. (I drew that Scottie dog free hand!) I'm also learning that Jessica could really be a professional bookmark model, no?

Here's an update on that sweet potato.

Remember when Jess and I got a sweet potato but then never ate it. I'm sure you all remember. (That "you all" thing is a joke. The only person reading this is Jessica because I told her I was going to post this.) Well, it was about two years ago, give or take a few weeks. Here's what it looks like now:


I happen to think that, in its antique form, it's sort of an edgy addition to the decor of our lovely little home.

---

On my absence from this blog: Yeah, I just don't really have that much to say. But I'm going to make an effort to write up in here again because I realized just now while perusing old posts with Jess, that if it wasn't for this ol' thing, I wouldn't remember about the time when Jordan rested his hand on the waiter's stomach. Also, it hosts our intern want ad. (We're still hiring! Apply now!) So for posterity's sake.

(The problem is, I'm not completely convinced that it's necessary for anyone to blog anymore since Tavi already blogs, and she does so in such a completely perfect way.)

when people stop being polite, and start getting real

In a conversation about what kinds of hobbies we could take up in an effort to make our lives less boring, Jess said this:

"I'm just trying to pass some goddamn time before I fucking die."

I just licked my plate clean.

In the past eight days, Jessica and I have had this recipe four nights. I cannot stress enough how delicious it is.

ingredients:
3 pints of grape tomatoes
6 shallots, quartered
1 tbl spoon of olive oil
1/2 cup of dry white wine
2 tbl spoons of capers

makin it:
Sautee the shallots in the olive oil for a little while until they get soft and, you know, cooked. Then add the tomatoes. Leave them for a few minutes until two-ish of them burst because of the heat. Then, add the white wine, and wait for it to evaporate. Stir in the capers.



So. Good.

highlights of my week:

1. Moe visited! And the highlight of this highlight was probably our pregaming Apples to Apples. That game. So dumb and yet so fun at the same time.

2. I went to see the school play and chatted during the intermission with an older man behind me who has as his goal to attend five plays a week. Holy shnikees, right? He strongly suggested that I see a play, the title of which escapes me, in which a man dies and then comes back to tell his wife how much he loves her. He also suggested that I think seriously about the impending danger of "that satellite" colliding with "something up there," thereby knocking out every computer in the country including cars. It would set our society back eighty years he guessed. According to his estimation, the cause of this doom is the terrible direction our country is taking what with the removal of religion from so many things.

3. So many of my students are now using textual proof to support their theses and are using correct MLA style when they do it. And they're doing it quite well.

4. Jess made red pesto ravioli for dinner last night.

Could I BE having a better Sunday morning?

1. Ani DiFranco Pandora station (forgot how much I love her)
2. productivity on grad school application and district funding application
3. fresh pot of coffee since I cleaned the mold out of the machine yesterday afternoon
4. windows open and air cool enough to be able to wear a sweatshirt and pants
5. good lesson plans written for the week
6. grocery shopping done
7. up early enough to do all of this and still be able to get over to church for the first time in a long time
8. little brother coming to visit esta noche
9. Alex and Jessica coming back today, too

The answer is definitively no. This morning could not be any better.
Man, I used to hate Sundays in college.

brain is on overload

I'm pretty excited for school to start. I've been working in my classroom a lot -- setting up, selecting materials, making copies, writing plans, trying to be preemptive about dealing with the annoying parts of teaching like constantly having to catch up kids who have been out the day before. More pleasant has been skimming back over the stuff I've read this summer in preparation for trying something new with writing instruction, and getting re-energized with all of the good ideas I came across and now get to try out with Real Live Teenagers.

So far I've had the seemingly compulsory:
"How's your summer been?"
"Pretty good! How's yours?"
"Oh, great. Too short of course. Ha. Ha. Ha."
conversation quite a few times this week. So boring. I wonder if every workplace is as riddled with this conversation as mine is. During the school year, it happens every Monday, and has a hyper-presence after any 3- or 4-day weekend or fall or spring break. I've also had some genuinely-happy-to-see-you conversations with colleagues I know a little better and really like.

I want to start a The Wire watching group that gets together twice a month or something and watches a couple episodes and then discusses over beers or coffee or pizza or caramels. I suppose Kasey, Jessica, and I could do this but (1) Kasey and I pretty much agree on everything besides the relative importance of Americorps, and (2) Jessica would think it was boring. Maybe there's one on campus.

I'm actually looking forward to cashiering for Dump and Run this weekend. (And anybody in town -- if anyone is still reading this -- should come and spend cash money. Lots of cool stuff this year.) Doing so reminds me of the Saturdays and weeknights I used to spend working with my Dad in the concession stand at St. Laurence High School football and basketball games. All the hotdogs with delicious just-add-water onions I could eat.

good friendth

Here's a reason why Kasey's great. When I was telling her today how disappointed I was with myself for getting impatient -- extremely impatient -- with a student today, she got as irate about the student's behavior during my telling as I had gotten in the moment. I told her what happened, and when I to the part in the story at which in the moment I wanted to put my fist through the computer screen, she got super angry for/with me. It's not that her reaction made me feel justified, just human.

