...Way Worse Inferno, Part II

So I actually survived the classes all the way until the afternoon—5th hour, with my plan period coming up 6th hour, meaning a blessed break for one whole class period with no kids.

And then the lights went off.

At first, the kids freaked. You would’ve thought they were being thrust into total darkness instead of the pleasant daylight of a hot, sunny day. Some kids thought we were under attack. And when you think about it, lack of electricity really is a reason to panic for these kids. Everything they know and love is operated with it.

Plus a lot of that is exactly what makes eighth grade so awful. It’s the age where the cluelessness of childhood mixes with the instability of hormones. The resultant mixture is so volatile, it’s a veritable Twilight Zone of tween-dom where spontaneous emotional combustion is commonplace.

I managed to get them calmed down in much the way the Dog Whisperer does—by distraction. But those battery operated clocks confirmed it: the bells didn’t work. I waited with Pavlovian pleading in my head. Bells! Where were my bells?!

Then a walkie-talkie carrying vice principal came around to deliver the sentence: Do not release classes until the electricity comes back on!

I watched in agony as my whole break ticked away. The room grew more stifling with the air conditioning off. I opened the windows; the kids threw things out. They hollered to their friends who were lucky enough to be outside for P.E. They were loud. The noise throbbed. My feet throbbed. My head throbbed. The heat throbbed.

They began to complain. They wanted something different to do. They wanted to go to the bathroom...all at the same time, because they were afraid the bathrooms would be dark and scary. They wanted funner friends and better games (yes, I played games with them; I was desperate).

A couple of the most tiresome girls sat near the door and whined. At me. I’ve heard some children with their parents, and it’s clear where they get it. “Let us ouuuut! We’re so hot!” Like I was personally keeping them in there on purpose because the whole thing was just so danged much fun for me. Like I was torturing them by making them play games with their friends. All that went through my sweat-soaked head was that these little girls had no freaking idea what torture was.

Hell is hot, yes. But here’s what they don’t tell you: it is also filled with eighth graders.

At that moment, as a middle aged woman at the opposite end of the hormonal spectrum and trapped in the stifling heat with 25 restless adolescents, I was possibly far more dangerous than any little old cyber-threat.

If I admit that here, is that considered another cyber-threat?

The lights came back on…just in time for 7th hour, the last hour of the day. No break, but I survived. Some people climb Mount Everest as tests of their mettle. Mine was a descent of sorts, and much hotter, but no less an achievement of a lifetime.

Let the summer vacation begin.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society. ~Henry David Thoreau

Dante's Way Worse Inferno, Part I

Anybody who teaches can tell you that the last few weeks of school are h-e-double pencils for teachers. For substitute teachers, those last weeks are worse still. Make it eighth grade—that pubescent purgatory, the most dreaded of all ages experienced by humanity—and you have a recipe for sheer teaching torture.

Last week I descended into such madness. It was at my favorite middle school, even, but I realized something was up when I saw extra security guards posted at the entrances. Apparently there had been a “cyber-threat.”

For those of you who are unfamiliar with public school terminology, “cyber-threat” usually means somebody started a rumor on Facebook about how somebody else threatened to blow the dumb school to kingdom come…and parental panic ensued.

In MY day (yes, I know) when somebody threatened to blow up school, we all got a fire drill while somebody—my guess would be the custodian—looked around to see if there was a giant package marked “bomb” sitting around anywhere. We got to go out just long enough to see how nice it was outside (and to give the teachers and some of the naughtier kids--and maybe the cutstodian himself--an extra cig break), and then we had to go back in again. But in MY day, no one had yet freaked out in a school and committed mass murder.

So these days, after the police and fire department and bomb sniffing dogs and school board and administrators have all gone in and checked things out, we go in with extra security.

I actually worked extra security once. I was basically a not-so-glorified hall monitor who also had to patrol all the girls’ bathrooms to check for threatening graffiti. No kidding. But this time, they had hired real security guards with uniforms and everything. They were old guys who looked like they’d retired from meter reading, but the uniforms were a nice touch.

(To Be Continued)....

