I am moving apartments and moving web addresses! The new home for this blog will be: www.lindsayliveshere.org. Change your bookmarks, yo - this will take effect in the next day or two.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Today was beautiful. Sunshine. Warm weather. And no teaching. Instead, I went to a reading teachers' conference, where I was inspired and energized by the other teachers around me. Hurray. My classes watched a movie, and Dictionary Devil Day went unaddressed. I'm not quite sure what to do about that. Oh well. I have 96 days of teaching left, and only half of those involve the Devil Children. And then I never have to have them in my classroom again, ever. Joy to the world. 96 bottles of beer on the wall, 96 bottles of beer....

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

I've been really negative lately about school starting again, and it's making me feel like a crazyperson. Luckily Deanna is sending me a yoga video, Becca listens to me panic, Dave has given me his veteran-teacher-mother's phone number, teacher Kim has offered to go to coffee and chat, and Eliina keeps feeding me ice cream and wine. See. Good things.

Dictionaries were thrown on Tuesday. That is all.

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Sometimes you end up with a pile o' words. So I did that over winter break, in a tiny cozy coffee shop in Clarence, and the result is posted for you now: "I like to believe I am a great collector of tickets out, and that my ultimate end will be a free green road with sweet grassy pastures, where everyone will say, what a large number of tickets you have, how wonderful that you bought yourself freedom with all of these tickets, but I do not know if that will happen." Additional context: I had just watched Cinderella Man. And I was highly caffeinated.

And since we're thinking big-picture, this is a quote from a zine that I like that resonates right now: "Maybe we eternal souls experiment with lifetimes the way high school kids experiment with bad acid. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Maybe there was some cute eternal soul I was trying to impress by coming to earth. 'Are you sure you want to go to Earth? I hear it's pretty hardcore,' she may have said. 'But baby, I'm pretty hardcore.' And now she's watching me timidly pick my way through this life, wracked by fear and neuroses, scared out of my wits, and I bet she's not too impressed after all." -- Bill Brown, Dream Whip No. 13

Friday, January 06, 2006

Been reading about Chris's current philosophizing. I also just recently went to a therapist, though I am not in any dire dire straits. Just the usual, anxiety, hopeless, overwhelmed, confused thing. Days all started to seem like a series of white boxes separated by white dividers with flourescent light flowing from one box to the next until forever. (This was before Christmas. Am less llike this now. But enough that I kept the appointment with the therapist.) She told me, among other helpful things, that I should try yoga or meditation, because I am not taking more than a shallow breath each time I breathe. So I've been looking up yoga classes, in the hopes of becoming peaceful and bendy.

Things went downhill fast. I started thinking about school starting. And freaking out about school starting. And not wanting to go back. And therefore not wanting to do any work for school. And therefore freaking out about not doing work for school. I like to think I'm brooding and interesting when I'm depressed and existential crisis-y. Really, it's not that endearing. I get a spacy look in my eyes and I get really quiet... which makes Eliina furrow her brow when she looks at me.

Monday, January 02, 2006

And already had a lovely time sitting around in Eliina's kitchen, then sitting around at Myhang's New Year's Eve shindig, then sitting around at Amanda's brunch, then sitting around at Jade's New Year's Day dinner. Peacefully happy with this relaxing weekend.

Friday, December 30, 2005

My dad keeps wanting to chill red wine. He put one bottle in the fridge, which I removed in horror after finding it there beneath the cold cut bin. I told him: Dad. You do not chill red wine.

Then, I went and bought a bottle at the liquor store, some Argentinian cabernet that was not great but was on sale. We uncorked.

-What, do you put ice in there?
-No.
-What about ice chips?
-No.
-You don't even put a little shaved ice in there?
-No.

My dad pours two glasses, then proceeds to try to swirl his around and smell it after it's almost completely full. We drink. My dad replaces the cork.

-So do we put this in the fridge now?
-NO.

Just submitted my veddy first grant proposal to do a Literacy Through Photography curriculum with my students. If I got it, I suppose I'd have to stay.

...Eating pretty much constantly. My body must feel as though it's been dropped into an oasis of food and rest, and is storing up for the hard road ahead. I have never been so hungry in my life.

I finish a sandwich and go to the fridge. My mother sees me from the living room and calls out, "How about a dish of ice cream?"

"I've already had two today."

"Third time's the charm!"

