Big, Easy Sophie

THIS SITE HAS MOVED!

2010-06-12T23:08:00.003-05:00

I'm moving all my endeavors -- personal, artistic, photographic, what have you -- to a NEW SITE, where it will live FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER.

Please move to and start following me at:

thenewstoryville.com

See you later, Internet!

airplanes

2010-05-23T20:45:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I jumped out of a plane.

I am not a thrill-seeker. When my family took trips to Knott's Berry Farm, I would cry or whine for an ice cream cone in order to fully avoid at all costs anything that remotely resembled a roller coaster. One year at Disneyland I went on Splash Mountain and thought it the most traumatic experience of my life thusfar, vowing at the age of eight to never again willingly participate in anything that was intended to make you feel scared.

But then suddenly there was this opportunity to jump out of a plane and I just thought, "Shit. If I don't do this, I will kick myself for the rest of my life."

Recently I turned twenty-four. It was shaping up to be the worst birthday of my life. I felt overworked and overtired, and my co-teacher's dog was sick so she had to miss the first half of the day. Teaching alone, as it always does, reaffirmed every thought I had ever nurtured that told me that I was a lousy, good-for-nothing teacher incapable of doing anything remotely useful for children. I went to swing dancing class, and it was HOT in there, and I didn't dance all that well, and for the dollar bill I had pinned on my own chest (this is a New Orleans birthday tradition), not a single person pinned another one, which made me look red as a tomato and monetarily pathetic. I called Leah over and over again because we were supposed to have dinner at Bamboo, but she forgot, so I had to ride home hungry and alone. It had rained the day before, and so the termites were out, and they mercilessly smacked me in the face and splattered against my glasses for the whole bike ride home. And I cried and felt VERY sorry for myself.

And I walked into my house, where it was dark, and I wanted to fall into bed and cry my eyes out... then suddenly the lights flicked on, and there stood everyone I loved, shouting "SURPRISE!" The living room was magically clean! Fresh flowers were on every table! A big chocolate-rosewater-pistachio cake with waxy candles made to look like tools sat next to a big heap of presents, alongside the gauzy butterfly Leah pinned next to abundant crepe paper wreaths and balloons. It was the kind of surprise party they put in movies that you convince yourself will never, ever happen to you, no matter how special you are.

So I cried again, but this time because I was so happy. I guess for the last two years I have built up this assumption that you have to make your own happiness, and that's okay, because that's just the way the world works. I thought that disappointment was just part of the everyday equation, and whenever it hurt too much, you had to go out and get yourself a new book or listen to a song you liked a lot, because no one was ever, ever, ever going to fix it for you. And then, as fucking cheesy as I know it is, this small group of wonderful people went ahead and proved me just so very wrong. Just when I thought I had it all figured out -- I was twenty-four, after all -- I didn't have anything figured out at all. And I was not as alone as I had assumed that I was.

There weren't that many of us that decided we wanted to jump this year. It was much more popular at my school last year. This year it was just Andrea, Kelsey, Saskia, Coop, Amanda, and Mark's girlfriend Tiffany. And me. I wasn't scared until we were about 10,000 feet in the air, and even then, I didn't know why I was scared. It didn't make any kind of rational sense. I knew I was going to be OK. When I drive on the highway (or any fast street, really) these days, I internalize a million different visual fantasies of the graphic deaths that could possibly happen in the next few moments. It's very traumatic, and I hate driving. But I didn't do that when we were up in the plane. I couldn't think of a single bad thing that could happen to me (now I can think of a lot: your parachute doesn't deploy; you accidentally jump into the propeller of the plane; you come in for the landing and accidentally land on a moving truck; etc.). I just felt scared, and all alone, and I couldn't stop crying.

I read "Ron Clark's Essential 55" over spring break. This is a book of 55 rules that caused Ron Clark the kind of teacher-of-the-year-my-life-is-a-made-for-TV-movie success he enjoys on a daily basis. It goes against basically everything I believe about teaching. I believe that children should figure things out for themselves. I believe that rules should be flexible and loose. I believe in a lot of hugging, a lot of conflict-resolution, and a lot of talking it out without any kind of major conflict. But I read this book, and I decided to try it. I decided to go into my classroom and demand these very ridiculous things of my students. I demanded that they fold their napkins on their laps during lunch. I demanded that they make eye contact with anyone whenever they speak. I demanded that they serve detention for sucking their teeth or rolling their eyes. I went and I put these rules on the wall, and I went over them during social studies, and I started to enforce them. And then the WEIRDEST THING happened: they worked.

I don't mean my students learned to read. I mean they learned all these things I had been trying to teach them all year. They started to be kind to each other. They started to be kind to me. They started hugging a lot more and fighting a lot less. They treated guests with respect. They made me cards and letters for the first time all year. I caught them saying nice things to each other when they thought no one was looking. And I thought, "What the fuck?" How was it that the one book I read all year that I couldn't identify with at all had done all the things I had been swimming upstream to teach my kids since I became a teacher? It's hard for me to wrap my mind around the reality that not every brain works exactly like mine. I just can't believe that not all children want just what I wanted when I was a kid. But I still am no closer to knowing what they do want, or need. All I know is that I love them. More and more every single day. So I guess I'm not so sad that my school year is a few weeks longer than everyone else's.

I sat perched out the window of this plane, tens of thousands of feet above the ground, and thought, "This is unnatural. This makes no sense." The world down there looked like a weathered computer chip. The clouds were underneath me. You couldn't distinguish a tree as a tree or a house as house. Everything was dots and circles and little peg-like squares. When I was young, when things scared me, I said my times tables. Once I learned them in third grade, they were the thing that I felt most proud of. I had had to practice and practice to nail them. I had had to say them while I was waiting in lines or when I was sitting at the kitchen table between dinner and clean-up time. I even had this record I played that said them over and over again and I would listen to it over and over again, because I just HAD to beat the 2 minute time limit -- just HAD to. And I was one of the last ones to get it, too, because in third grade, times tables did not come easily to me. I know I practiced them more than a normal kid, but when it came time to test, I flailed. I panicked. I couldn't do it. But when I FINALLY got there, I knew them. I did all my times tables through the twelves in one minute and twelve seconds -- the fastest in the class. And I had never felt so good or proud of anything. So after that, when I felt scared or uncomfortable, I'd start with the threes and say my times tables until the bad thing was over. For at least two break-ups, three funerals, and one impossible goodbye at the airport, I have held back my tears using the times tables method.

So it went: three times four is twelve, tilt back into the plane; three times five is fifteen, tilt out the window; three times six is eighteen, tilt into the plane; three times seven is twenty-one, and I fell out into the sky.

It didn't feel anything like falling. It felt like flying. There is no arguing with that. It felt like you were completely safe, because you had wings. I know a lot about wings, and I am pretty sure birds must feel that way every day.

But really, I couldn't describe it, so I won't try. The world never really came into focus. My tandem partner kept saying, "welcome to skydiving" under the shield of the parachute, and I thought to myself, "stop talking. I am starting something right now." But I don't know what it is.

I know less now than I knew last year. As I look back at my reflections from last year, I feel more disjointed, but happier than I was then. Then I was sure I had it figured out. Now I don't know.

