I blog most of the time over here, now. I don't know how long I'll be doing that, but anyhow. Just to let you know.

What with this and that, I'm moving to Portland earlier than I even planned, when I was moving earlier than planned. I am leaving this Wednesday. I should be there around 11 pm local time. Wowzee.

I have seen my mouse twice so far today, in my own personal rooms, rather than just knowing it was around in the kitchen. Disturbing, I tell you. I have more in common with the eeek stand on a table types than I would have assumed. In broad daylight it was out! Who is to say what it will attempt when I try to sleep? This is not why I am moving earlier, but it helps.

When I worked in New York

• I held 4 students back from physical altercations---all students under the age of 10 I believe.
• I was looked up and down with contempt by a 3rd grade girl. She seemed to be trying to intimidate me.
  
• I tried reading to pre-K classes for 30-40 minutes; you try, see how long till you want to strangle them.
• I learned that kids aren't into the book Magic Beach.
• I introduced myself over and over, my last name misunderstood consistently the first several times I said it, whether by teacher or student.
  
• I grew to hate another human being over a disagreement on the logic of mailbox placement.
• A small wooden block was thrown at me, and there was no consequence, because it was then the least of my problems.
• I was in three of the worst classrooms I have ever been in. The top 3 worst.
  
• I was in a couple of the quietest classrooms I've ever been in.
• None of the classes had more than 16 students, most around 10.
• I racked up another instance of my gender being a point of confusion for someone mentally disabled.
• I was asked if I was from England.
• Or Scotland.
• Because I sure talk like I am. (?)
  
• I was asked if I was from Puerto Rico.
• I yelled at students.
• I asked an entire classroom, at the top of my voice, What was wrong with them. I am not sorry. I still want to know.
• I saw a teacher pull one of her hefty 6th grade students out of his chair and out of the room, while he held onto the metal and wood chair with one hand. This was after he threw books, pencils, and a plastic box at the girl sitting across from him.
• I saw a first year teacher endure a week of constant yelling at his students, unable to ever get control. I tried to not yell, in that classroom, and could not get control alone, but instead needed the presence of 2 males. The teacher was reassigned, and another first year teacher was made to take his place. This one has air force experience.
• A student got suspended for not minding me, for threatening to leave the classroom and go home, but mostly for saying "white people." That is what the principal thought I was quitting over, until I corrected her. This incident doesn't bother me nearly as much as others. My quitting was more about the overall ridiculousness of my professional situation here, and the oddity of me being at this end of the country at all.
  
• I turned down students' offers to help me with vehemence. I don't know what it was, but they made me feel like it was an attempt to take control from me.
  
• I roughly pried a student's arms from around me, saying, "Do not hug me." He hugged me right after having another student in a headlock, and when I objected, said "I'm sorry" and hugged.
  
• An experienced teacher told me, "I can't believe this. I did not get into teaching to be a correctional officer."
  
• I saw teachers talk to their students in ways I hope to never. But does it work?
• The teacher of the best-behaved class has a poster in her room listing the things "mean teachers" do, such as expecting the best of students, demanding work be completed on time, etc. She never smiled once, even when I said, "Such a nice class. So mature."
  
• The coworkers nicest to me were first-year teachers. All but one was male. There was definitely a better ratio of male:female teachers than in most elementary schools. I don't know what conclusion I'm drawing from this.
  
• I had a cold, and often, I think, looked like I needed to sleep or cry. I probably wouldn't have minded either.
• I ate alone in a park a block away, overlooking another elementary school's play yard, if you can call concrete a yard, watching children play roughly and insanely, wondering if I forgot other kids being rough and insane when I was growing up.
  
• I was fascinated with the staff room, so long as no one else was there.
• I can't think of anything else. It was hard, I didn't like it, I could never have had a class here on my own with no preparation and a fucked-up system. I also would never have stopped feeling condescending for being white in a school with no white students that I recall seeing.
  

Life's weird.

I have some photos on flickr showing a bit of Queens, and some of the school I was at briefly. I forget what else is up there. Bushwick stuff maybe.

A few more posts over here.

THINGS I WANT VERY BADLY TO BUY

WHICH IS TOO BAD SEEING AS HOW I HAVE NO SPENDING MONEY WHAT WITH DECIDING TO MOVE ACROSS COUNTRY AGAIN

SWEATER


(ONLY QUESTION: THE BURGUNDY OR THE BLACK?)





T-SHIRT




OTHER T-SHIRT





BOOTSES





TOTE




sigh, the avarice.

plans

I'm gonna move to Portland soon. By October.

Counterintuitively maybe, I feel things are working out. I think this is going to be good.

I am not the person who made the plans to move to New York anymore. So the hell with those plans.


Of course I'm a little afraid. I don't know how anyone keeps from being at least a little afraid all the time. But I also feel like space is opening up around me. I feel like there's more air.

another post on the vox blog. you know, if you wanted to try one out for a spin, you don't even have to make a post. and then you could comment on that pretty page. aaaand you could maybe join the blogging fun once again.......

i should start making private posts over there thus making you sign up. though, probably, then you would just stop reading me, Readership.

