Why I will stop watching Grey's.

I'll do it. I'll stop watching Grey's. But first of all, I need to bitch about something annoying.

PART 1: ASS

One storyline in this episode is about a girl getting ass implants. Lexie Grey is worried that she's doing it for the wrong reasons, and the girl proceeds to convince her that she's doing it for the right reasons, for herself. However, this included a) a long speech from the girl telling Lexie she had a nice ass and b) a scene at the end of  Mark checking out Lexie's ass, which, surprise, is awesome.

NOW I"M PISSED.

Dad, if you're reading this, I don't blame you, even though it is technically 100% your fault that I have no ass. I'm happy that I am essentially a female replica of you. I love having nice legs, boxer shoulders, and curly brown hair, all of which I got from you. But sometimes, like now, I just really wish I had an ass.

PART 2: WHY I WILL STOP WATCHING GREY'S


I have been there for the long haul, Grey's Anatomy. But so help me God Shonda, I will stop watching if you keep this shit up. Allow me to explain:

1. I watched the first episode. I was 19, in my first apartment. It was Sunday night. I had just finished watching Desperate Housewives, which was an OK show back in the day, and then a new show came on. Usually, I turn off the TV. But in this case, I couldn't. The show began with a girl having a one-night stand. He asked her name, and she refused. The next day, it turned out he was her attending. She was an intern. At a hospital. SO GOOD. I was hooked. 
2. When Isaiah Washington revealed that he was a vicious homophobe, I still watched, even though Meredith had to cut Christina's wedding dress off of her, even though you waited WAY TOO LONG to get him off the show. If I ran a show, and one of my actors slung homophobic slurs at a fellow costar, I'd kill him off in the next episode. Fuck narrative arc. 
3. I watched when you killed off Denny the first time, and Izzy spent half a season crying on the floor of the bathroom. 
4. I watched during Izzygate, when you somehow thought it was a good idea to get George and Izzy together. 
5. I watched after Meredith "drowned," died, hung out with dead Denny, then came back to life, all to the tune of Snow Patrol ("Make This Go On Forever" was the one redeeming part of the episode). 
6. I watched when you, having realized your grave error in killing off Denny, brought him back as a symptom of Izzy's tumor. 
7. I watched when you had the worst episode ever and the hospital got shot up in the most slow, predictable, uninteresting way. The final ten minutes were good, though. 

If you let Christina Yang quit, for real, I will stop watching. I will always love the times we've had, and the music you've introduced me to via the show. I will not regret the time I've spent discussing it with everyone I know. But you will lose me as a fan. For real. Permanently. 

I am listening to "Make This Go On Forever" right now, for dramatic purposes. 

The weight of water, the way you taught me to look past everything I had ever learned... 

I'll close with something I tell my students when they are doing something stupid. 

MAKE A GOOD CHOICE, SHONDA. 

Love, Leah

worrying

I miss being young.

I was zoned out, wandering through my mental rolodex of memories when I realized that our worries define us. What we worry about says more about who we are than almost anything else.

THEN, I worried about the bottoms of my jeans being bleached from the salt on the ice in the winter.

I miss worrying about things like that. I miss high school, when my biggest worry was that my mother would find out. I don't like all the worrying I do now, and I don't like that it's all my own. I don't make sense. I give up.

Death and Buttons

Well, now I know. I don't handle death well.

uh...

I'm so overwhelmed.

I love my job but there aren't enough hours in the day. I spent the entire weekend doing nothing because the prospect of starting was too scary.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: I now love Maroon 5.

I may be the last person in the world to do this, but I'm doing it: Jumping on the Maroon 5 bandwagon. Why didn't I notice their awesomeness before? His voice is so smooth. It's unreal. It has this relaxed quality. The only way I can think of to explain "relaxed voice" is to provide an example of the opposite: Katy Perry. She can sing, but you can always tell that she's working hard at it. You can sense effort, and good God, the melody just casually flows out of Adam  Levine's mouth. I wouldn't be surprised if he sings that way all the time, whether he's in concert, or hanging upsidedown on a jungle gym.

Some General Thoughts

1. Hilary, you're going to be in med school for a long time. You need to make your gchat away messages more interesting. None of this "studying." Try "studying... WITH NO PANTS ON!" 
2. Did body pump today for the first time. Just now, I could barely lift my arm to brush my teeth. I had to kneel in the bathroom floor and prop my elbows up on the sink in order to accomplish the task. YES. Tomorrow, I double up on whey. 
3. Room is almost clean. Not "looks clean on surface," but "if you open the drawers it is clear that there is a rhyme and reason to their contents" clean. 
4. I'm a lot better at helping my 8th graders with math than I was at doing the math in 8th grade. 
5. My shoulder might pop out of its socket. Oh well. 
6. You know how sometimes you stare at a hot guy's muscles for motivation at the gym? I have several go-to men for this. (SIDENOTE: Unlike most women, I actually WANT to get jacked. None of this "oh, I don't want to be too bulky." Bring it on. Bulk = I can kick your ass in boxing). But anyway, there are a few men I regularly stare at to give me motivation to complete my last set of whatevers. I don't talk to them. They might as well not have names. They are purely objects, inspirational brawn if you will. Today, one of them spoke to me and I realized HOLY SHIT YOU ARE SO GAY. I'm one of the most open-minded people I know, so clearly I have no problem with this, but how can I not have noticed? Does gaydar not transfer to the gym? 
7. I told my mom about this and she said the problem is that I stare at American men. She has a whole posse of 30-something body-builders at the gym who ADORE her. "Foreign men are much easier to read, Leah" she says. They love her though. Sometimes, I want to go to Gold's just to see roided-up body-builders who can't put their arms down by their sides follow around my 61-year-old mother. Sven is her favorite spotter. Oh, life. 
8. News from the teacher FB account: My students have begun changing their names on facebook. It would be as if I decided to make my last name "Deng" because my BFFL's last name is Deng, or if I decided to make my last name "DiCaprio" because my life goal is to have ridiculous sex with him. However, I just get plain confused, think their accounts have been hacked, and frantically defriend them. They are offended of course, but how was I supposed to know that that whole mess of last names was you? Your photograph is of Justin Bieber. You have NO identifying information on your profile, except that you love Drake, but that's about as helpful as stating that you're a middle-school student: NOT AT ALL. 
9. PS: I knew Drake when he was Jimmy on Degrassi. 
10. Where did all my ties go? Father dearest gave me plenty... IE: all the fruity ones Mom gave him that he didn't want to be required to wear. Out of sight, out of mind. Where did they go though? Has it been that long since a corporate hoes / ceos / dirty schoolgirl / sketchy professor / generic excuse to wear pleated skirts and ties and look like a general whore party? Maybe we should throw one, for old time's sake. Hmmm... *wheels turning*

Love you all--- MC

rummage sale contributions!

Do you have clothes, shoes, books, purses and/or jewelry that you no longer want/need? My mom chairs a rummage sale that runs Nov. 1-3rd. Drop stuff off at my house, or give me some notice and I can pick it up. Message me for more info.


Plus, you can also feel free to shop at the sale. Good stuff... and I know from experience (in case any of you wondered where my Gucci bag came from). 

9:18 minute miles

I just ran 9 miles at 9:18 / mile pace. I AM ON FIRE.

I realize that this is not fast for many people. However, for ME? This is fast. I can run considerably faster if I'm running 4 or 5 miles only, but this is the first time I've been able to maintain that pace for 9. 9 glorious miles, during which I passed 5 men. FIVE!

I don't even know what happened. I wish I knew. I wish I had the boys XC team from HS or college to psychoanalyze it for me, because lord knows I can't figure it out on my own. I'm just going to walk around on a cloud of awesome for as long as I can.

I think Boston might be a reality this year. I need to get my weekly mileage up, in a serious way, but if I can run 9 miles on Thursday and then again on Sunday, BOTH times with a good pace... I'm feeling very, very good about this.

However, I feel like I rode a camel for 5 hours. My hip flexors are toast. But damn do I feel good.

Anyone want to run sometime? Preferably someone who's faster than I am? I really need to push myself to do the shorter runs at a quicker pace.

XO

I love running

I just ran 9 miles and it was awesome.

Starting out, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I started out slowly. My legs felt... well, you know how there are those runs when your legs feel like lead? This wasn't one of those... it was a heavy feeling, but more similar to sandbags. It was impossible to find a rhythm. NOT in the zone.

Then I started to reminisce. Whenever this happens, I am always amazed at how many memories I have of running. My life is full of incredible things, but running is one love that's been around longer than many others.

Though now that I think about it, I've had many long-term lovers.