“I like saw your phone? And I was like, ‘that’s a really small phone.’” ~Overheard from 12 year old girl

Here's my own quote:

I am not a writer, I'm a compulsive note-taker of life.

Unfortunately, have had too much life and not enough time for the notes. Hope that changes soon!

Thanks, Snigglefarts Bustapants

My dear friend Becky and I were emailing about being bummed out lately. Some of the things she said reminded me of what I do to feel better. Have had a lot of chances to think of these throughout my divorce, so here are a few (besides the obvious “call a friend”):
1. Make yourself smile even if you don’t feel like it. It sends a good feeling down your spine.
2. Rent a funny movie (or in my case, “The Office” seasons on cd). Whatever makes you laugh uncontrollably. Laugh out loud.
3. Force yourself to sing a happy song out loud.
4. Turn up the radio and dance.
5. Sit in the sun. If none available, do a Mr. Rogers and use your imagination.
6. Smell the roses—literally. Or buy a hyacinth at the grocery store, or put fragrant potpourri around.
7. Find something silly about your situation—for instance, I remind myself of the old Droopy the Dog cartoon when I cry and my nose swells up. Or think about how you’ll laugh about this later.
8. Exercise (Hey, do as I say, not as I do).
9. Write about how you feel.
10. Find one miracle and/or one lesson in your day, every single day. Write it down.
11. Force yourself to learn something new.
12. Look up art that appeals to you on the internet under “Google Images.” Use it as your computer wallpaper. Study the piece and look up the artist.
13. Look up photos of parts of the world. Ditto about the wallpaper. Take a pretend vacation every day.
14. Take care of a pet.
15. Light a candle, get out the pretty tablecloth, use the good china…whatever it takes to create a pretty setting or mood.
16. Make up silly names (thanks, Becky).
18. Not to be all religious, but pray. Honestly.
17. Make up a list of things to do to make yourself feel better.

“Reject a woman, and she will never let it go. It’s one of the many defects of their kind. Also, weak arms.” Dwight Shroot, “The Office”

An Omenous Cookie?

Fortune cookie I got the other day: “You will make many changes before settling satisfactorily.”
I am the masterpiece at the end of the journey so it is worth the climb. ~Anonymous

When Words Don't Quite Fail

Right after I filed, I actually had someone ask me point blank why I was getting a divorce. He prefaced this with, “As you know, I’m a good friend of the family.”

One of the last times I saw this particular “good friend,” an older, alcoholic former boss of my ex husband’s, he was soused and grabbing my knee under the table at a dinner party my husband and I were throwing. I hadn’t talked to my good friend in close to 10 years and wasn’t at all unhappy about that. So my first response was stunned silence, which I think is one of those times in life that guileless honesty has given me the perfect retort.

Then I got to use the comeback I’d fortunately filed away for just this occasion. It is: “I simply don’t deserve him.”

The response was perfect. "Oh, why yes, yes, of course. That is, ahh, oh. Oh, yes, of course. Oh, uh huh, I see. I—Yes. Uh huh. Oh."

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech. ~Martin Farquhar Tupper

What I kept thinking when I read the below joke was that I did the opposite. I married what some people thought was a hunk, and he turned into a frog.

The other way around would be way better.

“God don’t like ugly.” ~St. Louis woman on TV news referring to a man who’d committed a heinous crime

Pardon My Porn

A friend sent me one of those email jokes. It’s the one about the old lady who buys a frog and it turns into a hunk. The punch line is what did she turn into? (A motel.)

I didn’t really intend to post the joke, but I wanted to see how easy it was to cut and paste something like that to post on my blog. I’ve been wanting to mess with the photo feature a little more since a friend told me how to position pictures the way I want.

So I experimented. It wasn’t easy. For one thing, the pictures didn’t transfer, and there were quite a few of them. There was not only the hunky guy, but there were also frog pictures as the joke unfolded. So I had to cut and paste the pictures separately.

I got The Guy to post properly, but once I had him all set up and published, I was taken aback. Without the visual effect of scrolling down, and without the goofy little animated frogs along the way, he looked like a cheap Man-Pinup. It was only a naked torso, I promise, but he looked sleazy.

