A Long Week

This week has seemed endless. The first week back after a holiday is always interminable, but this one seemed worse than usual. I think it's because all the research papers came in this week. It's been a frenzy of last-minute advice, editing, and preparation as all my students were trying to get their papers ready for today. I have been really pleased to see that the majority of my students worked hard on getting it done. I was half afraid when we started that many of them would just choose not to do one. I still have to go through and grade all of them, and there may be many problems with them, but at least they cared enough to do the work, ask me questions, and try. That counts for a lot these days.

I am so tired that I actually fell asleep in my lawn chair this afternoon. I had gone out with the new striped cushion Mom bought for me to read and enjoy some of this eighty-degree weather we're having, and next thing I knew, Roux was licking me in the face 30 minutes later. I came in and just took a nap. I'm headed back to bed soon. Maybe I can get some stuff done tomorrow if I can get some sleep tonight.

I heard back from the poetry contest today. I didn't even place this year. Oh well. I can't say I'm surprised or even very disappointed. I had a feeling that I wouldn't make it in three years in a row. I still believe in the value of that poem, though. It seems that the ones I like the best don't ever make it in competition. It's okay. I guess they're like children; your own are rarely ugly to you.

Well, it's not really late, but I am almost asleep as I type, so I'm going to call it a night before I go to sleep in my chair here. Maybe I can get to the computer to type sometime before next weekend, but no promises....

PET FOOD RECALL

If you have pets to whom you give "wet" canned or pouch food, PLEASE check this site. A major manufacturer whose products retail under several famous names and in many pet stores and retail stores has tainted product that is causing kidney failure and death in dogs and cats. Make sure your babies are safe.

http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01590.html

SO Sore....

The backs of my legs feel like overtightened guitar strings. Every time I move, I think one of them is going to twang and snap. I've been working in my yard for the past two days, and my poor teacher body is woefully unready for such labor.

I started by getting a bunch of old bricks from an old house place to make some flower beds. I planted my lilies, added a concrete St. Francis (no, not Catholic, but I find him admirable anyway), fertilized my patchy front yard, planted two roses, repotted ailing Christmas cacti, tuned up my mower, cut up live oak leaves and trimmed off all the old winter weeds, fought with the vine tangle in the corner of the yard, and generally overdid it.

I still need to plant some cannas, make a bed for a gardenia I bought, and pot up some petunias I got on impulse. I don't know if I'm going to get it all done this week, but I'm going to try. It's been very nice to sit on the porch swing or the lawn chair and read in the evenings. I am also quietly proud of my little brick-edged beds. It's amazing how the addition of a few small pieces of hardened clay make something look finished off.

Well, it's TV time, soon to be followed by go-to-sleep time if I can unbend myself from this chair. Tomorrow will be another day of yarding.

Luscious

There's no other word for the weather today than luscious. I woke fairly early and got the housework underway. Once I got it to the run-the-dryer stage, I took a book and went out to my lawn chair. It was fantastic. The sun and the shade, the absolute indulgence of reading for pleasure and not for classes was like a balm on frazzled nerves. Tomorrow, barring the unforeseen, will be a day of yard. I am going to rebuild my bottle trees with some four-by-whatever timbers. Even though I like the look of using tree branches, I'm tired of having to rebuild them constantly. This way, they should last indefinitely. I'll try to do some pictures when I get them up. Well, I've indulged in Sonic after church tonight, and I'm watching the Bravo Law and Order:CI Sunday night marathon, so life is good in Podunk. Thank God for Spring Break.

Long Time Away

It's been a long time since I've had the time or even felt like Blogging. There are a lot of things that fall into that same category. Being a teacher and a student at the same time is harder than I thought it would be. I'm enjoying doing both, but neither leaves very much time for creative endeavours.

Spring Break has finally arrived, and I'm celebrating by watching Ferris Bueler. I haven't seen this movie in years, and I had forgotten how funny it is. It should seem dated being from the great 80s, but somehow, it really doesn't except for a few hairstyles and the soundtrack.

Life in Podunk goes on. I am now on Every Committee Known to Man at school, and we're in the final rush to graduation, testing, and other finalities for 2006-2007. It's odd to think that soon I won't see this batch of students any more. I've known some of them for three years and taught some of them twice. Seeing them go will be emotional, but I'm so proud of most of them.

I am attempting to do some minor yarding this week. I went a little nuts in the Wal-Mart garden department and purchased five pots of lilies, some petunias (one of my favorites), and two roses, one of which is called Irish Creme. Today I bought a concrete St. Francis to put in a bed I'm building. My favorite thing, though, is a big white plastic lawn chair I put under my pecan trees in the side yard. I plan to spend some quality time in it this week with something that's not Hemingway.

