You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February, 2006.
I just finished watching one of the best reality music shows ever created, CMT’s “Crossroads.” If you call yourself a music fan and you’ve never watched this show…well, I’m just going to assume it’s becuase you don’t get CMT in your town. “Crossroads” is 1-2 hours of candid backstage banter and both behind-the-scenes and on-stage collaboration between a country music artist and a well-known artist from another musical genre. Tonight’s episode featured Kenny Rogers with Lionel Richie, and my real point in bringing this up in the first place is to make the following important statements:
- Now that John Cash is gone, Kenny Rogers is the only old man on the planet who can pull off black leather pants.
- You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Lionel Richie and Kenny Rogers sing “Ruby” and “The Gambler.” I tell you, it was better than “Islands in the Stream.” Yeah, Calliope, I said it. But be advised that on Wednesday, March 15 at 11 p.m. “Crossroads” features Dolly Parton and Melissa Etheridge, and THEY sing “9 to 5″ and “Somebody Bring Me Some Water,” and THAT trumps Kenny and Lionel hands down.
Behold: my family a la South Park. Seriously, I need help. I don’t think I can collect unemployment if this is the reason I’m not working.
Mom
Megan
Charity
Act I: First of all, I’m not really embarrassed by any of my shoes. My many many many shoes. I love shoes, and have been told, in fact, that I should be embarrassed to have so many. I’m not. That’s how it is with addiction. Only others can admit you have a problem.
But there does exist a pair of shoes in my collection that is embarrassing to other people, not because they are a strange color, or covered with odd markings, but because one of them is held together with hot glue.
My mom bought me these shoes at the L.L. Bean outlet in Freeport, Maine, and as you can see, I wore them, and wore them, and wore them. I wore them until the cork footbed sort of exploded out the back of the shoe. Did I stop wearing them? No, I did not. I fired up the hot glue gun and filled in the now gaping hole, and since hot glue is not really adhesive unless you use it on a surface that can absorb it, this repair only lasts for one good wear. Every time I want to wear these shoes, which is often, I have to get out the glue gun. I have no problem with this at all, but I can see how my companions might scoff at the ubiquitous string of hot glue hanging out of my sandal.
Act II: More embarrassing to me is a recent incident involving a shoe. It happened like this: I was getting ready for work on Thursday morning, and I was running late, as usual. I grabbed my shoes, and because I was in a hurry, I didn’t do “the shoe check.” Normally before I put on a pair of shoes I check them, you know, for spiders. I know I’m not the only person in the world who does this. Charlie Sheen admitted to it on “Ellen,” and I know for a fact my sister Megan does it, too. But on Thursday I forgot. I put on my right shoe. No problem. I put on my left shoe. All hell broke loose. Something was in there, and I just knew it was a spider the size of New Jersey, and it was biting me.
Some backstory. Several months ago I bought a package of pants/skirt hangers–the kind with the little clothespin things attached to the bottom–at the dollar store. Because they came from the dollar store they apparently could only hold half a pair of pants, and if I attempted to hang an entire pair of pants on one of them the clothespin things exploded. All the parts of the clothespin–the two plastic sides and the little metal clip holding them together, flew into the air, ricocheted off the ceiling, and landed in some unknown place in the bottom of my closet.
On Thursday morning the whereabouts of one of the plastic pieces was revealed. It was inside my shoe. As soon as the hard pointy side of it made contact with my heel I saw the spiders devouring my foot; I kicked the shoe off while simultaneously hurling myself backwards onto my bed and damn near fell off the other side in my enthusiasm to escape whatever was in my shoe.
Act III: These are the best shoes ever, hands down. Enough said.
I’ve been updating my resume. I’ve been at the same job and the same location for 10 years, so it’s been a while since I’ve conquered this task. I’ve accumulated a number of workshops, conferences, classes, presentations, and activities in 10 years, and I’ve been keeping track of them, but making them fit a specific purpose* is an exercise in creativity. A resume is, after all, an ad campaign, a sales pitch, a billboard on the side of life’s highway begging the right buyer to invest in whatever skill you’re selling. Suddenly, my role as English department chair becomes “Team leader responsible for the planning of meetings and dissemination of information for eight teachers; administrative liaison for department members,” and putting student grades into my gradebook software becomes “Organized student data, including demographics, assessment, daily progress, and behavior patterns using system-wide data management software.” I have turned a decade of teaching experience into a document that makes me appear qualified to run the FBI. It’s impressive, and most of it is true in spite of some mild embellishment, but it has me thinking–what if we told the whole truth about ourselves and our work experiences? What would unembellished, honest resumes look like, and would any of us ever get hired to do anything ever again? Something to think about. While you’re thinking, here for your enjoyment is an excerpt from my resume, the uncut, unenhanced version:
HD
1234 My Street, Medium-Sized City, NC, 12345 ~ (123)555-6789 ~ tbgdee@aol.com
Profile: I am a real bitch before 9:00 a.m.; I prefer to avoid human contact, including phone conversations and email, during the morning hours. I enjoy working with others as long as they are not stupid. I am easily distracted and suffer from ADD-like symptoms, especially when I am doing things that involve numbers or tasks that I find pointless. I have very little control over my facial expressions and so my opinions about most matters are clear even if not verbally expressed.
