The Saddest Valentine

Don't worry. I am so rarely dating anyone on Valentine's Day that it's not really a holiday I dwell upon. I think there may have been a total of five V-Days upon which I was hooked up. I'm pretty sure at least two of them didn't believe in the holiday. At the time, I pretended not care about it either, but, here's a tip, men, women would have to be pretty impervious to the insidious nature of our culture not to care at all about Valentine's Day. If you're lucky enough to have a woman in your life today, be nice to her, even if she says she doesn't care about the Hallmark Holiday.

Anyway.

On one particular Valentine's Day, I was hooked up. I was dating a guy who was completely out of character for me. Some of you remember this time in my life. He was categorically good-looking, not cute-in-an-unconventional-way, like most of my dates. He also had muscles, which was weird for me, because they reminded me of nothing so much breasts. Curvy breasts, growing out of his arms. Breasts on his chest. Funny how the manliest man I ever dated always made me think of breasts when he took off his shirt.

The One With All the N's just got excited because she will use this as proof that I am a lesbian.

"Manly" and I met through the print-media personals ads. I was ahead of my time. Internet dating before we used the Internet to do it. He charmed me first with his voice on the telephone, deep and soft, like a plush carpet. He had a self-depreciating sense of humor, and a charming smile. Some things about him when we first met struck me as unusual especially since I'm such a pinko Commie liberal. He described himself as politically indifferent. He didn't even vote in every election. (What? They let you vote and you didn't line up to exercise your power? I don't understand.) He also served in the Army Reserves. Not a big deal, he said. Every month he would have one weekend when he would be unavailable for dates. That part actually sounded OK. I like my space. I just thought he would disapprove of my pacifist upbringing. And, let's be honest, I sort of wanted to convert him to the Way of Peace. I definitely wanted to make sure he voted in every election (even though it was likely that we wouldn't be voting for the same candidates).

Despite these differences we got along unusually well. Manly was very into nature, and he taught me the difference between white oaks and red ones. On one of our first dates, we sat on a blanket and watched a meteor shower overhead. He lived in a cabin on Medicine Lake and he would get up early in the morning to start my car when I had to drive back to Minneapolis for work. I secretly enjoyed being taken care of. Some feminist I turned out to be.

It all changed when, in January of 2003, after we'd been together for three months, he got word that his reserve unit was activated and called to serve in Iraq. The seriousness of the situation added some seriousness to our relationship that we wouldn't have given it otherwise. What was I going to do? Dump him because he was going to war? Unthinkable. Marry him before he left? Equally so. Instead, I just held onto him a little bit tighter, trying to enjoy the time before he left as much as I could. He told me that he put my name on a list. It was the list of people to call if something happened to him. It was at once flattering and horrifying. Of course, I belonged on the list, but there was no way I belonged on such a list. We only knew each other for three months, and my name was on the same list as the names of other men's wives and mothers. It was spelled wrong (Alia), but it was on the list.

The day he left was February 14, 2003. We got up early, in his little cabin, which was packed up and ready for him to leave. He put on his uniform, and I drove him to his base. We stopped to get gas, and he cursed that the guy behind the counter didn't volunteer to give him a discount for being in uniform, for leaving me for war. I didn't cry when he left my car. I didn't cry when I returned home. I composed a letter, in my little apartment, telling him that I loved him and telling him that I would wait for him. Such things probably shouldn't come up for the first time in a letter, but we had too little time in person to say them out loud.

That afternoon, I drove to Fort Snelling, where I was allowed to drive past the guards because my name was on that dreadful list. I boarded a coach bus full of wives and mothers and children and American flag t-shirts and red, white, and blue earrings. We drove to the hangar where our friends and boyfriends and husbands and fathers and wives and mothers waited for us in uniform. I was afraid. Afraid that I would be spotted as a fraud ("Where is your flag?"). Afraid that I wouldn't recognize him in his uniform when he was surrounded by other men in uniform. Afraid that he would not want me to hand him a letter that said "I love you", right before he went to war. Afraid that he wouldn't want to say it back.

The army gave me a red carnation. The army gave me a flower. I clutched it tightly as if it could help me recognize Manly in the sea of uniformity.

I did recognize him. Even though I had seen him hours before, I already missed him. I already felt like he was a stranger. He had to prompt me to hold his warm, dry hand in my clammy one, as we listened to speeches sending our lovers off to war. "Are we glad to be here?" said the chaplain. I half-expected a patriotic yes from the crowd. "No," whispered the pacifist. "No," came the thunderous response of the crowd of flag-waving family members.

I gave him the flower and the letter. We kissed, even though we both felt awkward doing it in public. He held the letter up, and then he was gone, and I was back on the bus full of quiet, grieving strangers.

I got home to a giant bouquet of flowers and a note, with the kind of things that it's better to say for the first time in person, but we never had time.

That day was sad. The next day I marched to protest the war with hundreds of thousands of people around the world, and I felt all alone, because I had been in a much different crowd the day before. The following day was my first day of student teaching. Those three days were almost the hardest of my life. So was every day after his unit left training and actually went to war, and I had to hear about dead soldiers on the news. The day the phone rang and it was for "Alia" was the most terrible day of all, even though the news that prompted the call was not tragic. I hear they come in person for the truly tragic news.

We survived the six months he was gone. We did not survive his return. In the end, we were too different, and the "I love you's" felt more real on paper.

In the context of all of that, it's so much easier to be alone on Valentine's Day. Don't you think?

RIP Book Club...Welcome Something Else

About two years ago, I responded to a Craig's List post about a new book club. At the time, I was recovering from the hermit lifestyle I had led with an ex-boyfriend, and I was trying to meet men in organic ways by doing things that I enjoyed doing. I was only just discovering that the things I enjoy doing are mostly things that other women enjoy doing. And the poster on Craig's List neglected to mention in her post that she wanted to create an all-women's book club. She was a bit crazy, but that's a story for another day. At any rate, she turned away the two men who showed interest in the club, and instead we had a lively group of ten women attend the first meeting.

I enjoyed the first meeting enough to commit to attending the second one. By the third meeting our lively group of ten women had dwindled to five, and the original crazy Craig's List poster was gone. The five of us carried on meeting though, through several books, some of which we read, most of which we didn't. At one meeting, Jessica announced that now that the five of us had been meeting monthly for so many months, she had decided that we had become friends, and so she collected our birthdays, and now she organizes birthday outings for the group.

We began to do other things, but we continued to not-read the books we were assigned. We had conversations about boys. They took me shopping for sexy new clothes. We went to movies about books we hadn't read. We baked Christmas cookies. Through Kate, I joined a cooking club, and for a couple of months, we cooked giant potluck dinners together. We even advertized for more members on Craig's List, making sure to warn the new people that we didn't always complete our homework for book club.

The men in our lives have always mocked book club. Emily has a friend who calls us SBC, which is short for Shitty Book Club, because we don't discuss books very often or say very deep things about them when we do. Rachel's friends made fun of us for having a movie date for "Three Christmases", which wasn't even based on a book. Or was it four Christmases? It was a shitty movie, at any rate.

Yesterday, Jess called and asked if I minded if we stopped calling our book club a book club. It will be just the same, she assured me. We'll still get together and talk and do fun things. We can even talk about whatever books we're reading. But instead of not-reading a book that we were suppposed to read together, we wouldn't even plan to read a book together. It sounded perfect. It's all of the fun of getting together with five smart women, and none of the guilt of not having read the book.

And so our new club needs a name. I have suggested "The Illiterati" or "NBC (Non-Book Club)". If you have a good name for our group, let me know. I'll pass it along.

Oh, and I'm still reading "Cold Sassy Tree", in honor of the days when our group, whatever-it-is, used to read books.

Wanna Play a Game, Scarecrow?

Lisa from Lemon Gloria recently asked me a few questions as part of an interview game. If you want to be interviewed, too, all you have to do is comment on this post with the words "Interview me", and I'll email you five questions tailor-made for you. It's easy. You'll love it. I'll put more detailed rules at the end.

Here, then, are her questions and my answers.

1. If you had 48 hours free and unlimited cash, how would you spend the time?

Boy, oh, boy, did thinking about this question reveal my inner miser. My first thought was “Did she say ‘unlimited cash’? I’m calling a plumber to fix my leaky toilet.” Then I realized that with unlimited cash, as long as the plumber was there, he could also install the faucet I bought for the bathroom sink ages ago, and then I could ask him to put a real shower-to-bath faucet in my old cast iron tub, so I could sometimes take baths instead of showers. And only then did I stop myself and realize how petty my wishes were. Seriously, you hand me 48 hours and unlimited cash, and I call a plumber? I’m pathetic.

