Productivity and Cleanliness in my classroom

Westminster shots aka my long commute

Mother, I climbed

I'm figuring out how to use iDVD. And I need to sing more lest I forget how. Cheers! It was either blurry or black. I chose blurry.

The Shortest Day

Shosha and I recorded this a few days after Christmas with her friend Mike. It was so nice to sing with her again, and with a new song to boot. We practiced for a really long time because it was a difficult harmony for me to find. In the bridge, I did it really well one time and then it took me about 15 times to get it the same again.

We were both nursing colds and so Shosha brought a bottle of Maker's Mark to help us sing better. It was pretty raunchy stuff and didn't seem very helpful in the voice department. But it turned out useful in the nerves department. Shosha put down her track and then I put down mine....several times. It was okay, but a little off somehow. Neither of us were singing very well on our own. So we did the Beach Boys think and just laid down a live track. It did the trick. There is something to be said about those sister harmonies.

I wish I had a copy of our version of Lyle Lovett's Family Reserve. We do it so well, and we've even gotten to the point where we don't giggle in inappropriate places.

Cry Like A Baby

Shosha and I did one of our favorites. Plus, you get to hear us fretting in the background. Yay!

Back together again

So I've decided to blog again at least until the break is over...hopefully after. I need to get in the habit of writing again. I seem to have forgotten how. Words don't dance for me like they used to.

Yesterday I went to the Governor's School reunion party. It was fairly overwhelming at first. I had never been to one as I've always been away at school or adventuring or other such nonsense. So I met Mark and Will in the parking lot (I was terrified to go alone) and we went in. I felt so old. The lobby was bursting with a really intense (kinda smelly) energy, and I found myself searching rather dazedly for familiar faces. The only people from our class were me, Mark, Will, Thomasina Sarah, and Jonathan, though we met up later with our juniors, Philipp, Amelia, Rachel, and Anna Kate. And then there were just swarms of other people to wade through.

I saw George. We talked for a bit, but then he was taken off by autograph seekers. Evidently he's written a writer's manual. I talked to Madame Glass and Dana Howard , but mostly just meandered around campus with old friends, thinking of a time when things were simpler.

GS has changed a lot. I hadn't realized how much. Doug (an 03 kid now an RA) said that they'd had to really crack down on kids because of poor grades and insincerity. Perhaps this was inevitable, but I couldn't help but feel guilty as someone led in Dr. Uldrick to the gift unveiling. This may not have been what she meant...just another cool place for rich(ish) folks to send their kids.

It's funny how the memory works. We were allowed to wander around for about an hour before getting spotted by the security people as strangers. I kept smelling things that took me right back. A stairwell that smelled like a crisis. A hallway that smelled like a late evening aimless walk. An office that smelled like acceptance. And get I walked into another hallway that I knew I had passed through a thousand times and had no memory of it, startled to realize where I was.

It used to sort of depress me to know that GS and the life I had there can never be replicated. I am beginning to feel similarly about Bard, though perhaps less so. I thought that I could never go back. Never be that person again. Never be loved in that way again. Never shine like that again. But that's only part of the story. I came into my own in those buildings. I allowed myself to be important in that place. I took such ownership of my existence. After a rather isolated existence at Liberty, I found myself surrounded by friends. And not just everyday friends, but people my own age that held qualities that I didn't know existed. People whose hearts spoke to mine. It may sound horrible, but until I went to GS, I had very few friends that I admired, certainly I was not surrounded. I've never felt at peace with my generation (their music only hurts my ears!), but at GS I was.

But I take some comfort in knowing that who I became there didn't stay there. Maybe there have been times when I forgot that. I stayed out long and late last night with old friends, several of whom I had not seen in 5 or 6 years. And it felt like home. I felt at home in myself. I didn't have to try. I just was. I feel similarly about my time at Bard, but I was older then. GS was my groundswell, where my new life began. Those people I laughed and played with last night...we shared a bit of light...somehow related by a post-genetic imprint. I felt such love for the experience and (most of all) myself.

All in all a good night. I wanted to explain to my friends at W-O. I wanted to share but knew that such things couldn't really be relayed through words.

Sprinkled and Dunked

This is probably one of my favorite hymns of all time, and like most of my favorite hymns, it is a redemption song. It's one of those "come on down to the altar and give your life to Jesus" songs.

Among the favorites:

Great is Thy Faithfulness
Jesus Paid It All
Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross
Abide With Me (not an altar call song, but a funeral one...equally great)
Just a Closer Walk with Thee
Higher Ground
Farther Along
It Is Well With My Soul
In the Garden
Have Thine Own Way
Open My Eyes, That I May See
Take My Life, Lead Me Lord
Old Rugged Cross


I'm only slightly exaggerating when I say that I have done the rounds of all the major denominations of Christianity (and been confirmed in two), but I've probably spent the most amount of time in the bosom of the Southern Baptist Church (a bosom from which I have long since self-weaned). It's always a bit of shock when I go to various Baptist functions with family or for students/friends, and I spend most of the time squirming uncomfortably in the pew trying not to look offended. Until they start playing the music, that is. And then I remember that this is my spiritual groundswell. I remember that as a ten-year-old, I walked into my pastor's office and told him that I was ready to accept Jesus into my heart. I wrote a heart-felt testimony and my father read it tearfully at the altar as I waded into the fake river in a white robe and purple swim suit. And because the music meant so much to me even then, My mother and I recorded "I Have Decided To Follow Jesus" in the balcony of the church to be played while I was dunked. I would love to get my hands on that tape.