But last year I wrote,

"This is the kind of statement I make and then less than a year later look back at and laugh out loud at because I was so many different kinds of wrong. I guess that really, everything is so complicated that something like the following statement is probably PARTIALLY true, or must be true for some portion of someone's life. Maybe it is only true for Sophie Johnson in the year 2009. Maybe it's not even true then. But. I think that you are supposed to live the things you believe. At least, I think that when you do that, you like yourself a whole lot more, and that makes you generally a lot more pleasant to be around. It is a very difficult thing to do, and I never used to do it all. Except for that whole vegan thing. And even then... I have been a VERY sloppy vegan. I will say this: I am a whole lot calmer and more satisfied with being alive when I know I haven't been doing anything knowingly wrong, per se. I like riding my bike. I like eating good, local food. I like working my ass off and coming to school as prepared as humanly possible every day. I believe in it and it makes me feel good.

Well, Past Sophie, I gotta say -- you were right on that one. Ron Clark (I know! He's such a tool! But still...) calls this Rule Number 55: Be the best person you can be. So now I look in the mirror and say that every morning. Be the best person you can be. It sounds so simple, but it's hard. Be the best person you can be. Who exactly is that, Ron Clark?

But you know what? I know. I do.

You slide into it, and you look around at the world, which is suddenly full of Big Things like Trees and Houses and Water Towers, and you think, "I like this place. It was nice to be in the air for a little while, but I never realized how grateful I was until now to be on the ground."

The radio at night

2010-04-02T02:26:00.002-05:00

I am listening to the radio at 2:30 in the morning. I used to do that when I delivered newspapers, back when I was in high school. Nothing about that job was glamorous, nor did it ever pay even close to enough. The only thing that was ever any good about it was that in the middle of the night there is relatively commercial-free radio, and the alternative rock station in Portland (holla 94.7) would apparently just play through their Awesome Music Archives, skipping over their Archives of Obligatory Songs That Sophie Doesn't Like, Including That One by Evanescence. Well, there were two good things. The other good thing was that you got to watch the sunrise.

Lately, as it has gotten more and more difficult to get out of bed and I can't slow down fast enough to chew my own food, I've been remembering those days. Here is how my daily schedule looked that summer: 2:00 a.m.: Wake up, go to work . 5:30 a.m.: Get back from delivering papers. 8:00 a.m.: Wake up, go to second job at Target. 5:00 p.m. Get back home from folding ugly-ass sweaters. 6:00 p.m.: Go to third job helping people make and receive pizzas. 8:00 p.m.: Get home, go to bed watching Fresh Prince on Nick at Nite.

Remember when Nick at Nite played great old retro television? I wondered why they ever changed television around. In the world of Bewitched and I Dream of Genie, women were hot, blonde, and magical. They could also solve the world's problems in thirty minutes or less.

I could use a wiggly nose just about now.

Thoughts on New Orleans in spring: this is the most beautiful city on the planet right. I only wish I had time to enjoy it just for the sake of it. I can only laugh at the ridiculousness of the songbirds going nuts because the sun is shining blistering, and they are far too excited about the new flowers coming up all over the place.

GREEN THINGS ARE COMING UP!

Ari left her comforter

2010-03-31T05:16:00.005-05:00

It's a little cold outside and I have no interest or desire to get out of bed. I have never felt more like life has been speeding past me than I've felt in the last month. It's the sensation I imagine one gets when one is chasing something very difficult to catch like, say, a wild turkey, or a rabbit. Hunters have it rough.

But actually, I shot a rifle for the first time this weekend (and I'm pretty sure it will be the last time, too. It was way too much fun for me to ever feel comfortable touching one again). A week ago, I built my first four-layer cake (although I had help). And yesterday I watched a video of myself teaching and thought, "Wow. When did I lose sight of what was important?" So I guess that's a vague way of saying that I feel like I'm perched on top of something, getting ready to sort of slip and fall into a new, exciting chapter. The analogy I came up with here is that life right now feels like I have been sucking on one of those strawberry bon-bon candies for a really long time, and the center part is just about to explode, and I know it.

The gun was a result of peer pressure, by the way. I was at boyscout camp with high school students from Rabouin. An octogenarian in an NRA hat told me that he wasn't surprised that I didn't want to shoot a gun, because after all, I was a girl. And then, as you can imagine, I found myself learning about barrels and gun powder and copper shells and triggers and safeties, and I was doing something I never thought I would ever do. That weekend I also spent time sitting on the levee, just thinking for, like, hours. I realized that any time you feel compelled to sit and think for long periods of time, you probably should. There is probably a lot to think about.

The cake came out of a lovely week and a half with Sam and my sister, who each came and visited for their spring breaks. There are a lot of really extraordinary people in my life, which I too often take for granted.

The doubt came from watching myself yell at seven-year-olds like they were adults; came from the pressure of standing in front of twenty people every day and trying to entertain them enough to get them to learn something. I'm not actually good at it. I am way too high strung. But I'll be good at it someday, maybe, so I won't beat myself up over it too much.

Today I'm not going to yell. That's my Wednesday resolution. And that's as far into the future as I can possibly think right now. Happy Passover, on the other hand. I'm going to go make a matzoh sandwich.

(For those of you who remember, that's Derrick, [I used to call him Derrin, I think] who was probably my the student I felt most emotionally connected to last year. You can't imagine how far away from the sullen, moody teenager who refused to talk to any adult the person in this picture is. Seeing him stand there, shooting a bow and arrow, acting curious about the world around him, gave me such profound hope that I don't quite know how to describe it to you.)

output, mostly.

2010-03-06T08:19:00.003-06:00

One.
I got hit by a car while I was riding my bike two weeks ago. The driver nubbed my back wheel and I lost control and smashed into a median. As far as bodily injuries go, I looked pretty bad-ass, but had nothing much to write home about, except for a mild concussion. Concussions, by the way, are funny. There are three days of my life that are just lost in my memory, and I have almost no recollection of what I did or what I was thinking. When I look back at that, it feels like I'm staring at someone's grainy photographs, of events I don't even really remember. I also got a cool bruise on my shin. Anyway, I bought a helmet, and naively assumed that anything broken could be fixed, bringing my bicycle in to the shop yesterday. No dice. I guess when you get hit by a car, you actually total your bike, and the guys at shop have to condescendingly say, "This thing is toast," as you present them with the life joy that is your bicycle. So I guess I'm in the market. Also, I'm bummed out.

Two.
Our zebra finches laid eggs, and the eggs hatched, and over Mardi Gras Break, the baby birds emerged from the nest and got very loud. This is what that looks like. (WATCH TO AT LEAST HALF WAY TO GET TO BABIES!)

Three.
I went camping last weekend, with the old crew from Rabouin. Lots of output from that. Camping is ultimately the most fulfilling activity I can think of. It's like a deep cleanse. You just can't do anything when you're camping! All you can do is look at trees, breathe, and crouch by a fire. This is heightened tenfold, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, when you go camping with high school kids who have never been camping before. It's just the fucking best. Here are some relics from that experience:

SubA: This really exists, in a place called Fountainbleau State Park. Seriously.

SubB: The boys built the fire, themselves, from wood we found around the site. And they were EXCITED. Observe.

SubC: From the sketchbook this weekend: An in-tents drawing; Mancel from below, with the clouds behind his head.

