My Literature Class: "Get A Divorce!" Girl

I know why this girl annoys me so much.  I'm pretty sure that at the age of 14, I was her.  I don't think I was her at the age of 18, but what do I know?  I'm not much good at self-awareness, even now, much less then.

She got a 102 on the quiz we had last week, which is annoying, but has not much to do with me.  Except she brings it up in every class.  Now, I got a 97, which is nothing to sneeze at - and I would have had a 102 if I hadn't completely whiffed on two questions that I should have gotten right.  (Reading for comprehension, people.  Is very important.)  But I know that the guy who sits right next to me did not fare so well.  He's a non-traditional student, too, and I constantly admire his self-restraint in this class.  Because if I were him, I might have done something regrettable by now.

It's not just this, and it's not just that she makes up jokes a three-year-old could come up with and then completely brings class to a halt to announce them in a voice that dares you not to give her the admiration for her "wit" that she thinks she deserves.  No, it's not just all that, although, none of that makes me want to love her.  The nail in her coffin is the stuff she blurts out in group discussions.

Now, I am totally a blurter.  I say things without thinking all the time.  It's a huge flaw, and I've been trying to correct it for probably the last twenty years.  I do it a lot less than I once did, but I'm still not great at shutting up when I should.  This girl, however, couples blurting with a complete lack of awareness of her surroundings and the other people within them.

Here are some of the gems from the last couple of weeks of classes:

• To address another student's legitimate concerns about what to study:  "Drink a Red Bull!"  I'm pretty sure she lives on a diet of these, because all this annoying "bubbliness" (her word, not mine) has to come from a chemical place.  It cannot be naturally acquired.
• In reference to a piece written by a Chinese immigrant:  "Just because he's from quote-unquote CHINA..."  (I actually have no idea what she said after that, because I'm pretty sure my head exploded.)
• With regards to a discussion on whether or not symbols about windows would have a different meaning to someone who lived in a shantytown:  "Let's don't talk about shantytowns.  That depresses me."  I'm actually a little impressed she has any idea what a shantytown is.

My very favorite thing she has said occurred yesterday.  We were talking about a piece that all the young'uns seem to think is about the death of dreams, but I think is about retaining your own culture and your own sense of self, and she dropped this one:

"Well, everybody knows that as you get older, your soul dies."

Spike said that I should have said "Well, it's a good thing I created all those horcruxes, then."  Which would have been awesome.  Except that I never think of that shit right in the middle of the moment.  I'm dying inside, not because I'm old, but because I totally wish I had thought of that.

What I did say:  "It's good to know that my soul is dead.  That explains why it's cold in here."

She went on to say that the reason she says that is because her daddy told her that she should always say exactly what she thinks when she thinks it and keep her "bubbliness" because as you get older, your soul dies and you're not bubbly anymore.  The error in this, of course, is that your soul doesn't die - you just learn manners.  I think her daddy is doing her a huge disservice by encouraging her to believe she's a unique snowflake who doesn't need to learn manners, but I get great satisfaction from the idea that eventually she'll figure it out.

So far, she has not persuaded me from my opinion that people under the age of 25 should just shut up and listen.  In fact, this particular opinion is getting cemented in a beautiful gazebo in my mind, with a great stone monolith proclaiming this opinion as fact.  I'm even mentally landscaping it with beautiful flowers and stately ivy curling around the stone monolith.  It will forever be an awesome monument to life experience.

My Literature Class: The Mumbler

Oh, where to start.

I mentioned in my last post not involving Mumford and Sons that there is an idiot girl in my literature class (the "Get a divorce!" girl).

She's getting better and better.

And by "better and better" I actually mean "worse and worse."

The good news is, other people are starting to talk in my English class, so I'm staying quieter.  Yay!  The bad news is, the other people who are talking are this girl.  And her buddy, the eighteen-year-old boy sitting next to her (the mumbler from the earlier post).

So, let's actually talk about The Mumbler first, because I can confine my comments to just two things he has said recently that were wildly misinformed and/or exemplary of any jerkish qualities he may possess.  Plus, GAD Girl deserves her own post.

Last week, we somehow ended up talking about the Border Fence that we have here between our state and Mexico.  He believes deep in his teenage soul that this fence will work.  I did not disabuse him of this, but then he uttered the words:

"Well, it worked in Korea."

Now, I am not very good at schooling my features into an emotionless mask when people utter idiocy of this kind.  I'm pretty sure I looked really, really shocked at the time.  I managed to get out "No!  Nonononono..." before the professor changed the subject.

There are just so many things wrong with that statement that it's so hard to pick just one.  I think I might just let it lie and let you all think over just the basic difference between a demilitarized zone and a fence that just stands there, not doing much.  You can ponder all the situational differences and the political differences and the consequences of each and all that on your own.

Yesterday, he told me I was wrong.  Just flat-out wrong.

I can handle being wrong.  I don't like it (who does?), but I can handle it.  However, this is literary criticism - it's a lot harder to be wrong when you're giving opinions about something you read.  Even if you don't agree, it's not necessarily that the other person is wrong, it's just that you don't agree.  I'm really great at saying "I see your point, but I don't agree" or something else that doesn't completely discount the other person.  Especially if the other person is older than me.

I have shifted from worrying about the future of the nation to worrying about what my household is going to be like when my kids are teenagers.  Is this what we're all like as teenagers?  This is horrible.

My Latest Musical Obsession: Mumford and Sons

Now, you may think that I'm late to the Mumford and Sons party.  Which is true.  But I would like you to know two salient facts with regards to this:

1.  I am not a hipster.  I don't mind if I'm not the first person to hear about a band.  It bothers me not in the slightest, especially when the band in question gives me hours and hours of happiness as Mumford and Sons has done for me over the past week.  Don't care if I didn't hear about them first.  I've heard about them now, and I am in love.

2.  I actually did hear about Mumford and Sons last year.  I just didn't get their album at that time.  So there.

I have literally had this album on repeat for a solid week.  If I'm listening to music, I'm listening to this album.  (Which is called Sigh No More, in case you're interested.)  Even more impressive, I'm not listening to it on shuffle - I'm listening to it exactly the way it was designed, because it seems like it tells a story to me.  I love that, which is definitely a factor in my love for Bruce Springsteen (which is a long and storied adoration - Springsteen concerts are akin to religious experiences for me, and yes, I have been to more than one.  And even more than one in a given week.  So.)

The best way to describe Mumford and Sons is a sort of awesome bluegrass/indie-folk thing that has this great driving beat, which is accomplished by the lead singer, who used to be the drummer for somebody else, and now works a bass drum-tambourine thing with his foot while playing the guitar and singing.  The lyrics to their songs are sort of philosophical and fantastic in this regard as well, because there is just something about their sound that clicks with me, so the lyrics are pretty much an added bonus.  They could be singing about socks, and I would still listen to it obsessively.

Given my earlier post about CeeLo Green, you may have noticed that my musical tastes vary wildly.  This is true.  It comes from my background as a musician myself.  I can appreciate perfect musical moments whenever and wherever I hear them, so I listen to everything.  On this album, there are countless perfect musical moments.  Ones where I still get goosebumps and my throat gets tight because it's just so right.  And that's after listening to the album approximately 100 times in a row.

To prove my point, here's a video of their song "The Cave," which is one of my favorite songs on this album.

Buy this album.  BUY IT NOW.  I get absolutely nothing from telling you this, except the knowledge that if other people buy this album, the world automatically becomes a better place.

My Literature Class

I tried to title this post "My Lit Class" but it made me feel icky, so I got all formal with it.

We're all in luck!  My Algebra teacher went on vacation, so class was cancelled for today and I have time before Government to write.

I decided to take my Intro to Literature class from the same professor I took my quickie English Comp class from over the Summer.  My reasoning was thus: I got an A in that class, and once I got to know her a bit on e-mail, I liked her.  Also, I figured that she couldn't make me read "Battle Royal" again.

I was wrong.

Fortunately, I was only wrong about "Battle Royal."  She's still a really nice lady - a former hippie and Freedom Rider, harkening back to my days at the Liberal Arts Academy.  She likes to encourage discussion, which is where I become the asshole in the class, because I can't stand the silence.  She asks a leading question and everybody just sits there and stares at her, so I end up giving my asshole opinion just to make the silence stop.  So I come off as a know-it-all, and probably a brown-noser because everybody knows I had her for my Summer class.

She likes to show us movies.  The problem is, our tastes in movies, mine and hers, are completely divergent.

On the first day of class, she showed us a clip from Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan.

Did you know that Tarzan was played by Christopher Lambert of Highlander fame?  Or that Jane was played by Andie MacDowell?  And Jane's father was Ian Holm? 

No, you probably don't.  And nor should you.  Because it was a terrible movie.

A few classes later, she showed us a video a friend of hers had compiled, set to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire."  She made absolutely no comment before showing us the video, so I was completely unprepared for the film clips of Saipan, the naked children of Nagasaki, and the Chinese Army shooting a guy in the head, for reals, at the end of the video.  I held it together through everything, right up until they shot the guy in the head.  And then I started to cry.  In public.  If you're reading this, I probably don't have to tell you how much I fucking hate to cry in public.

Today, she showed us clips from The Lion King to illustrate the use of symbolism.  It was pedestrian, but it completely blew the fragile little minds of the teenagers in my class.  Which brings me to: the teenagers in my class.