Recently, we went back to our old Church in Clemson to listen to the wonderful Roger Lovette (most sensible, poetic, liberal-minded Southern Baptist in existence) who had come back to town and out of retirement from Alabama for some anniversary or another. And, by God, if he didn't make me cry. Truth be told, I was in a bit of an emotional pickle. This was only shortly after I came back to South Carolina after my NYC fiasco. I just sat there and sobbed. Roger Lovett isn't as slick as most Baptist preachers, but he knows how to wrap your heart around a story and make it feel like he's just talking to you and no one else. And to top it off, just to make sure I knew my place, we sang "Just as I Am, Without One Plea" and I had I not had some iota of self-dignity, I would have stumbled to the altar right then and there. There I was, wretched and broken and wounded of spirit. And there it was, such easy forgiveness. Thankfully, I stayed in my seat and sang the damn song.

I'm not embarrassed by my faith, if that is what one can call it in its current form. It's real and not fabricated so I don't feel the need to apologize. Maybe it is just self-delusion, but it doesn't feel like it. I could never in good faith go back to any of the churches that sprinkled my childhood and profess to believe what they were selling. The God of my childhood has been unmasked and there isn't really a return to that, though I have to believe that there is a future for my faith. I've searched for many years for a spiritual community that rests easy in both mind and heart with little luck so far. I miss the storytellers and mesmerizers of my childhood, just as I miss their easy answers and security. Liberal Christianity seems cold and sterile, but I suspect I just haven't found the right place yet. It's a problematic place to be.

A started story

My grandmother, Mary Moss Harbinger, kept her gallstones in a mason jar in her avocado green Frigidaire for almost thirty years before she died of colon cancer. “Entrails is tricky, hon,” she said to me the last time she was able to walk to the bathroom. “You had better pray you take after your Daddy Baz’s side, because us Mosses got piss poor innards.” Daddy Baz, who had won the title Most Hateful Man in Deluda, SC a million times over, was the one who was paying me forty dollars a week that summer to sit with Grandma.

Another beginning

We go down to Gnat Creek in search of poems on a Friday afternoon in early May. Three weeks to convince our unimpressed faces of the merits of Donne and Pope, is what the State curriculum has awarded this group of budding adolescents and Miss Reason has reached the limits of her abilities in this endeavor. Truth be told, I have little fondness for poetry, despite my love of the written word, save for a particular poem concerning a moose’s face being as sad as the face of Jesus that Miss Reason keeps tacked up by the pencil sharpener in her classroom. But there are no moose in Camilla, although Paisley Mitchell tells me that there could be moose in Camilla if only Jesus wills it to be so. Paisley’s sorrow, kept hidden behind a face that looked like it was forever smelling something foul, is that her little brother, Fenner, drowned in a fly fishing accident three summers ago. They told her that Jesus wills us home to him when he sees fit, and the will of Jesus has since been printed upon Paisley’s every thought, poor thing. But I know that most of my classmates, Paisley included, would not see a moose in their lifetimes. I really wanted to see a moose so that I could see if his face really did look as sad as Jesus’s face, but then I realized that I don’t have a clear picture of Jesus’s face to use in comparison. So now I figure, if I see a moose in my life, fine, but if not, I’m not going to feel bad about it. A metaphor is a metaphor, and not to be taken too seriously. This Miss Reason must know.
I am at the front and Lloyd Murphey's at the back taking his precious time, as we all march like distracted ants behind the football field and down the kudzu bank, and that’s strange to me because Lloyd is supposed to be my boyfriend, but he doesn’t seem very devoted. Poetry has the best chance on Lloyd because he’s been to Paris twice but doesn’t have any friends except me. Miss Reason told us that all the great poets spent a lot of time in Paris and then committed suicide because they were so miserable and alone. I’m only Lloyd’s girlfriend because he’s my neighbor and my mother has made me walk home with him every day from the bus stop since he moved here eight years ago. I told I’d walk home with him, but I wasn’t going to be his friend, and my mama said Oh yes you will. I used to tell him at least once a week that the only reason I was his friend was so I wouldn’t get hit. He always said that he appreciated it.

If you could hear me speak, where would I begin?

I've been going back over my students' memoir projects this week. Some of them just hurt my stomach. Most of them chose to do post-secret cards even knowing that it would not be anonymous. It just seems like some of these kids are so desperate to let someone see behind their tough facades. Just a glimpse.

I hate Iraq and all them terrorists.

I took pills for my ADHD

I love the Middle Ages

I am afraid to die because I don't know what comes next, even though I say that I do.

I wrecked a stolen car.

I accidentally backed a four wheeler into my Dad's truck. I told him that a cow butted it.

I have a tattoo on my hip that no one has ever seen.

I hate the word panties because my uncle used to say it.

Sometimes I wish that me and Dan had a baby and had our own family.

My sister had to bail me out of jail when I was arrested for being high.

Pictures of horses calm me when I have a suicidal thought.

I had a breakdown and was put into a crazy house and everybody in my family knows.

I used to sneak out at night and do X

I can't tell time on a regular clock.

