set alarm for 6:15 AM

"What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in and out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?'" - Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

usually i roll out of bed at 8:30, giving me 15 minutes to throw on clothes and get to work by 9.

but now (*drum roll*) i have to get to my middle school by 7:30 AM!!! this is insane. i need to figure out how take my caffeine in the mornings intravaneously. coffee wont be enough! especially since ive been staying up until the wee hours of the morning reading the sportswriter and watching family guy .

but alas there is good news!

the reason i will be at my middle school so early is because the student i want to tutor is willing to get up early himself and take the public bus to school 40 minutes before the bell rings so i can spend time tutoring him. we are talking about a student who at the beginning of the semester didn't even want to show up to class!

this is so very exciting. i have hope!

so under the theme of "hope" im posting a photo taken after brad hawpe's home run during game 4 of the world series. hey that gave me hope too! and hope is all i need with my caffeine.

observations

last week in my 8th grade class i attempted to help a student write a paragraph. it became instantly clear that this student does not know the sounds of letters in the English alphabet. he is 13 years old and an ESL learner. the rest of the class is reading at about a 5th grade level and they are entering 9th grade next year. the class moves on, and many students (though not all) are improving every day with reading and writing. yet this particular student is left so far behind. its a sobering glimpse at the reality of our public education system and the challenges ahead for me, as a future teacher. as if i dont have enough going on, ive spoken to this student and im going to start tutoring him in the early mornings and on the weekends. i have no experience tutoring an ESL learner. my idea is just to start learning the sounds of the letters by using flashcards combined with reading out loud (a combo of phonics and whole language learning).

for my final school project, ive submitted a proposal to my professor to let me write a short book or story designed for students like the one im tutoring. i think im going to base it on the story of julius casear, since SuperDork is a roman history buff and i think this story will have special meaning to the student im tutoring. the books in the class written for students with low reading proficiency are horrendous! such as a "play" based on a king of the hill episode. i love king of the hill...but im not sure of its literary value!

im still humored by my students' quirks such as: "sneaking" a bulk-size bag of cheetos into class via an oversized backpack-- a bag almost the size of the student himself. or wearing house slippers to school and grandma's rosary as a necklace. they are also thoughtful kids. in one class discussion they all agreed the U.S. should help poor countries "even if they can never help us back." they just think other people should not be allowed to suffer. period. my students would make good world leaders.

in my other job, really interesting projects are emerging. like a "chapter" ill be co-authoring with my boss (due at the end of december!) and our design competition. im trying to figure out a way to keep working AND finish up my content-area requirements for my teacher certification.

meanwhile, im slowly recovering from the red sox's defeat of the rockies sunday night. its hard to hate the red sox too much since they have such charasmatic players. like kevin youklis (the girly hitter straight out of "deliverance"), man ram ("i think ill just live here at the ritz"), coco crisp ("i think ill jump backwards 12 feet in the air to catch this"), dustin pedroia ("i am short but awesome") and curt schilling ("i am god.") my obsession with the playoffs and world series was a major time commitment. something like 5 hours a day...watching BASEBALL.

jesus walks.

this music video is so powerful, especially the opening segment... love kanye west.

hello mother.

"Most women would be threatened by Betsy (the guitar), but not me. I don't care. I'd like to see that guitar come home and chicken fry a steak after substitute teaching all day." - Peggy Hill

for my one devoted reader (my mother) i think it is high time i post an entry to my blog.

its been about a month now. in that time i have: been to washington d.c., where i walked appx. 20 miles from house to senate offices in shoes that were entirely too big. i have been to maryland where i drank scotch like it was water and watched civil war reenactments. i began my classroom observation at The Perfect Middle School. there, i have learned a few tips from middle schoolers that adults might find useful:

- every 45 minutes run outside in circles and scream. then quietly and sanely return to desk.
- relocate waist line of jeans to the knees and secure with belt. long, long shirt strongly advised.
- wear one golf glove at all times, even when not golfing.
- run with eyes focused on feet. beware of doors.
- carry lolly pops in pocket (in bulk).
- spend weekends watching leprechaun 1 and leprechaun 2. then eat a lolly pop and watch leprechaun 3 and leprechaun 4.
- call anybody over the age of 20 "mister" (regardless of gender)

my class is great, really. i love the kids, and the teacher has this eerie power to prevent virtually all discipline problems. im taking many notes.

in addition, Super Dork and i have been drinking limoncello and pondering life... as in where we will be living a year or so from now, whether our respective gene pools will one day agree to a merger, and where our next vacation will be. i vote japan. he votes ireland. if all else fails, we will flee to destinations from our childhood: the beaches of new jersey , or road trip to washington dc in a minivan.

