Despite the word flush in the title, I'm moving away from my bowel for the moment. Never fear, tho, to know me is to know my bowel habits. (Just ask Leanne about the ill-fated polish hot dog at a SF Giants game lo these many years past).
I'm just trying to come to grip with my monkey brain. Always with the disjointed flitty thoughts in the predawn hours. The problem is, some of them are pretty good, so I don't want to call my doc and beg for meds. Like, I know I have to reconfigure my library so I can cope next year. It's grand-freaking central in there all the time. What other teacher has to do their lessons with folks coming in to make photocopies, and most of the time they screw up this simple task and I happen to have a photocopier that makes an alarming sound if you even place the paper on the glass in a way that it can't read and it starts making noise like diseased monkeys in the super-secret-sector-seven lab just escaped and are now causing havoc all over the lab and oh god what are the implications for mankind? Or it sorta sounds like the Stazi are tracking someone who's just about to make it to Checkpoint Charlie or something.
Not what you want to hear during Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. And I just don't have the time or the energy to give the stink-eye all the time. I'm just horrified by what people are willing to inflict on others in the name of getting things done on their schedule. And then there's the kids who have been sent down to the library to make photocopies. Kind of reminds of that tactic Jehovah Witnesses have when canvassing: they show up with a kid so you don't unleash all the vitriol you would like. But talk about brazen. Or clueless. I'm reading away, giving it all I've got and I glance down and whoa, hey, lurking at my right elbow is a kid holding some ratty sheet of paper and they want a photocopy of it. WHY? Why the hell would you need a photocopy of your shitty, illegible handwriting? Because reproducing it is not going to make it look any better. I feel like it's a tactic to just get a kid out of the room for awhile because they finished first, or they are driving the teacher crazy. I have noticed that the kids who wander in to "browse" or "make photocopies" are not the bright, shiny learners. They are usually the shuffling lurking types. One of them even has a bizarre odor that I can only interpret as Unicorn Piss. At first I just thought she was some horsey-type who has to muck out a stall in the morning before school. But that kind of fug tends to settle after a while. No, this is a powerful, magical odor that is not going to relent and fade like the real-life odor of a horse stall. Somehow she has come in contact with a mythical beast and she appears to have angered this normally benign creature for it has condemned her to smell like its pee-pee.
And now my library smells like Unicorn Pee from strange kids and the photocopier makes it sound like Vermont Yankee just hired Homer Simpson. Welcome to my library.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
A Serious Flap in my Doodle
Yesterday I had homemade potato leek soup for lunch. Also a piece of cornbread, an orange and way more girl scout thin mints than originally planned. Seriously, those cookies DO NOT fit my profile. I loathe chocolate and mint together. Nothing more disturbing to me than biting into a brownie and discovering vile mint flavoring mingling with the cocoa. But there's always an exception, as in most things.
So, I don't know if it was the circumstances of ingestion--slumping on a stool in the art room, leaning toward a table sized for kids which started a bad round of digestion, but I got some serious shooting-pain gas from that damn soup. Had to hobble my way through two more classes before it was all over. Dare not go to a school toilet lest I toot my horn, or clap my cymbals or play any kind of bottom percussion too loudly or too long. As we all know, the school's huge and there's no way there won't be some midget waiting for me, staring at me silently, when I emerge after my one-woman ass concert. No, I don't give autographs.
Chris and I left for the pool immediately after school. On the way there I was recalling a quote from one of Bob's many track coaches: "Yer bound to pass a little gas when yer exacisin' ya laigs". So that was my plan, grab a kickboard and move those legs. I'll be making so much froth at the back, who will notice a few more bubbles? Well, it worked, but damn if the gas-- which at this time was starting to feel like an entity with consciousness, some kind of internal twin who was tired of living on the inside or whatever. So yeah, it came out, but it STAYED in my suit. The entire back of my tank was filled with air. Just like the gum-chewing kid from Wonka. Then all of the sudden, the gas entity made a decision to be free. It flew up up the back of my suit and became one with the chlorinated air of the indoor pool.
Sadly, that didn't end it for me. But it was the end of the beginning. When I got home I told Bob about my gas and my potato leek soup suspicions. "Oh yeah, he says, that soup gave me bad gas, too."
File this one under Cheap laffs.
So, I don't know if it was the circumstances of ingestion--slumping on a stool in the art room, leaning toward a table sized for kids which started a bad round of digestion, but I got some serious shooting-pain gas from that damn soup. Had to hobble my way through two more classes before it was all over. Dare not go to a school toilet lest I toot my horn, or clap my cymbals or play any kind of bottom percussion too loudly or too long. As we all know, the school's huge and there's no way there won't be some midget waiting for me, staring at me silently, when I emerge after my one-woman ass concert. No, I don't give autographs.