Thursday, December 29, 2005

been sitting on janelle's couch with sarah z. for hours on end. it's amazing how we can get together like this every single year, and sit in the exact same places on the exact same couch, and four hours can slip away like nothing. in my mind's eye, i could see us as a flip book, sitting in those exact same positions on janelle's cream colored L-shaped couch with the little pink flowers. janelle sits on one end with her feet on the Lazyboy footrest, i curl up in the crook of the L next to her, and sarah sits on the other, longer side, and stretches out like a cat. the flipbook would go back to high school, when we sat there in ratty pajama pants and watched movies from the alphabetized mayer video library, up through college, where we rehashed the highlights of each semester, through our first years out of college, where we vented about first jobs, through janelle's mother's funeral last fall (janelle's old boyfriend would make a brief appearance -- he sat on the floor next to her), to now, the three of us, circling through our staple topics (teaching, relationships, family), eating candies from the ceramic dish on the end table and flipping through the channels but never watching t.v.

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Thank you, home, for existing. Thank you for your wide open empty spaces, though they are often weedy empty lots or marshy nothingnesses, they are blank places for the mind to rest in. Thank you for your shopping malls, though they are consumer gluetraps, they provide places for one to obtain gift certificates and two pairs of jeans in less than 20 minutes. And of course, thank you for your Wal-Mart, which we forded like a wilderness today, past the freezer cases of t.v. dinners and the long aisles of gardening supplies, past the linens, past the dishes, past the nail salon, through the sewing section. Wal-Mart: giver of our Christmas wishes.

After our shopping extravaganza, my sisters and I made Christmas cookies last night while drinking beer (Labatt's Light and Yeungling) and listening to the Garden State soundtrack on Christina's iPod. It feels good to be in the same general age bracket.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

I've got a 1993 Buick LeSabre that ferries me from home to work every day. It's like a space ship inside, all lights and consoles, passenger-side climate control and enough room to stretch your arms out and not touch the dashboard. I've considered putting in a mini-fridge. But. Anyways. I stopped at the post office for approximately 10 minutes yesterday, then came back to the car, and the thing wouldn't start. The headlights went on, and the radio went on, but the engine made no engine-y sounds. Luckily there was an auto shop just down the street. It's one of those places that looks completely abandoned, except for a few massive tow trucks in the parking lot. Another man was pulling into the lot as I scampered through slushy snow banks to get to the garage doors. I asked him if the place was open, and he said he thought it was, because he heard voices.

Well, the voices were apparently the voices of the nicest people alive. He opened the door, and a tiny birdlike elderly Hispanic woman sat behind the desk of the front office. (I'd been picturing a greasy macho muscle-fest, to go with the outside appearances.) The parking-lot man told her my trouble, in Spanish, and she called to someone inside the garage. This man, also very nice, came out and heard my problem, then called to a second man inside the garage. Man #2, though skeptical at first when I told him my car was down the street, went back to the garage, procured a sledge hammer, and joked "This is how I fix everything."

He took the sledge hammer and followed me to the car, about three blocks away. We popped the hood and I turned the key. The thing started up just like normal, not a hitch. My internal monologue was reduced to: "Wha...?" Luckily Sledge Hammer man was gracious and good-natured about the trek, and told me to come back if it happened again, because it might be the starter or the ignition. Great, I thought. I'll just wait for it to happen again. On the South Side. Hopefully it won't. But anyway. It made me think of this story by Anne Lamott.

Monday, December 12, 2005

Suicidal suckiness, amused detachment and relief that Christmas break is a mere NINE instructional days away. That's right, people. I just might make it to Christmas. Thank God Christ was born, thus giving us some days off of school.

Talked to Kristina last week, was much inspired by her tales of sticking it out through the first rough year, and my friend Kate of a JUF-land long past, gave me a good de-stressing conversation on Friday eve.

Also had a fine time at the TFA Christmas party, which included dancing outside on the sidewalk when the inside seemed just a tad too warm. Somehow this seemed totally normal at the time.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Funny thing: Apparently my punches haven't been going through on the time clock at work, so..... even though I eventually got a position number, I still wasn't being paid properly. It literally looks as though I haven't logged any time. What.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

This is what it is, I think. Ok, this could change. But. For now. This is what it is.

My realization:

There's no magic bullet, there's no silver solution, there's no formula for success because of the simple fact that things are always changing. You could never develop a recipe for a world that is always changing. You _can_ develop a recipe for mixing flour, salt and water to make pie dough. Because those things will not change. Unless there's some altitude change. Or unless the humidity changes. Or. See?

I kept wanting someone to just tell me the answers. There was always an answer before, always a "way." I felt like people were keeping secrets. How do you do it? Tell me The Way. There is no way, there is no answer in a book. I can't flip to the back of the math book and look up the answers to the even problems. Because everything, the x's and y's are always changing.

