POKE IT UNTIL IT MOOS

Ah, to crave a steak.  It's amazing what we are willing to do for a really good piece of beef.

After chopping my hair off (oh, yes I did), I treat my daughter to dinner.  She and I throw different ideas back and forth.  We are both trying to eat healthy, so a few of the possible venues get tossed simply because they involve less-than-stellar meal choices.  She suggests a steak house close to home.  I've only been there once, coincidentally with her, and, though steak sounds tempting, I wasn't exactly thrilled with my meal when we ate there the first time.

We banter back and forth more ideas.  She suggests another steak house, one closer to the salon where I just shed my locks and waved goodbye to at least half my gray hair.  I've only been to this place once, too, also coincidentally with her.  We had a decent meal, great service, and the place is reasonably priced, so with that idea firmly in place, we both start salivating over steak. 

When we arrive, the joint is jumping.  It's a Friday night, the restaurant is directly off the major interstate, and there may be a wait.  But it's our lucky night.  I know this because we take the last parking spot, the spot right between the dumpster and a sleek Ducati motorcycle.  The dumpster won't open its door and dent my car, and the Ducati … well, it's a Ducati, for heaven's sake, a blood-red 848.  No more need be said.

Inside there are very few seats, so we take a small booth in the bar, and by small, I mean I am barely able to fit my butt onto the miniature bench seat along with a pocketbook.  I'm dying for a steak, but four days prior the disk in my temporomandibular joint seems to have spontaneously shifted.  I've had some clicking and pain in my jaw before, but this is crazy, with my lower jaw shifting so much that my teeth hurt and I keep biting my tongue.  My jaw is still tender from its slow healing, and I'm not sure I can tolerate chewing a steak.  I resolve myself to a dinner of soup and something easy to eat.

That's when my daughter makes the best suggestion I've heard in years:  We are going to order the filet mignon.  She swears it will melt when I eat it.

I check the price, expecting a heart attack brought on by hardening of my wallet's arteries.  Instead I see that it's a $20 meal and includes a salad and side, plus the endless bread that appears on the table.  I'm very picky about beef when I order it out.  Sure, it's filet mignon, but certainly someone can manage to screw that up, right? 

As we order the filet, daughter says she wants hers rare, and I order mine medium rare.  I used to be a rare-meat gal.  When I stick a fork into beef, generally speaking I want the beef to moo back at me.  Lately, though, I've been a little more worried about food-borne crap I might catch from a kitchen I cannot see (I've already told you about my severe control issues), so I opt for a couple of extra seconds over the fire for my slab of steer.

We order drinks (glass of red wine and a lite draught beer), and it takes forever to bring them to the booth, even though we are about five feet from the bar and the taps.  The salads do not take as long, but our waiter throws them on the table as he whizzes by, mumbling, "Enjoy your meal."  This isn't so bad.  I mean, at least he put the correct salad in front of the correct person:  ranch for my daughter; house Italian for me.

Problem is there are no utensils on our table … and there are no tables open anywhere in the place from which we might steal some. 

We flag down another waiter, who graciously brings us an entire container full of clean utensils wrapped in cloth napkins, and says, "Here, I'll even let you pick!"  (Why couldn't we have gotten this waiter, one with a sense of humor?)  Eventually the rest of the meal joins us.  Like the Ducati parked outside, the filets are blood-red and enough to bring tears to my eyes. 

This is, indeed, a sweet piece of meat.

Not to exaggerate, either, but my daughter did not lie;  this filet mignon is the most tender piece of beef I have ever eaten, and I've had filet mignon at steak houses that consider themselves far superior to the place at which we were eating.  The filet mignon is like the consistency of warm butter with the flavor of gourmet steak sauce.  I am actually depressed when I have to take the last bite because I know it will be the last bite.  See?  Just talking about it is depressing me all over again.

Hey, I know that it is Good Friday when we visit the place, but we're Protestant, or, rather, protestant with a small p, so we skipped the fish and went for the red meat.  If God didn't want us to eat meat on Fridays, especially Good Friday, then He shouldn't have created beef to be so damn tasty.

Sunday is Easter.  I know I should be craving ham.  I can feel it in my bones and am trying to psych myself  into it. But I have to be honest: very little would make me happier than having another helping of that filet mignon, and I don't even give a rat's patootie that we are at a chain restaurant.  I don't care that my butt keeps dangling over the side of the teeny bench seat, I don't mind that our bar order is delayed, and I can even forgive the lack of eating utensils (as if we have visited the Medieval Manor).  I certainly pay for the sore temporomandibular joint during the night when I awaken no less than four times with shooting generalized pain. 