thats all for now. fall in austin is becoming quite nice.

p.s. go rockies !

gloomy gray windowpane

“Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world”- Grace Paley

I recently dusted off my copy of the collected stories of grace paley . she was a pacifist, an anarchist, and an all-around rabble-rouser, whose activism grew more energized with age. Ive only read the first few stories, but already I am amazed by how she could craft a bizarre and intriguing tale out of a dirty dish rag, or an old woman's memories of youth. she was a master of developing a plot around the lassitudes of habit and domestication. Yet the gloom and doom of every story has an element of magical realism. In one of the stories, a divorced couple have a peculiar encounter in the ex-wife's new apartment, in which she is revealed as a two-timer and he is revealed as a misanthrope obsessed with his biceps. When they depart from their meeting, he cartwheels down the street, into the sunshine.

bizarre! i love it!

speaking of bizarre, im not sure what is strangest about this story from sports illustrated ... the fact that an Oklahoma football fan tried to castrate a Texas football fan, or the fact that both of them had their respective team fight songs "programmed" into their car horns. i need to save this story for one of my future short stories. too weird to make up!

yoga was a disappointment today, but my turkey and avodaco sandwich at sweetish hill was not.

p.s. who let peter gabriel into the ACL fest?

no, i will not water my buffalo grass!

so today i learned that my dream of indoctrinating young minds is still yet a distant dream. apparently i need to take about FIVE more english classes in order to be certified to teach at the high school level. im stressed out now because i was planning to begin student teaching in january. now i will have to take all these classes. on the upside, i will be able to take english classes which is something i love. then again, i will be unemployed while i do this, which is something i dont love. well maybe that is a lie. last time i was unemployed all i did was watch king of the hill and drink cheap wine at noon. it was the best four months of my life.

speaking of teaching aspirations, my friend sent me this from mad tv:



Me and SuperDork -- in our neverending quest to one day own a house large enough so we dont have to store our cereal on top of our dryer -- visited the new mueller development in east austin. it will be a little slice of suburbia in central austin, with much lower prices per square foot than the hyde park and rosedale bungalows we love. the salespeople were a little creepy though. they thought we might jump at the opportunity to own a house with a view of "the parade of homes"! not sure what that is exactly, but it seems a bit peacocky to me. mueller is supposed to follow a "new urbanist" concept, which emphasizes walkability, high density, and residential mixed with retail. i just cant figure out how mueller's new chair king store fits into the progressive development scheme. then, i read this in the austin chronicle, which squashed my dreams of sitting out on my unwatered front lawn in my antiwar t-shirt and rainbow shorts:

Another concern recently raised by some potential home buyers is the need to revisit the restrictive homeowner association covenants that will govern residents. Austinite Tiffany Hamburger sees "freedom of expression" problems with the 134-page Mueller Master Community Covenant, an appendix to the Master Development Agreement that uses boilerplate language taken from suburban models. "How will these [restrictive covenants] be reconciled with the 'Keep Austin Weird' ethos?" echoes Prentiss Riddle, a potential Mueller homeowner. He notes that in other HOAs, covenants have been interpreted to forbid yard art, wildflowers, unwatered buffalo grass in August, unmarried or gay couples, anti-war signs, and rainbow flags.

not sure if i want to live in this society of home parades and plentiful chairs, where i have to water my buffalo grass and may not be able to raise a water buffalo (as fresh-mozzarella enthusiasts do). i would much rather live here and be within walking distance to maria's kitchen .

domesticated despair

"At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily." - Flannery O'Connor

much has happened in the last few days. most notably, i finally visited the zoo down the street from our house...also known by some as the local high school. i was actually enchanted by its zoo-ness. restless teenagers roaming, communicating with eachother with rumbling noises, meerkat calls, and bee dances. (communication rituals that proceed feeding time at the cafeteria, it seems). at lunch, they nibble doritos from eachothers' hair and drink Cherry Coke by the gallon.

the school i visited is HUGE-- something like 4,000 students. the campus is a tangle of hallways and for awhile i thought i would never escape the theater department. all in all, the kids were charming, loud, and quirky as all kids are. the teachers on the other hand:

DEPRESSED!

wide-eyed, hair-on-ends, shirts untucked, their Keds worn down to the soles.

these are all first impressions, of course. the experience at least reconfirmed my desire to teach, to get away from the stare-at-my-computer-for-8-hours-a-day lifestyle. such despair! or as Flannery O'Connor put it, a despair that has been domesticated and made happy. well, for me the daily grind really isnt so bad. but to be in a classroom seems so much more.... interesting (even if i find myself wearing Keds).

