juan, you mOnster, har har!

site meter is wonderful. it's told me that for the second or third time, somebody in argentina landed on my blog after (i assume) she googled juan munster. poor is the guy who gets written up on blogs because of bad behavior, who gets found out by the girls who google him!

finally, a functional family

boyfriend and i were at my mother's house this weekend, as was my aunt and two of my cousins, and my sisters and my niece.

saturday we had a little cookout. since it had been a while, i broke out the hookah. it was very funny watching my aunt c's bottom lip tremble as she tried to exhale smoke through her nose. and, of course, there were the inevitable paraphernalia jokes - mm let me take a HIT of that; yeah man that's some GOOD STUFF!.

as i was "packing the bowl" for the second time, my sister's friend from the barn arrived, with a friend who happened to bring her ten year old daughter. i continued the bowl-packing, then wandered into the kitchen since the burgers were ready. a few minutes later, the guest-woman comes into the kitchen and grabs my mom by the elbow.

she says something like, there's not drugs here are there? because i'm really not comfortable with that as i have my daughter with me!

of course my mom replies with a negative and i explain to her what a hookah is and what shisha consists of.

the three non-family leave soon after we consume the birthday cake (it was my mom's turn to celebrate the three birthdays).

we find out in the ensuing conversation that aunt c had said something like,

i'm going to eat outside, WHERE THE DRUGS ARE!

and that is what caused the "drugs" controversy.

i admit i felt bad and a little embarrassed that we didn't do more to make the guests feel more comfortable. but, we hadn't expected them, and we weren't doing anything illegal.

after all, it is a little odd to assume that someone would let her children, in the presence of an almost one year old, smoke something illegal openly in the back yard.

indoctrination

1. gee, surfer friend, in high school i never woulda' thought YOU would be the one converting ME.

2. the bible belt has begun to claim my sister as its own. she is dating this guy whose family is super duper bible thumpin' xtians. she owns a bible. she goes to sunday school. which is all fine, i guess, since it's her life and it's up to her and as her big (and more enlightened, i hope) sister i should not judge her. i can only hope she comes out of it with less psychic struggle than with which i did.

but i can already see the seeds of indoctrination. every once in a while she will say something that doesn't sound like her, or that sounds like my own reasoning and thoughts at the time of MY indoctrination.

the other day she said something about wanting to cut her hair because she loved it too much. she spends too much time looking at it and just likes it too damn much, so she should cut it off [so she isn't tempted to love it so much, i guess?].

when i accused her of having fallen victim to indoctrination, she said that thought had nothing to do with the church or her boyfriend's influence. easily bought by an outsider, but not by someone who has used that same reasoning in the past. why is it a symptom of indoctrination? the bible says you're not to love the world or anything of it - her hair is "of the world" - therefore she shouldn't love it - since she loves it a lot she should cut it so she doesn't love it so much. my problem with it: it's her hair! it's part of her! if you want to believe in god, he put it on her! he could have given her thin mousy straight hair if he wanted, but instead he gave her this gorgeous curly thick blonde hair that ought to be shown off! my own secular argument: WHAT? it's her hair, it's part of her. she should not feel bad for loving it, if loving it is how she naturally feels about it. there is nothing WRONG with loving her hair, so long as she keeps herself from following the example of narcissus and drowning for love of looking at it. she should not feel guilty about how she feels about her hair because loving it doesn't harm anyone as she is not one to brag or look down on her mousy-haired compatriots. it's quite a pleasure to behold. so for the pleasure of the rest of the world she should keep her hair where it belongs, on her head. (i know, my secular reasoning needs work but that's the challenge of secularism - no one moral authority).

3. we were driving to our grandparents' house when boyfriend mentions that he would like to get some starbucks coffee. my sister begins to chat about how she loves starbucks but does not want to become dependent on it - she doesn't want to NEED to drop five bucks for a coffee drink. i suppose this is a valid concern for any coffee drinker - symptoms of deviation from your daily coffee habit can be quite uncomfortable; not to mention that a daily starbucks cold-frouffy-drink habit could end up being quite expensive. symptom of indoctrination? maybe. for me, definitely because i've used that thought process before. here it goes: the bible says we're to give 10% of our income to god - therefore i shouldn't waste my money on frivolous things - coffee isn't something i need so it's a frivolous thing. therefore i shouldn't make a habit of it. my secular argument to her: first, starbucks isn't expensive if you buy regular coffee drinks or even a short cappuccino, like i buy. second, i wouldn't want to have a daily coffee habit either; that's why i say, EVERYTHING IN MODERATION.

