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3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

I was kind of walloped by this conversation.

Posted on 2008.05.12 at 19:17
Tom Stevens is the dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences here, and he's also a math professor, so his office is down the hall. He is a great guy. He is even-handed and fair to a fault. He is silly and good-hearted. He's probably around 60. He is one of the two  math professors that go to these MAA meetings with me. His wife is a biology professor here, too.

*                  *                       *

I submitted all my grades, which felt great, and the whole building was empty except for Tom's office, so I stopped by to say hi.  We talked about why my semester was so busy, (I bitched), and pay scales, and things like that.

Then I asked him about the plaque I'd noticed under a small tree, which says "Tom Stevens, Jr".  And has some lifespan dates.

He said he had another son, who died. Tom said his son was a student here. I asked him how old his son was when he died. Tom said he was 17.  He said that he died just after his freshman year here.  Then Tom started to cry, and then I started to cry too.

I asked him how he died.  Tom said that his son had asthma, and something about the inhaler. Something like, "We know more now about the dangers of those inhalers than we did then."  We were both crying, really, with passing tissues around and everything.  

Tom said his son died on the 4th of July. His son had stayed in town, taking summer classes.  Tom Sr had left for Canada three days earlier, where they usually spend their summers.  He said he wishes he'd stayed.

I asked him how long ago his son died. I thought the plaque might have said 1994, but I didn't really remember. Tom said, "I don't know. I really don't know when exactly it was.  That whole time period is a blur."

We sat there. I was astonished that you could suppress knowing what year your son died.

He went on, "I try not to think about it, because I can't handle it. I listen to the radio all night so that I won't think about it."

I asked him which child it was, in order compared to his other children, and he said that this was his oldest. His other children are adults in their late twenties and thirties. So Tom Jr must have died over fifteen years ago.

We sat there, and I didn't know how to wrap things up, but Tom said gently, "I think I'll change the subject.  It's still about death, though." And he started telling me about a documentary he saw on The Titanic.

We talked about other movies, and the subject of Tom Jr wasn't totally gone - Tom mentioned that he avoids sad movies, and reiterated that he really does sleep with the radio on.  We talked about politics and the Democrats for another fifteen minutes or so. Without crying.

*                  *                       *

Grief that gigantic scares the living hell out of me. I worry for my mom, if my dad should die.  Grief so terrific that you must suppress your brain, just to go on. For over fifteen years. You can't prepare for that, because that would be equally sad - to live in the shadow of a hypothetical tragedy of this scale.

God really can hand you more than you can handle.  In fact, I hate the saying that says otherwise, because I feel it trivializes how people really can break from pain.

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

Paper cage.

Posted on 2008.05.11 at 17:01
Oh god, I'm in some sort of paper-cutty grading hell. Pages and pages to go. It's too much! I resent it!

Out of my four classes, the final exams had 6 pages, 12 pages, 15 pages, and 7 pages.  I made a post-it note with hatch marks so that each time I finished a page for a class, I can X it out, like a prisoner.  I have 9 more pages left, spread out over two finals.

So if you wanted to quantify my pain, the units would be class-pages. Why the hell did I make the final exams so long again?

Grades are due at 5:00 tomorrow, but it takes me a while to enter grades and clean up miscellaneous homework and extra credit scraps.

Am I hungry? Or just bored? Let's have some Appreciation Cake.

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

Ferociousness.

Posted on 2008.05.09 at 15:35
There is a bathing suit I want, because I find the colors luscious.  It has the deep yellows and greens of a Mexican blanket, but soft and blurry.

Unfortunately it is skimpy as hell. Now, I remember from last summer that San Marcos becomes nearly-naked-ville, and I became re-normed in swaths of exposed flesh. And all kinds of ages and imperfect bodies.  So possibly I'd feel okay. The colors are so gorgeous.  I wish it had more fabric.

Let's play the Jammies update game!

You may remember: 

 

That became this:



and then this:

 


And that is the end of the update game. FOR NOW.

I don't even feel like I have a gender.

On NPR recently they had a series about transgender kids. Two parts left a big impression on me.  First, these kids were switching it up from the time they were two years old.  Most of the examples were little boy toddlers who are obsessed with wearing dresses and being referred as girls, and say honestly that they are a girl. And who become anxious and depressed and miserable when forced to live as boys. And as they get older and puberty looms, they become self-destructive. It was excructiatingly clear that these kids were born a gender which did not match their plumbing.