• ballet
• rum
• dancing
• torn sweatshirts, legwarmers, general Flashdance attire
• costumes
• peanut butter
• men with broad shoulders
• cars with spare tires on the back
• Backstreet Boys
• writing
• reading
• bass
• summer
• obscenely bright nail polish

Anyway back to running. It's amazing to me how much I remember. Hundreds of races later, I can still remember the way my feet felt in flip-flops on the dead grass at the Brown Invitational. I still remember the indoor track practice when we ran in the rain, and I realized that if I didn't brush my hair, I had ringlets. I remember putting makeup on after practice to go lift weights with the boys. I remember reminiscing about that a couple of years ago over mojitos and giggling hysterically. I remember which boys didn't race in underwear, how much every monogrammed sweatshirt cost, and every time I got partially (or entirely) naked in public to change because the baathrooms were too far away. Crosby dancing. My famous kick. Grandma Dorothy at my XC meet frosh year. My nickname freshman year at UMass, assless wonder ("it's a wonder she can sit down at all, let alone run!). Oh, and that BITCH who stomped on my foot during the first 100 meters of that race at Roger Williams. Her spikes tore a hole in the top of my spikes, and when I finished, there was blood up to my ankle. Jam sessions with Emerson XC in KB's apartment (she had probably 10 instruments). Early morning Dunkin while waiting at Boylston/Tremont for the bus. Peeing my pants three times during the marathon (I was SO PROUD of that. It's surprisingly difficult). 

By this point I was running much faster. I was listening to that Black Crowes song, She talks to Angels, and I sped up. Then BRMC's Weight of the World. Then Britney (YES). 

Good God it felt good. My knees were sore by the end but I was f-ing flying. 

I should mention that by the kayaking place (so, 3-4 miles to go), it started pouring. I had just run over the Harvard Footbridge and I figured, well, fuck it, I might as well keep going. I try not to run in the rain, because now it matters when I get sick, but this was by accident, so I figured it was okay. 

I love running in the rain. There's something so primal and strong and fantastic about not letting any weather get in your way as a runner. It's one of the many reasons I loved training for Boston. You're required to do most of your long runs in subzero weather. By the tiime you get to the marathon, it's a balmy 70 and you're like "Really? I was worried about this? I ran in weather so cold when I peed in the woods it froze before hitting the ground." True story, btw. 

Now I'm soaked and freezing and I smell like feet but hell I am SO HAPPY. 

And I ran fast. :) It felt fantastic. 

Love you all. 

Things I wish I could tell my BU neighbors

1. If you continue to walk out in the middle of traffic, you will get hit by a car.
2. Thanks for making all the cops angry. Last summer, when crazy lady hit my minivan (RIP minivan), the cop's exact words were "Listen up you little brat..." and he was shocked that I wasn't a BU undergrad. 
3. It's 2 a.m. on a Tuesday. Some of us have work in the morning. Shut the fuck up. I understand your passionate need to hotbox your bathroom while playing Stevie Nicks at full volume. In fact, I may have done the same, but I was living in Holland, so it's all kind of a blur. However, I respect that. Just not at 2 a.m. 
4. Out of state students- Hire people to move you into your dorms. Your parents can't drive worth a damn. If you were not taught to drive in this city, you shouldn't be trusted in an overstuffed Explorer with the rearview blocked. 
5. To the girl who yelled, "Do I LOOK like someone who cares about other people?" as Stephanie and I were walking by yesterday: No, dear, you don't. I'd go as far as to tell you that's not a good thing, but then I run the risk of a "talk to the hand" or an "ask me if I care" retort, and that's one risk I'm not willing to take. 
6. Do not play Ke$ha before 10 a.m. I guarantee you that she doesn't wake up until at least eleven, and probably doesn't bust out her toothbrush and Jack Daniels until at least noon, so I'm sure she'd approve of this plan. 
7. Stop blocking the footbridges to the esplanade. It's bad enough that I have to run 1.98 miles through your campus to even cross Storrow, and now you make me wade through sweaty plaid bodies to even get to the ramp? Make a path. 
8. In no way does your campus require 3 official (and 2 unofficial) T stops. WALK. 

To Plan or Not to Plan

I had this epiphany during a workshop I took this past summer. The woman running it wrote in her book (that I have taken on as my bible/torah) that your goal as a teacher of writing is NOT to have a set curriculum of lesson plans that you follow to the letter. Good teaching involves creating as you go. I totally believe in this, but at the same time... there's a little part of me that envies people who don't have to plan so much.

I'll get better at this. I will.

Hi

I am so tired but so happy.

Shalom.

Death and Buttons

I've never been someone who handles death well.

There are people who handle the idea with a great deal of grace. I've never been one of those people. When I was twelve and became capable of abstract thought, I wondered one day what happened to us after we die and I didn't sleep for weeks. I was probably the most depressed adolescent at Clark that year.

I have only vague memories of that time. I can't pretend to know why we remember certain things and not others, why insignificant details stand out and large life moments are blurry, but I have to think my preoccupation with death had something to do with it. How could it not? I remember purposely spilling coffee on my world history paper to make it look authentic. I remember Mr. Circo didn't think it was at all cool, and I wanted to scream at him, but I didn't. I remember wasting time in the library during a "research project," going to the aquarium and listening to the voice of the Little Mermaid sing "Part of That World" (she was dressed like a hoochie, I remember THAT vividly. No middle school student should have to bear witness to that much cleavage). I remember in Hebrew School I asked the Rabbi what happened to us after we died and he told us we wait in the ground rotting until the Messiah comes, and then our bodies roll underground to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. "Then what?" I asked. "I don't know. The Messiah's here," he responded. Needless to say, that image did not comfort me. That was the first moment I wondered if the Christians were onto something with this "Messiah" already being here deal.

When my first Grandpa died, I thought about a lot of things. What did grass taste like? Was dirt edible? Why were we putting rocks on that bandage on the ground? (unveiling, so actually, a year later). I was two.

When my second Grandpa died, I wondered if you were supposed to miss everyone who died, even the bad people. I wondered if my mother would miss him. If I ask her and she says she doesn't, I will understand why. At the time, I didn't. I was 14.

When all the people in high school died, I felt it because it could have been any of us. What determines who gets cancer, or gets hit by a car, or drinks himself to death? Was there someone up there playing eenie meenie minie moe? How did I know it wasn't going to land on me?

When our classmate died from a policeman shooting her in the eye with a pepper ball gun during Sox riots, I wondered if maybe we hadn't come as far as we thought we had as a society.

I knew Hal was going to die. Everyone was tiptoeing around him, avoiding the subject, but I came right out and asked him if he was scared. He said no. He had no regrets. He'd done everything he wanted to do, and had a hell of a life. And in his remaining weeks, he was making moonshine in the basement bathroom, because it was never too late to keep doing what he wanted to do. I drank a lot of moonshine that night. I hate moonshine, but when a dying man tells you to drink moonshine, you drink moonshine, and you like it. It was my 22nd birthday. A few weeks later he was gone.

There are two middle schools in my building, mirror image reflections of each other except for the library and cafeteria. There is a 7th grade writing teacher in each building. I am one. When the other one died last year, all I could think about was her beautiful honey-colored hair and her patience. She had patience I aspire to every day, patience I will never match, but patience I will spend my life aspiring to. Her hair was beautiful, and I complimented it constantly, until one day she said, "Okay Leah, you have to stop saying nice things about my hair. It's not my hair," and took off the wig and I knew. It's funny how big important information has a way of revealing itself in interesting ways. I found out about how babies were made by reading a book, because my parents couldn't get me to stop reading long enough to talk about it, so they just put another book on my nightstand and waited. I found out about 9/11 before the rest of my high school because I was in trouble for skipping class, so I was sitting in the guidance office and listening to NPR. I went into American Studies and announced it. No one believed me.

In Jerusalem this summer, I stood looking at the Mount of Olives, picturing us all rolling there, but it wasn't a religious experience. I had, in truth, mostly forgotten about it until that moment, but as I stood there, I could only wonder about the logistics. Where would we all fit? The Diaspora surely would fill more than that mountain. How long would it take to get there? My flight from JFK airport had been twelve long hours. Surely, rolling underground would take fifty times longer, if the MBTA was any indicator. Would we be filthy? Would we show up scarred and bruised, toes broken, shoulders dislocated? 

I also wondered about the Palestinians. We were on the border of the West Bank, in East Jerusalem, on our tour of the security fence (which by the way is not that impressive-looking). I wondered: When the Messiah comes, whoever he or she is, will we still be fighting? There were 13 missiles launched from Gaza during the 14 days I was in Israel. Depending on where we're rolling from, will some of us roll under the security fence? Will there be underground security checkpoints? 

I know it sounds ridiculous. It IS ridiculous. Who thinks about this stuff? My entire life I've been terrified of death, and going off what the psychiatrist my mother took me to in middle school told me: "Leah, you have to get through the day. You can't spend your whole life worrying about death. You do what the rest of us do: Shove those feelings down as far as you can and concentrate on living." Standing in front of the mountain I'll apparently roll to, all I can think about is if my pedicure will chip on my way there? It's asinine. But maybe after all that time I reverted to the last version of myself that I allowed to spend time thinking about death. After all, those are the questions you ask when you're twelve. 

