Syllabus #202

We did it!  We survived the 2022-23 school year.  As a whole, it passed in a blink, and yet each day and week felt like a Groundhog Day cycle of exhaustion and irritation, but with just enough bright spots to keep me from throwing my toaster in the bathtub.  

And I do, deep down, really like my job and my workplace.  Honestly!  So I guess hats off to people who legit hate their job and their coworkers and they still have to show up 52 weeks a year.  Sorry to rub it in y'all's faces that I get two months off from the job I actually kinda love in a dysfunctional family sort of way.

But now that it's summer, I am a completely different person.  Who is that person, you ask?  The kind of person who goes to karaoke night at Fran's and stays awake until 3 am, apparently.  Will I do that again?  Probably not, I'm still recovering and I wasn't even drinking that night.  Did I participate in karaoke?  Absolutely not, but I did love it with all my heart and soul when a slightly built older gentleman concealing a gray mullet under a trucker cap performed a spoken word rendition of "I'm Too Sexy."

Please buy me this cat tapestry

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Tired of reading abut the debt ceiling?  Here's something you won't be able to forget any time soon:  A 64-year old Kentucky man shoots roommate in ass following squabble over last Hot Pocket.  

Analog Reading:

Still plugging away at Matthew Desmond's Poverty By America.  It's a short book, and I should be finished by now, but it's data heavy and the topic feels like it deserves my full attention.  However, every time I've had a chance to read lately, it's at bedtime, and nothing lulls me to sleep like statistics and dollar amounts.  

I have some lighter fare on the docket, including Stephen King's novella collection, Different Seasons, and another Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait.

Syllabus #201

Summer break begins on Friday.  I think the school year cycle for educators must be something like what mothers report after giving birth.  Every year, as we approach the end of the school year, I'm exhausted and over it beyond any measure I ever thought possible.  I'm absolutely certain I'm more tired THIS year than any other year, and yet by August, I'll have forgotten this misery and will be ready to do it again.  But right now, I'm on my hands and knees, screaming obscenities and demanding the epidural that they won't give me because it's too late, and I'm probably convinced I need to poop but no one will let me because they don't want me to have a toilet baby.  At least I hear that's what childbirth is like.  

I was stripes, just saying.

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They say comedy = tragedy + time.  It sounds like some of these comics are using creative algebra and balancing this equation with (time ~ audience expecting jokes) and just going for uncomfortable laughter without any real emotional distance from the sad thing.  Does it work?  Maybe?  Depends on the person and the delivery, I guess.  I would argue that in Tig Notaro's case, it worked because a) it's Tig Notaro, whose delivery is unmatched, and b) there was so little chronological remove from the tragedy (getting a cancer diagnosis that day) that the shock of it prevented any emotion from entering the picture yet.

I have a soft spot for creative grilled cheese.  I still dream about Turkey and the Wolf's collard melt that I ate 5 years ago on a trip to New Orleans.  We need this kimchi grilled cheese immediately.  You must go directly to my mouth.  Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Analog Reading:

Finally finished Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet.  It was an interesting mix of historic facts and speculative fiction about Shakespeare's actual son named Hamnet, who died of unspecified causes a few years before ol' Bill wrote Hamlet.

Just started Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond.  It's a lighthearted romp very heavy horror show.  We are a horror show.  Our tagline as a country should be:  America!  Where we have the resources to elevate everyone out of poverty, but the big guys at the top like riding in private jets and not paying taxes, so suck it, poors!

Syllabus #200

 Wow!  Two Hundow!

There's just something about an arbitrary, meaningless numeric milestone that makes me swell with pride.

Also, Happy Mother's Day to specifically and especially the following people:  MY mom, my grandmom, my mother-in-law, Terry Gross, and Oprah.  Also, HMD to all caregivers and aspiring caregivers.  Every day I'm amazed when I wake up and my pets are still alive and seem to like me, so if you're shepherding an actual human person on their way to adulthood, you truly have all my respect.  