Second, they kept emphasizing the similarities between dealing with transgender kids in 2008 and dealing with gay kids thirty years ago.  One therapist said, "Parents come in saying, 'It'd be okay if he were gay, but why does he have to be a cross-dresser?' Thirty years ago, parents said, 'It's okay if he's feminine, but why does he have to be gay?' " And back then, coercive therapy was employed to straighten out gay kids; today it's considered unethical.  But they do use coercive therapies to try to get a kid to live as a gender that matches their plumbing.

So it seems very clear that some people have an intrinsic gender, sometimes independent of their plumbing. 

This has cheap, anti-feminist implications.  See, there IS a  gender which is programmed to be nurturing! Born to love pink! Built to play with dolls! Can't fight destiny, baby!  As a movement, we've got to pre-emptively get a different message into the public consciousness.

What we've got to do is separate out gender from sex in the public conversation, or else this will be disastrous.  Is feminism about gender equality or sex equality? Some of each? You know, I don't really know. Gender is very confusing when I stop and think about it too hard. Everything I think seems to be straight out of advertisements for Clorox Bleach. 

Are marketing departments and sociology departments arch-enemies? If they were put in a jar, which one would eat the other? Or would they mate? We will have to find answers to all these questions.

Here is some art I made one time about genders:



It's a little Zapatista rebel doll inside an egg beater. She guards the entrance to our kitchen:



Don't fuck with her, she has been through a lot.

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

Outcaked, over and upside-down caked, and inside out.

Posted on 2008.05.08 at 09:23
I ate the very model of a modern major general.  I souped him up with vegetables and animals and minerals. I soaked the beans of pinto and I fried them twice methodical, from pan to pot to pan to pot, in order alphebetical. What have you done so far today?

We're getting so fed today. There was a faculty appreciation buffet this morning, then a retirement lunch, and then in another hour we get an Appreciation Cake from the Development office. I'm so stuffed. I feel like a blueberry.

Last night I was so stuffed, too, because Miss Shel and I tried to take wine coolers down by the river.  We succeeded, and we succeeded in feeling like we were sixteen years old again,  but we kind of failed, because these days wine coolers are disgustingly sweet and not very alcoholic. After three of them, I was just nauseated from the sugar.

I feel like I need to rave more about the river. While we were there, a man came up to us, and asked us a bunch of questions. He and his family had recently moved down from New York. The questions were like, "So, are you suppose to pay an entrance fee somewhere to be here? Do you have to do something to be able to go swimming? Where do you go to go tubing?" and we were like, "Nope, free, free, anytime, just need a tube. No lifeguard, no reservation, come, swim, enjoy."

So allow me to rave. The river originates about a mile upstream from our house, so it's clear and clean and 72 degrees all year round. On the south side of the river is one long public park, kept nice and green with picnic tables and barbecue grills and tennis courts and baseball diamonds and a kingdom-sized wooden playscape.
 
There's pretty cyprus trees and elephant ears and rope swings, and sometimes live music. And we just take a six-pack and walk up river, put our tubes in and ride home.

(Update: We just ate the Appreciation Cake. It turns out we were be-caked because our department had 100% participation in donations to the university.  Which is odd, because I certainly didn't donate money.   I should totally have my cake revoked.)

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

I'll serve your ass like John McEnroe

Posted on 2008.05.06 at 13:17
Why, why, it seems that everything has become quiet.  Hush, hush, just listen.

...

I gave my last final exam this morning. That is why it is so quiet - it's the sound of nobody trying to interact with me.   Now my brain is like a  fish tank full of starfish.


Word to your moms, I came to drop bombs.


In the fall, I'm teaching a section of our How To Be A Freshman course, required for all first-year students. It's called The Freshman Experience. We talk a lot about study skills.

For the first half of the course, all the sections are reading the same book, and then the author is going to come visit campus for our Big Fall Symposium.  The book is called [redacted], a memoir of this white guy canoing down the Rio Grande from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico, and boy do I dislike him.

The author is very fond of the phrase, "I sensed that..." to pay himself backwards compliments. "I sensed that this humble Mexican  was amazed by my mastery of the Spanish language." "I sensed that I would become like a father figure to this young lad." "I sensed that the rapids were tiring out my rafting companion, but out of generosity I refrained from telling him how energetic I felt."