On the second class day, we discussed "The Hand" by Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette.  It's a story about a newly-married woman who, after a whirlwind courtship and two weeks of marriage, starts a weird obsession with her husband's hand one night in bed.  She stares at it for hours and finally works herself up into a big old hysteria about how ugly her man's hand is, and how she's going to have to just resign herself to a sad, sad life full of pretense and nothingness because of his damn hand and her stupid feelings about it.  It is, of course, symbolic and a whole bunch of other things, but one of the idiot teenagers in my class burst out with "If she hates him so much, she should get a divorce!"

There are many, many things wrong with this statement.  Here are a few, in no particular order:

• This story was written around 1924.  You couldn't just "get a divorce."
• It's not about getting a divorce, idiot.
• Seriously, the girl in the story had been married for two weeks.  Is that how people deal with things now?  You think his hands are ugly so you get a divorce?  Is that how it goes?  I guess being married for almost thirteen years should be an achievement worth a fucking medal, then, because I'm fairly sure that my husband and I have both been irritated with each other countless times in our marriage.  And if annoyance = divorce, we should be lauded by the goddamn President for our personal committment.

Today, for some reason known only to herself and maybe God, the professor decided to ask if anyone had seen the Republican debates.  I had not, so for once, I could keep my asshole mouth shut.  There was a girl in class who clearly felt strongly about the issues in the debate, and she mentioned how upset she was when the audience applauded Rick Perry for his record of 234 executions while in office.  Some other idiot teenager (a boy this time), started muttering under his breath that they deserved it, they were murderers, etc., etc.  First off, if you don't have the balls to actually speak up and join the discussion, shut the fuck up.  Secondly, if you are under the age of 25 (and I'm being real generous there), your opinion is stupid, so shut the fuck up.

Yep.  I said it.  If you're younger than 25, you probably have not lived enough to have a credible opinion.  There are, of course, exceptions to this rule - there are very mature, considered people under the age of 25, whose opinions are worth something.  It's just that there are none of those people in my class.  Or none that speak up.  Why is it that only the idiots speak up? 

And since I've already admitted that I give my opinion every time a hush falls in there, what does that make me?

Your Student Activity Fees At Work, Pt. 2

On the first week of school, there were posters everywhere advertising that our dear friends in the Student Life Center (the ones who brought us the Jam or whatever that was in the Spring semester) were kicking off the Fall semester with a viewing of Kung Fu Panda 2.

You may be thinking what I was thinking when I saw these posters.

Why Kung Fu Panda 2?  Why not something age-appropriate?  Oh, dear God, what if that is age-appropriate?

If you'd seen the posters yourself, you might also have thought:

Why are they only showing it at two campuses?  Could they only afford two DVDs?  Who goes to these things?  Do their moms not allow them to watch R-rated films?  Why the hell are they serving ice cream?

Sometimes, just walking on campus is an exercise in deductive reasoning.

The Long National Nightmare Is Over

Well, it was long by my standards.  Three entire weeks of finding textbooks for extremely clueless people who were getting more and more desperate (and more and more rude) as the days went on.

Friday was my last day at the textbook store.  I didn't get asked to stay permanently, and I can't help being really, really glad about that.  (Especially in light of the extremely stupid sunburn I'm sporting after a day at the beach yesterday.  The spray-on sunscreen failed me, but only partially.  So I have a blotchy sunburn in some places, and I also look like I'm constantly wearing one of those stupid shrug things on my shoulders - only in a lovely, bright maroon color.  I have no idea how this happened.  But I do know this: if I had to go to work this week with this sunburn, it would sap all of my remaining will to live, and I would be a lifeless husk.)

Here are some things I witnessed at the textbook store.  I promise I am not making even one of them up.

• A teenager with a really amazing mullet, who gave his email address as something like darkknightoflove@blahblah.com, and who paid for his textbooks out of his Twilight: Eclipse wallet.
• Hordes of incredibly ill-prepared people who came in and basically asked "Do you have that one book by that one guy for that one class?"  I would ask them (reasonably, I think): "Which class?" at which point they would get an incredibly annoyed look on their face and say "I don't know!  Isn't that what you're here for?"
• A variation on that: "I'm looking for the orange Algebra book."  I would then pull the only orange Algebra book on the shelves.  "No, not that orange Algebra book."
• One of my favorites: a girl came in wearing shorts that had to be six inches from waistline to hem, a huge t-shirt that hung over one shoulder, exposing bathing suit straps, platform sandals and her hair in a side ponytail that I had perfected in the fourth grade.  She was holding an Anatomy and Physiology lab manual and said "I want to compare this to the one you have on the shelf and see if they're the same.  They should be the same, right?  What's the difference?"  We went to the shelf with the current A&P lab manuals to find one labeled "CAT."  Hers said "FETAL PIG."  She said "That shouldn't matter, right?"
• I was reshelving books when a girl came up to me and said "I can't find the Poli-Sci section."  I said "No problem, it's labeled as POSI on the sign at the end of the aisle."  I then glanced up to realize that the reason she can't see the neon green sign is because she refuses to take off her giant, sparkly Snooki sunglasses.  I took her over to the section and she waved her hand at me and said "You can go now."

You think the world is fucked now?  Wait till these idiots take over.

Fall Semester, Tightly Packed For My Inconvenience

When I signed up for the Fall semester, I made sure my classes were in a morning block on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so as to maybe make myself more employable.  The "employable" part didn't actually happen, really, apart from this temp job at the textbook store, so now I'm stuck with two really intense mornings per week.

There are downsides to this, obviously.

• I have ten minutes between classes.  This works out fine between the first two, because they're down the hall from each other.  It's the time between the second and third classes that makes it tough - they're in different buildings.  And the professor for the third class will totally lock you out if you're consistently late.  So I haul ass between Algebra and Government like it's my job.
• There is no time between classes for me to write this blog, so I have to do it when I should be doing other things, like homework.  So, upside and downside.  I can't write about things as they happen, but I can totally write about things as a distraction from doing actual work.
• There was a third negative, but I can't remember it right now.

An interesting thing happened to me in my Government class yesterday, though.  The professor asked for volunteers to take notes for a hearing-impaired student we have in class named Jason.  Jason actually has a team of interpreters so that he can do regular college classes with everybody else.  The interpreters are almost hypnotic.  I watch them sometimes while the professor is talking.  I especially like their facial expressions while they're signing.  They work on a tag-team sort of deal.  It seems like they will do their interpreting for awhile, until their hands get tired, and then they tag out and are replaced with the backup, who signs until their hands are tired, and then rotate again.  It's a pretty cool system, especially as it leaves interpreters with only half-tired hands at the end of the class.

So, the professor asked for volunteers to take notes for Jason.  Nobody raised their hands.  Then she said "They'll pay you!"  It turns out that CCC will pay $100 to you at the end of the semester if you agree to take good notes for your hearing-impaired classmate.  I probably don't have to tell you, I jumped all over that shit.  I take strong notes with good handwriting, and I was already going to have to take the damn notes, so why not get paid to share?  (Here's the part where I expose my lack of money-making sense: I would have done it for free, because I was already taking the notes - it's not like I was doing anything extra.  But yes, CCC, I will take your hundred dollars.  Good day to you, sir!)

So, anyway, the packed schedule is indeed packed.  It's a high-intensity college morning twice a week.  It's almost like high school - that part where you're weaving through the throngs of people, trying to get to class before the bell rings.  Only we don't have bells.  We just have the walk of shame that comes if you're late.

So That's Why They Call It 'The Fall Rush'

I have been at work every day this week.  While it's supposed to be a part-time job, the completely predictable phenomenon of "The Fall Rush" has rendered my week completely to My Corporate Overlords at the textbook store.

There's a lot to say about this.

First, I am not a fresh-faced nineteen-year-old.  Working at a textbook store means endless walking, standing, bending, squatting, cartwheeling, somersaulting and other gyrations that make my body ache right down to my very bones.  Last night, after six hours standing at a cash register, trying to work my way through the line of customers that wrapped around the entire store and threatened to escape the front door (no kidding - it was really that bad), I left at about 9:45 (forty-five minutes past when I was supposed to leave).  My lower back was absolutely killing me, for about the fourth day in a row.   Improbably for Texas, my car has seat-warmers in it.  I'm not sure why it has seat-warmers, but I really, really appreciated them last night, because I used them like a heating pad while I drove home.  This could be applicable for senior citizens as well, so tell your grandma.

The main negative of this job, other than the minimum wage, is the body pain.  Since The Rush is all rush-y, I haven't had much in the way of boredom, so that's good.  I tried to explain to the manager that the body pain was a consequence of being a) elderly and b) fat, and he told me these were not valid excuses and to quit leaning.  No, just kidding, he let me get a stool.  Which then made my ass go numb.  But numb is better than hurting so much that I want to pass out, so that was good.

There are other positives to my week-long stint at this job:

• I can now find a textbook, any textbook, for any class, faster than I can find a pair of matching shoes in my home.  (I don't want to examine too closely what this means for my home.)
• I totally had a conversation with a literature grad student about literature and held my own in the discussion.  I am as well-read as that particular literature grad student, possibly as well-read as most literature grad students on the planet.  That somehow makes me awesome, though it's a very difficult awesomeness to define.  And yes.  The grad student was ten years younger than me.
• I keep getting compliments on how I follow through on projects, which I have discerned to mean that I don't just give it a half-assed try and then throw the list in the trash like other people.  This is positive and negative.  Positive in that: go me!  My Puritanical work ethic can be good sometimes!  And negative because: I weep for the species.
  
