Celebrity Gone Wrong: In Which I Reveal Myself to Be a Pretentious Snob

Let's get something straight. Most celebrities these days aren't all that talented. But their lack of any true performance ability exists in mediums which I tend to avoid: reality television, bad movies, auto-tuned crap music. So I tolerate their presence and focus my attention on what I deem as real performers and artists.

But these individuals who have "the look" if nothing else cross the line when they wet their talentless toes in the sacred waters of the novel.

I'm referring, in case you wondered, to this abomination (discovered while perusing Borders Friday evening):

(Pretty cover, I'm going to go ahead and guess not much substance based on the "author.")

And don't even get me started on this girl:

(Really? I mean--really?)

I just don't think "Duff played the precocious Lizzie Maguire" or "Conrad lived in 'reality' television prior to..." looks so good on the author bio when others in the profession actually graduated with an MFA, understand the nuance within the written word, and can form a sentence without the frequent interjection like (as in "He is like totally like not like listening to like me"). I just wonder who in the publishing world is keeping the gate. Because their A$$ needs to be canned.

In Which I Reveal My Petty Side

* Even the lovely Bette Davis had her turn as an Old Maid.

Old Maid-dom occurs when one's niece weds before she does. Yep. July 30th is the official date of the crap-tastrophic wedding (and I can say this because NONE of her family bothers reading my blog--that would require actually bothering to know me, I suppose).

The dear tried to tell me and bestie at a family get together last night that I "have no idea all that goes into planning a wedding!" Oh honey, have you never heard that little saying always a bridesmaid, never a bride?

I know. Believe me, I know. (Unlike your mother who wedded in 1989. You know: that wedding you're using as a model for your own reception.)

I'm just saying that in 29 years of single-dom I've attended or been a part of my fair share of weddings. Surely I could've been utilized for more than gift table duty.**

**Proof that outdated, unnecessary 80's Mormon wedding traditions will be leaking into this affair.

Conversations with My Mother

My mother and I went to a movie together last night. A lightning storm was starting and we both expressed a preference to stay outside and watch and listen to this shared pleasure. It felt good, this moment before entering the theater. Inside it was the usual chick flick fare. Predictable and silly, perfect for popcorn.

The movie featured two sets of lovers, one young, one old. As expected, the old lovers reunite. In that moment I looked to my right to see my mother crying--I knew instantly she was thinking of her first love. It is strange, this story she told me while I was a sophomore in college about that first, intense love she ever had. He left on a mission for our church and she, for all the reasons under the sun, married someone else while he was gone. I always felt saddened for her, for her regret of this first love who entered her dreams during her first marriage (my father is her second husband). When she told me about it, I remember thinking our relationship had changed, that I needed to start seeing my mother as a complete human being with a full story and not merely as my mother.

This is her reality, or what I perceive to be her reality: romance is real and a perfect ideal which we all should seek after. True, deep, sweep-you-off-your-feet kind of love exists for her. And when a love like this envelopes you, you never forget it.

When the young lovers confessed their love for one another at the end of the film, I felt nothing. To me, the woman of 29 who has never actually been in love, it all seemed forced and unrealistic. All flossy and insubstantial. It was, after all, a movie. My reality: I think it is just shy of miraculous that anyone finds themselves compatible enough to fall in love. I believe in finding your best friend with the added benefit of chemistry (whatever that may be) and making the best of things. I think being swept off your feet sounds like major head trauma waiting to happen. While my head is in the clouds about so many other things, when it comes to love, I've had a history of disappointment and reality checks. Romantic love is flimsy at best--brain chemistry gone awry which eventually corrects itself. (And, to be fair and honest, there is a small voice called hope or wishful thinking or what-have-you that is holding vigil for the chance I'll have to eat some of these words one day.)