More later, with writing and insight, I promise.

Brand new pair of roller skates

2010-02-21T08:48:00.004-06:00

Leah, my roommate, who is perhaps the most extraordinary adventurer, risk-taker, and action-doer I have met in my young life (and she doesn't read my blog, so I have no real impetus to write this about her, except that it is true), is good at doing things that make her happy. For the greater part of this year, I was convinced that the things that made me happy should be the things that made Leah happy, or that made teachers happy, or that made attractive boys happy, or that made my cats happy, or that made the writers of magazines happy. I had a very strict "supposed to" notion about the way to live my life. Leah goes dancing at bounce clubs in neon-colored outfits, and therefore I should go to bounce clubs in neon-colored outfits. Teachers like to sit over cocktails and bemoan the amount of work they have to do, and therefore I should accept every invitation to sip Manhattans in a dingy bar, and I should come prepared with a Best Of list for the week's misfortunes in the classroom. My cats eat salmon and chicken liver soaked in gravy while making growling noises, and therefore... you get the idea. So on and so forth.

But in the car the other day, I said I wasn't really all that happy. Leah said, "You should go out more." I thought about that. I've gone out quite a lot this year. "But going out doesn't really make me happy, I don't think," I said. And then Leah said something that should have been so obvious to me, but which I had not been able to wrap my mind around up to that point.

"Sophie, aren't you the one who is always telling me to be okay with the person I am? Aren't you always telling me to have confidence in doing the things that make me happy?"

I said, "I like to go to museums." Leah said, "Then you should go to museums."

Obvious.

I lay in bed for a while and thought about the combination that made me happiest, and which was most lacking from my life. I came up with this: exploring, slowly, alone. There's just so much premium placed on having fun in public; in enjoying yourself and letting others know that you are enjoying yourself, so you can create an image of Smiling Face Dancing In The Street. Well, there's no written rule that says you have to have a partner in crime.

On Thursday I took off running.

Or rather, I rode my bike. The rules for this day were that I had to stop any time anything interested me, and take my time to take it in. In general, I have decided I am a very slow-moving person. So I was going to let myself be a very slow moving person.

I did wipe out pretty hard around a corner on my bike. I am actually a really bad cyclist. I think I crash more than any person I have ever met (I average one major spill a month, which my roommates attest is pathetic). I am in a perpetual state of looking like a map of the world charted out in continent-sized bruises. Two things I can conclude from this: 1. I either definitely should or should not join the roller derby. Should, because I can fall with great ease; should not because I fall with great frequency. And 2. I absolutely, desperately need to drop all fussy funding issues I may have with my bank account and buy a freaking bike helmet. I just know that one day I'll be grateful.

I spent the whole afternoon doing nothing but exploring a city I wish I knew better. I saw rope swings, bedazzled bicycles, people taking apart Mardi Gras floats, and a girl roller skating. Instead of a camera, I brought a sketch book. I used to be very interested in sketchbooks, but that has taken the back seat in the past few years, as everything has gotten fasterfasterfaster, and I "haven't had time" to sit and draw. Lucky for me, I met Sam Alden, whose blog is testament to the fact that he sits for ten-hour periods (I'm not kidding) doing nothing but drawing. I bought a couple of line-free Moleskines (pretentious enough for you?), and dove back into it. I am a little horrified to find that I creepily seem to only have the ability to draw little girls. At the bottom of this entry I've posted some of the sketches of the girl roller skating.

Another big revelation of the weekend: it is the fourth time I've visited a single spot along the bayou to read (the weather could only be described as "hideously perfect" yesterday), and I realized it's my favorite space in the entire city. See the self-consciously-snapped photo at right. What is it about waterways? I spent four hours there. My leggings got very dusty.

I'm ashamed to say it (ashamed because I want to be content with winter), but I am really ready for spring. The magnolia trees are blooming now, coaxing the warm weather and soft rain. Mmm.

But now comes the hard part: The week starts again. Back to the routine, back to the late nights and early mornings; frozen lunches and sore legs; stolen jelly beans from the prize drawer. No time to read the paper (and the world should know that all I ever want to do is read the paper). It's a challenge. Good thing I've been reading fucking Spiritual Midwifery (seriously) for my book club (I do like book clubs. They are one of those social gatherings -- like Crafternoons, Wednesday Night Vegan Dinners, and Radical Educator Meetings -- that I find intensely valuable). Those crazy hippies help me sleep at night.

I see the girls in the club, they gettin' wild for me

2010-02-19T11:33:00.004-06:00

It is time for a grand re-entrance.

So I'm blasting "Welcome Back" by Mase*, eating a fresh and hot bagel, and getting down to business. My cats are excited. Seriously. I just made a YouTube video about this very topic.

So anyway, you may be asking yourself, "Why did your blog disappear in the first place? What happened to you?" I ask myself this same question fairly regularly, World. Let me tell you the three reasons for my brief and unannounced hiatus:

I thought that my blog was getting a little bit gossipy. I think that's what comes with finally making friends in a place, and knowing that there are people out there who regularly read what you write. Once I had a friend in college who admitted that he would open my LiveJournal and do a Cntrl + F for his name, so he could read anything I wrote about him without having to toil through lots of meaningless garbage. I became very aware of my (tiny) readership, I suppose is what I'm saying. Once I knew who was possibly reading my blog, I would try to mention those people more often than other people, so they would feel rewarded in their reading and would continue to follow my overly extensive ramblings in hopes that they might be mentioned again. And as someone who wants to someday be a journalist,˚ that made me feel dirty.
I started wondering if "fun" was really what I most wanted to be. I like feeling like a fun person, don't get me wrong. But I started paying attention to the merits of getting enough sleep, feeling healthy, being empathetic and kind, listening to other people when they talk, and being honest with everyone around me. All of that is kind of woo woo, and doesn't make for the best blogging material. Since I all-out quit smoking, drinking, driving a car when I didn't have to, and eating any sort of animal products, I have found my emphasis less on "fun" and more on "sane." I guess, dear Blogosphere, that's OK. I am aiming now more for "joy" than "fun," I think. If this means that my blog is no longer meaningful to you, kindly locate your nearest New Age health spa and alert them of my presence. I just know they'll be super-interested in my quest for inner peace.
Lesson plans are hard and take a really long time. Or, moreover, my workday is 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., every day. It sucks everything out of me! I come home, cook, eat, go running, read, and go to bed. I turned 35 before I meant to, I think. My life got a lot boringer, I guess, but I'm okay with that.

And following Mardi Gras '10 and Who Dat Saints fever, I'm worn down, exhausted, and anxious to start over. I want... adventure. I want to explore and poke at things I've never noticed before. I want to create, and to go on long journeys and to document all of that. Just because I am a teacher doesn't mean that I can't take a little time every once in a while to seek the kind of fresh, non-work-related joy I am desperately lacking these days. I have a few immediate adventures I'd like to have, and then I think I just want to spend a lot of time riding my bike around the city and stopping whenever anything is interesting to me. I will need to buy more wool socks, because I am always getting sick and feeling cold. But really, I live in the deep South. I should not be such a wuss. And after all, I live in the best city in the world∫, and I haven't yet gotten inside every possible corner of it! A sin.