I hate cheerleaders, but I'd do anything to be one.

I got drunk for the first time when I was 13. I came home and threw up all over the house and told my mom I had food poisoning.

I eat salads every day so that I won't get fat, but I'm still fat.

I write poems.

My mom still tucks me in at night and kisses my forehead.

I feel ugly and fat all the time. I wish I could be skinny and beautiful.

I don't take my medication in the morning even though I'm supposed to.

I'm afraid my parents are going to die before I grow up.

They still think I don't know...He's my biological grandfather.

I'm afraid I won't be able to depend on anyone.

I have pigment on the top of my eyelids.

I have starved myself since I was twelve. I am always hungry.

I have had two abortions and I am really sorry.

In my own opinion, I thank that American should be made up of Southern folk and that's all.

I only eat twice a day because I am scared of getting fat.

I am terrified of going to sleep because I have horrible nightmares.

I play video games for over 6 hours every day.

My grandpa shaved my face when I was little.

I can't cry.

Most days I wish I would fall asleep and never wake up.

She's my drug and I'm addicted.

I feel like I'm growing up too fast and I blame you for that.

I need to go back to church.

I lie for him.

If I knew I wouldn't get caught, I would rob a bank.

Notice how most everybody's the same? Everybody adapting and accepting to each other...pushing the ones that are different to the outside? Would it surprise yhou if I told you my favorite color was green?

Sometimes I just want to run away...but where would I run to?

I know what people say about me, but I pretend not to hear so that it doesn't look like I care.

Whenever anything goes wrong, I always feel like it is my fault.

I'm afraid I won't be ready when Jesus comes.

Sometimes I make long distance phonecalls to complete strangers.

I love cutting grass.

I was once an accessory in the stealing of the gator from Berea High School.

When I am home alone, I walk around the house naked.

I was sold back into slavery.

I wish I was kidnapped.

I am scared of cotton balls. I imagine them being stuffed down my throat and choking on them.

I don't like girls, but I can't be gay.

When I was in Kindergarten, I faked sick every day so that I could go home.

The doctors say that I am bipolar, but I don't take my medicine.

I got raped all because of the alcohol.

I have weird dreams that come true.

It took me 4 times to get my learner's permit.

I love writing.

I always chew on gum because I am afraid that my breath stinks.

I still get butterflies.

I peed on my step-dad's tires about two weeks ago.

I stole dip from my daddy when I was 10 and now I am addicted.

I almost got a girl pregnant and I really didn't love her like I told her I did. I thought my life was ruined until she was she wasn't. I broke up with her and found me someone I reallly do love.

I don't know how to use a debit card.

I was addicted to tobacco in the 5th grade.

I collect old coins.

WHere were you when I needed you?

My family pretends like we are happy to hide the shame.

I can't swim by myself because I think something will come up and grab and drag me down with it.

I'm scared of getting fat again.

I can't cry except when I see a dead dog on the side of the street.

I always make As, but I am always anxious about my grades because I don't want to fail.

I'm afraid of becoming like my dad.

I might be an alcoholic when I am older.

She thought I loved her.

I would rather eat deer meat than any other meat.

Not all black people run when it comes to doing your homework. I do my homework.

I suffer from premature hairloss.

I go to stores and try on shoes and clothes that I will never be able to afford.

I tell people that I hate reading, but I love reading.

I used to think that papayas were mangos.

I hate sex, but I have it all the time.

I started dipping in the 4th grade.

I never finish my antibiotics.

I don't want to have boys.

I still get whipped at home when I get in trouble.

I love English class, but I can't read very good.

My grandpa raped my mom.

I wet the bed until I was 14. I am still terrified of wetting the bed.

My mom sells meth.

Every day when I get off the bus, I think I will find my mom dead from killing herself.

Sometimes I wish that my teachers would adopt me.

I stole an ipod from one of my best friends.

I sleep in class becuase I don't understand anything.

My boyfriend hits me and I don't care.

Naked

A short short story by yours truly

You don’t know a thing about dead people, not one GD thing.
How did it start? It started with brown paint smudged on her chin as she lay on the ground looking at the ceiling.
Or it started when Adam looked down and saw his nakedness, the sweet taste still on his lips, when first he hated.
Or it started with a father who feared.
Or it started when a child had been born of the dead, cut like the pit of a ripe peach from the lifeless form of her mother, one-half heathen, one-half saint, one-half dead, one-half alive. The child had seen with her own eyes, smelled it in her nostrils still clogged with amniotic fluid, felt it run through her very own veins in those minutes between her mother’s death and the cutting of the chord.
They say you are not really born until the day your mother gets out of the birthing bed. Here I am still waiting. I never finished this thing. One-half born. One-half unborn.
The Reverend had been born again. Born so many times and ashamed of his nakedness every time. Born until he didn’t notice any more. All the way born from a long line of hard men. Born to spread good news, to drain the love from his own heart and give it away.
His daughter, who is she? One-half fire. One-half water. One-half alive. One half-dead. Born again, but not all the way born. Ashamed of her nakedness.
The brown smudge of paint on a woman of unwelcome blood, born only once, and unashamed of her nakedness. Naked, proud, who gave her love away and kept it for herself as well. The sister of a dead mother come to love like the Reverend could not.
Would not.
It started with brown paint, a lost job, a secret witnessed from the bottom of a closet, and an empty seat in the Reverend’s church.
Or it started with a prairie dog on a TV screen, and a heartbroken woman who would not go to church, between a girl who had never seen a prairie dog and a man who was ashamed of his nakedness.
Or it started with a girl who wished she were an orphan, but only half-way wished.
If only they knew what it felt like under my skin, in between my skin and muscle. If they knew about that place, they would take me away from here.
Let us consider the color of the Reverend’s face:
Pink, the color of the meat of a watermelon when he was calm.
The color of a wet brick when he was irate.
He was irate most of the time. Like when he came home from church to find the woman watching prairie dogs on the television, proof that she was not ashamed of her nakedness.
Sometimes people throw things when they are angry and leave a purple knot to prove it. She threw the flipper at him today.
And what if a woman who had enough love inside for herself found that sometimes anger was stronger than love? What if she got angry at her nakedness? What if she forgot to care?
And what if the Reverend forgot what it felt like to be born that first time? What if he forgot what he needed? What if his face turned the color of flesh dipped in a vat of hot oil.