reflection on learning

here is something i've noticed and begun to question:

am i really intelligent in the way i expose myself to new information, or am i just a cocky little bitch?

for instance, i'm reading this study guide for these education tests i have to take at the beginning of august. i read the sections on human development and questioned their validity towards education. in other words, i didn't just take notes about what these theories said - i actually wondered if they hadn't been debunked and if they were no longer relevant to education.

also, quite a few of them seem to go along the lines of cognitive development (ie, bloom's taxonomy).

maybe it's a mix of both. i think i am a little cocky when it comes to learning. i'm a bitch.

mid-week freak out

is what happened last week. but i survived. i asked and explored all those questions and came out allright. at least i hope. i know what to do if it happens again.

and i watched sicko today. it seems michael moore has done it again - made me cry and want to move to france! i believe he's onto something when talking about the french way of life... i like how one lady says that in france, the government is afraid of the people (well just look at france's history and one can understand why.) here, on the other hand, the people are afraid of the government.

i think it's silly that there are even songs that sing about being proud to be an "american." ugh, make me barf, it's all a load of crap. but wouldn't that be neat if the government were afraid of the people here? never gonna happen. unless we have something bloody and terrible happen like they did in france.

am finally getting my hair cut tomorrow. trimmed, actually. i'll cut it all off when it's finally in a great condition and long enough to sell. that's right, i want to sell my hair.

so i've been having all these "uncomfortable" thoughts. i would call them "bad" but i prefer not to judge them because they're just thoughts and shouldn't have a value in and of themselves - should they? isn't the action what is to be judged should they have any corresponding action?

i thought the question had been answered. since i was on the precipice of making a decision, the last time we saw each other was supposed to have been the one chance to make a good impression. at which was obviously failed. which leads me to believe the decision already made. from the third eye to the intuition to the voice, a strong resounding "caution" or "no!" continues to echo more than a year hence.

(i apologise for using some strange lexic constructions - it seems that in the days before tv people had a much larger capacity to understand the written word - which is why reading middlemarch has been such an adjustment. the language of the book is so rich and subtle that i find myself having to go back over what i've just read to make sure i have understood.)

but then the whatifs come echoing back, weaker than what intuition has provided, but gaining strength. what if there's more? what if i'm supposed to feel differently? what if we just threw ourselves together for the sake of making a good story come true and we don't really feel anything for each other? what if we're here by simple momentum, what if just because? what if in each other we fulfill a common need (such as dorothea's adoration for casaubon's scholarly demeanor) but don't feel what is required?

and to all these questions i can but answer (translation: i can ONLY answer; je ne peut que repondre JE NE SAIS PAS), i don't know. i don't know.

the question of self esteem: i don't deserve to be treated like this. this is too good for me. the question of pride: i will not be the other girl. i will not put up with those behaviors.

so why do i ruminate on another much less worthy of my concern? is it that the right words have already been used, despite my aversion to and disbelief in such words and such concepts i'm still female and it's in my nature to be attracted to them like a moth to fire? i should be smart enough to know when i'm being teased. maybe this is what i get for taking advantage of a malleable friend just for company.

i always feel better about these things, despite the mental tangle, after a long hard yoga practice. so i am sore today from plenty of sun salutations and lots of sweat (in fact i just cleaned my stinky yoga mat that literally smelled like ass)... yoga makes me feel calm despite the storm inside. it's weird, the strange calm. so i'll allow it to continue, instead of stewing in the perfect storm and waiting for a wave to capsize my sanity, and go to the library to look up some books i've heard of recently.

middlemarch

i have begun the literary journey of george eliot's middlemarch.

at the first page i was quite afraid i would have trouble understanding the writing, but it seems like it was just a question of acostumbramiento. (f@ck i can't think of the word in english!)

i'm only a few chapters in, and am enjoying it thoroughly. it's not one of those books i can take with me to the pool or the dentist's office. first of all it's the size and approximate weight of a brick. second, i must sit down, write a few post-its, take some notes, and really THINK about what i am reading. that kind of reading is the most rewarding - i'm required to think, to find connections, to understand new ideas in my own context. as a result i end up feeling smarter! and for educators, challenging reading like this is essential if we are to learn how to challenge young minds to think critically about the things they read.

