The Bastardization of Everything I Love

Time: To blog more often
Weather: There's been tornadoes and hail. Not in the metro, but around. The sky's yellow.
Mood: Bored. Wide Awake.
Number Dead: None to speak of.
Bullets Remaining: 98

I know. It's getting to be longer and longer in between posts. I don't quite know what to blog about this month. This is what's been naggin' me. As you well may have already predicted, I decided to teach not because of the lucrative money making opportunities, but rather because I loved the idea of working on debate for the rest of my life. I refused to get a minor or an alternate endorsement, like English or history, because I only wanted to teach debate. Idealistic. I know. Then college ended. I started grubbing for jobs. I ended up teaching the one subject I never intended to go near: stagecraft. (Those of you not in the know, that's the tech ed. class where we build the sets for the plays and musicals the drama department performs.)

I loved teaching stagecraft. Correction. I still love teaching stagecraft. I used to teach it every single class, but now I only have 1 class of it. I also teach debate now, which is what I wanted to do in the first place. The fufillment of my life's dream (truly, no sarcasm) to have a debate squad and to be coaching.

In preparation for the fufillment of my dream, I got used to, well over a decade ago, taking notes/projects/readings from all possible communication books, arguments, current events, etc. and mentally stored them for safe keeping. Waiting. For the time when it was time for my squad. No surprise there. However, as a result of my stagecraft carrer, I am mentally safekeeping a whole series of thoughts/projects/readings/viewings for all of my classes. It's exhausting.

Let me explain in an even longer winded fashion.

One of the conditions of hiring me was that I would agree to teach film studies at the end of the semester. I WAS PUMPED. Teach film? Hell yeah! Here's what I didn't know about stagecraft when I took that job: how to build a flat, how to change a bit on a drill, what a chuck key was, how to work a table saw, how to cut at an angle, you name it, and I didn't know how to do it. So this film thing, was gonna kick ass because I fo' sho' could stand around and talk about the shit that I was watching in the theatres and renting from the store. Coo'. I could do it.

So I started the mental preparation for my film unit. Every time I stumbled on a nail or drizzled another coat of paint on some kindergarten constructed piece of scenery, I would mentally escape to those weeks when we could move to film. All the films I saw became the topic of scrutiny. This actually wasn't new for me, I am usually pretty critical of the films I saw anyways and I was already one prone to watch the excentric symbolic films anyways, so I was a leg up on this whole project. First time teaching it was okay and I immediatley fell in love with this unit. Then, in an effort to increase accountability and in order to push my students, I started coupling more readings with the viewings so that basically all year round my kids are building, viewing, and reading. The wholistic learning shit, right? Yeah, right.

The problem is now, I can't turn this thing off. Everything I see, read, or ingest flows through this new filter. The teacher filter. Can I teach it? Is it appropriate to show in class? I have been lamenting for 3 days because we have been working on philosophy in debate and I am dying to show I heart Huckabees, but there's not a rat's chance in hell that I could show it to my kids, with the language and all...My mind still won't give up the ghost...It keeps pressing me to view it and show little clips of it...the "appropriate parts" damn it. While in a theatre, viewing a film for the first time, my mind ticks and the wheels grind during the whole film generating this annoying dialogue about how to cram this awesome film into my class. And it's spreading. Now it's books, moments, t.v. shows, if there's something I enjoy, I think of how to stuff it into a learning moment for my kids. Boardgames, internet quizzes, college notes, even the fucking concept of blogging I have shoved into my classroom. Strategically, this is excellent. What's-his-bucket, you know that one education guy, dudie-mc-teaches-alot, he says that kids learn exponentially faster when you can scoffold by attaching learning to what they know and by using the things kids are already interested. Whooptie fucking do. So now I get a gold star for amazing teaching, but what I realized, after discussing the Harry Potter series with my kids is that now I can't undo the "teacher thoughts." I have been working really hard on creating some private things for myself, such as the Shield. I try really hard NOT to talk about that show with my kids, but fundamentally, even though I know I will never show the Shield to my kids, my mind still thinks about the amazing camera angles and cinematography that goes into the show. I know, I know. I should be enjoying this because I am "enjoying" the show at a whole new level. Yeah. No. Don't think so. I miss the blissfully unaware moments of loving a show because it was "good." Or just the ability to be thinking about the plot of the film or the acting in the film rather than how I can teach it later.

