What Not to Do

If your kid says to you, "The reason I don't get math is because my teacher never goes over our homework, and I don't even know whether my homework is right, because my teacher never corrects it," then you will probably feel a slow burn of outrage. How can any teacher be so lazy?

But, if the same kid has been issued, in addition to a text book, a solution manual to the text book, you might want to ask her (or him) why she isn't correcting her own homework. You might want to stop for a minute, and imagine 120 kids just like yours diligently practicing factoring limit problems (just as yours does). Even if they only have about 25 problems a night, you will soon see that the result is 3000 problems. No one can correct 3000 problems. A day. No one can circle in red pen just where each child went wrong on each of those 3000 problems. Every day. No one can write enough happy faces or stars on the ones that made no mistakes. On 3000 problems. Each of the days of the week.

Still, even if you don't know this basic fact of math teacher-hood, even if the quantity of homework problems doesn't occur to you, and you decide to take your outrage out on the teacher, and you decide to email her (or him) with your anger and your frustration, then, please, for the sake of your child, whatever you do, don't cc the principal.

Don't do it. Really. Your relationship with the teacher will be better. Your relationship with the principal will be better. Your child's relationship with the teacher will be better. The teaching will be better. The world will be a better place. There will be rainbows and flowers where before there was only sewage and toxic waste.

Just believe me, OK? I know what I'm talking about.

My Claim to Fame

So, at this moment, if you're feeling sad and lonely, and you're sitting in the dark somewhere with just the Internet to keep you company, and you go to google at your wits' end, wondering just how you're going to make it another day, and you type "How to Live Alone" into the search engine, hoping against hope that someone, anyone, out there in cyberspace will help you muddle though your loneliness, down there at number four on the list of results is this blog. It's me, reaching out to you, one solitary figure in the dark to another, saying, "It's OK. We can do this."

Of course, this cracks me up, because it seems to me most days that I'm only about half a step away from typing just those words into google myself, and who's going to help me? Myself?

For some context, I've been stood up by the same guy two nights in a row. Well, not really "stood up", but canceled on at the last minute. The reasons sound valid. One of them was a double-booking problem, which I, of all people, should understand. The other was illness. And I don't really care that much, because I don't know the guy well enough to care, but here's the deal: I don't have time to get to know him, especially if, when I make the time, he cancels. I am working an incredible number of hours at school, and I'm still behind. I'm robbing my sleep bank in order to pay my lesson planning creditors. It's nearly 8:00, I haven't had dinner, I don't know what I'm teaching tomorrow in either of my two classes, and I have to get up and go to work in nine hours.

How to Live Alone? How about How to Eat, Sleep, and Make Time for Friends and Romantic Interests (Even Flaky Ones) All While Getting Your Lessons Done Before School Starts?

Excuse me, I have some googling to do. I just hope I'm not on the first page this time, because I happen to know that I'm not much help.

Shopping at this Time of Month

Oh my god, nutty bars are on sale! They're only a dollar. Should I buy two boxes? I don't need two boxes. Man, I can practically taste the fake peanut butter and chocolate flavor right now. OK, I'll just get one. I definitely need some nutty bars for my lunches.

Now, where is the chocolate milk? I need chocolate milk. Right now. Ooo. I remember this All-Star chocolate milk. I didn't know it had double the calcium. I'll get the big -- hey! is that string cheese? I love string cheese. It's a lot of packaging, but I can take it to school for lunches. It'll remind me of my childhood, so it's totally worth destroying the earth.

I wonder if they have a case of individual ice cream treats, because I could really use some ice cream right now. I can even eat it in the car - oh, yeah, Drumsticks. Just what I need. Chocolately, peanutty, icecream-coney goodness.

OK, this is getting ridiculous, I have to get out of the dairy aisle and find the cashier. Wait! Slim Jims. Perfect. I'll have a Slim Jim and a Drumstick for dinner. The cashier is totally going to think I'm pregnant. Who cares? Damn, if only I could figure out how to gracefully chug my half-gallon of chocolate milk while I'm driving, I'd have the perfect meal. Maybe I should go back for another box of nutty bars. They're only a dollar...

Don't I Know You From Somewhere?

So, I was on a second sort-of date this morning. I know. I know. A second one. Shocking.

Anyway, get over it. So we were on this sort-of date, and we were having breakfast.

Yeah, OK, get your mind out of the gutter. I don't even know why I talk to you.

We met for breakfast for our second date because both of us had other evening plans this weekend.

As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, we were having breakfast. My family occasionally eats breakfast, as you may know, which is why he let me pick the restaurant, and so I picked a family favorite, because it's reasonably priced and the food is local and good. Big mistake. Halfway through the sort-of date, who should walk in?

Go ahead guess.

Right. My mom and Jimmy. Big as life. She's a pretty good spy, and so naturally she tried to choose a table within earshot, but Jimmy's a better friend, and he firmly escorted her to the farthest corner of the restaurant. Still, I was left to explain to my sort-of date why even though he let me pick any restaurant in the city, I just happened upon the one place where my parents were dining this morning.

Unless he noticed that my parents are pretty hot for their age, he probably thought I was a big old dork. Of course, when he asked me about my other plans for the day and I said I was going to study Calculus, I'm sure that didn't help convince him otherwise. Damn.

Next time I go out for a secret sort-of date for breakfast, it will be at the Copper Dome. I'm going to have to eat first, though, because the food totally sucks, but it's a small price to pay for not running into any family members. Also next time I'm going to pretend that I teach something sexy, like, um, ceramics.

Suburbs

The hip-hop team at my new school is all white. I tried to judge them by the content of their characters, but they were dancing so self-consciously, like a bunch of white folks, and hip-hop looked like something they are just trying on, like joining the math team or playing intramural basketball.

The hip-hop team at my old school was more colorful and they danced together with all of their hearts as if they were dancing out a place for themselves within the mostly white school. And where do the black hip-hoppers go at this new school? How do they dance themselves into acceptance? I'll tell you one thing: I'm pretty sure it won't be with the crew I saw today, unless I'm very wrong.

And so begins a year of Al comparing where she is with where she has been.

Also, phew! I'm beat after six twenty-five-minute-periods today.

Al for VP

So, I was thinking about this birthday I just had, and how now that I'm 35, I might as well be 40, and how I'm not where I thought I would be by the time I was 40, and I was feeling all down on myself and the world, and then I remembered how exciting it was to turn 16, 18, and 21. When I turned 16, it gave me the right to get into a car accident every year until I really learned how to drive. And of course, nerd that I am I counted the days until November after my 18th birthday. And although it wasn't until years later that I felt comfortable doing it, turning 21 gave me the right to buy liquor (which, granted, seemed more exciting at the time).

And I remembered that actually 35 is a good birthday, because it gives you the right to run for vice president. I used to think that I wasn't really qualified to be vice president (and up until August 17, I wasn't), but I certainly feel capable of being mayor of some podunk town of 8500, and from there it would be a small leap for me to govern a state with a population only double that of Minneapolis.

I'm also the possessor of two fully functioning (we think) ovaries, and while I do not bring together the conservative base, I also never used my authority to try to get my brother-in-law fired. And, so, in conclusion, I have decided that I would be as good a candidate for VP as what's-her-face. Thank goodness I had that birthday before the election. I'll leave my phone on, just in case McCain rethinks his choice.

The Introvert at Sea

They say their names, and I smile. I shake hands. I forget to use all of those mnemonic devices that you're supposed to use when you meet new people, and I find instead that my brain is completely blank and terrified. It's been five seconds since I heard your name, and I not only can't repeat it, I can't even remember my own name.

Lots of pats on the back for getting the job at my new school. Lots of "heard great things about you". Lots of offers to help. Help with what? I haven't had time alone in my room to think about what I need. The few things I have asked about (money for math team, scope and sequence of my courses, attendance policy) seem to be decisions I get to make all by myself. I'm lost. I'm used to standing rigid against a wall in a building too dependent upon structure to see the students, and now I find myself with no wall and no structure, and I'm not even sure I know how to stand without it.

Excuse me. I can't remember your name, but I kind of sort of want you to give me some structure so I can rebel against it, especially since I suspect the structure will become apparent only when I violate it. Why don't you just save us some time and tell me what it is, so I can decide how to violate it?

Dating that Feels Like Homework

At new teacher training this week, I found myself surrounded by that usual crew of early-married teachers. They look like people I'll be asking for hall passes in a couple of weeks, shiny-faced, bright-eyed, unwrinkled kids, but they're all sporting diamonds on their left hands. More power to them, I say, but when one of them told me that she didn't even know you could administer the Heimlich to yourself on the back of a chair, I suffered through a brief flash of envy. I've eaten a great many meals all by myself in my little apartment. Granted, I've never choked or needed to save myself, but I know exactly what to do if I ever do.

I've also had a birthday recently.

My birthday was the deadline for the end of the dating hiatus, and I was feeling like it would be nice to forget the Heimlich-on-the-back-of-the-chair trick. Furthermore, I ran into my first true love at the coffee shop on Tuesday. Now there's a scab I can still pick when I feel like watching myself bleed.

It's all driven me back to the dating world.

This time, I've landed on a website that promises me dates with potential. It's not that one with the right-wing Christian gay-bashing dates, but it's a little bit like that one, in that you don't get to search for dates until the website's algorithm determines that your personalities and dating wants and needs match in some way.