I started off on this train of thought because I just watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I am not always F. Scott Fitzgerald's #1 fan, but in this story, he did me proud. If I had to pick the purpose of the movie, the thing we're meant to walk away from it understanding, I'd say it's that nothing lasts, and you have to make the most of every minute while you can. It's a mixed bag, that one. I've always been a fan of carpe diem, it's been a wonderful way to help myself sleep at night, but I don't like how fleeting each minute can be. I see them as grains of sand on a beach, and we go through life trying to pick up and hold onto as many as we can, but they all fall through our fingers eventually. It seems so futile when you look at it that way. I'll never be able to hold as many moments as I want to, and I don't like to picture them falling away from me. It makes me want to be cremated and tossed on the beach, mixed with the sand, to be as close to those moments as I can.

Benjamin, we're meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us? 

I don't think we need to lose the people we love in order to know how important they are to us. I think we're better than that. I think we can know how much they mean if we let ourselves every day. It's difficult. It's much easier to keep going and going and grading papers and running and boxing and cooking and failing and cooking and sometimes not failing and stringing beads onto wire and watching True Blood illegally online. That I could do forever. Taking a moment to stop and let everything else in is another matter. But I can and will do it. I will appreciate the ones I love while I have them with me. And if I forget, I will be reminded when I crumple to the floor in tears in Market Basket every time my mother forgets to pick up her phone.

Shalom.

PS: He was 44 when he filmed this movie. I don't think he looks a day over Thelma and Louise.
PPS: It's a beautiful film. You should see it. It isn't a tearjerker until the last 10 minutes, but even so, it's worth it.

YAY HEARTBREAK HILL!!!

Clean Clothes On The Floor

I've been sitting at my computer, on my bed, for about half an hour. I'm looking at the huge pile of clean clothes on my floor, in two IKEA bags- three loads worth. For the past 48 hours, I've been picking clothes to wear out of said pile, and leaving the remainder on the ground. In bags. Now, instead of putting them away, I'm ordering swimsuits on sale from Victoria's Secret. 

Hmm. 

I should put those clothes away. 

*Gets out credit card to place order*

Wife Swap

I just watched an episode of Wife Swap and I loved it. 

For those of you who may not know, I'm not a big reality TV person. By that I mean I detest it, for the most part. I can't seem to turn it off when it IS on, but since I no longer have cable, I haven't had a problem avoiding it. Now, however, I'm sick in a hotel and I don't know the Pittsburgh channel lineup. And, as usual, when I saw it, I couldn't turn it off. This had the added draw of involving two drastically different sets of teenage girls: ones who had no freedom, and ones who were wildly out of control. 

It was just a great story. The parents who were too lax and gave their kids too much freedom against the parents who essentially jailed their kids, complete with no friends and video surveillance. 

It made me wonder: How, as a parent, do you balance? You want your kids to respect you, but they need the freedom to make their own decisions, including their own mistakes. I don't know how I'll be able to do it. 

Mom

I don't think it's possible to love someone as much as I love my mother. I don't think the human condition can handle or express it. It's a love that I can't. Try. Words aren't enough.

In the Dark

The hunger in my stomach is intense. It crashes, collides, echoes throughout my torso. It's the moment you realize that you're up way too late as a kid, when staying up super late isn't something that happens very often. You can't sleep so you walk around the house, trying to be silent, but every noise seems to echo, even the tiny sounds of your bare feet on the kitchen tiles (which are ten degrees colder at night, you decide).

The house looks different at night. It, too, has gone to sleep. The house in Dallas had skylights in most rooms, and they looked like eyes. I felt exposed, somehow, by all of those dark windows. As a child I would sprint by the biggest windows, crossing my fingers (but not sure what for). I only let myself walk at a normal pace on carpeted hallways with no windows.

I still remember how the rooms looked at night. Not full, well-rounded descriptions, but bits and pieces remain, like an unfinished collage in my memory. The slanted windows of Dad's office. The laundry cabinet in my brother's and my bathroom (When I was really small, I was convinced it would come to life). I remember the walkway around the living room, tiled in a stone I should call my mom to get the name of, when it's a normal hour, when she's awake. Green painted petals on my light fixture.

Sidenote: What specifically designates a chandelier? What does it have to have to be called that, as opposed to a light fixture or a lamp? Will look up later.

I find it odd that only pieces stick in my mind. I also find it odd which pieces in particular stick. Why the green painted petal on my light fixture?

My eyelids are tired.

I am still on hummus detox. My body is not happy with the drastic shift in diet. By that, I mean my body is not pleased that all I've ingested since returning to this country are eggo whole wheat waffles. But damn, they're so good.

XO.

Thunderstorms were a different story.

I went to Israel?

I went to Israel. It was amazing. As Matt said, it's frustrating to sift through your mental rolodex of adjectives in attempt to describe it and always come up short. Although if I'm honest, I prefer to think of my vocabulary as a magnetic poetry. Does that make my brain equivalent to the door of my dishwasher? Probably.

ISRAEL: Dopp Kit Take 1

What I'm packing in my dop kit (feel free to yell at me if I'm missing anything):

1. Sunscreen (Neutrogena lotion and Coppertone Spray)
2. Bug spray (spray and wipes and little wristlets)
3. Contact solution (big bottle, little bottle, 2 cases, eyedrops)
4. Extra contacts
5. toothpaste
6. toothbrush
7. shampoo
8. conditioner
9. deodorant (night stuff, day stuff x2)
10. things I'm bringing that are mostly unecessary but I have miniature versions from Target so why not: apricot scrub, lotion, facewash)
11. pfb vanish, razor
12. benzoyl peroxide
13. toner
14. soap / dish
15. q-tips
16. medicines
17. goggles
18. tissues
19. a tiny bit of makeup
20. tylenol
21. allergy stuff
22. INHALER!!! 
23. cotton balls
24. aquaphor

Buzz.

I've only seen 2.5 scary movies

I just read Boston.com's list of the 50 scariest movies ever clickity here if you want to read it too and I'm shocked and dismayed to report that I've only seen 2.5 of the movies.

1. The Ring: Honestly, I didn't love it. I was freaked out by it, but it helped me articulate what I believe to be an important distinction: scary versus startling. The Ring made us jump out of our seats, but it was due mostly to the startling factor. The camera zooms into the guy dead on the chair with his face all distorted, but it happens SO FAST that you're literally startled that the lens moved that fast. Yes, the dude himself is scary, but I think the startle far outweighs the scare. However, I'll give it props for having a creepy premise. And I love the actress who plays Samara. She also plays Rhonda, the mormon fundamentalist patriarch's child bride in Big Love. She's f*cking fantastic.

2. Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Fantastic movie. I watched part of it when I was 8, and when I saw a clip of the remake many years later, even my 8 year-old memories could tell the difference. I've seen it several times since then, and I have been able to draw the following conclusions:
--It is fantastic. Watch it.
--My mother is magical, because this movie did NOT scare her away from gardening in the slightest. In fact, I think it may have inspired her to go outside that very minute and start weeding.
--Botany is a funny word.
--It is AMAZING how Jeff Goldblum has aged so well. In this movie, he is supremely awkward, all lips and squinty eyes and teeth. In Law&Order, he's actually borderline handsome. Fascinating.

2.5. The Shining. I say .5 because I couldn't get through it. It was too slow. I liked the creepiness of it, but there isn't enough Adderall in the world that could make me sit through the rest of it. Kid was fabulous though.

New Goal: Watch as many of these movies as I can. Starting with "The Innocents (1961)."

I FOUND THE CURE FOR ROAD RAGE!

Ladies and gentlemen, I have an announcement. After 8 years of legally carousing the roads of Boston and surrounding areas, I have found the cure for road rage.

Along the way, I've run into a disturbing cast of characters:

CRAZY LADY 
Last summer, Crazy Lady turned left on a red light in Brighton Center, ripped a chunk off my minivan, and when I went to pull over, took both hands off the wheel, swerved all over the road, screamed, and became a scene from the Exorcist. When I got ahold of the police and finally felt safe pulling over, she proceeded to tell me that it was my fault, because her husband was going to beat her.

OLD WHITE CONVERTIBLE GUY
Last spring, I lived on a pretty small street in Brookline. However, despite it being - for all intents and purposes - a small, residential street, it is actually a long street that turns into Kelton, Warren, Sparhawk, and eventually Arlington Street before merging with Faneuil on the Brighton/Watertown border. Translation: If you have any experience driving in this area, you know that Winchester/Kelton/Warren/Sparhawk/Arlington street is one of the BEST cut throughs to avoid any number of LOS (Large, Obnoxious Streets) crawling with O-Bugs (Obnoxious BU Undergrads). Enter Old White Convertible Guy.