Chris and I left for the pool immediately after school. On the way there I was recalling a quote from one of Bob's many track coaches: "Yer bound to pass a little gas when yer exacisin' ya laigs". So that was my plan, grab a kickboard and move those legs. I'll be making so much froth at the back, who will notice a few more bubbles? Well, it worked, but damn if the gas-- which at this time was starting to feel like an entity with consciousness, some kind of internal twin who was tired of living on the inside or whatever. So yeah, it came out, but it STAYED in my suit. The entire back of my tank was filled with air. Just like the gum-chewing kid from Wonka. Then all of the sudden, the gas entity made a decision to be free. It flew up up the back of my suit and became one with the chlorinated air of the indoor pool.
Sadly, that didn't end it for me. But it was the end of the beginning. When I got home I told Bob about my gas and my potato leek soup suspicions. "Oh yeah, he says, that soup gave me bad gas, too."
File this one under Cheap laffs.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
The Daily Rhubarb
IF only I could capture the random ideas that flit in and out of my head while I'm driving down to Mt. Holyoke every Saturday morning and afternoon. I've realized there's a standard collection of themes. EVERY time I cross over a bridge I imagine losing control over the car and crashing over the railing. Would I begin trying to get out of my seatbelt if I was heading for water? I wonder. The weirdest thing I do is take other driver's behavior personally. I get passed a lot, because I am no Joey Chitwood, we all know that. Sometimes I notice a car bearing down on me in my rearview mirror and I start speeding up a little--alright, alright, I'm going, already. I think to myself. I always think I get passed with a "there's no telling about some" shake of the head.
Although I should spend the valuable hour listening to a quality kid lit book--like A Wrinkle in Time, I find I keep scanning commercial radio stations for either Led Zepplin songs or what I call my Secret Shame songs. The newest SSS is the John Mayer song about running through the halls of his high school. The original is Kiss on My List by Hall and Oats. I hear that one almost every drive down. I feel guilty when a good, obscure Beatles song comes on and I choose not to listen to it. I dream of making a song collection full of ELO, Led Zepp and that one John Mayer song for the drive down. And that new Regina Spektor song about making it better or something. SSS's really help with the mind flush reverie I get going during the one-hour drive. Full of flitting thoughts of car crash deaths, dreams of fame and fortune that could be mine if only I could find the wherewithal. Then I pull up to the ol' Ivy-covered brick pile that is one of our Seven Sisters, heave out of my filthy car and head to a three hour class with a random assortment of future librarians with Masters.
Bob and the kids are at a kids party at KidsPlayce. (Kidsplayce: A playce to Scream your head off)'its in the basement of a downtown building. It was a gay bar in the late '70s, so I'm told. It would seem there's been some kind of attrocious behavior occuring in those bathrooms of one kind or another for almost thirty years straight. I realized that listening to kids screaming for two hours is not the kind of thing to get me unwound and ready for a work week that will include not only screaming kids, but yelling kids, whining kids, complaining kids, confused kids, crying kids, and all manner of unpleasant kids. It's the dead of winter. Vermont kids are looking pretty chewed up right now. Pale faces. Chapped lips. Muddy boots. Dirty snowpants.
Instead of the scream fest I am here, initiating a blog because I miss interacting with all of you. I thought Pownce was the answer, and it could be, I suppose. But I'm going to try this, for lots of reasons. Like you, and you, and you and you and you.
Although I should spend the valuable hour listening to a quality kid lit book--like A Wrinkle in Time, I find I keep scanning commercial radio stations for either Led Zepplin songs or what I call my Secret Shame songs. The newest SSS is the John Mayer song about running through the halls of his high school. The original is Kiss on My List by Hall and Oats. I hear that one almost every drive down. I feel guilty when a good, obscure Beatles song comes on and I choose not to listen to it. I dream of making a song collection full of ELO, Led Zepp and that one John Mayer song for the drive down. And that new Regina Spektor song about making it better or something. SSS's really help with the mind flush reverie I get going during the one-hour drive. Full of flitting thoughts of car crash deaths, dreams of fame and fortune that could be mine if only I could find the wherewithal. Then I pull up to the ol' Ivy-covered brick pile that is one of our Seven Sisters, heave out of my filthy car and head to a three hour class with a random assortment of future librarians with Masters.
Bob and the kids are at a kids party at KidsPlayce. (Kidsplayce: A playce to Scream your head off)'its in the basement of a downtown building. It was a gay bar in the late '70s, so I'm told. It would seem there's been some kind of attrocious behavior occuring in those bathrooms of one kind or another for almost thirty years straight. I realized that listening to kids screaming for two hours is not the kind of thing to get me unwound and ready for a work week that will include not only screaming kids, but yelling kids, whining kids, complaining kids, confused kids, crying kids, and all manner of unpleasant kids. It's the dead of winter. Vermont kids are looking pretty chewed up right now. Pale faces. Chapped lips. Muddy boots. Dirty snowpants.
Instead of the scream fest I am here, initiating a blog because I miss interacting with all of you. I thought Pownce was the answer, and it could be, I suppose. But I'm going to try this, for lots of reasons. Like you, and you, and you and you and you.
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