So. I want to do these things, in general:

Stop and smell more flowers, talk to more people, explore more holes in walls, eat more bread and drink more foreign coffee. Keep my iPod off and my eyes open.
Go to every bookstore in New Orleans. The fact that I haven't done this yet seems like a gregarious injustice to me.
Walk for miles and miles and miles, alone.
Build a swing in an unlikely place.

I'll chronicle these four small goals as the year unfolds into spring (it's doing this now!), and I take some space from my wonderful school and the most amazing seven-year-olds there are in the whole entire world≈, and I'll find my own corner of this tiny, incredible city.

Since you and I last spoke: Ari has departed the Crescent City for the Emerald City (two nicknames which don't really fit, don't you think?), which was a sad thing, but not an ending in my mind. She is one of the strongest, most beautiful hearts I have ever known. Having her here allowed me to see the cracks in the cement in a new way, and it let me be OK with the version of myself who didn't drink or go out late or fake it at big parties. But now she's opening up a whole new life for herself, and I feel weirdly proud of her, and excited for all the things she is going to do. But you should ask her about it. We have a new roommate, too: his name is Allie and he makes moldings for movie sets seven days a week, which he describes as "long, tiring, interesting, absurdly funny, dusty, unromantic, and demoralizing." He's extraordinary. Sam was here for Mardi Gras, and I can't believe how fast the holiday passed. We took in Muses, Krewe de'Tat, and Endymion. We also made a King Cake, so I felt I had met the bare minimum, at least, of my Mardi Gras requirements, which is impressive because I have a bad cold (turns out you get sick a lot when you work with little kids. Who knew?). Lots of good visits. My parents, too, came to New Orleans recently. I felt like a grown up. And then, two weeks later, my little sister turned twenty-one. I visited her in Colorado to see what it looked like to turn twenty-one (because heaven knows I didn't do it correctly -- I just bemoaned my ungraceful departure from childhood and watched a lot of Disney Channel in a state of miserable denial), and to celebrate her existence. I can't believe she's an adult. I guess she always sort of was, but now there's an official number to put on it. My sister is the most extraordinary person I know. How did we get so big so fast? I don't feel like I have changed much. Then again, I could write two separate biographies for the person I was just a year ago and the person I am now. Life is a paradox like that, I guess.

I am looking forward to the adventures.

* I recently sang this at a karaoke/ sushi bar in Metarie and was told that I really wasn't cut out to be a rapper. I have to admit that this was a bit discouraging. I would be lying if I told you I hadn't considered a possible future that included a primary income of six figures due to rap stardom.

˚ Don't ask me what I mean by "journalist." She is definitely a dying breed these days, as Gawker continually, pathetically, and aptly points out. But it's been my stubborn dream since I was about three years old, so I'm not giving up now just because the "newspaper" is "going extinct." Pish posh.

∫ One of them. Portland is pretty staggeringly wonderful, with its insanely black coffee and never-ending bookstores and my mom's bird feeders all choked with sparrows and waxwings and HUMMINGBIRDS. And lately I've missed Chicago a lot too, for all its sprawling neighborhoods, and the rambling El Trains and the magnificent limestone rocks on the big Lake Michigan.

≈ That my students are the greatest living human beings on the planet, I am absolutely certain. Every moment I spend with them I become a better person. I can't describe the brilliance each and every one of them brings to my life, but to cite a total cliche, just imagine you have stared your entire life at black-and-white, grainy photographs, and then someone suddenly puts a bright, color, high-definition, flat-screen television in front of you, playing clips of flowers blossoming as created by high-tech speed-capture cameras. It's kind of like that.

pre-surprise teaser

2009-11-11T06:20:00.003-06:00

There have been A LOT of surprises in the last two weeks. Don't worry. I'll tell you all about it later.

Teaser:

39 percent fun!

2009-10-30T19:24:00.015-05:00

Last weekend was really fun. It was SO FUN that I am worried that no other weekend -- not even HALLOWEEN WEEKEND -- could possibly be as fun as last weekend.

The trouble, I think, is that the week that followed was NOT particularly fun. It was one of those long-haul, rough weeks at work, where everything feels like a grindstone. Even kittens feel like grindstones. On the plus side, my job is to hang out with the most intelligent, loving, enlightening, hysterically funny people in the world, and talk to them about books and shapes and feelings and the habits of light. So even when the universe seems like one giant grindstone, all you have to do is turn around and say, "Hey, Bracuan! HIGH FIVE!" And then at least you know that you're all in it together. For example, we did a feelings circle on Thursday. We had to go around and say Good Morning, and then say "I feel..." and fill in the blank with how we were feeling. (I was feeling obsequious. Big words are funny to people who are seven.)
Ms. Bevans: Good morning, M.
M: Good morning, I'm feeling JEALOUS.
Class: .... .
Ms. Bevans: I have a question. Who are you jealous OF?
M: (Somewhat impish laugh). I am jealous of my DREAMS.

But last weekend, after I spent Saturday at work, I let everything go. I didn't think about bills or about grocery shopping or about laminating anything or about non-toxic adhesives. I just thought about FUN.

But actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go back to Friday. It was Sam's birthday. It was a beautiful, sunny, cold day in New Orleans. It was a pretty OK day at work. And now, for our purposes, I will ask you to refer to Sophie's Ten New Years' Resolutions: Resolution 1:

1. Get over my fear of fish. I secretly believe that I am already over my fear of fish. Well, I believe that SOME of the time. Rationally, I understand that my fear of fish is irrational. And I understand this in ways that I don't understand that my fear of the dark is irrational, or that my fear of zombies is irrational. So I'm going to do something symbolic like go SCUBA diving. I'm not really ALL-CAPS excited about that, it's just that SCUBA is an acronym and you're supposed to capitalize it

I did go SCUBA diving this year, it's true, but not in an ocean with real life fish. I went SCUBA diving for a certification class with Outdoor Venture Krewe high schoolers in a big, deep pool. And that was fun, too. But my fear of fish had not been symbolically overcome.

UNTIL I was walking along on Friday, gasping under my breath because the sky looked as if a bottle of maddenlingly expensive paint had spilled all over it, and the water in the bayou was stretching out lazily among yellow-green reeds, and it was just too freaking beautiful to ever hope to describe, when I ran across what was either a) a bluebill (see right) or b) A MAGICAL FISH just lying on the bank of the bayou. I am hesitant to say it was a bluebill, because while it was that general shape, it was MUCH BLUER than that fish is. Dark blue and sparkly. And glowing. And it could talk. OK OK, it was just VERY blue, but all the Louisiana Lists of Fish I have looked at are trying to convince me that this fish could only have been a bluebill, so I'm going to go with it.

So anyway, I walked up to it because that's usually what I do when I see an object lying on the banks of the bayou. When I saw that it was a fish, my heart sank a little bit, because I don't like when creatures of the world die, but I was also excited to see it. It was so blue! I stared at it for a while, thinking, "This is really a beautiful fish." I think what must have happened is that the fish got so excited that it jumped out of the water with glee, and then accidentally ended up on land, where it suddenly could not breathe, and it died.

Only... its gill were moving ever-so-slightly. And its eyes looked oddly pleading. I was thinking about these strange fish features when the "dead" fish gathered all the strength in its helpless, legless body, and flopped from one of its side to the other.