At that point, I decided that I was going to use my unlimited cash to buy a whole new house. Fuck it. I’ve had enough of pull-chain light fixtures and leaky toilets. I deserve a dishwasher. I can have central air. I can have insulation and new windows, so I can be warm in the winter and cool in the summer. And, oh, wait! I could have my new house in a warm and lovely place. I can relocate to the beach, and I can have a new beach house where I can take a bath sometimes and not just a shower.

At about this time, I realized that you asked me how I would spend the time, not the money. And so I scrapped the house plan and decided to go hot-air ballooning instead on some early summer morning. My grandmother went ballooning for her eightieth birthday, and I was invited to join her, but I missed it because I was working at a summer camp that year and it was an hour further away than I thought it was, so I was late to the launch, and ever since then, I’ve had an empty place in the part of my heart that would be full if I ever got to go up in a hot-air balloon.

And then, after my hot-air balloon landed, I’ll spend the other 40 hours picking out and closing on my new beach house with a non-leaky toilet and solar panels and super-insulated walls.

2. Do you feel like working with math all the time and having a math mind colors your world in a particular way? I ask this as someone with no mathematical ability, who consistently struggled in math once it got beyond the basics, really. But I feel like being so focused on words, and having studied linguistics, I am constantly listening for how people phrase things, or appreciating alliteration, or whatever. Does this happen with numbers (or numerical patterns, or geometric planes, etc), if one's brain has that ability?

OK, so I don’t listen to music, ever. My friends who do listen to it sometimes give me CDs or tell me to listen to things, and I try, but after the CD or the song has been playing for a while, I forget it’s on and I go back to not-listening to it. I dated a musician once. He gave me copies of his own songs sometimes. I would listen, and at first I would feel enormously proud and slightly embarrassed that my boyfriend was singing and playing a song, and then even he would fade into the background, and I couldn’t even tell him what I thought of his music when he asked.

I think maybe that working a good math problem tickles the part of my brain that other people can tickle with music. I can get totally absorbed, in that time-stretching way, so that all of the rest of the world fades behind me, and all I can see is whatever problem I’m working on. I can fall asleep with a good problem on my brain and I can dream the solution, so that in the morning I see the problem with new clarity. I think of that line from a song actually (the Beatles being the one, notable exception to my inability to hear music) “There will be an answer. Let it be.”

Also, you should know that I suck at computation. I can’t add or subtract (especially subtract) without paper and a pencil. Higher math has very little to do with computational skill. We turn a lot of kids off to mathematics by making it so computationally focused in the early years.

Still, I don’t feel that I apply math to the real world all that often. I love it for its own sake. I’m not a physicist. I just like playing with symbols and manipulating algebra and seeing geometric connections on the page. I think of a math team t-shirt that I once saw. It had a famously beautiful equation on the front. On the back it said, “Yes, but when do you ever really use the Mona Lisa?” It’s more like art to me than it is like science.

I think I’d be a better teacher if I did use math in the real world. I was once seduced by a guy who used math. If seducing nerdy women counts as a real-world application of number theory, then I’m living proof that it works.

3. You are on an endless breakfast quest. How would you describe a perfect breakfast?

My family would be there. We’d all be alert and not hung-over. When my family is on, we are some of the wittiest people around. The laughter alone makes the food taste better. I’d definitely get something savory, because I’m not a big sweet breakfast person. There might be some goat cheese in my dish. I’d want some potatoes that were crispy on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside. I’d want a cup of really good coffee with lots of cream and sugar. I’d want the restaurant to have a clean and airy feel with sunlight streaming through the windows. I’d want the waiter or waitress to flirt with my family a little bit as we placed our order. Everything would have enough fat and salt in it to taste good and get properly brown, but nothing would be bogged down by grease. Finally, as we left the table none of us would feel so heavy and weighted down that we’d never want to eat again. We’d all just be comfortably full, with happy aftertastes of breakfast in our mouths to get us through to lunch.

4. If you were given the choice of being able to fly or breathe underwater, which superpower would you choose and why?

I’d fly. Flying is much more practical. How often is there even water around to breathe under?

5. If you had to choose a flavor of ice cream that most fits your personality, what kind do you think you would be? Feel free to make one up if necessary.

It’d be something dark and brooding, but with some bites that are so good they would make the occasional bitter overtones worth it. Double, dark chocolate with a hint of salty caramel, perhaps.



OK, now you know you want to play, here's how:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions. Be sure you link back to the original post.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

The Thirty Degree Solution

And so it came to pass that the sun beat down upon the land, warming it to nearly the temperature of water. The people all smiled, and drove their cars to the dog park, filling the parking lots to overflowing. Even the dogs smiled. They ran free in the woods, greeting one another with fierce wags of tails. The people took off their hats and looked skinny in the absence of layers of long underwear under their thick, puffy coats. And a miracle occurred in the form of a bird, living and breathing in the Minnesota winter. It was only a woodpecker, but in the presence of the second miracle - clear blue skies and sunshine - it looked like a messenger carrying good news from on high. The sun will warm us up, as it warms the Earth. There will come a time when we will allow our skin to touch the elements again, and we will feel the naked joy of spring someday.

Three Things About My Parking Spot

1. According to yesterday's New York Times, teaching math at an affluent suburban high school is the most recession-proof job in America. It's at the bottom of the article, in case you don't believe me.
   
2. According to a news story on MPR which I heard on my drive home, our governor is trying to make my recession-proof job even more safe by instituting a pay freeze, which will guarantee that no one will ever want to take my very safe job from me. You'd have to be nuts to do it for less than what I make. Or the same as what I make, really.
3. Finally, according to gossip at the lunch table, the other day an angry parent called an administrator in my building to see why students have to pay so much to park, while staff members get to park for free. That's right. It's one of the perks no one talks about. I get to park my '96 Mazda in front of that affluent suburban high school every day so I can teach The Math, and the best part is I don't even have to take out a loan in order to do it.
   

Sometimes I Lie

Like yesterday, for example, when I wrote that I don't trust Buddy any more. And then just this morning, I was frantically cleaning and I wasn't even dressed, and I felt like he needed to pee, and so, just for a second, I let him out in the yard, but somehow the back fence was ajar. Now, he's on the loose, and I'm wearing clothes over my pajamas, but I couldn't even see him when I walked the 'hood and froze my ass off. Stupid stupid dog. Stupid stupid Al. Why did I trust the Gingerbread Dog?

The Things I do for Love

My dog is a lovely soul with a talent for getting loose. When I first put him in my yard, he pulled at the back gate until he managed to separate the chain link from the fencepost, and then he squeezed his lean black lab body through the gap and ran wildly through the streets of the neighborhood. I'd get calls from the nursing home two blocks away, "Hello, I'm calling about your dog, Buddy, he's here - oh - now he's running. He's headed east on 38th street, if you want to catch him." I want to catch him. Desire is never the problem. The problem is that he has four predator legs, and I only have two. He has the lean muscular body of a hunter, and I have only the short bursts of speed of an urban animal. Perfect for catching buses. Not so good for chasing after determined runaway dogs.

When I replaced the gates, he tunneled, like a canine version of Tim Robbins's Shawshank Redemption character. He found a weak spot below the fence which led him to Bev's yard next door, where a conveniently placed rise in the ground gave him just enough lift to clear her fence with a single leap. He was free, long lean body stretched out against the ground. Meanwhile, I stumbled after him, lamely offering treats to his departing figure. What good my biscuits compared to the sweet, sweet taste of liberty?

I tried to get inside his head. I became a dog whisperer of sorts. Perhaps, I thought, he needed more exercise, and so I took him to the dog park to tire him out, and then I watched him flee from the back yard less than an hour after he had run himself weary in the woods.

Perhaps, I surmised, his abandonment issues forced him to run from me. He had to leave me before I could leave him. Hadn't I, myself, practiced this very philosophy on more than one unsuspecting man? And so I lavished him with affection. I tried to gain his trust through pats behind the ears and scratches of the belly. He took the love in the same calm way he takes all forms of affection. "I deserve this," he seems to say. "I'm a good dog." Instead of me gaining his trust, he gained mine. I got lax in the pulling closed of gates and doors, and he pushed past me, mischievous glint in his eyes, "Catch me if you can," he said, "I'm the gingerbread dog."

And so we have reached the age of Loving Distrust. Buddy does all of his business on the end of a tightly held leash. Two to three times a day, I hold that leash, and walk the streets of my neighborhood, and, much as I grumble, it's good for me. However, we have had some dark and cold days here in Minnesota this winter, and so, with Buddy lifting his paws gingerly off of the frozen pavement, I wrap myself in layer after layer of cashmere and down, soft and fluffy garments, covering my rock hard core, clenched like a fist against the goddamn cold. He stops to smell some other dog's pee, and I yank his leash a little too roughly. "Let's go, Buddy," I say, "it's too cold for this." He's waiting, as am I, for the days when we can stroll again through the neighborhood, with something more than irritability and cashmere to keep us warm.