for the seasonally unemployed: embark on a literary journey. that way you'll at least have produced something for yourself that can never be spent! yay! becoming smarter!

first impressions: dorothea reminds me of myself during my cult days, and i probably would have ended up much like her had i not gone to salta when i was 20.

literary connection: jane eyre (charlotte bronte) is probably somewhat responsible for the undoing of my involvement in the cult. when the oldest of the german speaking family that jane lives with proposes marriage to her so she can go with him to be a missionary in india, i felt so strongly against this proposal. it had no feeling; he was proposing that she be his woman-tool to help him achieve a greater good, glory for himself. so it is with dorothea and mr. casaubon - he expresses no love for her, only admiration and a recognition that she would be the perfect woman-tool for him. it even says that he was somewhat disappointed that he wasn't experiencing the passion that men are said to experience as documented by poets, etc. i don't understand how he could get to the age he is without feeling that kind of passion. he is so emotionally ignorant. she is so caught up in her dogma that she doesn't realize the absence of love. she doesn't know enough about the real world and about herself to make the kind of decision that will entrap her for the rest of her life.

prediction: she's going to be unhappy and have some kind of awakening too late. fortunately for me, i had that awakening before i had made any ridiculous commitments. praise JEEEEE-SUS!

1. one might wonder what a skinnygirl has to worry about. while this skinnygirl considers a boob job, it's hard not to admit that boyfriend and i do enjoy cyclically expanding/contracting breast tissue. but here is something that i can't change: the size of my ears. I was looking at my head from behind in the bathroom mirror (checking out my GORGEOUS hair because i want to sell it) and i looked at my ear and was for a moment reminded of "HEY YOU GUY-AAAYYYYYSSSSSSSS" ... you know, that retarded ogre in the goonies; he had tiny ears, no? i'm self-conscious of my ears looking under-developed and deformed.

2. i'm believing in marriage less and less. hollywood people make a mockery of it - just getting married to help their careers. people i knew in high school getting married too early - and consequently divorced - because the "happily ever after" story had been carved into their brains since birth. so, so many stories we tell ourselves. that's why i had such a hard time when i was dating - i was caught between two stories: the remnants of the happily-ever-after preached by the cult, and the jet-setter who didn't need a boyfriend but nevertheless wondered why each new guy lasted on average two weeks. why is it that i always tended towards the long-term relationship? i blame it on the adaptations women have evolved after generations. why get married? what is the point? ok, there are good reasons to get married: so your kids aren't bastards, the benefits when it comes to insurance, property, citizenship, etc (in fact i saw a personal ad on craigslist - i only read the platonic-only ones - where the guy offered to pay a woman to marry him for citizenship purposes - he would pay for everything). so i guess it's not all bad. but you better have a fucking good concept of yourself before you bring someone else into the storm!

3. sadly, i fear i have to leave the exchange program kids. on both practical and moral grounds; practical because i have to spend my time looking for a job and/or producing something, and moral because they send out a "patriotic" flyer saying that you should host a foreign student to "combat the poisonous propaganda which is deliberately being spread about our country." (poisonous propaganda = THE TRUTH!)

4. i'm crocheting. my friend liz is a knitter. we'd like to sell stuff. so i'm coming up with a few prototypes of pieces and patterns - speaking of which, i have to photograph and print and put in my sketchbook. then i can undo the first prototype, make changes, and do the next one. until i perfect my product.

new post just for the sake of not having some lame-ass title such as "girlfriends" be the first thing one sees as one lands on my small parcel of blogosphere.

that's all. i'm paranoid about friends; last night i dreamed that for grad school i had to go back to my high school for a week and take classes - in algebra we went to this amphitheater that was made of sand dunes and we put triangle-shaped blocks in the sand and flooded it; my high school crush "carlitos" was also there, being reprimanded by his soccer coach for not participating in practice - apparently he was distracted because he was my sister's baby's daddy...

in other words, i miss my dream journal and i'm pissed that the perfect journal (spiral, hard bound, thick paper, pages turn neatly) costs like $12.00. though i may just end up buying one. a dream journal is so much fun!

oh! good lord i almost forgot! sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll! fornication pussy willow cock and balls! dick, prick, johnson, pito, paja, one-eyed-monster, trouser snake! hahahaha! (trying to see if this increases blog traffic. check out the sitemeter and then check the "referrals" to see what people were searching for when they found this!)