I have also been to some of my favorite junkin' places. I found a couple of really gorgeous old hankies, an old yellow McCoy Floraline planter for my lucky bamboo, and a really cool 40's tablecloth with good luck charms all over it. All this was less than $30. How great is that? I plan to spend some time junkin' in a couple of new locations in the next few days.

It will be nice to have a week to decompress. I had reached a point of desperation by Friday. I think everybody at the school had, teacher, student, and admin alike.

Devolution

I had the most disgusting experience today. I had turned in a paper for my Hemingway class, and I knew it was not what it should have been when I did. There was something nagging at me about it, and I stayed after class to talk with my professor about it.

Once he started pointing out ways to make it better, it suddenly clicked with me what the problem was. I was looking at a high school paper, not a graduate student's paper, not a paper that is up to what I used to write. Apparently, I have become what I teach: a three-point thesis and a military outline structure.

I have devolved without knowing it. I feel ill. If I can get my kids to write at that level, I'm happy, but only because they have a good basic grounding from which to grow into that subtle, organic style that is a mature form of writing. From myself, I expect much more. Granted it's been a long time since I wrote about literature, but that the basic mechanics have so invaded my writing as to become obtrusive is unacceptable. It's like seeing the mechanism behind the illusion.

I don't know if I can get back to what I used to have. Maybe I've been hamstrung by my own teaching. All I know is that I have a week to see if I can refine this graceless lump into something with some elegance, and am definitely going to try.

I Heard the News Today

After taking a vocabulary test today, one of my students told me that a former student had been shot and killed over the weekend. All that potential wasted, cast aside like something of no value. I still can't believe, with the typical denial of the living, that anyone that young and alive can be dead in a box.

He was never much on school. He refused, albeit politely, to even do things that would have been simple for him. He had no interest in it, and always struck me as a person simply humoring another until it was okay to leave. I wish so much that something we had done had caught his attention. Maybe if anything had, all that latent talent wouldn't be gone now. Maybe he would have chosen a path other than the one that led him to a grave before he was 25.

I wrote a poem for him. It's the first time I've been moved to words in a long time. I think it will be my entry in this year's competition. If it wins, I think that would be a fitting tribute to him.

Birthday Surprise

I had the nicest surprise today. My fourth period class brought me cupcakes, dill pickle chips, and PEZ. One of my coworkers gave me a funny card. It was nice to be noticed.

Most of my birthdays are terrible, but this one is looking better than most. In addition to that little lift, I also got news that one of my best friends who has been "expecting" for what I'm sure seems to her like forever had her baby this morning early. I know it's weird, but I think it's neat that her baby and I will have the same birthday. If she's lucky, the little one won't grow up to be anything like me. :)

Rat Rescue

Of all the things I didn't think I'd be doing tonight, rescuing mice is probably at the top of that list. Dillon and Pearl managed to corner one, but Dilly is still so young that she's not quite sure what to do with wiggly things. They chased it under the desk in my living room, and then Pearl grabbed it in her teeth and took off to the sun room growling like some sort of feral creature instead of the overfed lapcat she is.

I ran to the kitchen, got my heavy leather work gloves from my junk drawer, raced back, and grabbed up the mouse. Pearl, needless to say, was most displeased. There was blood on the mouse, but it was still kicking, so I hope she didn't mortally wound it. I took it outside and dropped it into some tall grass away from the house.

I have rat poison in my attic and under my house, so I guess this action was a bit paradoxical, but I just couldn't stand the thought of the cats torturing it to death. It probably ran right back under the house and proceded to chew up my phone lines again in vengence, and Pearl is currently in full savage-cat hunting stalk looking for another one, but at least I feel like I did the right thing.

Got One!

I finally got one! My eBay luck changed and I beat out the persistant bidder siempredolcevita who was buying up every chenille spread offered. This is my birthday present to myself. I love the color combination, and there is something oddly comforting about just lying on top of it. It's another thing somebody made with his (or more likely, her) own hands, and it's a piece of American history as well. I wonder how many people have spreads like this one shunned and tucked away in their closet tops. Maybe they aren't the current vogue, and I'm sure that the IKEA crowd would rather die than have one, but it suits my vintage life and tastes perfectly. I am looking forward to sweet dreams guarded by brilliant peacocks in the nights to come.

Bizarre-Land

Yesterday, there was a memo from October in my mailbox with passages highlighted that concerned regulations against teachers wearing jeans at school.

I was so hacked off. It must be admitted that I am occasionally guilty of wearing a really dark blue pair of jeans with my high school sweatshirt because I can't seem to find any navy pants when I need them. However, I also live, sweat, bleed, and die my job, so I don't think that one dark blue pair of jeans is a heinous sin.