Phenotype

A new song.

I wished upon a star that wasn't mine.
It was just passing through on someone else's dime.
So I can wait at my window
or I can turn my head away
and fall asleep to someone else's song
and dream about my father when he was just a boy
and know that he was fragile just like me
and dream about the springtime in the land that I love
(I'll be there for a while,
I'll be there for a while
and then I'll go).

I walk this world in a rented soul,
leased down from generations.
I took it from my mother
and I'll pass it right along
to a little bitty unsuspecting stranger
Because there's not enough room in this life for this shame
(So I'll feel it for a while,
I'll feel it for a while
and then let it go).

Sometimes we write the book
before we know the whole story
and fill the lines with all we thought we'd be,
but for all the things we carry
and what we left behind,
we're painting daisies over the pages of our lives.
Because when I dream of heaven
you're cradled in my arms
(and I'll hold you for a while,
I'll hold you for a while,
and then I have to go).

Harry Potter dreams...

Mama, Shosha, and I went to Charleston this weekend and listened to about 10 hours of The Order of the Phoenix and I've been having dreams ever since. I keep dreaming about Professor Umbridge, that maggot-of-a-woman. In my dreams, I just throw fits whenever she appears, but I never seem to affect her demeanor--calm, collected, and absolutely loathsome. And then I have dreams where I am totally and completely infatuated with Snape. Of course, I think I just have an unhealthy attraction to Alan Rickman. And sometimes in my dreams, Alan Rickman is Sherlock Holmes from Laurie King's Mary Russell series, which makes me want to go reread all those books...but I will not. I have a list a mile long already. I don't have time to reread things.

But if I do end up moving to San Francisco, I will need to reread Locked Rooms and The Art of Detection.

I'm not really any closer to figuring out what I need to do with myself. I'm just in a vile mood lately, which I am working on as it is no fun to be in such a state. Things have stopped making sense to me. The things I have wanted for so long, I'm not sure I want anymore (or I just feel indifferent in the face of this seemingly impossible reality). But I haven't found any knew things to want...so I just feel lost in it. Unsure of my direction, restless in my present, distrustful of my mind.
Nothing is making me excited...not grad school, not New Zealand, not California, not anything. It's just one big void.

I just realized that Alan Rickman is very very old.

I had an idea for a good blog last night, but now I've forgotten it...

For the first time in a long bit, I will not be writing about Stevie.

Since the job search has been going so abysmally, I decided to follow through on an ad I saw in the news for plasma donors (or plasma sellers, actually). I don't mind needles and I'd heard that you could get something like $30 bucks per session, and when you are so utterly and completely broke like I am, $30 dollars is really nice...and you don't need a resume. You just have to have not had sex with an African male since 1976.

In a perfect world, I should really donate my plasma, but when you can get paid for it...I had to at least check it out. And check it out I did. I went to a place called Talecris Plasma in downtown G-ville, but was told that they weren't accepting new donors and to come back at 8am tomorrow. I was a little weirded out by the whole scene. There were definitely some dodgy characters and no one was friendly. Some of the people looked like they were homeless (or close to it) or patients in an Alzheimer's ward. Lots of lanky men with grotesque, greasy facial hair, and old women with crazy eyes and missing teeth. I was looking around for the poor student types and saw none. But I said, Maura, damn it, you lived by the projects in Harlem and you can handle this. You can get a little money to work towards paying your next insurance bill. So what if it is unethical. Deal with it.

So I rolled out of bed (literally, I'm sleeping on the dog bed these days) at 6:30 am and drove back to G-ville. There was practically a line out the door of more shady folk. I got handed a pamphlet that specified where the plasma went, and mostly it goes to pharmaceutical companies to make drugs (overpriced and useless, most likely) and not people who actually need it. And the people running it treated everybody like shit, and this guy beside me kept harassing me and informing me that I was too pretty to be there. And it just hit me...the clear message from God or whatever that I shouldn't be there (and not because I am pretty). So I left. And then I felt stupid for going all the way to G-ville just to leave. So I drove over to the Blood Connection and donated my platelets instead. It was just a whole different experience. Everyone was so nice and the building was clean and friendly looking. And I was glad I did it. Sometimes you just have to listen to your gut, I guess.