This man had impeccable timing, and tended to drive by exactly as I was crossing the street to my apartment.

SIDENOTE: In Brookline, there is no overnight street parking. In a town like Belmont, with an abundance of driveways, this is not a problem. In Brookline, it means that you pay people every month to rent a spot in their driveways/front yards/etc. Thus, I parked across the street.

This is what he would yell:

YOU STUPID C*NT, GO TO THE G*DDAMN CROSSWALK TO CROSS THE STREET! HOW F*CKING STUPID ARE YOU?

I understand people yelling things like that in big intersections. Hell, I switched from the Brookline to the Allston CVS because I was tired of being given the finger by rich mommies jaywalking across Harvard Street with their toddlers. I never yell obscenities out the window, however. I'd like to say it's because I'm a more honorable person, but honestly, it's because I have this irrational fear that one of my students will for some reason be within earshot and will yell, "TO THINK YOU KICKED ME OUT OF CLASS FOR DROPPING F-BOMBS. FOR SHAME MISS!"

In any event, this intersection... is not a big intersections. This intersection is two lanes, and on a residential street. There are no crosswalks. If I wanted to use a crosswalk, I would have to walk back to Beacon. See below:

So you see the absurdity. However, I never got a chance to explain this to him, because he always drove off at 100 mph. 

These are two of many disturbing characters I've encountered along with the subsequent rage that bubbles up inside after our run-ins. But, fair readers, I've found the cure. 

THE CURE FOR ROAD RAGE

Do you remember those old school Nickelodeon game shows from the early 90s? They contained something wonderful: Green slime. I found the history the the green slime on Wikipedia, but I'm entirely too lazy to read it, so I'm going to assume that it started with one show, and caught on due to its awesomeness. If I'm wrong, sue me. 

THIS IS THE CURE. 

Picture the scene: You're driving. You're probably running a little bit late, or worse: you're not quite late, but you're on the borderline, so that one extended red light, LTDTUWDR (Left turning douche taking up whole damn road), or YLNT (Yellow light not taken) could bump you into lateville. I hate that feeling. I'd rather just be late than hovering in the possibility. But anyway, this is the scene. I'm going to use an example of how it might happen for me: Old White Convertible Guy expands his horizons to Storrow Drive. I'm on the Tobin Bridge, and he cuts me off right before the 4th street exit, the one closest to my school. I am forced to continue to the Chelsea HS exit, and backtrack. I will be late. 

Normally, this would be tragic. I would scream, yell things like WHAT THE FUDGE, SHUT THE FRONT DOOR, etc (can't have my students overhearing me). But today is different, because I have figured out the cure to road rage. I've also figured out the longest-winded way to explain this cure to you, but if you're still reading, you love me enough to deal with my rambling. 

Instead of my usual meltdown, I smile. Not a little smile, but a wide smile, ear-to-ear. I giggle first, then burst out into full-fledged laughter. As I pass him, I wave, grin, and blow him a kiss. He looks at me, shocked, because his plan to ruin me has failed, and he has no idea why. 

Why am I smiling? Although he's clean, wearing a white-collared shirt, in a white car, that's not what I see. At the exact moment I was about to burst into road rage, I pictured a huge bucket turning upside-down, dumping gallons and gallons of old school Nickelodeon green slime on him. 

Now it won't work if that's all you picture. You have to use your imagination. What, really, would it look like if green slime was dumped on an angry old man in a white convertible

A convertible has no top. There is no barrier between the sky and the slime, so it pours right in. It slides over the leather seats, slides down the windshield (he turns on his wipers), and seeps into the crack that holds the canvas top, so even if he tries to put the top back up, it will be slimy on both slides. He has glasses, in my vision, so in the midst of all this, he's stopping to wipe slime off the lenses with his fingers. It's in his ears, his nose, and sliding down his white-collared shirt. His feet slip on the pedals because it's in the bottom of the car by now. It covers the seatbelts, the stick shift, the CD player, and his latte. It ruins his issue of Douchebag Weekly in the front seat (Oh no, what will he do for guidance?). He will panic, wondering if it is somehow radioactive, and then panic some more when he realizes he didn't get any kind of service contract on his car because he thought the world revolved around him. He will pull over, covered in slime, and bystanders will take pictures with their phones and post them on the internet. He will try to use his phone, but it will not work, due to slime damage. He will sit in his car, wondering if the brunette in the RAV-4 is some sort of sorceress who can snap her fingers and bring green slime on people. He will remember all the times he cussed me out unnecessarily, and he will. be. sorry. 

I understand that none of that will happen. But here's what WILL happen: As a result of this visualization exercise, I walk into work smiling ear-to-ear. I tell everyone about my breakthrough, and they marvel at my brilliance, while laughing internally at the kooky writing teacher, but still debating trying this strategy themselves. I will prepare for an hour or so, then go to my first class, and even though my 1st period 8th graders are especially negative, they will be drawn into my infectious positive attitude, and when I explain why I'm smiling, they will all tell me of times they've illegally driven automobiles, and we will laugh, and I will try not to worry about that. They will write. Win. 

So try it, I dare you. 

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Living like a writer?

We have writer’s notebooks, lists of writing territories, explorations, drafts, and poems. We brainstorm, share ideas, model ways to vary our syntax and diction, and how to edit. We share, comment, and reflect on our writing. We share storie, do freewrites and more. But as writing teachers, are we really living like writers?

A long time ago, I thought living like a writer meant you got paid to write and your writing got published. Then I got a job reviewing trendy technology. I was paid 20 cents/word to write a review of iPod-wired Levi’s jeans. By the end of it, I wanted to punch someone. Then I applied to teaching graduate school.

A shorter time ago, I thought living like a writer meant you looked at the world differently. On the sidewalk in October, there is a pile of leaves. Some people walk through the leaves without a second thought. Some people pause for a minute to marvel at the way the four o-clock sun slants through the clouds and makes certain colors pop. Some people walk slowly around the pile, squinting, noticing that if they move their heads two inches to the left, the reds cast a light glow over the yellows. A writer picks up a pen.

Both definitions are true, but it took a blog and a roommate for me to realize the element I was missing. I posted an early draft of my memoir, so early that “rough” doesn’t cover the lack of polished prose. In passing, my roommate said that it had a lot of potential, and I wanted to curl up into a ball and disappear. I wasn’t familiar with the fear associated with other people critiquing my writing. It had been three years, after all, since my last writing workshop. Even then, I focused on mainly fiction. This was TRUE. It was my mother, my wonderful mother, who’s in fantastic shape and still somehow needed emergency brain surgery. This was me, sobbing in front of my laptop, setting a timer for ten minutes and letting the fear envelope me as I tried to put it into words. This was less than two months ago, and my roommate thought she could just comment on it in passing, like it was nothing?

In an instant, I knew I would tell this story to all my future students. I ask them to share like it’s easy, like putting your thoughts on display for 27 people is easy, and I’m surprised when making participation 20% of their grade isn’t enough motivation? Sometimes my thoughtlessness alarms me. Sometimes I don’t know how 25 years and God knows how many tears haven’t taught me that it’s hard to put your feelings into words, and even harder to speak them out loud.

That’s what I’m missing. I love my students, but it’s not enough to write for them, and the 6.4 people who read my blog. To truly live like a writer, I need to write in a community of writers. A community of writers where I can swear, where I don’t have to conspicuously leave all the alcohol and sex out. A community of writers that aren’t 10-15-years old.

Most of the writing I’ve done in the past two years has been for my students. When I’m looking for an example of a quickwrite, I do it myself. I have dozens of lists of “My Writing Territories,” geared towards different groups and grade levels. I wrote my own “Relaxing Place” essay. But it’s been three years since took a writing class, three years since I wrote my thesis, graduated, and ended up back in middle school.

The single most meaningful teaching experience I’ve had this year is writing a memoir with my 8^th grade students. I used all the brainstorming and visualization techniques, half the drafting strategies, and found myself saying things like, “Show, don’t’ tell,” while revising my syntax. I found the common theme in a dozen rambly freewrites and stitched it together in a way that made sense. The experience of writing the memoir helped me process the experience I was writing about. I learned something about it along the way. It was too valuable an experience to keep to myself. Even though I assigned a pinch reader to take over when I felt the tears starting, even though I still cried while reading it to them, it changed the way I understand and teach memoir, and way I understand and teach writing.

It really made me question everything I know about writing. It made me wonder if, despite all the observing, writing, collecting, and sharing I do, I somehow was missing the point. Was I really leaving like a writer? Are any of us? Are we looking at the way the sun hits a pile of leaves and picking up a pen? Are we writing while crying and laughing and screaming into our computer screens? Are we hurling our words full-speed at the page like we expect our students to?

I don’t think I was living like a writer until I wrote that memoir.

