Advent again.

How I hate waiting. But how I love Advent.

A couple of days after Jess and I move in together years ago, she told me that I was moving too fast all the time and it was freaking her out. She was speaking quite literally: I wash the dishes fast, get the chips out of the cabinet fast, walk to the bathroom fast.

Sometimes as a kid I would lay in bed in the morning planning out my route around my room, the bathroom, the kitchen from the time I stepped out of bed to the time I walked out the door for school. I liked figuring out the most efficient way to get it all done. A lot of times, I would even sleep in my uniform polo, tights, and boxer shorts, so that all I had to do in the morning to get dressed was step into my skirt and slip into clogs. Is that weird?

I love doing things fast. I come by it honestly. My mom and I once decorated my entire apartment within two days of moving in, wallpapering included. I woke up pre-dawn and couldn't go back to sleep, so visceral was my desire to finish painting my room.

seeking inspiration

The last two speakers I've seen on campus, Bill Ayres and Cornel West, both spoke in part about how defeated Dr. King was in the months before his assassination. His approval rate, they both cited, was as low as George W. Bush's was when he left office last year, largely due to his stance on the Vietnam War (anti-). The way West put it, (from my notes, so not completely verbatim,) "King knew that historically Black people were born amidst a stream of urine and feces, born amidst some serious funk. We were born in the funk of James Brown, George Clinton, and Lil Wayne. That there was slavery in that funk, and Jim Crow, and dilapidated housing, and despicable school systems, and love, and hope, and dignity. He knew that Black people would never be able to find their dignity in that funk if mainstream society insisted on deodorizing and denying the funk. He knew that his funk would be deodorized by mainstream society which doesn't want to deal with the nightside." The public misconception, West explained, about what exactly King's dream was, really got to him.

I try to remember this at times like yesterday, when in the hallway during a passing period, I took a post-it off a student's back that said, "I'm gay really gay." And one of my students who is homeless showed up for the fourth time this semester on Tuesday, promised he'd be back, and wasn't for the rest of the week. And this week when I was told that two of my students have dropped out. And when I had to deal with the return from suspension of a student who stole my wallet. And when a student in my AP prep class made fun of his brother in our co-taught class and who has a learning disablity for being "dumb." And when I had to call a parent every night to tell her that her son, who plagiarized a paper he recently turned in, was repeatedly lying to her about giving me a revised essay. It really sucks. And it's really hard not to feel ineffective.

I voiced this concern to one of the experienced teachers in the building, who compassionately told me that I was wrong, and that I was making a difference. When I talked about it with my boss, and he asked me what I was going to do about it. I really appreciated that I was able to have an honest conversation with him about it; it was definitely more productive than just acting like my inadequacies as an educator are non-existent.

Sydney, my good friend and colleague, asked me the other day if I thought that we, as teachers, would ever not have to constantly remind students that homophobic, racist, sexist, classist, etc.-ist, remarks are not allowed in our classrooms. Probably not. I went into teaching knowing that I'd probably never achieve this. I certainly didn't plan to save the world. And that's all good to know in theory. I guess I just wish I had the humility to know it in practice, and to not feel so depressingly defeated when all of my work towards that goal is not successful. It would certainly make it a lot easier to not want to cry through my lunch hour.

thoughtlessness

I did two really thoughtless potentially hurtful things this week, and it sucks. In neither case did I mean to be a dumbass jerk, but in both cases, I'm pretty sure I was. I'm too embarrassed to explain either situation here. Uggghh.

feeling fragile

I have to use more than one hand to count the number of times I've been sick this school year. At least.

Right now I have an upper respiratory infection and pink eye in both eyes.

Not fun.

Dust allergy, why dost thou plague me so?

Seriously, I feel like freaking shit. I'm trying to pack my stuff for moving/purge my piles of all of the useless crap I've saved over the past four years. And my reaction to the dust I'm kicking up in the process is hindering my ability to comfortably scream along with my current cleaning music of choice, Kings of Leon. Which is a total bummer, obviously.

So I decided to take a break and work on the vlog. This is what I look like right now. (It's bad. I wasn't even making that face. I swear. PhotoBooth shot right when I had a sneeze come.)


Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

shameful

I got out of bed at 5:10 pm today. Tonight, I should say. Seriously? I mean, to be fair, I woke up earlier, enjoyed a bowl of pasta salad, and then watched the last hour of Batman Begins. But I didn't really get up for the day until it was 17/24ths over. Also, I'm pretty sure that saying that I watched a movie in bed doesn't really hold up as an argument for non-ridiculousness.

Then I went to Bread Company, by myself, and had a glass of wine with dinner as I read something pretentious. Then, I got an iced, skim, no-sugar vanilla latte. And now I'm sitting on my porch, working on creating a new-and-improved version of KEOH.

Does it get anymore self-indulgent than this? I think not. (And unfortunately, I'm so self-absorbed that, I must admit, I've found today to be lovely.)


(In other news, the NatGeo photo of the day today is pretty cool, no?)