And then I came home, feeling tired and a little woozy, only to find out that I didn't get the GS job. I am upset because of the lost opportunity to return to that place and those people (and maybe it is for the best that I don't take that step backwards), but mostly I am just overcome with frustration, anger, and self-pity. If I can't get a job at GS where people know and like me and I am more than qualified, where can I get a job. I am just completely demoralized and beyond exasperated with the whole process. I just spent my last dime in the world on Stevie's book and couldn't even afford to bind it properly. And I just don't understand how I got here. I mean, even three months ago, I had no financial problems. I was slowly starting to replenish my savings that I had lost due to not having work for a while. And then overnight...it happens. I have a major medical emergency while under-insured and get dumped out on the street by a new set of jerks a few weeks later. I don't understand. And maybe I don't care. But I feel like I am twelve years old. I almost forget what it was like to take care of myself. I know I'm so lucky to be here. I really I am. But it is still hard.

I don't know what to do. I almost never have to say that. It is a strange sensation. But I don't know what the right move is for me. And I don't think it is something that anyone else can tell me. And I get caught up on what I should have done to begin with. It seems like every decision I have made in the last 18 months has haunted me. Hindsight is always 20/20. After Stevie, I should have immediately started looking for another nanny job instead of flittering away my savings while desperately trying for a "normal job." I should have taken the agency-sponsored job with those filthy rich people with a child-care staff at $20 an hour instead of falling for a few kind words and an adorable baby. And I should have stuck it out in NYC and found another nanny job as soon as possible instead of coming back here. Or maybe those were all the right decisions, but I just can't see it yet. Because I thought the GS job was the light at the end of this long, dark tunnel.

I hope that is the case. I don't know what to trust in anymore. I don't even feel like I can trust myself, but I know I have to. I feel like I need to pray, or soul-search, or maybe they are the same thing. I just feel alone and scared and too weak to go it alone.

day-o

I've been missing in action for a few days, I know.
Shosha came home, which has been wonderful. For some reason, it feels like summer camp around here. I like my new little home, though I still might like to live in the camper. Despite still having no job (which is getting a little ridiculous), I feel more satisfied than I have been.

I have been having baby pangs again (as if they ever stop), but I'm sort of working through the psychology of that. The truth is, for the past 5 or 6 years of my life, I have had a baby or two to love. I can just list them all off: Haleigh, Cameron, Hamish, Jenny, Anna, Catherine, Franz, Kira, Eli, Stevie, Stephen, Madeleine. I have the caretaking gene. I always have. I'm your typical ultra-sensitive, middle child who wants to be able to fix everything and takes emotional responsibility for things that aren't hers. I think I have sort of transferred that persona into a kind of super-maternalism. And I think it is mostly positive. It doesn't feel like a crutch, even if it is difficult to be without it. I find a kind of peace and purpose in loving children, even if they are not my own. I find solace in the uninhibited closeness. I feel stronger and more alive in that kind of relationship. I have found joy in loving the little ones who have pranced into my story.

And working with very young children and babies, even though it isn't really what I want to "do" with my life, has been meaningful to me. I have not been restless or unsatisfied, which is no small feat. Maybe that is what is so scary about this phase of my life. I don't know what will come next, and I am afraid that it might not be meaningful. I may get this corporate real estate job for the summer and while, at this point, I am not in a position to turn down a job offer at Fuckrudders, I don't think I've ever done anything that I wasn't emotionally or intellectually invested in. Well, I take that back...I took those two classes at Clemson two summers ago. Totally pointless. And aside from the fact that I would love to be a part of the GS community again, I am terrified that if I don't get the job at GS, I'll have no choice but to settle for something utterly meaningless for the next year. The thought is almost enough to make me march myself back up to NYC and lay my heart down in the middle of Lexington Ave to be trampled again. Because I know that I can always get a job as a nanny there. Sometimes I think that maybe my heart would just stop minding so much...that leaving wouldn't hurt anymore. But that's stupid.

Where is my love?

places I'd like to visit before I die...

New Zealand
Italy
Greece
Denmark
Romania
Egypt
Chile
South Africa
Kenya
Zimbabwe
Indonesia
Iceland
Japan
Australia
Israel (probably never gonna happen, but I have always wanted to see Jerusalem)
Tonga
Bolivia
Macedonia
India
Ukraine
Argentina
Thailand
Vietnam
Poland
Lebanon
Austria

places that I have no real desire to see...

Saudi Arabia
Algeria
Greenland
China
Russia
either Korea
Pakistan
Chad (I hate the name Chad)]
United Arab Emirates
Germany
Kansas (did you SEE Jesus Camp?)

Summer's lease hath all too short a date

I'm trying to find out if my insurance will pay for the Gardasil vaccine. Seems like something it would make sense to have. But I always feel kinda iffy about new medicine. I was on the OrthoEvra patch for a while and Serevent for my asthma, both of which ended up killing people. Maybe I should talk to my obgyn...oh wait...I don't have one anymore.

Speaking of which, my cycles have been abnormally consistent. 31 days on the money. Aunt Flo comes about 3 days after the full moon, and for the past three months, it has also been when my student loan payment is due. I blame it on J. When she fired me back in January, I started my period almost two weeks early. I thought maybe that my heart had actually broken and was bleeding out, you know, hemorrhaging. It was more of a metaphorical thing, but I still wondered what it would be like to be the first person to die of a broken heart via profuse bleeding.