Horrified, I deleted it all. I bet the whole process took maybe five minutes—which is a surprisingly long time when you’re cutting and pasting.

Apparently it’s also a long time when you’re browsing blogs. A friend chose just that moment to look at mine, and up popped Naked Torso Guy. Confused, she clicked on him…and she says he took her places no family oriented woman wants to go. Bad, bad Formerly Frog Man! She says she didn’t stick around long enough to see if it was—urk—a true pornographic web site.

I don’t understand that, but then, I don’t know the first thing about computers. I just want people to know that I am not, in fact, a porn peddler.

“People in the library shouldn’t conjugate near the doors!” ~Teacher making an announcement in a high school library

Today I realized the chief difference between my view of the marriage and my ex husband’s. When I look back on all those years of marriage, I see all the times I should have left--and can’t forgive myself for staying. He sees all the times I stayed and can’t forgive me for finally leaving.

“The greatest of teachers won’t hesitate/to leave you there by yourself, chained to fate….” ~Live, "I Alone"

A Peggy Hill Moment

I got stuck.

I got stuck because I’m trying to recall how far I’ve come from the anger, but in order to do that, I have to recall the anger itself. And I don’t want to do that.

So I won’t for now.

For now, I’ll stick to the day I had last week. I subbed in middle school P.E., which I almost never do. The P.E. part, that is. I’m not sure why I took the job in the first place other than the fact that it was in a school near a store where I’ve been wanting to shop. Plus it meant I got to wear my beloved Reeboks to work. Ahhh.

I like gym because you get to just sit back and observe the kids…sort of like an anthropologist of adolescence. I often think, as I’m sitting there playing gym teacher and supposedly monitoring the game, that gym class is such a microcosm of our competitive selves.

I was horrible at gym in middle school. Horrible. I still think of my middle school gym years as a nightmarishly literal sweat-and-blood struggle mixed with ill-fitting polyester and pubescent agony.

Ironic, then, that I’ve grown up to play gym teacher sometimes. I do it because I feel like it slightly smudges the helplessness I used to feel. That, and all I have to do is stand with my arms on my hips and yell a lot. I yell, “LISTEN UP!” and “LET’S GO!” like I know what I’m doing. Here is a confession: I sometimes don’t even know the rules of the game.

The horror is that I wasn’t one of the pale gawky girls who look like they should be bad at gym. In my experience, they are usually just annoyed with sports, but they’re really not that bad at playing them. I was truly bad at gym. The kid who came closest to who I was at that age was a mostly unattractive girl with pretty hair. She continuously shrieked and cried, “Don’t hurt me!” while darting delicately away from the ball every time. When it would land near her, she’d slap that icky ball limply away. I was in much greater denial of my sports-helplessness and therefore much less demonstrative of it, but I had about that much interest, grace, and talent.

Turned out the kids were playing Dodge Ball. With today’s no-risk mindset, that sort of surprised me, although the balls were partially deflated so that they made a horribly explosive noise when they struck the right way but didn’t really hurt. I know they didn’t hurt because I accidentally got hit once. The kids all giggled and watched me to see what I'd do (I laughed and told them I was now going to cheer for the other team.) I asked if the deflating of the balls was intentional, and the other P.E. teacher said it was just a byproduct of being too lazy to blow them up.

At one point a male gym teacher told me I had to go in the girls’ locker room to “…make sure they don’t fight or anything.” I had to laugh at that. Middle school girls don’t tend to have fist fights; when they get mad, they make each others’ lives miserable in every possible way. It’s far more prolonged than a straight-forward fist fight and causes far deeper and more permanent scars.

Something happens to boys in middle school gym—they wrestle and tumble and fight. But girls just sit there and talk. Even the truly athletic girls don’t play aggressively, and they’re all considerably more athletic than they used to be. Even the best of them lob the ball—not with that anger that the boys seem to have—but with a calm competitiveness. One little pony-tailed girl moved like a dancer and hit the ball so hard it whistled, all with a benign smile on her face. The other gym teacher confided that the boys were afraid of her, and it was clear he was right.