We exited the theater to see the storm had moved on to the north. And we started talking about our notions on love. I asked her why she cried, only to have my suspicions confirmed. I then shared this hunch I have about myself: I'm too old or too smart or too hardened or self-protective to fall in love in the manner she did. She got tangled in it, still an adolescent. I didn't necessarily mean this to sound like a good thing. To me, it is a loss, knowing I can't throw myself into something with quite the same emotional, logic-be-damned vibrance that a teenager can. I never had that opportunity. The window for such irrational but glorious frivolity is over. I'm Elinor, not Marianne.

She, on the other hand, told me she's fallen in love numerous times. None so great as that first time. And then we each quieted into our own thoughts, looking west to the last flame of sunset. And I wondered which of us was worse off. I felt a pitied sadness for my mom, for this deep regret she still holds after 45 years. This kindling inside her for someone who, frankly, is now another being entirely as is she. And then there is me, knowing love only in theory.

The light disappeared slowly from the sky. My mother gave me a hug and said farewell. I came inside to an empty apartment, dark but for the deep grey of dusk seeping in through the windows. In the distance, I could hear the rippling of thunder.

* image found here.

Why Teachers are Underpaid

In 10 minutes I have to make my way down to the gym for the annual student Spirit Bowl. Two hours in a large box with few exits filled to brimming with 2400 stomping, shouting, competing, hormone-driven, frontal-lobe-not-yet-fully-developed adolescents. Freshman vs. Sophomore vs. Junior vs. Senior. I've taken my 600 mg of ibuprofen in advance, I'm in my running shoes, but it never gets any easier. I simply don't trust crowd mentality. Teenagers in large groupings = anarchy.

Heaven help me. Include me in your prayers.

The Singles' Ward: An Amateur's Quasi-Field Study of a Most Curious Culture

The roommate and I tried sneaking into church rather late yesterday. Sneaking anywhere in two-inch wedges (2" = my limit; 3" seems downright cruel) with two large bags in tow (my purse is big--my church bag is ridiculous) always proves interesting. Sneaking through the entire congregation to the only seats available "up front" lends its own special form of embarrassment. Anyway, the point here is that I was late. And when I'm that late I find it difficult to focus on the messages shared. And when I'm lacking focus in a room with folks to observe (say the airport, or, in this scenario, church) I tend to people watch. More than I ought. And, as a woman of some education with a brain trained for analysis, I sometimes consider that which I notice.

In the airport I make up stories about where strangers are going, who they are meeting, what they are running away from. Church-People Watching, however, is vastly different from Airport-People Watching. Because, in theory, one already knows these people at church. Or, at the very least, one knows of them: their names (if you can keep them straight), where they work (because what else do you talk about with people you share few commonalities with?), their clique (oh yes, singles' wards are nothing if not clique-ish). And one has to be careful about being caught because, well, one knows these subjects. And staring might make them think one has some message to relay. Or, even worse, if caught staring too frequently at someone of the opposite sex, it can very easily translate into one becoming the (insert any physical characteristic here--hot, fat, skinny, sweet-spirited, tall, short, handsome, old, young, blonde, ugly, pretty) girl/guy with a crush.

You see, women in the singles' ward far outnumber the men. And this disproportionate ratio thoroughly destroys all acknowledgement of male fault or folly while simultaneously accentuating every female flaw and blemish. Likewise, this numbers game (along with attitudes to be discussed later ) has ellicited a heightened competition amongst many of the females (go here if you don't believe me).

So if one looks and looks again, it surely must mean something more than the innocent curiosity that typically motivates people watching. Here you were pondering the stained athletic socks they chose to pair with their suit (Out of clean laundry? Fashionably clueless?) and the next thing you know they're trying to awkwardly flirt in the hallway as if you're both in on some little lovers' secret. You can see the danger here. More commonly, the "victim" of innocent Church-People Watching has mysteriously dropped off the "perpetrator's" facebook friends list and if said "perpetrator" so much as shares a friendly hello the "victim's" eyes get a little shifty as they duck into the nearest restroom. The "kinder" variety will simply blather on about someone from work they are interested in taking to the lights at Temple Square as a means of hinting that you're-not-that-someone-you-thought-you-might-be-based-on-the-staring-you-were-clearly-involved-in-during-sacrament-wink-wink.