  And here's my favorite positive:
• Over-Achieving Girl hates me.

Well, I think she also hates this job, but not with a fiery passion.  More like she hates this job with a soul-crushing whimper, because not only has she completely stopped speaking or smiling at work, but she got into an argument with our manager because he scheduled us all so many damn hours this week (I'm working an almost full-time week this week, for instance).  Turns out she would prefer to work the four to five hour shifts that she was promised when they lured us all in here.  She left early one day because her soul is a delicate snowflake that is slowly melting in the heat of her disappointment with this job (not to be confused with the heat of our unrelenting Texas summer), and you can tell she's hanging on by a thread.  There are no children to play with here!  There is nothing remotely creative about this place!  She hates this job.  But she also hates me. 

I know this because she has given me two big clues.  Both of these clues happened within a four-hour window of time yesterday, which was the worst day of The Rush so far. 

First, she called me jolly.

Well, specifically, she said to me "Your jolliness is contagious!"  This was said to me without any trace of a jolly smile, so clearly it was not contagious.

You may think this is not an insult.  And if you think that, you are skinny.  Fat girls know, instinctively, that "jolly," when used in connection with us and not, say, with an elfish-looking man dressed all in red with a sack of fucking toys, is in fact an insult.  If you don't understand this, I'm not actually sure I can explain this to you.  Apart from the fat-girl dig, this was also a passive-aggressive way of saying that my interaction with customers (I'm sorry, "guests") was loud and annoying.  Now, I have to say, nobody likes standing at a cash register for hours on end.  So I make my own fun.  I try to make sure people have a smile on their faces when they leave the store.  Sometimes, this is impossible.  But I always try.  And I have a loud laugh.  I may have mentioned this before.  Once, my brother echo-located me in a big, crowded convention center using only my laugh as his guide.  True story.

So, the second insult was more blatant.  I mean, a lot more blatant.  The manager asked me to help her sort some receipts and file them.  She looked right at him and said "Is there nothing else she can do right now?"  In point of fact, I could have gone home at that point, because it was already half an hour past the time I was scheduled to go home, but I was trying to do my part to help close the store and everything.  Being a team player and whatnot.  Over-Achieving Girl apparently hates team players.

I go back there this afternoon, and then again tomorrow, and then I have Sunday off!  I am looking forward to that more than I can actually say, which is funny because I'll probably end up spending Sunday doing homework.

This brings us to the new semester, which brings us to a new post.

I Have Joined the Ranks of the Gainfully Underemployed, Part Two.

Here is why this job will be a doozy, requiring all of my limited social skills for a solid month:

• The manager keeps eyeballing me, like he knows that there is sarcasm welling up in my soul, and he's just waiting for the moment when that sarcasm bubbles up uncontrollably and I start shrieking one-liners laced with incredibly foul language at the customers.  Who are not customers, you know.  They are "guests."  I get the uncomfortable feeling that maybe he has seen my kind before and he does not appreciate us.
• The people who were already working there before my little gang of four got there.  More on this later in this very post.
• These words came out of the managers mouth as he explained my incredibly uncomplicated job as a cashier:  "You'll probably have to help them write a check.  Lots of these kids have never written a check before."

Please allow me to pause a moment so that you can let this soak in.

I understand not having a checking account prior to the age of 18.  Lots of banks do this, and it's not a big deal.  I myself did not have a checking account until the age of 18.  I do not consider this odd.

However. 

The check.  There are two factors at work here.  First, the check itself literally tells you what information in requires, and where to put it.  The only reason for not being able to fill out a very, very simple form, is that you do not read or write English.  This is appropriate, and it's the only possible excuse a person may have for being unable to write a check.  I have helped people write rent checks before because of their limited grasp of the English language and it is no big deal at all.  These people have an acceptable excuse.  There is no other acceptable excuse.  Excepting a total lack of hands or fingers or something.  In which case it is permissable for you to write your check using your special tool that you've been using to write on things with since whenever you lost your manual abilities.  I don't judge.

The second factor is this: even if you have never written a check in your life, you have probably received one.  Even if it was just a $5.00 check from Grandma on your birthday, you have received a check.  If you ever once looked at that check, you would see exactly what information the experienced checkwriter put in what fields.  They've laid it all out for you.  It's right there for you to learn from.  If you get a $5.00 check from Grandma every year for your birthday, you would see it at least annually for the duration of your life (or hers).  Does this not sink in?  Have you never watched your mom write a check at the grocery store?  Maybe not, considering that you were probably eight years old on 9/11 and you have no idea who the Beatles are, apart from iconic images on those posters that you're buying to decorate your dorm room.  (Semi-related: if you can't sing one single verse of a Bob Marley song and you are wearing a polo shirt tucked into your jorts, I am not selling you the Bob Marley poster.  I am not.)

Come to think of it, I actually don't mind teaching college kids how to write checks.  It's a valuable lesson I can impart to younger generations before we all devolve into vaguely sentient beings that may or may not gnaw at each other's faces when we meet on the street.

So.  The people who already worked there.  Pardon me for a second, while I dust off my fingers. I am eating puffy Cheetos right now and I have no idea why.

We seem to have several categories of people within this small group.  We have:

• The manager.  As I mentioned before, he appears to be wise to my kind and I don't think I made a favorable impression, despite my outward show of docile willingness.  Just think about it a minute, Mr. Manager.  It would have been a total lie for me to say that I'm passionate about helping other people balance the books.  Nobody is passionate about Accounting.  It's like saying that people are passionate about the Dewey Decimal system.  Not even librarians are passionate about that. 
• The "Team Lead."  He's been there for three or four years and he doesn't make eye-contact with you.  Chances are, he won't even learn your name.  Because you are one of the Faceless Warm Bodies that corporate sends in when it's Rush Time.  It's remarkably efficient if you think about it.
• The Blond Girl Who Is Also An Athletic Somethingorother Major.  She shares my name, but not my mostly good nature.  And how dare you ask her a question.  How dare you, sir.
• The Artistic Dude Who Might Be Nice or Might Just Be High.  I liked that guy.  If he was working while high, he's damned good at it, because he knew where everything was and didn't giggle once.
• The Girl Who Has Only Been Working Here Three Weeks.  She's disillusioned (probably on account of that psychology degree she has, yet she's working at a textbook store), she's grumpy, but she is a goddamn workhorse.

Speaking of which, I was a workhorse, too.  I spent an hour and a half lugging textbooks around and figuring out where to shelve them, which is an excellent way to learn what's there and where it might be.  Kudos to the manager for having us do that, even though it was probably just a matter of needing those damn books on the damn shelves as soon as damn possible.  Hilariously, he practically forbade all of us from speaking to actual customers.

You will not be surprised to hear that Over-Achieving Girl volunteered for the first shift on the cash register.  It was at that moment that not a single customer darkened our doorstep - at least not any that wanted to check out.  So, she contented herself by straightening up merchandise that didn't need straightening.  She'd been doing that all the way through the orientation, refolding shirts that were perfectly folded in the first place, and doing it very obviously, so that Mr. Manager could see that she was Taking The Initiative.

Here's the part where I tell you that I'm absolutely not bitter about doing this job.  I'm actually really glad to have the opportunity to make some money, even though it's probably only going to be for a month or so.  I've got these dreams, see, and I'm pretty much willing to do whatever to make them happen.  It doesn't matter to me that this job makes not only my head but my tired old bones ache.  I'm going to do it, and I'm going to do it to the very best of my ability, for as long as it lasts.

Plus this is going to be an excellent story to tell at my fancy parties on my yacht in another ten years or so.

I Have Joined the Ranks of the Gainfully Underemployed, Part One.

So, I knew going into this that my employment was going to be kind of sketchy and weird while I went to school.  But, I have been in business for myself for the last couple of years, so I just figured I'd be scheduling clients around my school schedule.  Sadly, the economy claimed my last two clients, and I wasn't able to secure any more by the end of the Spring semester.  So, I had to find a job that would work around my school schedule.

Unfortunately, the job that found me is in retail.

I don't want to say too much specific about this job, because I sort of need it and I don't want them to fire me for writing a blog.  Not that they'll ever find my blog unless I do something stupid like friend one of the children I work with, which is about as likely as me sharing clothes with Lady Gaga.  Suffice it to say that I work at a textbook store.

The first interview was a "group" interview, at which the general manager of all the stores told us what to expect.  Which is - this is a temporary job for the Fall rush, and it's minimum wage.  This is how far I've fallen, people.  Minimum wage.  I haven't worked for minimum wage since I was sixteen.  Our situation is such that there is no room in this for pride, so I decided to suck it up.  There was no real speaking on the candidates' part in this interview, except for the part where we all told the GM our schedules.  Later that same day, I got a phone call offering me the job.

I can only imagine that I got this job based on the following:

• I showed up.
• I did not appear to be drunk.
• I did not smell bad.
• I smiled encouragingly at the GM at the appropriate times.

That last one may not have mattered. 

There was a girl in that group interview for whom I would have sworn this was her first job interview.  She asked what she clearly felt were insightful questions, and beamed at the room full of silent people as though she had just given us all a cherished gift: the gift of her obvious competence.

An example of her questions:

GM:  Textbooks represent 80% of our total sales.
Over-Achieving Girl: What represents the other 20%?
GM: (completely deadpan) The other merchandise.

