Summer Wine Groove #3

Can you believe it has been more than two years since I invented the Summer Wine Groove, and this is only the third? Unacceptable. But my shrink has me doing EFT tapping. (Look it up.) I tap, and I say (yes, out loud), "even though I haven't posted a Summer Wine Groove in two years, I completely and totally accept myself." You can put anything in the "even though" part. For instance, you could say, "even though I just blew $100 on eye cream when I have 17 eye creams in my bathroom already. . ." or "even though I pathetically still miss my ex from 5 years ago. . ." or "even though I squeal like a girl every time I see a bug. . ." or "even though I just ate four candy bars in a row. . ." or "even though I just elbowed that woman in the stomach to get to the guacamole. . ." or "even though I deleted the baby's favorite movie from the DVR to make room for episodes of House Hunters I've seen three times, (especially if HH International). . ." or "even though I got caught dancing to the dumbest song ever by the father of my student, who is, by the way, a Baptist preacher of the Footloose variety. . ." Not that I have ever done any of these things. Not at all.

Here are the reasons I love white wine. 
1) Nobody else does, and I want to be an iconoclast standing alone on a mountainside.
2) South African Chenin Blanc
3) New Zealand Sauvys
4) Torrontes
5) Albariño
6) Picpoul de Pinet
7) People who only like red are wine poseurs.
8) I associate white wine with heat and beaches. Who doesn't like heat? Who doesn't like beaches??

Anyway. For instrux on how to do this (the Summer Wine Groove, not the EFT), see the first: http://mommysortof.blogspot.com/2011/06/summer-wine-groove-1.html?m=1

Today's wine is a South African Chenin Blanc (with a touch of Viognier) called Essay. I don't know if there are other years, but I'm drinking the 2012. I am in love with it. $9, people. Alright, maybe $10. The song is "Fences" by Peas. Sounds silly I know, but it is some good shit. Enjoy.

Flash Truth

So, I have about fifteen minutes, but was thinking of my friend, Everett, who writes a lot of flash fiction. I like flash fiction because during the school year I'm too busy to read a book. By that I mean that I sit and read chapters 1-6 or something, and by the time I have another moment to read it is months later, and I've forgotten everything that happened. So I start again, but I remember what happened enough to be bored of reading it a second time. The entire reading process is wrecked for me thusly. So: flash fiction. I don't know if the flash refers to the time it takes to write or the time it takes to read or both. I would like to make some, but I have no imagination, so here is some flash truth:

1) Ari won't let me pick him up before 5:30 because they are outside until then, and he refuses to come home when he is outside playing. Today I was early and decided to pick up waffles to kill time because we were down to our last one. B had the same idea, and now we are the proud owners of approximately six thousand waffles.

2) One time I asked B to send me this song on Spotify, but she accidentally posted it to Facebook instead. We were in the car, which made it hard to delete the post because the app is so imperfect. She managed to delete it, but then it still kept showing up in the feed. Then of course, she couldn't click on it to further delete it, since it was gone (but still there). Maddening! "I'm going to kill myself," she said. And I knew just what she meant, and we laughed and laughed. If that's not marriage, people, then what is? Don't give me your one man one woman malarkey. A marriage can be a bunch of queer-mos and our house-guests. 

3) When I was 14, I had a Walkman, and on long car rides I listened to Sinead O'Connor's The Lion and the Cobra. One time my mom borrowed it to see what all the fuss was about. She listened for about 11 seconds and then said, "no wonder you're so miserable all the time."

4) I want to buy a decanter. First, however, I must tell all the world how I feel about stemless wineglasses:

no. 

I do not like them, Sam-I-Am. They may look good, but humans are warm-blooded creatures, and our hands are hot all the time, and wine should not be. Even reds should be chilled. Of course we all know this, since only smart people read this blog, but you may not have realized that in order to keep wine chilled during the time it takes to drink, you must not touch the glass! Because you! Are a burning goddamned sun, a world of heat, a toxic lava flow! That's right, you. So not only must you not use, purchase, or otherwise encourage the existence of stemless wine glasses, but you must also hold the proper, stemmed wineglass by the stem, with your pinky out like the queer-mo you know you are, so that your hot little hands don't touch the bowl within which the wine sits. Just do that, ok, and nobody gets hurt. And tell me what decanter to buy. 