I gave the sheet to my department head who took it to my principal, and guess what? It didn't come from the administration at all. Hmm..... curious....

Apparently, we have someone childish and silly on the hall. Joy-O. It's not enough that I deal with teenagers everyday; now one of my co-workers has devolved into one, too.

I have a pretty good idea who's responsible, and now I can just laugh at it. It's not going to affect me. I have too much to do to play juvenile games, but I have to say, it made yesterday really bizarre. As long as my administrators are happy with what I do, petty children in adult bodies can find anatomically improbable places to put such little missives.

And Then There Are Other Days

....the days I hate this job more than I can bear. Today is one of those days. My second period class apparently cheated on the makeup test I gave them, and I just want to put all my belongings in a box and go home permanently.

I hate dishonestly in general, but something about this just galls me. First, there's nothing that can be done. Since I personally didn't see it, there is no action I can take. Second, after confronting one of the alleged cheaters and having her lie right in my face, I am so physically sick that I need to go throw up.

I know I am not the arbiter of their morality, but I find it so offensive. Then adding the lie to it, I don't know how I'm going to be able to look at that class again. To know that they are cheating liars, to know that every single moment of every single class they lie and cheat, is almost too much for me to stand.

I wish I could just shrug my shoulders and say, "Oh well." I wish it didn't matter. It does, though, and today, I feel like the weather, gray, dull, cold, and lifeless.

I'm sick of this. There has to be something better, something worthy out there somewhere. I give too much, I put too much of myself into this teaching for things like this not to matter to me.

Maybe I'll go back overseas. I loved that. I was happy there. Maybe I could be again. Right now, I cannot believe that anything I do here matters anymore. That's not a feeling I can stand.

Oddness

At church tonight, our pastor was reminding the youth and their parents about summer's camp plans, and he mentioned the fact that Gulfshore, the Baptist camp on the coast where I spent almost every summer, was completely gone. I knew it had taken massive damage from Katrina, but I thought some part of it had survived. I thought I was going to cry. One more splinter of my childhood gone forever, I suppose.

Life has been odd lately. I have missed two days in my classroom because of an editing job for some stuff at school. Just being at school in my room without my students has been really weird. I've missed them. Even though they quite frequently wear me out, their absence was uncomfortable. I hope the job I did was useful, though.

Men have been odd lately, too. It seems that the interesting ones I meet are all GEMINI -- gay, engaged, married, insane, or not interested. This town and what passes for its dating pool constantly depress me. As Madame De Stael said, "The more I see of men, the more I like my dog."

Hopefully this week things will stabilize a little. I have a lot of Hemingway I've got to read for one of my night classes, and an assignment for the other, so I guess I need to get to it.

Elvis

I am on a serious Elvis kick right now. I took a three-CD set and selected twenty something songs to make one portable CD that I've been driving around to non-stop for the past week. I think it's probably impossible to be sad listening to "Return to Sender" and "You're So Square." I have found myself arriving at school in a much better mood since I've been listening to Elvis on the way in.

The 3 CD set was chronological, so the collection I made goes from early to late, and it's interesting to hear the changes in the music over time. I added two remixes, one for "Rubberneckin'" and one for "A Little More Action," that I downloaded from Wal-Mart's website.

Elvis' voice, and this is probably a "duh" statement, is such a pleasure to listen to. When you start stacking him up against most of the so-called singing stars around today (for some reason, Justin Timberlake and his pale, weak self comes to mind), it really starts to make you wonder just how these people got recording contracts. I guess though, that's probably a little unfair. After all, there's only ever been one King. I am going to continue to enjoy his gorgeous voice in my commuting.

Golden Light

There was a golden light as I was driving to Jackson this morning for Tech Prep training. It was like the whole world was inside an amber ball. This light is the light of my dreams, the good ones anyway. It's one of the things I missed the most when I was in other countries and states. Nowhere but Mississippi has that delicate spun-honey light. Sometimes, in the summer, it looks like a tangible thing, like something you could carve or mold. I love it when it slants through the trees late in the evening, bars of warmth, columns of the sky. It's one of the few things that makes the endless back-and-forth of the interstate a pleasure, and watching it bathe everything in glory this morning helped balance out what turned into a very pointless day.

Ella

I got a new CD Thursday from Amazon. It's called Ella for Lovers and is a part of Verve's massive re-releasing of their catalog. It's great. Of course, with her voice, how could it not have been?

I've loved Ella Fitzgerald for years. She was one of the first jazz vocalists I discovered. Her voice has a beauty of feeling that informs every note. I imagine each sound like a perfectly-cut jewel shimmering in the air.