in other news, i had class last night. we had a discussion about bibles and military recruiters in schools. everyone agreed that neither should be allowed. we also discussed the new "mandatory moment of silence" required after saying the pledge in a texas classroom. strange law to be coming from our very LOUD, and very tightly-wound texas legislature.

not sure how ill survive this semester. by december i have to...

for school:
-complete a final project
-finish 25 hours of observation
-prepare for student teaching
-pass competency exams for my subject(s)

for work:
-co-write a book chapter with my boss
-organize events to be held in different texas cities
-pull off another fundraiser

plus i still must find time to rest and watch my netflix, of course! SuperDork and i watched the gospel of judas last night-- extremely interesting. judas, the "villain", has been redeemed! i love when that happens.

happy birthday to me

the universe celebrated my birthday by raining ancient meteors upon the earth!

the people of chile celebrated my birthday by insigating a peoples' revolution!

the american cancer society celebrated my birthday by kicking off a universal healthcare campaign

my dad celebrated my birthday by requesting the performer sing "somewhere over the rainbow" at a bar in new york. apparently thats my song. im sure eggs and tomatoes were thrown.

Super Dork celebrated my birthday by buying me a gift, he says. (i speculate it is something like Tolstoy's collection of letters, or the audio version of Ulysses, or maybe a workbook explaining the theory of relativity.) YES!

i celebrated my birthday with a "down south burger" and lemon meringue pie at the frisco shop (also known as the nighthawk). sadly, the nighthawk-- the only place in austin where: bouffant hairdoos are still the rage, a heaping ball of butter is served with everything, and you are guaranteed to be called "hon" -- may soon be turned into a walgreens!

two years ago...

"The family huddled on the platforms, silent and fretful. The water was six inches deep in the car before the flood spread evenly over the embankment and moved into the cotton field on the other side. During that day and night the men slept soddenly, side by side on the boxcar door. And Ma lay close to Rose of Sharon. Sometimes Ma whispered to her and sometimes sat up quietly, her face brooding. Under the blanket she hoarded the remains of the store bread.
The rain had become intermittent now--little wet squalls and quiet times. On the morning of the second day Pa splashed through the camp and came back with ten potatoes in his pockets. Ma watched him sullenly while he chopped out part of the inner wall of the car, built a fire, and scooped water into a pan. The family ate the steaming boiled potatoes with their fingers. And when this last food was gone, they stared at the gray water; and in the night they did not lie down for a long time."
- The Grapes of Wrath

Two years ago today, Hurricane Katrina drowned the Louisiana Gulf Coast. I wasn't there, but the storm had an impact on my life because since 2005, I have interviewed several Katrina survivors. I still keep in touch with them. Its hard to believe its been two years since the storm, because the lives of those I interviewed have changed very little since they first came here by bus with nothing but the stained clothes they wore, and a handful of family photos (if they were lucky). They are still walking a very fine line between security and destitution. These families use grandmother's SSI disability checks to pay the energy bill. They go without necessities such as nutritious food and eye glasses, just so they can make rent. Their lives are like the salvaged photographs taped on the living room walls: torn, blurred, water stained. Yet something recognizable remains. Or it could, if we as citizens demanded our government provide the kind of significant recovery assistance that is necessary for people to recover from total and utter destruction.

As President Bush parades around New Orleans, offering nothing but false promises as he has done over the last two years, thousands of survivors remain in Texas. Their futures are very uncertain and they have been offered few opportunities for long-term recovery. They are on the fringes economically, politically, and physically. The evacuees I interviewed live in apartments on the far edges of Austin-- neighborhoods that have long been racially segregated. When survivors were left to fend for themselves at the Superdome or on the desolate highway to Metairie, that was only the beginning of the abandonment. Most families have long ago lost their FEMA assistance, and they have just become part of the anonymous working poor. They were poor in New Orleans, but now they have no history, no connections, no social foundation. How can President Bush fly from Washington to New Orleans and announce today that he sees "a more blessed day ahead"?

So that is what Im thinking about as my birthday approaches.

c2 = a2 + b2

lately i have been having nightmares about all the formulas associated with triangles. square this. half that. radius this times this. unlike my husband who does physics for ... fun?... i avoid math like the plague, bill o'reilly, and mopac during rush hour. the reason for the nightmares then, is the fact that i am taking the GRE on monday. i can breeze through the vocab, reading comp, and writing, but math kills. it kills! so please pray for me.

turning 28 in exactly one week. 28, almost 30. which means, of course: almost 40 and then almost dead. feeling our age, my friend and i are pondering the idea of getting some quick PhDs at university of phoenix online and writing the next bestseller self-help book.

there are things to be happy for, however. little new family members are arriving in my husband's (Super Dork's) family: neices, nephews, etc. they are helping populate the earth with future physicists, musicians, and all-around geniuses. (meanwhile, i dont know if i correctly spelled "geniuses" mmmmm....)