So the website sends you some matches, and then you can move a little slider bar right or left to indicate your interest in each person. Only I can't possibly tell how interested I am from a picture and a paragraph - unless they have some sort of obscenely hideous facial hair growing out of their upper lip, or they make horrendous grammatical errors in their essays. I feel like I should be able to tell, but I can't. Or, actually, to be brutally honest, I feel like moving all of the little slider bars all of the way left (to the "no spark" end), but I keep telling myself that I have to be more open in order to actually ever meet anyone, and so I procrastinate on moving any of my slider bars, because it's too hard to make a decision.

Meanwhile, every man who sees my profile and moves the slider bar even the slightest bit to the right generates an email of "interest". Seriously, I've gotten about one auto-generated email an hour from this thing. The emails bring up more profiles with more pictures and more cursed slider bars. I've stopped even opening them. I can't face it.

And what do you get if you both move the slider bar to the right? You get to move on to the free-response portion of the test. You choose some questions. He chooses some questions. And you both write essays.

I keep thinking that there must be a more fun way to do this. It'd be great, for example, if instead of slider bars and multiple-choice tests and short-answer questions, I could get flirtatious banter and dinner and flowers. Why can't dating be more like that?

One Thing She Noticed

I was sitting in the back of the van one day in Kyrgyzstan, next to Daniya, the local volunteer coordinator. Daniya is kind and green and new to her job, and I sensed that she was having a rough time, but she's also very girly, so while I felt like it was important to talk to her, I also struggled to come up with things to talk about.

I had noticed that there were a lot of Korean restaurants in the neighborhood where we were working on the house.

Ask me how I could tell.

Go ahead, ask.

OK, I'll just tell you. It was because I could read the signs in front of the restaurants. The Russian signs.

So anyway, I decided to ask her if there a lot of Korean people in Kyrgyzstan or if they were just concentrated in that one neighborhood. It turns out, in fact, that Daniya's own family is Korean. Originally her family (and a lot of Korean people) settled in the part of the Soviet Union that was near, well, Korea. So, they were living just across some water from their home country, when World War II started, and because Korean people look Japanese (but don't say so to the Koreans or the Japanese), the Russians decided to forcibly relocate them to an interior part of the country so they wouldn't collude with the enemy. Both sides of Daniya's family were left in what must have felt like the middle of nowhere, and they had to figure out how to make a living in the high desert deep in the center of Asia.

I was still trying to wrap my mind around the massive relocation of Daniya's entire family just two generations ago, and also trying to figure out how to get me an invitation to her grandma's house for some dolsot bibimbap, when I realized that the conversation was lagging. OK, next question. I knew she'd been in the US in college, so I asked her what she noticed most about living in my home country.

After a lifetime of living in Kyrgyzstan, I thought she might have noticed that you could walk across the street in a well-marked crosswalk without fearing for your life. I thought maybe she would have remarked upon the good-tasting potable water that comes from the tap. I figured she'd be impressed with how safe the drivers on the highway are, mostly sticking to their own lanes, and only rarely creating new ones in order to pass other cars. I thought she might notice the green, since she lived in St Louis, and K-stan was feeling pretty dry and brown to me in late July.

So, imagine my surprise when she pondered for less than 30 seconds before answering, in that quiet, halting English, "I think I noticed the segregation first," she said. She lived in a dorm in St Louis. The first two floors were filled with white people, she said. The floor she lived on with her Russian roommate was nearly all African American. She noticed the neighborhoods in St Louis. The places where white people didn't live. The places where black people did.

She got quiet. I felt like apologizing for the arrogance of the question (or at least of what I expected in her answer) and for the inequity revealed by her honest answer. She wasn't at all accusatory, didn't blame me for having white skin, or suspect me of creating an unfair system. She just reported on the facts as she noticed them as an outsider suddenly living inside our country.

And I say unto you, friends and countrymen-and-women, do we really want to live in a country where people from the outside notice first our racism and our segregation? Aren't we all equally hurt by that perception? Isn't it finally time to be done with it?

Pity, Party of One

I've spent the day painting my back steps, and it's the third day I have been so occupied, and all I have to show for it is back steps fully covered in primer. Primer is to paint what knitting the fist sock is to knitting a pair of socks. You get yourself all worked up, you work for days, and when you finally finish, and you look at the thing, all you can think is, "Great. Now I have to do it all over again." Stupid primer.

The other reason to feel sorry for me is that I had to take the car to the shop today. No, it was nothing serious, but as a former owner of a Swedish car, all of my trips to the shop are accompanied by post traumatic stress disorder.

Also, no matter how fast I watch my Netflix, I can't seem to get more than one a week.

And finally, the real reason to feel sorry for me is that my summer vacation ends today. And see above about how I spent that last day of freedom. Priming. Ugh. Too bad I have to wait for tomorrow for Battlestar Galactica to arrive in the mail.

Some Other Things I Like Better Than You'd Expect

So, in addition to Battlestar Galactica, here are a couple of other things I secretly adore, but don't usually advertise, because of my fear of mockery. Now that I'm almost 35, I've decided it's time to let go of the fear and embrace whoever I am. If I don't love myself, who will?

1. Whole milk and whole milk yogurt. Especially organic milk. I know, I know, I'm supposed to say, "Yuck, it tastes so thick and creamy," but I can't make my lips form those words, because my heart is so filled with love for high-fat dairy products.
   
2. Other people's kids. You know the Christmas letter with pictures of your friends' kids, and how you're supposed to be a little bit annoyed, since you don't have kids and so you don't torture your friends with stories of their accomplishments? Yeah, except my wall is still plastered (in August) with those kids' pictures. I like being the fun adult friend. It's amusing to chase little kids until they scream and invent stupid little games that are just repetitive enough that the kids can play along. It's a blast to introduce kids to Choose-Your-Own Adventure stories, and study how they handle the risk of making plot choices as they grow up. Some of these kids I've known since they were little monkey-babies, and so I especially enjoy them now that they seem so human.
3. The Little Giant. Before I got the Little Giant, I dropped whatever I was doing in order to watch the Little Giant commercials. The Little Giant remains one of the most thoughtful Christmas presents I've ever received. I mean what other ladder can safely rest with two legs on the stairs? I used this feature just today. And I'm not 250 pounds, yet, despite all of the whole milk, but it would be totally safe for me to be on the Little Giant if I were.
4. Veronica Mars. Joss Wedon told me to watch Veronica Mars, and so I did, because he's an artistic genius. I found myself with a series of DVDs not a single person in my peer group had ever seen - or was willing to ever see. OK, fine, it is a high school drama but it's still good TV. Same goes for Buffy, but I always had friends who recognized Buffy's quality.
   
5. Driving stick. Driving at all is passe for environmentalists, but I only just learned how to shift, and it's such a pleasure, please, don't make me hate it. It even turns out that parallel parking with a manual transmission is one of my Special Talents. If I can ever afford a hybrid, I'll have to go back to just steering the thing, which would rob the Earth of my talent. Sigh.

And you? What's your secret delight?

The Darkest Recesses of my Heart

My brother came home early while I was taking care of the nephew yesterday. The kid was napping (Finally, after an hour of sqirking around in the big boy bed, he passed out after a block in the stroller), and I was watching my Netflix DVD in the living room. Well, I jumped right up, turned it off, pulled out the DVD, and stuffed it in my purse as soon as I heard the doorknob turn, but it was too late. He caught me.

"What are you watching? What is that?" Ever the big brother, always able to catch the slightest hint of shame.

"It's, um, it's Battlestar Galactica." Ever the less-than-cool little sister, always apologizing for my nerdiness.

"The TV show?" Disbelief.

"Yeah, well, it's from Netflix. I kind of love it."

And, so, as long as I've already been outed by my favorite older brother, I might as well tell you, faithful readers, Jenn and Jen alike. I love Battlestar Galactica. And no, I am not secretly a man. Women can like Sci Fi, too, you know. Really, really nerdy women, for example.

But, if you want to judge, then at least watch some of it before you do, because if you do you'll see a show in which the humans are driven to participate in suicide bombings, and you'll see main characters argue about the use of the tactic. You'll see secret wartime tribunals meet to condemn accused traitors, and you'll see the danger of the secret tribunal as they almost execute an innocent man. You'll see post-traumatic stress turn Starbuck into a not-so-sympathetic heroine. You'll watch intelligent arguments about genocide and biological warfare. And you'll get to see gratuitous shots of Lee Adama with his shirt off, which just about proves that I'm not the only straight woman watching the show.

So, anyway, I'm not trying to deny my nerdiness. Indeed, I am thankful that it allowed me to watch such an intelligent and pertinent show (gratuitous male torsos aside). I will just say that my name is Alex, and I am a Battlestar Galactica viewer, and I'm proud. Join me. Together we can conquer the final frontier and make Sci Fi safe for women at long last.

Mary Johnson

Our first experience with the previous owner of our house's do-it-yourself tendencies came within two weeks of moving in. At the closing, she said that as a single woman, she always felt safer coming home and parking in her garage if she didn't have to get out of her car to lift the garage door. She bragged that she had installed a garage door opener as a safety measure in her new home. So, one fateful day, coming home late at night, I pushed the button on the much-lauded garage door opener and watched as the garage door was pulled apart by the mechanism that was supposed to lift it. You see, in the old days garage doors were heavy, and they were designed to be lifted from below by the driver of the car. They were not designed to be pulled from above by an automatic opener. It was predictable that the door would fail. Predictable, that is, to everyone except for Mary Johnson.