Here are some humorous decanter reviews I encountered. I must admit that when Amazon suggested stemless wine glasses to me while I was looking to decant, I almost wrote a review of my own all about what they could do with their stemless, poseur wine glasses.

5) In this gum container, under the leaves, is a six-day-old caterpillar carcass, which I have been bullied into preserving, all gross-and-creepy-like, by a five-year-old. Sigh. 

6) This is on my porch, bitches. Tell me you're not jealous.

The end.

Shakespearean Comedy

In my 7th grade English class we're reading Midsummer, and I give the students summarizing and paraphrasing assignments which they have to do in class (no SparkNotes) with the footnotes in their book and a dictionary.

Before I get to the fun part of shit my students write, I must pause to discuss how I feel about teachers who dress up and dance and sing to try to get kids into Shakespeare. I do not like it. Shakespeare sells itself. All that bother is patronizing. Kids don't need a clown suit to like literature. You can't force a kid to like something, anyway. You can only get them to look at it, and then only some of the time. But if you wear a clown suit and dance, then all the kid is going to love is you--the teacher, not the text. And we all know that's wrong.

Now: here are some entertaining translations by my students, who I am proud to say, have gotten really good.

Oberon: "And Helena of Athens look thou find:
All fancy-sick she is and pale of cheer,
With sighs of love, that costs the fresh blood dear:
By some illusion see thou bring her here:
I'll charm his eyes against she do appear."

Student summary: "Helena's so love sick she can't handle it, and she's totally let herself go and looks bad like whoa, so Oberon wants to cast a spell to make her look better to whichever dude she loves. (I forget which one it is in this act.)"

Puck: "My mistress with a monster is in love. 

Near to her close and consecrated bower, 

While she was in her dull and sleeping hour, 

A crew of patches, rude mechanicals, 

That work for bread upon Athenian stalls, 

Were met together to rehearse a play."

Student paraphrase: "My queen has fallen in love with some lowlife because he and his idiotic, ghetto friends were practicing their play near her special bed, and she woke up and saw him and didn't seem to mind that he (coincidentally) had the head of a donkey." (This one lost a point because she included more information than was in the lines, which is technically not paraphrasing.)

Oberon: "Here comes my messenger. 

How now, mad spirit!

What night-rule now about this haunted grove?"

Student paraphrase: "Oh, good, it's Puck. So, you crazy kid! What's going on in this nut house?"

Oberon: "What hast thou done? thou hast mistaken quite

And laid the love-juice on some true-love's sight:

Of thy misprision must perforce ensue

Some true love turn'd and not a false turn'd true."

Student paraphrase: "You put the love juice on the wrong person, and that is bad."

Puck: "Captain of our fairy band,

Helena is here at hand;

And the youth, mistook by me,

Pleading for a lover's fee.

Shall we their fond pageant see?

Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

Student paraphrase: "My king! Helena is here. So let's watch her and her lover make a scene! These people are so stupid I can't believe it."

Clock

So, here is how it went down. There was a power outage in my school in the middle of the night. We all showed up at work to a downed server and no a/c, but! This was not the most annoying thing. The annoying thing was The Clocks. They were wrong. All of them. Mine, too!

Do you know any sixth graders? Actually it was the seventh graders who were difficult, as usual. The sixth graders were normal human creatures about the whole thing. "Ms. S," they said, "your Clock is wrong." "Yes, I know. Thank you." It was annoying to have to say it approximately 90 times (once for each sixth grader), but it was doable. And I felt a sense of accomplishment as I did it because I knew that particular sixth grader would not mention The Clock again, what with my evil glare. They read face. Seventh graders? No way. My seventh graders have a special kind of maturity, one which makes them crazy insanos for however long it lasts. By the time they came in, I had a routine. I began each period with a brief announcement about The Clock, the cause of its incorrect time, and the approximate time of its repair. I had a visual aid. This worked with the sixth graders. They all nodded knowingly, and there was some whispered gossip about The Clock, and then that was the end of it. The seventh graders ignored my spiel, came up and told me "The Clock is WRONG, Ms. S!" Or! Even worse--didn't know that it was wrong even though that was ALL WE TALKED ABOUT THE ENTIRE 48 MINUTES of my supposed English class. Honors English, mind you.