Julie/Julia (can't remember which right now) Penelope talks about this type of containment. She talks about the root of patriarchy coming from the anglo thought that I can take what I love and shove it into a little box and claim it as mine. Game Over. Stick the flag in it and call out the name of your motherland, because what you have conquered is now your property. I thought and still think that part of what makes me a pretty okay teacher is the fact that I care enough about my profession to think about it outside of the school day, but I still feel a little sick to my stomach to think that I am shoving a whole series of things I love into my little shoe box profession. Enough verbage, I am annoyed at myself this evening and all of this sounds like whining, but I am just now wishing that I didn't love my job so much so that I could keep my business and private worlds seperate...

The Best Fight Ever

Time: An hour before bed
Weather: Cold. Windy. Gloomy. Raining.
Mood: Somber. Exhausted.
Number Dead: Just one. One really annoying nurse.
Bullets Remaining: 98

I went into the lunch room. I have to microwave meals. These precious few minutes with the lunch bunch never cease to be the most exciting moments of my day. The microwave is humming its three minute song. As I wait, I am asked where I went for spring break. "Palm Springs," I reply. "I decided to gamble my money away."

The wretched nurse, Nurse Nan, twists her head around in an exorcist-type fashion. "There aren't casinos in Palm Springs," she knowingly informs me. Hmm. "Well, [Nurse Nan] there must be because I was just there."

"Well, I know California law and California law specifically outlaws gambling, so there's no way that you went to a casino in Palm Springs." I must have missed the memo: nurse by day, lawyer for the counsil of High and Mighty by night.

Now, wait a minute. Is she seriously accusing me of LYING about LOSING money over spring break? I repeat, "Well we just stayed at a casino and hotel there, so I'm pretty sure it exists." She is so incredulous at this thought, that she just turns back around and looks at the women sitting at the table with her to report that she knows all about California and how there was no gambling when she was there. As if confrontation with me wasn't worth the effort. I guess she just had to be right to someone. I might have tried logic on her, things like telling her which casino I was at, or even reminding her that most forms of gambling are illegal here, but we still have Indian casinos, but considering that Nurse Nan isn't worth my breath, I just focused on the humming of the microwave and started thinking of the title of this post.

Arount The World...Part 2

Well, here I am. Returned from Palm Springs and my first gambling experience. The shopping still hasn't quit. I am now up three books, another 2 pair of shoes, 2 bras, and 4 pair of panties. I didn't shop out of anger this time. I was shopping thinking that I would reap this awesome amount of money at the casino. Har-dee-har-har. The winnings, weren't as you can tell, high. I also am fortunate enough that I didn't have to buy everything that I shopped for, I have a mother who loves to spoil me, and who loves to buy things for me. I am ready to go home to be in my own home, but I am enjoying my visit.

The first gambling experience was fun, and I enjoyed it, although I basically went through all of my money except for $10.00. I won $60 at one point and $60 at another, and then this morning I won $50, but mostly, I lost it all. I played slots and video poker and I hated playing all of them. Well, I loved it, but I hated how it made me like a mindless drone and worse than that I hated that I loved it. I started gaining this personal affection toward some of the machines that gave me money. It was nuts. I don't know that gambling should be something I do more than once in awhile. Or at least, I wouldn't ever do it every week by playing the slots.

So, now we are back from Palm Springs and we are in L.A. I am going to go out tonight and then I think we'll just hang out tomorrow. Hopefully, we are done shopping, it has started to wear me out! I am looking forward to hearing from everyone and I'll post again tomorrow...

P.S. Genderist, Mom got the shoes that we were looking at! Now our shoes will match just like our toes...

Around The World...

In something like 5 days...

My little adventure started out in Oklahoma City. I travelled for 4 hours last night to a small town in Kansas that is 50 miles North and West of B.F.E. I was there to pick up my Grandmother so that we could begin our journey. We took time to catch up and I got to see my former home town. I spent the first 9 years of my life in Herington, and I usually enjoy going home. I think I still enjoyed being there, however what was bad is that I had to go to bed last night at 11:00p.m. only to wake up at 2:30a.m. to drive 90 miles back to Wichita to catch a flight to L.A. with my Grandmother which was supposed to depart at 6:30a.m.

