And I'm rambling.

Once upon a time, I began my mornings around 3:30 or 4. I'd have a vat of coffee with Splenda (this is why I no longer use artificial sweetener) and translate like a motherf*cker until 9, when I'd head off to class. Each week I had five classes of my own (each met three times), three classes and three sections of the class I TA-ed, research for my advisor, and daily exercise. I always made time to exercise. I didn't make time to have friends, but I did stalk a very cute coffee guy at the Tuesday farmers' market, and I pretended that I knew the patrons who sat at my favorite cafe. I'd cook a small dinner in the evenings, work for a few more hours, and then I'd head to bed around ten, though I made sure to read one short story before sleep, just so I wouldn't lose all sense of propriety.

While I don't reminisce fondly about this particular interlude, I do frequently marvel at my former self. So driven! So regimented! So diligent!

I was just coming off this schedule when I met n.o.c., and six hours of sleep seemed like the ultimate frivolity - a selfish and slothful waste of time. Then we spent a solid month sunning ourselves and sleeping when the mood struck, and - *SHAZAM!* - that driven, regimented, diligent person decided that she was done with that shit, threw her book bag in the trash and cracked a beer. Last I heard, she was tanned like luggage and slinging cocktails in a seedy South American bar on a dangerous but beautiful stretch of beach.

Lately, I've been sleeping a lot - going to bed around 9:30, getting up around 6:30. I love it. In fact, it feels so good that I wonder if I might be happy just sleeping my life away. When I think I've finally gotten my nap out, I find that I can easily sleep for several more hours. I don't feel badly about this, although I do suspect that I'm being judged by some past me. I also feel a little duddish and phlegmatic when I come across someone like this, who is inhumanly productive and probably sleeps less on purpose so that she can do more. But, I was never into computers - or anything profitable, for that matter - so there's really no sense in comparing apples to wildly successful, techy oranges.

At the moment, I spend most of my time reading, writing, cooking, and sleeping. I'm basically a literate cat with culinary ambitions. And I think that's fine. I think. For now.

Because I'm sure as shit not writing anything worthwhile these days.

Read this.

The one where I talk about poop.

Last weekish, n.o.c. and I were having a lovely evening. We'd just finished dinner, so I went off to read, while goodhusband n.o.c. worked on cleaning up the kitchen. Snorri (a.k.a. The Snorracle of Smallfry, a.k.a. Snorrious Maglorious Bloodeagle Ford (not mine), a.k.a. ooooooohhhhiloveyouiloveyouiloveyou (mine)) was off doing what he does best - conquering cat trees, manhandling bottle caps, destroying feathered playthings, what have you. Or so we thought.

As n.o.c. prepped the coffee maker (he's the shit), he noticed the Snorrster scooting across the floor on his arse. Not having read 2,935 books on cat rearing (punny!), n.o.c. thought our little guy was just being a clown. I, however, realized that something, um, fouler was afoot. Sure enough, Snorri had managed to embed two hockey pucks of poo into his very fluffy and once pristine buttfur and then decided to drag ass across the apartment in hopes of scraping them off. To his credit, there was a poo circle (something like a crop circle) around my chair, so he had tried to attract my attention before embarking on his apartment-wide shit-smearing adventure.

Anyhoo, we eventually put everything to rights, and Snorri endured the blow dryer with aplomb (and a considerably less furry, but poop-free, rear end). We chalked the incident up to youth and abundant, Pantaloon-like leg fur.

But last night, after a delicious dinner of Cornish game hens (Snorri enjoyed Iams kitten chow and the smallest sliver of crispy skin), we settled into bed and Snorri frolicked off to take his evening constitutional. After I heard him exit the box, I immediately went to dispose of his deposit, because I am fastidious. Most unfortunately, Snorri had once again managed to - I don't even know how to describe it - it was like when you were little and you fell asleep with chewing gum in your mouth and it ended up in your hair... except, in this case, the chewing gum is multiple nuggets of poo and your mouth is a little feline ass sphincter and your hair is white fur. Too graphic? I just don't know anymore.

I tell you this neither because I'm weary of kvetching about work (never!) nor because I want to ruin your dinner - I just don't know how to proceed. Is the issue mechanical? Gastrointestinal? (I took in a sample yesterday.) Maniacal? What is he doing? Why is this happening? Help!