Here are the things he hates: Whitey, society, excess. Here are the things he omits: women.  Here are the things he values: Mexican men who live alone and survive by eating one peanut every ten days.

(Really, he has some fetish for men who don't eat much.) (Unlike his travelling companions. Haven't they ever heard of scarcity?)

Also I like it when he describes someone he idolizes, and then describes how he has come to embody a younger version of that person. Also details like: "My companion laid his sleeping bag on the grass, while I hunted around for harder ground."

OH GOD YOU'RE SUCH A BLOWHARD.

Man, I want to quote from this book so bad, but it seems like it could potentially compromise my anonymity. Since this intersects with my job.

(Seriously, I'm 3/4 of the way through, and there are no adult women in this story. Not even incidentally. Not even when people recall memories of life before the trip down the Rio Grande.  He seems to have never come across a woman-person. Then out of the blue, he described a bend in the river as "nipple-shaped" and I wanted to hurl the book across the room. But the room was full of students taking an exam, so instead I angrily dog-eared the page.)

I've got more rhymes than the Bible's got psalms

Anyway, I sense that this book won't drag down a woman-person as nurturing and nipple-shaped as me. I look just like a bishop piece. And I move diagonally to boot.

Old Nipply Heebie sure has been raking in the gifts this semester! The SAGA kids gave me a whole lotta candy, a key-chain, and two mix CDs, and another student gave me a vase he made in ceramics. I was super touched by all the gestures.

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville
Posted on 2008.05.05 at 09:44
Locations of visitors to this page


3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville
Posted on 2008.05.05 at 09:10



TC

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

Hey, I love my job, but I love summer vacation more.

Posted on 2008.05.04 at 17:11
You know, they all say, "Find a job you LOVE!" "What color is your parachute?" "If you do what you love, it won't feel like work!"

You know what I love? Kittens. Watching TV.  Oooh! And ice cream. And blogging. My parachute might not be green with the benjamins.

It seems we've deflated the myth that you'll find a Prince In Shining Armor to marry, but we still believe in the Career of Shining Armor, and it's a pack of lies. We tell our students to figure out what they're passionate about and blah, blah, blah, and it IS a good exercise - every one should figure out what they're passionate about. But it's not necessarily going to parlay into a Grand Career. Sometimes you just stick with the job that you mind least. 

Once my uncle said that Buddhism is the religion designed to help people deal with the fact that life had been exactly the same for thousands of generations, and would continue to be exactly the same for thousands of generations of people to come.  I always thought that was very nice.

All I'm saying is, you might not find a career which illuminates you from within like a flashlight in your mouth, cheeks red. You can still be okay; think of the Buddhists.

(Also, is this the Down-Low Subtext to the stay-at-home-mom controversey? That maybe they just didn't love their career that much? Maybe most people don't, and SAHMs are the ones whose economics merges happily with their preferences.  It seems like it would diffuse the tension between the sides if we acknowledged this, instead of hyper-focusing on The Children.)

(Also, I'm really REALLY aggravated by Hillary Clinton latching onto the gas tax suspension, and thereby forming an alleginace with McCain against Obama. You are REALLY not supposed to jump across the aisle to win your primary.  Especially when the gas tax is nine kinds of gimmicky bullshit all roled up into a happy shitstorm. I find politics very stressful.)

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

And it's filled with hydrogen.

Posted on 2008.05.03 at 11:57
Gee, Heebie, why so quiet? Oh, long hours. A general feeling of mental thrumming because of a sea of little tasks.

Little tasks are like cicadas, and my brain is like a thousand cicadas. By the river on a hot summers eve? No, trapped in a balloon.  A novelty balloon, like the Easter Gift baskets used to come in, except chock full of angry cicadas. A Hindenburg of cicadas.

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

They accuse me of murder! Stalker of women!

Posted on 2008.04.30 at 10:46
Our home internet is down. Which affects you, dear reader, because I'd written half an entry at school yesterday, and then I couldn't finish it.  And now it doesn't make sense.  So you'll have to put on your googly eyes and boingy-boingy shoes,  and squeaky chronometer,  and onamonapoeia foil helmet, and we'll pretend we're time travelling to last night.  Bring on the sense-making!

It's Tuesday Night!