I can only imagine that this girl had read every available piece of advice on the internet on How To Land A Job or How To Ace An Interview or even possibly How To Make Everyone Else's Ass Twitch.  Because she is Over-Achieving, she is succeeding in all of these things like a boss.

The first day of work comes and lo and behold, Over-Achieving Girl was hired.  And put in the same team as me.  In the same store.  Now, she's a very nice girl, but she has some things working against her for me.  To wit:

• "I used to work at the Disney Store because I love kids.  But then they were really pressuring me to sell things instead of playing with the kids.  And I just wanted to play!"
• She likes to use everybody's name a lot in a single sentence.
• She will look around on your person or in your office to find some clue about you and then ask you personal questions purely for ass-kissing purposes.  The HR guy was humming while we were filling out paperwork.  She said "HR Guy, what kind of music do you like, HR Guy?"
• She introduces herself to everyone and then beams at you like she did you a personal favor.

In short, she is perfect for this job.

They send you into this job telling you that they're hiring a huge amount of people for the Fall Rush and then they will keep the best ten percent on a permanent basis.  This is an incentive to get the best possible work out of you without actually offering you a goddamn thing.  I thought that by virtue of the fact that I will likely be one of the only people there with a solid work ethic who knows her ass from her elbow, I was a shoo-in for this.  Do I want a minimum wage job for longer than a month?  Well, no.  But I need a job, and if this is all I can get right now, I will absolutely fucking take it.

I realize now that I will be the first person to go. 

There are many reasons for this, some of which I will list for you now.

• I literally cannot stand still for an hour and a half listening to the manager of the store explain to me the incredibly simple concepts behind the cash register.  I fidgeted.  I yawned.  I briefly contemplated wilting to the floor gracefully, as though I had swooned, just so I wouldn't be standing in one place anymore.  I asked to go to the bathroom before he was finished talking.  (I've given birth to two kids.  I pee when I sneeze.  Sue me.)
• I am absolutely older than everyone in the entire corporation.  Probably including the CEO.
• They all know this and they not-so-secretly feel superior to me because of it.
• They also feel not-so-secretly superior because they go to The Big School, and I go to CCC.  I did not try to explain to them the financial advantages inherent in my plan, because then I've officially become a Geezer Who Would Rather They Save Their Money Than Spend It On Beer.

The icing on the cake came when the manager asked everybody what their major is and why.  Over-Achieving Girl said, enthusiastically, "Psychology.  Because blah blah help people blah blah blah."  The manager said "That's great!  So-and-so who has been working for us for the last three weeks just graduated with a degree in psychology."  Ooooh, burn, Over-Achieving Girl!  See what he did there?  He just intimated that you're not going to find a job other than this one, even with your fancy degree!  (No, she did not see what he did there, by the way.)  Then there was the Girl I Can Stand, Because She Seems Smart, who said "Athletic somethingorother" that appears to mean she will one day be a personal trainer, thereby undermining my original assessment that she might be smart.  The tall guy said "Music Performance" and we had a brief sidebar about it because I was a music major the first time I went to college.  He's a guitar performance major.  (WHY OH WHY do parents let their children DO that??  You're practically ensuring that your child will one day become a busker for food.)

When it got to me, I said that I was an Accounting major because I have been a bookkeeper for a number of years and the difference between having a degree and not having a degree in that particular field is the difference of several thousand dollars per year.  They all looked at me as though I had perpetrated a huge faux pas, and then the manager dropped into the silence: "Well, good luck with that."

My only guess about where I went wrong is that I did not say I want to help people.  I didn't say I want to help them with their emotional issues, personal fitness or provide them with soothing music by which to shop for high-end clothes.  Because I don't.  I want to make buckets of money doing something I like, that I'm relatively good at, and that's it.  And one day, I want to travel the world.  I don't ask for much.

Upon my pronouncement, everybody shuffled a few extra inches away from me and we got on with our day.

Coming up, Part Two.

I Cut My Own Bangs Again.

Apparently, it's that time of the semester, because about a week ago, I cut my own bangs again.

It's not as disastrous as last time - I might be getting better at this.  But I think it points to deep-seated mental illness that keeps me from going to professional hair-stylists and instead, hacking at my own hair with kitchen scissors somewhere around 5:00AM once a semester.  It's a very specific mental illness.  It's called So Little Sleep and So Much Stress That Home Haircuts Sound Like a Great Idea Once Every Three Months Or So syndrome.  Only really awesome people have it.  It results in bangs that look like Bettie Page bangs, if you tilt your head to the right and squint a bit.  Pure awesomeness.

So, remember the boulder from Spring semester?  That was a teeny-tiny little pebble compared to the summer semester boulder that has flattened me.  The stress over the summer was so enormous, I lost twenty-five pounds in about eleven weeks.  Go ahead and ponder that for a minute; I'll wait.  Twenty-five pounds.  That's one-third of my seven-year-old.  I'm pretty sure it's because I have convinced my body that it can live on Diet Dr. Pepper and maybe a tuna salad sandwich at around 2:00.  I like to call it the "Holy Shit I Can't Do This" diet.  At completion, you can fit your newly skinny body into Bad Idea Jeans.  It's a beautiful thing.  (Not that I am anywhere near skinny now, but this is a good start.)

Speaking of my seven-year-old (as I did in the paragraph above, however fleetingly), I have been at home with my children for the bulk of the summer.  Just me.  And them.  And Phineas and Ferb.  And a lot of homework that they would rather I didn't do.  It's a lot of togetherness, and starting Friday, we'll have two weeks of ultra-togetherness, because I won't even have the option of going to class twice a week to get away from them.  I start my Fall semester the day after they do.  Which means that on August 22nd, I will have from 7:30AM to 3:00PM full of quiet.  I may just sit there, in the quiet, doing nothing all day until I have to go get them and bring them back.  I may weep from the beauty of it.  Just the idea is making me a bit teary.

Other news and notes:

* Thanks to my Environmental Science class, I may start doing my level best to ruin the environment singlehandedly.  It would serve it right for giving me the boringest class of my life.  (Boringest is indeed a word.  I just made it up.  English is a fluid language, people.  Changes everyday.)  I plan to buy a Hummer and drive leaded gas on the highway, chucking fast-food wrappers out of the window every three miles.  I also plan to contribute heavily to the hole in the ozone layer.  Maybe I can hire an airplane and take a run up there to jab it with forks or something, creating more perferation.  I also plan to take a blowtorch to Antarctica and melt the ice caps a little more.  Just doing my bit.

* It is so hot outside right now that my sunglasses, which were on top of my head momentarily when I went outside earlier, burned my face when I put them on my nose where they belong.  Burned my face.  I yelped and everybody stared at me.  It's almost as awesome as that one time, the first time I went to college, when I completely buckled for no apparent while walking to class through a completely crowded commons.  I fell right on my face.  That was awesomeness.  Not because I was self-aware enough to laugh at myself at the time (although whenever I think of it now, I can't stop laughing, because somebody falling down and busting their ass for no apparent reason is funny, even if the falling-down person is eighteen-year-old me), but because it was a complete and total failure of my legs and everybody in the entire school saw it.  It was epic and would have been on YouTube, had YouTube existed at the time.  And digital cameras.

* The excruciating heat is not helping with the kid-and-mom togetherness.  You can't just send your kid outside when it's 107 out there with a heat index of 115.  You can't say "run your energy off" and send them out there, because if you do, that's child abuse.  They will immediately melt into a puddle on the porch, and there is just no amount of hosing that will make that pavement clean again.  Besides the fact that CPS will then show up, load the amorphous blob that used to be your child into an unmarked van, and take it away to live with nice people who would never do that.  This may sound like a good deal, but I'm betting there's a lot of paperwork involved and maybe also police, who I promise you, you do not want to tangle with during a summer as hot as this.  Because it's this kind of heat that will make usually normal people try to jump off the Wilson-Riggins Hardware Store wearing nothing but a Speedo with the British flag on it, black trouser socks, and water shoes.  So they're a little busy right now and do not want to deal with your kid puddle and everything that comes with it.  Trust.

I'm supposed to be doing algebra homework right now, but I can't summon up the energy for it, given that I just took my last Environmental Science test about fifteen minutes ago.  And studying for that test made sure I only had about four hours of sleep last night, so I'm fucking giddy.  I'd also really like to go home, but staying for class and working on my review sheet is probably the better idea.  Fucking adult-level responsibility.  You're always screwing up my sleep

I Do Not Recommend a Summer Semester

This Summer semester has been hard.  Like, haaaard.  As in, very difficult.

As in, last week I crawled out of my cave for the first time in a month, brushed my greasy hair out of my eyes and blinked into the unrelenting sunlight.

Okay, just kidding, my hair wasn't greasy.  I have been bathing regularly.  Sometimes I would take a shower in the middle of the day just to jolt myself out of the endless loop of Richard Nixon's political career, global warming, quadratic equations and the universal symbolism of the hickory tree in literature.  I'm clean, but I'm definitely not socialized any longer.  I do, however, know exactly what has happened on all the seasons of all the cities of The Real Housewives, because as it turns out, rich women with a complete lack of self-awareness bickering is great background noise for studying.

There were several problems inherent in a Summer semester for me.  I will list them for you now.