But none of that is the filet's fault.  In fact, I'm quite certain the filet helps, and even if I cannot think of a single good reason why, I will stand behind that assertion even in a court of law, if necessary.

Sadly, there are no leftovers to bring home.  Even sadder, the Ducati is gone when we arrive back at the car (the dumpster is still where we'd left it, though).  I have had a great meal and a great evening with my daughter.  Wedding plans are moving along nicely, and there will be a menu tasting in a few weeks.  I wonder if there may be steak.  Hmmmm, I'll bring a fork, just in case … (in case the utensils go MIA, and in case I want to see if the steak moos back).

WAR - WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? (ABSOLUTELY NOTHING)

March 29, 1973 - The day Nixon declared all American troops had been removed from Vietnam.  Of course, he forgot to mention the men and boys we left behind, both dead and alive.  They mattered not to the

political machine; we were officially out, and that was all that mattered to the government.

We read about a fictional Vietnam vet every fall when the class studies the Chiam Potok story "Zebra."  Every year I teach the kids about Vietnam, the conflict, and the horrors the young men who served went through while over there, at the hands of both North and South Vietnamese governments, as well as our own. 

One year, I had a student whose father was older, old enough to be, and truly was, a Vietnam vet.  It broke my heart to tell the class how we treated those boys when they came home, how society turned their backs on them and called them "baby killers" and spit on them, refused to give them jobs, refused to help them recover from horrors that were inconceivable, some horrors of which they wrought by their own hands for whatever price their honor and sanity tolerated.

After we had finished the Powerpoint presentation and the discussion, I turned to that student and asked him to thank his father from us all for his incredible service to our country, and I told him to be proud of his father because most of us were not like the fringe protesters and appreciated what these men had endured.

Students today come to us with zero knowledge of American history and certainly none of the 20^th century world.  They know geography and ancient world history and some random explorers, but they have no concept of world war or the fracture of our own country or even the roots of patriotism.  It's almost as if they've lived in tiny vacuums, protected from newspapers and news broadcasts and anything that doesn't have the name Kardashian attached to it.

March 29^th was Vietnam Veterans Day, and I'm willing to bet very few people knew that. 

The radio knew it, though.  As I was driving home rather tardy on Friday evening, one radio station was playing the entirety of "Alice's Restaurant," the anti-war anthem of its time.  I quoted the entire script pretty much word for word (except those bad words they cannot say on the radio).  It amazed me how much I remembered since I recited it in 1976 for Mr. Becker's English class.  I remember he said, "Oh, I hate that song."  Why he hated it, he never said.  Had he been pro-war?  Had he been to too many rallies?  Maybe he was high … again … and didn't realize he was actually speaking out loud.  Either way, I recited it, took my "A," and sat down, refusing to acknowledge much of what he said for the rest of the semester. 

It may not be a particularly happy holiday remembrance nor is it entirely unhappy.  However, March 29^th is Vietnam Veterans Day.  If you cannot remember that much, just remember that you can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant (excepting Alice).

RESEARCH THIS ...

Fucking research papers. 

There are two main reasons why I am on the writing track in grad school.  The first is I'm a bit obsessed with writing.   Duh.  I'm here every day.  (So are you - This must either be your penance, or the judge made reading this part of your parole.)  The second reason I took on the writing track rather than the literature track is because I am sick and freaking tired of writing research papers.  I don't give a rat's ass what "scholars" think of the shit I read.  Look, Romeo and Juliet is one of the funniest comedies I've ever read; anyone who thinks it's a tragedy doesn't know shit about satire.

Yet I find myself deeply entrenched in a writing seminar class, presumably one in which writing is the main focus, and I'm doing … tah-dah … a research assignment.  Frick.  The worst part is that I have started this paper now three times.  Three.  That's right.  Three.  Frigging.  Times. 

I start out with one topic that I think is where I want to go: voice in writing across the curriculum.  Damn, that even sounds fucking pretentious.  Then I realize the one class we are spending discussing voice is the one class I am planning on missing to go to a lacrosse game.  Probably ought to choose another topic. 

So, I do. 

