Filed under: 공부방 (after-school program)
Today for breakfast I ate a chocolate and two packs of fruit snacks from the bag that was left in my office. The neat thing about these weird pseudo-gummies, even though they are sort of gross, is the diversity of flavors: according to the package (and my mouth), there’s peach, raspberry, and green grape in addition to boring old strawberry, orange and purple grape. My current diet reminds me a little bit of this exchange from Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, a favorite of both Miguk Oma and myself:
Michele: Have you been losing weight?
Romy: Actually, I’m trying this new fat-free diet I invented. All I’ve had to eat for the last six days are gummi bears, jelly beans and candy corn.
Michele: God, I wish I had your discipline.
Today wasn’t notable for much with the exception of two new cases of ringworm. Ringworm is not as bad as it sounds, but it is still Pretty Gross. Gross enough, certainly, for the teachers to say, “Uuggh.” In front of the kids who have it. I’m not going to pretend that I am totally innocent in this area. I got one of our kindergartners bandaged up so that she wouldn’t spread it, and as soon as her mother got in, she started yelling at me about how I shouldn’t cover it because covering makes it spread. And I was like, lady, that doesn’t even make sense. That’s what I said in my head. What I said out loud was, “We…we were worried she would touch it.”
Now I itch all over. People who know me in real life, this is totally psychosomatic. I promise. I will not give you fungus. Unless you ask for it.
I also had dinner and drinks with one of my FB friends who lives in the city and who has become one of my favorite people around here. It was nice – peaceful, really – and allowed me a distraction from the thought of children you can’t even hug.
PS: I saw the temperature gun today, and it revealed that the temperature in my office has gone down to ninety degrees – eighty-seven, in some parts. The gun wasn’t as neat as I had hoped, but it was still pretty cool.
I wore the least amount of clothes that could still be considered professional today at work. That sentence took me maybe four tries. The older secretary in my office came in and said, “You know, the man came in yesterday with his little temperature gun, and he pointed it in here and he said it was one hundred degrees!” Which proves that I was actually underselling my situation yesterday, and also leads me to wonder what sort of gun takes a temperature. Because I want it.
No major disciplinary incidents today, thank God, probably because one of the teachers put the entire cafeteria on silent. I realize that this is a cultural thing I just have to get around, but it’s so jarring to hear the teachers yell like that – the assumption is that because they’re kids, they will inherently try to get away with something, and so you have to do a preemptive strike (in this case, ensuring that everyone enters the cafeteria and puts their heads down). I didn’t like that outlook as a child, and nothing much has changed, but I realize that I’m also biased because my parents rarely, if ever, yelled at me in that sort of habitual manner. Yelling was reserved for when we really screwed up and was served with a healthy side of guilt. Anyway. You’re probably thinking: isn’t this your program? To which I must reply: But it isn’t my school. This was done by decree of the principal, who – to be fair – has taken a school with a lot stacked against it and turned it into a success, and she is the final word on this matter. It does make me feel sort of – well, I suppose emasculated is not the right word, but something like it.
Today was a mostly terrible day for mostly the reasons stated above, so instead I’m going to refer you to a much happier matter about which I also wrote.
Filed under: 공부방 (after-school program)
I should probably make a list of things in my life that are going okay tonight. It’s preferable to the alternative, although the alternative might be easier.
- new roommate gave me leftover homemade Indian food and it was better than pretty much anything I have ever had in a restaurant
- have successfully written every day since ScoopDaily launched (all two days)
- received mandolin case in the mail
- ScoopDaily is not blocked on my work computer (yet), which means I can blog during work hours
- Evernote (I know, I know) allows me to take notes for blog entries at work and access them at home in a user-friendly way, thus rendering all of my procrastination potentially productive. PPPPPPPPP. I am not much of an adherent to any sort of productivity methodology, except for the fact that I like to accomplish things, but I am really loving this. On first glance it doesn’t seem particularly useful, but it essentially allows you to create different sections for different projects and things you are working on and then dump everything you find and think about into those categories. Which is sort of like the file setup on your computer, except that instead of having to save everything using different programs and in different formats, you can just clip it. It’s sort of like a giant interactive bulletin board. Is it weird that this reminds me both of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Ghostwriter?
