I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams

At just past five this morning, Jamison woke me to say that I was hollering in my sleep. From the time I went to bed last night until the wee hours, I had a series of disturbing lucid dreams that are still with me - and from which I had shouted a few resounding NOs. But now I'm sitting in my new class at Platt College - a temporary gig teaching composition - and they are hard at work writing stories for me from a Scattergories game. I hope they don't think I'm too much of a goofball. I am a goofball, but at least I'd like to think I'm well humored about that fact. I admit I have been dreading teaching here to some degree because the drive is long and the pay is shit, but so far, I'm having a good time. The others who work here have made me feel welcome, and this class has only five students in it - all good natured and chatty - so I think it's going to exceed my expectation.

Yesterday was a rubbish day mood-wise. I try to not be annoyed with insufferably stupid people, and I struggle to ignore those who offend me because I know it's never worth it to fight about such things, but still. I have this student from my spring 1020 class that won't go away and I have had it. He blew off the class entirely, turned almost nothing of import into me, and I informed him regularly and repeatedly that he had no prayer of passing my class and advised him to drop. His argument? He couldn't drop because he'd lose his financial aid and he'd be kicked out of school because he's on academic probation. It goes without saying here that he is clearly a stellar student and has been all this while; how he figures that any of these facts come to bear on me is a mystery. He made bad decisions, and expects me to care about them or feel compelled to help him, neither of which has ever happened on my end. I explained this clearly; in fact, I'd say that as students go, I'm a straight shooter. I never led this kid to believe anything but the truth of his situation. I should point out also that even though I kind of liked him, he pushed my buttons by always insisting on arguing with me on every point I tried to enforce, which I hate. I don't mind confrontation of this sort, but it bugs me when people have such a powerful sense of entitlement that they don't even hear what I'm saying - that it all translates into a personal beef between us when it's not. So when it came to turning in the final paper, I refused to take his because it had no bearing on his grade and I wasn't going to waste my time. I told him this and it was an email argument - AGAIN - so I ended it with telling him he was not welcome at the last class and if he showed up I would call the cops. I was not going to engage him any further.

So yesterday I get an email from the chair of the department that he wrote to her and claimed that I treated him unfairly and that I failed him because I felt like it. His letter of course was one-sided and villified me, and I don't even care about that part. What bugs me is that this guy actually believes he was mistreated and sees no fault in his own behaviors. How do you communicate with these people? It ultimately frustrates me because I know he'll never see the situation as his own fault; and his argument is that he needs a passing grade to stay in school. How selfish can you get? I can't stand students who see our relationship as capitalistic - that is, they are "paying" for school (i.e., a product), and they "deserve" to get what they paid for. I love the ones who say they're paying my salary. They are not; the State of Colorado pays my salary and our relationship is not a commercial one; it's a voluntary one in which I possess knowledge that they require and I choose to give it to them under my own rules. If they don't like me, they can choose another class. But I am hardly a servant, or a body behind a cash register, and I am not obligated to be nice, treat them as though they are customers who are always right, or care one iota about their personal shit. This kid better hope I never see him off the clock or so help me god... grrr.

But reflecting on that makes today a better day. It's ten a.m. and all is so far well, except for the lingering of my house being haunted by the Poltergeist clown this morning whilst I slept.

Standing in the shower thinking

Instead of a new obsession, I'm revisiting old ones. Is that a sign of aging or an acknowledgment of the circular nature of existence? I dunno, but I'm digging Jane's Addiction's "Nothing's Shocking" album lately and something about listening to it - despite its often troublesome themes - makes me feel happy.