The ones who didn't know it was wrong were the real misery. They kept looking at it. Teachers freaking hate it when you look at The Clock. Non-teacher equivalent hatred does not even exist in this world. So I just don't know what to tell you. Use your imaginations, people. One student, let's call him Xerxes (because I need a rare name to protect self from anyone knowing whom I'm talking about), said to me, "Ms. S, The Bell's about to ring." Of course you people all know that this is another thing teachers hate. When they decide The Bell is about to ring and that they get to pack up their stuff and stop learning and shit. Yo. It is just rude. But I suppose it's silly to count on a middle schooler for manners. This one, this Xerxes, has many clones who do the same. They think the clock is right!!! Even though it is 1.75 hours slow! And further! They do not even notice the short hand is pointed at the wrong number! So it says 11:45, and The dumb Bell (hideous interruption) rings at 1:49, and this Xerxes and all his clones think The Bell is about to ring because in addition to having not noticed the prior 30 minutes of class which were, naturally, all about The Clock being wrong, they can. not. read. In my English class! Oh, and! It isn't even reading! It is telling time. There are no letters. OMG. I may explode here, just writing this. Help. The incredulity is all that I am and all I have become.

So, anyway. I can barely bring myself to continue this story because it is so frustrating, but I shall trod gamely forward, for the sake of my three readers. Anyway, I know that you cannot fathom such a thing, but it gets worse. Meaning, specifically, that Xerxes and his clones, once they have been informed for the 3803802359th time that The Clock is wrong and that The Bell is emphatically NOT going to ring right now because it wouldn't dare, continue to not understand. As in: they have further questions. What do they ask? Oh, you know, the things we have already said ten thousand times. 1) Is The Clock wrong? 2) Why is The Clock wrong? 3) When will The Clock be right again? 4) Are you sure? and so on. And now I think that I have switched verb tense inappropriately somewhere up there, which I am obviously opposed to, but that is how upset I am, remembering this horror.

My students are so eager for the bell to ring that by this point you probably think I'm a bad teacher. I'm not. I am seriously not. But learning is Hard. Teaching is Hard. Learning something new or even something quirked erases your previous self and draws a new one. Learning hurts. It should.

The end.

Cat Food

I have this friend at work whose name I do not know. We're very close. (Shut up.) She's a para(educator), and we proctored a test together at the beginning of the school year. Like every traumatic experience, this one brought us closer. And like every test that needs a proctor, this one was several days long. The extent of our friendship, because we are teachers, is a rushed exchange when we pass on our way to or from the bathroom, on days we're lucky enough to have time to go. In this manner, a little at a time, I've learned all about her cat. Due to time limitations and the cat's Highly Dramatic Life, my friend and I don't really talk about anything else.

I first learned the cat (whose name I forget) is a he. (Have I mentioned I suck with names?) I learned a couple of weeks later that the cat had trouble using the litter box and was peeing on the floor. I made a couple of suggestions, and they worked. (New litter box, new location, for those of you who wonder.) Of course, now we were super BFFs. First proctoring, then I stopped her cat peeing on the floor. The woman loves me. A few weeks after the litter box incident, I passed her in the hall and was informed that her boyfriend had moved in, and the cat didn't like him. He (the cat, not the boyfriend) hid under the bed for a week. I helped her with that, too. (Don't do anything. He'll come out. I have an extensive history with cats. Am Jewish lesbian, after all.) The next time I saw her she told me the cat had run away. She posted a sign and messaged her neighborhood list serv. Well, you can imagine the results of that! One person threatened to beat up her cat (I do not understand) and another called the SPCA. Some others sent her death threats. For posting about a lost cat, people! What is this world we live in??

Sasha's old cat food, by the roasting pan and
the crock pot, which we also never use.

So the cat (let's call him Fluffball, just because) was lost and stayed away for many moons. Finally around February, my friend (let's call her Glenda, just because) grabbed me in the hallway, very excitedly. "He's back!" she squealed. And because I am an enthusiastic sort, I danced a little jig with Glenda in the hallway there. Evidently, Fluffball had just strolled in one evening while Glenda had the door propped open to bring in groceries, as if he'd never been gone. He looked fine, smelled fine, was fine. Cats! Go figure. But then! In March, Fuzzball (Fluffball? Whatever) started puking a lot. Glenda took him to the vet, and learned he (the cat, not the vet) was allergic to his food. He required a low allergen cat food, sold only at the vet, for $50 a bag. Of course, Glenda bought six. Anything to stop the cat puking.