"Mary Johnson" quickly became a cuss word around our house. When we operated a hole-saw on the door frame of the downstairs apartment door in order to install a deadbolt, and found that it spun helplessly when it hit the folded pages of a magazine that had been used to shim the door in place, we shook our heads and muttered, "Mary Johnson". Then the kitchen sink clogged - because it had been installed to drain uphill - which cost us hundreds of dollars to fix. My sun room painting project turned into an ordeal when I discovered that not only had the wallpaper been painted over, but the bottom 2 feet of the wall had also been plastered on top of the wallpaper. Good one, Mary Johnson. Thanks to you, I had to install wainscoting.

To be fair, the house is nearly 100 years old, so Mary Johnson may not have been the owner for all of the gimcrack do-it-yourself fix-it jobs that have ever been done to it. Life isn't fair, though, so in our minds she always gets the blame. When an outlet sent off sparks in the attic, and I opened it up to find an octopus of wires behind the faceplate, I could only curse poor "Mary Johnson", especially when I discovered that trying to simplify the wiring in that overloaded outlet affected the lights in the living room.

And so this morning, when I had a roofer over to give me an estimate for some leaks, I was quick to point out that the previous owner didn't know jack about flashing. His inspection revealed that not only did poor Mary Johnson know nothing about flashing techniques, her shingling skills were poor, too. I'm shocked. How could a woman who shims with a magazine not know how to shingle a roof? And with all her fix-it skillz didn't she ever hire anyone to do anything around the house?

Home Sweet Divot

I've had my bed for enough years, and enough of those years have featured me sleeping alone in it, that I've managed to wear away a me-shaped divot on one side of the mattress. There's something comforting about that indentation in my bed. It gives me a thrill similar to the one I feel because my space bar and home keys are shiny with wear. I made this. I did it all by myself, and not because I was trying to, but just because I used these things enough times that eventually they yielded to the weight of my body or to the gentle tapping of my right thumb enough times in just that one spot on earth.

How many nights did it take for me to curve the mattress to exactly fit just the way I sleep? How many words did I type so that my soft skin finally wore away the plastic beneath it?

At any rate, it's nice to be home to the one mattress in the world that is shaped this way. It's freeing to have instant access to the Internet any time I want it (although I'm trying not to want it quite so often, since I should be doing dishes or learning Calculus), and, even though I have had to spend the past two days at a conference for math team coaches, it's wonderful to have some measure of control over my own time again. This morning I ran for 40 minutes in the dog park, catching again that sense of rhythm I get from the sound of my feet on the ground and the feeling of air entering my lungs. I was molding the muscles in my legs not by trying to but by using them over and over again, wearing away a path in the dog park with my running shoes at the same time as the dirt whittled away at the tread on their bottoms.

Safe in London, Folks

I just reserved a hotel at Heathrow (so expensive Buddy may have to switch to generic kibbles) and I'm off to explore these Tubes they have here, as soon as I drop off my bags, rinse my pits, and change for the theatre. See you soon in the MN!


After I wrote these words, I took the tube to Leicester Square, bought a half-price ticket and saw "The Thirty-Nine Steps" at the Criterion. Didn't know that you would be able to hear the tube every time it rumbled underneath during the show. Didn't realize it was a comedy. Didn't think it was all that funny, but I might have liked it better if I had just seen the movie. I also thought one of the actors was an annoying ham, but the rest of the audience loved him, so who am I to judge? (Well, most of you know that I secretly think I am a better judge of acting ability than that loud tourist next to me who didn't even change out of his dirty t-shirt and shorts to watch the theater. OK, OK, it's not a secret.)

Even if it wasn't funny, the theater was a great way to keep myself awake until London bedtime. I was alone on the Tube ride home, so I took a picture. After taking over two hundred pictures in two weeks in Kyrgyzstan, suddenly I think I'm too cool to let anyone see me snap photos in London.

I realized as I returned to my hotel room that my definition of having enough space is being able to pee with the door open and walk around after my shower without a towel. No wonder I felt overcrowded for two weeks. And, yes, some parking lot in London got to see me naked if it was looking, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't.

Do You Have the Time?

I don't have a watch. Tom does and it has local and East Coast time, so I have been using his East Coast time and changing it by two hours to figure out what you-all are doing in Minnesota (usually when I'm up you're sleeping). I am embarrassed to admit that it wasn't until yesterday that I figured out a pretty good trick for figuring out the time back home. When I had Tom's watch, I figured out I could take the current time, add two hours and change the AM to PM to get East Coast time. Then, I had to subtract two hours to get Minnesota time. Some of you math-people might already be there. Here's the trick to get Minnesota time: We're twelve hours off. I just change the AM to PM. Duh.

Not-So-Very-Hot Lake

I dreamed last night that while I was babysitting for Cat and Finn, I lost Finn. The worst part was that the Alex in my dream had all of the panic of the real Alex, but none of the competence, and so there was a lot of aimless running around and moments when I would reach for my cell phone and find that instead of packing my phone I had accidentally stolen the TV remote from my apartment in Bishkek. Anyway, I wouldn't allow myself to wake up until Finn was relocated, which happened not due to the incompetent-Al, but due to a call from an anonymous person who wanted to deliver him safely home under cover of darkness without being identified. Dum dum dum.

My first R and R event of the day was a solitary walk to the beach of Issyk-Kyl at 6:00 AM. I planned to go earlier, but I awoke to find that I was locked inside the guest house compound until the cooks woke up to make breakfast. Issyk-Kyl means "hot lake". It got its name not because it's actually hot, but because it never freezes. There is a big difference between hot water and not-frozen water as you know, but I guess "Pretty Damn Cold Lake that Somehow Still Never Freezes" doesn't sound inviting to Russian tourists, so "Hot Lake" it is. At 6 AM, the Russian tourists are sparse but friendly. The greet each other loudly, laugh at the people psyching themselves up for a morning swim, flirt with the little kids toddling on the shore, and stand chatting on the beach while they take in the beauty of the lake surrounded by ice-capped mountains.

I talked a while with a paunchy Russian and a middle-aged Kyrgyz man. We quickly used up all of their English words - and my Russian was exhausted at "good morning" - and so the conversation ended with "American women, beautiful. I love you." Then I jumped in the lake.

I swam again after breakfast, but at that time of day the beach has too many Russians with too much junk in their trunks (and a spare tire up front). Still there is something appealing about a culture in which it's OK to wear a skimpy swimsuit no matter your body type - not visually appealing, mind you, but appealing nonetheless. The Russians all had terrible sunburns. During the hour I sat on the beach, I saw no one apply a drop of sunscreen. I guess their skin cancer can heal during the nine months of winter.

A little before lunchtime, we piled into the van again for a trip to the Kyrgyz version of the Katy Daly - only with a more powerful diesel engine and a deck large enough fpr a table that seats twelve. It was the first relaxing part of the R and R, and we took advantage of it by lounging on the deck and stuffing piles of grilled meat, bread, and salads into our guts. At one point, the capatain stopped the boat, and some of us jumped in the lake again. The water at this depth was startlingly blue and crystal clear. It was a lovely - if cold - third swim of the day.

Now we are all back in Bishkek and I have moved into my new apartment. Dean and Suze left this morning. The trip is winding down. We just have one more day to stroll the city, one more day to work, andthen we fly home. I spend a night in London on the way home, which will be an adventure, but I miss my Buddy and my bed - although not necessarily the smell of Buddy in my bed.

Everybody Forward!

After horseback riding it was difficult to imagine our planned whitewater-rafting trip. I didn't want to be wrong again, but it just had to be a disappointment after the horses.

The trip began with the van pulling off to the side of the road where we had to scurry across the highway, down a ravine, and across some railroad tracks to three lean and muscular Russian-Kyrgyz men in skimpy bathing suits. They ferried us on a raft across the river to their camp, where they outfitted us with wetsuits, life jackets, and helmets. They made what sure sounded like surly comments about us in Russian. Our translator/guide confirmed that they were in "bad moods."

They guided us back to the raft, where six of us got to paddle on our knees with straps holding us in place. The rest of the crew straddled an inflatable bench in the middle of the raft and held onto straps. Four strong guides joined us as paddlers at each of the corners. The lead guide said, "You: left side" - pointing at my side - "You: right side" - pointing across the raft. "I say: left side forward, right side back paddle. I say: right side forward, left side back paddle. I say: Everybody forward. I say stop, you stop. Pay attention. Dangerous place. OK?" - slight pause, and then, "Right side forward, left side back paddle." We did as he said and the boat turned towards the current. "Everybody forward!" We were in the whitewater within seconds. "Stop!", and the four guides took over steering us around rocks and safely through the rough water. I was drenched immediately from the splashing waves.