To simplify that: one's innocent people watching clearly indicates attraction. Because, beyond a shared religious belief, if there is a primary commonality amongst those in the singles' ward it is this: delusion.

The delusion is palpable. Apparently happily-ish married church leaders believe that placing all single adults with a pulse in the same building together for three hours a week, and then encouraging them to come to various "fun-filled" (read: painful) activities throughout the week will automatically result in more happily-ish married couples. And the semi-young lad with the stained athletic socks and bad haircut who is, bless him, proudly employed in the telemarketing industry thinks himself the matrimonial equal of a young Marie Osmond with hints of Stepford woven in. And well-educated, career-driven, relatively feminist women in two-inch wedges (I said "relatively" feminist) such as myself actually think they will find compatibility within their own sect. Delusion is the name of the game.

Which isn't to say that coupling in one form or another doesn't occur. Hands are held, flirtations are flaunted, backs are scratched, closed-eyed swan dances are danced. The singles' ward and adolescents (yes, some in the singles' ward are adolescents) have this in common: yack-worthy levels of physical affection instigated by an abnormal spike in unsatiated hormonal activity.

Beyond shared religious belief and delusion, there is a third phenomenon particularly intriguing: pressure. Though slightly less palpable than the aforementioned delusion to the outside observer, most members of a singles' ward congregation recognize within a fairly short amount of time that there is a subliminal message much like microscopic mold spores circulating in the air. Pressure. Communication between religious and familial leaders and the single congregation is laced with this pressure: marry and be made whole. Lessons are taught, meetings are made, activities are designed all with one purpose: to get the relatively feminist career woman in two-inch wedges and the telemarketer in athletic socks to notice one another's "potential" (read: ignore all warning signs that your fiancee is really a creeper in disguise) and eventually wed.

I suppose any issues of incompatibility after pressed nuptials take place are technically no longer the responsibility of the singles' ward religious leadership. And, after all, shared religious belief and delusion have many happy-ish marriages made.

Also, lest you think I'm entirely pessimistic on the singles' ward front, let it be known that free food that I didn't have to cook often shows up with the delusion, pressure, and general sense of awkwardness. And, might I add, I looked damn good in those two-inch wedges.

Overheard at School Today

Friday marks the end of term one in Ms. Rookie's class. In celebration of one of my least favorite weeks, I thought I'd share with you all what it is really like to be a teacher.



(So much for my positivity-fest. Yes I really do get paid to spend the day with these people.)

"What's my grade? Am I passing yet?"
If you aren't the type to keep track of this kind of thing on your own, I'm going to guess no.

"That's not middle awged! Middle awge starts at like 30!"
Nice. Talk about life coming at you fast!

"Can I turn this in late and still get full credit?"
Because you didn't understand my 50% off late work policy that is posted and has been covered just about every day since the beginning of the school year?

"'Dude' is such a sweet word."
Great, and they've given you a driver's license.

"What's my grade?"
Comin' right up! Just let me check my ULTRA-HUMAN MEMORY DATABASE because I actually do have the remaining mental capacity after dealing with you people all day to memorize all 160 students' ever-fluctuating letter grades.

"You mean double spacing isn't just pushing the space bar twice?"
Sometimes there are no words.

"If I do this assignment, can I pass your class?"
Oh, absolutely. Because all those assignments and projects you haven't done this term were absolutely meaningless.

"But I'm like seventy-two ounces of sexy, Teacher."
(WTF?) No, no. Let's clarify some things for you: you are about 117 pounds of awkward freshman pubescence.

"Just think, we may have F's now. But by Monday we'll all have A's again!"
Way to look on the bright side of your failure.

Have a happy Tuesday. I've grading to accomplish and some ibuprofen with my name...

Nice Neighbors

do not fry up a large vat of something smelling much like this:



and then let that stench float into the neighboring apartments. I'm gagging here!