Three days ago I asked a chronically-disorganized student to show me the Table of Contents in his Writer’s Notebook. He smirked, and said, “Fine, but let me see yours.” When I showed it to him, he said, “But, is it up-to-date Miss Wyner?” It wasn’t. Luckily, I managed to talk my way out of a detention.

The next day, I walked into my seventh grade class and held my notebook opened for them to see. “This is my homework,” I proclaimed. I showed them my two pages of memoir explorations, and explained that my half-page detailed list about Franklin Park wasn’t something I thought I would continue writing about, but I thought I might keep working on my exploration of swimming pools in my life.

A girl who often tells me how annoying she finds me looked up from her detailed schedule of scratching hearts into the table and said, “Wow. That’s really cool that you did that.”

Later, I let her teach me how to jerk. I failed. We all laughed as I tripped over my feet trying to do an alarmingly simple dance move. Life goes on.

HEART OF MY HEART

HEART OF MY HEART
LKW

I was five the first time a boy stomped on my heart.
He divorced me two weeks after our recess wedding on the playground and I thought I’d never get over it. When I told my mother, she didn’t say a word. She just picked up the phonebook and called his mother. I giggled on her lap. Already, the pain was fading.

***

The next time my heart broke I was 14. I don’t remember how it happened; I just remember how awful it felt, the days fading into one long grey streak. Self-doubt consumed me as I tried desperately to figure out what I had done wrong. One afternoon, my mother joined me on the couch. She cradled me like a baby, rocked me back and forth, and stroked my hair. I cried awful, hiccupping sobs. I cried so hard I could barely breathe, so hard it sounded like I was dying, gasping for breath.
As she wiped the streaks of mascara from my cheeks, I was surprised to see sadness in her face. "What's wrong Mama?" I asked.
"Heart of my heart," she said softly, "Don't you understand? When you hurt, I hurt. Your pain is no different from my own."

***

Ten years later, I held her hand carefully, trying not to interfere with any of the IV tubes. Around me things beeped, gurgled and swished, an onomatopoetic paradise. It was 9 a.m. on Valentine's Day, 2010, and I had left the apartment so fast that I had forgotten socks. Her brain had started bleeding, and no one knew why. They were able to fix it, but no one knew the extent of the damage. I couldn't think about it, it was too painful. An hour earlier, when the surgeon had come to talk to my father, I had fainted in the middle of the hallway. No one had noticed.

When she woke up it was worse. Seeing her helpless was nothing that could adequately be described in words. The helplessness I felt was worse. I saw her in there, trapped behind swollen eyelids and a bruised mind. She writhed in the cheap hospital sheets, trying to hurl herself off the bed. My mother, who couldn’t sit through a half-hour sitcom in our den without getting up at least five times to do various things, was confined to a bed. There was a falseness to the situation, a bad aftertaste like cheap soda leaves on your tongue.

She couldn’t talk for days. When she could talk, it was in bits and pieces. My mother, the woman who instilled a love of words in me, could only say about ten of them. It nearly killed me, seeing her like that. “I…” she would trail off. “I just can’t… I don’t… I…” I didn’t know if she wanted me to stay or leave. I didn’t know if I should make flashcards and have her point. I didn’t know how to help. I’ve never felt so powerless in my entire life. I felt like my soul was going to faint, and leave my body standing there, staring, vacant, not knowing what to do.

As time passed, she spoke more fluently, but there was still a halting quality to her sentences, as if she needed an extra second here and there to find the words. Every time she stopped, every idea she couldn't say, tore away at me in little pieces. Every time her eyes sparked with an idea and then welled up with tears when she couldn't express it, pain consumed me somewhere between my chest and shoulders.

A week later, she was doing what the doctors called “waxing and waning.” Some days she could talk almost normally, and some days she could barely get a sentence out. On one of her good days, she told me it was like being imprisoned in her own mind, and we cried. She said, over and over, “There’s no way you could ever know how awful it was,” and she was right: I’d never had brain surgery; technically, I didn’t know what it was like.

What I couldn’t figure out how to tell her was that I did know. The way it felt, watching her, helpless, was a kind of torture I wouldn’t wish on anyone. It felt like being ripped in half. I thought of all the times she told me she felt my pain, all the times she cried when I was the one breaking, and right then I realized what she had meant. Never before had I wanted, so much, to take someone else’s pain. I wanted to lie down in the bed next to her and have her pain transferred to me, injected into me in huge doses, pushed into my body by IV, to get it out of hers. When I was 14 she told me she could feel my pain, and it took me until 24 to realize that link went both ways. Heart of my heart. I finally understood.
I don’t know if I’ll become a parent anytime soon. I don’t think I’m strong enough to take on a lifetime of feeling my child’s pain, a lifetime of wishing that pain was inflicted on me instead. If I can, one day, I will.

***

Wouldn’t it be the greatest gift of all, to truly take on someone else’s pain?
If only we could.

An Open Letter to Naturally Thin People

You know who you are. You casually walk into the employee lunchroom with leftover Burger King tucked under your arm, a dollar in your pocket to buy Sunchips from the vending machine.

When we went to college, the rest of us agonized over our weight. The dining hall became a veritable fat factory, full of cholesterol waiting to seep over the tops of our high school denim. We spent 20 dollars a week on diet coke, celebrated the invention of Propel, and sloshed through puddles on rainy days all in the name of keeping our highschool figures. In the end we all failed, some more tragically than others, but we stood united in our defeat. We moaned and groaned together. We joked about Lindsay Lohan's cocaine diet, but knew we were only half-kidding. We tried crazy fad diets and failed.  We planned group shopping trips as soon as bubble dresses became the style, thrilled they hid our ever-expanding lovehandles.

Throughout all of this, you stood off to the side with your 4,000-calorie brownie Frappuccino from Starbucks. You nodded in all the right places, said, "Damn, I know, right?" and wiped the whipped cream off your chin. You were never mean about it. It was simply a part of life that you didn't understand.

Our older friends, wiser, somewhat worse for wear, told us, "Don't worry, guys don't like girls that skinny." They pointed at you discreetly and said, "She's built like a boy. Men like curves. Men like women that look like women." And it pacified us for the time being, but on some level, we knew it was a lie. Because when given a choice between flat-chested Kate Hudson and gargantuan Kirstie Alley, who do you think men would choose?

Thousands of dollars and dozens of weight loss programs later, we're still struggling. Some of us have bins in our parents' attics, full of jeans we haven't been able to wear in five years. We should just throw them out, but that would mean defeat, so we don't. We let them accumulate dust, dust that we will one day, hopefully, get all over our hands in our haste to open that bin.

This is a message for all the women who can still drink frappuccinos on a regular basis: Your time will come.

It might be ten years after college graduation. You'll wake up one day and realize that you have to suck in your stomach to button your skinny jeans. Maybe it'll be after your first child, and the weight you gained won't slide off you like the freshman 3.2 you gained. Or maybe you'll be like Sienna Miller, and realize one day that, despite being skinny, your skin flops around your tiny bone structure and you look worse than some fat people.

I say this not with anger, but with the quiet realization that what goes around comes around. Maybe it's Karma. Maybe taking it for granted will be the catalyst for your downfall. Maybe it's like diffusion, and the bad luck will gradually spread out.

When it happens, I'll be flying down the esplanade with Muse blasting in my earbuds. When the proverbial fat hits the fan for you, that's where I'll be, in my rosy-cheeked, muscled glory. My ass will be carved from steel, my quads will be almost too strong, and my arms will finally not look like string beans. Maybe I'll still have a miniature spare tire, but I'll be a tan, ripped, golden God so I won't care.

When you stagger into the gym, I will help you. I will politely remind you that Converse sneakers are not workout attire, and I'll even show you how to work your core. I will throw out your Frappuccino.

So enjoy it while it lasts, thin person. Your time will come.

And until then, at least my boobs are nicer than yours.

Things I Hate

This blog is inspired by Dave Anderson. He was two years ahead of me in high school, and his senior year, he took my yearbook and labeled all the people in his class that he hated and why. Thank you, Dave. I hope you're having fun in France, doing... whatever it is people do when they move to France.

THINGS I HATE:

• People from BU (except MK)
• People from BU that howl at the moon while drunk at night during the week. or at all. who howls? who does that?
• injuries
• the smoke monster
• being fat
• having to wait a week between Lost episodes
• Jack Shephard (I'm sorry, he's SO ANNOYING. I know everyone loves him, and I know you're going to judge me, but I am ALL ABOUT SAWYER. I know. Surprise, surprise. Leah likes the bad boy with a heart of gold character. Color us shocked). 
• the fact that I'm losing weight, and as a result, my boobs are shrinking
• winter
• cold
• car payments
• my hands. they are bitten bloody and raw.
• this week
• luck

Fraud

FOR TEN MINUTES, I'm going to let the pressure out. 

I'm so scared. I realize now that I am a complete fraud. Every time I've comforted someone who's lost a loved one, every time I've cried over someone's death, none of that compared to this. Every single word I've said.

