I've been dividing my grieving

I like the way the back of my neck melts, I like the surprise taste of salt.  The opening of the hollow space beneath my throat, the stretching of the places between my ribs.  Most of all I like the unexpected softening in bones that felt impossibly rigid, impossibly arid and neutral; I like to expand and breathe.  Like a memory I thought I had lost.  These moments I remember being Intrepid, these moments I do not wait and react, these moments I do not calcualate the cost of anything.


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It's six minutes past eight in the evening.  Early, still very early.  But I am thinking of going to bed right now so I can read my book for longer without falling asleep over it.  I am reading In One Person, which is John Irving's newest book.  It isn't that I am not aware that I am a nerd, it's just that sometimes other people get me confused when they confuse me with someone else.


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work

Sometimes I speak out publicly against the actions taken by my union.  This is an activity that is forbidden by the union (obviously) and could result in losing my license.  I am not certain if I should be more careful about who I speak with or if I should simply be prepared to do battle.  Or perhaps I should prepare to change careers.  My union makes great contributions to social justice programs around the world, fighting for teachers to have the global right to free speech, yet pays someone full time to ensure its own membership is carefully and tightly gagged.  And ironically uses our members' dues to pay the salaries of those whose job it is to keep us quiet.


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Shawn fired J's riding coach on Sunday.  It felt a bit like we were at war all weekend, but now it has all settled down and she is set up with a new coach who I hope will refrain from exploding her head veins at J whenever she's in a bad mood.  The previous coach was a bit crazy, which I can appreciate, as long crazy involves no screaming.  The new coach is cool, efficient, and delightfully predictable.  And does not, in my experience, ever scream.


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The new windows are going in starting today.  I anticipate four highly anxious pups when I return from work who will have been listening to contractors tear their house apart for the past eight hours.  This would make me anxious too, though not more so than hanging out with teenagers does. 

My theatre production block is insane, busting at the seams with eager seniors who would like to put on ten, not two, shows a year, and who would like to spend all their free time in my room telling me jokes and stories and making noise and keeping me at school until the sun sets.  They seem a bit miffed when I tell them to go home.  I cannot remember if I did this to my Drama teacher when I was in high school.  Probably not.  My high school Drama teacher was a crotchety old guy who looked like Humpty Dumpty and who smoked in the costume room.  He did not have a particularly warm vibe.  I think he retired early and took a job replacing windows in old houses.


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My students from the Philippines regularly tell me ghost stories.  I do not know if the Philippines are more haunted than the rest of the world, or if it means this culture is more comfortable with the idea of ghosts.  I asked Cesar, the caretaker at my school, and he started out by telling me that he has never seen a ghost in the Philippines and that he does not believe in them.  But then as we talked more, he told me that ghosts prefer colder climates (it's too hot for ghosts in the Philippines, really) and that if I want to see a ghost I should go to England.  And then he told me about some buildings around this area that are known to be haunted.  I think he believes in ghosts after all.  Sometimes I want to believe in ghosts.  As long as they are friendly.


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Stupid germy teenagers.  I think I am getting sick.

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Weird

Some time in February I sent my mother a friend request on Facebook.  She ignored it for about six months, not because (I assume) she does not want my friendship, but because historically she has been a bit of a technophobe.  She didn't used to log onto Facebook very often, and when she did, she would become confused as to whether she was typing in the Google window or the Facebook window.  It was cute.  Sometimes her search terms turned up as Facebook statuses or comments.  "Lovely to see you yesterday!" someone would remark.  "Facebook", she would reply.  "How about we meet for coffee next Tuesday?"  "Google maps", she would respond.

But this weekend something happened, and I don't know what it was.  Suddenly my mother accepted my friend request, went through all my pictures and made non-Google comments, and began using the abbreviation "u" to mean "you".  My mother is a retired English teacher. This bastardization of language is highly out of character.  In the 80s I used to fear my mother would be arrested for vandalizing an "LY" on those stupid "Drive Decent" bumper stickers XL Radio handed out.  She would frequently whip out a red pen from her purse and make corrections on menus in restaurants.  The very idea of using "u" to mean "you" would have, at one time, set off a series of obsessive compulsive tics.

I don't really know who my mother is anymore, and now that she is using language in this slick new way, what will we have in common?




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Dorian helped me paint his office

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