Apparently, I'm "intense." Sami's friends have voted me "scariest mom" and I can only laugh at this fact, dubious distinction or not. Her friend Stephanie thinks I "yell a lot" and it's true, but at least I know I'm not getting any 13-year-old lip from the back seat when I'm driving the squirrelly, giggling gossipers and text messagers in the back seat of my car. I try to be understanding about how annoying they are because I know full well that I was at least as annoying at that age. But still. Some days I have to ask them to sit quietly because the noise level reaches a pitch only dogs can hear and it makes my ears ring. They wear too much perfume and too much eyeliner; they are attached to their cell phones and meet boys at the movies and don't take kindly to my perpetually logical moralizing from the driver's seat. I remind them to be smart, assertive, not to drink, smoke, or accept drugs; to not talk to people they don't know, even kids their age; to not have sex without thinking about it and using protection. There is a collective groan and a "Moh-um" utterance from my daughter when I remind them that oral sex is still sex, and that they should never do anything they don't want to do or succumb to boyfriend or peer pressures. Moriah wonders aloud why I can't just drive them and not pay attention like her mother does. I responded that I couldn't possibly delineate how many things were wrong with her question in the limited time it takes to drop her off at home. I didn't have to look in the rearview mirror to know she first looked perplexed and then rolled her eyes and went back to her cell phone.

One of the signs of maturity - at least I think - is accepting who you are. Turns out I'm intense, sometimes embarrassing, and often don't filter what leaps to my mouth from my brain. I say stupid things; I swear when I shouldn't; I forget my train of thought; I'm tangential; hyperactive; silly; love to talk quickly and honestly; and sometimes, this makes people uncomfortable or causes them to dislike me, misunderstand me, believe me to be younger than I am, and the list goes on about how I don't always present the impression I hope for. But then it occurred to me: that's me and frankly, I don't really want to be associated with people who think I'm something different than I am. I'm not even going to apologize for my foibles. I shall simply embrace them.

Still dreaming of London. Last night I walked through Westminster Abbey, and I might have enjoyed it if the elephants would not have insisted on marching in front of me and I hadn't been trying to dodge Mary Queen of Scots who did not like my packing up relics from the church and trying to steal them. She haunted all of my steps.

London Calling

I've been fantasizing lately about being in London again. I simply loved being there, and even more I loved the freedom associated with that great city. It was like suddenly realizing that the prison door was open after I'd been so accustomed to assuming its closure I forgot to pay attention. It seems like an awful thing to say about my life, but in some sense it's true - I had a child when I was young and spent my twenties raising a child alone, mostly in varied states of poverty, and limping along through my life with a few shining moments along the way. It's been difficult to be a student and friend to others who are single and child-free (or at least they were when my child was young); it's worse to automatically discount yourself from most things because babysitters are difficult. When most of my friends were having fun being young and traveling - Jennie got to live in Tokyo, Pam trekked through the Amazon, Charly went to Spain, Van to Sweden, etc. - I was confined to a few days here and there of personal freedom and could rarely afford to go far. People who went on study abroad programs incited downright bitter jealousy in me.

Going to London last fall just for me and by myself was immensely rewarding, as I've gone on and on about in previous entries. Now there's an opportunity to go again this fall and even though I really can't afford it, part of me says fuck it, just go. When will such an opportunity arise again, when people I know are going to be there, I have disposable student income, and a sense of how I owe myself this after fourteen years of almost perpetual struggle. Not that life is a cake-walk now, but it has certainly changed directions drastically in the last few years for the better. I want to smell the London air (even though it's not always pleasant), travel by foot and tube, keep wonky hours, eat cake in the afternoon, and walk about in museums like I have nothing better to do. I want entire days devoted to exploration and wandering, to breakfast porridge and coffee in Russell Square and lunch while walking along the river to Tower Bridge, to Paki curry dinner in the part of the city one should not walk through unattended at night and where people still eat "eel pie." Blech. I still want to go to Cambridge and Canterbury, and I must remember this time to take a hair dryer, wash cloth, and fewer clothes. Jamison will feel slighted if I go, and part of me feels guilty about this - it doesn't seem fair that I should be able to afford to go when he cannot (and oh yeah, not once but TWICE) in a year's time, but it's not about him. I don't mean that in any kind of snotty way, either; as a person without children, he's always had the ability and freedom to do as he wished - to travel, move around the country, party, follow the Dead, drink and smoke, whatever - when I rarely did. Now that my child is older and I have the time, money, and ability to be a little selfish, I feel entitled to that, even briefly, and that's nothing personal against him. It's something I want for me, and I haven't gotten to say that very often in my life except perhaps for my school career, and since that involves work, it hardly counts as purely selfish.