I don't think I'm gross.  You don't think I'm gross, do you?  It's just that I haven't showered since Friday.  Don't judge.

So we had a soccer game Sunday night.  Afterwards I did not shower. Even though I was a sweaty-sweaty-sweatseygail.  It was a late game,  and we didn't get home till 11:00 pm.  At night!  So I just went to bed.

Monday morning, there was no time to shower.  So I just went to school.
Monday night, I got home at 10:00 pm. And, actually, I just forgot.

Tuesday morning I did not shower.  And so I just realized sitting here that it had been awhile. I assume I'll shower tonight, right?

Now it's Wednesday morning!

Did I shower last night? Did I did I? It is a mystery.

Anyway, here are two more photos from the City-Wide Garage Sale:



Yikes! How would you like to come over to our house for a dinner party and see that your place-setting was outfitted with those hooves? You'd be shaking hands with deer all night. And what if we served tongue? You'd be tasting tongue while handling paws. 

And:


There was a whole stack of these magazines, old and crumbly. What a wonderful publication. "They accuse me of murder!"  I like her expression. I like how she is about to stab you, and presumably then be accused of murder.  Every story true.

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

Ring ring! Operator, please put me through to engagementville.

Posted on 2008.04.27 at 16:59
Jammies and I went ring shopping yesterday. Yes - the eyebrow-waggling meaning of ring-shopping. Weee-yoooo!  We went to the City Wide Garage Sale. 

Three engagement rings were purchased; one for Jammies and two for me.



The woven silver ring is for Jammies. The glamorous Colgate toothpaste ring and the tranquil sunset ring are for me.



My camera doesn't do close-up detail work very well.

It is not yet established how these rings will come to live on our fingers; I think Jammies has something planned, and it is always fun when Jammies plans something, so I do not want to interfere.

*                     *                    *

You know, it is sort of amazing that I have been grading exams for eight years and I have not yet lost an exam.  If I think about it too much, I'll jinx it. 

(It is also amazing that you don't bite your tongue more often. Your teeth are thrashing around in there, and your tongue is dodging, dodging, like a carnival game.  Just don't think about it, or else you'll chomp the fuck out of your tongue.)

(I didn't invent the tongue analogy.  The author is Adam Corolla, from when he was on Lovelines.)

(I have a small collection of brilliant lines from Adam Corolla, when he was on Lovelines. Here is one winner: A teenage boy, trying to get his girlfriend to orgasm, is like a raccoon trying to get a candy bar out of a vending machine. He's got his arm in there, up to the elbow, frantically waving around. Scratching at it. No idea how it works, but he wants it SO BAD. Running around back to see if there's another way in.)


(OH! I also need to clarify: I did not invent the Tiered Tests. I saw a presentation on this method of giving tests at the MAA conference. If you'd like to know the author's name and details, e-mail me, because otherwise I'll plead private blog anonymity and not name names.)

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

Paging Dr. Haweye Pierce.

Posted on 2008.04.25 at 11:28
I would like to see Hawkeye's haircut from M*A*S*H come back into style:



So cute! Does this mean I have an Electra Complex? I choose to believe that I do not, Daddy-o. Perhaps when Jammies's hair grows out, I can encourage him to try this out.  We'll be ahead of our time.  SO CUTE.

Future comb-overs UNITE!

Lately I seem to be losing my ability to digest meat.  Red meat in particular. Am I doing something wrong? Do I need to eat more enzymes or capsaicin? Because I'll do it. 

I find it unbearably depressing that our idiotic forays into faux-green ethanol production have, predictably, triggered mass starvation.  LIARS! You're all LIARS! We told you it wasn't a cleaner alternative fuel!  We told you that food prices would spike. You knew that people were surviving on less than a dollar per day.

The main reason I don't blog about politics much is that I descend into shrill panic. I do not know how to keep my composure when discussing how our false promotion and subsidy of ethanol production, which was never environmentally greener than oil production, is now unnecessarily making tons of people starve.

(Did I mention that steak makes my tummy feel stuffy?)

So the last full week of classes draws to a close.

Tiered tests were a flaming success.  Students said it lowered their anxiety.  It cut down on my grading time. And I felt more confident that I was assigning grades that reflected the individual's mastery of the material.

I don't think I ever told you guys about the details of this Pedagogical Silver Bullet.  Shall we put on our teacher's caps for a short lesson?

We shall.