THE AIRPORT TREATED ME LIKE A TERRORIST. As soon as I walked in, I proceeded to do what any other person would do when going through security, and I took my shoes off. I set them in the gray bin and the security guard man, I'll call him GRUMPY MCGUMP PANTS threw my shoes onto the floor. "You don't need to do that, put your shoes on." Sorry, my fucking bad for not knowing that now it was a ridiculous idea to take off my shoes in an airport. I wish someone would have sent that memo out months ago or at least sent it to EVERY OTHER AIRPORT in the world to let them know that apparently Wichita has it figured out. They know there won't be another shoe bomber. On the lighter situation, however, they weren't so sure. I was keeping my grandmother's purse in my bag and she had a lighter in her purse. They pulled me and the bag over. GUMPY MCGRUMP PANTS asks, "Is there a lighter in this bag?"
"Yeah, probably." I reach for my bag to pull it out. My hand is knocked away and he tells me "not to ever touch a bag when it is being searched." I felt so much anger that I was pretty sure that I might start yelling "bomb" or "allah" or "down with brown" anything to incite him to want to arrest me. I am starting to get airport rage. Especially, after working on about 3 hours of sleep, you have to sit behind the crying kids on the way to Denver and in front of the sonofabitch who keeps frantically typing on his laptop and punching his fingers into the keys like his fingers are fashioned out of stone. Each time he does it the chair vibrates. At some point I flirt with the idea of turning around and speaking the truth, which is that if he did that for one more mother-loving minute, I was going to puke from the seat vibrating. And if I was going to puke, then by god, I was going to puke all over the perpetrator of this airplane crime. I had to do some serious impulse buying to get some new shirts and a skirt in order to compensate for my plane rage. Don't worry, it was all on sale and I only spent $50 for 3 t-shirts, another pair of flip-flops, a blouse and a skirt.

Well, now I'm here. And tomorrow morning we will leave Los Angeles and head to Palm Springs. The traffic situation on the road had better be better than the situation on the plane, otherwise I am likely to bankrupt my account having to go on shopping sprees rather than killing sprees to displace my energy. I am hoping to catch a glimpse of Angry Dissenter sometime before I leave home, but we'll see how lucky I am...I'll keep you posted on this little adventure.

A Potpourri of Thoughts

Potpourri
I never realized how weird this word looks when you are the one typing it rather than reading it.

The Blog
I know. I keep changing it. The worst part is that I am really obsessed with messing around with the template. I am convinced that at some point, I will get it to look exactly like I want it to. This is the same reason why I would NEVER have a tatoo. I keep things the same for about 10 minutes, and then it's time to change it again. I know, it's annoying. However, I did discover that I am really blessed to be able to have a huge moniter at home with which to view my blog. I went to check my blog from work and I realized how shitty it is to have to look at my blog with a smaller moniter. It was driving me nuts! I haven't fixed that problem yet, but I am really hoping that I will be able to make it how I want pretty soon...I don't know, I'm still working on it.

The Joy of Being An Oklahoman
The past 48 hours have been eerie. I walked outside yesterday, amid 80 degree weather. There's no air conditioning on right now in the school and I was sweating all over, including underneath my boobs and buttcheeks. I stood outside, when walking to my car, and there was a slight breeze. I noticed that it was sunny and yet somehow also pitch black outside. While standing there, I realized that there was a chill to the wind. Uh oh. This only means one thing. Tornadoes. By the time I made it to my car, the wind had picked up substantially and it was whipping my car all over the road on the way home. It is really scarry to feel a storm brewing. The sky gets this funky greenish yellowish color when tornadoes are coming. I got home and braced for the storm. Even Oklahoma's most famous meteorologist, Gary England, was sending out the panicked reminder about how to take caution in case the twisters strike. All for not. The tornadic winds blew, the lightning made itself appear more ominous by flashing orange instead of white, but alas, there was no storm. Sigh. We are still waiting for some rain. Now I know why 40 years in the dessert was a long time. Chinese water torture my ass, I would kill for rain, even a few drops. We're all tired of the nose bleeds. Better yet, if yesterday was a cock-tease, then today was the mother of all fucking cruel jokes because it is still thundering, it's humid, the wind is whipping, but there's still not a drop of rain. This has to end before my sanity does...

The Lunch Bunch
It all starts with Nurse Nan. Like the old television series, Emergency! I have given our school nurse this name. I hated Nurse Nan when she was on that t.v. show. I never had a good reason, or at least not one I could put my finger on, but man, I hated her. It's the same thing with the school nurse at my school. I keep trying really hard not to say something about her because I don't really have a good reason to hate her, but I can't help it, this woman drives me nuts. Mostly because she believes she is HARD CORE. She's the nurse that would love to sell you the thought that her job at the school is just as hard as triage on a battlefield in the middle of an epic battle and that she's the last living nurse to handle the dawn of the dead and dying. Every drink she has at lunch: Coke, tea, water, juice, all comes from a styrofoam cup and a straw. A cup that has no lid, mind you. So the straw isn't a result of needing the protection of a lid. Hell no. It's like she's the one that's sick, so she sips on the straw like her lips couldn't handle the force of tilting her cup up another 2 degrees to reach her mouth. Maybe she had a bad drink spill when she was in middle school and as a result now has a complex, I don't know, but just once I want to see this bitch drink out of a glass or even a can or a bottle. OH, OH, OH and I saw her drink out of a can and she used a straw then too! What's her major fucking malfunction?!? I enjoy a straw as often as the next guy, but c'mon, Nurse Nan, you are killing me softly with your straw...