I have probably five cds of just her works from various periods and labels. Of course, one of my very favorites is the collection I have of her and Louis Armstrong, but this disc is a good addition to my collection of her works, too, because so many of the songs are simply her, a piano, and perhaps a guitar. It's good rainy-day music, and since today is another rainy Sunday, I'm looking forward to a pleasant day of reading 1984 and listening to her heavenly voice.

The Missing Harness

This evening, Roux showed up at the door to be let in for the evening, and I opened the door for her and Yelldo. I fed them both, and when she came back in the living room afterward, I noticed that her harness was gone. She had no form of identification or restraint at all.

I could swear that she had it on when she came in. How could I have missed the fact that the brightly-striped and jingly harness was not on the big red dog? However, apparently, I saw what I was used to seeing instead of what was really there.

I walked down the road and then back up the pasture in search of it and went over all the yard. No sign of it. I suppose she lost it somewhere in the woods in the hour and a half she was outside without me.

It was just weird. I jokingly half-suspected my mom came down and stole it because she hated the stripes so much. She thinks the only two colors for a dog collar are brown and black. I prefer more colorful options.

Anyway, tomorrow begins the long haul toward the AP test and the end of the school year, so I'm going to put the mystery to the side, watch a little more tv, and get some rest. Maybe the harness will show up again somewhere in the future.

New Year's Eve

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves. ~Bill Vaughan

I don't know which category I fall into in regard to the above quote. There is a bit of both in me, I think.

I watched the last light of the last day of 2006 fade from the trunks and boughs of the pines on top of the hill near my house. It seemed to cling just a little longer than usual, as if the year was hesitant to pass on, as if it would stay now that its time has come.

Yesterday and last night, torrential rains swept through Podunk. The rain was sufficient to set dry streams running and to cut shallow rivulets through my driveway. As I listened to it pounding the metal roof in the back of the house, I kept thinking that it was the hand of God washing away the old year, cleaning the slate, as it were.

2006 was not a particularly good year for me. Those of you who have been reading me for a long time may have noticed the shift of topic and tone in my blog; of course, with the infrequency of my blogging, the change may not be apparent. It's been so much easier to stick with the trivial or not to write at all. If you know me personally, you may have noticed that my usual taciturn nature has been even more than its usual solitary self.

There were things from the past that came back to me this year, things I cannot and will not discuss in a forum such as this, but suffice it to say, these things put a crack into that thin roof of hell upon which the famous quote says we all stride picking flowers, oblivious to the imminent danger just below. The idea that the monsters in the closet come back after childhood is over is enough to make anybody run, and running is exactly what I've been doing. Things I used to care about and enjoy have been pushed to the wayside. Friendships I treasure have been allowed to slide into decline. It's been easy to be too busy for everything because being busy keeps the mind from having time to engage topics better left alone.

I refuse to live 2007 this way. If I do, the monsters in the darkness win. So tonight, as I prepare for my own observances of the death of the old year and the birth of the new, I am lighting every candle in the house. The lights on my porch still glow and twinkle. There will be no darkness, no horrible things waiting in the shadows tonight. I will meet the new year with hope and with purpose. My family has its own traditions, and one of those is that odd-numbered years are lucky for us. I am looking forward to a lucky and healing 2007.

Happy New Year to you, wherever you may be.

Nothing Like Sickness for the Holidays

Christmas Eve morning, I woke up with that spaced-out feeling that precedes a bout of sinus crap for me. I hoped against hope that it was just allergies stirred up by something the previous day, but by the time I got home from church, I was really looped out. I went to sleep, and slept all day.

Christmas day, I was supposed to cook a breakfast meal for my family so we could do our gift exchange, but I couldn't even get up. We finally had Christmas last night around 8, and it was very low key.

I hate being sick, but this is the worst. I am fighting it with every medicine known to man, so hopefully, I can stave off an infection or bronchitis. I guess I should be glad that it's not school time right now, but man, I did NOT want to waste my precious holiday with this....

Citizen Kane

Today, I saw the movie ranked #1 by the AFI top 100 movies of all time poll. I don't know exactly why I haven't seen it before now, but it's one that has eluded me. I am currently trying out Netflix, and I decided to send for Citizen Kane after having seen most of Welles' Othello in my recent Shakespeare class.

I enjoyed it for several reasons. I was able, thanks to the Shakespeare class, to appreciate some of the technical things that were going on film-wise, and with me, the more I know about something, the deeper my enjoyment generally is. The storyline was also captivating, as was the way the story was presented. I can see why it's considered to be so great. If I knew more about its technical aspects, I could probably understand better why it's considered to be the best ever. I'm a little leery of labels like that.

While I don't think it will ever become one of my frequently-watched favorites, I am glad I saw it. I want to watch it one more time before I send it back to get the flavor of it better.