1.  I have kids.  Kids who are not in school this summer.  I did get them into a lovely day camp every weekday from 12:00pm to 6:00pm, but that was mostly in order for me to go to algebra class on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Most days, I feel like I haven't seen them much this summer.  (Although, some days I feel like I have seen them entirely too much.)  It has gotten to where every time M2 sees me open up my laptop, he screams "Noooooo!" purely on reflex.

2.  I am stupid.  Somehow, I managed to sign up for two five-and-a-half-week classes and two eleven-week classes.  This resulted in a June filled with exquisite horrors including a history test every Tuesday that necessitated reading and taking notes on at least four chapters of the history textbook every blessed week and an English paper every week also.  Which, as you may recall, involved reading depressing short stories and then writing at least three pages on the symbolism, point-of-view and other things I'd rather not write about.  Oh yeah, and I had to write an eight-page annotated paper for history.  Not to mention, two algebra assignments every week that consisted of at least 20-30 problems and having to read about two chapters of Environmental Science from the world's most boring and pessimistic textbook ever.  It should seriously be called Fuck It, We're All Going To Die and It's America's Fault: A Study in Earth Science.  I'm also required to watch videos laden with the fish with three eyes from The Simpsons and oil-logged birds and otters pulled from waters contaminated by oilspills.  And somehow, through all the tears for the poor chocolate-covered birds and otters, I have to take notes.  The good part in all this is that the five-and-a-half-week classes are over, so we're down to the Algebra and Environmental Science.  And guess what?  I have tests in both this week.  Hooray.

3.  I am still unemployed.  Actually, I think this is less a problem and more a plus at the moment.  If I had to juggle a job with all the rest of this nonsense, I would be in the proverbial padded room right now.  I can't even clean my house on any sort of basis, much less do a good job for somebody else.  However, the lack of employment does mean abject poverty at the moment.  Spike and I decided that we will revisit the employment issue when the kids are back in school in August.  As it stands, a job would be tough after August 5th anyway, as camp ends that day and they would have nowhere to go from then until school starts August 23rd.

The long and the short of it is - this is a lot of work.  By some miracle, I still have a 4.0, but I'm pretty sure that my algebra class is going to be the killer there.  I got an 83 on my first test, and I walked out of there thinking I aced it.  But it turns out that I'm not as awesome as I thought I was, and I made approximately two billion stupid mistakes that turned my aced test into an 83.  And that was on the stuff I already knew from Elementary Algebra.  I am in deep doo-doo.

The good(?) news is that when this semester is over, I have seventeen days until the next one starts.  That's seventeen days off, bitches!  Probably, I will sleep through fourteen of them, because I am tired.  I am parent-of-a-newborn tired, that bone-deep exhaustion that you secretly fear will become a part of you forever.  August 5th is like a finishing line, and I am that runner whose bowels have completely failed them during the marathon, and I am shitting myself all the way to that nebulous tape somewhere off in the distance.

In other good news, I've lost 14 pounds since May 23rd.  Never let them tell you that absolute overuse of your brain doesn't burn calories.

I Have Been Blasted Out of a Cannon.

I have decided that Summer School is like being shot out of a cannon and having to do a shit ton of things in the air before I hit the ground.  That cannon is called "Summer Semester."  It even says it down the side, in big, metaphorical letters.

School started on May 23rd, and since then, I have done three US History II tests, three English papers (well, two, but I'm working on the third and it has to be submitted by midnight tomorrow), an Environmental Science test (which required something like 21 straight hours of studying, and even then I think I must have studied the wrong stuff, because the test confused me) and hours upon hours of algebra.  It's getting so bad that when M2 sees my laptop on and open, he gets pouty.  He doesn't actually want to play with me or anything, he just doesn't want me working on homework so much.  (I've compromised and will turn on Real Housewives of Wherever, which he is addicted to as much as I am, and I work on homework with that running in the background and listening to M2's insightful commentary, which includes things like "That's a little dog.  I wonder what kind of dog that is.  What kind of dog is that, Mom?"  I am an awesome mom.)

The English and History classes are five-and-a-half-week courses.  They are a blessing and a curse wrapped up together in a tasty good-evil burrito.  The blessing part is that in five and a half weeks, they will be over, leaving me the other five and a half weeks in the semester to concentrate on algebra and Environmental Science.  The curse is that there's a paper every week, and a test every week, and all I ever do is study and write papers.

I have one paper left after this one and a departmental exam for English, and two tests and a research paper left for US History.  The end is in sight.  I just have to hold on a little bit longer and try not to go insane, and hope that the rest of my family can stick with me on this.  I also have to hope that the house, with my total lack of housework right now, can hold and maintain just a little bit longer.  I figure a little clutter is okay, but if it rises up and attacks us, it might be time to take a few minutes away from studying and clean that shit up.

I Figured Out What It Is About This Campus

This summer, I'm taking classes at a campus at the north end of the city.  This campus does not feel like home to me, and I figured out why.  There are actually two reasons.

1.  People keep asking me for directions.

I don't know what it is about me up here, but I'm forever getting stopped by folks who want to know where things are.  The thing is, this is only my fourth trip to this campus - I'm as clueless about this crap as they are.  I was really proud today to be able to direct someone to the library, though.  And that was entirely because I had just figured out how to get there. (I was, in fact, just leaving there when they asked me.)  No matter, though - they asked my help and I was able to give it!  Correctly, even!  The next guy, not even ten minutes later, asked where the bookstore is, and that was a big fail.  They're still hiding that particular place from me.  I haven't even seen a hint of it yet.

What is it about me that makes these people think I know where I am or what I'm doing?  I absolutely don't, and one day when I give the wrong directions and someone ends up in Narnia, they're going to figure it out.

2.  There are far too many white people here.

This is not a racist statement, as I myself am white.  I should probably back up at this point and mention that my entire education from the seventh grade on has been conducted in historically underprivileged schools.  In other words, I have never gone to a junior high or high school that was not located in the ghetto/barrio.  As a result, I feel much, much more comfortable on CCC campuses that are similarly located.  The two campuses I went to last semester for classes are only a couple of miles (or even blocks in one case) from my former high school, so I felt completely at home.  The people were generally the same, I was comfortable with the neighborhood... it was much better than this.

Here, I feel like I'm on an alien planet.  Everybody is totally serious, all the time.  I get it that school is serious, and summer semesters are particularly perilous (that's another blog post, but I have a paper due tonight, two tests early next week and another paper due at the end of next week, so you might have to wait a bit), but smile a bit, dammit.  This is probably also because it seems like the majority of people taking classes this summer go to four-year schools and are getting some cheap credit hours in while they're on summer break from the other place.  I gather that from the abundance of tanned, skinny co-ed looking girls I see wearing sorority t-shirts with their short-shorts that advertise their sorority's annual Quilting Bee and Watermelon Seed Spitting Contest For An Obscure Charity, which was held on March 11th of this year.  If the event in question had been held in 2004 or somesuch, that would mean that they were not, in fact, slumming this summer, but if that was the case, they would not look like the fresh young hussies they are, either.

I should also point out that this campus is approximately an hour away from my house.  It was the only Intermediate Algebra lecture class I could get that fits not only with my schedule, but Spikes, M1's and M2's, so I'm not complaining.  I have nine weeks left to go, which isn't too much.

It does make me feel like I'm in a White People Zoo, or invading a Free Range White People Commune or something.  I'm longing for just one car with too-loud bass, or those fighting lovebirds I posted about in the Spring.  It would make me feel less like an extra-terrestrial.

"English 1302" Is Code For "Emotional Torture."

Speaking of starting off with a bang, my first paper (due on Sunday, but will be completed way, way before then, because: algebra) for English 1302 is a few paragraphs describing the characters, conflicts, plot and theme(s) of Ralph Ellison's "Battle Royal," which also happens to be the first chapter of his book The Invisible Man.  Which is about symbolically invisible men, not science experiments gone horribly wrong.

This story is horrible.

I don't mean that it's badly written or anything.  I mean that it's actually, literally, horrible.  It's about a nameless guy who gives a great speech at his high school graduation.  The speech is so great that all the white dudes in the town want him to come to a special event for just white dudes and say it all again.  When he gets to the Great White Dude Party, they tell him he has to participate in a "Battle Royal" which at first seems like it's going to be a boxing match with a bunch of other dudes our narrator knew in school, but actually turns out to be the most bizarre free-for-all I have ever read, and I have read Anita Blake Vampire Slayer books.  There's a naked white lady with an American flag tattoo on her belly who dances to a clarinet song (???) while all the white dudes alternately tell them to look and not look at her.  I'm not exactly clear what happens to the naked white girl.  The white dudes do like a "hip-hip-hooray!" thing, throwing her up in the air seemingly without the use of blankets, (which renders any and all Winnie the Pooh stories I have ever read absolute bullshit - they're famous for using blankets to hip-hip-hooray people into the air.  Turns out you don't need blankets, Christopher Robin, you girl-shoed moron.) and then she seems to disappear or something.  So this bunch of black dudes with raging hard-ons and panic attacks are all blindfolded and then they have to fight each other.  After the fighting is over, the white dudes toss a bunch of money on a rug and tell the black dudes to go get it, but the rug is electrified.  WTF?  And then the narrator gets a chance to say his speech (most of it cribbed from Booker T. Washington, but apparently that's okay?), but he's all bloody from the fight and pretty much fucking miserable but for some reason really gung-ho to say his speech.  The white dudes make fun of him but then they're all naaah, we were just shittin' you and they give him a briefcase with a scholarship to college in it.