PS There was a photo to illustrate. I can't get it from camera to computer. So imagine a picture of me in the dark, up to my eyeballs in cold-weather gear, in one of those photos you take of yourself from an arm's length away.
I give up. I'm buying a new digital camera tomorrow.

Trippy Derivatives

The solid boy in the football jersey startles me whenever he sees the calculus in poetic clarity. His voice, full of questions, can cut across the room. Despite his doubtful tone, he reveals the truth about what I'm saying in a way that I can't, because I learned it all for the first time too many years ago.

"Why did you give us the surface area formula?" he says. "Don't we just need volume for this problem?"

"Yes," I say, and I start to walk away. It was a trick, a decoy, a distractor. Something makes me stop. "But look at your derivative for volume. Isn't it just the surface area formula?"

"Whoa," he says, in words that could easily be construed as sarcastic, but which don't come off that way. "Trippy."

"Yes, but doesn't that make sense? Doesn't the derivative just take you down one dimension?"

I walk away to answer another question. The students are so stressed out about their final. I feel like I'm performing triage these days. Even as I go, I hear his awestruck voice, to his football buddy. "I mean, what if someone took the derivative of the world?"

I stop long enough to absorb the beauty of his awe. What, indeed? What if someone had the power to take that kind of derivative and leave us all flat?

The Library Again

I went back to the library. The creepy guy was there. He did try to follow me out, but I thwarted him by forgetting my hat. It'd be easy to change my hours so that he couldn't find me again, but I'd be afraid of losing my regulars.

Anyway, here's a video about tutoring at the library, starring me, and made by one of the other tutors. Enjoy.

New Stories for the New Year

Sometimes I look around this Earth and I think it's funny that all of those other people think that they are the main character in the story when, clearly, I am. I like to let them hold onto their delusions, because they make more interesting minor characters when they think they have to hold up the main plot of the story.

For example, I recently ran into an ex-boyfriend. Now, according to my story, we didn't work out because we were too young, and we didn't try hard enough. His story is that we weren't even a good fit. In fact, according to his story, we were such a not-good-fit, he rarely even thinks about me any more. I'm not sure how I can let the memory of this failed relationship continue to eat away at me and make me worry that I didn't try hard enough if he's not even going to think about me with any sort of regret. It's ridiculous. Luckily, I'm the main character, and all of the rules of story-telling demand that I show growth and change by the end of the story, so perhaps this will be the year of letting go and finally finding happiness.

My other new story this year will be that instead of the being the Woman Who Drinks Coffee Alone, I am now the Woman Who Joins Groups. And so this morning, The Woman Who Joins Groups got up to walk the dog in her running clothes, and then drove her ice-covered car to Uptown, where she joined a group of runners in the -1 degree weather to run around the lakes. Then The Woman Who Joins Groups went to a coffee shop where the cute boy behind the counter made her some coffee, and she pretended that he did it because he wanted to, and not just because she gave him a 50% tip on her order.

On Friday, I'm going to eat dinner with a bunch of strangers at a restaurant. I've done this once before with a group of strangers that eats dinner in restaurants, and, frankly, I've found it somewhat stressful, but that was last year, before I took on this new role. Now, I will take it in stride, because I'm used to Joining Groups. It's What I Do.

You'll see. 2009 will be a year of happy stories, full of new people and new adventures. It will be the year I let old pain die, and I force myself out of the rut of thinking that I'm the tragic heroine of a tragic story of what might have been.

Or, maybe it's just the last day of winter break, and I'd rather make up stories than figure out what the heck I'm teaching tomorrow.

The Slowest Mile

I looked out the window at 1:00, and the sun was out. I peeked at the thermometer. It was over 20 degrees outside. OK, no excuses, I had to run. I figured that the sidewalks would be icy, but maybe the park board had cleared the lake trails, and so I drove myself to Nokomis, where I began my run on the north side of the lake. North side, as in sunless side. The trails were coated with ice. I barely moved my feet as I "ran", struggling to making my upper body look like that of a runner, while my feet moved barely faster than a walker's.

Whenever I found a patch of dry pavement, I flew because I was finally able to let go of a little bit of my steam. Then the dry part would end, and I would throttle back so that I wouldn't find myself sprawling on the ground.

To avert the almost certain disaster of a spill, I almost turned around, but there was another runner up ahead. If he could do it, so could I. We met up at the stoplight. "At least we're still standing," he said. "Well, it's the slowest run of my life," said I (exaggerating, since surely the slowest run of my life was the Mother's Day run I lost to my mother).

His daughter goes to Carleton, and so we ran together around the slightly less icy south side of the lake, chatting about education and money and Jonathan Kozol, and allowing each other to use the dry patches on the sidewalk for traction.

And then, Christmas miracle, neither of us wiped out. We finished our runs and we didn't add to our injuries, and now I get to have that clear-headed just-exercised feeling for the rest of the day. I'm going to use it to buy some paint for the basement floor.

Lib-a-rary

Saturdays are my day to volunteer at the library. I get myself downtown to the big public library. Usually I plan to take the bus, but I wind up being late and driving and having to pay to park. Today, I drove and found a spot that was far from the library but free on Saturday. Today was a good day.

I settle myself down at the table on the fourth floor, get out my computer, or whatever papers I have to grade, and then I wait until the students come. I have some regulars.

"Betty" is an elderly black lady who is teaching herself algebra. She travels from library to library in search of math help. I've seen her at least once a month for over a year at two different libraries. We've sat down together for hours at a time, and I've walked her through problem after problem. After a year, her math skills are about where they were when I first met her. I think she has a little memory loss to overcome while she learns. Betty always has her "homework" and she comes prepared with questions. Secretly, though I think that Betty is using algebra as a prop to get tutors to sit down with her for an hour, interrupting her math problems with tidbits about our real lives. "What kind of math do you have today, Betty?" doesn't take long to detour to "How was your Christmas, Betty?".

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure Betty loves doing the math. I'm sure she gets off on it, in a truly nerdy way, and perhaps if she had been born in a different generation or if she had been born white or male, she might have found her way to a continued study of mathematics. She says that she wakes up in the morning sometimes, having dreamed about math, and then she has to get up to finish a problem before she even gets dressed. She once said to me that a system of equations reminded her of a marriage, and that solving for x and then using it to solve for y was like peeling away the layers of your relationship to discover who you each are as individuals. Only true math nerds can make relationship analogies to algebra.

"Leroy" is a middle-aged black man who fears math but knows that he needs to go back to school in order to work his way out of a dead-end job. The first time I met Leroy, he brought a blond husky-voiced woman with him. She also had math homework, but she refused to ask any questions, and I soon realized that she was the crutch he needed to get through the door to ask for help. Once he found out how the whole tutoring thing worked, she never returned, but the amazing thing is that Leroy does return, again and again, even though after an hour or two of math, he looks like someone who needs a cigarette - at which point he excuses himself for a smoke break.

Leroy has been coming to the library on and off for at least nine months. He even took the test he needed to get into school, failed it, and battled his way back to the library to get over that defeat. He says he has a calendar at home to keep track of the days I work at the library. Now that I'm only at the library every other week, it stresses me out on days like today, when Leroy doesn't make it. He might not learn enough math before his next test if he only works on it once a month. I'm a little worried that he only has one more test in him, and if he doesn't pass the next time, he won't be back. Unlike Betty, Leroy has improved a lot on his math. Mostly, he has gotten over the deer-in-the-headlights fear he feels when he first looks at a problem, which allows him to relax enough to remember what we've done for the past nine months.

And then today there was a dirty white guy at our table, and I had a bad feeling. I have never had a bad feeling at tutoring before. I didn't want to tutor him, because I felt leered at when he looked at me. I also felt like a dick for not wanting to be friendly. So, when he asked me when I'm available for tutoring, I told him my actual real hours, because I didn't want to be a dick. When he said he'd come in two weeks and bring some calculus homework, I said OK, but, I said it unenthusiastically, because I had a Bad Feeling, and I was pretty sure the calculus was a ruse to get me to talk to him. Then I started to wonder whether I was having a real honest-to-goodness Bad Feeling or whether I had some sort of homelessness prejudice that was keeping me from being helpful. The good news is that all of my homelessness stereotypes indicate that he will not be able to keep the appointment and I will probably never see him again, so I might not have to play the game of pretending to tutor him in math, when all he really wants is to sit next to a friendly woman for an hour.

Besides, isn't that all Betty wants, too?

Baby Whispers

One of the things I believe is that as long as parents are not harming their children, then the way that they choose to raise them is the way it should be done. I don't offer advice or criticism, mostly because what the hell do I know? But also because the world already gives new parents more advice than they need.

"Oh," says the world, "your baby doesn't sleep? Have you tried letting her cry herself to sleep?"
"Have you tried the family bed?"
"Maybe it's something you're eating."
"He needs to be kept on a strict schedule."
"She needs more stimulation. Take her outside."