So:  The test has four sections - a D-section, a C-section (*snicker*), a B-section, and an A-section.  It takes 80% to pass a section.

If you pass the D-section, you've earned 70 pts.
If you pass the C-section, 80 pts.
And, B-section, 90 pts.

When you fail a section, you get a grade determined by your partial credit. So if you get half the points on the B-section, you'd get an 85.

I gave out the D-section ahead of time. (That's what the students said lowered their anxiety - knowing ahead of time what it took to get a 70.) It was all definitions and properties and basics - no problem solving.  Plus, they did better on the C-section for having formally memorized the D-section.

The C-section is straight-forward problems with no tricks.
The B-section is hard problems.
The A-section is conceptual challenge problems.

If you fail a section, I won't grade anything after that.  This is what made it such a time-saver: I didn't have to grade C-students mangling hard problems.  You just grade what they can do, and stop.

And it was so clear.  You can do easy problems but not hard problems? You'll get a low B. You can do hard problems? You'll get an A. You get kind of stuck on easy problems? You get a C.  It felt like everyone was getting the grade that matched their understanding.

All right. When I say GO, everyone work on getting the message out. SPREAD THE WORD.
Go! )


3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

On a hot, damp evening long ago.

Posted on 2008.04.23 at 16:13
My funny bone is bruised.  Isn't that awful? Slightly bruised. Awfully slightly bruised!  And so reminds me of a story.

Back in the nineties, I was on a soccer trip.  For a weekend tournament, probably in Tampa or Orlando or Jacksonville.  We stayed in a hotel, and the boys' soccer team was there too, and it was all deliciously exciting. 

    I believe I was a sophomore in high school.

    The year was 1993.

    Or near then.

It was night, and the air was damp and warm, and we mingled in the parking lot. At this age, I flirted by staying quiet and trying to seem friendly. So mostly I failed at flirting, because I can't hold me back, baby! When I've got something to say, it's coming out. But whatever. I would try to stay quiet.

I was staying quiet in conversation with two boys, and my friend Cara called my name. I ignored her. She called my name again. I slightly turned my back towards her.

(One of the boys was Lonnie, who I had a mild crush on.  On this same trip, my soccer coach said, "Well, Lonnie is cute, but he has such a bird chest."  I was weirded out that my coach had an opinion on Lonnie's chest.)

Anyway, Cara was becoming increasingly impatient, and I was ignoring her.

Here is my version of events: She pulled out a Class A Firearm Rock-Gun, and loaded a jaggedy rock into it, and fired it close-range at my back.  It hit me square on the funny bone.   Who cares what her version is. The point is, my funny bone! My funny world exploded in pain, flashing lights, blah, blah, blah, "HOLY FUCK THAT HURTS", blah, blah. My whole arm throbbed.

I like to believe that I turned, and charged, and tackled Cara to the ground. But I'm pretty sure I didn't. I think I sort of hopped around, holding my elbow, and swearing a lot.  The conversation with the boys was certainly over.

(But wait! This is my blog! COMMENCE REVISIONIST HISTORY!   I whirled around with fire in my eyes and molten lava in my belly, and charged like an angry triceratops. Head down, horns blazing. 

The impact of my tackle took Cara and I up and over the white Thunderbird parked behind Cara.    We landed on the roof and wrestled. From the T-bird, Cara jumped on top of a brown van, and I was hot on her heels. Up and onto the hotel roof, which was made of gravel. I pinned her down up there, and then affectionately said, "Lil scamp, you can't get away with this." I tossed her into the hotel pool.  Lonnie clasped his hands together and sighed, "My hero!")

And the bruise! Lasted forever! For months I'd idly rest my arm or tap something, and the fireworks of SEVERITY would course through my arm, and I would curse Cara.  Who claimed that she'd just tossed a rock at me and it didn't really hurt that bad, and I should shut up already.

The moral of the story is: Stay away from Cara.  This mindless - yet true! - anecdote brought to you by the funny bone.

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

Soup for thoughts.

Posted on 2008.04.22 at 18:52
I left work sick today!  How unprecendented.  I wrenched myself out of bed at 5:30 am, head a-buzzy and snot a-flowy, and staggered into work.   But as I was preparing for class, I was so dang addled and fuzzy-brained that I feared disaster during my 8:00 am class, because the dean was supposed to sit in and review me for my third year review.