A couple of weeks later Glenda stopped me in the hallway and asked me if I had any use for Fuzzball's old food, which she had an almost full bag of. None of the shelters will take opened food. Probably they think we're list serv crazies who've poisoned it, because harming animals one has never met before is so much fun! But I couldn't use Fuzzball's food. "I have the same problem," I said to Glenda. "Sasha has food allergies, too. I was gonna post to my neighborhood list serv to see if anyone wanted her old food, but I chickened out." The end.

Teaching Stories and Lizards

So, listen up, party people. Teaching is some hard ass shit. And today is National (What--they couldn't go global because all the other countries respect teachers everyday?) Teacher Appreciation Day. So in honor of that, and because the Chipotle bitches did buy one get one instead of free burritos because they know teachers can barely get out of the damn school, much less go two at a time anywhere or have enough time to coordinate an order, I'm gonna tell you some Teacher Stories. By the way, Blog Reader, in case you work for Chipotle and have any pull: give us the damn burrito, yo! We taught all of your Chipotle asses. What is this bogo half-assed crud? Sigh. Typical. Ready? For the stories? I know you are.

Lizards.

1) The other day, a kid barfed in my class. He raised his hand. I was busy. (Class has 32, in case you non-teachers didn't know. For you lawyer/MBA/engineer types that is 32 x 5 clients, all of them unwilling, unpaying, and as understanding of the Degree Of Difficulty of teaching as a fed-head is of coding.) But because I am a teacher I have eyes in the back of my head. In the front, too! So I called on him. "Ms. S," he said, "I just threw up." And then he did it some more. I shan't get into the details further, but we all left the room. Patient Zero went to the nurse, and another boy, affected by the whole scene, barfed in my trash can on the way out. I sent him to the nurse, and we went to the media center, where the librarians welcomed us as if we were royalty, instead of puke-escapees, in that way librarians do. So I taught my class there. Then, at about 2:20, Patient One RETURNED FROM THE NURSE!!! Wtf? It was Friday at 2:20, 7th period, 20 minutes to dismissal. And she sent him back?????? What for? To contaminate the rest of us? I was furious. I was all like, "oh, no she didn't!" with three snaps in a z-formation and everything. So I said to Patient One (who was not to blame), "just sit over there, and try to be very still." Then I stomped around fuming. My students didn't know what had become of me. It was a lucky thing I couldn't leave my class because if I could have I would have gone straight to the health room and told that nurse what for. The end.

There are  flying fishies, too! Top left on fan blade. 

2) Kids in sixth and seventh grades love to pass out papers. Or anything really. They don't grow out of it, even. I taught high school seniors, and it was just the same. You could say to them, "Would anyone like to eat this chalkboard eraser?" and their hands would shoot up, and they'd go "me, me!" and they'd eat it so fast they'd bite your hand. I don't get it. I used to think it was because they liked me. Ha. Then for awhile I thought it was because it meant they could Get Up From Their Chairs. Surprisingly: no! I realized that this wasn't it when I asked someone to alphabetize something without getting up. Still just as into it! I wish I could bring my laundry pile to school with me. The end.

3) Here is how you proctor a test. Get 32 kids in a room and make them give up their electronics, books, jackets, etc. Since there is no place to put these things and you can't let them out of the room to go to their lockers because of The Security Of The Test, have them shove it all in a heap on the floor at the front of the room. Pass out test. Read instrux. Walk the room for 16.9 hours while children take test. Don't let anybody out of their chairs except in an emergency. (By now you have noticed we teachers are all obsessed with the kids staying in their chairs.) Don't let anybody talk. Don't yell or punish anybody; just whisper so you don't distract the test takers. And did we mention don't let any of the 32 11-year-olds out of their chairs or speak? Without yelling or threats or violence (since illegal)? Oh, and while you're at it: fix global warming, win the lottery, and end poverty. But, whatever you do, don't grade anything, don't read anything, and for god's sake don't touch that computer because you must put your full attention on circulating the room and staring at the students to ensure The Security Of The Test. Can't they get a guard dog to do this? They'd be much better at it. The end.