These things might all be good advice, but when you're sleep deprived, and your own individual baby, the one you know best in the world isn't sleeping, what business is it of the world to intrude with its sage advice? No. I figure I am a better friend by believing with all of my heart that the parents know best.

And, so, when I worked as a nanny/research assistant in Portland, OR, for a woman who followed a book called "The Baby Whisperer" to the letter, I did as she instructed. I didn't rock her son to sleep, and allow his drowsy baby head to droop against my shoulder. I didn't hold his sleeping body against mine and smell his head while he dreamed. No, I followed her routine. He woke up. He had some food (breast milk with her), he got a clean diaper, he played on his stomach as long as he was happy, and then he played alone on his back. When he got tired of alone time, I picked him up and talked to him and sang with him. And, then, as soon as he started to rub his eyes or droop, we played three songs on the stereo while I danced with him in my arms. When he zoned out and his eyes glazed over, I carried him to his crib, and placed him gently on his back. He was still awake, but he was as limp as an overdone noodle. Before long, he fell asleep on his own. I walked away, and helped Liz with her research until he woke up again, at which point we would start the routine from the beginning.

She was strict about following the routine (which she never called a schedule, because it was shaped by the baby and never by the time on the clock). Once she returned from vacation, nearly in tears. Her son wasn't sleeping well. Her husband had walked him to sleep the whole time they were on vacation. He had ruined her carefully constructed patterns. How was the boy ever going to learn the rhythm again?

Sometimes, I thought maybe she should lighten up. I was pretty sure she was missing the greatest joy of feeling her small baby sleep against her chest. It definitely seemed like bad policy to over-monitor how her husband parented. However, I have to admit that the job was one of the easiest I ever had. Her son took to the routine. He ate well and played happily alone and then he enjoyed singing and talking until it was time to dance and to sleep. It was her kid, and she seemed to know how to parent him. I did as I was told.

I didn't realize that the Baby Whisperer's patterns had become so ingrained in me, until last week when I babysat for an infant about the same age as that boy had been when we met. I thought they were just Liz's thing that I did because she told me to. But then there I was with a small infant, and I had forgotten how boring they are. For a while, alone with this blob of an (albeit very cute and cuddly) baby, I felt at a loss for what to do. I was in someone else's house, holding someone else's baby, and there was nothing to do.

And so I fell back on the routine. I put the baby down, arranged some toys to be swatted by her undirected hand flailing, so she could learn some cause and effect. When she got bored I picked her up and sang with her and talked to her. When she started to yawn and looked glazed over, I set her down, and watched her fall asleep. She woke up. I gave her the bottle. We changed diapers. She played a little more Cause-and-Effect. I sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" and asked her how big the baby was. She stared the yawning again, and I put her down, and just as I was getting bored again, she fell asleep. And, so I knitted, baby-whispering complete for the afternoon. She slept straight through until her mom arrived.

It's a pretty good trick, actually, especially for that little monkey-baby stage. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work on my own kid, though. I'd be too busy smelling hair, and trying to get some cuddles in.

Well, You Missed It

I saw a great show yesterday afternoon, called "Fool For Love", by Sam Shepard. The story is grim (and dumb when you think about it), but the performances by four actors were all outstanding. One guy played an awkward moment without speaking so well that it made me squirm. The leads were both coiled like springs for the entire show. There were times during the show when I couldn't take my eyes off of each of the four of them, not even to see what the other three were doing.

I hate to tell you how engrossing the play was, since yesterday's show was the last performance, but I will tell you that after this I'd see anything at the Gremlin Theater. It's small and intimate like the Penumbra, too, which makes you feel like you're right there in the room with the actors (who came out to the lobby in street clothes after the show and chatted with the audience). So, I'm sorry you missed this one, but check out their next show if you get the chance. OK, carry on.

Paradox

So, I was thinking about my blind date today, and I was thinking that I didn't have high hopes for it. He seems introverted and numerically inclined, which is fine, but I'm starting to think that two such people in a relationship is one too many. Still, he contacted me, and I didn't say no, because I'm trying to be open and yes-y.

And then I was thinking about all of these people who keep telling me that I shouldn't try so hard, that I will meet my someone when I least expect it. And for a brief moment I thought maybe this was when I would least expect it, which, of course, ruined the moment, and brought me back to where I started.

Three Little Words

You can describe the state of my apartment at the moment in just three words. Sarah did so just this evening. She walked in the door, wrinkled her nose, and said, "What's that smell?" Yep, it's time to clean. For once, the rankness of the air was not caused by Buddy's intestinal problems. It's just the stale smell of girl and not-too-clean dog living together in squalor.

I'm counting the minutes until break, and then I'm cleaning it from top to bottom. It's going to be squeak by Sunday. The smell of this place by Sunday will be the smell of clean.

Over It

Jimmy invited me to dinner. This is the perfect response to the kind of mood I was in when I wrote yesterday's post. I was probably hungry and tired. Hungry and tired equals vague existential weariness for me, and I can never seem to remember at the time that the reason I find myself questioning the meaning of life and my place in it, is mostly because I'm hungry.

I mean, sure, sometimes I feel like the Loneliest Girl in the World who has to eat dinner alone in restaurants, but it could be a lot worse. I could be too poor to afford dinner. I could actually, for real, not have friends, and I could actually be lonely, not just temporarily without company. I could have no family to pick me up when I stagger, no Jimmy to offer to cook me dinner. I could have no Buddy to curl up beside me when I crawl into bed. I could have no sister-in-law who saves me crossword puzzles when I visit. I could have no book club friends to meet me for bad movies downtown.

I could have no courage to date and no confidence that the Right One is out there for me. I could be married to the Wrong One or trying to figure out custody of my children. I could be mourning the loss of the Right One, or forcing myself into a closet so that I'd guarantee myself years of dating Wrong Ones.

None of these things is true. I'm just single. I'm just hungry after long days of work, and I have to figure out how to feed myself after working a full day. I'm just working too hard because I'm a new teacher and I'm learning as I go. I'm just a procrastinator who would be happier if she did her damn work instead of playing computer games and wishing she didn't have to do all of that work. I'm just light-sensitive and I work without windows, so I need to get light some other way. I'm just ready for winter break, and I just have four more days to go until I'm free.

Fear

We've reached December, everyone, which for those of us who are seasonal, is never a particularly good thing. This year, the effect of lack of daylight on me seems to be an increase in fear. Don't worry. I'm not panicky. I'm just angsty. Lovely.

I'm afraid I'll spend the day playing Eight Letters in Search of a Word, and I won't get my work done, and I'll have to go to school with ungraded tests no plan. I'm afraid my dog is mad at me for not wanting to walk him these days. I'm afraid I'll never run again. I'm afraid I'm out of food. I'm afraid that my heart is frozen. I'm afraid my mom will read this, convince herself that I'm depressed and worry about me. I'm afraid I can't make new friends. I'm afraid I'll have to look for a new job this summer. I'm afraid that Facebook is stealing all of my personal information in order to target ads at me and it still shows me diet ads. I'm afraid that I'll never get my master's degree. I'm afraid that my married friends will outgrow me. I'm afraid that I missed the deadline to invest in my 403(b). I'm afraid that my students are cheating. I'm afraid that I'm too easy a grader. I'm afraid that the rain will freeze to my car and I'll have to spend the morning hacking it out of the ice. I'm afraid that once I get my car out of the ice, the roads will be so slippery I'll go in the ditch. I'm afraid of the economy and the war and the crazy white supremicists who want to kill the president.

See? You don't want to be in this head. I'm telling you. It's loud in here.

Fifth Hour

"I have a question, but it's not math related."

Uh oh.

"Have you seen that guy from the hockey game lately?"

"Was that your mom who just knocked on the door?"

"Well, will you bring your mom to school one day so we can meet her?"

"Can she bring your dog?"

"What kind of dog do you have?"

"What's his name?"

"What does your mom do?"

"What does perinatalogy mean?"

"Does she deliver twins? I'm a twin. Did she deliver me? What's her name?"

"Like the Science Guy?"

"Mrs. B says you and her go way back? Are you friends with Mrs. B?"

"You were in AmeriCorps? What's AmeriCorps?"

"Um, can I ask you a math question?"

Yes!

Day of Rest

The best thing about the half-marathon training program that I'm running, even though I'm not running in a half-marathon? The off-days.

Don't get me wrong. I always go a lot of days without running. In fact, I've been down to running once a week recently, but my days off from running have never been off-days. They have always been days when I didn't get to it. They were days when I couldn't make myself get up before school or saddle up after school for a run. On those days, I still thought about running, thought that I should run, thought that maybe, even though I didn't get to it before school, I still might run after school.

There seems to be a secret to life in there somewhere. I take days off from grading homework, for example, but I never take days off from homework. It's always there, hanging over my head, making me feel guilty. Maybe I should do a six mile run of homework tonight, be done with it, and then allow myself a day off to heal and rest for the next burst of homework energy another day.