It's not that I mind really, but it is a nuisance. I was getting used to my 45 day cycles. It was kinda nice.

I finished Angels in America a few days ago. I can't even really process it, and I feel like I would need to read the screenplay or watch it over and over again to really get the full effect...it was so verbose, and sometimes you miss out on the poetry just caught up in the emotion. I was slightly disappointed in the ending. I don't know what I was expecting, but that kind of resolution wasn't it. And I want to know what happened to Joe. I'm not sure that I like the way that Kushner abandons him in the end. He has an opposite trajectory from Prior, and I can sort of appreciate that as Prior reclaims life Joe abandons his, but I was dissatisfied. I thought Meryl Streep was just phenomenal (surprise, surprise) and Al Pacino easily gave her a run for her money.

I interviewed at GS yesterday. It is hard to tell how things went. It was like a tribunal hearing, six of them and one of me. They all read off these silly questions that came straight out of the "Interviewing Candidates for Dummies" book. But luckily, I know how to tell a good story. I refrained from using the word "like" (thanks Marina Van Zuylen!) and was very articulate and coherent. I'm really really good at bullshit, but I didn't really have to do that here, and hopefully it showed. When I interview, I try to pick out the person or persons who appear to be the hardest won. In this case, it was the HR lady and the one RLC that I didn't know already. I couldn't get a good read on the RLC, but I had the HR lady hook, line, and sink. What sucks is that I could possibly not know anything until the end of June. I need to get a self-help book on developing patience, because I am just terrible at patience.

e hine e

I miss Stevie like crazy today. I want her here with me. I keep getting these depressing emails from D about how badly things are going and how J is claiming that Stevie has developed neurological problems since she started spending the night at D's place. I know it is just another one of her sick attempts to sabotage the case in anyway that she can, but I still worry about her. Hopefully Stevie is just oblivious to her mother's psychotic behavior and happy as a clam as usual. And hopefully soon she will just forget me. D left a message on my phone a week ago where Stevie just yelled into the phone. "Ma-ah! Ma-ah! Hi! Ma-ah! Hi!" He says she still goes into my room and says "Ma-ah!" That bothers me. I know that I had every reason in the world to come back home, but I need her to forget. I still have this awful image of our last day together, in Park Slope, after I had moved out. We played on the playground and she'd get really upset when I'd move out of her sight, which is so unlike her. And when I walked away, she just sat down on the ground and cried.

And sometimes I can't remember why I left. I forget the reasons that I knew this was best for me, or even the relief I found in the decision. Sometimes I feel so strong and determined to really take control of things in the wake of life's curve balls, but sometimes I just seem to drown in self-doubt.

This weekend was particularly hard because it was graduation up at Bard, and I really wanted to be able to be there. I said my goodbyes before I left NYC and have kept in touch reasonably well, but it just feels like I should have been there. Instead I am here...restless and unsure. I'm ready to get over this hump. I feel like I am close, but the last mile is proving to be the most difficult.

Whine Whine Whine (or whinge, if we were in UK)

I'm wondering if this actually works...

I think I'm finally figuring out my Garage Band on my Mac. I recorded this song. Except, it doesn't like me doing more than one track and when I tried to put down my vocals, it doesn't quite sync them properly (maybe a 4th of a second off), so I sound like I'm forever jumping the gun...which I'm not.

I kinda wanted to write a bluegrass song when I wrote these lyrics, using that lovely little Smoke on the Mountain image of God as the hand at the end of the string tied to a junebug's leg (and if you pull too hard, you'll just break your leg right off.) It's funny as hell. But it turns out I'm not really the best at quirky bluegrass songs. This is my submissive side coming out, I think.

I think that when you graduate from college with a degree in English, they ought to tape a prescription for Xanax to the back of your diploma.

This will be a short post. I'm sleepy and irritable. I think I injured my pecs at the Y today. My boobs hurt...deep tissue hurt...too deep for Icy Hot.

Actually, so far it has been a pretty good week. Still unemployed, but I interviewed for the truck job on Monday, have an interview at American Grocery Restaurant on Thursday, and have an interview at G.S. on Tuesday. And I might have a tutoring job for a 1st grader. I'm beginning to feel less hopeless.

I've also been hot and heavy into my grad school research. I have a list of about 25 programs that I am going to research. I'm hoping to narrow down to 10 so I don't break the bank come December. Some of these schools have $90 dollar application fees. So I'm creating fairly detailed profiles on all of them, including faculty contacts, financial stuff, and current student dissertations. I've done Washington University in St. Louis and Columbia so far. It is actually really helpful to read faculty bios and research interests. I'm getting a better idea of what I should call my own interests.

I also struck gold today at the Inside Bard website. Evidently, they have revamped ReserveWeb and now all the readings from all classes since 2001 are available for student use. This means that I can read all the articles and chapters that I SHOULD have read. It is also just a really good resource for me. I can go back to my Into to Cultural Anth readings and refresh the basics. And I can go back and read the selected texts from Michele Dominy's colonial mythology class (back when she still taught). I also dug out my GRE books, determined not to go postal about the math section like last time. I was doing so well back in October. I did the entire Verbal section of the Kaplan one, and I took one look at the Math section and went into traumatic shock. I'm good with the algebra and basic math, but the Geometry is going to kill me...and I'd say about half the questions are geometry-oriented. I haven't had Geometry since I was 14 years old!!!! I will not fall to pieces. I will not fall to pieces....