It struck me that I was observing a civil war of sorts, the way each side just faced each other and picked off the other side like that. Interesting who was left standing, too. In each class, there seemed to be a little girl who fared well simply by virtue of being too thin to hit easily. In each case, the girl stood with her hands stick-straight at her sides or twiddled her hair or picked at her cuticles while the balls screeched past her head. Occasionally she stepped out of the way, looking slightly bored.

In one class, the kid who was left standing every time was a boy I had in In-House Suspension last week. I think he was left because he’s the kind of kid people just don’t notice, and he stood in one corner looking out of place in gym shorts. In eighth grade, this angry looking red-headed child looks like he should be wearing camouflage. Somehow even his normal clothes look like camouflage.

Last week in in-house suspension he spent half of a class period playing with his eraser, and at the end of the day he picked lint off the carpet and put it in his pocket to take home. He told me that dead people always talked to him, and—I know it’s horrible of me—I asked him if they told him to get back to work.

He’s one of those kids you can’t help but worry about, both for his own sake and for others’. When he’d end up left standing in Dodge Ball and all the other kids suddenly noticed him and started throwing balls at him, you could tell he was taking it personally. He’d suddenly come alive and start throwing back with such anger that it made my throat ache. I noticed he hit the same girl several times after she was out, too.

I really did want to ask him what the dead people said to him, by the way, but I would have been encouraging him to be “off task.” Talking dead people are against the rules in middle school.


“Everyone gets hurt. Meaning’s got nothing to do with it.” Aryn Kyle, God of Animals

Ode to the Imperfections

In this era in which I’m seeing more and more people with faces frozen in perpetual surprise, I’m sort of liking some of my imperfections. Is that weird of me?

Maybe. And I don’t mean all of my imperfections, either. The truth is, I have jowls that could use a support garment. But there’s some other stuff on my body that I’ve grown sort of fond of, in a way. Battle scars, I guess you could call them.

For example, I have a scar that I'm sorry to say is fading because it makes me laugh. You know the sit com joke about the shirt with the iron print burned on? I have an iron print—the tip of one—burned on my arm. I tried to iron while watching a movie with a cute guy in it and got distracted.

Then there’s the extra rib. After an x-ray, I was told by a solemn-faced doctor that I have an extra rib on one side. He carefully explained that it shouldn’t make me feel…you know…freakish. He said it as though he clearly thought it should. In my mid-thirties, I was just old enough that it made me laugh and exclaim that, to be honest, I am a bit freakish.

When I was a kid, I knew a Girl-with-No-Bone in her pinkie toe. Only cartilage. I always admired the fact that she had sense enough not to be bothered by it, and if you asked her, she would take off her shoe and bend it every which way like a fake rubber toe. It was so cool. Funny how we don’t always get smarter when we age, isn’t it?

I had another friend with an extra nipple. She was a teeny bit embarrassed by it, but she did show certain people if you asked her right. Frankly, I was unimpressed. It was on her stomach and didn’t have an areola or anything. Really it just looked like a flesh colored mole.

So anyway, today I noticed another one of my mutations is back. I think generally my eyebrows are pretty normal, but if you look closely, they are very long and sparse. Occasionally I get this freakishly long one. I blame the Scottish side of my family. Have you ever noticed some of those Scottish guys have eyebrows that look like somebody took a golf club and lobbed a couple of small animals at their foreheads? I must have the female version. Anyway, I tweeze this thing out, but then it slowly grows back until it’s so long that it really needs its own hairstylist.

One of my new year’s resolutions is to add photographs, so here goes. Below, for your viewing pleasure, is my Mutant Eyebrow Hair. I had to add it to its own post because otherwise it wanted to go to the top of the post, and that just ruined the suspense.

I haven’t talked to my old friend in years by the way. Maybe I will write her and ask her if she still bends her toe for people in that cool way. I hope she does.