Fever Cured

I gave the sweater away today, and then, mere hours later, I drew my dad's name in the gift draw. If only I could have waited it could have passed as a Christmas present.

In case you were worried, it fit. The sleeves were long enough. The neck was only a little bit weird, and I only had to reknit it three times to make it work. I learned a new cast-off.

In other news, I ran for about six miles today to Lake Nokomis, around it, and back home. I'm starting a new thing where I'm following a half-marathon training program. Not, mind you, that I plan on running in a half-marathon. You'd have to be half-nuts to run in one of those.

That is all. Oh, yeah. I don't want to go to work tomorrow, mostly because I didn't grade homework this weekend. Blech.

Obsession for Knitters

I go through these phases with my knitting. I've been working on a sweater for my dad for at least a year, and most of that time "working on" has looked a lot like "ignoring that thing shoved in my drawer," but yesterday I pulled it out of the drawer, read the stitches left on my needle like some secret coded message from my past, and managed to resurrect the sweater from that place where well-intentioned knitting projects go to die.

I began slowly enough, before Thanksgiving dinner, knitting a couple of rows, while chatting with my family in the kitchen as they made stuffing and dressing and mashed potatoes. I even allowed myself to be interrupted so I could set the table.

Had I stopped there, I would be able to say that I still have a healthy relationship with my knitting, but I didn't stop there.

No, I got home from Thanksgiving, plopped myself down on the couch, and didn't even remove my coat. While TV droned on in the background, I finished the sleeves and then sewed up the seams so that what I had finally looked like a sweater. This process took three hours. Three hours of me hunched over my knitting, barely moving except to change the channel so that I could watch the Office instead of whatever was on after Moonstruck. At some point, I removed my jacket. Buddy gave me that look that means, "This means you aren't going to walk me again tonight, doesn't it?" and then sneaked off to sleep on my pillows (which is not allowed). Still I knit on.

Finally, I could look at the tiny stitches through my sleep-deprived eyes no longer, and so I stood in front of the mirror and tried on the nearly finished garment. It needs a neck. One of the seams is only partially sewn. The end of the knitting and sewing marked the beginning of the worrying stage of my obsessive evening.

It's big on me, but is it big enough? Will the sleeves be long enough. Will it be too tight for my dad's belly? Will the neck be weird? Will I be able to figure out how to attach the neck? How will it look after it's washed and blocked?

No wonder I didn't fall immediately into a deep sleep when I finally moved the dog's smelly body off of my pillows, swept aside the sand, and pulled the covers over my head. I have knitting fever now, and the only cure is a completed project.

The One in the Style of Facebook

So, now that I belong to that social networking thing, a new writing style has crept into my head, somewhat against my will. In this style everything is in the present tense, and you always refer to yourself in the third person. Sentences are short in Facebook world. Here, then, is my yesterday, told Facebook style.

Alex is making herself go back to sleep. It's too early.

Alex is finally getting up.

Alex is glad she's running with Buddy in the dog park this morning.

Alex is peeling apples and sprinkling them with sugar.

Alex has a secret for apple pie. Rum.

Alex's recipe for pie crust calls for sour cream. Sour cream? She has to go to the store on the day before Thanksgiving. Wish her luck.

Alex is cutting butter into flour.

Alex is cutting butter into flour.

Alex is cutting butter into flour.

Alex is glad that's over.

Alex is rolling out her crust just so. She is already dreading cutting the butter for the next crust.

Alex is sure she had almond extract, but she can't find it. She's on her way to the store again.

Alex is wondering why her family never followed the trend of using the food processor for this.

Alex would marry the next man she met, just so she could register for a food processor and stop cutting the butter into the flour.

Alex is enjoying the smell of apple pie in the apartment.

Alex is trying to break up the monotony of cutting butter into flour with daytime television. It's not working.

Alex is convinced that her butter is now pea sized.

Alex is weaving her cherry pie crust. It looks goooood.

Alex is trying not to think about how messy her kitchen is.

Alex has to make appetizers for tonight's party. Alex will have to clean the kitchen.

Alex is making guacamole. She enjoys mincing garlic into tiny little cubes.

Alex is not at all sure she can wear that sweater with that skirt, but she's doing it anyway.

Alex is laughing at the one-year-old's shenanigans with her shirt. Alex likes the word shenanigans.

Alex is eating water chestnuts wrapped in bacon and dates stuffed with goat cheese and lots of fresh mozzarella basil and tomatoes.

Alex is telling stories again about her cat getting stuck in her face.

Alex enjoys a party this size, and she likes laughing with old friends (and one-year-olds).

Alex is sad that the party is over, but she's ready for bed. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Moms

I dated a guy with a handlebar mustache. My friends called him Colonel Mustard to distinguish him from all other dates of mine (which at that time weren't many, since we dated for more than a year). Anyway, Colonel Mustard's mom traditionally cooked a Christmas goose. It was one of the best things I have ever eaten. She and I are both blessed with skinny-genes and healthy body images, and so we sat at the table together after everyone else had finished eating and picked at the carcass. We both liked the crispy bits of skin, which on a goose, are even more intensely fatty than turkey skin.

She also used to work on jigsaw puzzles with me in the basement. She had a triumphant way of tapping her piece whenever she got one. She liked to be acknowledged. She asked me to teach her how to do Sudoku puzzles, but I suspect she was just trying to make me feel welcome in her family. It worked. I used to be able to imagine myself as part of her family. I couldn't imagine the Colonel in my family, but I could imagine myself in the long run in that basement working on jigsaws and laughing with his mom as we picked at fatty meat together.

Jimmy recently asked me to contact her to get the goose recipe. Never mind that the entire Mustard family is off limits to me since the Colonel and I had our falling out. Jimmy wants to know how to recreate that crispy goose skin experience. Of course, it's impossible, but it made me realize that after almost three years, one of the things I miss most about Colonel Mustard is his mom, the woman who baked Christmas sugar cookies and orchestrated intense cookie-decorating contests among her children and their mates, the woman who bought me the π plate I will use today for a Thanksgiving apple pie. The woman who in addition to having all of these domestic talents also spoke with fierce intelligence about the news of the day.

I love my own mom best of all, but really there are so many good moms out there, I appreciate it when anyone I know is willing to share his with me.

Not Dwelling

I had a goal. It was arbitrary, but it was a goal, and I didn't make it. Even though it's silly, I am fully capable of making myself miserable over something like this.

I want to run, but I've been so tired that I can't make myself get up early to run, and I'm so tired when I get home that I can't make myself do more than take a short jaunt with Buddy.

I'm happy enough right now, but it could only take a couple more days of not-running, or a couple of more days of dwelling on missing my arbitrary goal that I'll sink down again into not-happy. So it's a good thing that I don't have school tomorrow. It's a good thing I'm going to write this post and then go to bed, so that I can get up and run tomorrow. I'm aware that if I can write about maybe being sad without crying, then that's a good thing, too, because it means I'm not there yet, and I still have time to run it off.

Somehow, I'm getting better at being myself, but the view from this side of the brain always looks dicier than the one from where you're sitting. Trust me.

Scarier than a Stock Market Crash

They're reporting it as a touchy-feely human-interest story. A farmer decides to open up his fields to the public after he's harvested, so that regular people can pick through for anything left behind by the harvesting machines. He grows potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, pumpkins and leeks. And guess how many people came to pick through his fields for these non-glamorous vegetables? 40,000.

Unless he also served free popcorn and beer, it makes me a little bit worried about the state of our economy that 40,000 people were willing to do farm labor for root vegetables. Free or not, Americans don't even like beets.

Hammer Time

Also, I had to tell you that I played a little MC Hammer in my calculus class.

I have a disability which allows me to not-hear music. Usually this disability boosts my immunity to ear-worms. However, hearing the song four times in one day was too much even for me. It's in my head now, but good.

Anyway, I was teaching about asymptotes. I played the song, and then I blew their minds with a little bit of this action:




MC Hammer was wrong. You can touch an asymptote. Repeatedly. Cool!

The Internet Made Another Mistake

There's a website that will tell you what Meyers-Briggs type of person the author of a blog is. Guess what I am. Go ahead. It'll be fun.

If you guessed "The Performer," you're as wrong as the website. ESFP? Never in all my days! An extrovert? Feeling over thinking? Sensing over Intuiting? Come on, Internet, have you met me?

Don't worry. It's in beta. Maybe future releases will implement an algorithm that will be able to cull personality traits like introversion and logical and symbolic thinking from such post titles as "The Introvert at Sea" and "Polynomials".

Or maybe I'm more extroverted than I think I am. But after spending the past 2 hours meeting parents, I'm feeling like a puddle of mush. Shouldn't an extrovert be ready to party right about now?