I couldn't shake the premonition that the Kosovo Kid would ask some reasonable question, and I wouldn't be able to answer it, and I'd flail and grasp for excuses of how addled and sick I felt. And then I'd be anxious and tormented for having bungled my review.

So I re-scheduled for Thursday, and headed home. I was tucked back in bed by 10:30 this morning, with the cats and the pillows and the comforter and it's been lovely. You know, I always thought that Sudafed addled my brains, but perhaps just being sick does it.

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

Mmmm, wait

Posted on 2008.04.21 at 10:39
They don't love you like I love you.

My throat feels soggy, in that post-nasal-drop getting sick way. Bleagh. On top of that, I'm feeling earnest and navel-gazy today. Please, let's take a sensitive look at my life. Together.

Wait.

Chaunda, my beloved therapist, is ending her practice. I have One Last Session scheduled before she calls it quits.  (Here Lies The Following:  An Unbearably Trite and Doe-eyed Waltz Through Heebie's Emotional Growth.) Let's dive in! 

I started working with Chaunda almost four years ago. I was single and miserable, and I didn't understand why being single  meant that I was utterly incapable of enjoying life.  I didn't understand why I was dominated by something so small and petty.  But it was. I felt like I ceased to exist each night, that no one was in a relationship with me to pull me into existence. So pathetic!  And I knew it was pathetic! It's a horrible feeling to know you're wrapped up inextricably with a small, pathetic problem.

So finally I set up an appointment with the University Health Services people, and the person I talked to referred me to Chaunda. Who is brilliant. And listens and empathizes, while gently questioning your assumptions. She sees how people operate in systems. We worked really hard for about one year.
 
And then I was all better. Everything fell into place. (Sure.) Honestly, I felt like I was in 5th grade again - rational, liking myself immensely, full range of emotions, able to brush off rejection.  Trusting myself.

(So wait, how did everything fall into place? I had to confront a lot of internalized misogyny.  It's hard to convey how scary that was. The scariest thing was "Would Life Be Okay If I Never Got Married?" I didn't want to even look at the question, because it felt like if I looked at it, I would jinx it and make it come true.  So the big thing was learning to enjoy myself enough that if I was single forever, it would be wonderful, because I was with myself.

When Jammies and I got together about six months later, I did feel torn, because I'd wasted so many years suffering, and only had six months of enjoying myself, being single. But he is worth it.)

For a while I was seeing Chaunda on a two-week schedule, then a monthly schedule, and then since I've graduated and been working, we've been on a seasonal touch-up schedule.

The best part is that the 5th-grade balance and self-directed compass has now lasted for almost three years.  At this point, I trust it.  And because I've got my shit together, I have the ability to focus and care about bigger issues.  It's such a relief that I'm no longer consumed with small, sad crap.

Anyway, I thought that Chaunda would be in my corner forever. I thought I could spit out my mouthguard, and she'd put a bag of frozen peas on my eyes. I'm grateful that she taught me how to freeze my own peas, but I'll miss her all the same.

They don't love you like I love you.

What is the occasion to wear our lovely striped dresses? We wear them to play Rock Band on a home-built stage, and to sing The Yeah Yeah Yeahs like we mean it.  Because we do.  We look like this:


  and this 


(Click on me to fully appreciate the dress.)

There were stage lights, and amps, and a mini-drum stage behind the singer, and happy birthday, Jammies's old roommate.  They were roommatoes before Jammies and I became roommatoes.

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

I'm begging, "Please, baby, PLEASE."

Posted on 2008.04.19 at 14:28
Please

Jammies observed correctly that it would be an awesome job to be the guy who serves subpoenas. Especially when you get to play cat-and-mouse with someone who's avoiding you. Because you'd get to surveil and learn his routine. Once you determine where he gets his morning cup of coffee, then you put on a Starbucks apron and hop behind the counter.  When he gets to the front of the line, hand him his papers and say, "Here's your cup of SOMETHING ELSE."

Baby

I think a good idea is to own clothes you love, in all kinds of sizes. Right now I'm on the upper end of my weight range. It's like, "Stripey dress! my old friend! I'm delighted to wear you again!"  Otherwise, if you just shop for the lower end of your range, it's depressing when you have nothing that fits. 