girlfriends

i know i'm not the only one because i had this conversation with the girlfriends i accompanied to quelquepart island: why is it so hard for girls to make new friends?

ugh. because it sounds weird when you ask another girl for her phone number. even if it is someone from work with whom you're on pretty comfortable terms, it's still hard to ask for a phone number. even though obviously you just want to be friends with the person.

basically, it feels weird to ask another girl for her phone number because one doesn't want her to think one is trying to hit on her completely irrational thought, i know, but that's the base of it.

making friends shouldn't be thought of analogously to making dates. so when you're asking a friend for her phone number, it should be assumed you're making a friend, and have no "other" motives.

it's kind of sick that we even have to worry about that kind of thought-interference. and i know i don't worry about it just because i was made fun of in high school (i think freshman year i still dressed a bit like a tomboy and refused to wear a padded bra - thus making me look like hillary swank in "boys don't cry.") because other people have expressed similar anxieties to me.

i hope i made a new friend today - i had to go through the above anxiety (what if she thinks i'm stalking her?) today with one of the girls i work with, since today was my last day at school until august and it DEFINITELY seems stalker-ish to look up someone's phone number in the staff database. she's a lot of fun and told me that the gym teacher occasionally makes magic brownies.

good LAWD the things on your mind when you don't have to worry about boys!


*************
a former girlfriend of mine recently got married (oh! and pregnant). i say former because i was not invited to the wedding and it has been probably a year since we have spoken. and it's not because she did anything that i stopped talking to her; sometimes, with some people, things just stop, ready to resume whenever one person picks up the phone. but at that time i did realize that she was one of my malleable friends, she was someone i could use. any time i had a craving for chocolate chip pancakes at IHOP and was pretty sure JCP wouldn't meet me, i would call this other friend because i KNEW that she would always go along with me, or if she was already doing something, would try to work me in. looking back on that now, i don't know why i found something wrong with that attitude; it's nice to have friends you can hang out with whenever. but anyway, i still stand by my distaste at being able to change her mind or convince her of anything (except of my philosophy of salsa dancing, which she swore depended on being thin and beautiful. no - it only depends on being female and being unaccompanied on the dance floor)

i am happy for her that she's pregnant. the marriage thing is not really important for me because i think i'm part of the group that doesn't buy the marriage bullshit anymore - the "you have to get married before you're thirty, make sure he gets you a big diamond from the mall for your engagement, make sure everything for the wedding is just-so, and we'll be happily ever after, la la la la la!" bullshit.

i found out the preggers part from a friend - who told me that the couple didn't want anyone to know, ESPECIALLY (ie, they pointed her out by name) the person who broke the news to me. i've begun to feel that the couple is obsessed with this person and no matter how much the person has moved on with her own life and forgotten the couple, she will still be the ghost in the corner. that makes me question the "adult-ness" of their relationship that marriage is supposed to symbolize.

i think it might be endemic to the male part of the couple - during his first marriage, the person mentioned above was an issue also! his then wife was always making a big deal, whenever she spoke to me, about "oh i don't want you to feel like you're in the middle BUT..."

if that person is reading this now, i think he is obsessed with you!

mushrooms?

let's just get it out: i want breast implants. i want to be a normal size so that i can have my pick of any bra out there.

anyway.

background story: a couple of weeks ago i went with five girlfriends and one guy to quelquepart island, sc. (it was actually kind of amazing to be in a group where WE WERE ALL HOT and there were no fat ugly girls -haha i'm so mean- i crossed out the fat because it's mean and i have some friends who complain they are fat, but i have no friends who are ugly) we had started the day early, around 9:00 and well, when in rome, you know. shortly thereafter my mom called and i picked up. realizing that when in rome it may not be the best idea to converse with my mother, i told her i was at the beach and distracted so i'd have to call her back. um, okay... she said, and it appeared to me that she was speaking to me as she would speak to me if i were drunk.

upon our return from the beach, i listened to my messages and my brother had left a cryptic rant about the "magic mushrooms" and how he couldn't believe i didn't feel bad about "eating all the mushrooms and making mom feel bad." i was convinced that he was being an asshole and trying to make me feel bad about picking up the phone when i couldn't be bothered to talk.

i freaked out and thought my mom was upset by our abbreviated conversation that morning. i called boyfriend and told him about the situation, and cried as i asked him to call her (because there was no way i trusted myself to talk to her with any coherence) and explain to her that "i was 26 and could do as i pleased." (i only remembered this yesterday as boyfriend and i laughed about the call i received from my brother.)

which brings me to yesterday. i finally picked up the phone to answer his call (i was until then only accepting text messages from him). shortly after i said, hello, he began to tell me a story:

when you were twelve or thirteen years old, one evening you were hungry and looked in the fridge and all there was to eat was this package of mushrooms. so you took it out and ate every single one of them. then mom got home and she was pissed off at you, because she was going to use the mushrooms that you ate for that day's dinner. she was yelling at you and you didn't even feel bad.