P.S. As long as I'm pointing you to websites, you might as well go vote on which ballots should go to Franken and which should go to Coleman. Come on. Be honest. Stop saying "Franken" just because you want your veto-proof majority.

and
P.P.S. It's neck and neck between "Hot Dish" and "Under Construction", but I think Rachael logs on to a new computer and over-votes for "Under Construction" every time "Hot Dish" pulls ahead.

And Now for Something Positive

Here are two games that were mostly invented by a good friend of mine whose name rhymes with Hair-a.

1. The Name Game. You're driving down the street, and you notice something about someone walking on the sidewalk. You point the person out to your friend, and say, "OK. One, two, three," then each of you shouts out what you think the name of the innocent bystander (bywalker) is. Sometimes the names you yell at each other almost sort of match. This is very exciting. Other times the names don't match, but one is clearly much better than the other. The winner earns a small smile of satisfaction at her triumph.

2. The "I can't believe you..." game. For this game you need a straight man. By default I usually play this role. You pull a story from the day's headlines. Page 6 stories are better for this game than leading news stories. Approach your straight man and retell the news story as if your straight man had played the starring role in the story. As in, "Alex, I can't believe you finally decided to support a woman's right to choose, but only when it comes to her light bulb." If you're lucky, the straight-man hasn't read the story and doesn't even realize you're playing a game. Confusion and hilarity ensue.

Saturday

Woke up to the sound of the phone ringing. 'Twas the mother. She wanted to go to the dog park before work. It was 6:00. Somehow this has become my version of normal. She and I laughed throughout the walk. Words were said that shall not be published here. Actions were taken that shall not be repeated on this page.

After the walk, ran off to the library for tutoring. Met Fred who wants to be a chef and needs some math to get into school. We did fractions. He said he learned something. I said, "Well, that's why you came, right?" He promised to return. I will not hold my breath.

Booked it across town to meet a colleague for lunch before the high school musical. Late because of traffic. Fucking 62. Raced off to the school. Watched high school students enacting racial stereotypes on stage for old folks and children. OK, because they're Asian. The model minority. Is that the logic???

Off again, this time to NE for a birthday party at the Bulldog. Stopped at Target for chocolate and a card. No gas left in the old car, but parking is only 25 cents an hour. Heck, I can afford to stay for three. Appetizers, cupcakes, and a BLT surrounded by beautiful people. I don't fit in. I pay and go. Home again, at last. It's 9:20 and I'm exhausted. Can I go to bed now?

Non-Negotiable

The last guy I sort-of dated was not kind. I don't mean that he was cruel, because he wasn't, at least not until the end, which is understandable, but, still, "kind" was still not a word that I would use to describe him. Distant, yes. Aloof, sure. Kind, no.

Here I am wandering the vast wasteland of dating, and you can wander here for a long, long time, and sometimes I wonder if maybe I should have just found a spot in the wasteland, and set up shelter, and settled in, and made myself at home. What am I looking for, after all? And would I recognize it if I found it? And have I already missed it? And am I too picky?

So, I decided to make a list of the non-negotiables, the things I need from a guy to have in order to set up my tent. Here it is:

1. Kindness.
2. Brains.
3. Happiness.

Oh, it's not a long list, but it's triple the length of the list I had at the beginning of this journey. I used to think I could be happy with a man who was as smart as I am. Isn't that shallow? All I wanted was a giant walking, talking brain. I wanted him to understand me when I said crap like: "This is the winter of my discontent," so that I wouldn't have to explain myself to him all the time, because funny is so much less funny when you have to use the glossary to get to the punchline.

Somewhere along the rocky path of dating, kindness slipped onto my list ahead of brains. The thing about dating really smart people is that sometimes they come with a little bit of scorn. Sometimes they are too busy intellectualizing to remember to be decent. Sometimes, they think that because they carry the enormous burden of having too much going on in their heads, they are excused from the task of remembering to be good to the people around them.

Finally, after stumbling one too many times over the paralyzing rock of depression, I also added happiness to the list. It's a tall order, being smart enough to know about all of the shit that happens in the world, being kind enough to care about it, and being stubborn enough to maintain a core of happiness anyway. I didn't realize that I wanted so much until I wrote it down. No wonder I wander.

How to Feel Old

First, go to your college alumni happy hour, even though you graduated thirteen years ago. Second, try not to make eye contact with the waitress, so you don't get any food or drink for at least half an hour. This will leave you with nothing to do with your hands. Third, arrive late, so there is no more space at the table, and you have to stand awkwardly at the elbows of some young perky alums who are complaining about nearing thirty, and who won't turn around and introduce themselves to you. Finally, be so introverted that you can't find a way to interrupt them to introduce yourself to them.

It wouldn't have been worth paying for parking, but I "accidentally" ate one of the youngster's kobe beef sandwiches. Oops. Except for being tender and delicious, it sure looked like my burger...

I Suck at Naming Things

The first thing I got to name all by myself was the cat my dad gave me for my ninth birthday. Now, when I was nine, I went to a hippie school, where we called our teachers by their first names. A teacher at my hippie school was named Florence, but she always went by Fluffy, and, so in honor of a favorite teacher, I named my cat Fluffy. I still cringe when I write those those words. I named my cat Fluffy. Might as well name a dog Buddy. Which I didn't, by the way. He came with a name.

I did a little better with my second cat, which is a good thing because I had to live with her name for 20 years. I named her Stevie, which I think is a cool name for a girl. Every single vet she ever had used male pronouns with her, but otherwise, it was an OK name. She was named after an obscure British poet however, which wouldn't have been bad, except that even I hadn't read her poems. I always had to explain that she was named after some poet that I didn't know anything about. She was played by Glenda Jackson in the movie. I should have just named the cat Glenda. At least I know who she is.

Anyway, five years ago when I started this blog, I named it "Under Construction" which I thought was clever, because I was writing about going on a Habitat trip where I would be doing construction work. Get it? Yeah. I know. It turns out not to be very clever.

So, here's where you come in. Please, give me a better name to write at the top of this page. I'm getting annoyed with the old one. Thank you for your time.

Character Study

I'll call him Zack Brown, which is not his name, because every time I think of him, I think of him by first and last name.

Zack Brown's mother had two older kids, nine and thirteen, both boys. She got divorced and she remarried, and her second husband also wanted a biological child and so she agreed to have a kid with him, too. When she told us this story, there was very little doubt that, while she loved Zack Brown he was not Her Idea and if he had been Her Idea, he would have been a girl. By "us", I mean the three of us who worked in the toddler room with 2-year-old Zack Brown, the three people, who despite a relatively humane four-to-one toddler-teacher ratio in Oregon, often lost track of her child in the chaos of the room.

We would find him in the kindergarten room down the hall, playing with the big kids. Or, worse, we wouldn't find him, but one of the kindergarten teachers would walk him back to us before we had even noticed his absence. We would find him hidden behind bookcases, climbing on forbidden structures, or crawling behind barricades to find a favorite toy that we had put off limits. One day, our toddler room floor drain backed up, and water seeped into a puddle on the floor. We corralled the kids away from the water, but caring for toddlers is always a little like herding cats, and I remember hearing a slurping sound while I was changing a diaper. I looked up and there was Zack Brown squatting face-down next to the puddle, helping himself to a refreshing drink of sewage. Hands full of diaper, I couldn't even stop him.

His mother took these lapses in oversight with grace. She knew how quickly he could move. "With my older kids, I always liked that stage when they knew how to sit, but they couldn't crawl yet, and you could put them on the floor with some toys and walk away," she said wistfully. "Zack learned how to crawl before he could sit."

We used to take the kids for a morning walk in one of those big, red multiple-seat strollers. There were six kids in the stroller, which required one teacher, and then the other two teachers would hold the hands of whoever needed to walk. We protected the communal nap like lions protecting our young. Without the communal nap, we wouldn't get our breaks. If a kid started to doze in the stroller, we'd pull her out and make her stumble over her own sleepy feet until she woke up again. Zack Brown never slept in the stroller, but we never let him ride, either. We didn't know what we'd do with ourselves if we didn't tire him out enough for him to nap, so we held his hand. Zack Brown was going to sleep, even if one of us had to run with him for the entire walk.

"Please, don't let him sleep too long," begged his mother. "Wake him up after an hour or an hour and a half. I need him to sleep at home." We always agreed to her demands to her face, and we always let him sleep for at least two hours when she wasn't there. We were too worn out to pass up the chance to know where he was for a full two hours.

Zack didn't have to speak. He used pointing and grunts to let his needs be known, or he'd move towards what he wanted and have it in his hands more quickly than we could get it for him. At two, he had so few words, his mother started to worry. "He's smart," we said. "We can tell. Don't worry."

Still, one day, she came in to school excited. "Zack has a word! Watch!" she said, pulling out a piece of drawing paper and a marker. Most of our markers had no ink, because when we weren't looking Zack Brown would stick the tips in his mouth and suck them ferociously until the tip was ghostly white. She found one that worked and began sketching. She drew two circles.