As long as I'm asking you for help with animals, please keep another furry friend of ours, M., in your thoughts - clap for her, give her the care bear stare, pray to St. Francis, smudge sage, whatever. Sweet little M. is having a rough go of things and could use whatever you've got. Thanks.

Guilt.

I feel guilty when I don't post. It's not guilt of the Southern Methodist, do-you-know-that-you-know-that-you-know variety, but, still, it niggles. If let it go on for too long, it's bound to spin into:

Shame (I have let you down. You came to me for amusement, and I failed you.)

Inadequacy (I am not clever enough to warrant your attention.)

Self-loathing (I'm a sham. I have never been funny.)

So, it's best if I just blog on the regular. I feel better, regardless of whether you do or not. (Though I really hope you do. And that's the baldest emotion you're going to get for a while.)

Lately, though, I haven't felt compelled to write much. It's not that nothing's going on, it's just that I'm consumed with a weird apathetic hatred that makes me boring and dangerous. Like a wildly venomous slug. I'm also really fucking tired, but who the fuck isn't, so that doesn't seem like a topic of conversation. But I persevere:

• Ninth graders think that circumcision is a rare and barbaric Jewish ritual. I have disabused them of this notion and given them permission to ask the men in their lives whether or not they are possessed of a foreskin. Consider yourselves warned.
• Snorri enjoys having a perch for his rear end when he takes a poo, so he often lets his turds fall just over the rim of his litter box. I find this endearing and amusing, and so does n.o.c., except that he practically vomits whenever he smells kitten shit. This does not bode well for the prospect of actual human offspring, since I am sure as shit (punny!) not changing all the rancid diapers.
• During last week's professional day, the dean of faculty began the morning by taking to the loudspeaker and commanding all teachers to leave their offices and march in the hallway. She then called out those who did not participate with enough vigor: "Ms. Lemplekins! I see you on the monitor! Get those knees up! You're only seventy-five!" She also sang the school song and a hymn.
• My dear, sweet, slightly insane mother would not stop cleaning last weekend, and now I'm convinced that she has the hantavirus. And it will be All. My. Fault.

That's the best I can do for today. I must off to work on my drinking problem and decide how best to be subversive and hateful without expending excessive energy or getting fired.

Happy Birthday to The Rog

I hope you're as happy as a rat eating shit from a broke fruit jar on a cheetoh.  May your year be fine as frog's fur, may difficulties pass as quickly as greasy string from a cow's ass, and may you have enough happiness that if you turned that happiness into gasoline and put it in a piss ant's motorbike, he'd make it a billion times around a BB. Much love. 

be careful, little hands, what you google

I was trying to come up with a good metaphor for my persistent presence in someone's life, so I googled "untreatable std".  Here's a tip, children.  Clear your google browser before showing anyone anything on your computer. 

Take that! And that!

When I'm having a shit day, I sometimes like to see just how unpleasant I can make it. And that's what I'm doing today - poking the bruise that is my life. 

To examine this day properly, we really need to begin with midnight last night, since that's when n.o.c. and I decided to stop at a Taco Bell because we were seeing double and nothing sharpens the senses like questionable meat coated in chemical hot sauce.  Then I slept for five hours. Now, somehow, I'm at work, and I loathe everyone actively.  I'm wearing pants that make me unhappy and ugly shoes.  I am unprepared for my classes, but instead of preparing, I obsessively refresh my blog roll and nytimes.com.  I have other, non-work things that need doing, but completing them would be too satisfying, so I perseverate over their magnitude.  It's a beautiful fall day, but I will not be coddled by sunlight.  Instead of walking up the hill for a salad, I sit at my desk with bad posture and eat a white bread bagel smothered with cream cheese. My tongue has a wax coating and my stomach churns.  I am despised by my body. 

bitterbitterbitterbitter

Today is such a f*cking shit smear.  Forget anything kind I've ever said about humans and get over my bullsh*t stance on not complaining. Here's why:

1) Two weeks ago, a three-hour and ten minute meeting to "brainstorm" about "process".  Then a fourteen-hour day, largely spent talking with parents about why little Susie is a "modest scholar." 