Speaking of falling to pieces, I may have crossed the blurry line into insanity. I've been toeing it for a while. I had Kayla bring over her fake baby. I'd call it a doll, but it's just fuckin' scary how life-like it is. I have him to counteract my baby-withdrawals. I named him Atticus (don't worry, he'll grow into it).



Heartache and trauma aside, sometimes I just miss being around the little ones. I feel a bit like a partially-recovered alcoholic who drives by her old favorite booze stores before catching herself. I found myself on a nanny classifieds board the other day and had to throttle myself and say, "Maura, look at me! Don't do that! Stay away!" So my fake baby can be like a plastic cigarette, satisfying the oral fixation without compromising the internal organs.



And here's a little preview for photo post for my recent adventures. I finally got around to uploading the pictures from "The Great Escape: April 2007." I also have pictures from the first Jocassee run of the summer and my adventure in 3-par golf (or more like 18-par in my case).

This is me and my lovely door front in Harlem...dear, dear Harlem (gag!)



And this is me and my lovely little street with the lovely little project development behind me.



This is me in the frigid waters of Jocassee, praying that the buried ghosts of my ancestors don't rise up and bite me on the ass. There is a bowling alley at the bottom of Lake Jocassee...maybe there is a Loch Ness Monster as well.




This is me using the flag to putt instead of the putter. I am shit at putting.




This was a common occurrence--gives a new meaning to "out of bounds." Mulligan!

what great doom lies in a land of settlers with never a soul at home

I have James Belich's email address. So of course I have to write him and ask him something...anything. But first I have to reread Paradise Reforged. Luckily I still have Bard's copy, which I am assuming I will have to give back before I can get my transcript. I am a shameless library criminal. James Belich is the author of The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict and two really wonderful, thorough, and hard-hitting historical volumes: Making Peoples (polynesian settlement to 1880) and Paradise Reforged (1880-2001). I don't even know who we would compare him to here.

I've been thinking a lot about my new piece which is just now in its pre-pre-development stages. It's that frustrating time at the beginning of a project where you have to hunt out the questions that you want to be answered by the process...find someway to start articulating a purpose before you can even start developing a research plan. And while I'm still overwhelmed by all the many possibilities, I think I know where to start.

In the last section of my senior project, "Becoming Tangata Whenua," I talked about a recent publication by the leader of the Green Party of New Zealand, Nandor Tanczos, about the need for a more tangible Pakeha indigeneity. He writes: "Until Pakeha are able to feel certain about our place here, we will continue to show signs of anxiety, defensiveness and intolerance, always underlined by the question 'when do I become tangata whenua?'" And it's really a good point. The politics surrounding the Treaty of Waitangi (might be compared to the politics around our constitution) delineate a bicultural New Zealand, tangata whenua (roughly translated as people of the land) and tangata tiriti (people of the Treaty). So it makes sense that Pakeha, people of the treaty, in the process of claiming indigenous status, are going to be making a discursive and emotional turn to the land. It's fairly straightforward. It begins to make perfect sense why more and more white New Zealanders moving out into the country to run self-sustaining farms or moving into communal eco-villages. While fundamentalist Christians have increasingly been pulling their kids out of school in the expanding American Bible Belt (Homeschooling), liberal middle and upper-class white New Zealanders have been opting out of the cities and suburbs of industrialized New Zealand and developing really interesting relationships to the physical landscape (Homesteading). It's really quite fascinating.

And the cool thing is that I've seen this kind of reclamation of cultural identity through the land played out historical fiction. And I made a lot of kinda shaky connections to a contemporary New Zealand reality based on what other academics were writing. I'm really excited to explore it on my own.

My littlest boyfriends...

My baby pangs are always so Stevie-oriented, but today I caught myself thinking about little Stephen and Eli. I was only with Stephen for about 6 weeks before being unceremoniously dumped out on the side of the road. Certainly my heart was guarded, or at least more guarded than it had been with Stevie. I had definitely lost my innocence. But it didn't mean that I didn't naturally bond with him during those weeks. I'm a total sucker for a squishy newborn, in fact, my nn for Stephen was Squinchy. He was actually a really good baby and he had the sweetest, most expressive face. Mostly I miss the closeness, his warm little body squinched up in the sling while we walked around the city. As unhappy as I was during those hard hard weeks, I enjoyed my time with him. But my feelings about Stephen are so wrapped up in my feelings toward his parents. I am still so angry at their cowardice and insensitivity and outright inhumanity towards me. I am so emotionally consumed by J and D's stuff, but I can just be unadulteratedly pissed off and stung about S and J. But it doesn't change the fact that I loved their child for a time.



My mother and Kayla both say that Stephen was funny-looking, but I just thought he was so adorable. He had these wonderful eyes.


"Tell me a story, bub."


And then there is Eli. I loved Eli so much, but leaving him was relatively easy. Eli's got the most wonderful parents. That makes all the difference in the world. Eli will be in good hands for the rest of his life. I always joked around that Geoff (as my project adviser) would have to give me an A or else I would kidnap Eli. There was a certain forced accountability involved in being Eli's sitter. I was there at the house twice a week. There was no chance at being elusive. I'd show up on Thursday to "So, Maura, I didn't get your chapter yesterday...what's going on?"