I start writing about the new national curriculum, CORE, and its evil, tax-sucking parasite PARCC.  The paper begins innocuously enough, as do most of my opinion pieces, and quickly disintegrates into a diatribe against the raping of our Constitution and the illegal federalization of the public school system.  I get to page twelve before I abandon this idea, well aware that I have already offended the professor and my classmates countless times with my anti-establishment, anti-socialist rants.  (Sucks like hell being a moderate working in public education.  The only thing worse is admitting one might be a Republican.)

This brings me to paper number three.  I ask myself (during one of our class meditation exercises) -- Dear Self:  What interests me?  Well, what do I do every day?  I blog.  I blog all the time.   I have a blog, I belong to a blog, and I've been kicked off of several blogs, including a regional TV news blog, a regional newspaper blog, and, le coup de grace, a national television station blog of a major network show (do NOT ask).  What the hell, other than blogging, am I interested in enough to write a research paper on and have the proposal ready to file within a few short days?

The problem with the blog topic is that my professor is doing some kind of ongoing blog experiment, and I   I have enough targets on my back without voluntarily adding in another one.
don't want to compete with the professor.

I start thinking … all this funny shit we all share over the Internet.  Why do we do it?  Where does it come from?  And I realize it comes from the old oral tradition of telling stories, passing stories around, and making ourselves and each other laugh.  We truly have turned from the Information Age to the Age of Mutual Entertainment.

And why the hell not?  With our country in the state it's in and the world on the brink of nuclear meltdown, why the hell shouldn't we be laughing?  It's the only damn thing left on the planet that no one has tried to tax yet.

My new research topic -  Column Writing and Humor: Focus on the Funny.  There are so many great column writers who have been around recently (and some still around) in my lifetime, people who write about themselves and their lives using creative nonfiction (think "A Christmas Story" -- truth-based writing molded into mass entertainment with a liberal dose of poetic license).  They write to laugh at themselves and make us laugh with them.  Writers like David Sedaris, Dave Barry, Erma Bombeck, Jean Shepherd, Jenny Lawson, and their kind, who turn fresh and ironic eyes onto the otherwise bleak and mundane distraction called life.

My essential question?  No frigging idea, and I have until Sunday morning to figure that all out so I can post my proposal online to be critiqued.  But I figure if I have to suffer through yet another research paper in a creative-type writing class, then I'll suffer my way, suffer on my terms. 

You see, surrender is not an option. 

Even if I could opt out of the paper at this point, which I can't but if I could, there is no way I will admit defeat.  I already lost the first two skirmishes (research paper attempts).  I am not about to go limping through a theory paper that would not only bore me to tears but would bore my audience (the professor, who grades this). 

The bad news?  I have to write this paper.  The good news?  I actually care about the subject matter.  Which is why I'll probably be told it's a crappy topic and a mediocre paper.  But I don't care.  Remember, people, I never wanted to write another research paper as long as I live.  I made that perfectly clear when I jumped ship for the Lit major.  Clearly the professors have no one to blame but themselves. 

And, yes, it is time for my meds.  (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, ya know what I mean?)

EYE EYE, CAPTAIN

Last night was a late night.  I didn't get home from the college lacrosse game until 10:40, and I still had stuff to do before I could turn in for the night.  The alarm, normally set for 5:05 (SOS) is now set for 5:15 (SIS).  I sleep from about 11:30 to 4:30 (five hours - an average for me) then manage a few more minutes after convincing myself that I really didn't need to get up that early.  I should've stayed up at 4:30 because the extra few minutes just makes me feel like I ran headlong into a concrete wall.

I debate my hair.  It looked like crap yesterday (hence the whole "cut it, don't cut it" debate), and I am trying to decide if I wash it and risk another Bad Hair Day, or if I just straighten it and accept that it will be in my face all day, bugging the living shit out of me.  I end up washing it and hoping for the best.  Blow drying does nothing but make it poufy, and gel just makes it look … heavy …. thick …. wrong.

After washing my hair, I figure I might as well put my make-up on.  I usually put that on last, when I'm wide awake and rushing to get out the door.  Why, I ask myself, why do I wait until 6:55 and then rush?

I take out the staples of my routine:  eye shadow, liner pencil, and mascara.  That's it.  I can apply make-up in less than two minutes.  No foundation, no concealer.  I'm a low-maintenance kind of gal (which is why this whole hair dilemma is bugging the piss out of me). 

The eye shadow goes on with no problem; it's a quick, easy application of some powder.  Even a monkey could handle this.  Then some light liner, which I only use when I'm not going outside in allergy season lest I want it all over my face like a raccoon. 