My mother is the most incredible woman in the world. I love her so much it physically hurts. It is painful. And this week I had to face the possibility -- I can't type it. Every time I try, I sob so hard my body bucks forward and I have to gasp for breath.

I've been so lucky. No one I know has ever left me in a permanent way. I wondered about it for the first time when I was quite young, and the longer it lasts, the more I worry. When someone leaves me I don't know if I'll make it. Given how I'm handling this now, I'm not too optimistic.

She looked so awful today. Her whole face was waterlogged, puffy to an extreme level I've never seen. She seemed so frail. My mother. Force of nature. The strongest woman I know, the person in the world with the most fire in her. SHe was helpless. Everything I say is wrong. I wanted to say it nearly killed me, but I can't. Oh god. This is too much.

I feel like I can't talk to anyone about it. Everyone I know has gone through real loss in a way I haven't, and I have this fear that, no matter how genuine they are in their care for me, they will resent me for it. And I can hardly blame them.

I felt her eyelid today. It was puffed out twice its size, filled with fluid from the swelling in her brain. It felt like a tissue-thin water balloon.

There's too much. I can't let it all out it's going to choke me and drown me and I can't take it. Ouch. Oww. I am silently screaming, hunched over, abs crashing into each other, back curled over my keyboard, mouth wide open, eyes squeezes shut, silently screaming. That is exhausting.

I don't feel resolved, but I do feel drained. Turns out the advice I gave my dad about setting a timer for ten minutes and letting the fear envelope you for that time isn't half bad advice. I'm still terrified and overwhelmed, don't get me wrong. But I feel drained. And starting now the pressure will start building up, and I'll do what I did today: everything I can to keep moving. I cleaned my room in a more thorough way than I have the entire time living here. I even cleaned my dresser. I just couldn't stop moving. I kept telling myself that I was being absurd, but in my head I knew I had to keep moving, for fear of what would happen when I stopped.

Now my eyes are dry. My face is a work of science. The skin that still has the night cream I use on it is stiff, but the rest of it is covered in streaks of saltwater that wiped it clean.

Times like this make me understand those people who completely shut themselves off from the world and lock out all emotion. You know, the people who DON'T believe it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. Right now, I understand the logic. I still don't believe it, but I can see why people would.

And I feel like a hypocrite. They say she'll be fine. She's supposed to be swollen - she had brain surgery. She's supposed to be out of it - she had brain surgery. I believe she will recover. I worry she won't, and I think of our conversation about GD, and I'm going to need to push that down again. Shove. Smush. Push. Close. Lock. I'll explore that with my ten minutes tomorrow.

Monday Night, Midnight, 2/15/10

REMEMBER * book idea * book of letters, book of dear ____s *

testing

...Does it work?

Snow Memoir

I remember cupping my hands against the glass, trying to block out all the light, and squinting through the window. The first floor roof always obscured my view. The trees along Solomon Pierce didn't help much either. Eventually, I would creep downstairs, carefully stepping on the outer edges of the squeaky steps. I'd push back the curtains on our front door windows and strain to see the tiny dots of white against the black backdrop of night.

What were those special curtains called, the ones that were attached at the top and the bottom? We had those curtains on the front door. Mom always yelled at us when we touched those curtains, but it never stopped us. "They'll turn yellow, look, they're already looking worn," she'd insist, but the second she turned around, my brother and I would go back to casually pushing back the sheer fabric to check if our friends were at the door. Eventually, she gave up and stopped telling us how much they were. Years later, they are noticeably yellowed on the inner edges and seriously stretched out of shape, but I doubt my mother cares.

In my head, I imagine the moment she changed her mind about the curtains. One minute, she glances at them and sees the money she's wasted on curtains we inevitably destroyed, and the time she's wasted trying to convince us not to. The next minute, in my vision, she looks at those curtains, yellow and pulled out of shape, and they conjure images of the two of us, young and eager, pulling back the fabric, looking for friends, butterflies, snowflakes, and car headlights. In her mind something shifts, and those curtains become the children that grew up tugging on them, the children that are now grown up and gone with curtains of their own to pull on and snowflakes of their own to chase.

I always loved snowflakes. There's something soft and comforting about the way they fall from the sky. I remember squinting through the window at the street lamp on 1 Solomon Pierce Road, trying to see tiny dots in the light it cast. It was always tough to tell if it was snowing, or if it was just an illusion created by flecks of dust on the window.

PUTA: a poem

You look the same
in your fifth grade
ID picture
but different

I look at you now
as you slump
against the back of the
green, metal chair
and wonder
where did that open-eyed
wild-haired
bright-faced ten-year-old
go?

You didn't have bangs back then
maybe the fringe hiding your right eye
is what makes you evil
maybe the hair gel seeping into your brain
makes you ask,
"are you on your period?
is that why
you gave me detention?"

the little girl without the eyeliner
would never have said the word "pad"
out loud
without trying to
smash chin
into chest
bright red
mortified
wanting to disappear.

so where is that
sweet
little girl?
her frizzy black hair
now flattened and gelled
her wide eyes
now covered in shadow
her mouth now spewing
spanish words i
shouldn't know
the definitions of
but i do
unfortunately

well i might be a
PUTA
but i'm still the
PUTA
who tries to wipe the slate
clean after every nasty comment
you can't resist yelling
i'm still the
PUTA
that wants to read your words
even if yesterday they were
swears screamed at top volume

not every puta can do that

WHEN I WAS FIVE

When I was five

I decided the trees

were all boys or girls

(tall trees were boys)

(short trees were girls)

When I was five

I hated to read

but halfway through

Ramona Forever

I hid under blankets

with a flashlight

(couldn’t put it down)

When I was five

I chopped off dolls’ hair

and cried

when I realized

it wouldn’t grow back.

Impatient,

I cut my own hair

then baby brother’s hair

until Mom hid the scissors

(thank God).

When I was five

David threw sand

stung my eyes

broke my heart

(we got a divorce)

When I was five

I rode horses all day

tiny cowboy boots

dry heat

When I was five

ballet was my love

I danced through gym class

“Leah, pass the ball!”

(can’t hear you,

busy spinning

my hands in the air).

When I was five

I wore a shower cap

to school

My mom couldn’t stop me

so she gave up

(can you blame her?

I was five).

When I was five

Mom went away

and Dad fed us peanut butter and jelly

for all three meals

Mom was not pleased

“It’s pretty healthy food, Leah,

tell your students that,”

he insists

when I call him

to ask for details

about when I was five

Hanukkah 09 Recap

I CLEANED UP this Hanukkah. It was the best Hanukkah ever. The only one I can think of that was better was 5th grade, when I got a boombox and Hootie & the Blowfish's Cracked Rear view. God damn, what a good album that was. You don't get that many albums nowadays that you can just listen to straight through. I blame iTunes. And Bush.

The top gifts:

• a drill. so I can drill things. and drill holes in things. and sometimes, i will even drill different-sized holes in things.
• a label-maker. I already labeled the cactus in the kitchen. "cactus." in case you thought i labeled it with something else.
  
• jew bling for my phone. i now have the five books of moses represented in silver keychain form.
  
• A BULLET BLENDER. oh my god, it's like, imagine a food processor and a blender got together and did a lot of cocaine, a lot of steroids, and then had a baby.
  

You know what really bugs me? Those movie trailers that are 3 minutes long and somehow manage to say almost nothing about the movie. what a waste of time. Boo sex and the city 2.

Just kidding. I didn't mean it. I swear. Promise. Forgive me?

Writing yet again about dieting (how boring, you should fire me)

Let me begin by saying that I know diets. I've been on one, more or less, for the better part of my twenty four years. Growing up in Texas it's just a reality. When we moved to Boston, my mother used to joke with New England natives about how in Dallas, they put the diet drug Phen-Fen in the check-out line next to the bubble gum. The next time we went grocery shopping, I eyed the bubble gum in the check-out line, wishing there was Phen-Fen there like in Dallas, so I could be the same size at the Limited Too as my (slimmer) friends. I was ten.

I won't say that I've been through all the diets in the book, because I haven't, and thank God. Here is a list of weight-loss measures I have tried:

1. running. I started by running a mile a day in 7th grade, and ended up... a runner.
   
2. anorexia. I wouldn't recommend it.
   
3. bulimia. I also wouldn't recommend it.
   
4. Atkins. Not a good idea for a vegetarian.
   
5. South Beach: Works like a charm, but is impossible to sustain for life.
   
6. jenny craig: also works wonderfully, but is ridiculously expensive, and although it teaches you portion control, there's no lifelong method.
   
7. crazy expensive gym with personal trainer 4x a week: also works, but slowly, and I didn't learn anything about the muscle groups. Idiots.
   
8. winging it.
   