I do think, however, that it might be guilt by association. Nurse Nan is accompanied by her best friend, The Handicapped Silver Spoon Princess. You know this woman, too. She's the one who worries tirelessly that there might be too many germs involved in putting cooked chicken on top of a caesar salad the night before because that situation would probably spread a sea of germs and germs cause BACTERIA, god forbid, we get ourselves INFECTED with BACTERIA. I call her The Handicapped Silver Spoon Princess because she surely feels like the whole damn school is too dirty for her, the world itself is just too filthy now-and tainted. Dust bunnies everywhere! Dirty thoughts, dirty places, dirty people, dirty business this whole trying to teach kids thing. There isn't enough Purrell in the world that could disinfect her brain from the high-minded society burden that she carries on her back. Oh wait. She wouldn't ever do heavy lifting. She must keep it in her handbag, not purse, too common. Maybe that's why she walks around with limp wrists all of the time. The weight of the world all stored in her coin purse. She is emotionally too frail to do her job well. I don't know how to describe it. I have struggled for a metaphor for days and one just refuses to come. She carries herself like a 70 year old woman because she is so DISGUSTED by her surroundings. He can't even handle using the plasticware that the school provides for lunch. She's the person who grumps up her face when she has to talk to custodians because that's like talking to patients from the leper colony. Ugh. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little thinking about how disgusting her personality is.

The third woman that makes up this little triad of joy is Soccer Mom X. The X clearly stands for extreme. Soccer Mom X has a student teacher following her around. One she feels the need to talk to much in the same way that she would talk to a deaf mute dog. Regardless of who you are, you are just another retarded child in need of advice. I was bitching about a policy change at the school, and she just wanted to jump in and fix the problem for me. When I explained that I could handle the problem on my own, her response was something like, "Well good for you! You are learning how to be like the big teachers and handle problems on your own!" I'm sorry, I'm sorry. What I meant to say is, "How would you like to suck my balls, Mr. Garrison?" (There's a South Park reference here. Don't want to be too ambiguous.) I can't handle being the baby. "I'm not a baby!" I scream as I stamp my feet on the floor, slam my fists into my legs and storm from the room. "Gah! I hate school! I can't wait until I'm done!"
Oh. Wait. Dammit, nevermind.

Women 4-7 are worthless in terms of mentioning. To me there is only an Axis of Evil. I have ignored them, and I have started eating alone in my room, but even the 5 minutes that I have to spend heating up my food in the teacher dining room is too much. The worst part is what I mentioned before, which is that there really isn't anything wrong with these women except for the fact that their personality nuances make me want to put toothpicks under my eyelids. I would take a razor blade to my retinas before I would spend another full day in the lunchroom with them...

The Oscars
For some reason, Blogger is joining in on the fun and choosing to also be a pain in the ass, so I will post my most recent thoughts here instead of on Angry's blog. I agree. That's all. Most plainly, I think Brokeback was given the shaft-truly no pun intended, I just caught it reading the 2nd time throught- for a more palatable movie.

The Vinegar
In Genderist's hair is hand's down the funniest story I have heard all week. I am still giggling a little at your pain. Well played, my friend. Well played.

Damn It!

I was sitting down to post because I have alot on my mind and right as I come into the room to type, The Count comes in and screeches out that The Shield is on. I may yeild once in awhile and give up wrestling, but I will never let go of the Shield. Still reading you all from work and not able to respond...I'm still here, but I gotta go the commercial's over...

Genderist, Thanks so much for the puzzle board-it kicks serious puzzle ass!

I'm Back

I know, it's been awhile. I haven't seen anyone, I haven't really been around. For the past five weeks, I have had almost back to back debate tournaments. The most important being getting ready for Districts, which is our national qualifing tournament. I am happy to report that I have two students going to Dallas this summer. I am also happy to report that other than Nationals, I only have two tournaments left, one which is this Friday and Saturday and one which is in April. Soon all of this crap will soon be done...I am so tired right now that I don't even know what to say or what to report. The Count and I woke up this morning and decided to unpack the dresser that we bought a month ago. We rearranged the furniture in our bedroom and then took another nap to recover from the weekend. My favorite quote of the weekend was this:

"Hey Baby, wanna cookie? I keep my Nutter Butter's right here in my pocket...You like that? Yeah, well you should see where I keep my Oreo's..."

Hopefully, I will be up to full speed sometime next week...