Holy shit! I thought. Well, actually, scratch that. "Holy shit!" I said out loud, because I was on the phone with Sam, casually discussing his birthday at the time that this happened. "There is a FISH, and it's LYING HERE, and it's DYING, and I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN SAVE IT!" I threw my phone to the ground. I looked at the fish. It looked at me. I looked at the fish. It looked at me. Time was running out. Here are thoughts that went through my head:
1. The oils in my hands will surely cause this fish instant death if I touch it. But there are no pieces of cloth or smooth sticks I can use to aid me!
2. This fish may be suicidal. I may be doing it a terrible disservice by throwing it back into the water. It probably takes a lot of energy to hurl oneself suicidally at a landform from water.
3. This fish has fangs and it wants to bite me and give me a fish disease.

But I had to dismiss all these thoughts, because there was no time. I held my breath, bent over, and PICKED UP THE FISH. Then, with unprecedented swiftness and might, I hurled it back into the bayou, where I watched it swim away.

PUT A BIG RED "ACCOMPLISHED" STAMP ON RESOLUTION NUMBER ONE BECAUSE SOPHIE JOHNSON JUST CONQUERED HER MOTHER-FUCKING FEAR OF FISH!

And that was only Friday.

On Saturday I spent the first six hours of the day at work, toiling away (see above). Then I came home, crawled in bed, and read for two hours while listening to Aaron Copeland until I passed out in one of those afternoon naps that actually TASTES good because it is so exactly what you need.

When I woke up we had to scrounge to finish our Loteria Card costumes. You may feel like you missed a step here, and that's because you did. Two weeks ago, Leah had the great idea of marching in the 6 t' 9 parade dressed as creepy loteria cards. We all sort of thought that cutting, painting, sandwich-boarding, drawing, and re-painting plywood would NOT be that time-consuming of a costume. But then it was. Actually, that was sort of a blessing in disguise, because it meant we all had a lot of excuses to hang out and craft and talk about boys and school and not school and crazy outfits and goals and dreams and sauerkraut. Well, not sauerkraut. But we COULD have talked about that if we wanted to do. That's how much time we had to be together. I have to admit, of course, that like most things that work out in my New Orleanian life, the pull of the work was really Leah's, and it never would have worked without her. For that I am a very lucky person.

The final loteria krewe for the Amigos at the 6 t' 9 Parade were: Leah, Hannah, Ari, Mariette, a girl I hadn't met before, and me. On Saturday evening we got to dress up in front of the bathroom mirror and spray things out of aeresol cans like we were going to a high school prom. Then we headed down to St. Claude Street, and became spectators. No matter how good your costume is, it's impossible not to become a spectator when you are marching in a New Orleans parade. So much goes into them! You see people in crepe paper dresses and hats that light up; babies decked out in lace and face paint; tall shoes full of water and beads; amazing music and smells and everything gold and glittering and neon. This time there was Mexican candy and a mariache band. A woman filled her pull-cart with marigold plants to hand out to people watching the parade. A whole band of children rode in a Day of the Dead Carriage with skeleton faces, gritting teeth out the windows. A woman dressed like Frida Kahlo danced to the second line behind us while jutting out of enormous cardboard picture frame like a painting come to life.

See? That's New Orleans.

We marched for three hours. I want to show you pictures of everything we saw -- the wedding with the bride in a whispery off-white lace gown, watching the parade from the church steps with her new husband and all her well-dressed guests. The sunset that made the whole parade stop and turn around and collectively groan, "Oh my God." The dancing children and drunk Mexican wrestlers throwing Milky Ways into the intersections of streets. It was all worth documenting. But my camera ran out batteries within the first ten minutes, and I guess I'm almost grateful. In the end, I got to drink it all in. That was a tremendous gift.

On Sunday, Ari and I had our annual Harvest Festival. This is its third consecutive year of existence. At the first Harvest Festival, Ariana and I lived in a house together at 140 Otis Street. We bought thirteen pumpkins from the pumpkin patch down Isaacs and invited ten people over to carve them on the front lawn, drink apple cider, and decorate pumpkin cookies (see left).

This year, we wanted the sentiment to be basically the same, but we decided we would only invite each other. And Leah. This really took a lot of the stress out of the whole event, to tell you the truth.

But it was still ideal. We started by carving twenty apples. Then we made: pink cinnamon apple sauce (We used Red Hots. Brilliant.), apple cranberry pie, apple cider, and three flavors of pumpkin seeds, including curry, Cajun, and sugar and spice. The house smelled so good. The air outside was cold, so we opened the doors and let all the crisp fallness of the October night mix in with cinnamon and cloves and baking apples and cranberries, and we put on sweaters and Lindy Hop music and just hung out in the kitchen for like five hours.

The pumpkins, however, presented a bit of a fiasco. They didn't have any at Rouse's, so we had to use a pie pumpkin and a couple of white pumpkins. The white pumpkins carved out fine (and it was pretty novel, actually), but we had to use a SAW to get the lid off the pie pumpkin, which made the very thought of carving the features on the face of the pumpkin impossible. After much deliberation, we decided the best route would be to use an electric drill to make a nice pattern of holes in the pumpkin. This is not a joke.

On Monday Ari and I went to see "Where the Wild Things Are" for the second time. On a Monday night!!! Are you GETTING how much FUN I have become?!

It's Halloween again. Already! I know, I can't believe it, either. I am very excited about living life right now. There are so many things I still want to experience and do before I leave New Orleans. Thank goodness I'll be here another year at least.

That said, I can't articulate how much I am looking forward to coming home (because Portland is still, and will always be, home) for a week for Thanksgiving. I can't wait to eat my mom's cooking and to let my dog lick me all over my face. It will be weird to be home without Alexis. It's the first time we've ever not spent Thanksgiving together as One Big Happy Family.

But we're all doing a pretty good job of taking care of ourselves these days. I'm proud of the Johnson family. We have had some nutty times, that's for sure. At points, I think we actually redefined "dysfunctional." Now we're redefining it again by being enigmatically functional, normal, rational, and sane. Cheers to us.

Another month has unwound and lies, autumnal, in the rear view mirror. I am practicing, above all, patience. Tom Petty says, "It'll all work out, eventually." He was a good songwriter, so I'm gonna go with him on that one.

Fun-ometer reinstated: 12 percent fun

2009-10-14T20:35:00.010-05:00

Last Wednesday, I started to update my blog, but I wasn't even fun enough to finish said entry. I dissolved into a puddle of gross misery and left this entry unfinished. It sat in my Drafts folder, like an unhatched egg. Would you like to read it? Very well then. It was titled, "8 percent fun." If you will notice, my funness percentage has already risen since then. I am a very proactive type! Either that, or I'm a little bit bipolar.

Look at this fun percentage. Things have definitely been better. I think 8 percent fun actually might be generous, to tell you the absolute truth. Case in point: it's Wednesday night. But I'm not at Wednesday night dinner. I'm in bed, with my sweet potato puff pastry (which I can't even finish eating because for days on end I've only been eating freaky-gross foods and my stomach can't handle any more of them), chillin' out, staring at the ceiling, drifting in and out of pathetically restless sleep. It's bleak.