2) Then an eighty-hour week, sixty-four of which were spent in the woods with little idiots, talking about feelings and getting bitten by spiders.  EIGHT spider bites.  SIXTEEN tiny fang marks. 

3) This week, in addition to attending three after-school meetings and completing interim report cards (which is surely a punishment from the fifth circle of hell), I have been informed that the classes I was hired to make academically rigorous are now too hard, even though they are the same as they were last year.

4) Now, even though I have made it absolutely clear that talking about feelings is my least favorite thing, I have been "asked" to be a group leader for the "Difficult Discussions" program - a bullsh*t enterprise that trains students to be "issues facilitators."  I'm retching.  AND they meet at night.  For HOURS. 

F*ck it. I'll just scrap everything and teach the students how to macrame while singing kumbaya, since that is clearly where all this is headed. 

He likes the finer things.

Snorri watches us breakfast while he lounges in a little something from Tiffany's. What?

You've got to do what you should

I am not a big U2 fan.  Oh, sure, I'll sing along with their old songs if one happens to come on the radio, but I don't own their albums or hanker for their music. Despite my ambivalence, I went to a U2 concert on Tuesday night, because sometimes people get deported and can't go to concerts like they planned.  But I digress. 

The concert was good fun, and the stage resembled a giant, be-nippled space spider, which, of course, is always awesome. Now, I have a vague notion that Bono is a celebrity do-gooder, but I don't really know much about his work, so I'll refrain from expressing an opinion on the topic. (Look at me!  Being the change I'd like to see!)  Nonetheless, I was touched by the concert's emphasis on human rights - Aung San Suu Kyi and Desmond Tutu, both featured, always appeal to my nobler instincts, particularly when I overhear f*cktards confirming to one another that Desmond Tutu is, definitely, that Mandello guy from Africa or wherever. 

Sometimes I feel like a turd for not being involved in a cause.  I give money, I help no-longer-homeless Rick, I'm kind (believe it or not), and I try to teach these dependably lackluster teenagers something about the responsibility that comes with their privilege, but it often seems a piss-poor effort.  Perhaps I should be tireless and inspired - comforting the needy, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry...

Here's the problem.  I am not made of the prerequisite stern and noble stuff. I am, in fact, absolutely overcome by the even smallest glipses of the magnitude of the world's vast f*ckedness.   A couple illustrative examples:

1) There's a very old and toothless gentleman who sells succulents at the Sunday farmers' market. His are not your run-of-the-mill, plastic-potted, withered-at-the-tips succulents; they are works of art - plump, glistening plants nestled in gnarly tree trunks, raunchy old tires bedizened with lush, curling tendrils, fat cacti with leaves so perfect, I imagine that the wizened little man spent his Saturday night carefully polishing each one.  He brings his creations to the market in an old black truck, and then he sits on the tailgate and waits. Now, he's not cheap (I wanted one of his pieces but had neither the money nor the direct sunlight), but I've never seen anyone buy one of his designs.  Never.  Few people even stop to look.  He doesn't seem troubled by this, he just watches and works his gums, and then he carefully packs up his wares with his thin, weathered arms and prepares for the next market.  Something about this just kills me.  Seriously, I'm a little weepy just thinking about it. 

2) Benches all over Baltimore are emblazoned with the slogan, "Baltimore - The Greatest City in America!"  These benches are usually broken, occupied by homeless folk, surrounded by refuse, and/or in front of dilapidated rows of falling-down houses.  At first, I thought the benches might be ironic - perhaps the work of some politically minded artist or a group dedicated to raising public awareness. But, no. This slogan was coined by our current mayor in what I can only imagine was a fit of idiotic and delusional optimism.  What a f*cking numbnut. Baltimore may be many things - charming, gritty, dangerous, friendly, dirty, enduring, and maybe even resilient, but The Greatest City in America!?  I think not.  Now every time I see a bench, I seethe over the money some shit-for-brains spent on a wildly hyperbolic branding campaign instead of on, oh, I don't know, comforting the needy, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry...

So, I'm going to keep on in my own small way - writing checks, making sandwiches for Rick, teaching John Rawls, crying over the succulent man, shaking my fist at preposterous benches, and applauding those whose capabilities are more sturdy than mine.