Lizard on Mame 

4) My son has these lizards he throws at the ceiling. They stick up there. (Okay, I cheated. This is not a teaching story.) Today, he made me get them down. Then, of course, he threw them back up there. One missed and landed on my Mame poster. This is obviously just an excuse to show off my Angela Lansbury memorabilia. Try not to be too jealous. Meanwhile, he didn't get into any of the immersion kindergartens we applied to. (Not because he isn't a genius. It's a lottery, and we are unlucky.) Anyway, he throws lizards. We worry about kindergarten/college, his mind, his imprint on humanity, his whole self. Getting a lizard off the ceiling is easy. Doable. More lizards, please.

Macho Talk

I know none of you remember when I blogged long ago about Ari wearing a tutu and making out with boys. Sigh. I miss those days. Now he does this thing when he is "playing" by himself where he makes laser gun noises and flails his fists in an aggressive manner. He also has conversations with himself, taking both the good and bad guy roles. I think of them as macho talk, and they usually go something like this:

Good guy: You are a bad guy!! I wanna kill you hard!
Bad guy: (laughing evilly) Never! I won't die! I will kill you two times first!
Good guy: Oh, yeah? Well I have a super-sonic, enormous gun that shoots really big ginormous bullets at your head!

Then there's a pause in the discussion for laser fire sound effects and hyper gesticulations communicating same.
Pow pow crash zoom etc., done with some kind of pre-school type beat boxing I'd be impressed by, were it not for the atrocious violence.
Then, it's back to the original conflict.

Bad guy: I am a very bad guy. I don't even listen to anybody at all.
Good guy: Well, you better listen to me, buddy. Because I'm about to kill you and kill you! And then I will make you listen!
Bad guy: Well, if you kill me I can't listen because I'm dead! (I swear to god he said this. The logic on that boy!)
Good guy: I'm going to kill you anyway!
Bad guy: (with many flying bullet sounds) I'll kill you more because I have bigger bullets.

And so on.

How did this happen? I do not know.

While we are on this topic, allow me to address the related topic of quirky-coolness. What is that? Well, pretty much the opposite of big guns. Or that is what the quirky-coolsters would like you to think! But I beg to differ. Exhibit A: knitting. Somebody in Portland or Providence twenty years ago decided it would be a good idea to be quirky. So they chose the thing nobody actually has any interest in at all and pretended to be riveted by it. This thing at the time was knitting. Now it is food trucks. Long ago it was throwing pots. Somewhere along the line it became quinoa. If I had a disgusting vegetable with a crazy name, preferably with at least one silent letter, such as "pbkitqua" (pronounced "kit-qua") I could make a zillion bajillion dollars from the hipsters selling its seeds. Bonus cash if it's impossible to harvest except in third-world countries, takes more than two hours to prepare, and/or has some bizarre alternative purpose, such as toothpaste preservative. So anyway, the quirky-coolsters like to pretend they are not macho. They like to think that their little obsessions are not oppressive and that all of us have secretly wanted to grow pbkitqua all of our lives. They want us to think they are freeing us. But: I feel oppressed. Because I have no interest in any of it, and I refuse to pretend I do. Take that, bitches!

There is a retail establishment in my neighborhood that sells coffee which closed recently and another that sells yarn that put up a fancy, expensive new storefront. The second place is so quirky it has, in its name, a subtitle. It is called: Wool Winders: A Knitting Salon. This place is evidently flourishing. It's been here for years and years, but the coffee place closed down. Wtf, people? Are you all secretly buying yarn from my neighborhood? If so, stop it! Or at least buy some coffee, too. Oh, whoops! Too late. Coffee place out of business. No coffee for you.

My other thinking is that Wool Winders: A Knitting Salon has a side business. Specifically, I think they sell crack, heroin, and crystal meth. Or maybe just Sudafed. But without making you show your license! Now, normally I would not care, but I miss my coffee place. And I know there is only so much drug trade a neighborhood can support. So I think Wool Winders: A Knitting Salon must have taken some underground business away from my coffee place. What do you think? Nobody can be selling just yarn and coffee! Not in this economy.