On the other hand, two things:
I think I'm a pretty fun teacher. I really do. I know some good circle games (thanks, Girl Scout camp!), and I know bookoo awesome songs to sing, and I am pretty sure I make science fun and interesting, what with all the wacky experiments we do, and I have a lot of good read-aloud voices. FUN! I think kids even sometimes look at me and say, "Oh hey, there goes Ms. Johnson. She is the FUN teacher. I wish I could be in her and Ms. Bevans' class. They have a HEDGEHOG." Fun, fun, fun!
I went to Portland this weekend, which makes me a really great traveler. And I did a super-fun prank! I didn't tell my parents I was coming. So that Saturday morning, I telephoned my mom. "I'm so glad it's you!" said my mom, thinking I was in New Orleans. "Yes, me too," said I. Then I rang the doorbell. "Oh, Sophie, let me call you back. I think Mancel has come to trim the garden," said my mom. "Ok Mom. Bye," said I. And she opened the door and SCREAMED and said "No!" a bunch of times, and that felt AWESOME. I also got to see Sam Alden, and Ben Stevens, and Vince Levy. It was a really beautiful weekend, full of a lot of good coffee, and a lot of good comic books

You know what? It actually IS very fun to travel across the whole entire country for a single weekend. So let's spend a little more time on that. Portland is unfathomably beautiful this time of year. Last weekend, New Orleans was still the spitting image of hurricane season, with smudgy storms and 90-degree heat (with 94 percent humidity), so when I walked out of the Portland International Airport into the 50-degree air without a sweater I almost swooned over and kissed the ground. This is what fall is supposed to feel like. All weekend I got to wear sweaters and scarves, and coffee tasted better and jeans didn't feel sticky against my legs, and my hair didn't end up in a ratty ball of overdone spaghetti every time I walked out the door. The weekend was so full and beautiful that I forgot to take pictures of most of it, but I have a few highlights:
How unbearably Portland-in-October is this picture? We were sitting on Broadway at a coffee shop that taught you Swahili on Wednesday nights and helped you plan your trip to Sweden on Sundays, and we ordered vegan apple cake (because any coffee shop in Portland just happens to have things like vegan apple cake) and had to wear jackets while we sat outside by the hip bikes to drink lattes (Sam) and fat cups on drip coffee (me). I am loving coffee, incidentally, more and more with each passing hour. Since I completely quit smoking, drinking, and eating animal products, strong coffee has become my number one vice. I think it is way more acceptable than any of my previous vices.

We also went to Cathedral Park, right under the St. Johns bridge (you can click on that link if you would like irrefutable proof that this is among the most beautiful bridges in the world). I had never been to that park, and I actually have dozens of pictures I took there with my jaw perpetually scraping the ground because I had never seen a place quite so sublime. We sat on a bench overlooking the park and I could see the pine trees puffing up their chests on the mountain, and the oaky things blushing for the onset of fall, and a hummingbird singing like a creaky gate on a branch right over us, and a pair of children riding Their First Bikes along the walking path, and a set of maybe eight people laughing as they shot some sort of movie by the water, and I actually cried because Earth, in that moment, seemed singularly peaceful and extraordinary. I couldn't imagine -- and I tried! -- that anything bad ever happened on Planet Earth. That was a strange thought, but sometimes when you are intensely happy, you can't help but think it, even though it seems irresponsible. I thought, How nicely all these species can coexist when every one has space to breathe and run around and be themselves, and no one is competing for anything, and everyone is nonchalantly letting everyone else exist just as they are. But, of course, the world wouldn't be the place any of us loved if it weren't for competition, and I knew that those thoughts were born out of the sort of transcendentalist utopia I had briefly fallen into, so I pulled myself out. The picture I've included is not of the space I'm describing to you, anyway; it's a little up and to the left of that bench, in an old shipyard where Sam and his family once discovered this huge propeller. Wait. I wrote that sentence wrong. Let me try again: That photo was taken in an old shipyard where Sam and his family ONCE DISCOVERED THIS HUGE PROPELLER!!!!!!!! Have you ever seen anything like that? You can climb around it and blackberry brambles are shooting up through the middle of it. I have no idea why it's there, or what it was intended for (presumably a ship, says Sam), but it's one of the awesomest things I have encountered in my brief life.

This is what the leaves look like in Portland. This photograph makes me feel tremendously homesick.

The week following this trip was tough. I think a lot of the reason for that was that I never caught up on the sleep I lost from hanging out all weekend and then traveling ten hours both ways. But also, I am not doing enough for myself in general. I almost re-typed that sentence because it sounds kind of selfish, but what I mean by that is that there are so many things in the universe that I love to do (a short list: Draw with sidewalk chalk! Go for long walks! Explore museums! Eat by myself at restaurants! Listen to music! Go to the library! Experience the cinema! Chat with wildlife!), but I haven't had the chance to do any of it in the last few months. I hear a chorus of "Told You So"s echo whenever I say that out loud, because Teach for America is generally supposed to do that to you (you know: weed the life out of you and turn you into an incredible teaching robot), but I guess I had to experience it for myself. I think the trouble is that I've grown so terribly invested in this school and in these kids, that I find myself pushing outside the realm of normalcy to do the best job possible. Now I sound like a martyr. Well, look, World: I'm not a great teacher yet, because I have only been teaching for one year. I'm still learning it! I have got to figure out how to forgive myself for that, and be patient. It will come. That's why I've decided to stay in New Orleans and teach for third year. In the mean time, I should go on more long walks, and sign up for more cooking classes. A teacher with a lot of fun in her life is a good teacher. I think Albert Einstein said that.

Luckily, I have a handful of really fun friends who are tremendously good influences on me. On Friday, we had the most successful Crafternoons (Crafter-dark?) we'd had in ages. Friday was also the day that New Orleans started to cool off. The night that night was too frigid for mosquitoes, even! We had the doors hanging open and we let the cakey smell from Leah's evening baking endeavor coupled with dusty sweaters from last year warm us up. Oh yeah; we also ordered a life supply of MSG and corn syrup from Yummy Yummy Chinese Food and ate like pregnant women. I crafted until 3:30 a.m. the next morning, which may be my longest crafting session of life. Maybe. Twelve hours is a long time. As a sidenote, I think that at some point in my life I would like to live in a house with a lot of artist-bum-types and make shit to sell at fairs and carnivals for a living. I think I would like to do that for one year. That will also be the year when I watch all 1000 of the Best 1000 Movies of All Time. I never want to watch good movies anymore. Too much work. My last Netflix batch included "Tuck Everlasting" starring Alexis Bledel and "No Reservations," which is about a surly chef who has to raise a child alone -- until she meets hunky Aaron Eckhart, and her life is changed for good! I ran into the postman yesterday and he asked me what two movies I was returning. I was like, "Taxi Driver" and "Casablanca." He said, "You don't wanna tell me, huh?" "Nope," I said.