W.T.F.

I'm supposed to write about this?  I hate this.  It's horrible.  I realize it's metaphor, but I have a sneaking suspicion that somebody somewhere actually did this shit, and now it's a thing.  I feel like my eyes, and indeed my brain, have been violated.

I'm also supposed to write about "Chrysanthemums" by John Steinbeck, which was boring as hell - a farm wife gets scammed by a tinker.  Well, duh, honey, that's what tinkers do.  And it took twelve pages to say so.

There were other stories I was supposed to read for this section.  Any one of those stories would have been easier to write about (I actually really enjoyed "A&P" by John Updike), except one.  There was one in the group that was just as bad as "Battle Royal."  It's called "The Lottery" and it's by Shirley Jackson.

It's about a small town that does a lottery every year.  Why?  Because they've always done it, that's why.  And what do you think that lottery is for?

IT'S TO FIGURE OUT WHO TO STONE TO DEATH, THAT'S WHAT.

I totally get the point.  Some people have stupid traditions that they just keep doing because it's always been done that way.  I get it.  But the fact that I was forced to read the anxiety of these people as we go through the lottery makes me want to spit on somebody in public.

Has anybody ever written a short story that is well-written and uplifting?  Does any conflict ever end with people shaking hands and maybe going to get ice cream together?  I completely understand that humankind is a cesspit, but for the love of beans, do they have to keep reminding me?  Can't I read about ponies or something?  Instead, we have a dude who quit his job at the A&P because some girls came into the store in their bathing suits and got the stinkeye and a comment from the manager, one where a woman finds out her husband is dead in a railroad accident and just as she realizes she's free, she finds out it was a terrible mistake and he's alive, so she drops dead from the disappointment and one about a little girl who can only afford Barbies that come from a fire sale.  I'm surprised none of the stories were written by Margaret Freakin' Atwood.  Or Eeyore.  What the hell is wrong with the American short story author?

Beyond all that, I have to keep contemplating horrible fictional (?) events while creaking open the rusty trunk in my mind that holds things such as "theme," "motif," "conflict," etc.  It's an uncomfortable fucking place, and it's making me wonder if I shouldn't quiz all of my potential professors before I register for their classes.  "True or false: 'I will force you to read traumatizing short stories on the very first day of class.'  Be warned that an answer of 'true' could lead to me finding an English professor with a shred of humanity left in them."

I will persevere.  I will write an awesome piece about this story that was scraped off the bottom of somebody's shoe.  And I will do it today, because I refuse to think about this any longer than I have to.

US History 2: This Course Requires A Map Test.

The Summer semester has started!  Today, actually.  And it started with a bang.  Apparently because we're on a condensed schedule, we are going to make the very most of every single second, by the power of Greyskull.

I have a map test on Wednesday for my History class.  I have to know where Chicago is, among other things.

I don't know where Chicago is, technically.

I have been to Chicago.  I've actually driven to Chicago from my house.  (Or, more accurately, from my friend Christy's house, which is in St. Louis.  But I drove to St. Louis from my house.  It's how I suddenly realized that St. Louis is sort of in the mountains, which I didn't know, despite having been there before.)

Do I get credit for having driven there?  No, I do not.  It's totally unfair.  I can tell you how to get there from here, but I get no credit for that.  I have to find it on a map.

I also have to name all fifty states, locate many major rivers, label all five Great Lakes and several other large cities in America, many of which I have also visited but couldn't possibly find on a map.  Clearly, I have to study.

Here's what I don't have to study.  I have to also find Canada, Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  I'm pretty confident in my ability, there.

Frankly, I'm just a bit shocked that there's a test so damned fast.  Fortunately, it doesn't cover any material from the book, because I would just be screwed if it did, as I don't have the book.  I have plans to get said book, but as of now, I don't have it.  I'm pretty sure that this makes me a slacker.

The whole map test thing is actually pretty amusing to me, considering I haven't had one since my junior year in high school.  It was a hard one, too.  Which is why I still remember it.  I don't think it scarred me for life, but I guess we won't know for sure until I take this new map test.  If I have a panic attack and start thumping my head against the desk in the Testing Center, we'll know for sure, won't we.

How I Write

Since I don't have classes this week, and I obviously don't have a job, I've got a week of days where the kids are in school and I'm not.  I decided to use this time to work on this novel I've been working on (oh, come on.  Of course I'm writing a novel.), because, theoretically, there will be seven hours per day during which there are no distractions.  If you've ever tried to write creatively, you may already note the bullshit in that sentence.  If you haven't, let me explain why that idea is total and utter bullshit.

This is how a day of "writing" goes in my house.

First, I get up and make coffee and dawdle around with morning-type activities that sometimes include doing a crossword puzzle on my iPod.  Then I set up my laptop.

I open up the file I'm working on.  Sometimes I adjust the margins or the page layout.  And then usually I read back a bit to make sure I'm going to be in the right frame of mind to start writing. 

Then I notice a bit of breakfast in my teeth.  I go to the bathroom and examine my teeth.  I then determine that I need to brush, floss, polish and otherwise go through an entire oral hygiene regimen that I may or may not have completed only about an hour ago.  After I'm done with my teeth, I realize my eyebrows could probably use some plucking.  I set about doing that for awhile, accompanied by fiercely watering eyes and curse words, and then I think of a brilliant sentence.  I go back to the computer and type it.  It doesn't look right.  So I go back to change the dog to a cat to make it fit better.  No matter that the dog/cat appears eleventy billion times up to this point: that's what Find and Replace is for!

By this time, it's probably noonish.  Time for lunch!  I take an entire hour making the most elaborate lunch possible, and serve it to myself with real cloth napkins and shit.  I take my time eating the lunch I so meticulously prepared for myself, and then I sit back down at the computer.

Someone e-mails me.  Wait, it might be important!  I check the e-mail and then decide to check Facebook too, while I'm at it.  Somebody might be looking for me or waiting to ask me a burning question.  It's not good to make people wait with burning questions.  That's how people end up with charred bits that need Tough Actin' Tinactin.  And I'm just not ready to be responsible for that.  I end the chat with some lofty pronouncement that it's "now time for me to write!" and then realize that it's 2:59.  I have one minute to write something profound before I have to go get the kids from school.

The profound thing, of course, doesn't come in a minute, so I go get the kids.  And then when they're done with homework, I write a blog post.

And then later tonight, as I'm trying to fall asleep, I will have approximately one jillion great ideas for the book.  None of which I'll remember when I wake up.

This right here is why I'm adhering to the Stephen King principle of writing a hundred words per day.  Even if they're crap words, this book is going to get written a hundred words at a time.  Or it will until I get distracted by something shiny again.

What I Learned This Semester - Spring 2011 Edition

Some things that I learned this semester:

• If I am given the opportunity to procrastinate, I will absolutely take it.  Maybe I won't take it down to the very, very wire (unless it involves Access database work, which I did on the last day to turn in for my Business Computing class that last night), but I'll definitely wait until I can't take the guilt and stress of putting it off anymore.  This is a good thing for me to remember, as most of my classes in the Summer semester are online, and, to a degree, self-paced.
• Do not make fun of your professor, no matter how bad a teacher s/he may be.  S/he may die during the semester, and then you'll feel really, really bad, for at least one day.  Possibly twelve hours.
• Just because you think you're funny and your presentation is awesome, doesn't mean the rest of the class shares your sense of humor.  Tough rooms, those classrooms.
•  Algebra is hard as balls.  It takes a lot of time and work and even more frustration.  They tell me it's all worth it, but I think they're lying.
• If you are constantly eating "on-the-go," no matter how "on-the-go" you are, you won't lose weight.  In fact, you might gain some.

By the end of the semester, the Picnic Table People had dwindled down to myself and Brian, who I think I've mentioned before.  Spidey dropped out of sight a couple of months ago, and Mike the Iraq War Vet never came back after our discussion about whether or not school was harder than war.  (I maintain my point, but given that he never came back, he may be equally as convinced of his own.)  We also picked up and lost The One African Dude Who Likes to Talk About Soccer, and That Skinny Kid Whose Name We Don't Know.  And by African, I mean, really African.  I listened to a lot of talk about soccer that I probably wouldn't have otherwise just because he had an awesome accent.

I never did find the words to express how much fun I had in my Business Computing class, but I really, really did.  The professor did a great job of engaging everybody (especially considering that it was an evening class) - he was hilarious.  He said great things to me and about me and he was just my very favorite.

All in all, I think it was as good a semester to jump back into things as I could have had.  This summer, I'm taking English Comp 2 (I took English Comp 1 the same semester as I took Elementary Algebra back ten years ago) and US History 2 as online courses for the first five and a half weeks of the summer semester.  At the same time, I'll be taking Intermediate Algebra (actual physical class) and Intro to Environmental Science (online) as eleven-week courses.  This could be the dumbest decision I have ever made in my life.  It's hard to say at this point.  But rest assured, if it is, you'll probably be the first to know.

Irrational Things I Am Scared Of

There will be a recap of the semester probably tomorrow, when everything's over.  Today, I have to give a three-minute presentation on why there should be rigid standards of truth in advertising (thank you, tobacco industry, for giving me SO MANY EXAMPLES), and then I have a final in History (not comprehensive) and a final in Business Computing (comprehensive).  Both of those are open book/open notes, so I'm not very stressed today.

