Sweetness.

Making a Person

For a long time, I was unsure about this whole gestation thing.  I couldn't decide if it was miraculous (there's a person growing inside me!) or somewhat on the order of science fiction (there's a person growing inside me!).  I think this latter perspective resulted more from accidentally catching a now-laughable, but to my then-eight-year-old self truly horrifying scene from the miniseries "V."

It's taken actually being pregnant for me to realize how incomprehensibly amazing the process is.  I've definitely come down on the side of miraculous.

In the meantime, I'll comfort myself with the knowledge that there's now way my labor will be as bad as this:

Grocery List

There's a reason I haven't written.  There's a reason I've been sleeping 10-12 hours a night and then napping for 5 more hours each day.  (And it is not because teaching 8th grade is *that* hard.)  I'm sleeping so much because we're checking things off this list right and left.  We're stocked on OJ and coffee.  We've got a house.  I ate all the craisins before they even hit the salad.  The professor's big conference is in Rome this year.  The puppy's on hold.  And now?  Well, let's just say that tenure (aka job security) and a new car are a must.

Crazy in Love; or, In Case that Picture of my Thigh left you Wanting More

So.

I've been busy these days, trying to sell the wonders of Shakespeare, namely the beauties of "Romeo and Juliet," to a bunch of thirteen-year-old boys.  It's taxing and trying work, I tell you, and I worry that I am selling old Will a little bit short. 

For example.  The balcony scene.  What line do we focus on?  Is it, perchance, "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou my Romeo?  Deny thy father, etc. etc?"  Nope.  Is it, "What's in a name? A rose is a rose is a rose?" (Gotcha! That's part Gertrude Stein, that.) Nope. (And the boys never get my Gertrude Stein jokes either.  Modernism is so lost on today's Young People.)  No, the line we focus on is when Romeo is reduced to a vibrating ball of nerve endings: "Wilt thou deny me satisfaction?" (or something very close to it--I haven't got my Riverside with me at the breakfast table so excuse my rusty paraphrase.)

Yeah, we go straight for the nudge-nudge, wink-wink moments in my classroom.

But what's really interesting to me is that Juliet deflects Romeo's amorous intentions with (I think) feigned innocence--"Satisfaction?" she says, "Why, what on earth are you talking about Romeo?  I have no earthly idea what you mean!" (You've only jumped over the fence and into my backyard, stalking me post-party, scaling the wall to talk to me in my nightie at the window of my bedroom, dear Romeo, I have NO idea where your mind is.)  I think it is an act.  She's sly, she's clever, she's more calculating than I've given her credit for in previous reads of the play.  She uses Romeo's desire to achieve a measure of safety and assurance for herself--she'll give him what he wants, only if his intentions "be honorable," that is, if he'll propose marriage.

Which is, in itself, a beautiful move, because Juliet is, in effect, the one doing the proposing (oh forward!).  She basically says to him, "Look, Romeo, if thou likest this, then thou shouldest put a ring on it."

It's all about bringing it back to Beyonce.

With Apologies to Judith Viorst

I might as well have woken up with gum in my hair yesterday.  I certainly need to go get some dirt on my face today, because yesterday was terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad, and I think it is something I will be ruminating on and being penitent about for the entirety of Lent.

Yesterday, I learned why one of the 10 Commandments is "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."  Ususally this gets boiled down to, "Don't lie.  It's wrong."  However, lying and bearing false witness are, in many ways, very different things.  Both actions can be classified as inhabiting the realm of untruthfulness.  However, the intentionality (or lack thereof) behind each of these acts seems to separate them somewhat.  I guess it all boils down to what my mother says: "Didn't mean to doesn't cut it." 

So, in addition to my annual forfeiture of colorful language and wine with dinner, for the next forty days, I'm trying to be more mindful of all I say and do, and to become aware of the ways in which words and actions exert a ripple effect in the universe.

I try to comfort myself with the thought that sometimes, they even break commandments in Australia.

Tomorrow, we celebrate Fat Treesday. But that sucker's kicked to the curb on Ash Wednesday.

So, yeah.  the professor rigged up this watering system that has kept our tree alive and needle-y for two months now.  Two months.  It's obscene.  But you know what?  People on our street still have their Christmas candles in the windows and lights in their front lawn.  You want to know why?

Because February, like November, is a month that makes you want to curl up and die.  Except this time, there's no Christmas to look forward to, what with its merry gentlemen and bowls of wassail and hearty feeling for your fellow man (and woman).  Nope, just our neck of the woods's best imitation of the Russian steppe. 

"How bad can it be?" you ask, innocently.  Lemme show you.  I'll demonstrate by letting you play a little game I like to call "Which is the Crab Nebula and which is a Bruise the Size of an Extra-large Grapefruit I Got on my Leg from a Fall Down the Front Steps because of All the Stupid Ice?"