Here's a reason why Jessica is great. When I told her that I had to write my first discipline referral of the semester, and that one of the things that I had to write on the form was that the student went into the adjoining computer lab, raised his arms high in the air and yelled at all of the students in that class, "You are all idiots!" she about died laughing. And while in the moment part of me knew it was hilarious, the part of me that's striving for a rigorous learning environment did not. Laughing -- especially laughing that hard -- at my own failures is super useful, seriously. Laughing at funny shit like a student yelling at a bunch of people he doesn't know, "You are all idiots!" is also very fun.

wanted:

Kasey, Jess, and I have come to the realization that we really need an intern.

Seeking Unpaid Intern

Job Requirements:

• Male.
• For-profit.
• Single, but not looking AND/OR happily married with a cool wife.
• Not douchey.
• Common decency.

Highly Preferred:

• Not White Liberal.
• Bachelor’s Degree.
• Boring.

Job Decription:

• Make sure the shower is hot.
• Talk to (an unspecified) my mom.
• Check (an unspecified) my ass.
• Talk to boring people.
• Talk to interesting people when they are being boring.
• Get us fondue supplies, salad stuff, and orange juice when we don’t want to.
• Jump Alex’s car AND/OR find Jessica’ s battery.
• Ensure Jordan’s life as necessary.
• Go to Blockbuster, sucka!
• Identify all possible locations where Combos are available for purchase.
• Make Ellen’s copies.

Uniform:

• Snuggie.

*We are equal-opportunity, non-paying employers. But we seriously don't want a female intern because she'd probably just turn into our friend.

I peed my pants a little when it happened.

habits

So I don't know what sparked this long absence from my blog, but I really just don't think of anything to write these days. Before, I would see something and think "Blog," immediately. Now, I'm feeling very out of practice.

But just now, I thought, "Blog." Because Jess is at the gym working out, and Kasey and I are waiting for her to come home. And we've got both doors to the apartment locked and chained, so that when she gets here she'll have to knock. And when she knocks, one of us is going to let her in, and one of us is going to throw a pie in her face!

I'm so nervous! I'm so excited!

movie recommendation

Doubt. So good. Really interesting in this fascinatingly painful way. See it with at least one other person so that you can talk about whether you think he's guilty or not afterwards.



It's the kind of movie I'd like to write a paper about. And that means I liked it a lot.

Almost as thought-provoking, was a question Clinton asked today on What Not to Wear:
Why would you wear mom-jeans in a world full of so many fabulous denim options?

Next stop:

THE ISLAND OF MISFIT TOOOOOOYYYSSS!

My Dad says that all the time, not just at Christmas time. It's from that stop-motion animated Rudolph movie that I've seen about a gazillion times. Jess put it on in the background while we put up our tree and lights. I never realized as a kid how uncool-ly the movie treats disability. Poor, Charlie! Check it out below. Mom, where were you on this one?



But seriously, that's kind of a whack message to send to kids about differently-abled folks (Toys, I know. Whatever.)

the mid-school-year slump

I'm in it. I just can't seem to keep up with everything that needs to get done. Or I probably could, if I wasn't such a perfectionist. I have this compulsion, though, to do everything 110 %, or whatever. This is not me bragging; this is me wishing I wasn't such a control-freak since it's seriously damaging to my mental health.

I have a really hard time not thinking. Like, I get home from work on Friday afternoons, and all I want to do is lay on the couch and drool. But then my mind just starts working faster and faster until the next thing I know, I'm on the phone with a parent coming up with some action plan for changing a kid's behavior. Or I'm leaving endless voicemails on my co-teachers cell about what else we can be doing to track progress. I want to be able to slow the fuck down, but I don't know how to do that. I mean, I really want to know how.

So I decided to watch a bunch of sappy movies, because those usually get me all swept up in admittedly shallow emotional plots so that at least for an hour and a half my mind stops reeling. Last night I watched Love Actually (which I'm not embarrassed about liking), and The Notebook (I know). I just tried to put on The Prince and Me, but Jess protested, "There's a thin line between sappy and terrible, and this movie is definitely terrible." I had to agree.

So here I am at my computer catching up on my weekend news, and look: Urban League's closure leaves community-watchdog void. Another bummer.

I will say that one happy thing I came across this weekend, is this guy's lesson plan for this coming week. I really like this, and will probably adapt it for one of my groups of kids.

Also, I finally got a chance to post to the vlog, which I was missing. Susan, if you're reading this, I'd like to have some thread of our conversation go in the direction of action-research in the classroom, conducted by teacher and/or by students. I'm trying to collect some data on my classroom environment, quantitative and qualitative, and am finding it to be a tinse overwhelming. This might have worked better as an email.

"But without heads!"

While perusing the racks (That's what she said.) at GAP on Friday afternoon, Alex pointed out to me that these two mannequins are dressed exactly the way Jess and I dress. Jess is on the right; I'm on the left. It's sort of uncanny, actually.

How much more yuppie can we get.