I don't regret parenthood and I adore my daughter. Today is her fourteenth birthday and I couldn't be prouder of the young woman she's become. She is lovely, refined, and self-assured. Well-adjusted. Brave. Intelligent. Wickedly funny with a penchant for silliness. I cannot wait until she's old enough and willing to travel with me.

Waking up at the start of the end of the world, and it's feeling just like every other morning before

It never ceases to amaze me how much growing up I have to do on an almost daily basis.  I'd like to think that once a person reaches a certain age in adulthood that (I dunno, say, 30), that person gets to move forward with lessons learned and a solid sense of self.  This has in fact happened to some degree, but even at 36 I find that I often wonder what my life is going to be like when I "grow up." 

Case and point: the aforementioned woman of Wal-Mart is the perfect example of an eye-opener, and not in an expected way.  I told my mother not to get further involved because I understand people better than she does.  In fact, I'd say my mother is outright naieve in most regards, having lived an entirely sheltered suburban life; but she didn't listen and felt disappointed when the Wal-Mart woman started to take advantage of my parents' help.  Eventually I called Social Services to see if someone - anyone - could help.  It turns out the SS knows all about her, and the woman refuses help and is an alcoholic.  She has the social worker's card and access to a phone, so there's nothing more can be done.  This did NOT surprise me, of course, because this isn't my first rodeo.  My mother was crestfallen.  What I have noted lately that surprises me is others' reactions to tales like this one, not the least of which is Mom's.  In discussions about how to handle this whole thing, I warned her not to get too close; I specifically told her that while her actions were admirable, the best thing she could do was to try to help someone in a real way.  Feeding someone living in a car is a really nice thing to do, but it doesn't fix them or their situation and sometimes, I think it might make it worse, like when tourists in national parks feed wild animals and they forget to forage.

Especially concerning is the tandem conversation in which I complained that people don't see other people too often.  I get irritated when cars don't stop for crosswalks - particularly when I'm the pedestrian - but rather than yell at the rude folk, I throw up a hand of thanks to people who do stop.  I firmly believe you can change the world in which you live by promoting positive reinforcements to strangers.  My mother scoffed, "why would you thank someone for doing that which they're supposed to do?"  My response is, why wouldn't you?  When you have a blinker on and merging onto the highway, other drivers are supposed to let you over, but often they don't.  So I throw up another hand of thanks when someone does.  I say hello to neighbors when I'm walking the dog even if they ignore me or don't return the kindness.  I'm polite to telemarketers before I hang up on them because I know that they have these jobs because they're qualified for little else and OF COURSE they hate it.  I'm empathetic to grocery clerks and fast-food people when they are disgruntled and sometimes even when they're rude because maybe they're having a bad day.  But my Mom, god bless her, feels entitled.

Other folks I have talked to about this woman have similarly shocking responses.  Several have asked me why I've bothered at all.  When I tell the story of my student two summers ago who found himself homeless - and despite the fact that I could hardly stand this kid and he drove me crazy - I made phone calls and spent an afternoon helping him get a case worker.  I intervened on his behalf and then this woman took over, got him a job, place to stay, financial aid, and a year later he emailed me to say thanks and that he was doing well and still in school.  This is the kind of kid who probably barely passed high school, has been in jail on several occasions, is barely literate, likely a thief out of necessity, isn't terribly bright, and would otherwise be doomed to homeless street life or crime and he was, for the moment anyway, saved.  Not by me per se, but by the people I found to help him who know how to do that.  The shocking part is when others, and especially other teachers and profs, comment that they never would have done that.  One of them even said to me, "you're a teacher, not a social worker."  I often think there is little difference between the two, though.  It's impossible to be a good teacher without compassion, empathy, and even sympathy; I cannot fathom how teachers teach without getting to know their students.  I suppose they fall under the same category of parents who have no idea that their children are talking to strangers on MySpace or sawing off shotguns in privileged suburban neighborhoods.  They wouldn't have gotten involved with the homeless kid, and I dare say that the bulk of them would never have even gleaned the fact that this kid was carrying his whole life around campus with him, needed a bath, and had an aura of desperate loneliness.  How sad is this fact?