OOOOOOHHHHH so that's what you were talking about! but, why this recollection?

i think this explains my aversion to mushrooms. i felt bad for mom because you didn't feel bad about eating all those mushrooms!

so he actually was talking about mushrooms. i thought he was being euphemistic and totally blew it out of proportion. and needless to say, i have zero recollection of the mushroom incident, but i wouldn't put it past my twelve or thirteen year old self.

yet another shining example of why one should always get one's facts straight before reacting to a situation. or of why one should observe without reacting, or observe and withhold judgement.

abortion, bitches! or, parenting license

Last week a kindergarten student wet her pants. since it was the end of the day, mom came to pick her up and that was that.

the next day, the student's teacher sent her up to the nurse's office. the child was wearing the same clothes in which she had been sent home and smelled like urine. the nurse and another teacher, with a generous helping of baby wipes from another teacher, helped the little girl to clean up, and found her a clean pair of underwear, pants and a shirt.

they said it appeared that the girl had been wearing the same pair of underwear for a week.

the nurse also commented on the little girl's recently-braided hair. "it must've taken at least six hours to braid her hair. she said her mamma did it last night. it's like professional! i would send my girls to her to get their hair done, if that woman didn't let her little girl walk around all nasty!"

the sad part is the little girl didn't even realize she was dirty. and i couldn't believe the mom would spend so much time on the child's hair and neglect to bathe her (or not even realize how she smelled!!!)

which leads me to a point on abortion. true, had the mother had an abortion this little girl would not have come about. but that's not the point i'm trying to make.

what i'd like to say is that to me it appears the problem with adamant pro-lifers is that they don't seem to consider people who might not be in an economic condition that would be good for children. consider the above child, or any other child born into poverty. a lot of these kids come from single-parent homes, which leads one to assume they weren't products of planned pregnancies. these mothers have to work for a living, or are on welfare, and probably aren't insured, so it costs everyone to take care of these unplanned pregnancies, in terms of tax dollars. would it not make sense to have abortion be an option? (that is something i need to find out though, the attitudes of this group of people towards abortion. is it even an option for them? why do they have babies if they can't afford to support them?)

of course we could take care of this problem quite easily: take away everyone's capability of making babies temporarily. then, everyone who wants to have babies will need to apply for a license; upon granting of said license, reproductive rights will be restored. easy!

vindicated n stuff

what is unfortunate for teachers at my old school is that the principal must make a decision whether to rehire them in february while the results of the teacher's hard work aren't released until sometime like october.

case in point: me. YOU'RE WELCOME!

the other day i wondered about my school's report card. every school gets one. it outlines the demographics, financial info, and test scores for the previous years.

so now i have graphic, empirical evidence that I DID A GREAT JOB WITH MY THIRD GRADERS LAST YEAR!

there are two tests that students take in IL - one is the ISAT, which native english speakers take, and the other is the IMAGE, which those whose native language is not english must take. i had only six students take the ISAT while the rest took the IMAGE.

what the report card shows is that IMAGE-takers had much higher improvement than ISAT-takers.

i find that quite funny, seeing that two of three teachers who had the majority of students take IMAGE were on provisional certificates - ie, did not come from a background in education, yet had their students improve more than did the mainstream teachers.

perhaps it's of little importance to the average reader of this blog but to me it's a big deal. now i can write letters to the editor, i can write a "you're welcome, bitch" note to the old Principal, and i have raw evidence that the principal didn't know what she was doing when she didn't renew my contract. in other words, i can say my contract didn't get renewed because of my credentials, but i have evidence that i did a good job regardless.

i brag to the other teachers: "wanna see something?!"

have not yet shared this information with the principal, but maybe that's not necessary, as personally i've had a gigantic psychic load taken off my shoulders.