Lastly, the mascara - waterproof, black gel mascara.  This should be an easy application as it's a wand.  Should be.  Easy.  Apparently, though, I am mascara-retarded. 

I'm still only partially awake and semi-functional.  Ah hour earlier than my usual time, my hands and arms are not ready for the well-practiced routine.  The wand whacks my upper right eyelid and smooshes black goo under my eyebrow.  What the eff.  Really.  I wipe the crap off, turn the gooey blotch into an ugly streak of tar, and attempt to use tissue and cold cream to repair the damage.

After about ninety seconds of quick-fix, I bring the mascara wand to my left eye. 

Muddahfuddah.  I do the same goddamn thing to my left eye lid that I just did to my right, including the lame attempts of clean up and repair.

Look, it's bad enough that I have to worry about my hair before 6:00 in the morning, but this is too much.  I decide that tomorrow I will not START with make-up; I will finish with it, same as always.  I will hit up the quick shadow-liner-mascara routine at 6:55 like I usually do, rather than 5:55 a.m. like I attempted this morning.  After all, mascara is kind of expensive.  If I keep applying it to my eye lid and eye brow instead of my eye lashes, I'm going to tear-ass through the stuff and have to sell my car to support my mascara habit.  Maybe I'll sell my son's car.  Either way, I should buy damn stock in the make-up company. 

Or maybe get more sleep. 

Nah.  That would make way too much sense.

CUT!

I can't decide if I want to chop all of my hair off again or not. 

It took me years to grow it out, then last summer I chopped it, like eight inches worth, right off.  Well, not right off.  It took me three trips to the hairdresser to get it right.  I think they were afraid to go radical the first two times until I pleaded with them, "Look, please, get this shit OFF my head."

Then I missed pulling it back, so I let it grow out, and it grew in mere months this time.  Now that it's long again, I am despising it every day.  Every day I have to worry about how it looks and that it's in my face.  Sure I can pull it back, but that was the problem in the first place… ALL I can do is pull it back.

It's in my face.  All the time.  I go outside to shovel, and it's in my face.  It blows around and gets in my mouth when I have the windows open in the car.  It aggravates my neck and pisses my off when it hits the pillow and crunches against my cheek.

And it sheds.  God, I hate the shedding.  Long gray hairs everywhere.  Never the brown ones or the tinted ones, just the gray ones, mocking me.  "Look, here we are again!  Did you miss us, bitch?" 

But, I have to admit, long hair is so easy.  You wash it and let it dry.  No cowlicks anywhere.  You pull it back, and - voila - instant "short" hair.  It's kind of like the best of both worlds.

I have two weddings to attend in the fall, important weddings, weddings in which I am to be photographed.  I've heard the opinion that I should get my hair all done up, have it all swept up maybe, tendrils around my ears.  Smashing!  And I'm certain it would be. 

Except … except …

It's not me.  I'm low-maintenance.  I'm a gel-it-if-I-must kind of gal.  I don't go for the oil or the mousse or the flat iron or the curling iron or the headbands or the barrettes or the clips or anything.   Hell, until last
summer, I didn't even know what the devil a round brush was for.

Besides, when I got my hair cut and colored, people told me I looked younger, which was great even if it were a lie.  I definitely looked different, and they didn't just tell me with words.  The expressions on the faces of people who had seen me with my long hair suddenly gone -- priceless.  I'll never forget the first time I saw my colleagues after cutting all of my hair off.  Double-takes.  Shock.  Maybe even a little fear that I had gone so far rogue.

And now, as I sit here typing, my damn hair is in my damn face again.  I'm heading out to a lacrosse game, and it'll be blowing in my eyes and up my nose as I take pictures from the stands.  But I know that my blowing hair will still look pretty much the same after the game is over.  When I have short hair and it curls, which I can't help it from doing, and the wind gets to it, I end up looking like Phyllis Diller without the cigarette holder.

What to do, what to do?

I'll give it a few more weeks and make a decision by April vacation.  I'll let you know how it works out, but I'm willing to bet there will be locks of hair all over the cutting room floor like an edited movie gone bad.  Then I'll be back here bitching about how I can't pull my hair back, how the curls are driving my nuts, and telling you that I look like a squirrel.

At least it will provide a few weeks of distraction.  There has to be some value in that.

TEACHABLE MOMENTS AND PORT-A-POTTIES

Today is the last day of the state English test for my students.  It was supposed to end Friday, but we had that nasty snow storm on Tuesday that threw a frozen monkey wrench into everything.  The long composition happens today, and we are ready. 