Before 20 minutes had passed, the guides steered us to shore so they could reinflate the boat. Then they huddled together with the lead guide giving instructions (or so it seemed to the non-Russian speaker), and then they all laced their arms over each others shoulders and bowed their heads for what appeared to be one last prayer for safety. Nice effect, because we listened a little more carefully when we were allowed back on the raft and the lead guide pointed ahead with his paddle and said, "This very dangerous place. Pay attention. Everybody forward!" We followed his instructions and we were rewarded with a nosedive down the next set of rapids. When my paddle reached out only to find air, I reached a little bit further, because all I knew was that if I wanted to survive, I had to obey that calm, certain, and heavily-accented voice over my right shoulder. He knew where every hidden boulder lay, and if we listened to him he was going to navigate us safely past them and down the river - no matter how crabby he was.

We had two hours of near-constant rapids. It was two hours with a little bit of terror, but mostly great fun. I wanted it to last longer, but my knees shook like jello when I finally unstrapped them from the boat, so it was probably a good thing that we were finished and ready for another nap in the van and a drive to the lake.

Finding My Sociable Self

I thought about staying behind in Bishkek while the crew went on holiday. I was having fantasies about empty apartments, privacy, and unscheduled time. Then I spoke firmly to myself. "Al," said I, "You are being a hermit. Get over yourself. You might actually enjoy yourself if you do." Thank goodness I listened, because I was right.

The first stop of our vacation-within-a-vacation was horseback riding. I was expecting lazy nags plodding through a well-worn trail through a forest. I was expecting to be afraid nevertheless, and I was expecting to be thrown from my nag and wind up trampled and dead on the ground. I was wrong.

The drive to the stable should have convinced me of how rugged the trail was going to be. We traveled across narrow dirt roads up into the mountains. At one point, our van, laden with thirteen people and their gear lurched across a bridge made of logs. The logs rolled under our wheels as we passed. The driver just laughed when we gasped. "We do this all the time," said our English-speaking guide, and I tried not to imagine all of those previous trips weakening the structure of the bridge.

I climbed up on my horse apprehensively, and received instructions. "Chu" means go, and "Prrrr" means stop. I barely had time to hope that my horse would be understanding that my American tongue just doesn't roll its R's. And then, within five minutes, we were climbing mountainous trails and viewing breathtaking scenery. I clung to my saddle with my arms and legs as we descended into valleys, and I relaxed my grip ever so sligtly when we headed up the hills again. It was two of the most thrilling hours of my trip so far - the view so gorgeous and the transportation so exciting that the time passed quickly. It wasn't until we reached the shephard's hut where we were to sleep, that I realized how hungry I was. My hunger had been anticipated and a giant feast lay before us when we entered the hut. We ate with gusto, appreciation, and good humor.

And so it was that I found my sociable self inside of an isolated hut in the middle of the remote mountains of Kyrgyzstan.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?

The last day of floors is complete!

On Monday we move on to ceilings. We had a traditional Kyrgyz meal at a restaurant with Kamile as our translator. I complained to Jim about feeling overcrowded in the Penthouse. After our R and R trip to the Lake, I will move into the apartment that Jim and Suze and Dean share. Suze and Dean leave on Sunday morning because their flight got rescheduled, and I will have my own personal space for the last two days and three nights of the trip. A room of one's own, as it were.

Donning the Rose-Colored Glasses

I've gone from living alone with my Buddy to living in a 2-bedroom one-bath apartment with three other people, and taking all of my meals with nine other people, and I can be flexible and roll with the punches as well as anyone, but I sure do miss my alone-time these days. Seven days of togetherness appears to be just about my limit. Suze tried to tell me to take an antibiotic yesterday, and I gave her that sneer of dismissal patented by my family, which I instantly regretted. Lindsay asked me why I was so quiet at dinner and I snapped, "Because I'm an introvert and being with all of these people all of the time drains my energy." She didn't talk to me again all through dinner. Way to go, Al. Making friends and influencing people halfway around the world just like you do at home. Sweet.

Yesterday we worked on the floor some more. Because the lumber is so bad, we had trouble making the floorboards fit. Every board has to be flipped and rotated to see what the best fit is, and then it has to be wedged into place to eliminate the gaps before it's nailed in place. Our team got a rhythm going by the end of the day (and included Lindsay who forgave me for being such a downer at dinner), but we still weren't able to finish the job by the end of the day.

We spend our down-time on the job exchanging language lessons with our Kyrgyz co-workers. We can how say "Malatok" which means hammer, and they can say "crowbar" with a delightful roll of the first "R". All of us accompany our new foreign language skills with self-conscious laughter.

On Thursday, we leave for a little R and R at Lake Issyk-Kyl. I will post when I return. I just hope I don't throttle anyone during our little vacation - at least part of which will include all ten of us sleeping in the same room. If you are at home in Minnesota and reading this, shoot me a comment or an email while I'm gone so I can remember that I'm still lovable even if I am sometimes a bit prickly.

In Which The Team Searches for Ice Cream, but I Don't Write About It Because I Don't Want to Sound Crabby

The volunteer coordinator made us all nametags to wear on the jobsite. They're written in Cyrillic letters because they are for the Kyrgyz workers and homeowners. We had a new translator today, and because I am constantly practicing my reading (which is slow like a small child's), I sounded out her name. She caught me staring, so I said, "Is your name Snora?" and she laughed. "This is in English," she said. "My name is Chopa." Then, she threw me a bone. "But you'd be right if it were in Russian." See what problems are caused when they pervert our letters?

We started nailing in the floorboards today - the first semi-skilled labor of the trip. Men kept taking my hammer and my skill saw out of my hands - the universal language of sexism is fluently spoken here. There is a bit of a shortage of hammers. The good news is that I was allowed to continue hammering after they saw me pound in a few nails. The bad news is that the Kyrgyz kid who took my skill saw is less than 20 and used it with no eye protection. Maybe his imagination isn't good enough for him to picture a splinter sticking through his eyeball, but mine is.

Dinner was a long and tedious process, followed by a slightly embarrassing trip to icecream, which is not on the BRAT diet and, therefore, made me crabby since I wanted to go home, but we won't talk about that...

Get Your Own Damn Letters, Comrade!

I'm learning to read the Russian script. It's not that hard, since it's phonetic and it's not like I have to memorize thousands of Kanji. I hate not being able to read, and the tourist maps are all written in our letters while what few street signs there are are in Cyrillic, so the only way to get un-lost if you can't sound out the signs is by asking a loal, and I've found quite a few locals who don't know what the streets are called, either. And so, in short, I'm becoming literate.

I still remember the day in Sri Lanka that I finally sounded out the words "Seat Covers" on an advertizement we passed every day in our van. It was a thrill. The comparable thrill came today when without consulting a map, I read that we were on "Pavlov" street.

I do have a beef with the Ruskies, however. I don't mind if they borrow some of our letters. It makes it easier for me to memorize them, actually. But if they want to use our letters they should have to use the sound, too. Instead, they're all: "Oh, I like your P. It's really pretty. Let's make it sound like an R." and "Ooo, that B is so curvey and bubbly, it sure would make a nice V. Oh, and let's make it sound like an F at the end of a word, too, OK?" Bunch of pinko Commies, if you ask me. We have an R and a V and an F. Why don't you just take those?

Anyway, the gang (except for Rice Girl) shopped for picnic food at the Osh Market, and then we drove an hour to a park up in the mountains to eat it. Unfortunately, it started to rain as soon as we unpacked the food, so we sheltered under some trees until it was safe to walk back to the van, where Suze led us in a meditation which I tried to follow, despite my inherant skeptism, until I heard Tom, who is nearly deaf, whisper loudly to Denise: "Now, what are we waiting for?" He couldn't hear a word of the tranquil meditation. I decided to have my own meditation watching the rain drops on the van window merge and drip down the glass. It's difficult for me to suspend my disbelief during a group mediation in the best of circumstances.

Then we visited a tourist yurt in the middle of a monument to Manas. There was instense wind blowing against us all the way to the yurt, and when we got inside we discovered that the yurt had been damaged by the wind. Somehow I think that an actual, non-tourist yurt can withstand a wind storm. In the yurt, the crew played dress-up with the costumes available (put there for that purpose?), while I tried not to think about my intestines and took pictures.

I'm still on the BRAT diet this morning, because I had pizza for dinner, and it didn't sit well, but I've broken down and taken an immodium, so I can work today. There was a BBC special on our apartment TV this morning about Cordova. I'm already planning my next adventure. Now I need some Spanish lessons to go with my Cyrillic ones.

In Which I Try to Remember what BRAT Stands For

Our second work day was much like the first, but with more heat and less water. The water delivery to our job site failed to arrive twice and so it got to be 11:00 and we were working hard in the hot sun, and the water still hadn't come. You want to see some crabby Americans? Deny them potable water. Our apartment was also short on water this morning, so my personal water bottle was already empty when we arrived. Sadness. Thirst. I volunteered to work inside to keep away from the blazing sun, and so I wrapped wires around nails and dug holes and stayed away from the concrete.

The water eventually arrived, but the afternoon just kept getting hotter. Paulina experienced some sort of heat exhaustion and had to lie in the shade and still we worked (although I did keep her company in the shade for a bit longer than strictly necessary).

All of it made me feel old and tired, and so when the young women and Denise went out for cocktails after dinner, I opted to stay home and sleep instead. My sleep was hard and sound, but interrupted by frequent, urgent trips to the bathroom. We have a tourism day planned next. This could be the day I discover the joys of the BRAT diet.