But Geoff and Sarah were just so wonderful to me during what turned out to be a very hard year. I sort of became family. And I got plenty of that grown-up interaction that I so crave. I get along well with my "peers," but I am just more engaged with adults in many ways. Geoff and Sarah were (and are) good friends to me.

And Eli was just a joy. I just had such a good time with him. It was so emotionally uncomplicated. I could just love him and enjoy him with no strings attached. And it was really amazing watching him grow. He was 3 months old when I started working and 13 months when I left. And it is strange because I just didn't really notice he had grown. When you are with a baby on a consistent basis, you just don't process the time that goes by. The toddler still feels and looks like the newborn. It's hard to explain.

Eli has the best eyelashes ever...he also had an oral fixation



My little Arm and Hammer man...



I've been giving it a lot of thought lately, and I can honestly say that I'm glad I made the kind of "work" choices that I did, even if it is causing me grief and inconvenience in many ways now. I had to work in college and instead of doing something that might look better on a resume, I did what I loved. I don't think you can ever regret loving and taking care of a child. It is such an emotionally validating thing. It feels so good to embrace the beauty of babyhood and childhood. For me, it's a really magical thing to be a part of. I've never gotten into my car after 8 hours with a child and said, "God, that was torture...what a waste of time." And even on the most dull of rainy days with Stevie, I never went to bed wishing I was somewhere else, and that surprised even me. I remember going up to Bard for a long weekend and getting restless by Sunday because I wanted to be back with her. That level of attachment has burned me, but I don't think it is wrong. In fact, I think is wonderful that I am able to give myself so completely to something. Being with Stevie was like being in the middle of writing a story. It's hard work and emotionally draining, but you are just so into it, so consumed with the doing of it, that you lose track of time. Nothing feels better.

Living it up in the garden...

The newly built bean/pea trellis gracing the garden...


I will admit that the carpentry is inexact architecturally, but it has a homely charm.


Or maybe we just need a different angle.


I call this nail "Northern Aggression" (Little Cold Mountain reference there)


The roses that Cocoa nibbled on...you'd think aloe and roses would make her breath smell a little better, but no...


Doesn't she look penitent?


Doesn't she look oblivious?


Doesn't he look dignified?


Shootin' the breeze on the front porch. While the Rents yak, Fiona has a little lick of beer.


"Help me! They make me do the laundry."

News from Lake Cappsbegon

The first bit of news here at the dead end of Huntington Drive is that we have gone high speed. Yes, we've moved on up in this world. Even cavemen have broadband these days, and while we still clobber each other with clubs around here, at least we have fast internet. The Rents just don't know what to do with themselves. They just didn't know what they were missing.

The second bit of news is that my piece-of-shit mac is back, and so far it has been behaving really really well. Lets not jump the gun, though, and get too excited.

The third bit of news is that I my feet have grown since I was 11. It's kinda sad really. My heels still fit in the slots, but the rest of my foot doesn't.




Another interesting development is Daddy's culinary failure. Who would have thought such a thing to be possible. But here you have it. I've named it Vegetable Porridge (please, sir, may I have some m-m-more?). It looks like something Cocoa barfed up, and while I can't attest for how Cocoa's vomit tastes, this tasted like spicy regurgitation.




Stevie's new book is almost complete. I think I have maybe 2 or 3 more pages to do. I don't know what to call it yet, though. The first one was just called Stevie and Bobo. I was thinking "Stevie and Bobo's Grand Adventures," but that doesn't quite cut it. This painting makes me sad though, because I'm the one who would most likely be there with her...that exact position. J and D, as mentioned before, have weird sleep issues.


This is the remains of the aloe plant. Cocoa, in one of her frequent moments of insanity, decided that she needed to eat it. You have to wonder, don't you, what goes on inside that head of hers. I mean, aloe tastes really bitter like rubbing alcohol, and she didn't just nibble at it. She consumed about 7 or 8 of the fat, 12 inch spikes.





Have no fear, Shosha, the Africa water hasn't eaten through the plastic of the Voltic bottle yet, though the sometimes I hear the foreign microbes and microscopic parasites talking to each other at night.







This is what I would look like if I was an Anne of Green Gables doll. Oh wait, I think I would be Diana.








I really think I should be getting workman's comp for having to sleep upstairs. This is the stripped room with a hole in the floor. I have to dodge rusty nails sticking up our of wooden planks...really. I actually don't think I'm up to date on my Tetanus. Wouldn't it be fun to go to the emergency room again. Wonder if hospitals are cheaper here?


In my own little corner of my own little room. This is what Shosha's room looks like now that I have moved into it. Though I'm not sure where I'm going to go when Shosha comes back. Somebody is going to have to move out into the camper. I hope it is me. I wonder what Jennifer would say if she saw the product of my unique interior design style. I hope she'd be traumatized.




I have re-established my "thinking space." I used to sit up on the roof, but I've become nervous in my old age, so I just stare out from the sill.



The best bit of news is that I have taken up my hammer with a vengeance and glorious things have happened in the garden. I mean business. More later, because this post is seriously busy already.