"Ball," said Zack.

We looked at each other. We knew he knew "ball". It was exactly the kind of monosyllabic utilitarian word he had mastered. "Not that," she said, continuing her drawing, connecting her circles, adding a seat, and a set of handlebars.

"Bicycle," said Zack Brown, as clearly as if he had been speaking all of his life, and then he ran off to join the kindergartners.

A Good Day for a Dog

Owning a dog has divided my time in a whole new way. I give you the four times of my life:

1. Times when it is a Bad Time to own a dog.

These are the times when, without question, my life would be happier if I didn't own a dog. (Don't worry. It's OK for me to write these words. Buddy can't read.) The number one time when I'd be happier without a dog is when Buddy has what we call "intestinal problems." I know that writing is enhanced with vivid details, but I just rejected about eight such details as too gross for a family blog. Suffice it to say, that most of these times involve me cleaning and trying not to inhale through my nose.

It is also a Bad Time to own a dog when I want to travel or have a sleep-over. So those two weeks in the summer when I try to get away, and that once-in-a-blue-moon time when I have a sleep-over, it sucks to have a dog.

2. Times when it is a Good Time to own a dog.

Most of these times are in the dog park. On a bright crisp morning in the fall, when he is a black streak against the golden leaves, and everyone else in the dog park is smiling, that's a good time to own a dog.

It's a Good Time to own a dog when your feet are cold in bed, and you are able to push him aside so you can stick your feet in the spot he warmed up for you. It's a Good Time to have a dog when you feel lonely, and you wonder if anyone loves you, and then you glance down at the floor two feet away from you, and he notices your head movement and looks up at you to see what you're thinking.

It's Good to have a dog when you're visiting two-year-olds, and they follow him adoringly, saying "Buddy! Hi, Buddy! Hi!" or "Buddy licks you!" It's especially Good to have a gentle, old lab at these times, because he is trustworthy around kids and realizes that they are his boss, even when they are small and try to climb on top of him.

3. Times when it seems Good to have a dog, but it's really Not

So, I'll admit it. I've tried to use Buddy as a litmus test for dates. I thought he would be able to suss out their true character with his doggy sense. The truth is, Buddy is not picky. He likes anyone who pays attention to him. He is indifferent to anyone who doesn't. So, um, my litmus test is really more of a test to see who likes Buddy than it is a test to see who has a good character.

Similarly, you might think that Buddy would make me safer living alone in the city. Sure Buddy seems like he should be a watchdog/protector with his dark good looks and his rapidly swishing tail, but I don't even want to think about what would happen if someone wanted to kill or maim me and thought to bring a nice juicy steak for Buddy. I'm pretty sure I'd be maimed or killed and Buddy would get a nice little treat. Good for Buddy. Bad for me.

4. Times when it seems like a Bad Time to own a dog, but it's really Good.

Today was one of these times. The dark and the weather were conspiring to make me feel a good hibernation coming on. I got home from work and all I wanted to do was curl up in my bed with a book or a video and not get out again until someone else had scraped off my car in the morning. I dread the next five months, because I don't want to be cold all the time. Still, I had to walk the damn dog, so I pulled my parka out of the closet. I found a hat and wrapped a scarf around my head. Yes, I know. It's not that cold, but I was crabby and I shouldn't have to wear a flimsy fall coat or breathe cold air when I'm crabby. I putzed around as long as I could, and then finally, Buddy would let me put it off no longer, so I hooked on the leash and we walked through the crisp, dark neighborhood. My muscles clenched against the cold, and we walked.

We walked.

It's Good for me to walk, especially when I don't want to. By the end of the walk, my hands were warm, I had lowered my shoulders from around my ears, and I had poked my nose out from the safety of my scarf cocoon. It's not that Bad. We will make it through this winter, too.

I Blame the Recession

Because of tough economic times, NPR did a story about a woman who had drastically reduced her shopping bill by clipping and downloading coupons. I only half-listened, because I'm far too busy and disorganized to remember to use coupons, but at one point I heard her say, "No one should ever pay full price for toothpaste," and as she spoke I remembered that I had once heard that toothpaste brand-loyalty was among the highest of all products. It may have even been second to cigarettes. Anyway, as a consumer, I must be some sort of anomaly because have absolutely no brand-loyalty to toothpaste. I grew up on Tom's all natural chalk-flavored toothpaste, and anyone who can survive Tom's really can use just about anything. If nothing else is around, I'll even use Tom's black licorice-flavored chalk, which is just about the worst thing on Earth.

Or so I thought.

It just so happened that shortly after I heard the story, I ran out of toothpaste. I stood in the aisle at Walgreen's, and as I reached for a box of something (anything) I cursed the fact that I hadn't clipped coupons beforehand, since "no one should ever pay full price for toothpaste," and then I noticed that on the bottom shelf, way below Crest and Colgate and Aquafresh, there was a box of Aim toothpaste for a third of the price of everything else. Aha! I thought. I win! I get cheap toothpaste, and I don't have to carry a coupon to the register. In my excitement at scoring such a good deal, I only briefly wondered why Aim is so much cheaper than any other toothpaste.

I paid my 99 cents, and brought home a shiny new tube of Aim. Remember Aim from your childhood? I didn't, but it turns out that it tastes so bad it makes you want to fill your mouth with the refreshing smell of garlic after brushing. It puckers up the insides of your mouth and dries up your saliva, and leaves you feeling decidedly unclean.

In short, it makes me miss Tom's. And now I have to use it all up, because it doesn't count as saving money if you just toss it in the garbage when you get it home. The final blow was that my 99 cent toothpaste came with a free travel-sized tube of the same crappy stuff. It'll be a year before I can like the taste of my mouth again.

My Pen Pal

I joined Facebook yesterday. This is an experiment. I'm too old for such things, but many of my equally old friends belong, and so I thought I'd give it a try. So far it's a little bit intimidating, because I don't really know what I'm supposed to do there. Anyway, I was examining pictures of my new Facebook-friends (who are all old friends of mine in real life) at the computer in my parents' kitchen, and my mom, who is about as tech savvy as one of our presidential candidates (and not the one she voted for), saw a picture of Barack Obama on my page standing next to one of my actual friends, and she was finally impressed with my social networking prowess, "Oh! Are you Facebook-friends with Barack Obama?!" I said no, but I pointed out that it probably wasn't all that hard to befriend our president-elect on Facebook. However, since he already drove me away from my old yahoo email address by emailing me every day, and since he already turned me, a die-hard phone answerer, into a dedicated call-screener for a full week before the election, I wasn't about to allow him to become my Facebook buddy.

Still, Sarah pointed me to his new transition website and I read through it, and there was a link to make a comment, and suddenly I found myself writing him a letter.

"Dear Mr. President," I wrote, thrilling at the sound of it, "I am writing to thank you for the press conference you participated in this week. I would like to urge you to continue to be open and available to the press. As an American, I have longed for the old days when the president held regular press conferences, and faced the tough questions from the media as a regular course of events. You will make mistakes," (because I'm experienced in making mistakes and I want Obama to benefit from my wisdom), "but don't hide from them. Stand in front of the press and face their questions, because you owe it to the people who voted for you and worked for you and campaigned for you, to meet honestly and often with the media whose job it is to monitor your work."

Or something like that. Anyway, I await his response. This could be the beginning of a beautiful non-Facebook friendship.

The Mouths of Babes

When I admitted that I wouldn't grade their tests because I'd be at a hockey game, the kids asked me who I was going with. I don't usually share my intimate details with students, but I'm a bad liar, and so it slipped out that I was going with a guy before I could think of anything else to say.

"Ooooh," they gasped, shocked that a teacher had allowed that tidbit to escape. "What are you going to wear? Where did you meet? What's his name? What's his name?" It was a spontaneous gossip session and it was sweeter than I thought it would be. Sure, I blushed, and I regretted my inability to hide my life, but their earnest interest was touching.

"Why won't you tell us his name? Just tell us. We don't know him. What does he do? Have you been together long? Does he work here?"

I tried to maintain a little bit of privacy, and I attempted to cut off the questions by answering them as briefly as I could, but I'm still not sure they learned any math that day. One of them said, "Oh, we should stop asking, because what if it doesn't work out?" The innocence of the question caught me off guard, and I said, "Well, I'm thirty-five, and it hasn't worked out yet, so it probably won't," and I laughed, because a date to a hockey game means so much more to a 17-year-old than it does to a woman twice her age, but apparently it still brings out all of the same insecurities.

After class, a quiet, hard-working girl who is so much cooler than I ever was in high school, changed her exit path from the room so that she would walk by me and said, low, so no one else would hear, "You know, my mom was thirty-five when she got married for the first time." She smiled at me, encouragingly.