P.S. Don't worry, Mom. I haven't written the next post, yet, but I will spoil the ending and tell you that I found some rice at the market and ate bananas and apples and rice all day. My intenstines have straightened themselves out. I mean, they are still wrapped up inside me as they should be, but they are no longer reminding me of that fact every 20 minutes.

The Work Begins

The house is even less finished than I imagined. They build with concrete here, not wood, and in its current state the house looks like it has been carved out of dirt. It is house-shaped, but otherwise feels like a cave.

We had three teams again with three different jobs. Denise, Elyse, Tom, and Paulina stood outside in the blazing heat and mixed concrete. They hauled dirt in a tool I have named the "barrow" because it's a wheel-barrow with a second set of handles in place of the wheel. They dumped the dirt into big troughs along with cement powder, added water, and then stirred the trough with shovels and hoes. It's grueling manual labor, and it's hot, since the temperature reached at least 90 degrees, and the troughs are in the sun during the worst heat of the day.

Suze, Jim, and Homa were the wall crew. They drove nails into the rough concrete walls and then tied wire to the nails in a diamond pattern. They were preparing the walls for the layer of smooth plaster that will make the house more home-y and less cave-y. Unfortunately, they had to reuse nails from another project, and so part of the job included trying to hammer out the bends in old nails. It was frustrating work, and Suze looked positively bitter by the end of the day,despite looking OK with life in this photo.


Who knew the hole-digging crew would have the most satisfying job? My team dug holes into the hard-packed dirt floors in one room. We had to dig 40 holes which were to be 30 cm by 30 cm by 30 com, and about 100 cm apart. Lindsey, Dean, and I worked with some silent Kyrgyz family members. In addition to trying to dig through hard, dry baked earth, we also got to watch the progress of lunch outside our window. The mother in the family cooked a giant wok full of "plov" for us over an open fire.

It was a more manual labor filled day than I expected, but we got to watch our progress, first in adding to the number of holes and then in filling them up again with concrete for the footings. And we got to eat plov under grape vines with views of mountains peeking through the leaves. What could be better?

In Which We Meet the Team

Why do I have to be Judy's daughter? I love my mother, and I feel lucky to have inherited every trait I could from her, except for one: I keep waking up ridiculously early. You could blame jet lag. You could easily blame the trains which are less than a block away, or the barking dogs in our neighborhood, or even the ticking clock on the wall. However, as the daughter of a woman who rises every morning at ever more ridiculous hours, I know that the real culprit is genetics. Or possibly nurture, since she also used to stand and watch me sleep in the morning, until those I'm-being-watched senses started tingling and I opened one eye - to which she would respond "Oh, Al, I knew you'd be up," which such enthusiasm that I was forced to join her for some pre-dawn mother-daughter time. Anyway, with no mother here to keep me company, the pre-dawn has become my writing time.

The rest of our group arrived yesterday, and we all met for the first time (finally!) for a team meeting at noon. We learned that we will be finishing a house for a family. I'm not sure what this means, but I did meet an American woman on the plane whose daughter bought a house in Bishkek and then had to finish all the details on it herself. I'm not talking details like shower curtains and grout. I'm talking installing bathtubs and light fixtures, putting up drywall and mud. So it might be something like that, which sounds a little more high-skilled than is ideal for volunteers, but we'll see.

We then went out for a big lunch under a tent at a restaurant with the authentic Kygyz name of "Edgar's". I had a pizza, with sour cream and mushrooms, in an attempt to choose toppings that the locals might eat, but it arrived swimming in grease, which was a bit much even for me, and I like my fat.

After lunch we went on a shopping spree for breakfast food. It was all paid for by Habitat (or, more accurately, by us, but a long time ago when we paid our trip fees), and our only instructions were to "be reasonable". It was like some kind of reality TV show. We divided into three teams and descended upon the grocery store.


Our team - "Team Penthouse" - consists of Tom, Paulina, Denise and me. It is the most age-diverse team, ranging in age from 20 to 70-something. We also each have our own breakfast needs, but we're all pretty aggressive and not at all jet-lagged having been here for two days, and so we managed to do pretty well for ourselves, operating like a well-oiled machine, and finding sweet and savory breakfast options. Denise even side-lined as the group organizer for staples like coffee, sugar, and water for all the teams.

The "Seasoned Travelers Team" consists of Jim, our team leader, and Dean and Suze, a married couple from New York. Jim had few needs, mainly yogurt and bread, but he had to man the cart for the whole group. Dean and Suze shopped well together because they already knew each other's tastes, but they wasted precious time looking for soy milk (soy milk?!).

Meanwhile, "Team Jet Lag", with three women in their twenties weighed themselves down early with a giant watermelon. Homa and Lindsey went to Bowdoin together and graduated the same year, and then coincidentally both signed up for the same random trip to Kyrgyzstan. Lindsey also spent nine hours in the Moscow airport with Elyse before the 8 hour flight here which arrived at 5:00 in the morning. Despite their jet-lag this group of acquaintances manged to leave the store with a full bag of groceries - and one giant watermelon.

By the time we packed up all of the loot, it was nearly time for dinner even though none of use was really hungry after that big lunch. Still, we piled into the van and made our way to one of the fanciest restaurants in Bishkek for a welcome banquet. We were greeted with a three course meal, and giant platters of food, including, yes, some plates of grilled meat. Mmm, meat. We also got to meet the local Habitat bigwigs, who were very kind and grateful to our team.

And then, because I am Judy's daughter, and it was nearly 9:00, I fell asleep before I could even finish one chapter of my book.

In Which We Move Up to the Penthouse

In the middle of the night, our doorbell rang. And rang. And rang some more. By "the middle of the night" I mean at least 11:00 and we were still awake and chatting, but still. We both got very quiet and waited for the intruder to go away. Neither of us made a move to answer the door. I decided it was probably someone who was expecting the landlord or another renter to be staying in our room, and I went to sleep after the ringing finally stopped. Still, the visitor was very persistent, and didn't give up easily, so I understood when Paulina informed me the next morning that she hadn't been able to fall asleep for hours afterwards. I suggested that we pack up our things and move to the other apartment. They had extra beds, anyway, and we didn't like being isolated, so really it was perfect.

In the other apartment, we meet a new cast of characters. Tom is a retired cosmetics marketer who now works as the EMT for his town in Connecticut. He gets to use the siren. He's in his mid-70s and has legs to rival Jimmy's new muscular ones. He also has nearly no hearing in the upper registers.

Denise is a competitive swimmer from California on a sabbatical from her real job to do this sort of thing. I'm not sure what the real job is. She claims to want to be a competitor on Survivor. I can't tell whether she's joking.

We now live together in the 9th floor penthouse, which has slightly nicer Soviet-era details than that last place, including some really outstanding light fixtures. These will be our digs for the next two weeks. The best part is that Tom likes to get up early and make coffee - although not quite as early as I do. As a I wrote these words, I was the only one up, and I was writing by the light of my headlamp. The worst part is the ticking clock in my bedroom/the living room. I decided that the clock will hereafter sleep in the bathroom.

In Which We Travel from Food Emergency to Food Emergency

After a morning of much sitting around and studying maps, we ventured out of the apartment and onto the streets of Bishkek at nearly 11:00. We exchanged money at a little place down the street and both got ripped off. Paulina lost more than I did. New vow: Be more careful, especially around money-changers.

I had a whole route planned and Bishkek has mountains to the South, so it was going to be feasible even with my wretched sense of direction, except of course it was cloudy by the time we made it out, so the mountain compass didn't work. Besides, our apartment wasn't exactly where I thought it was, so the route quickly went out the window. Still, it's always exciting to walk around a new city, and I was even more excited to discover that the city is a calm one without people on the street approaching you to buy buy buy or men yelling "Hello, American, where are you going?". In fact, we were mostly ignored despite being two attractive blond women and a little bit lost. A good sign.

The drivers here suck, however, so crossing the street is always an adventure. They anticipate when their light will change to gren and are already well across the street when it happens. The safest way to cross is with a local, or at the beginning of a light cycle - wait too long and they'll run you down, even if your light is still technically green.

So we walked and we walked, and I soon realized that my urgent need for food would never be matched by Paulina's. She was nervous to stop at a restaurant because we couldn't read the menus. She wanted a grocery store instead. We actually found two likely candidates, but both of them, even though they looked like grocery stores from the outside, actually turned out to be full of individual booths, mostly of people selling cell phones. Can that many cell phone vendors be profitable? Do they understand about supply and demand? Finally, well after I had reached the medical emergency stage in my food panic, we found a window on the street that said "Fast Food" and had pictures of hamburgers and pizza. I pointed to the hamburger, and the woman at the counter said, "All we have is cheeseburgers and hot dogs." I said "Cheeseburger" with the last of my strength and was rewarded with possibly the most delicious cheeseburger I have ever eaten. Ah, protein after a long walk through the heat.