In honor of my neighbor's olfactory cruelty, I'm posting some Robert Frost.

Mending Wall

SOMETHING there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
He is all pine and I am apple-orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down!" I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

And to this I add: impermeable walls, doors, and windows make good neighbors!

Sometimes Shakespearean Captures My Emotion Best

Tonight I'm going to a viewing (wake) for a friend's mother. One month and three days from her shocking stage IV gastric cancer diagnosis, she passed away.

Today I found out a dear friend at work has ovarian cancer. Luckily chemotherapy is still an option. Devastation abounds, it would seem. Both are too young for this. Forgive me while I write a letter that needs writing.

To Cancer:

I loathe you. You ravenous beast. You thief. You villain. You putrid spawn on the human condition. Not only do you take over the human body, sucking it of all want for living, but you reach your corruption into the body of families, of friends, of coworkers. You ruiner of lives. I hate you more and more as each day passes. You are the loathed enemy, the furies collected, all wicked personified.

Signed,
Not a Fan

In my mind, cancer

is equivalent to (=, if you will)

The worst of Shakespeare's villains combined. The correlation of grief and devastation left in their wake is just too uncanny to not notice a connection.

Today's the BIG Day

And I'm on the verge of melting down altogether. Melting, really, should be a theme today. You see, the forecast is for a million and five degrees (anything over 100 is automatically placed in that particular category).



And then we get down to the nitty gritty (the nit and grit in which I self-absorbedly vent about my life, abandoning decorum entirely): I have multiple meetings to attend this morning at an inconveniently located school other than my own. I'm currently late to one of said meetings so what the heck, right? Why not blog while the internet is actually available. Because, you see, I wasted an hour on the phone with the devil (COMCAST) last night, trying to arrange an installation appointment at the new place. Appointment is yet to be set because the devil (COMCAST) couldn't understand that I need a modem that can hook to a wireless internet adaptor so that we're free to roam with the laptop. We CANNOT seriously be the only people in America with this situation! My classroom is in no way prepared for the students' happy arrival on Tuesday. Beyond my classroom, mentally and materially I am entirely unprepared for their swift approach. People are arriving here at six PM to haul our boxes of stuff to the UHAUL I'm picking up at five PM--and let me just say the living room does not look ready for that particular event. But I'll enjoy my pointless and frustratingly inane meetings in the meantime. I'm exhausted after a week of waking early and staying up late so I'm kind of at that sleepless, angry zombie state in which crying at the slightest provocation occurs quite frequently. The roommate and I fight, bicker, snap, or argue EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. WE. TALK.

My life feels like an ever-lovin' disaster. What about you?

I want my bed safely tucked away in an upper bedroom at my new house along with everything else of mine...and for someone else to come clean the old place...and for it to be some relaxed Saturday in the not-to-distant future when all of this is over. And I'm sleeping the sleep of someone situated.

Taking Yourself Too Seriously: When Bitterness Expresses Itself Freely

This week and next I am trapped in a writing institute "for the students." I got wrangled into it under false pretenses. I thought I was going to learn some great strategies for teaching writing and simultaneously provide some hand-picked students with a fun and stellar summer writing program. All I've really learned thus far:

1. There is a vast difference between theory and practice.

2. Don't ever work with the local big fat university's education department because it is like offering your students as guinea pigs to the research gods.

3. And, this is the most important lesson here, I've learned that it is sickly satisfying to watch college of education academians learning the critical truth about working with (gasp!) actual high school students.

Because the truth is that professors don't know about much beyond the false land of academia. I could go on about how most of the students I teach never make it into their second (or first) semester of college. How, subsequently, these poor professors don't know the truth about that other piece of the pie chart. You know, the group that doesn't make it to college (which somehow translates into my failure as an educator). I could go on about how most actual college professors only teach equally cocky graduate students about their personal, passionate specialty and research within the same narrow specialty and, as a result, can't function beyond their particular specialty. I could give them the benefit of the doubt here. But I'm feeling quite sassy. So I'll say this: never have I enjoyed anything more than watching smug, insulting, arrogant professors flounder painfully and awkwardly as they demonstrate what they believe I should be doing in my classroom.