Upon walking from my car to the building this morning, I realized that I'm irrationally afraid of some weird things.  It's not terribly surprising, because I can freak myself out about pretty much anything, but I feel like I've really outdone myself with a few of these.

1.  Curbs.  Sidewalk curbs, specifically.  Every time I step off a curb, I do it really slowly and carefully, as though I am just relearning to walk after a terrible hovercraft accident, because I'm 100% positive every single time that I'm going to step off wrong and break my ankle.  I know that this fear is loosely based on my friend KC, who, years ago, had trouble getting into a Jeep and broke her ankle in the most horrific way possible.  This somehow involved curbs.  It even more involved a Jeep Cherokee, but for some reason, I'm not bothered by those.  In fact, I drove one up until a few months ago.  I have no idea why the sidewalk curb is catching the brunt of this irrational fear and not the truck that actually caused the problem, but I think it might have to do with the Jeep's V-6 engine, which I really miss.  A four-cylinder just is not the same.

2.  Walking up the stairs.  I have no problem walking down the stairs.  But walking up the stairs makes me worry that I'm going to trip up the stairs and fall and smash all of my teeth out.  Even the ones in the very back.  This has never happened to me or anybody I know, but it's been a lifelong fear.  I prefer the elevator for going up, but I'll totally take the stairs going down.  I wonder what the statistics are for injuries going up and down stairs.  But even if I fall going downstairs, I think that maybe my teeth are safe.  And that's really all I care about.

3.  Pedestrians.  Well, I'm only really scared of them if I'm in my car, driving.  There's always a little voice in the back of my head that tells me that if I am not absolutely hyper-vigilant, that guy walking on the sidewalk like he doesn't have a care in the world will suddenly realize that his life is meaningless and launch himself in front of my car to end it all.  Too bad for him - I drive a PT Cruiser, and he would probably just get a really nasty burn from the friction of my bumper - but maybe he doesn't realize that PT Cruisers are relatively harmless, and then I'd have to live with the fact that I gave a dude a bumper burn for the rest of my life.

4.  The Nursing School students.  They are so stressed right now that at any moment one of them may snap and start menacing us all with their stethoscope.  I'm not exactly sure how a stethoscope could become a weapon (short of hurling it like one of those balls-tied-together-with-rope weapons), but if anybody can figure out how to get the most harm out of one, it's a nursing student.  They know about anatomy and shit.  (I'm also starting to get really afraid of my body, given the lecture notes they read out loud while studying.  Your body can really get you into some serious shit.  But you probably already know that if you listen to the "fine print" on the drug ads on TV.)

I probably should be afraid of toilet seats, given that one tried to hurl me off earlier this morning, but so far, no dice.  If I think about it hard enough, though, I could probably scare myself into total paralytic fear any time I encounter a restroom facility.

There is probably a medication for this (and it's probably called "Daxin" - hi, TKers!), but the side effects could be so serious that I don't really want it.  Side effects may include: sweating to the oldies, spastic thumb disorder, internal seepage of Kool Aid even if you haven't had any in twenty years, unluckiness, uncontrollable sobbing and even death.

I think I'll stick to my compulsive walking-like-an-old-woman for the curbs and stairs problem, and total avoidance of nursing students wherever possible.  It seems safer.

I Am Utterly Exhausted.

I think I've finally hit the wall.  I guess I'm just lucky that it's happening in the last week of school.

I have terrible insomnia that is completely exacerbated by stress.  Add to that my procrastination problems that have amounted to an absolute ass-load of homework that could have been avoided had I been more diligent earlier in the semester (total lesson learned, by the way), and I'm averaging about 3 to 5 hours of sleep a night.

This is leading to some surprising crap.  And some not so surprising crap.

For instance, this morning, I got gas before coming to school.  About halfway there after I got the gas, I remembered to reset the trip-o-meter on my odometer.  (This is pretty much a rule in our household, even though I have absolutely no idea why.  When we first got married, Spike sort of insisted on it and I eventually fell into step with it, not really understanding the reason behind it, but it takes me less than a second to do, so no skin off my nose.  I'm completely OCD about it now, though.)  I looked down and realized that at some point, I had totally already done it, and I have absolutely no recollection of doing it.  I have no idea when I did it.  I'm actually sort of suspecting that my car did it all by itself, knowing that I was going to want that done.  Maybe my car is anticipating my whim.  I could maybe get on board with that except that yesterday, I nearly bought two pairs of scissors when I meant to buy one.  At some point, I had put the scissors in my shopping cart and, not realizing I'd already done that, did it again.  I was completely bewildered when I found the second pair of scissors in there.  Once again - I have absolutely no memory of doing that.  This could be dangerous.

Besides accomplishing small tasks that I can't remember doing, I'm also making questionable choices.  Case in point: I trimmed my own bangs last night.  At the time, I had no sense whatsoever that this might be a bad idea.  I just figured that they were long and tacky-looking and in my way.  Did I have time to go get them trimmed professionally?  Hell, no, I have homework and not sleeping to do.  So I did it myself.  Now I look like I went down to the Golden Comb and had them done.  I probably should have gone the distance and given myself a home perm while I was at it.  At least then my granny-bangs would have hair-context.  As it stands now, I have a completely normal haircut with hideous bangs.  I feel like apologizing to people who have to look at me.

My algebra teacher has noticed my brain fatigue, also.  (I think the bangs might have been a big fat clue.)  He has suggested that maybe I take a pill on Sunday night that might ensure me some good sleep before the final Monday morning.  Bless him, that was very tactful.  At least he didn't say "Get you some sleep before you injure yourself with your sharpened pencil."

Sigh. Feelings.

I believe I've made it perfectly clear how much I hate talking about feelings.  I loathe it.  I detest it.  And yet I always end up doing it.

If you're already sick of Osama Bin Laden stuff, feel free to skip this post.  It's not going to be funny.  It's not going to be about political anything or who deserves credit or what.  It's not about speculation or celebration or anything. It's about my own reaction, which surprised even me.

We were cruising iTunes last night and Spike saw something on his newsfeed that said that President Obama was going to have a big announcement on TV.  My stomach sort of dropped, because for a split-second, I was absolutely convinced that the big announcement was going to be that aliens had landed.  I was trying to figure out if I should wake up the kids and drag them into a closet, fashioning tin-foil hats for us all and filling up water pistols along the way, because I have watched a lot of M. Night Shymalan movies.  ("Swing away, Merrill.  Swing away.")  Logic and reason took over again fairly quickly, so I figured this was an announcement about the NATO strike and the death of Gaddafi's son.  (I have no idea if I spelled that correctly or not.)

When we heard the news (I think we missed the actual announcement by about five minutes), my heart leapt up in my throat and the only thing I could say was "Thank God."  All I felt was relief.  I felt sort of giddy with it.  We watched the celebrations on CNN and talked mainly about the crowds themselves (especially the cheerleaders outside the White House.  That was freakin' weird.  They were doing stands and stuff).  And then we tried to go to bed.  I didn't end up going to sleep until about 4:00am.  I had made the mistake of reading my Facebook newsfeed as I was laying down, and I couldn't stop thinking about it.  I had mixed feelings, and I was surprised at myself, because I thought my reaction was going to be cut-and-dried.  Not that I ever expected this day to come.  I fully expected Osama bin Laden to die of natural causes and we, the people of the world, would never know.  Al Qaeda surely wouldn't tell, so he would just continue being a boogeyman for all of us until the end of time.

A little history would probably be good here.  On 9/11, I was almost seven months pregnant with my first child.  Even though I was miles and miles away from the Twin Towers (and at that point, had never even visited NYC), I cried for days.  Osama bin Laden was a particular source of anxiety for me.  I remember telling Spike that I was absolutely terrified of him.  I felt really silly for being as overwrought as I was, but I just sort of chalked it up to being pregnant, and eventually stopped crying.  I never really felt like I had the right to be as upset as I was, because I didn't know anybody in those towers.  I didn't live in NYC.  I'd never even been there.  In short, I felt like a dumbass - like one of those people who try to inject themselves into every situation, whether it concerns them or not.  I was jumpy about planes in the sky once the planes started flying again.  I was just all-around freaked out.  But I did get over myself and get on with things, obviously.

And then, last September, I went to Ground Zero.

It was my third trip to NYC.  There wasn't a lot to be seen at Ground Zero at that point - the construction fences had been put up, and they were working away, so really it just looked like any building site.  But I and two of my friends went to the little Ground Zero Center sort of catty-corner from the construction.  And once we got in there, I started crying again.

I didn't expect to.  I expected to look at everything and be okay, but I cried in public and I hate crying in public.  I hate it so much.  It always makes me feel like an idiot, and I felt like an extra-supreme idiot for the same reason I did almost ten years ago.  I hadn't been there.  I had no right to be upset.  My friend Amanda lived in NYC at the time.  She would have had a right to cry, if she'd been there with us.  I did not. 

Cheri, my friend from Canada (hi, Cheri!), wanted to go across the street to the little church where the first responders had gone throughout all of the rescue efforts for respite.  We got over there and I couldn't go in.  I absolutely could not face it.  So I sat on a bench in the pretty little churchyard and looked out over all the very old graves dating back to the 1700s and waited for Cheri and Jill to come out and get me.  Then we went on with our day and I was fine.

This morning, I cried in public again.  I didn't cry for Osama bin Laden, because I'm really having a hard time dredging up any sympathy for him.  I cried because of this picture.