Our next adventure (after long jet-lag naps) was to find the other apartment with two of our other team members in it. We talked to Tom on the phone and he said, "Is your apartment next to a beat up old playground?" We confirmed that it was, so he said, "OK, then we're in the same complex, just go to our building and come up to the 9th floor." He gave us the address, and we set out, walking up dillapidated cement staircases in our complex and failing to find the apartment he described. Finally with the address written carefully on a piece of paper, I began to approach the young mothers on the beat-up old playground. One of them was so helpful that she even called her own mother on her cell phone and directed us two blocks down the street. One the way, we passed three more beat-up old playgrounds, a street name in Russian script, and no house numbers at all. I had to ask 3 more young mothers (and Paulina had to use her Polish to understand their Russian) before we finally found the building. Addresses are not a big thing here, apparently. You just have to know your building by sight. Also, beat-up old playgrounds make terrible landmarks in this city.

This second adventure also ended with food, because even though Paulina still wasn't hungry, I was, and so Denise (one of the other group members) took us out to dinner at a German restaurant with pictures on the menu. I had more beef and the second food panic of the day was finally subdued.

In Which We Find Our Room

We were met at the airport by a man carrying a sign that said "Habitat" in carefully stenciled letters. The flight arrived at 3:30 am, even though it was scheduled to arrive at 2:30, so the man had not only interrupted his sleep to meet us, but had probably also waited an hour and half for us to make it through customs and baggage claim (where my luggage did, in fact, arrive with everyone else's). Still his expression was calm and kind as he guided us to his car. He used what may be his only English sentence ("My name is Ruslan") before we got to the car, and so we drove into the city in near silence. He handed us a note which read: "You address: Sovietskaya Street, Building 101, apartment 56". It was too hard to communicate that we already had a hotel room reserved elsewhere, and so we allowed ourselves to be whisked away to a strange apartment.

We stopped along the way at an all-night supermarket, where our friend in one-word English sentences (Juice? Water? Yogurt?) helped us shop for provisions for the night and payed for our purchases waving his wallet full of local currency when we offered to pay with a credit card. Unfortunately for Paulina, I had reached the stage in my jet lag at which decision making had become impossible. All I knew that I wanted was water, and that was only because my thirst was pressing and immediate. With no help from me, she also secured us some bread and cheese.

The apartment is in a complex of buildings with a mural of "Lolita" painted seductively on the side. He took us into a back alley and into an open outside door which lead to one of those rickety and tiny European elevators - the kind you never expect to make it to your destination - and up to apartment 56. Apartment 56 is very Soviet Block. It's the kind of place you can easily imagine coming home to after spending a day waiting in line for toilet paper. Paulina said, "Oh, this looks very Polish," and I agreed, having once spent a night in a Soviet-era Polish apartment in Krakow. The furniture could be from the 1960s or 1970s, used for decades and kept clean and tidy. Nothing is beautiful or extranious. No frivolity.

Still it felt good to be somewhere, and so we gratefully said goodbye to our friend, brushed our teeth, changed into pajamas and put ourselves to bed (or couch as the case may be) just as the first morning light started to appear on the horizon.

In Which My Flight is Delayed

My Polish travel-companion and I don't know one another. We just happened to be on the same flight from London to Bishkek, connected with each other by email, and agreed to meet in the London airport before renting a room together in Bishkek. She's part of the Habitat for Humanity group, 20 years old, blonde, and living in Paris as an au pair over the summer. In her last email, she said that she would wear a pink scarf on her wrist so that I would recognize her. I've been on enough blind dates that I wasn't really worried, but I agreed to tie some yellow yarn to my bag so she could find me as well.

My itinerary gave me 3 hours layover in London, which is good because the ticket agent in Minneapolis couldn't give me a boarding pass for the last leg of my trip. "Don't worry," she said. "You'll have plenty of time to figure it out in London." Famous last words, which may or may not have jinxed my flight from Chicago, causing a delay of over two hours in take off, which is how I found myself running through Heathrow, following the maze of walkways and ground transport to Terminal One and a long line at the transfer desk, me at the end of it, and the digital clock in front of me ticking down the minutes to my 1:00 departure. The ticket agents felt no urgency. At one point all but one of them walked away from their computers (Break time? Now?!). The clock said 12:56 when my patience gave out, and I asked the two people in front of me if they might let me go ahead of them. They did, and so I was close to the front of my endless line, when the boarding call for my flight came on ("Passengers to Bishkek, please, report to gate 38 for immediate departure.") Finally a desk agent took my ticket. Finally she (ever so slowly) picked up a phone to hold my flight. Finally she told me to run to gate 38. "But your bags might not be on the flight," she said to my departing back. Cheerio, then.

And so I met Paulina while I was drenched in sweat, seeing her bright pink scarf moments before she warmly embraced me. She was as relieved as I was that we wouldn't be traveling this last, most frightening leg of the journey alone after all. I don't think there's another flight from London to Bishkek for two days. Phew.

After all of that running and panic and worry, I am now (as I write this, not as I type it) back in the calm of an airplane seat, sitting for another 8 hours (on top of the 8 and a half I've already been in the air). It's a good thing I'm practiced in the fine art of sleeping on a plane. I've also already finished my first trashy novel of the trip. Take that, Youngster.

Wii Hangover

Family and friends gathered for a goodbye barbecue at Jimmy and Judy's house last night. There was swimming and a new game called noodle-balance-toypedo-catch, or noodle-toypedo for short. You have to balance on the noodle, standing in the deep end, while you and your friend(s) shoot the toypedo over to each other. If you fail to catch it, you have to surface-dive with the noodle between your legs to retrieve it. Good fun, and not overly strenuous, which makes it a successful Saturday afternoon pool game.

After dinner, I walked around the block with my mom, Buddy, and the one with all the N's and her children. How to make a walk around the block turn into an hour long adventure: bring two-year-olds. Finn dragged a car around the block. Cat climbed up every neighbors' steps and walked down the ramp when she wasn't busy trying to "get me". Eventually, Finn helped her out by yelling, "Here's another one, Ayah," as we approached a set of steps. Their play is evolving out of the parallel stage and into interactive play. He even let her pretend to wash the car. Fun to watch, especially if you're not in any kind of a hurry.

I was in a kind of hurry though, because there was a Wii party going on, and you know how I feel about the Wii. Well, my love for the Wii doesn't quite seem to extend to Mario Brawl, which I don't understand at all. Too many bright colors and moving pictures for me to keep track of my guy (who turns out to be kind of a crappy fighter - except when I accidentally set it up for the computer to control him). Tennis and golf are still where it's at. Somehow, when we're Wii-ing, it's possible to get so wrapped up in the game that it gets to be 1:00 in the morning, and we're still on the 7th hole and not about to quit without finishing.

And, so, this morning, when my body got me up at 7:00 as usual, my brain stayed in bed. Sure, I ran through the dog park with the dog (who now smells of mango-fish, because of his inability to resist the lure of a roll through a rotting fish carcass, and my mango flavored dog shampoo.) But I'm all disjointed and unable to focus. It took me three tries to finally call the newspaper and get it to stop while I'm gone. This is the Wii-hangover. If I lived in the same house as the machine, I'm sure I'd be having a little hair of the dog that bit me right now, because I could really use some practice on my putting, and I'd like to have a Wii age of less than 50.

No. Al. Must. Focus. Leaving the country in six hours.

Independence Day

The neighborhood smells like gunpowder. Explosions surround us, small pops and larger ones, and shrieking spinning shouts. When my neighbors aren't throwing meat in the boulevard, I guess they are shopping for explosives and blowing shit up. Buddy hates the 4th of July. Not only does he have to live in some kind of war zone, but I leave him alone for the loudest part, because I just can't keep myself away from the party in Powderhorn just to comfort the dog. He didn't even eat his rawhide while I was away. Too scared. Also, he had let himself into the kitchen and the rawhide was in the living room. Why he was in the kitchen, I don't know, since it's Against the Rules and there was nothing there for him but dirty dishes anyway. The "how" he was in the kitchen has been solved. He jumps my 4 foot tall baby gate. I watched him do it when I returned from the fireworks, graceful in his disobedience. We'll see what kind of trouble he discovers when the baby gate is replaced with a real door. He'll probably take the opportunity to teach himself doorknob technology, and then I'll be sorry.

So, I am not quite packed for my trip. I leave on Sunday. The house is a wreck (dirty dishes rinsed in dog slobber all over the kitchen), and I have no idea what to expect when I get off that plane. This is the least prepared I have ever been for an overseas trip. I'm on my way to bed, so I can finish the packing and cleaning in the morning, before I spend my two hours in the library - and maybe pick up a travel guide that's actually helpful while I'm at it.

What am I doing? I'm going to be in Central Asia in three days, and I don't even know what that means. I guess this is what adventure feels like.

Baby Mama

Also, I saw Baby Mama yesterday, and hard as I try to be hip (oh, I do, too, try), I just can't say "baby mama". I can try "baby's mama", but that's as far as I can take it. It just doesn't feel like English to this middle-class white girl. I can understand it, though, so if you want to say it, then, by all means, feel free.

Oh, and, if you run into anyone who was at the Riverview last night, I wasn't crying. I got some brewer's yeast in my eye, is all. Sheesh. I'm like a rock. I dare you to make me cry at a movie.

No fair bringing in Corinna, Corinna though. That's just epically sad.