The first thing my class does is supply themselves with pencils.  I am amazed at how the kids can chew through pencils on this test.  Of course, it doesn't help that I have a graphite-eating, old-style, hand-crank sharpener bolted to the wall.  I have one student who writes pages and pages of a first draft and then a final draft, and she never once sharpens her pencil.  When she turns it in to me along with her test materials, the pencil's graphite tip is flat across, flush with the wood encasing it.  Another girl turns in a pencil so small I can't believe she could hold it in her hand to write.  It's not like I didn't grab a dozen extra pencils for her and her classmates to use.  Perhaps she wants to finish the test using the same pencil with which she started.  That's perseverance.

The composition writing prompt is reasonably straightforward, something about character traits and picking one from the list that relates to them.  I don't know for sure; technically I'm not supposed to read the question, so I don't.  Actually, I don't really care what the question is because the kids are ready for anything the state throws at them, and I trust them to do what needs to be done.  I have been telling them all year to trust me; it's my turn to return the favor.  However, I cannot help but wonder how many of them are writing about feeling proud, which is the writing prompt we used as a common assessment just two weeks ago, the same prompt that we stole off the 2011 test.  (They really should recycle these topics a little more thoroughly.)

The students work away and work away.  Technically, the state believes this is a ninety minute test: forty-five minutes to write a first draft, and forty-five minutes to write a final draft.  The problem is kids this age rarely do what is expected of them, and the first session drags on for one hundred and thirty-five minutes.  By the time the kids get a break, they are mostly toast from waiting for the stragglers to catch up.  I pre-warned them that this endless waiting would be the hardest part.  I can see it in their faces as they look at me with sad eyes.  "Oh, man, the teacher was riiiiiiiiiiight."  The only thing that sucks worse than this realization is the one when you suddenly figure out in your twenties that your parents really were right all along.  Sucks, sucks, sucks.  I understand the class's collective sense that this, too, sucks.  Big time.

After a fifteen minute break, in which we guzzle miniature bottles of water and chow down Nutri-Grain fruit bars (which are only fruit in the processed food kind of way and taste remarkably like sawdust and tree moss, but we are all so damn hungry that we would eat dirt off the floor at this point), the kids are back to work.  They are only writing for ten minutes when the construction machinery that has been operating outside gets too close to the building.  Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne are moving the giamundo boulders outside of my room.  Email #4 of the testing cycle: Please ask the construction workers to stop moving the boulders outside my window at least until we've got the writing mojo back.

Once again my email bites me in the ass.  I figure I'm safe from more machinery running directly against the outer wall to my room because outside of my window is a pile of rebar.  Wrong, again.  Turns out the workers really can squeeze by the mess to stand up against my window and press against the screen and talk … and talk … and talk. 

            As I begin typing Perturbed Email #5, they move away from the building again, perhaps being reminded by the administration not to piss me off unless they have a basket full of chocolate to offer me in exchange.  For the next hour, the workers are simply running a truck out at the other end of the acres-large dig site.  I abandon my email and sit back at my desk to relax, do some more filing, and think mostly happy, nonjudgmental, bipartisan thoughts.

            But then it happens.  With thirty minutes left until we have to go to lunch (we put lunch off until the last possible slot plus an extra ten minutes, so if we don't go to the café by 12:20, there will be no lunch), the workers assume we certainly must be done.  The problem is, we're not.  Not completely, anyway.  I still have four kids writing when it starts up.  It is right outside my window.  It is no longer near the boulder; it is the boulder.  At 11:50 a.m., the earsplitting sound emits from Mike Mulligan's modernized version of his steam shovel with a loud clanging.

CHUNKACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKA…

            The crew is breaking up the giant boulder that separates me from the port-a-potty.  Unable to contain themselves for one more second, the nineteen students who have finished the test and handed in their materials all rush to the windows in unison.  They don't speak because they know they cannot make a sound, and they silently find perches from where they can watch this fascinating rock breaking occur.

CHUNKACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKA…

            I can tell when the worst of it is over.  First of all, the deafening noise recedes momentarily while Mary Anne shifts her giant tracks to the next enormous rock.  Secondly, the students start shuffling back to their desks.  Lastly, I look out for myself and see a huge pile of rock chunks. 

            And the port-a-potty.