When I was a kid, there was a teacher in my middle school who was famous for crying. Making Mr. Peterson cry was a badge of honor for a certain population of student. And here I was, accidentally flapping my jaw and allowing an entire classroom full of students to see my soft underbelly, and instead of kicking it they tucked me in with care, protecting my fledgling relationship the way they would protect one of a friend.

The hockey date didn't survive, but he still played a role in making my fifth hour a more fun place to be.

Blog Cheater II

I'm schlipping in this little post. Don't tell anyone.

I got a call from the Red Cross the other day. Note that they called me.

RC: Hello, is this Alex?
AL: Yes, it is.
RC: I was calling to see if you could schedule a time to come in and donate blood.
AL: Well, I'm a teacher, so I'm pretty busy during the week. Do you have any weekend times?
RC: Let me check. What's your phone number?
I paused. Remembered automatic dialing machines. Gave my number.
RC: And what's your zip code?
Hmm? Didn't the phone number allow you to look me up on your computer? Guess not. I gave them the zip code, too.
RC: And what's your name?
You mean the name you called me when you called me on my phone with my number?
RC: And when did you want to donate?
AL: On the weekend?
RC: Oh. We don't have any weekend times.

Solitary

"Oh, yes," said a woman at the party, when I told her where I work. "I used to know someone who worked at that school. She taught there for one year, and then she quit teaching." She caught my look. "Oh, but I don't think it was the school," she said too quickly. "I think she was just done with teaching."

I nodded. Sure. It probably had nothing to do with the lack of windows or collegiality. She was probably just done teaching. Who makes big decisions like quitting your career just because you're isolated in a concrete box for ten hours a day?

Best Day Ever

I woke up, and hopped out of bed without pushing snooze, just like I did when I was a kid on mornings when I knew that there would be a stocking hung by the chimney with care. I walked Buddy down to the polling station. Too early to vote, but I wanted to see if there was a line. It was 6:10. Usually, the park is abandoned except for us and a skittish greyhound named Hooch with his owner. Today there was a line beginning to form. It was nearly an hour early, and it was ridiculously early in the morning, but there was a line. Hooch's owner met us on the other side of the park. He said he was on his way to vote. He's an under 40 city-dweller with tattoos who adopts retired greyhounds. I felt pretty good about his vote.

I stopped by the Baker's Wife for a little sustenance on the way to work and was disappointed to see that they were out of my favorite croissants. I was about to settle for a donut when Gary walked out with a tray full of croissants, still warm from the oven. I nearly cried when that first warm, flaky bite melted in my mouth. This was really and truly going to be the Best Day Ever.

My lesson was dull and my students were all keyed up (or absent), but they just weren't part of the Best Day Ever, so I ignored them. I also ignored the fact that my classroom is a windowless, stiffling box. Not part of the Best Day Ever.

I had time to make cookies after voting (which was a breeze at my precinct), and so I loaded them fresh from the oven into Tupperware to be consumed by election partiers. After a slow and tedious process of watching CNN's ridiculous coverage with too many strangers, I finally got too tired, and drove home. In the car, the calm and thorough voices of NPR soothed me through the reporting of California, Oregon and Washington. They were the ones who finally called the election for me, confirming that I was right this morning when I took my first bite of croissant. This really was the Best Day Ever.

Absolute Value: The Shower for Numbers

If you're clean when you go into the shower, you're clean when you get out:
|6| = 6

If you're dirty when you go into the shower, you're clean when you get out:
|-6| = 6

If you take a shower, and then you get dirty right away, well, then, you're dirty:
-|-6| = -6

Three of my 12 algebra kids failed first quarter. This wretched rate of success brought to you by absenteeism and a history of low expectations and failure. One of the three has decided to change schools. I'm putting on paper (er...pixels) right now that the other two will pass this quarter, if I have to drag their sorry butts to class myself. I mean, seriously, if you can't pass algebra when I hand you the number shower, when are you going to pass?

Oh, and PS, stop calling me. I'm not going to answer. I promise to vote. I would even if I didn't get free ice cream or coffee for it.

(shh...i'm dancing in the streets.)

A friend wrote to invite me to watch the election returns at her house. She said that when it was over we could dance in the streets. Or something else she didn't want to think about.

I read an article in the New York Times about Democrats who were so worried that the polls keep saying that Obama is ahead, they are afraid to even look at them any more.

On Saturday Night Live, Ben Affleck talked about working for Jimmy Carter's reelection when he was a kid. He said that he worked for Mondale and campaigned for Dukakis. Then he supported Tsongas against Clinton. Of course he endorsed Gore and then Kerry. I'm not one of those Ben Affleck lovers, but he connected with me last night. He and I are about the same age. We've lived through the same painful defeats. We've survived the Clinton age of compromise. We've been afraid to hope because our losses have been so epic.

I keep reading and rereading the polls, and I feel for those angsty New York liberals. I can't take another four years of hell. My heart isn't strong enough for another heartbreak. This one would be the worst of all, too, because my votes for Kerry and Gore were really just votes against Bush. Obama was the one that I wanted from the very beginning. Please, please, just let me dance in the streets this one time.

There Goes my Productivity

My iPod has games on it.

(Half of you just wondered what I need with an iPod. The correct answer is podcasts. Mine may be the only one in the country with an empty music folder. If you want free podcast recommendations, however, I can help you out. It took me a while to warm up to them, but lately, I've been feeling pretty close to the folks over at the Slate Political Gabfest. Oh, and The Moth makes me laugh and cry and gasp at the sounds coming out of my earbuds. Radio Lab is the best thing on public radio and it's way easier to get it as a podcast than it is to try to figure out how to listen to the radio at 2:00 in the afternoon during the week. Now I just have to wait for the new season to start.

Anyway, podcasts don't interfere with the rest of my life, because I take them with me when I walk Buddy. I do that thing where I meet people on the street and barely nod because I'm all caught up in my iPod. Yes, I do the very thing that always used to make me fear for our civil society.)

Remember having Tetris on your brain? Remember packing your moving van, and feeling like you really could use one of those T-shaped blocks to wedge on the side next to your couch? Remember imagining artwork and books sliding together on your wall, so it would disappear?

Well, Vortex is my new Tetris. Last night my closed eyes covered up imaginary balls dropping into a tunnel and blocks twisting below them. Oh, dear. This does not bode well for accurate end-of-quarter grades for my students tomorrow.

Wordle Never Lies

You know, it turns out this blog is about the other guy. This whole time I thought it was so obvious that Barack Obama was my candidate that I haven't gone around shouting "Barack Obama" to the rooftops of the world, but it turns out that without even meaning to I mention that other, more spiteful, one a lot. In fact, he comes up nearly as often as my two favorite words: thinking and busy. Here's the proof.

I'm Really a Giant Nerd

How excited was I that I was finally able to get this to work for my calculus discussion board about homework help questions? Don't ask. It's too embarrassing. It's quite possible that I high-fived myself...but at least it wasn't a high-π, which is just about the nerdiest thing I've ever done in public.

Too Busy to Blog

So, I've been busy with teaching. Not bad busy, just busy. Too busy for important things like blogging.

I will not, however, be too busy to vote on November 4, despite what you may think after watching this video, which amused me, even though it was yelling at me to vote. Yelling at the woman who even voted for school board members and shoe-ins in the primary. Funny. And is that how you spell "shoe-in"? Probably not.

What Else Not to Do

If your kid bombs a test, don't call the teacher and complain that the test was too hard. Don't try to sit down with the teacher so she can explain to you why she only does easy examples in class and only puts hard questions on the test. What are you trying to accomplish? Anyway?

Other People

I was walking through the dog park today and I realized with some surprise that for once in my life, my thoughts were with other people. Don't worry. I'm not giving up my self-absorbtion for good, but today, for one day, I'm thinking about somebody else for a change.

I'm thinking about how I hope the weather is good in Washington DC today, because Lisa is getting married to Nick there today, and I don't know Lisa or Nick, but I've grown to care about them from reading Lemon Gloria regularly, so I hope their ceremony is beautiful because it matters to Lisa, who is so happy to have found Nick she can't stop crying.

On my morning walk with Buddy, my thoughts also turned to T, who accidentally participated in a home-birth this week, successfully delivering a baby girl, despite unsuccessfully making it out of the house and to the hospital. Who knew she'd follow in our hippie-mothers' footsteps and deliver in her own bedroom?

And finally, I've been thinking of John McCain, only not in any sort of a deep way. Thinking of John McCain deeply hurts my feelings. No. I've just been thinking about how he said that he looked into Putin's eyes and he just saw three letters - K, G, and B. Now, if you know me in real life, and you haven't seen the letters under my eyes, then ask me to show them to you some day. This week I've been showing them off to my students because we're all sharing our stupid human tricks lately. So anyway, l've been imagining Putin with veins under his eyes spelling out KGB, and it's been making me giggle a little bit.

That last paragraph was sort of about me, wasn't it? OK, back to me me me. Carry on.

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.