What's New is New Again

I've been working at the same school for five years. It's 17 miles away from my house. I guess some people are OK with a 34 mile round-trip commute. A lot of people would have moved closer, maybe to the suburban wasteland where my school is located. Unfortunately, I'm the kind of person who would type something like "suburban wasteland", so moving closer was never an option for me. I'm also the type of person who felt guilty every time she filled up her car with gas. "Damn it," this type of person thinks, "I'm killing the world, and I'm using up gas, and we don't have that many days left of there being oil in the world, besides which I might as well just be the person dropping bombs in Iraq if I'm going to be using all of this gas." As you might imagine, this type of person doesn't really spend a lot of time enjoying the scenery through her windshield.

I even started hyper-miling, which mostly means that I accelerate as if I don't want to crush the eggs under my gas pedal, and I coast to red lights, hoping they'll turn green before I stop so I don't have to burn energy starting up from a dead stop. Even with the hyper-miling and the 30-mile-per-gallon car, I still had to fill up every week, and the guilt was making me crazy.

On the other hand, it was good for me to work at the same place for more than a year. This is a first for me, you know. Al (good, solid, reliable Al) never worked the same job for more than a year until she found this suburban school. She flitted back and forth between computer science and community work and preschool teaching. She never experienced turn-over as the one staying behind before this job. Always the one leaving, never the one staying. So, yes, it was good for me to see a place change around me, good for me to take on more responsibility as I learned how the place worked. Really good for me to learn the seasonal rhythm of a place.

I ran into a student in the hallway whom I taught this year and also when she was a freshman. She's a super-senior now, so she's been at the suburban school for nearly as long as I have. She handed me a letter thanking me for putting up with her as a freshman (She was pretty challenging back then, but always bright and filled with personality) and thanking me for believing in her until she finally graduated this year. I was glad to have been there long enough to see her come around. If I had known only the freshman, I would have held onto my nagging worry about her, but since I stuck around, I got to see a glimpse of what the grown-up version of her would be like, and she's going to be OK.

Anyway, I was hired at a new job today. A different school, 10 miles away from my house. You have no idea how good it feels to drive 10 miles when your body is used to 17. It feels good to take an exit that used be about half-way to school and know that I can park my conscience 7 miles earlier than I used to. It also feels good to come into a place knowing that I'm competent and that I will find my niche. I have a new place to learn. I can't wait to start.

Also, I have to learn Calculus. Calculus? Yikes. There goes the summer.

Why Crushes are Better than Dates

Crushes never live with their baby's mama (even though they both date other people now). They don't have disturbing relationships with her that involve threatening to take the baby away or calling the cops on each other.

Crushes will be easy to talk to once you get over that stuttering. You'll have so much in common you won't be able to shut up.

Crushes will shave and wear a nice shirt for your date.

So, anyway, that's why my dating moratorium until August is still in effect. And P.S. I'm in the market for a new crush.

Remember Your First Time?

I walked into my fourth hour computer science class towards the end of the year. Granted, a fourth hour computer science class never seems to lend itself to particular diligence and intellectualism, and, yes, it does get worse as the year draws to a close and the weather outside gets nice. Remember, after all, that the computer science classroom houses an unusual number of ninth grade boys. Still, on this particular day, my special trio of yahoos (and I say that with all of the affection in the world), seemed more-than-ordinarily rambunctious. One of them was practically falling out of his chair laughing.

I wasn't in the best of moods. I don't remember why, but it probably had to do with suppressed guilt at procrastinating on grading their web projects. Anyway, before I could snap at the boys to pull themselves together, I flashed back to my own ninth grade year and German class. A kid whose name I've long since forgotten, but whose gawky silliness I still can recall, smiled in the front row, and Herr Larson snapped. He yelled at him for a good minute. "Wipe that ridiculous grin off of your face. You look like a fool." Don't worry. The kid played trumpet in marching band. I'm sure he recovered with self-esteem intact. I, on the other hand, was afraid to smile for the rest of the year. The memory of Herr Larson's red, angry face did its usual trick and I swallowed my impatience with the yahoos' shenanigans. Instead of yelling, I just raised an eyebrow at them, so they'd know I was watching them.

Yahoo#1 (falling apart laughing, barely able to speak): "Sorry. It's just-"

Yahoo #2 (seeing that his friend was unable to continue): "He's not being rude. It's just his first time eating Pop Rocks."

OK. Glad I didn't yell then. Made it easier to laugh at - er, with - the poor kid for nearly choking on the surprising explosions going on inside his mouth.

School's Out

Way back when I started this blog, it was because I was traveling to Hungary with Habitat for Humanity. I gave myself the trip as a reward for finishing the school year without having a complete nervous breakdown. This was the a place to write down stories from my trip.

Hungary was a reasonable place to go. Most people didn't ask me where it was. They sometimes thought I was going to Turkey, but they accepted that Hungary was a separate country, and they understood that it was in Europe somewhere. On the other hand, almost no one knows where Kyrgyzstan is, and no one can spell it. Still that's where I'm going this year. I leave in less than a month. I just wish I knew something about it - other than that they like to drink fermented mares' milk and sleep in yurts. I guess someone needs a guidebook, now that she doesn't need to haul around all of those teacher's manuals any more...

Ceremony

I spent the weekend coming up with awards. Little things I've noticed about our students, not all of them academic, not all of them all that great, but all of them phrased in as positive a way as I could. I enlisted the help of the other teachers for the ones I couldn't invent myself. Finally I got them all together, typed them into the computer. Youngster put them on fancy paper and made them look official.

We pulled the kids into a circle. Forty-four faces awaited their awards, some of them we've known all year, an unfortunate rarity in our school, which is on a block schedule so most classes only last a semester. I even typed up awards for the teachers, so everyone was included.

We announced the awards. Kids get excited for this kind of thing, even though they are supposed to be too old to be thrilled by a little piece of paper. It's the details they like. The somebody-noticed-me-in-this-great-big-school effect. Kids we never see smile, smiled when they heard their description tied to their name. Heck, the grown-up para got excited when she got hers.

So it was nice. It was perfect, up until it was all over, and some of the kids said, "Hey, what about XXX", the quietest kid in the room. The kid who likes to answer questions with as non-commital a grunt as he can. He didn't have an award. On the spot, I couldn't do it. My well had run dry. I could think of nothing to say. I didn't have one for him. Either his name got skipped or the award got lost, but the quietest, most invisible, kid got nothing on the day that was supposed to be about noticing every single one of them. Damn.

I thought this thing was going to get me into teacher heaven, but it turns out I'm going to Hell after all.

Someone is Wrong on the Internet

Duty calls so I must point out that a mistake has been made. Despite the best efforts of the editors of this here Internet, a bit of hate speech leaked onto the Web. I'm sure it won't happen again.

The object of this hate is...well...it's me.

"There is nothing more pathetic and… alien… than a pre-menopausal aging childless woman throwing herself headlong into the chaotic vagaries of dating. When a woman doesn’t have children to nurture and raise by her early 30s she morphs rapidly into a sad and tragic creature — a shell entity of raging cynicism that can do no more than go through the motions — that no one wants to be around. Whatever is left of her innate femininity, beauty and sexiness is destroyed to dust by that point."

Sometimes I think that men feel this way, as I walk down the street and smile at a moderately attractive man, and he responds with an off-putting scowl. I think, "He thinks you're a sad, pathetic pre-menopausal woman on the prowl for sperm, and he doesn't want to encourage you with a smile," and then I think, "Oh, Al, you are being melodramatic again. We're in Minnesota. People just don't smile here."

Of course, it could be worse. I could be dating one of them.

The List

It seems unlikely that we were inspired by that Bucket List movie. (Aside: I don't know what the big hairy deal about Jack Nicholson is. Doesn't he always just play himself?) But at about the time it came out, Rachael, Fern, and I began to keep a list of New Things We Want to Try.

Fern started it with a suggestion that we take a spinning class, which brought us to a likable new fitness studio in town with the worst website of all time. Seriously. Don't click that link. And if you do click it, turn off your speakers. I told you it was the worst website of all time. Of course it has music.

Now, I've come a long way in my understanding of the words "spinning class". The problem I had when I realized it was an exercise class (and had nothing to do with wool) is that I heard about it at about the same time everyone was talking about the new form of exercise that uses bump-and-grind stripper moves and a pole. I put the two together and for a long time I thought that "spinning class" meant "pole-dancing exercise class". I was armed with my new-found knowledge that it was really just a stationary bike class when Fern suggested we try it, and so I agreed, because at least it wasn't some sexy dancing thing.

It was on the trip to the fitness studio that Fern and I learned that behind Rachael's placid and friendly exterior, she hides a deep inner core of curmudgeonliness. She only reluctantly agreed to go to the spin class with us, and she maintained throughout that she wasn't going to like it. Up until the class was over, she was the one who kept saying things like, "OK, I'll go, but I'm not going to like spinning." or "Are we really going to go to this spinning thing?" (Spoken with a hopeful lilt to the voice, as if she hoped the answer was no.) The class kicked my ass so badly that I rivaled the sweat production of the overweight man on the bike next to mine. Fern didn't like looking like she was working in front of other people. Surprisingly, Rachael the Reluctant took the ass-kicking as a personal challenge and signed up for more. She has become a regular at the spinning studio, and she has taken all of her aggressive curmudgeonly comments about spinning and turned them towards the studio's website (which deserves every last gripe and which she has to check often because the likable studio doesn't print paper schedules).