One of my students doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving because he believes it's unjust to the Native American people. Socially conscious kids make my heart gleam. Anyways. YOU should have a happy holiday, because really, it's a good excuse to eat.

Last year around this time, I spent my days sitting in a quiet office, quietly typing numbers into spreadsheets and listening to not-quiet Priscilla next door.

Now. Well. We know how things are now.

My mission henceforth is to not let life get me down, to take it on in all good ways, to find good happy crunchy joyful things in the everyday.

Dinner tonight at Sarah Z.'s will be a good start.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

The most interesting conversations with kids at my school. About their career ambitions, the Hebrew-Isrealite religion, the definitions of "a lame" and when it's appropriate to say "no good..." I've played tic-tac-toe speed rounds, yanked the mice out of the computers because they wouldn't stop playing music on them, had kids pound on my door like storm troopers, eaten flourescently cheesed nachos because they were a fundraiser for the cheerleading team, lugged two enormous crates of binders and notebooks home to grade, searched for apartments and failed miserably, felt miserably, ate at Trattoria Demi and remembered the blissfulness of cheese ravioli marinara, discussed the manifestations of poverty, called a student's house and found out her brother had been shot 12 times over the weekend, and.... and... been going.... and going... and....

Friday, November 11, 2005

Ok and not ok. Like those switches on train tracks. One way means the train will take this track, the other way means the train will take this track. The switch is switchy switching by the hour. Listening to the Royal Tennenbaums soundtrack, which is similary chill-happy/brooding-sad and drinking coffee and trying to do grad school homework.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Damn, when the chips are down, I have some awesome friends to help me inch up this mountain. Thanks thanks thanks to beccajanellemandaeliinaschndeannasarahjillocaitlinchristina&et.al for things such as the CD I'm listening to, and the scent-y candle burning on my kitchen table, the day-long coffee and grocery shopping extravaganza, the hot chocolate in the sketchy coffee shop, sleeping on your couch, phone calls soaked in therapeutic terms and tough love that have gotten me from minute A to minute B and then to minute C.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Lately I'm struggling with how to take or not take responsibility for things. On the one hand, I evade responsibility whenever possible and come up with excuse upon excuse for why x,y,z did not work out. On the other hand, I heap responsibility upon myself for when x,y,z did not work out. I think I've just discovered the difference. When I come up with excuses, it's for concrete things I did not _do_. When I heap on responsibility, it's for things that I intrinsically _am_. Apparently I give short shrift to my own agency (helpless helpless) and put extra weight on my own character flaws. Beautiful. So if I didn't do my attendance records right, damn, that's because I wasn't trained or didn't have my book, or the spawn of the devil was running around like crazy and who can keep a record of that kid? But if a relationship took a nosedive, it's because I'm needy, depressive, un-fun and inflexible. Yup. Perfect sense.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Presents way after your birthday. The present I got from Deanna, Jill and Sarah last week was a total surprise. I walked up to my door one day and there it was -- a big-ass box with my name on it. A caveman voice resonated in my head: "Urrr?" I opened it find _another_ package, this one wrapped in cloth, and then inside _that_ was a basket of magically good things: Burt's Bees bath stuff, peanut butter-filled pretzels, Pixy Stix, a scent-y candle, fuzzy comfy stripy socks, happy stationary.... It was, without a doubt, the most awesome thing ever. It came last week, when all was looking like hell on acid as I started at my new school.

Perhaps these things were meant to be a buffer for the rocky road.

Met someone last night who called my job "beautiful but crazy." He just kept repeating those words over and over. Beautiful. But crazy. Beautiful. But crazy. That sounds self-important, but it helped in the moment to have me think of those two words. Beautiful. Crazy.

Yes, I realize blogs today don't have "guestbooks," okay? But. Mine exists. See it over there. Where you can leave comments. Someone wanted to know about the Creeley quote embedded in the following text of a megaphone:

thankful --
there's a word i can't
pin down.
like creeley said: "god shed his grace on thee--
how abstract is that fucking fact."
how do you say,
in any language,
may i never forget
what i hated to learn.
thank you for this pain,
thank you for this day.

So -- weirdly, this fits the general tenor of my current state as well as it did when I returned from study abroad.

And the Creeley quote is from... i have no idea, because unforunately my book appears to be missing. perhaps left in buffalo. But the book is So There: Poems 1976-83 and also includes the following:

Catching Cold

I want to lay down
and die--
someday--but
not now

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