I know that I cannot save the world, but that should never prevent me from trying to make it at least marginally better one kind word or gesture at a time, and I don't even care if those things are "deserved" by the recipients.

If I turn into another, dig me out from under what is covering the better part of me

The gym I go to is in a Wal-Mart shopping center, and includes - of course - a Starbucks and several other shopping outlets.  I never think about these things and what they represent; I don't shop at Wal-Mart because I don't support their business practices, but I spend way too much money in general at Starbucks, and it occurs to me that I am of a particularly privileged class that this is even an option for me.  That I never think twice about shelling out four or five dollars for a mid-afternoon coffee whilst sitting in my air-conditioned vehicle, talking on my cell phone, at the great American drive-thru window.  When I worry, I worry about how we're ever going to get to Hawaii this summer, or how I can manage to get to London again this year. 

But there's a woman who lives in her car in this very same parking lot, and I can no longer ignore her the way I wish my middle-class white existence tells me I should.  I noticed her about a week ago, her car filled to its weight limit with her belongings, wrecked in the front, and she hangs around on her cell phone.  Initially, I thought maybe she was just traveling or moving, and had stopped for a break, but she is still there, and she has been each and every time I go there in the past week.  Several times I've meant to speak to her, but being alone, I thought better of it.

Living downtown, I became accustomed to the homeless population.  Normally they don't bother me, either, because in large part, the urban homeless seem to understand their resources, have friends and their own communities, and occasionally I toss a few dollars or some food their way.  It seems to be almost its own subculture, but out here in suburbia, it's keeping me awake at night.  This woman appears to be utterly alone, and what I find most staggering about her situation is that in the past week, no one has appeared to notice her or do anything to help her.  If I noticed, then certainly the people who work daily in this center have noticed her too?  Seeing her breaks my heart and mostly because I know that I can't adopt her and make her life better despite my obvious privilege in the world.  It makes me keenly aware that I am where I am largely because of the circumstances I was born into - I will always have family and friends, a certain standard of living I can maintain because of this fact, and the ability to obtain work and pull myself up if I have to because I'm educated and skilled.  

So I decided to do something.  I called my mom to find out if her church had an outreach program.  I wanted people who were on charitable missions to find her rather than the State.  There isn't much they can do.  I called the United Way on their 211 number and asked them what they could do.  Nothing until she comes to a shelter.  They told me to call the police department and have them "check on her" and try to convince her to go to a nearby shelter.  I called the cops and they said they'd take care of it, but I drove by late last night, hours after my calls, and she was there in exactly the same state I found her previously.  My heart sank when I drove in and saw her car again.  

Why is it that in a place where homes cost a quarter million and certainly not less than $150,000, and where a Starbucks drive-thru can be busy at every waking hour, that NO ONE can do a fucking thing to help this woman?

My parents went over and talked to her.  Her name is Kathy and she is obviously not well mentally, but reasonably lucid.  She said she was hungry and thirsty, so my dad got her some dinner and a large bottle of water and some ice.  He wanted to put her up in a motel, but thought better of it - he certainly cannot afford to keep her there so it would only be a band-aid and she'd go right back to where she is after that ran out.  She was very grateful to my folks, and my dad took her some breakfast this morning on his way to work.  I don't know where else to turn, really, but I cannot abide this situation.  I won't.

The worst, most sinking part of all of it, though, to be honest, is this: I can't figure out if what's bothering me is that she is there as a constant reminder of the iniquities of American existence, or that I would rather live in ignorant bliss.  Part of me wonders if it's just that I want her to go away to assuage my guilt.  I hope that it's because I genuinely care about her.

I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind

All I can say today is guh.  Or ugh.  Certainly not hug.  

I think I'm delirious.