Skills Summary: Binge-eating chocolate doughnuts; extracting canine anal glands; making lattes; obsessive vacuuming; making up recipes; doodling during meetings; letter writing; people watching
Professional Experience
English Teacher, East Crazy High School, Crazy, NC, 1996-Present
- Tolerated obscene amounts of insanity, stupidity, apathy, and thick-headedness
- Became skilled through on-the-job training in the detection of lame excuses and shameless lies
- Made many noble attempts to convert chicken shit to chicken salad
- Developed extensive knowledge of contemporary language and culture, yo
- Attended numerous meetings lead by people who were being paid to hear themselves talk
- Supported the agendas of various administrators even though they were total idiots
- Attempted to present inordinate amounts of information to unreceptive subjects in a short time period, all in the name of a test, taken by the subjects at the year’s end, the results of which determined my own instructional abilities
Computer/Technology Skills
- Creation of superb South Park charicatures of friends and co-workers
- Surfing the net when there are other more important things to do
- Sending emails
- Instant messaging
- Capacity for spending long hours in front of computer completing totally mindless activities
- Setting the time on the VCR/DVD player
- Attained “Expert” level at online Scrabble
- Creative photo editing
*Don’t ask, because I might tell you, and then I’d have to kill you. Details forthcoming.
Thanks to Trista and this website, one of two things will probably happen in the very near future. One, I may lose my job because I spent the day making South Park versions of all my colleagues, some of which were not very nice. Not only was I completely void of productivity (cut me some slack, I have a student teacher so I wasn’t neglecting my students or anything), but I was also quite unkind and more than a little tempted to anonymously post my creations around faculty areas with little signs reading, “Can you guess who I am?” And two, it’s a definite possibility that an intervention will soon be necessary. Given the addictive nature of the activity–and if you haven’t tried it you should, I don’t like to be alone in my addiction–I will have exhausted my friends, family and coworkers by midday tomorrow and will require a 12-step program to avoid the inevitable next step: South Park versions of famous people.
On the bright side, however, I’ll have lots of nice pictures to cover the fingernail marks and food stains on the walls of my isolation cell. Like this one:
Seriously…help me.
…this is for Trista.
I attempted to photograph my hands just as I would any subject, but it didn’t work so well, so I decided to combine the hand topic with a visual representation of my physical and emotional states as this week draws to a close.
Dear Harris Teeter Grocery Stores: A few weeks ago you opened a new Harris Teeter store off of a major thoroughfare near my house. I travel this road often, and I saw the “opening soon!” signs hanging from the building, but imagine my surprise when I saw one of those airport spotlight things shining brightly into the sky from the roof of the new Harris Teeter. Do you really think someone driving down Busy Boulevard is going to say, “We’re out of milk and bread. We need to find a grocery store. Kids, keep your eyes peeled for a spotlight!”
***
Dear Driver of Blue Honda Accord Who Passed Me on Highway 70 Tuesday Morning: When you flew up behind me as if attempting to park your little blue car in my hatchback I swore at you, but when you proceeded to pass me and three other people in the turn lane, I became apoplectic and vowed to catch up with you so I could commit your license plate number to memory. As it turns out, I ended up behind you at a stoplight, and we both turned left, at which point you passed the two people in front of you on a double yellow line. Since there is nothing in that direction but a bunch of houses, some churches, and the local middle and high schools, and since you were in such a damn hurry, I was sure you were either a) an undercover fireman or police officer heading for the scene of some horrible crime, b) in labor and going to your midwife or doctor’s house, or c) some strange person who is so excited about getting to work that you insist on violating three traffic laws to get there. Of those choices, C was the most accurate, because you turned onto the dead end street where both schools are located, but because I park behind the high school I don’t know which school was your ultimate destination. Don’t worry, though, I memorized your license plate and turned it in to the school resource officer. Perhaps there’s nothing he can do about you, but I wish you a cop on every corner for the rest of eternity, you stupid stupid woman.