            The day we've been waiting for has finally arrived.  We now can easily and straight-on see the workers going into and coming out of the rectangular waterless toilet facility.  We can smell it, too.  Yahoo.

            My stragglers finish their tests, turn them in, and I email the office again, this time to let them know my room is all done.  Good thing, too, with seven minutes to spare until lunch.  The vice principal comes along to collect the box of secured testing materials, and he is barely audible over the noise Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel are making.  I tell him he should've heard it while they were actually busting rocks just a few minutes prior.  Yes, sir, these are the conditions under which my students test and quiz and talk and work and listen. 

            "But that's not the worst of it," I say.  Together the VP and I walk over to the windows and I point to the port-a-potty, now a mere twenty feet from where we are standing, separated only by concrete and a cheap piece of clouded plexiglass.  "That," I implore, "must find a new home."

            Boulders and outhouses and teeny water bottles and pencils and snow and late lunch and Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne the "steam" shovel will not deter us today, though.  Our state testing for English is done, and I don't know or care what the kids' scores are, they kicked it and they did it for themselves; not for me, not for the team, not for the school, not for the district, not for their parents.  Totally and completely, they kicked that test's ass. 

LONE LADYBUG

I see the first ladybug

            of the season today. 

It is clinging to my front step,

            all alone,

                        like some kind of extreme rock climber

                                    on a solitary mission. 

I am a little surprised to see it because

            it is still chilly out. 

I am also surprised the ladybug is

            alone. 

Usually when the spring

            ladybugs attack,

                        they do so in swarms,

                                    ending up both

                                                inside and outside

                                                            the house. 

Spring isn't official until the

            Attack of the Ladybugs

                        occurs. 

It's our New England version of

            Attack of the Killer Bees

                        except without the bees. 

It's like a bazillion miniature flying

            Minnie Mouses

                        descending on us all red with polka dots

                                    except the wrong color dots.

But today there is

            only one

                        ladybug,

                                    clinging to the step,

                                                climbing away from winter

                                                            just like the rest of us.

ONE VERY PISSED OFF, PSYCHOTIC LAMB

Ahhhh, March.  That psycho month where Spring arrives and Winter refuses to exit.

When I was a kid, I hated March.  First of all, there are no school holidays in March.  It's a long month of endless blah.  Second, It comes in like a lion and leaves like a lamb … a very, very pissed off, psychotic lamb.  Third, it's cold and blustery and raw.  Oh, sure, the sun is stronger, so if you're sitting in your car with the rays beaming down it's almost warm inside your vehicle.  Almost.  But step outside, and you might as well be in the Arctic Circle in the dead of Northern Hemisphere's winter.

Years of spring sports have convinced me that March is not the pleasant end-of-winter experience it is romanticized to be.  It's the month of multiple layers, heavy jackets, extra socks, multi-purpose gloves, car blankets, and stick-on foot/hand warmers.  It is also one of several months of snow storms, both Nor'easters and Alberta Clippers.  Just today on the way to an outdoor lacrosse game, it started flurrying during warm-ups.  How ironic is that?  And how ironic that they're called "warm-ups" when there's nothing warm about the early schedule of college spring sports, which start in February and are just … warming up … in March.

When I was a kid, I hated March because I considered it the coldest month of the year. 

Now that I'm an adult, I don't mind it so much.  Quite frankly, it's a surprise not to wake up dead some mornings, and that certainly would put a damper on things, not to mention that would be the ultimate chill.

March may drone on, be cold, and lean toward psychosis … but so do I.  Despite all its faults, living through March is certainly better than the alternative.  

BEEP BEEP

Sometimes progress is a pain in my ass.

Thanks to another epic snowfall, state testing is an epic fail.  Tuesday's required long composition tests for all students in grades four, seven, and ten, fall victim to a Nor'easter.   It is the only mandated date that cannot be changed without a directive from the education commissioner.  The same scenario played out years ago, leaving many school systems that had delayed or cancelled openings shit out of luck, forcing students to take the make-up test or take zeroes.

That section of the test is now re-scheduled for Monday.  We, however, have the reading comprehension portion to complete, a two-day test of reading and writing that involves both multiple choice and short answers.  Short answers, or open responses, are supposed to be a paragraph each, possibly five to ten sentences.  The kids we have this year are writers; not always good ones, but, god love 'em, writers, just the same.  My team drags on and on as students attempt to squeeze full-length essays into the tiny one-paragraph spaces in their answer booklets.

But that's not the truly amazing part.