I submitted the draft of my dissertation chapter to my advisor yesterday morning (26 hours late) with apologies that it sucked so hard.  I got up yesterday to discover that I had no real anxiety about the tardiness of the paper nor the suckage factor, and this is slightly troublesome because I need a certain level of good old-fashioned panic to accomplish such tasks.  I need the imminent threat of failure (which is anything less than an A, typically) to motivate me - whether it's genuine or neurotic.  Alas, I have none of this and today, at 38 minutes past 7 in the morning, the day AFTER my other paper was due, I sit and blog sans coffee, fighting the desire to return to my bed until I have to teach this afternoon.  I simply could not care less about this paper and something needs to happen to get it written.  

I've already tried waiting it out to see if it will write itself, by the way.

I'll go to college and I'll learn some big words and I'll talk real loud, goddamn right I'll be heard

I have to laugh at myself today because that's all there is.  I have no strength for frustration or anxiety so I laugh.  It's 7:30 in the morning on the day that I have a paper draft due.  It's a chapter from my dissertation and something I am supposed to send out for possible publication.  The person overseeing this is my advisor, but does this inspire me to get this fucking thing written?  Nope.  It is yet unfinished.

I've been awake since six and didn't ever really go to sleep.  I've had so many chances to get this paper done but alas, here it is the due date and I'm ignoring this fact entirely.  The nice thing about graduate school (and it's a short list, really) is that due dates are negotiable because there are not many of us to manage and we are, after all, graduates.  You have to attain a certain level of scholarship to be in this club and it seems to me that I should have some professional leeway.  

What is most amusing, however, is that I preach to my students in an almost endless diatribe to not wait to the end of the term to write; I design my courses to make them plan ahead, to make it impossible to procrastinate.  The reason I am so perfectly adept at designing courses in this manner is because I am the ~QUEEN~ of procrastination.  Why do today what you can put off doing until tomorrow?  But still.  This has gotten out of hand.  One paper due today, another tomorrow, and I'm no further along with the latter mentioned one either.  The bottom line is, I don't want to write them.  I'm sick of MLA and research methods and thesis statements and supporting evidence.  I teach it practically every day, can do it in my sleep (and often do), and I want to be on strike.  Isn't it enough that I made it through the quarter at DU and - to my knowledge - all are yet living?

I often wonder what would happen if I just never turned something in.  Undergraduate students never think about such things because most of them couldn't care less about the difference between an A and a B or even a C, but I'm a shameless grade grubber.  In all three years of DU, the only smirch on my record is from The Professica, who gave me an A-fucking-minus, not because I performed in a substandard way, but because she flat-out doesn't like me.  As a teacher myself, I happen to know for fact that it's impossible to be impartial when it comes to grading people in subjective matters like English.  I try to be fair, but some people I just don't like, and I am aware that at least subconsciously, I grade them harder.  So every time I look at my transcript and see that 3.95 and not my standard 4.0, I seethe.  Also in my program, anything less than a B is considered a failure, the consequences of which are dismissal.  Thus, what would happen to me if I just didn't turn in these papers?  Would these profs give me an incomplete?  I almost feel like daring them to fail me because some part of me knows full well that neither of them would.

So where's my motivation?  It's summer, my superiority complex is fully fleshed, and I want to write fiction but have no time to.  I can't wait to get out of this program, and I plan to toss a lit match onto this bridge behind me as I leave, and which I will douse in gasoline on my way across.  

Happy Monday to me!

If you don't have the answer, why are you still standing here?

What amazes me most about the tenor of my life lately is the ability of something like a workout to completely 180 my mood.  For a person who has spent the better part of her life trying not to physically work hard at much, to discover in my mid-thirties that exercise is the key to happiness is an irony not lost on me.  Case and point was my general funk of yesterday, mitigated almost entirely by the late evening trip to the gym.  Go figure.

I slept this morning until after ten!  This is truly out of character since I usually accomplish more by ten than most people do in a whole day.  Really.  My adult life has created this morning-productive person who up until about 30 never knew what the hours before noon even looked like.  I still have not written the final papers for two of my classes (for which due dates are fast approaching), but I'm liberated by the fact that I simply don't care.  They'll get done when the impulse strikes me.  Just like dishes get done when I get the urge to clean, and so on.  