I saw it on Buzzfeed.  I don't know why this affected me so much, but I just sat at a picnic table in the cold wind outside the building where my 10:30 class is held and cried.

I don't have any answers.  I don't have a pat thing to say, like that Mark Twain quote that's going around right now.  I just keep thinking that if it's making me cry, what must the other people be feeling right now?  The survivors and the widows and widowers and kids who lost one or both parents?

I can't celebrate.  I don't really have that in me, I don't think.  It's just amazing how much stuff can be raked up inside yourself, even almost ten years later.  Imagine being someone who really has something to be raked up.

Cee Lo Green Is My New Best Favorite

I have fallen hopelessly in love with the musical stylings of Cee Lo Green.

I absolutely have to give credit to his new TV show "The Voice," which I guess is on NBC.  Spike and I watched the rerun of the first episode over the weekend on E!.  I never, ever watch that channel for any reason, but it was the only place that had that show, and we were sort of interested in it.  (It's actually a pretty good show - the auditions take place with the team leaders [Adam Levine from Maroon 5, Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green and Blake Shelton] turned around with their backs to the stage.  They listen to the singer and then if they decide they want that voice on their team, they hit a button that swivels their chair around so they can see the performer.  The performer then gets to choose which turned-around artist they want for a mentor.  Each artist gets a team of eight people, and they themselves are competing against the other artists for top slot.  It's pretty awesome.)  Anyway, I had heard a clip of his big hit "Fuck You" (or "Forget You" if you're terrestrial radio and/or Wal*Mart) awhile ago and tried to make a mental note about it, but my mental notepad is more like a dry-erase board these days, so I forgot.  Until yesterday, when we watched "The Voice."  I remembered, and downloaded his entire The Lady Killer album.

There are several points to make here.  First, I am the whitest white girl that ever lived.  I turn bright pink even without sun - just with application of a little heat.  (This is extremely inconvenient in Texas.)  The only soul I have is the one on the bottom of my shoe.  I can sing with some soul, but I just do not possess any in my everyday life.

Having said that, I come to my second point: I am an avid, entrenched fan of early R&B.  I love early R&B so very, very much.  I always have, and I always will.  Unlike many people who like that style, it's not homogenous to me.  I have favorite artists, and favorite eras, and favorite eras of artists.  Chief among them are The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson and Al Green.  They move me.  Their voices move me.  Their grooves move me.  I love this shit.

Cee Lo Green is just like this shit.  He is fucking amazing.

The orchestrations, with the horns and the back-up singers and even the freaking xylophone is such a throwback to earlier times.  And tracks on that album hark back to the 1960s and the 1970s, in separate tracks.  This music is so great, I want to rub it into my skin.  I want to wear it like a too-tight t-shirt to inappropriate places, like church.  I love this music.

This is not to say that all the tracks are equally good - they're not.  Some are weaker than others.  But even the weak tracks kick the collective ass of current popular music in such a fashion that I'm not sure I'm allowed to watch.  It's that brutal.

The long and the short of it is: I don't care if you like Motown or not.  Buy this damn album.  It is musical genius.

A Blog Post: Special Royal Wedding Edition

I got up at 3:00am my time this morning to watch the Royal Wedding.  (I think you get arrested by beefeaters or something if you don't capitalize that.)  The fact that I can do this with no ill effects is one of the myriad of benefits of being an unemployed college student.

It's also the perfect opportunity to get up in the middle of the night and have exactly two cups of coffee that would have been embarrassingly plain and in no way appropriate for a Royal Wedding if I hadn't served it to myself in a silver-rimmed coffee mug (which renders any cup of coffee immediately ineligible for microwave reheat, because of the metal rim) and with the honey coffee creamer that my friend Sue turned me onto.  Two points here.  The addition of the honey creamer and the special coffee cup instantly renders my coffee frou-frou and Royal Wedding Appropriate.  And Sue is not my only friend, contrary to what this blog might suggest.  She's just the friend who has the most influence on my daily choices of food and beverage.  Oh, also I'm having an embarrassingly huge and tasty chocolate-chip muffin.  Anything less would be horribly low-claaass.

I have a history of plopping myself down in front of the TV for events that I feel are somehow "historical."  This dates all the way back to 1981, when I can remember lying in bed with my mother, watching another Royal Wedding (it's actually one of my earliest memories).  Since then, I've made a point to watch things like the OJ Simpson verdict, That One Time When Prince Charles Had To Give Hong Kong Back To The Chinese, Princess Diana's funeral, Michael Jackson's funeral, Barack Obama's Inauguration, and all sorts of shock and awe.  (Probably, I watched other memorable occasions in history, but they can't have been too memorable, or I'd have remembered them here, wouldn't I.)  I will absolutely admit to sobbing like a baby throughout the two funerals mentioned above and also the inauguration.

I did not watch any of the lead-up to the wedding, not even the Lifetime movie, because I don't care about any of that.  It's not the love story I'm watching here, because I'm essentially a cold-hearted reptile.  I'm in it for the history, people.  The history. 

We're only at the "arriving" stage, which is startlingly like the Oscars, except that nobody stops on the red carpet to talk to the press.  I'm watching this totally alone in my living room, as the rest of my very sane family is still sleeping.  I'm pretty sure that M1, like any other nine-year-old girl, wishes that she could be up with me right now, but she has school today, so I get to watch it blissfully alone, muttering to myself ("Oh, William and Harry look so handsome!" and "Wow, that outfit is unfortunate." [That last one is directed to Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, who I sort of hate for no good reason at all.]) and stuffing my face with muffin and frou-frou coffee.

The one issue I have to address at this time, given that the wedding hasn't even started, is the wearing of completely bizarre hats.  I realize that this is some sort of British tradition, but WTF.  I'm looking at you, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.  I can't ever tell the two of them apart (I mean, I know they look different, but I don't know which is which), but one or the other of them looks like she has a huge logic puzzle stapled to her forehead, and the other one looks like she has an explosion of feathers occurring on the very top of her head.  Piers Morgan on CNN has informed me that this is called a fascinator.  I'm certainly fascinated by it.  I could probably stare at it for hours.  And if I did, it might just tell me the secrets of the universe and blow my fucking mind.

While I totally understand that if I'm socially-aware and whatnot, I shouldn't be watching this (what with all the unemployed people in Britain and the fact that the very same nation spent millions upon millions of pounds/Euros/whatever on this event and all), I'm still going to watch it.  And I'm going to enjoy it.  And I'm going to weep copiously.  I have tissues all ready.

In fact, I will totally cop to tears when William and Harry arrived, because they look so handsome.  The tears weren't even a little bit about how sad it is that their mom can't be there today.  And maybe I like tears with my middle-of-the-night historical event watching.  Don't you judge me.

Updates of Many Things!

Sneaky Lizard Update!

He has not been spotted at my house, but the other morning when I was leaving in the early hours to go to Algebra class, the clarion call had apparently been heard, because there were about four types of lizard on my front porch.  I ran on my tiptoes out of the house, squealing like a little girl under my breath so as not to wake up M2, whose window I was right outside.  And as I was squealing my way to my car, I ran face-first directly into a giant spiderweb.  Sometimes, I think God put me on Earth to entertain Him.  If so, I hope the resultant gyrations satisfied my purpose on Earth this week.

Algebra Class Update!

I got a 44 on my most recent algebra test.  In my defense, my new baby niece was born last Thursday, and I spent Wednesday night through Friday evening in South Texas, staying with my 13-month-old nephew while my sister-in-law was in the hospital.  So that put a crimp in my studying time.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  I don't know what the rest of the class's excuse is, though, because a 44 was the fourth highest grade in the class.  The highest grade was a 66 (two people had that), and the next-highest was a 53.  Then there was me.  I should elaborate on this.

I totally knew I was bombing the test while I was bombing it.  I could not get my brain to function, and promptly had a huge panic attack in the middle of the test.  I finally stopped torturing myself and turned in my test without even trying a bunch of the problems.  And then I immediately went home and cried in the bed until it was time to get the kids from school, skipping Radio and TV entirely.  Which was actually okay, because the Radio and TV guy didn't care.  So I felt guilty all day Monday for no reason.  This has actually happened to me before - in 2000, when I took this class the first time.  I bombed a test and left the testing center in tears, only to run into my high school algebra teacher in the hallway (NO LIE), who asked me what was wrong and then gave me a hug when I told her and said "Well, you always were a mess when it came to tests."  Nice to know I made a good impression on you, Miss Cooley.  Turned out that everybody in that class bombed that test, too, so she curved it.  I'm wondering now if maybe it was the same part of the subject matter.  Maybe rational expressions just are not for me.

The Final Exam is on May 9th.  Our instructor passed out the review packet today, and I feel pretty doggone good about it.  There are only about three rational expression questions, so I should be just fine.  I'm still going to study like a madwoman, and I sort of want to get a hotel room for the weekend so I can just hole up with my dear friend algebra and have a weekend-long tryst that will result in a good grade.  After the test, I'll have two weeks (srsly) until Intermediate Algebra begins.  And then in the Fall semester, College Algebra.  So two more semesters of this.  Le sigh.

Punctuation Matters!

It's amazing what a difference a hyphen can make.

"I am so sick of these stupid-ass hairs getting in my mouth."

OR

"I am so sick of these stupid ass-hairs getting in my mouth."

Misplace the hyphen at your peril.