Some worked. Some didn't. Some worked really well- South beach, first time around, was amazing. I was so thin. Elyse, do you remember that? I came to visit you at Scotty's? I was CRAZY thin. But again, it just seemed so hard to sustain. I do well with structure, so I do well with most diets at first, and even for a few months. But after that, I'd get fat again.

I had the epiphany that I wasn't looking for a diet sometime around last spring. I realized that the problem with all these diets is that they don't promote lifestyle changes. Or maybe they do, and I just completely missed that. I was so busy trying not to hate myself physically that I changed my lifestyle drastically to fit a diet, and then when the diet fell away, I was left with nothing.

I tried all summer to lose weight. I told myself, I want to change my lifestyle so that these bad eating habits don't come naturally, so that if I fall off the wagon occasionally, it won't be so hard to get back on. And I tried, God love me, I tried. But it wasnt' enough.

It was Elyse that finally inspired me to do Weight Watchers. More about that later. Need to watch Cougar Town.

Thoughts on October 26, 2009

I'm so tired. I love my job, I really do, and I know it will get easier every year, but whoever said that the second year of teaching is significantly easier than the first is lying. A bit, maybe. But not a lot.

I am so frustrated with my students. I want so much to motivate them, but it has to come from them. At a Halloween party last year, an old friend from high school/temple said, "Wow, so you're like Michelle Pheiffer in Dangerous Minds," and I couldn't comprehend the comparison. Movies, books, all narratives essentially, are made with the audience in mind. There are things like narrative arc, climax, rising action, characterization, etc. Real life is a lot less interesting. It tends to wear on you day by day, like a layer of gauze between you and the outside world, until finally your mind is so blurry that you sleep for 14 hours starting at 7 p.m. Friday night.

I will, however, try to use positive motivation whenever possible. I can't keep giving detentions. There's no point. I am happy with my decision to not hold afternoon detentions anymore (Haleluyah), but still, something about the model is broken. I don't know.

I ... am tired.

Loans

Here's the thing about my relationship with loans. I love the idea that borrowing money is so easy, but the interest freaks me out. Most people are okay with it. I am not. I worry, agonizing, calculating how much more I'm actually going to have to pay back beyond my original principal amount because of how slowly I'm going to pay it back.

I know you have to pay to borrow money, and nothing's free, but I still lie awake at night hyperventilating about the 20+thousand dollar graduate education that very well may end up costing me over thirty. And although I'm prone to exaggeration, this, dear friends, is not an exaggeration. I have the loan payoff calculator bookmarked. Apple-D baby, Apple-D.

I can't figure it out. On the one hand, I want to subtract my living expenses from my paycheck and send the rest into Sallie Mae. On the other hand, what if I need more money than I anticipate. And shouldn't I be saving?

Saving is another thing I wonder about. I love the idea of saving money and buying a place. But I wonder... what good is putting away money each month if I'm rapidly incurring interest? Won't I eventually be spending all the money I save on the interest I'm incurring while I'm saving it?

My inability to answer an MCAS prompt

It's funny, actually, that so many writing prompts involve choosing a relaxing place. The irony that I of all people am tasked with teaching 13-year-olds how to best organize their thoughts into an MCAS response is... well, we'll talk about that later.

I always do what I ask my students to do. Maybe not immediately, or in the exact same way, but I would never ask them to try a strategy I haven't tried myself. As a result of this, I've tried to do the MCAS prompt about a special place I go to relax. And... I can't.

I wasn't an overanxious kid, as far as I know. I'm sure I was as demanding and outspoken as I am now, if not more so, but I wasn't so high-strung that I never relaxed. I just can't remember relaxing places from my youth that I went to with any regularity.

I remember moments, not place with broad, overarching feeelings attached to them. My parents' bed was one place I remember going to cool down. They always had silky sheets that were crisp and cool against your cheeks, and this comforter with a nubby design that I loved to pick at (and that my mother, naturally, loved. I remember their pillow shams, the stiff ruffled edges, so full of ... pillow stuffing... that I thought they might pop. I remember the darkness in the air, even in the bright mornings, and I remember a velvety blanket we used only occasionally. I remember that I had to lie a certain way to attain maximum comfort between my mom and dad.

I remember hide and seek. My brother and I spent years trying to craft the perfect position to hide in. We were positive that if we crumpled the covers up JUST SO, then the seeker wouldn't notice the human body rolled up in them. I don't think we ever succeeded.

But I also remember traumatic memories tied to that bed. I remember running in the middle of the night, zig-zagging across the living room, and hurling myself at them, only to be picked up, tossed over a broad shoulder sack-of-laundry-style, and carried back to my bed. I remember how far away the floor looked from where my head rested on my mother's shoulder as she carried me. I remember throwing up all over her, en-route, the puke staining her blue nightgown in streaks of dark navy. I remember how they used to calm me down.

Leah, look at one spot on the wall. Tell me five things you can see, five things you can feel, and five things you can hear. The first time a guy really hurt me, like, treated me like garbage, I dug my fingernails into my palms and pretended you were asking me to do that again.

So, what do you do with that? What if your memory isn't compartmentalized by emotion? I mean, I'm not worried about my life. I think it's a good thing that my memories are so multi-faceted and vivid that no place ever evokes solely one feeling. But still... it makes you think.

And ramble, clearly.

Loveyouall-lw

PS: Being a writer means...
-Sometimes you have to write, even if it's late, because the thoughts bubbling inside your head are too much to sleep.
-Sometimes you can't fully enjoy something in the moment, because you're already thinking of how to express it in words. This, however, lets you enjoy it later.

Day Sixteen

Day 16... -10 pounds and counting...

BIG thoughts

Done.

Maybe that’s why I took so long to finish the 8th grade poetry book. Because on some level I knew that the completion of that would really mean the end. I mean, what do I really have left to do? Buy envelopes. Pack. Organize. Find those damn letters. Dayanara is afraid to go to high school so she’s subconsciously sabotaging herself with negative behavior. Is it all that different? Probably not.

the sheer volume of information I have in my head is overwhelming on a level I never thought possible. If I thought I could write it all down I’d try, but I don’t know how far I’d get before losing it completely. However, one skill I have perfected this year is learning to take my own advice, and practicing what I preach, so more often than not I find myself saying, “What would I tell a student who had this problem?” It works, surprisingly. I think using student strategies helps talk me down from my metacognitive cliff because a) they are good strategies, b) we are not that different and c) it keeps me humble. So, how would I advise myself?

First, a flood of ideas would deluge my mind. Then, I would consider where the student was coming from on every level I could think of, and suggest something I thought they could handle. So, what can I handle now? Right now, I need structure. I need some way to express these ideas, some medium, because or else I’ll burst (or deflate). But I think I need to structure it so I don’t freak myself out.

Marion’s idea of color coding everything is probably going to help in the later stages of this mental inventory and organization, but for now, I think I’ll just broadly compartmentalize. If I had to put all the info, duties, plans, necessities, every part of my life into three buckets, what would they be labeled?

Personal/me, curriculum, remembering as much as I can.

There. There are my buckets. So, here’s the plan which I just came up with forty five seconds ago. I’m going to carry a notebook. Or maybe a little, four-subject notebook. and I’m going to keep a running list. Listing is another thing I tell students to do, because it’s not as scary as paragraphs and sentences, and more often than not, when you take the pressure out of the equation, most of your bullet points end up being sentences or something like them anyway. But regardless, I’m going to list. Two lists for each, one on computer, one on paper. And that way, I’ll remember everything I can.

How did someone with such poor executive functioning skills by nature get a master’s degree in education? I sit, in this room, in this disastrous hellhole covered with clothes, middle school vampire literature, New Yorker magazines and school supplies, and marvel at my ability to teach nine different classes when I can barely locate my right foot. But I’m working on it. Baby steps.

Just start listing. You might miss something, a thought might fly out of your head while you’re using your brainpower to write another thought on paper, but if you never start writing, odds are you’ll lose both of those thoughts.

I wonder what a thought looks like. That would make a cool personification exercise. If you had to give a visual representation of “thought” how would you do it? Food for thought. HAH thought.

So, I’m glad I wrote all that. I’m sure it’s a mess, but the point is, I wrote it, and in doing so, I talked myself down off of my metaphorical, metacognitive cliff. I wrote to move time. Before I started, it was standing still, and I was not happy about that. I hate when time stops. It’s unnatural, illogical, impractical and wasteful, because inevitably when time starts up again, you miss the time you would have had if time hadn’t stopped. Say time stopped at 12:40 a.m. for roughly two minutes. When time starts again, it’s 12:42, and you’ve missed 120 seconds, skipped, gone, adieu.

But anyway, I hate it when time stops, and when I closed the document, it did just that. When time stops, you feel everything. Where your bangs lay on your forehead. Tongue against inside of your front teeth. Ring sliding down finger. Sometimes I swear sound slows down too, but I’m not entirely sure about that.