My office – and I do have an office, unlike many of my less fortunate coordinator peers – is, as I discovered today, on top of the school’s boiler. Yesterday, when I was out, the heat was turned up. I am a floor sitter, like most four-year-olds, so I already knew that the heat came from the floor, but today I was reminded of this fact when the temperature in my office rose to – I am not making this up – about eighty-eight degrees. The secretaries in the connected office kept yelling, “MISS [IGR]! COME ON OUT OF THERE, MISS [IGR]!” Whenever I emerged, they expressed their concern that I might fall victim to heatstroke.
Also, disciplinary incidents today:
- 4-year-old girl said “fuck your butt” (1)
- 2nd grader made other 2nd grader bleed, claims she was bothering him first, it becomes obvious that his stutter prohibits him from telling teacher when other people bother him, although not from cursing (1)
- 3-year-old boy yelled “oh shit” (1)
Which is how I found myself chugging a second bottle of soda (!!) and scarfing abandoned fruit snacks as the program wound down, hoping no one would come into my sauna of an office and wondering what country I was really in.
Look, I’m in a place right now where I need to celebrate even the smallest of victories.
And Ms. IGR was given $1000 to spend on supplies for her after-school program. Ms. IGR just spent $997.44. HEYYO
Filed under: Uncategorized
A four-year-old called me stupid and told me to shut up today.
Somehow, the fact that I also saw her licking the asphalt of the basketball court doesn’t really make me feel better, despite the manner in which this undermines her credibility.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Does anyone have any ideas for a 1,000-word policy memo?
To quote my mother: “So…you’re supposed to write about a problem? In society?”
Filed under: poetry
Things with the IGRB are over, at least for the time being. Everyone involved possesses hopes of being friends, maintaining the relationship so carefully developed over months, and the reasons behind all of this, the who did and said what and when, are irrelevant, at least to you. For the most part, fault isn’t the issue. Of more concern, I think, is the pain we fear we are causing each other.
For my purposes, what I’m concerned about, after dealing with the levels and facets of feeling, is my urge to speak in other peoples’ words; this happens a lot, when I’m feeling hurt, because I lack the confidence that my own language is sufficient to express what I feel, and so after the hours of sleep – which is what people who deal with depression do – I find myself overcome with the urge to tattoo these poems, these song lyrics (song lyrics! am I sixteen?!), these passages over everything: on paper, on my skin, on my walls, in an effort to divest myself of some small segment of what hurts inside. To repeat them, over and over, like some sort of shallow, pop-culture mantra, until the pain is gone.
Even if you have heard these before. And you have.
| Compulsively Allergic to the Truth | ||
| by Jeffrey McDaniel | ||
I'm sorry I was late. I was pulled over by a cop for driving blindfolded with a raspberry-scented candle flickering in my mouth. I'm sorry I was late. I was on my way when I felt a plot thickening in my arm. I have a fear of heights. Luckily the Earth is on the second floor of the universe. I am not the egg man. I am the owl who just witnessed another tree fall over in the forest of your life. I am your father shaking his head at the thought of you. I am his words dissolving in your mind like footprints in a rainstorm. I am a long-legged martini. I am feeding olives to the bull inside you. I am decorating your labyrinth, tacking up snapshots of all the people who've gotten lost in your corridors. |
||
First went wrong is hard to find
We’re paralyzed, we apologize
Our hell is a good life
Last went wrong, where’s my prize under the lights
Can we call it in?
We’ll be on the road
Can we stop?