!

New post over here.

Les' screenname: what ya doin today
Mine: uh, being a crazy person, but in a subdued way
Mine: i took a shower, so there's accomplishment
Mine: i am halfway dressed, just missing the pants
Mine: i might wash some bras
Les' screenname: woo hooo
Mine: isn't that exciting
Les' screenname: that's fun
Mine: that reads way more exciting
Mine: way more
Mine: ha
Les' screenname: waay

I have been watching a lot of movies since coming here. Last night, I saw Half Nelson. I don't know if it's in wide release yet or if it never will be, but if it's out where you are, see it! It's not super cheery, but not super uncheery. You can handle it. And it's got such good performances. Especially especially Mr. Ryan Gosling. I'd heard he was good, for years, but I never got around to seeing anything he's been in. I think I lost some interest when he was in The Notebook (though I much prefer "Bad Love of Old People Movie," Cam's alternate title when she couldn't recall the real one). But yeah, he's a great actor to watch, very charismatic, just awesome. And, I looked him up on imdb today---he is going to be in a movie with Tom Waits! So that does it. New celebrity crush.


I don't feel like I have much to say, lately. I am a little in disarray. Maybe I will try harder to fix that, today. I find out what region I teach in today, so then I will probably take the new apartment in Park Slope, for October through January. That will mean staying here awhile. At least 6 months. Unless I absolutely have to freak out, in which case anything goes. But yeah, that's something to get used to, the idea of staying here. Yikesaroo.

There is a post here.

On my way out to get lunch today, feeling weird in my neighborhood as I routinely do, some young girl said to her companions, "Oh, I seriously thought that was Frodo! No really!"
Sigh.

I find it pretty difficult to find things near me, and finding things near enough to me is hard too. Google Maps doesn't take into account one's inability to drive, and thus its estimation of relative proximity is for shit, and my own knowledge of subway stops etc is not what it could be, and so I end up just picking whatever place google maps shows me first, and saying to myself OK FINE LET'S GO THERE. So I ended up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, this afternoon. I have never been that south in Brooklyn, so I was a little nervous what I'd find when surfacing from the subway pit at 86th Street. It was actually not too bad at all, though. Not where I'd want to live, but not scary. And I even had a nice little milkshake, at a place Zagat's deigned to notice, where the old lady at the cash register had some kind of funny accent (British? a long-standing faux British accent?) and called everyone, even me, darling. Then I went to find a Staples to buy a print cartridge, out where I thought it would be nice, because it seemed relatively close to Prospect Park on the map. Ohhhh, it was not nice. I saw a dead cat. And there were other ways it was not nice.

And now I am in my apartment, my printer cartridge refuses to work and I can't figure out why, my back is killing me from I don't know what, apparently I tense every muscle I have in my neck/shoulders. I still very badly want to go home.
I have this plan now to move by September to some nice brownstone, but that sounds like a hard plan. Tomorrow seems hard, too, because I have to leave early to find a fax and copy place, and I have to go to a placement fair in the afternoon where I will try to talk to a lot of people but not get hired. It all has gotten to be such a mess. And it doesn't straighten out at all. I was thinking mornings here are pretty bad, but afternoons and evenings are too.

I try to figure out what is so wrong about here, but I suppose the real question to me is how do people like it here? There's money, yes, that helps, you can get a lot of things here with that but then also...I don't know. There's the idea that this is the most important, or one of the most important, places in the world. People want to be in the middle of that. People are determined to stick it out here, to "make it" whatever that means. To show they're important and have a place? They have a place because they fought really hard for it? I am babbling now probably, and really I hate reading any of my blog entries anymore, but there's nothing else in me to write right now.
Anyway, I don't feel like I need to get my sense of self-worth from where I am. Except that that's ridiculous, because that's what we do. But I just want where I live to not stink as much, and to not be as difficult. New York is so difficult. I struggle and struggle and I don't even know what I'm aiming at here. I guess what I'd wanted was to feel like a woman who can take care of herself wherever, and make the most of things...and the idea of city life, with the nice places to go and the culture, that's a neat idea, but I guess I don't think there's any center to the idea...you can find that city life here because people believe in it and fight hard to maintain/achieve it, but culture? You can find that anywhere and make it anywhere. There is a lot here, I know, but not all of everything and so I feel I've been oversold.
I don't think New York sucks, but every time I'm here I'm really disturbed about its...ego or something, really disturbed by everyone's insistence on the realness of the New York myth, the greatness, because that widespread insistence seems like all that makes it at all real....but then, it is real, right? Not if you aren't one of the people insisting on it, maybe? So, that's good and babbley. I really ought to quit now.

I saw Bebe Neuwirth (sp?) I am pretty sure, at the R stop somewhere in Manhattan today. Yes, I was in Bay Ridge, AND Manhattan. I saw Bebe Neuwirth AND a dead cat. Quite a time. She looked very pale, stylish, but kind of old. She looked uncomfortable. To be fair, subway stations are uncomfortable.