Yesterday I took a long walk with Ari (check and check!) and we talked about boys and moving and New Orleans and our respective prior weekends. Kevin came to visit her last weekend and they got to gawk at beautiful buildings and eat bengiets (sp?), and ride the streetcar and dance to jazz music in drizzling rain. It is so wonderful to show New Orleans to someone who has never been here. I also don't know how often I have seen two people more in love than Ariana and Kevin. Seeing people in love is something I can appreciate in any phase of my own relationship life. When I'm single, I still love to see people in love. You know that when people are deeply in love, they have found a corner of their lives which will always exist in their memories and intense and whole. There are so few things in life that so completely stay with us like our experiences of being in love. I hope that when I write shit like that it doesn't come off as super-arrogant and condescending. Maybe I should have just written, "Seeing Ari and Kevin together made my heart physically flutter." That also would have been true, and maybe less annoyingly introspective. That's a picture of Kevin wearing two things that are plaid. He's pretty badass. Plaid-ass? Hmm.

I simply cannot walk around New Orleans without falling in love with New Orleans all over again. Every time I let myself take it in, I feel dizzy with infatuation.

This blog post is getting too long for anyone to feel like reading all the way through. There is a lot more I want to tell you, but I've rambled on for a long time. Here are two things I should add before I go, because they are important:

I'm sorry, haters, but I thought "Where the Wild Things Are" was lovely. I really did. It was the first movie I've watched that felt like I was watching one of those sleepy childrens' books that grown-ups like a whole lot more than kids do. You know, the kind with lots of little magical aspects, but not much plot. I cried through the whole thing. It did a great job of depicting childhood the way adults want to picture childhood. Yes, it was simple, and yes, it had some kind of obvious metaphors, but WHATEVER! It was built to show us what we remember about our own childhoods. Maybe in some ways it was built to reimagine a childhood we would have created if we had had the emotional depth to build it as children. In any case, the monsters said some really beautiful things, and the structures in the movie were gorgeous, and the kid was a great actor, and the house Caroline Keener lived in was perfectly staged, and I found the lack of exposition and explanation refreshing. I went with my school to see it (K-3. Not my choice, actually), and the children loved it. At least, Barshall loved it. I sat next to him and he had great commentary for the whole thing. He said stuff like, "I would like for that monster to eat the other monsters and then eat all the trees." A whole new angle!
Avery's birthday (I can now tell you, since he has graduated and become my friend more than my student, that his name is actually Arthur) was yesterday. Celebrating it was the fuzziest, warmest experience of my whole year, hand's down. In fact, it was how a movie might end. For one thing, a lot of things we tried to set up for Arthur last year are finally falling into place. For those of you who have been following (read: have been forced to listen to me talk on and on about) the Arthur saga, you should know that Arthur is doing GREAT. The Personal Care Assistant we applied for finally came through, and she's amazing. She has helped him with so much! She's gotten him a volunteer position at the ARC. Next week they are going bowling. Arthur looks clean and well-dressed and I've never seen him so happy. Kristen and I brought Arthur a big pizza to eat with his grandma at his house. It was gross, but Arthur sure likes pizza. Then we took him to Wal-Mart and bought him a new hoodie and some markers. It's fun to pick out your own birthday presents! The best part, though, was that we took Arthur to Creole Creamery, where he was surprised by Ms. McGough (his old teacher and my dear friend), and her fiance Drew (an amazing man, whom Arthur is also obsessed with), Drew's rap partner, and their perfect, amazing five-month-old twin boys. It was like being in a real family. Jayda (Ms. McGough) looks beautiful; and Drew was smiling constantly. The babies are cuter with each passing second. We all got to hold them while we passed ice cream around; and even Arthur bounced Savion up and down on his bum knee. I felt very nearly content in that moment.

So it's The Next Year now. What will I learn? Already, I have learned a whole lot. But only, it seems, when I get out from under my covers and poke around in the universe. That's very hard for me, but well-worth it. If I ever need proof, there's a yearlong backlog on the Internet in the form of my blog to remind me.

funder and lightning

2009-09-28T06:39:00.002-05:00

This is probably my most original blog title yet. Especially since in New Orleans the weather is so often so stormy.

Wow, Blogosphere! It's been a long while since we've talked, yet again. Remember a year ago? I was such a good correspondent back then, while I was trying to get my fun back on track. Now I am a little less concerned with being a fun person, and more concerned with being a sane and rational one, which means it's been quite a long time since I've done any beautiful exploring or learning about this amazing city I find myself in. It's okay, though: I have time.

The weekend was nice and long. I just spent ten minutes going back in my brain trying to think of events that I could brag about this weekend, but I couldn't come up with any. Ariana and I went to the Art Museum and looked at the beautiful photographs. I broke off on my own and walked through the lonely rooms upstairs no one ever goes in because they are full of permanent collections of Chinese, Japanese, African, and Native American art that people dismiss as generic ("I could see that stuff ANYwhere," they say). I do have my hesitations about those rooms, of course. It's not really fair for museums to have those beautiful artifacts locked away in glass cases like that. They don't belong to us. When I look at the gorgeous craftsmanship of a mask or a vase or something, I feel like I am in the presence of something sacred that is being totally exploited. I tried to walk through the rooms as appreciatively as possible. I do love the Japanese brush scrolls a great deal. They remind me of my mother.

And I was riding my bike on another beautiful sunny day in the Quarter and ran into Lily and Jazzy and their friend Tah, whom I have not seen in aaaaages, and they shouted, "Sophie!" and I shouted, "Lily and Jazzy and Tah!" and they were sitting outside Port of Call, which is this famous burger place that always has bookoo people outside it. They were like, "Hey, we're going to go to Port of Call, do you want to come?" and in my head I was like, "No I have way too much work." And then in my head I was like, "Whatever! I don't have that much work! I have never BEEN to Port of Call!" So in real life I said, "Yes, I would love to." And then I joined them for lunch and ate a baked potato with chives and had an iced tea. I have this to say about Port of Call: the burgers cost a lot of money, but they did look really pretty. I have no idea how to judge a good burger. I do have an idea of how to judge "Good Burger," starring Keenan and Kel from Nickelodeon. And I judge it like this: A+.

But it was nice to laugh and to talk about not-school stuff. Examples of not-school topics that happen when you are with non-teachers (Tah is technically teacher, but she's a cool teacher who can talk about hauntings):
1. Pooping.
2. Spirit animals.
3. Sam Alden yesterday said, "Hey Sophie, I have found a word in the dictionary you maybe don't know. And the word is 'pinguid.'" And I said, "I have not heard that word before. What does it mean?" And he said, "Fat and oily." So I mentioned this to Tah and Jazzy and Lily, and we talked for probably forty-five minutes about 'pinguid.' Subtopics: Can pinguid ever be a positive thing? Would you like to eat a pinguid sausage? Was the guy one of them hooked up with last night pinguid? All valid questions.
4. Tulane.

School, to completely change the topic, is wonderful. Today we don't have students because we are doing data work, and I thought last night for a great deal of time about how much I miss them, and how sad I am that I don't get to see them today. They teach me so much every day. I can't believe we are already at the midterm assessments.

My students are very receptive to learning about history -- especially about African American history. The thing is that they often say things that are truly depressing without ever realizing it. When I read a story to them last week about Martin Luther King, Jr., there was a section in the book that talked about how Martin Luther King, Jr. fought to desegregate the schools, and my students were genuinely puzzled. At lunch Melissa said, "Ms. Johnson, black kids and white kids can't really go to school together, can they?" Apparently the vast majority of my class thinks it's actually still illegal for classrooms to be racially integrated.