Please

Airport security guards must feel like such tools when they hold up a backpack and say, "Who's is this? We need to take a closer look," and the little four-year-old pipes up, "It's mine!"  Son, what have you got in that satchel? Are those action-figures?

Please, baby, please
Baby-baby, please-please.

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

All the big blue-rimmed sunbonnets in the world

Posted on 2008.04.16 at 21:50
Over time, I've been finding my computer science colleague more and more endearing. I've grown quite fond of her, in her robotic proto-humanoid approximations of normality.  But Pam, honey, let's be explicit about parking lot etiquette, shall we?

Pam, you know how we're accustomed to parking side by side, in the same spots every day? And we both get in super-early, and so we're the first two cars in the lot? Now, suppose someone meddles with our routine. Just say. Like, if the construction workers happened to park their pick-up in your spot. Then - and here's the etiquette - don't turn around and then take my goddamn spot.  Take any other random spot. See how that works? Now you know.

Aren't worth anything on a cloudy day.

In other news, I just noticed that one of my regulars in office hours says dadgum all the time.  Any time she's stuck, or puzzled, or finally sees it, she goes dadgum.  Seriously, sweetie? Your default non-swearing emoto-word is dadgum? As in, "Dadgum, that boy dipped my plaits into the inkwells while I was working on my sums in class" or "Mister, if you can spare two-bits then I can buy a bandana and tie it around the end of this pole to make a dadgum sack-on-a-stick"?

Speaking of, do you know that there are railroad tracks two houses away from us?  I'd love to get one of those platforms that rides the railroad tracks, with the arm-powered pumping mechanism in the center to give it some go. Then me and Jammies could spend the summer pumping ourselves all over Texas. All over dadgum tarnation, one might say. Wouldn't that be fun? Yes, for about ten minutes. Then I'm sure I'd be like, "Jammies, my dadgum muscles are too puny. Please pump me home now."

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

Then the second muffin said, "Wow, a talking muffin!"

Posted on 2008.04.15 at 13:58
Apparently, most prison breaks occur in the last month before the prisoner was going to be parolled, anyway. I can totally relate. I have four more Tuesday/Thursday days until the end of the semester. I'm practically panting, I'm so excited.  The inside of my office door has claw marks, and my eyes and tongue protrude, and my belly is swollen.  I keep licking my lips, as though someone is about to give me a Beggin' Strip. Oh, I'll beg. On my knees. Just get me out of here.

On My Knees

We have to hold a program review, so that we can justify that our students achieve all these lofty ideals that we claim they achieve. Critical Thinking Skills! A mastery of vector calculus! A respect for diversity of cultures! You know, maybe we should just scale back our lofty ideals. 

Check my stees

College sure is shaped by people who love higher ed.  It is a bizarre collection of hoops to jump through, if you don't.  ("Okay, now take your derivative, and find its zeros. No, your zeros! YOUR ZEROS! ......why? Don't you want to know where your horizontal tangents are? ..... Atta girl.")

I think that every university should offer a two-year associate's degree.  Ivy League, State schools, whatever.  If you could get it from a prestigious school, it wouldn't have a stigma.  Why do you need to pick an academic discipline to major in, if you're not inclined towards an academic discipline?  Why should you pay $27,000 of yearly tuition, to be forcefed twelve courses from your least-painful academic discipline?

Is the two years even necessary? Yes. You should see how our students write and read and struggle with fractions. Let's have two years of basically intense high school education.  But then, let's set them free unless they really want to learn more.

Let me knock it with ease

If you know this song, you can be Biggest Fan #2 of K-Ci and Jojo. Or we can share the #1 spot together.

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

Find particular solutions to the following nonhomogeneous differential equations:

Posted on 2008.04.13 at 18:10
We have really stunk it up on the soccer fields this weekend.  Yesterday, my coed team, we bumbled our way to a 4-0 loss, and today my women's team bobbled our way to a 6-0 loss.  I was particularly pathetic this morning.  Tonight we have an indoor game.

After yesterday's soccer game, I cajoled Jammies into stopping at a garage sale, where I found a mess of heart pendants:



They range from 1" to about 3" big.

The big ones are my favorites:



I didn't know what I'd do with them, besides necklaces and earrings, but I needed a container to hold them, and so I bought this box to put them in:



I thought, could they hang from a light fixture? Could they dangle from a mobile? For the time being, I think that a Brass Box of Old Hearts strikes just the right note, and that it should live in the bathroom.