***
Dear Buttwipe Who Took a Partially Eaten Hershey Bar and a Handful of Change from my Top Desk Drawer: First of all, the fact that you think it’s okay to go through someone’s personal belongings is reprehensible. I know you were here after school hours when I’m not actually at my desk, but that fact does not make my classroom fair game. That you took the change does not really surprise me, but what kind of person takes a candy bar that someone had already started eating? What if I had left a half-eaten banana on my desk? What if I had some sort of communicable disease? I considered replacing the candy bar with assorted chocolate flavored laxatives, but I wouldn’t actually get to enjoy that, so I’m pondering my next course of action. In the meantime use that money you took from me and buy your own damn candy bar!
I never talk about my breasts. Never. Really, there is nothing to discuss. I’ve worn the same bra size since eighth grade, and no, I was NOT an early bloomer. I wasn’t a bloomer at all. Occasionally you might hear me explaining that my mother, who has a decent rack, divided her boob genes between my sisters and me; Megan got half, and Charity and I had to split the other half. When I lie on my back or wear a sports bra they disappear completely. It’s my butt that gets all the attention–it certainly has no trouble being seen [from miles and miles away].
But we’ve had a few interesting experiences lately, my breasts and I, and I think you should know about them, because it’s just not all that often they get this kind of attention.
The first incident occurred at work. I was putting away the literature textbooks that my single-celled shit-for-brains scholarly students had left lying around the classroom, and since I’m one of those people who tries to take ALL the groceries into the house in one trip, I was carrying about 10 books at once. Suddenly the four or five books on the top of the stack began to slide and I arched backwards to balance them. Apparently, the arching action caused the top books to bounce a little, and when they landed, my unfortunate left boob was smushed in the middle of the stack. Because my chest was suffering extreme trauma, I was not equipped with my typical grace and agility range of motion clear thinking abilities minimal brain function, so instead of placing the books on a nearby desk, or even dropping them to the floor, I pulled them away from my body and attempted to shove them onto the shelf in an effort to get them away, OH GOD, from my boob. As the stack of books traveled away from my body it took my boob with it. It was flattened and pulled and pinched all the way to its end, to the tiny tender part, until it finally sprung loose and retreated into my chest cavity. I haven’t seen it since.
Several days later I was awakened by my boobs. I had the distinct feeling that someone was giving me a breast exam with a nail gun. I hadn’t been dreaming of my doctor (or anything else of interest that might involve boobs and/or construction workers) so it was with great confusion that I shook myself awake. When I opened my eyes in the dim 6 o’clock light of morning I was nose to nose with my cat, and he was kneading his paws in true cat fashion, claws fully engaged, on my breasts. I thanked him kindly, explained that I had already taken care of that task for the month, thanks, and shoved him off the bed. I drifted back to sleep, only to be startled awake once more by the inability to breathe. Apparently His Highness was offended by my dismissal of his kind gesture; he had resumed his kneading, but this time his focus was my trachea. I don’t think he was trying to kill me, but I’m not so sure he wasn’t trying to knock me unconscious so he could have his way with me.
I know what you’re thinking…how sad, the only action she got in the past few weeks was from some books and a cat. I’m thinking…hey, at least someone noticed them.
***
I’m sorry I’ve been away so long. I’ve been a little too preoccupied for blogging, but the running commentary in my head could fill pages and pages. I’ll fill you in. I know you can hardly wait.
the shelf that ennis built
Originally uploaded by tbgdee.
My grandfather built this bookcase when he was in high school. It is my favorite piece of furniture, second only to the table and chairs that sat in my grandparents’ kitchen for as long as I can remember, and which now reside in my dining room. Both the table and the bookcase are scratched, and the finish has faded or worn off in places, but I’ve never had the desire to refinish them. They are perfect just they way they are, and they hold their respective contents with such sentimental grace.
Librarians beware! What you are about to see might be unsettling!
Gives new meaning to the phrase “delicate balance.”
I spent a few minutes pondering a clever caption, but I think this speaks for itself.
And that’s all we have time for tonight, folks, but come back tomorrow, or maybe the next day, for an all new episode of, “Vexed and the City,” or is it, “Hexed in the Titty?” “Messed up and Shitty?” I know, I know, you just can’t wait.
It’s official: I’m a Flickr whore.