The truly amazing part is the on-going construction right outside my window.  In addition to boulders being dragged around and machines that go BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP all bloody day long, there are also men leaning up against the screens in the class windows, heavy machinery driving back and forth making some kind of road right along the brick outer wall of my room, and the port-a-potty is close enough for me to hand the guys toilet paper when they need it. 

I have been assured that construction will cease for the mornings of testing.  Turns out this is a fallacy; you know, like the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and a raise in my paycheck.  The noise has become such a part of our daily lives that I don't really want to call attention to it lest the children become as fixated on the distraction as I have.  I can even put up with the peep shows that will be provided without a cover charge via those exiting the portapotty.

What I absolutely cannot tolerate is the conversation happening right outside my window.  I let it go on for about five or six minutes, and then I sneak over.  By "sneak," I mean "easily approach" under cover since the windows are made of plexi-glass from the 1970's and are completely opaque.  I snap open the window, which casuses the men to jump then stand completely still like deer in the headlights:  What was that? … I don't know.  Go check it out.  No, YOU go check it out.  I'll follow ya…  As soon as the window is open, I say through tightly clenched teeth, "Gentlemen, you'll have to MOVE because we are TESTING IN HEEEEEEEEEERE!!!!!!"

Someone must've pre-warned them about me because these poor fellows jump nearly fifteen feet at the sound of my voice and immediately move away, babbling incoherent excuses that leave a trail behind them that's about as welcome as a fart in church.

The second day of testing the noise is a little better until I write a note to stick to the top of the MCAS box stating that the noise is better.  Suddenly the same three brave but clueless workers begin congregating outside of my window.  At 9:30.  In the morning.  On a school day.  During testing. 

They seem to be trainable, however, because as I approach the window, there are either sensors, they can feel my presence, or my figure casts a shadow along the whited-out panes.  The moment I get within striking distance, the workers scatter as if someone across the site yelled "FREE COFFEE!!!"

That's not the truly funny part.  The truly funny part is that the make-up for the long comp that got snowed out is randomly scheduled for Monday.

And on Monday, it's supposed to snow.

Touche, Mother Nature, touché.  BEEP BEEP!

MENU FOR ONE

I like it when I have so much extra work to bring home with me that I can't even think about cooking.  It gives me a great excuse to get take-out.  Not that I need an excuse.

Oh, sure, you people probably think Live-Alone Losers order take-out all the time.  Truth is, we can't be seen too many times at the same place or we will totally blow our covers. 

Depot House of Pizza:  Here she comes, the Half Hawaiian Half Pepper and Onion Small Pizza Loser.  Again this week. 

King Subs:  Small chicken cutlet sub with lettuce, tomato, and mayo, coming up for -- Wait, what?  A large chicken cutlet sub?  Hmmmmm, Loser must be having company.

Peking Garden:  Number four come with rice.  Rice come with number four.  (They never judge me to my face.)

Sometimes I change it up so they don't know it's me until I get there.  Recently I ordered a tuna sub from Depot, and today's order was a small pizza that was half cheese and half pepper and onion.  Once I ordered a roast beef sub from Kings instead of my usual.  As for Peking Garden, sometimes I get chicken wings and sometimes I don't, but I always get the pork fried rice.  That's just a damn staple as far as I'm concerned.

I used to frequent Panera until I found a long hair inside my sandwich.  The girl said, "Don't suppose you'd like another, huh?"  No, I don't suppose that I would.  I have gone in for soup since then, but I'm not sure I'll ever eat another sandwich made by them. 

I gave up fast food about a year ago, or, rather, it gave me up.  I used to hit Burger King every once in a while, but now it makes me so sick the following day that I spend most of the time doubled over from stomach pain.  It's just so not worth it.  I cannot even remember the last time I hit a McDonald's or a Wendy's.

I have to post grades this week, which means Friday, so on Thursday I stay late at school.  I don't leave there until close to four-thirty, bringing home so much work with me that I wonder if the backpack can manage the load.  I know I don't have time to make anything, and my eating habits over the last few days are nothing short of pathetic.  This is what causes me to call up and order pizza. 

But I change it up.  You heard me already - I discard the Hawaiian half of the pizza in favor of just cheese.

Totally worth it.

Well, that oughtta keep 'em guessin'.  And now … back to correcting … and some cold pizza.

ODE TO SPRING ... SORT OF

It's been a while since I wrote a poem,

Especially one with rhyme.