Oh Jesus, who've you got now?

On Friday, I got into conversation with student during office hours. He wants to be a teacher.  He said he hated college when her first got here, but that he matured a lot over the first year.

I asked more questions and he admitted that, halfway through his first year, he was Saved. Since then, he has put his studies first and worked very hard. So it was a good thing. So I felt obligated to congratulate him on this turn. Heebie, you big phony.

Burning questions

1. Post-Jesus, why did Christianity switch the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday?  How do they justify that theologically?

2. I know Jesus went around saying that you no longer have to follow all 500 piddling commandments, about the kosher, and the peyes, and the four-cornered garments, and the hey-hey. And so Christians are off the hook.  But if Jesus said, "Don't sweat the small rules, focus on the big stuff," how come the Christians stopped celebrating Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah?  It doesn't get any bigger than Yom Kippur, for those who care about such things. Who dropped that ball?

I promised you snow drifts of pollen.



Rugs of tan tree sperm. Live oak tree sperm, I believe.



Like a big lake of brown dust.



Fortunately, I do not suffer from allergies.

3 kittens, Skeletons, bathing suit, Heebie with Feet, Dwight Yoakam, open log, Johnny Cash, CC Deville

In 8th grade, we danced like THIS.

Posted on 2008.04.10 at 20:55
The other day, a student wandered into my office. He drops by from time to time, and talks aimlessly.  This time he asked me, "Do you still have a boyfriend?"

"...Yes," I said, taken off-guard, "...did you guys get introduced when he was on campus?"

"No, Kim said you mentioned a boyfriend at some point," he said.

"Oh. Yeah."  Okay.

Then he said, "I was just wondering, how did you get a boyfriend?"

I chuckled awkwardly and said something like, "Uh, we've been together a while," while thinking, Who exactly would be off-limits for boyfriends in your book?

"That sounded really bad," he back-pedalled, "That's not what I meant. What I meant was, who would date you?"

I said, "That's any better?" He sort of laughed, too, and went on to some other topic, about how much his brother grew in college.

But I'm very curious as to what the hell he was getting at. If I'd had the presence of mind, I'd have pursued it further. I don't think he meant to be mean. In hindsight, I think the intended subtext was, How do unconventional people get other people to like them enough to date them?

He's told me from time to time, "You have a weird sense of humor. But so do I." (And he also tells me, "You're so short. You seem taller when you're teaching.")

(Also, often during class, he sits up straight and gives me a grotesque jack-o-lantern stretched out grimace-smile. Gigantic and ghoulish. The first few times, last year, it threw me.  I chose to interpret it as though he was trying to make me laugh. And so I smiled back and exhale-laughed inconspicuously.  Two years later, he keeps grimacing at me, I keep laughing; I guess we're square.) (As long as he doesn't actually have Tourette's.)(Or hey, even if he does.)

I think the answer to his actual question, who would date me?, is one part that he and his peers will grow older, and one part that he's suffering the handicap of a tiny school. Aside all that, I was entertained. Who would date you?

Schlemiel, schlimazel, hasenpfeffer incorporated!

Jammies and I have been living together for 6 months now. Amazing. And it's going very well. It turns out I like having him around, a lot. The house is much cleaner. 

Amazingly well, considering I had lived alone for eight years.  I love living alone, I'm not going to lie. The way I phrase it to myself is that I can crab-walk when I want to crab-walk, without feeling stupid. Sometimes I like to crab-walk.

Anyway, I can still crab-walk when Jammies isn't looking. It's nice to have him around, too.

One consequence though, is that I now find it almost intolerable to talk with people on the phone. Like my mom, and long-distance friends. I just am never isolated enough to build up a drive and desire for conversation.  I'm saturated. Anyway, I do talk to my parents weekly, but it's forced and hard for me to enjoy.

We're gonna do it!

Last night's Kids In The Hall was like a summer camp reunion with all your bestest, most hilarious friends.  I laughed till I cried, my sides hurt, etc, etc.  I felt elated.

The title of the post is sampled from a sketch where they dropped a beat and rapped:

In 8th grade, we danced like THIS.
In 9th grade, we danced like THIS.
In 10th grade, we danced like THIS.
But in ELEVENTH grade, we. danced. like. THIS.


They demonstrated each of the dances, line by line and year by year.  I love it so.

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