Are You There, GOB?

I had been planning to post an update on how my month of summer classes were going at the halfway point (which came and went a few days ago).  However, I am so so so so so burnt out and the little coherence I still possess is going in to papers and other classwork.  

SO instead: a link to a video of Will Arnett reading a key passage from the Judy Blume coming of age novel Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. 

Click for awesome.

So, it has come to this.

I am now wearing a backpack.

I seem to be incapable of not carrying my entire world with me in a bag at all times.  Up until a few months ago I carried giant messenger bags filled to capacity with me everywhere I went. 

Then in November I had sudden shooting pains in my chest and arm and went to the ER convinced I was having a heart attack.  Turns out I had probably pinched a nerve in my shoulder and pulled a muscle near my ribcage from lugging around a giant bag since I was 13.  The prescription: no more one-shoulder bags.  

Since then I have been wearing a "lumbar pack" (glorified fanny pack) which was working for a while but it has been steadily accumulating weight (I plead total ignorance on this one,  I have no idea how all my bags end up so heavy. Bag Gremlins?).  Yesterday I noticed a slight bruising on my waist and began to worry for all the important internal organs in my abdomen.  Plus I was starting to carry a shoulder bag for all my school books and that was also getting pretty heavy.

So ... backpack.  My reluctance to wear a backpack stems the fact that it will make me look even more like a 12-year old than I do already but I feel like I'm out of alternatives.  

This morning I dug out an old black Easpack ("The leader of the pack" says the Double-Dare announcer in my head) from middle school.  It has miraculously emerged from that time unscathed by purple marker drawings of peace signs, ying-yangs, or flowers.  To offset the 12-year-old factor I decided to pair it with a granny cardigan today.   My roommate assures me that the sweater and the backpack average out to make me look my age.  

After my fist backpack commute in over 10 years I will say this: padded shoulder straps are pretty sweet.

Also if anyone knows of a cool (and inexpensive) backpack-type-concept let me know.  I am looking to upgrade the Eastpack.  

Oh, NYC, why don't you want me to get a graduate degree?

After my first class yesterday I realized I might make it through this summer term if I managed to get up early, stay up late and get some major reading done on the subway during my commute.  This morning I set off reading packet in hand.  I had an early success in getting a seat right when I got on.  I opened my packet to begin learning about Erikson's 8 stages of development when suddenly:

The Crazy happened. 

A woman I hadn't noticed before sitting in the corner of the car began talking back to the train announcements.  It is the N so there is the female and male automated voices.  She thought they were talking shit about her and that they shouldn't be the ones talking because she knew a lot of shit about them...and it was REALLY juicy.

Apparently the automated bland female conductor voice is actually a Trinidadian woman who was "married at 16 divorced by 19 to a black man who was forced to marry her" AND she "fooled around with her mother's boyfriend" which got her kicked out of the house.  AND (prepare yourself) is actually a "he/she, who answers to the name mrs. and mr."

The automated bland male voice seems to be two distinct people.  One is a "MTA Jew" who is watching everyone all the time on cameras he has planted around the subway.  He judges them but he should really judge himself because he is responsible for EVERY crime: "rape, murder, arson, IDENTITY THEFT!"  Also "He needs something in his ass to get rid of all the shit."

The other male is a retarded Panamanian ("I have never seen anyone so retarded") who likes to brag about his exploits "with sodomy."  I am sure he has a richer background story but the 14th st. stop came too soon to find out.

I feel vaguely guilty about finding these rants so fascinating in their conviction and details.  I hope that woman finds the help she obviously needs.  Or a job writing for All My Children.

I still know nothing about the 8 stages of man but I know who to blame next time there is ANY crime.  I'm looking at you MTA Jew...what ARE you doing with those cameras?

To my friends...

To my friends:

Tomorrow I will disappear for a while.  For the month of July I will be working from 8:30-4 and then be in classes from 5:30-9.  I am taking two classes (Child Development and the aforementioned extraneously-long-titled Children's Literature in a Balanced Reading Program -Focus on Grades 3-8).  So that about covers July.  I love you all and will see you on the other side.*

 

To my laundry:

Could you somehow get yourself clean? That would be really helpful. Thanks.  Also, could you be the sweetest little cupcake and tell the fridge to fill itself.

 

To the non-school related books I have started and will definitely not finish:

Sorry.

 

And lastly to my unwatched Netflix:

I think I will miss you most of all.

 

* I say this now while my resolve and work ethic is strong.  I can already foresee the need to blow off some steam at some point. 

The Giver involves no rabbis

In preparation for the Child Lit class I am taking in July (full-FULL- course title: Children's Literature in a Balanced Reading Program -Focus on Grades 3-8 ).  I have to read (or re-read) some kids and young adult books. 

So far I have re-read Charlotte's Web and The Giver.

I didn't write about Charlotte's Web because it made me cry a lot and I had just written another entry about crying a lot and I didn't want to worry anyone. 

Synopsis: A piglet, Wilbur, very much enjoys life and throws himself down into piles of hay in absolute hysterics (Wilbur is a bit of a dandy) when faced with the reality that death is inevitable meets an older spider who fully understands and embraces life's natural cycles.  Life, death, detailed (almost oddly pornographic) scenes of spiders eating flies, bacon. crycrycry.

Last night I finished reading The Giver by Lois Lowry.  I had read this when I was younger and it has been on my bookshelf since then.  I had never been tempted to pick it up again because for some reason I remembered it having a Jewish theme (I blame the rabbi-looking guy on the cover and the prominence of a character named Asher).

The Giver is actually about an alternate community where everything is controlled down to the point it is in black and white.  People live in assigned family units, do assigned jobs, they have no knowledge of life outside or before the community.  They live in what they call "The Sameness".  One person in the community is designated the Receiver of Memory and he hold all memories of the outside world from colors, to weather (they have none of either in the community) to death and war and pain and love.  The main character, 12 year old Jonah, is designated to become the next Receiver and begins to inherit the knowledge from The Giver.

It's a warm up book to Brave New World and 1984 and all that good stuff.  

Message that ultimately maintaining "sameness" eliminates humanity and allows people to do appallingly inhumane things without batting an eye.

Plus they make you take a pill to get rid of "The Stirrings" that start around the age of 12.  That is no life I'd want to live.

First grade

I have found out where I will be placed for the first part of my student teaching in the fall!  

I will be with 1st graders.

This is a relief because my giant boyfriend had planted the idea in my head of the possibility that my students might be taller than me.  It is the rare 6 year old who breaks 5 feet so I am feeling (relatively) safe on that front. 

This has made me try to see what I remember from first grade:

I think I was starting to know how to read.

I shared a school birthday with Anna M.

My class was OBSESSED with Fiddler on the Roof. (Oy, jew school).

Ari stuck a pair of scissors (possibly) accidentally in Anna M's forehead.

We wrote books.  Or we would narrate and illustrate them and the teacher would write it down.

In one of those books (what makes me happy and what makes me sad) I wrote that "it makes me sad when my dad hits me" prompting the school to have a SERIOUS conversation with my father who would never even threaten to hit me.  I wonder what that was about. 

When learning about syllables I went to WAR over my belief that "Charles" has 2 syllables.  My first academic defeat.  I still have not forgotten it.

What do you guys remember about first grade that will help me prepare to face them come September?

This...was probably a foreseeable problem.

Jane:  read your blog....i read the link as "e meats paste" and i was like....hm meat paste?

Me:  ha ha I am a little worried about the unintentional "meat" in my address.  

oh well.  

maybe it will intrigue the fans of electronic meat paste

a fast growing industry