My daughter is quickly becoming a true teenager and this both makes me smile and terrifies me at the same moment.  I know full well that as she gets older I will not be her chosen confidante - it is quite imperative that I am the enemy for a while, but I so desperately don't want to be the enemy.  As I've mentioned before, I don't necessarily believe that teenagers are entitled to complete privacy, particularly in a world where the pitfalls and dangers seem to carry heavier consequences now than they did when I was thirteen.  I never had to worry about predators in my email or meeting strangers from online chat rooms, or being e-stalked or terrorized via text message.  I worry almost endlessly about these things and check up on them frequently.  I try to never read personal things of hers from names I recognize because she is entitled to safe spaces to express herself and I stand by the fact that people who read private correspondence in order to glean information of any kind get exactly what they deserve.  But I stumbled upon my daughter's "diary" the other day and opened it.  Not out of the spirit of feeling I had the right, but only because I wanted some insight about the part of her she keeps so private.  Her friends talk about boys and group dates, and it makes me wonder that Sami isn't also talking about these things, even in the abstract.  I guess I wanted to know her story on the boy front; out of compassion, out of sensitivity, out of concern, and mostly because I know what I went through at her age and hope to keep her from that path.

There was little written there and I really did just scan it - I don't want to know for what and how much she often hates me, or what she thinks about me when she feels compelled to write it down.  She did mention that she invited some boy to Kayla's "after party" last week and that did bother me.  Clearly she is heartbroken at the fact that this boy apparently doesn't reciprocate her crush (and we all know that kind of incomprehensible ache, don't we?), but I want to know why she didn't tell me that she invited him.  Of course I know why, but I get so scared that she will meet up with a boy who isn't nice, who will convince her to leave the place she is, and will do her harm in a host of ways I can't even write down.  I worry about this because I should, and because it's how I behaved at her age.  I look back with parental perspective and feel extremely lucky that more bad things didn't happen to me because in retrospect I can see where they quite easily could have.  Guh.  I would never mention any of these things to her as a direct result of my shameless snooping, but I will try to find ways to incorporate general advice into general conversations.  That's something my mother would have never taken the time or energy to do, so it must be the right strategy.

Let's do the time warp again...

Why that is stuck in my head is anyone's guess.  I hate the Rocky Horror Picture Show and fully admit that I don't get it, never did, and probably never will.  I do, however, quite enjoy the Angry Alien version and the easter egg that teaches you how to do the dance.  Quite amusing.

I'm in the weirdest space today.  I slept until almost 9:30 this morning (which is really late for me), got up and fought the urge to fall back to sleep until well past noon, still haven't showered at twenty past seven, and despite the unreasonable amount of coffee I've consumed, could go to bed right now sans sleep meds and stay there till this time tomorrow.  I finally finished watching the Sex and the City movie this afternoon and the part where Carrie spends two straight days in bed made me actually feel jealous.  I need a vacation.

Not that cool

I was never cool.  That has been firmly established on many occasions.  I told my daughter that I'd  take her and two of her friends to see Panic! at the Disco tonight at the Fillmore in Denver.  Under no circumstances would I permit them to go unattended, and since I find the band not so bad, I said I'd go.  The rule was that I had to bring a friend so that it didn't look like I was a chaperone.  I get it; thirteen is all about image and girls want to feel cool and older than they are and so on.  But then I remembered that once upon a time, before I even had Sami in fact, Charly and I went to see some punk band in Boulder - I think it was Rancid - and we were joking about being so much older than the bulk of the audience and we continually made cracks about trying to remember where the minivan was parked.  It was funny and we were considerably older, but now I actually AM a mom taking teenage kids to a bubble-gum punk show and the only thing I lack currently is the minivan in order to make that joke complete.  As I grabbed the tickets, I even remembered to bring (gasp) ear plugs because it will be ungodly loud in there and I don't want to have a ringing headache all day tomorrow.  I won't drink because I'm driving the kids and I have pretty strict rules for myself about such things.  So there I will be, surrounded by middle-schoolers, wearing my Sketchers and capri pants, and holding my purse, looking for the least-populated space where I can sit down and wait for the whole thing to be over.  I feel so freaking old when I look at myself through this lens.

But at least I'm the one who introduced the kid to the band; it was MY CD she borrowed in the first place.  That's something, right?