And, now, we have all three become a reluctant crew of try-new-thingers. The three of us, introverted, and inclined to stay home because it's easier, slightly cranky about the things we haven't tried, make an odd assortment of adventurers, but we've written a list and we're checking it twice, and we're going to do all sorts of New Things whether we want to or not.

Here are some sample items:

• Take social dance lessons
• Take a cooking class
• Visit a Minnesota winery
• Paddle on the St Croix

So, I'll see you at the social dance studio. But I'm not going to like it.

Fun Bunnies

My college roommate, Kristen, had a family parable about feeling left-out and unloved. It went something like this: Once upon a time, there was a little bunny who wanted to have fun with all of the other little bunnies, but they never invited him to join them, so day after day he sat on the sidelines watching all of their fun and games, and he was very sad and lonely. One day, he asked his mother why the other bunnies never played with him, and she suggested that he make his own fun. He should play his own games and have so much fun by himself that eventually all of the other bunnies would want to see what he was doing so they could be part of his fun.

Another friend (the one with all of the N's) says that I should have a baby by myself. It wouldn't really be by myself, she says, because I have loving and supportive family and friends. And I'm running out of time, and my hunt for dates has been largely unsuccessful anyway. You know the whole boring single-woman-wants-sperm-donor-baby story, because I'm sure you've read all about it in the New York Times magazine.

I caught myself, in mulling over this plan, thinking about that little bunny. The problem with the mother bunny's advice of making fun by yourself is that, when what you really want is companionship, frolicking by yourself just isn't all that much fun. Sure, you can play jump rope alone, and tiddle your winks in solitude, but if all you really want is company, then those other bunnies aren't going to be fooled into thinking that you're having all kinds of enviable fun by yourself. They're going to know it's a trap. And they're going to stay on their side of the playground away from your little bunny games, because you're going to reek of desperation and loneliness.

I'd be a good mom, and sometimes I'd probably have fun doing it even if I were all by myself, but the thing is, it would bring me farther away from what I really want. What I really want is a companion who will hold the rope while I jump and tiddle his winks against mine. (Why do all innocent little children's games have to sound like sex when I write about them?)

Gutter Meat

First let me say, I love my neighborhood. It's a place where young families and old people live side-by-side in stucco bungalows. It has a nice mix of ethnicities and sexual preferences. Most lawns are are littered with liberal lawn signs, and you actually see people out strolling the streets most seasons of the year. In fact, the other day, I was walking through the park, and I realized that you can tell what season it is by what sports the kids are playing. Right now, for example, it's baseball season, but the basketball hoop is still seeing a lot of action, too.

So, what's the drawback? Well, in a neighborhood where people care about their lawns and keep up with their perennials, I am shocked again and again by how much meat and bones are strewn about in their boulevards. I wouldn't even notice, if I didn't have Buddy, but I do have Buddy, and, seriously, neighbors, why wouldn't you take those rib bones to the trash? What possesses you to throw a chicken bone down next to your tree? Why would you so carelessly toss aside that hamburger and leave it in the gutter?

It's confusing. Is there really this much meat detritus all over my fair city or is my neighborhood just full of extraordinarily careless carnivores? At any rate, it slows down our walks and contributes to Buddy's ongoing digestive dramas. I mean, we can't expect him to walk on by that pile of delicious fast food wrappers without sampling the leftovers (and digging into the paper itself), can we? Somehow I think I'll have better luck convincing my neighbors to clean up after their protein feasts.

The Luxury of a Crush

Having met my last several dates online, and having jumped from one unsuccessful month-long relationship to another since March of 2006, I now find myself in a situation I haven't felt in years. I have a crush on someone I sort-of know.

In the online dating world, the transition from strangers to lovers is so brief (if it is going to happen at all, which it usually doesn't) that you scarcely have time for that stomach-churning internal dialogue. You know the one. It goes like this: "I like him. I want to talk to him. What can I say? Oh my god, did he just flirt with me? Now what can I say back that's witty enough that he might think I'm possibly interested, but not so blatant he thinks I'm a crazy psycho-stalker?" For me, because I'm such a socially awkward introvert, this internal dialogue sometimes seems so loud that I accompany it with a complete removal of eye-contact and banter with the object of my affections. If he were interested, surely, he would have noticed that I was completely ignoring him, and, therefore, going insane inside. Now why did he stop talking to me? Damn.

Anyway, back in college, I had such an abundance of these crushes, that I had to give them nicknames to keep them all straight. Bike boy, who had a bright yellow bike and deep dark eyes. The Package, who just seemed like all around perfection to me. Dirty Dancer because I once bumped and grinded with him to Madonna at a party (and then proceeded to avoid him like the plague ever after. Good technique. And we wonder why I'm still single.). Little did I know, at the time, that this plethora of options was temporary, that as I aged, there would be fewer and fewer opportunities for me to fantasize about conversations I'm too timid to actually have. So that now in my thirties, I can just call my crush just The Crush, because there is only one and the next one might be years away.

And he's probably married anyway - although I did boldly glance at his left hand the other day and found no ring. It took me three months of Saturdays to get that far. Maybe by summer I'll ask him about it.

Are Our Projects Graded, Yet?

So, the thing I most procrastinate about, the thing I hate doing the most, even more than dishes, is grading a certain project that inertia demands I keep assigning in one of my classes. There's only so much I can read about Halo or the history of Nintendo before I want to tear my hair out by the roots. There are only so many barely-reworded wikipedia plagiarizisms that I care to see before my eyes glaze over and I wonder what it was like back in the good ol' days when students used to steal words from actual well-written encyclopedias.

Here's a tip for my teenage readers: if you're fourteen, it's nearly impossible that you will naturally use constructions like "mark the turnaround of his career" or "not only, but rather". If you type such words into a paper, and your teacher hasn't been lulled into a moronic puddle of drool by the mind-numbingly dull words of your classmates, you will be caught. So stop copying. Besides, you may not believe this because you're fourteen, but you actually do have some unique things to say. I once had a kid describe how to balance on a unicycle. It wasn't Shakespeare (or even Wikipedia), but it was good, detailed writing and I'd never read anything like it before. Why can't you try that? Explain something you know. I'm not looking for Proust. It doesn't matter that you don't know who Proust is. I just want you to create something of your own, so when you look back at it years later, you see only your own work. OK?

Anyway, I have nine left to grade. Nine out of thirty. Which reduces to three out of ten. Only 30% left to grade. I could have begun to grade one of them in the time it took me to calculate that percent, but I didn't. Nope.

The kids - who say the darndest things - said, "Why aren't they graded, yet? Did you have some personal turmoil in your life?" Yes. I confessed. I did. Turmoil they are too young to imagine.

"You procrastinated, didn't you?" they said. Yes. I confessed. I did.

"It's OK, we understand about procrastinating," they said, and I felt like the World's Worst Teacher for leading them by example towards an entire lifetime of wishing you had only done your work when you were supposed to, so you would never again have to look at a class full of innocent children and tell them that you still hadn't graded their endless stack of dull, plagiarized projects.

Nine more to go. Seventy percent complete. That's a C-. Isn't that good enough? Can I stop now?

In the Belly of the Beast Looking for Coffee

If you're me, and you get nervous around pushy strangers, you spend your whole life avoiding Mormons. You learn to recognize them from the earnest way they wear their Jansport backpacks securely fastened over both shoulders, the straps somehow barely wrinkling their freshly pressed white dress shirts, and their ties swinging between their arms as they bike through the Philips neighborhood looking for converts. They travel in pairs, being all freshly scrubbed - the whitest, youngest, most earnest men in the neighborhood. And I, uncomfortable around all that cleanliness and conviction, cross the street when I see them, avoiding both their intense eye-contact and their pamphlets.

And so it's all kinds of odd to find myself in Salt Lake City, the whole town scrubbed clean, the streets wide and orderly, the lights gently whistling at me when it's safe to cross the street, a subtle reminder painted in the street at my feet, telling me to look both ways. There are even bright orange flags in cups at crosswalks, so you can carry them with you when you step into traffic, and leave them on the other side when you make it safely across. It makes me worry even more about those fresh-scrubbed biker Mormans in Philips. Minneapolis must seem like the Most Dangerous Place on Earth to someone used to a town built to protect you from traffic and from the whole wide world.

Anyway, I'm here, and I'm me, so I need coffee and the Internet. All of this orderliness makes me long for the chaos of the World Wide Web. It would drive me to porn if I were the type. It's not the easiest task in the world to find a coffee shop among all of these clean-living people, and my first route took me to a plaza owned by the Mormon church. So there I was, after spending my whole life avoiding the Mormons, walking right onto their sacred ground. Would I have to stare at my feet the whole time in order to avoid being converted? No, it turns out, because, at least on Saturday morning at 9:00, the place is deserted, quiet, like a museum. I see one man in a tie and jacket, and because I am in his land, I make a point of smiling at him and meeting his eyes. I figure as I do so, that really, the safest place on Earth from an attempted Mormon-conversion might be here, at their very doorstep. As far as he knows, I am already saved. There's something freeing about it. Here, at least, I don't have to avoid those poor clean boys and their convictions.

And, besides, after I passed safely out of the Mormon sanctuary I found myself on a street (wide and very well-regulated) that looked promising for what I really needed - coffee and at least the knowledge that there is always something unseemly and unsafe just a click away.