"…I was merely reading the Muggle magazines. I do love knitting patterns." ~ Albus Dumbledore

Mutant Eyebrow Hair

The Coat for When Hell Freezes Over

It’s supposed to get cold here this week, so I took my daughter out for a winter coat. She is a teenager, and she hates coats.

When she was a child, she hated shoes. Hated them. Shoe shopping was such a nightmare that I used to threaten to put duct tape on her feet to get her into school. She had one pair in the world she would wear, and I drove all over town trying to find that brand and style in every possible color.

The coat was like that.

I think we really did see every coat at the mall. It was not allowed to be: too long, too short, or a weird color. It couldn’t have shoulder pads, even small ones. One had “funny pleaty things that stick out.”

It couldn’t make her look like an FBI agent. Or on the way to a board meeting. Or a safari. Or look like one that her childhood Madeline doll wore (she was right about that one). Woe to the coat that made her look pregnant, fat, or like she was "wearing a dead weasel" around the shoulders.

It couldn’t have weird sleeves, oddly sized or colored buttons, or any other outstanding embellishments. The collar could be neither too big nor too small. It couldn’t be tweed. It couldn’t be leather. No plaid. No hound’s-tooth.

I asked her what she would wear. She said, “One like that girl’s.” But when I asked where this girl was, my daughter clammed up—wisely sensing that I was to the point where I would have tackled the girl and ripped the coat right off of her. Then my daughter said she wanted a coat that looked like she’d just come from skiing in the Alps. Lederhosen? No lederhosen. A ski jacket, then. But no, ski jackets are too puffy. They’d make her look fat.

As we were leaving—hot, tired, crabby, and sans coat, she took one more look at the very first ones we had seen. She tried on the one I had secretly dubbed “The British Rock Star.” It had been overlooked because the buttons were too shiny, even though I’d assured her I would personally rip the buttons off with my teeth and sew on whatever buttons she wanted.

In the end, she forgave the shiny buttons, even. It is perfect on her. My daughter, the British Rock Star.

I had it wrapped in plastic, but she took it out and wore it home.

Maybe it’ll be like the sparkly purple snow boots she got when she was nine. She loved them so much, she wore them to bed for days.

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

New and Improved! Farewell, Pepto Pink!

I thought this was a little easier on the eyes...and stomach. Tell me what you think.

In the meantime, I promise I can blog about something other than vomitus, but I just have to get this one last thing out of my system as it were:

Practically Scientific Chocolate Study
I was curious to see if I could eat chocolate again.

I long ago decided that it would not be a bad thing if I developed an aversion to chocolate. So every time I was exposed to stomach flu or thought I might have a chance of throwing up later, I’d be sure to eat some. I once ate expired baking chocolate rooted out from the back of my pantry. But wait…that might have just been an ordinary day, come to think of it. But I know for sure on at least one occasion, I rushed out and bought some with the specific intent of later blowing chocolate chunks.

This went on for years. The only thing I determined was that chocolate is apparently a very reliable puke-preventative.

Except with the aforementioned barfing episode. Amazingly enough, I ate chocolate on New Year’s Eve. In fact, if color is an indication, and I find it usually is with puke, chocolate came up in the very first round.

So, what did my almost scientific chocolate-hurling experiment prove? Drum roll…………...............................................Are you kidding? This is chocolate we’re talking about. Chocolate!

Nevertheless, here’s what I’m telling myself. It just didn’t “take” this time because the chocolate had been consumed too early on. I’m convinced that it needs to be freshly swallowed chocolate. Which means, of course, that next time I will have to have chocolate ready to go at a moment’s notice.

“The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives the hurt.” ~ Max Lerner

It is now three days post-puking, and I have a flat stomach.

I had to announce that, because it’s not going to last long. Not such a bad thing, I’ve decided, to start the year cleansed and purified. I can now call it a "cleansing" since my face is no longer thrust into a receptacle that was never made for the end of a human being which contains items such as a nose and mouth.

I haven’t had coffee for three whole days (which would explain the headache), or chocolate, or any of my other addictions.

The book signing was wonderful, by the way. I don’t know when I’ve ever laughed so hard or met so many nice people.