This week I had a new experience.  I am all about personal growth and leaving my comfort zone (am I though?) so I am grateful for this new thing that happened to me:

I got cat-called during the morning drop-off line.  At an elementary school.  By a weird guy I've never seen before, presumably not a parent.  He was, in fact, A literal scrub, as he was hanging out the passenger side of his best friend's ride.  Trying to holler at me.  He looked me dead in the face as the car slow-rolled over a speed bump, and in a monotone voice, said, "Nice legs."  He was gone before the full bizarre weight of it registered in my brain.  

Now it's time for a pop quiz.  Which of the following was I wearing to elicit this comment?

A) a skirt

B) booty shorts that said Juicy across the ass

C) a dress

D) loose-fitting jeans

If you selected answer choices A, B, or C, you are probably someone who blames a woman for being harassed or assaulted!  Bye, please leave.  If you chose answer choice D, you are correct and you have probably been the recipient of strange and unwelcome commentary about your body at times when you were not, in any way, shape, or form, inviting it.  I could have been wearing an It's Always Sunny Green Man body suit, a ball gown, or a Heidi Klum worm costume and somebody's still gonna get off on saying something weird to flex in front of his boyz.

Nice legs.  Ironically, the Philly Phanatic did actually grab my ass once.

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Goals.

Analog Reading:

Still reading Hamnet.  My reading schedule is all off this week.  The book is compelling, I just haven't had much time to devote to it.  I have had some wild dreams about contracting bubonic plague as a result of reading this book, though.  

In one dream (which will be as fascinating to you as listening to a blow-by-blow of Uncle Carl's colonoscopy at Thanksgiving), Andy and I were at some kind of resort where he was golfing and I was about to go use the fitness center, but I suddenly didn't feel good.  I took myself to some kind of on-site clinic where the doctor took one look at me and ordered me to leave immediately because I had bubonic plague.  He said to go home and get in a milk bath, so I did, but we only had like half of a 1/2 gallon in the fridge, so I just dumped it in the bathwater and hoped for the best.  I fell asleep in the tub and woke up to Andy angrily pounding on the front door because I was supposed to pick him up from the golf course and I never showed up.  He had to walk all the way back with his clubs, and was pissed.  I trudged downstairs, covered in bulging sores and dripping milk-water, to explain what was happening, but Andy kept going on and on about what a great golf game he just shot and how it was ruined when he had to walk all the way home with his clubs.  I was like okok sorry, but GUY, I HAVE PLAGUE!  And then I found $5.

Syllabus #199

I survived Book Fair, but barely.  My mom came to help me this year, for the first time!  I hope she wasn't traumatized, and I hope she will come back next time (thanks, mommy!).  Despite her tremendous help, I am left a mere husk of my former self.  Somehow I managed to squeak through the week, literally, with a case of laryngitis, capped off by a truly delightful bout of hives.  

When I say that book fairs are stressful for me, I'm not just whining.  I may honestly be allergic to book fairs.  At the very least, they are psychologically damaging for me.  

With time, I will eventually stop having night terrors about explaining the intricacies of sales tax and the concept of buy-one-get-one-free.  The scars will remain, though.  I bet if I ever did ayahuasca, all of us would be vomiting and purging our traumas and everyone else would be unloading stories of abuse or abandonment or feelings of inadequacy and I'm just over here purging the thought of having to count a child's crumpled pile of sweat-soaked dollar bills.  Forget anything bad that ever happened to me before the age of 30.  All my traumas are triggered by Clifford the Friggin' Big Red Dog.

legitimately terrifying 

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What happens to my body when I eat spicy food?  I become immortal.  That's what.

Analog Reading:

I finally reached the tail end of Butts:  A back story by Heather Radke.  It was great.  Butts ARE funny, but there's also a lot of cultural and racial significance to unpack from that trunk.

Just started Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet.  Too early to form an opinion!