Super Dork and i are notoriously cheap. yet we are pondering an art purchase. first major purchase since we bought 10 gallons of pickled jalapenos at costco.

its a lithograph by willie cole we found in a gallery in ABQ. he is an african american artist whose works are based on the form of an iron -- an image which i believe evokes the women before him who were domestic workers. his art embodies their spirit. he also creates sculptures that follow this theme: one for example is constructed of egg 'beaters' that resemble African sculpture and which were carved out of two large sections of porch post. the litograph we love is made with irons to form a vibrant brown and orange sunflower.

the question is: do we have to own it to appreciate it?

Look West.

“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit”. - Edward Abbey

On being footloose in the West...

"It should not be denied. . . that being footloose has always exhilarated us. it is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led West."

-Wallace Stegner, The American West as Living Space

Returning to the quiet, habitual life is strange after living two weeks in the Southwest, high on mountain air and red rock. Our trip from New Mexico to Colorado to Utah to Nevada was wild. We hiked the Jemez Mountains in New Mexico and came across unexcavated Anasazi ruins, littered with ancient pottery shards. The back roads from Georgia O'Keefe's "Ghost Ranch" to Taos took us to reservation towns consisting of wind-battered general stores that sell nothing but hard liquor. In Colorado, we stayed in an old silver mining town and ascended almost 3,000 vertical feet to the summit of Twin Peaks. We scaled rocks. I complained that I would rather be poolside with a martini (It was a lie). The descent was so intense we basically just slid down. In Zion, we "hiked" through water knee-deep into "The Narrows" and searched for snails the size of pencil points that only live on Utah rocks protruding from the Virgin River.

We took the burnt-orange Tin Can On Wheels that we rented from Hertz to places we didnt think it could go: the Mojave Desert, the Rio Grande gorge, to uncharted roads in Utah, through the Rocky Mountain switchbacks in the rain, and then finally (when both the car and us were covered in dust), down the Las Vegas strip. Las Vegas was a stark reminder of the absurdity of unbridled American consumerism. Its a plastic city weighed down by smog. Every show promises "A Good Time!" and tired midwestern families will pay whatever it takes for a piece of it. Watered-down Las Vegas margaritas from foot-long glasses cost $20. But there are up-sides: In the Vegas airport I made 50% on my money at the slot machine! Of course, I only gambled $5-- coming out with $7.50. All the casinos and shops are indoors and air conditioned. In short, Las Vegas is where Americans go to be stimulated and refrigerated.

Compared to the West, Austin is humid, flat, and civilized. The brilliant book I read on the trip ("Into the Wild") has inspired future adventures. Its time for another trip-- but this time not a vacation. Im plotting an escape route that will take us somewhere far away for more than just a few weeks...

the lesser-traveled road we'll take.

if you are looking for me, this is where i will be.

blogger life

Im not sure where to begin. And what is a "blog" anyways? A long, continuous, uneventful e-autobiography that nobody reads but oneself? Perhaps. One of my favorite writers, Roald Dahl ("Witches"), once quipped: "An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details." So that is the title of my blog: "boring details."

It begins a little less-boring than usual, because in less than 24 hours, ill be on a west-bound plane (to new mexico!) somehow my husband finagled first-class seats, which also means ill be on my third glass of champagne. (who cares if its before noon? im taking full advantage of all that 'first class' has to offer).

my colleague was so kind to lend me his vast collection of new mexico travel books, and to highlight for me the winding mountain road from Canones to Cuba, new mexico. the destination? an unknown little restaurant called El Bruno. also on the agenda:

- an extended visit with friends in ABQ
- hot springs in the jemez mountains
- the santa fe opera (cossi fan tutti)
- "ghost ranch" (home and beloved landscape of georgia o'keefe)
- durango, colorado (mesa verde national park)
- a cabin (sans running water and electricity) outside cedar city, utah
- sin city, nevada
- also i hear there is a place in taos that sells "green chili beer" which to me sounds like the perfect concoction.

i have to say, there is no place i love better than the southwest. ive traveled some, but never to anyplace so eerily breathtaking as northern new mexico. (and i am including the albuquerque airport! i swear, the adobe-style airport is full of beautiful people adorned in turquoise jewlery, all eating chalupas.)

until later ciao...