P.S. I couldn't find a feature that asks me for my favorite quotations, so I am going to add a quote of the day.

Today's: “The fire of anger burns only the angry.” ~Confucius

Not-So-Fun Thing for Losers to Do on New Year's Day:

Barf repeatedly.

I spent the first day of the new year curled in a fetal position in a nest of sorts made out of bathroom rugs piled under my toilet, with my head smashed against the tub, in between bouts of sickness spewing from various orifices. What I kept thinking is how you can really see new kinds of dirt from that perspective. Specifically, I was wondering how on earth black dog hair gets piled so thickly along my baseboards when my dog won’t go in a bathroom.

He was a rescue dog who had clearly been locked in bathrooms a lot as a puppy in his first home. Almost 13 years later, he still won’t go into a bathroom. But clearly, his hair will.

Anyway. It was a gastro-intestinal virus and not a hangover, I swear. I feel sort of ripped off. I’m really not a drinker these days. At first I’d thought it was my shrimp contribution to the dinner, but everyone ate some and no one else got sick. Plus the friend who hosted the get-together assured me that “stomach flu” is going around and her son had it not long ago. Bleah.

My dog was much more concerned about me than my daughter was. He even stopped by the bed several times to check my breathing by sniffing my nose and mouth with a worried look on his face. Big shock to open your eyes to a cold dog nose. Then he came and squeaked toys in my general direction. I couldn’t tell if this was a celebration of some sort or an assumption that I should play with him as long as I was breathing and all.

Today I can cross my house to put in a load of laundry without having to stop and lie down on the floor to rest several times on the way.

Here is what the Magic Eight Ball said, by the way. I did not drop it from a step ladder, but it still managed to be too bubbly to read the first time. I am for some reason compelled to shake it like it’s a can of V-8, even though as a 3rd grader my daughter instructed me in proper Magic Eight Ball consultation. “You have to wave your arms,” she said, “like this,” and she demonstrated a grand flourish. While doing this, she told me to say (with equal grandeur), “OH, Great Eight Ball! Please answer this question…!”

I consider it a good thing I couldn’t read it the first time, because I’m pretty sure the first word was “Don’t,” and that just doesn’t sound good.

So I tried again without shaking it up so much. This time it said, “Ask again later.” Wimp.

So I did. The third time was indeed a charm, especially since I’d recalled the proper procedure by then. I drew the words out and gave them lots of feeling, just as she’d taught me. “OOOHHH Great Eight Ball! Will 2009 be a good year for me?!”

So, it’s definitely official. 2009: “Outlook good.”

Book Signing!

Coming up January 3

at Barnes & Noble

St. Peters, MO

Hello Out There!

Welcome to my very first post, created on December 31, 2008. I would like to announce that I do, in fact, have plans this evening...I am crashing the private party of a couple of very nice neighbors of mine. But before I got the pity invitation, I thought these up. So here for your viewing pleasure are

10 Things for Losers to Do on New Year's Eve:

1. Climb onto a step ladder at midnight and drop an Eight Ball. While you’re up there, ask it if it will be a good year. If it isn’t broken, read the little window for your answer.

2. See if you can fit 2009 pieces of gum into your mouth.

3. Make a dragon face out of a paper bag. Glue curling ribbon streamers to the back and put it over your head, then skip through your house shouting, “Happy Chinese New year!”

4. At midnight, put Brendan Fraser wallpaper on your computer and neck with your computer screen.

5. Open a can of olives and arrange them on oyster crackers. Call them hors d’oeuvres and eat them wearing a little black dress and white gloves while sipping ever so delicately on orange juice poured into a plastic champagne glass.

6. Make up your own words to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne,” because who the hell knows what that means, anyway.

7. Make a list of things you will resolve NOT to do over the new year, such as “I will NOT sing ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ and mosh with my Christmas tree.”

8. Shake a can of Mountain Dew real hard and pop the tab at midnight.

9. Make a list of things for losers to do on New Year’s Eve.

10. Bang pots and pans at midnight. Ewww, no, I didn’t mean it that way, Scumbag.

Please feel free to add any suggestions of your own!