When we stop my back will turn your face toward the fence
What I thought it was it isn’t now
All this weight, is honest worse
We’re moderate, we modernize
till our hell is a good life
All we know what to forget, how to do right
Coloring in the black hole
Can’t we stop? when we stop
My hands will shake, my eyes will burn
My throat will ache, watching you turn
From me toward your friends
What I thought it was it isn’t now
What I thought it was it isn’t
Punishment to stall what is done
What I thought was in is missing out
What I thought it was it isn’t now
There’s a pattern in the system
There’s a bullet in the gun
That’s why I tried to save you
But it can’t be done
I am the owl who just witnessed another tree fall over in the forest of your life.
Nothing like fall for groundless melancholy. It’s been cold and wet here for the past five days; by this past Friday, my kids hadn’t had recess for three days straight, so for our Fun Friday we held a “Rainy Day Dance!” during which some of them literally just jumped up and down in place, presumably to burn the energy the monkey bars normally might have received. I let the teachers DJ, and the music seemed a little loud to me, but bear in mind whom we’re discussing: I hated school dances because I hate crowds and loud music, so all music in that sort of scenario is going to be too loud for me. I am not a good barometer. Then the principal called me over and told me that she had received parent complaints about the noise level, and that we had to be mindful of our noise because of our, quote, “changing population.” I think what this means is that she thinks white people are scared of loud music, but I’m not positive.
IGRB and I went to see “Where the Wild Things Are” this morning, and I loved it. He gave it 2.5-3 out of 5 stars, but to quote him, it’s okay to think wrong things sometimes. It’s very much a movie for my demographic and generation though, and maybe that sounds selfish, maybe I am too narrow-minded and the movie can be appreciated by all ages and backgrounds, but let’s be realistic here: it’s directed by Spike Jonze from a screenplay by Dave Eggers. I own a Spike Jonze music video retrospective. Come on now. Anyway, we were discussing this and being able to identify with the main characters – because I didn’t really appreciate the book until I was grown, being more of a Chicken Soup with Rice fan myself, and I definitely occupied more of the older-sister position in my household. But the thing is: I work with Max. I see him every day. There’s a kid named Marcus at my school, a kindergartener, who has to wait for his older brother to come downstairs so they can walk home, and during the beginning of this arrangement he cried for three days in a row because he was convinced that he might not come back. Now when he sees me, he tells me: “Not gonna cry today!” (Incidentally, I also have a three-year-old who says things like, “Ms. IGR, I’m not going to scratch anyone today.” Does he want a cookie?) It’s funny that in many respects, I wasn’t very good at being a kid. In some ways I think I’m better equipped for childhood now than I was back then.
This weekend IGRB and I were supposed to go apple picking, a long-awaited day trip that was supposed to provide us with idyllic opportunities to climb trees and generally frolic in the fall weather. Somehow, however, we managed to pick the one orchard that the entire city of Baltimore had decided to visit. Also the apple trees were in disconcertingly neat rows, the tops trimmed off, the pesticides streaked on each apple. It felt like such a castrated version of our imagination. Also, it was not very cold. Such a small thing, but I almost cried with frustration.
It turned out that the real experience was in the beet and spinach fields, because – and I know you will be surprised about this, o my readers – no one cares very much about spinach or beets, so it was us and a few old ajumaa in visors. Picking beets is terrific fun, actually, and yes, I realize that such a statement makes me one of the more exciting people in existence today. But it was neat to look for the biggest ones poking out of the muddy ground. Here, unlike in Kentucky and Indiana, they’ve abandoned the descriptor “U-Pick” for the slightly classier acronym “PYO” (“pick your own”). Sometimes I think that if I were actually a farm laborer and I saw people paying money to pick crops, I would go blind with rage, but unfortunately, that doesn’t change the fact that I enjoyed myself.
Tomorrow I have to come up with behavior plans for an angry fourth grader and a four-year-old who could best be described as a loose cannon. I have to admit, the problem solving aspects of my job are probably the most enjoyable.