Yes, if you didn't know this, the beauty in education professors is that (and I'm quite certain this is true in most of academia) they actually believe they know how to do my job better than I do. Why? Well, because they've researched in controlled environments and read articles on the topic, of course. Apparently teaching in the chaos of an actual school and prepping and assessing and discussing students for ten hours a day doesn't qualify me as an expert on the topic. But, never fear, the decision and policy makers churned out of college of education departments nationally are experts.

This post is entirely unprofessional of me, I know. But seriously--you cute little professors (bless your hearts!) need to realize that your quest for tenure means not a thing in my classroom. We're not a team in this. Teams fester in the trenches together. Real teaching (not that pretend research kind or the incessant talking that happens in a lecture hall--but REAL teaching) is damn hard.

It's like this: the emperor of education has clothes on, yes. But, my lands, if that get-up isn't ridiculous!

*What would Stacy and Clinton have to say?

20 Random Things That Make Me Cringe, In No Particular Order

1. The sound my alarm ringtone makes (you can add the T-mobile jingle to that list as it was once my alarm).

2. Needles.

3. Veins.

4. The sound of a shovel scraping pavement.

5. Opening cans. A few months ago I royally sliced my hand on the jagged lid while opening a can of refried beans. Ever since then I'm terrified of it.

6. Swallowing the handfuls of vitamin concoctions my mother gave me growing up (washed down with a protein Shaklee shake, thankyouverymuch). (You can add this to the "things that make me shiver" list.)

7. Stagnant algae-filled bodies of water. I was once dumped into a stagnant cove of this stuff while canoeing at girls' camp growing up.

8. Ear wax.

9. The heavy stench of bacon that lingers long after it has been cooked and consumed.

10. Fish. Seafood in general, really.

11. Mystery moisture (you all know this experience--any public place in which you sit in/accidentally touch moisture that derives from an unknown source and has been there an inestimable amount of time).

12. Grammatical errors and malapropisms including: "Unthawed" (so does that mean you're freezing it?), "Irregardless" (not a word, in case you missed the memo), and my mom's personal favorite "Ignernt" (she thinks she is saying "ignorant" as in, they are rude, but she apparently is ignorant of the fact that "ignorant" means unaware, misinformed, or uneducated on a matter--Mommy, you know I still love you).

13. Over the top comedy movies in which things go from bad to worse (I hated Meet the Parents because I was cringing with stress the entire time).

14. Body odor. 'Nough said.

15. When I've started saying something without thinking and my comment goes awry (typically down the offensive/insulting path), at which point I try and correct or clarify the statement and, in the process, make it much worse.

16. Canned meats. It is just wrong.

17. When people say incredibly stupid things and remain oblivious to the stupidity of their statements. (Thank you, Miss South Carolina, for exhibiting my point perfectly!)



18. Scab-picking.

19. Muffin tops. Or should I say ill-fitting clothing in general.

20. Dry wooden spoons.

I've HAD IT with the Singles Ward!

That is all.  I am done being single.  I am done with the ridiculous games and the linger longer activities.  I am done with Break the Fast.  I am done with FHE.  I am done with full-of-themselves EQP's and BFN's (sorry, Alice is probably the only one out there who will get this, but...oh, okay.  It stands for "Beer Flavored Nipples" and it is entirely inappropriate and in reference to The Ten Things I Hate About You and in every ward there is a BFN who dates everyone, EVERYONE, and people don't seem to get that they are a player and jump from one victim/conquest to another for the mere challenge of it...so we call them BFN's because there must be something there that we don't see).  I am done with pettiness.  I am done with the meat market.  I am done with the Singles Ward.

I have come to the conclusion that this is in my stars:

Yes, today I give up and resign myself to the future of a bitter, lifeless HAG.