I wish I'd done one sooner, but

I didn't have the time.

First we sprung the clocks ahead,

And then we got more snow.

When the season does get here,

Even birds will know.

I just wish Spring would hurry up

And show us all some signs

Because I'm having trouble with

Creating written lines

Of poetry to fill this post.

I guess I'll end it soon.

New Hampshire has a ski resort

The name of which is Loon.

The end.

BURYING THE SOURPUSS

I buried someone's trash and recycling today.

Oh, please.  It's not like a buried a body. 

You see, I have a neighbor who is … well … for lack of a better word and to keep it clean for a change, why don't I just say "sourpuss."  She's an incredible sourpuss.  She has this irritating habit of putting her weekly recycling and trash cans out for pick up directly in the line of access to my driveway, and she did it again last night in anticipation of today's trash pick-up.

Surprise, surprise, it snowed again last night and this morning.  The two to four inches originally predicted rapidly ups to a revised prediction of four to eight and actually ends up being about ten inches of snow.  I watch the radar (which is not a surprise), and I see there is rain, possibly even sleet approaching.  Since I'm the lone shovel-wielder in my house, I make an executive decision to pick up the mess before it ices over or becomes as heavy as lead.

I create a path by shuffling my feet, working my way out to the end of the driveway, hauling my bag of trash and one full recycling bin with me and dragging the shovel behind me.  My trash and recycling go along the street, beside the walkway, and away from people's paths into and out of their driveways. 

Not Sourpuss's trash and recycling.  She has to be a …. a …. sourpuss.

Coincidentally, as if I haven't been doing this for ten years (or however long I've lived here, I don't even remember anymore), the snow from the end of my driveway always gets shoveled to the area that separates her property line from mine.  This is where she puts her trash.  This is where she puts her recycling.  She, who obviously sees it is snowing, puts her crap right in the way of my coveted shoveling spot, the same spot that is (conveniently for me) slightly downhill so it's easier to throw snow there.

Today's snow is heavy.  There's a lot of it.  So I start shoveling it where I usually do, hoping it will stay in a wet pile.  As I begin building the mountain that will block visibility, I notice that the snow is rolling down and battering the recycle bin Sourpuss left slightly over the property line.  I throw more snow.  It rolls some more.  Pretty soon I notice her recycling bin is gone, buried under a large white clump. 

I move further down the driveway, shoveling away, paying no mind to anything except those errant snow blobs that keep falling off the massive loads I am trying to toss onto Snow Mountain.  I take a quick glance over the precipice and see that I have not only made her blue bin vanish, but her trash barrel is up to its cover in white snow.  As a matter of fact, it resembles a rotund Frosty with a flat plastic sun hat. 

Then I hear it.  Damn, her front door just opened.  Uh-oh.  She is marching to the end of her driveway.  We have had this confrontation before, but it's usually when the other tenants are here and yell right back at her.  Last time my neighbor, who lives out front, was so pissed off that he started throwing snow over the fence and into Sourpuss's driveway.  This time, I'm alone out there, defenseless except for my plastic shovel and my bony little fists, so I immediately start moving the snow the other way, tossing it up against the front house (which is on top of a five-foot retaining wall, almost as tall as I am).  Then I start shoveling snow up my driveway instead of down, so now I have the weight of the snow and gravity against me.  If she yells at me for burying her garbage, I will pretend I'm hearing-impaired (not to make light of hearing impairment, but you people haven't actually met the Sourpuss - Trust me, it's your safest defense).

In the end, I spend ninety minutes outside in the snow, which turns to rain then back to snow, then stops for two hours before turning the flakes back on full blast for another two hours.  It's after five now, and I've yet to see or hear the garbage truck or the recycling truck.  I am assuming that none of our trash cans nor blue bins will be emptied today.

Good thing.

Maybe we'll get a sudden thaw and her rubbish will reappear.  Maybe she has already called the police to file a complaint against me for burial without a proper permit.  Maybe she didn't intend to clear her driveway at all but came outside to make me stop doing what I was doing, what I always do, what happens every snow storm that she refuses to accept; maybe she just wanted me to stop putting the snow along the property line.

Whatever her issue, Sourpuss never spoke a word to me, and, if wise, never will.  You see, burying her trash is the least of offenses I could pull on her.  One of her windows directly overlooks my patio.  Who knows?  Maybe at my age I'll take up nude sunbathing and really give her a heart attack.

Then someone else can do the digging.  That's one burial I'm not going to have to do.