I don’t do well with big transitions. In fact, let’s call them negative transitions. I don’t mean bad, I mean diffused. When I suddenly have a lot less to do, and a lot more time, I flip out. The sudden loss of that is horrifying. It’s why I got depressed after running the marathon. I looked
up marathons overseas compulsively. I planned training runs. I even bought new sneakers. You need something to fill a void that size.

The real issue is that my 8th graders will be gone. My eyes are crossing with the revelation. I always tell them sometimes you have to write 5 pages of junk to get to that one great line. Well, I had to ramble about all this GodKnowsWhat to get to this place. The place where I’m going to lose a piece of myself when they go. It’s not weird or inappropriate, it’s just reality. They made me the teacher that I am today. Wow.

Need to sleep on that.

Sometimes I think I'll never have the time and energy to revise my own writing. Well, what I'm doing now is more important anyway.

Day One

Somehow, every year at around this time I find myself in the same place: a fat place.

Every year, regardless of how good or bad I look, I'm unhappy. The thing is, as far as I know (and to be truthful, I may not know as much as I think I know, given that I'm hardly an objective observer), every year it's a little bit worse. I think about past Junes, picture my figure, and say, "Wow, to think I thought THAT was fat." I reminisce about the various diets I've tried, some successful, some ridiculous. And I always wonder if it will ever end.

Last summer, I was complaining and a fellow lifeguard said, "Leah, you say you've been overweight for 5 years, and that you want to get back to your 'normal' weight? Five years is a long time. Maybe this is your new normal." It stung, cut like a knife, burned, whatever, insert all cliches denoting pain. But it really got me thinking... Is she right? What if I'm fighting a battle I can't win?

I've tried them all.

Atkins worked minimally, but was seriously unhealthy. Plus, being a vegetarian basically meant that I ate eggs and Greek salad for an entire summer, because the snack bar at the Boston Sports Club didn't sell anything else. Not a long-term plan.

South Beach worked, but I couldn't keep it up long-term.

Jenny Craig worked, but it didn't promote independence. They say you learn lessons that you can apply to your whole life diet-wise, but it's not true. Once you stop eating just Jenny meals, you're lost.

I also tried intense personal training and tons of protein. Worked, but hard to maintain.

I learned from all of them though. South Beach and Atkins taught me about how our bodies process fat, sugar, carbs, etc. Blood sugar, etc. Jenny taught me portion control, and personal training (James, I should say), taught me about the effect muscle has on the whole mix.

Now, though, I think I'm ready.

I think about what my friend said about my new normal, and I scream inside, because you know what? It's not my new normal. I am supposed to be slim. My body is built that way. I will never be skinny, because I have huge shoulders, and I'll always have lots of muscle, but I am not supposed to look like this.

I start tomorrow.

This did not turn out to be good writing. It was more like word vomit, that I had to get out of my brain.

That's okay.

XOXO_Mc

Ruminations

My feelings for them can be compared to the feelings you experience when you see a hardened, whored-out woman walking towards you on the street. I don’t mean faux-trashy BU undergrads with their black stockings torn by French-manicured nails, I mean the woman whose hair could be dyed or dirty, anybody’s guess. She’s tattooed, pierced in nineteen places, her eye makeup smeared, stumbling down the street. Half of you recoils in disgust and wants to sterilize the ground she's walking on, and the other half wants to reach out to her, give her a damp towel, and hug her, asking, "How did absolutely everything go wrong for you?"

But at the end of the experience, you realize that this is a fleeting moment of horrified pity, five seconds in your life, the life of a person that can afford five second breaks to think about things like that. On second six, your mind returns to whether Kenmore Square will be mobbed, if the gas gauge is accurate, what you’re going to teach tomorrow, what leftovers wait in the fridge. You can't stop for more than five seconds. You can’t let either half win, because you have to live your life and not get sucked in.

365 things about me... #1-25

As a result of a double dog dare...

We'll see how far I get. I'm tired.

365 things about me

1. I'm 5'6.
   
2. In high school, elizabeth had a website and she posted a picture of me, tanned, grinning sleepily, in the car on the way home from the beach. The caption was "5'5 with brown eyes... smile like the sunrise" like the song. I didn't correct her.
   
3. My mom just called, and when I told her what I was doing, she suggested that I add this tid-bit, which I have probably heard, but forgotten: When I was a toddler, I really wanted to wear an ace bandage wrapped around my waist (over my shirt) and a polka-dotted shower cap. My mom, when faced with the task of going against my desire to do so, gave in and let me wear the outfit. She swears every mother who noticed in the grocery store understood.
4. I have terrible vision. I wear contacts, and it's correctable, but it's bad without them.
   
5. I usually have tan lines yearround.
   
6. I wear short skirts because I like my legs. I am not ashamed of this.
   
7. For my Bat Mitzvah, I couldn't find a dress that fit. That's how awkward I was. We had to have one made by a dressmaker. I ended up loving the entire experience. She did all the alterations on every prom dress I wore.
   
8. I am a mess. I work so hard to be organized, but... alas...
9. I lived in Texas until I was 10. I am glad I moved. I think bad things would have happened if I hadn't moved.
   
10. I think Dr. Pepper is an aberration.
    
11. I used to live in a castle.
    
12. I find Hugh Laurie extremely attractive.
    
13. I watched the new Hannah Montana movie illegally online last week. I loved it.
    
14. I grew up line dancing to Billy Ray Cyrus' "Achey Breakey Heart."
    
15. I was the north texas state champion horseback rider two years running. I'd love to ride again. Take me riding. I'll love you forever.
    
16. I think it's horrible that the brookline high school/middle school girls are trying to pull off wearing stockings and tank tops. I don't understand. You need to get dressed to come to school. If I can see your underwear through your stockings, that's a problem. This coming from a girl whose high school had no dress code, and.. well, I've worn my share of slutty things. I've pushed many envelopes. If I think it's bad... it's bad.
    
17. I love V8.
    
18. Smells transport me. Whenever I smell a certain variety of the "outdoor barbecue" smell, I am transported to Shade street, almost done with the run, pushing hard, trying to keep up with the older, faster girls, and smelling that food, and almost hurling, but still running...
19. There is always a moment when you walk outside and it just smells different. In this moment, you know it's spring. In 2006, I was walking back from the bus stop in Well, Limburg, NL. I had a huge backpack on that I was struggling to carry. I had just spent the weekend in Amsterdam with my mother, who had come all the way from Boston to visit me. I remember it so clearly. I was wearing those american eagle jeans, the danskos she'd just bought me, my trench coat, and I had my old, pre-ipod mp3 player with me. It was damp, and I just knew.
    
20. I hate intolerance.
    
21. I would wear a chunky digital watch with a cocktail dress, if no one reminded me not to.
    
22. Ooh, lesson idea: list stories that you've heard, or that you've told, a million times. or, added onto my oral tradition strand... hmm...
    
23. I'm so psyched that Tep moved in down the street. I was getting sick of driving to Watertown. Thank GOD.
24. I wish I remembered everything, even though I know I'd be totally overwhelmed.
    
25. I <3>

10 things I would change if I could

I have no recollection whatsoever of writing that blog about running camp. I know I wasn't drunk... maybe I was half-asleep? Wow. Some people sleeptalk, I sleepwrite, or sleepblog.

Well, since I have a strict rule of always doing assignments I give to my students, I decided to do the territories prompt I gave my literary magazine this week. Also, they reminded me. "Miss, did you do this already? You know your rule. You have to do all the assignments you make us do. It's only fair."

Ten things I would change if I could:

1. If I could, I would like Jeremy Irons to follow me around and narrate my life in third person. His voice is so gravelly, evil and incredible... Plus, I think I would get street cred from my fifth graders if Scar from the Lion King was my personal narrator.
   
2. You should be able to get married, regardless of gender. I don't understand the opposition. If you're against gay marriage... then don't get one, and shut up about it. It's not your concern.
   
3. I would like to be able to operate on 3 hours of sleep.
   
4. I wish one of my students specifically would take writing seriously, because he's a brilliant and wonderful writer and person.
5. I would make Karolina's wedding during Feb. vacation next year so I wouldn't have to use my personal days.
   
6. I would get tons of computers for my school.
   
7. I would make more hours in a day.
   
8. I would make Houghton Mifflin or Simon Schuster call me and beg me to publish my own curricular resource on writing instruction for a ridiculous compensation.
   
9. I would make protein shakes taste better.
   
10. I would snap my fingers and have my brother find his perfect job.
    

Over and out--LW

JUST like that, I'm back at running camp

the way the chilly air is hitting me through my window reminds me of foss. i smell pine. i feel anticipation. 5, 7, 9 tomorrow? more? less? who cares, as long as i'm moving.

satiny feel of my sleeping bag. always the navy one. softer.

sometimes i thought i could hear other cabins talking quietly. could have been crickets.

that burn of wanting, waiting, excitement.

i remember.

lw