Picture 1:

Picture 2:

It's a tough call, I know.  Super-amazing photo of the crab Nebula courtesy of NASA/CXC/SAO.  If you really want to geek out, another fun site with space images is NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Have you decorated your Mardi Gras Tree yet?

Yeah, didn't think so.

The only reason I don't watch "The Hills" is 'cause we don't have cable,

but I'm starting to think maybe I should check out "Gossip Girl."  It makes fun of semiotics!  And sparkly hair!  That show looks trashy and funny in the same way that all good things are.  Like OK! Magazine, early Cyndi Lauper, and Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock."

Anyway, it's been another week of barely-staving-off-the-panic-and-not-writing-anything.  So here's more fluff and nonsense.

So, as you might have noticed, I love trashy (and funny!) pop music.  Love it.  Love it like I used to stay up past my bedtime hitting snooze on my alarm-clock-tape-player-radio over and over and over to hear the top nine at nine on B97 FM.  (Which is now, to my horror, no longer the broadcasting bastion of all songs adolescent, but rather...gasp...adult contemporary.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but my twelve year old self is currently gagging herself with a spoon.) 

I didn't listen because of burgeoning dreams of pop stardom, I listened because I loved to take apart the lyrics and find the meaning or the gross lack thereof.  (Burgeoning dreams of English-majordom.)  Because, really, when you're dealing with close-reading pop songs, you're working on a scale that ranges from utter nonsense on one end of things to platitudes on the other.  But that's not really fair, because it seems to imply a lack of meaning in popular music, which is not what I'm arguing.  I guess I'm just saying that there's a lot of dreck out there.  And the thing that I love about pop music is that it is so freaking hard to discern the dreck from the good stuff - I guess that's what gets me every time.  The line between the sublime and the ridiculous is so fine as to be nearly invisible.  And people fall all over themselves trying to figure out just where that line is.  Awesome.

So, yeah.  I've pretty much decided that Lady Gaga is on the ridiculous side of that line, but I'm trying to figure out if she might fit on the running playlist.

Placeholder

Good gravy!

Work slays me.  I have all these intentions, this desire to write and then...poof!  Nothing.  I'm busy filing or freaking out or worrying or keening/wailing/gnashing teeth--aka grading.

So my desire to write gets drop-kicked to the curb and I am left posting a place holder--merely getting words on the page.

Today's placeholder is not witty, wise, or wonderful.  It is the running playlist on my iPod.  I listen to it at the gym (scintillating, this place holder stuff, no?).  I am pleased with it.  I share it in case you run.  And, for what it is worth, the placement of "Sex on Fire" is genius.  Perfect timing, in my humble opinion.  But, then again, minute 15 of a run is always awful for me.

"Don't Stop Movin'" - S Club 7
"Single Ladies" - Beyonce' (your fault, Leslie)
"Mercy" - Duffy
"Radio" - Beyonce'
"Sex on Fire" - Kings of Leon
"Hot N Cold" - Katy Perry
"Shake It" - Metro Station
"L.E.S. Artistes" - Santogold
"Disturbia" - Rihanna
"Foundations" - Kate Nash
"American Boy" - Estelle
"Rockferry" - Duffy

It still needs a little tweaking.  Suggestions appreciated. 
And also? I apparently am a serious teenybopper.

Oh, Tannenbaum.

I went to the grocery store the other day and all the Christmas spanglies and sparklies were all gone. (Stock up early! now! for Valentine's day!) I wasn't surprised.  After all, the whosits and the whatnots had been there since, oh, October, when they were duking it out with the Halloween decorations. (Poor Thanksgiving! Always getting the shaft.) 

I haven't seen many trees by the curb, though.  Where I grew up, you were always sure to see the sorry sight of abandoned trees out for the trash the day after Christmas.  So sad.  We always kept (and still do keep) ours up until January 6th.  Twelfth night.  Old Christmas.  The twelfth day of Christmas.  Epiphany.  Whatever your pleasure.

I like having our tree around longer.  The days are lengthening, but still quite short.  The months ahead are bleak and chilly and attempting to kill us with their combination of wind, snow, and ice.  Summer lies so far ahead that it is not even within the realm of imaginative possibility.  It's just a myth.  A lie they tell you in grade school.  So, for now, I like the tree.  Its smell.  Its light.  Its existence as a reminder of all that is good and cozy about Christmas.

That was impressive, wasn't it?

Oof.  So much for making resolutions about writing more and living healthier and such in mid-November.  The dead of winter is so-named for a reason.  It makes you want to die.

Or curl up under the comforter in the fetal position, to cold to muster the energy to even read the Twilight books, much less shovel the snow that is rapidly piling up in the driveway.

And so, as he daylight hours of 2008 waned to a mere nothing, I was to be found thus curled and shivering, pondering the sorts of existential questions that plague teenagers: Why are we here?  What is the meaning of life? Will Edgar and Bella get together?

It's been a busy month.  Or two.