But on a happier note, our table groups are named Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi; and our 2nd grade class is completely fascinated with Gandhi. There has possible never been a group of 2nd-graders more obsessed with Gandhi. There are almost no books available for children about Mahatma Gandhi, but Carrie and I both have a copy of the same one -- a dense, boring, dully-illustrated book more suitable for high schoolers than seven-year-olds. My kids daily insist that I read them a few pages from it, and they listen in absolute fascination to theories about karma, and to the stories of Gandhi's life. They can find India on a map.

My students are so unbelievably curious and open-minded. They are ready to learn and they are eager to access information. They hug each other and take care of each other when they think no one else is watching. They don't sweat the small stuff. They draw beautiful pictures and see the world in shades of pink and orange and bright blue and green (I assume, based on the color palate they choose for their art samples). They aren't afraid of school yet. They beg for homework. At what point do we get beaten down enough that we start to pull away from life? I promise you it happens sometime AFTER the age of seven.

We have two great class pets. I tried to take videos of each. One cut off within one second of video taping. The other is the most boring class pet video ever. I tried to wake Chico up but he just tensed up and hissed at me. Enjoy these boring videos. Know that if you were to come visit, you would have a lot more fun with our class pets than these videos immediately suggest.

things are pretty good.

2009-09-15T22:17:00.004-05:00

I feel... lucky isn't the word... I feel unbelievably happy to be alive and to have so much love in my life every day. More soon. There's a lot to say.

Dol-fun

2009-09-07T20:49:00.004-05:00

Let's just pause a minute and play, "WHO IS SOPHIE LIVING WITH NOW?"

Here are a few hints:
1. Both the people I am living with are in the picture to the left.
2. Both of the two people I am living with are really freaking adorable.
3. Both of the people I am living with are human people, and are not waffles, or grits.
4. I do not live with any men.
5. As beautiful as she is, I do not live with Gina.

If you have guessed ARIANA RAMPY in the Oh-My-Fucking-God-Is-That-An-Actual-Dress? dress, and LEAH HOPE FISHBEIN who cooked the fabulous beyond all words feast which lies on that table (peanut butter waffles, deep South grits, homemade bean-and-cherry sausage, rosemary apple scones, and all of it vegan), then you have guessed CORRECTLY, and you win a PRIZE!

And that prize is a brief-but-thorough update on the Life Happenings of Sophie Johnson, embedded with no fewer than Four Fun Facts about Dolphins!

(I still can't spell "dolphins" right the first time I try. That's not one of the facts. But I legitimately always try to spell it "dolfins," and it is hard for me to understand that I am incorrect in believing it ought to be spelled like that.)

So many things have happened in this last week.

Monday was a pretty regular and ordinary day, for the most part. Someone threw up in the hallway at school. I stayed in the building until 7 p.m., and then worked at home until 10 p.m., and then I felt shitty because that was too much work. So I decided that wasn't going to work for Tuesday. Thus, Tuesday was different.

On Tuesday Hannah, Leah, Karaline and I tried to have our weekly dinner, but we failed for the following reasons:
1. Hannah was stressed out and could not make it to dinner.
2. We picked a Chinese restaurant (because we were all FAR too stressed out to think about cooking) that ended up looking sketchy and then we ended up at a Japanese restaurant that was very fancy.
3. There was almost nothing vegan on the menu, except some of the sushi, and Leah hates sushi.
4. And I had to leave really early BECAUSE:

... ARIANA RAMPY arrived! The excitement is still very, very warm in my blood. In fact, I would go so far as to say that nothing in my immediate past has made me feel so warm-blooded as Ariana Rampy's arrival to New Orleans, Louisiana (by the way, DID YOU KNOW that dolphins are warm-blooded?!?!).

No, folks, she is not just visiting New Orleans. She has moved in here. She has a room in my house, with a bed, and a window looking onto our back porch, which I am constantly rediscovering as one of the most desirable hidden worlds I've ever caught myself in. And ever since she got here, the air has been full of Winnie the Pooh stories, bad eighties movies, gluten-free baking, and that arresting laughter that makes my heart stop in a kind of frightening way -- a barrier only ever broken by Ariana.

Moving is stressful. I watch Ari go through the motions of transporting beds and trafficking dressers around the house, while trying to find a job, and trying to figure out how she is going to hang her dresses up, and trying to cook in lower-than-sea-level tropical humidity, and a lot about last year comes back to me. Except that Ari is infinitely saner than I ever was last year, so while I sit around waiting for her to have a panic attack, she breathes in the dishwasher-wet thunderstorm air and says, "I love it here." This makes me love it here all the more. Sometimes humans can communicate enormous truths without even speaking. Ari being here makes me understand, with my whole heart, how lucky I am to call New Orleans home. (By the way, DID YOU KNOW that dolphins, too, communicate without speaking? It's true! Dolphins can make a unique signature whistle that may help individual dolphins recognize each other, collaborate and perform several other kinds of communication.)

On Wednesday it was Parents' Night. I ate a lot of chips and felt sick. And then I sat in my room in total shock as I looked out at a sea of parents' faces -- moms and dads and grandmas and aunts and brothers and neighbors -- and thought, "Wow. This school really works." I enthusiastically raved to moms and dads about their children, who really are the most brilliant and interesting human beings I have met in my whole life. I know that this is not the way that parent night is supposed to go. You're supposed to say all these things that parents can do to work with their children to help them succeed. But I'm no good at that. That's why I have a co-teacher.

I'll get better at it. I just love them so much. I can't even wrap my own mind around it, let alone put it into words.

On Thursday my co-teacher was sick. It was a very, very bad day. My kids all decided they were sick too (I assume mostly because they wanted to copy Ms. Bevans; and I can't blame them because she is very much worth imitating). The rest of them decided that they should be on their worst possible behavior, particularly when I was being observed. I lost Charles. I lost my temper. I lost my voice. And at the end of the day I needed to be reminded of all the At Leasts (At least the school is still standing! At least everyone is safe! At least you get to go home!) because I couldn't think of them on my own.

It was humbling. It was one of those, "Oh my God, I'm not actually good at this yet" moments. The kind where I felt like I was drowning, about 260 meters below the surface of the ocean (which, by the way, is about as deep as dolphins can swim, DID YOU KNOW?).

On Friday we all celebrated. The kids were nicer, and I was nicer. Ms. Bevans was still very sick and sat on the stool looking cross whenever someone was out of line. That actually was a better management strategy than anything I had previously tried, so I was very, very grateful for her presence -- as painful as it must have been for her.

It was a long weekend. The highlights were cleaning the house, and eating that amazing brunch. We went to Southern Decadence and just Took Things In -- men as women as men as women; dancers and twirlers; cigarettes and penises; cigarettes shaped like penises; children in coats and women with babies; vomit, beads, gendered-up Mardi Gras fare in September. The heat got very sticky. Ariana continued to bring light into the house, and Leah cooked food I never imagined could exist. The three of us went to see "Julie and Julia" last night, which I'm embarrassed to say we absolutely loved. We made a lot of really loud orgasm noises over the buttery foods that none of us can eat.

The house is feeling a bit more like a home, and I half-expect my mother to be sitting in the living room reading T. S. Eliot in an armchair before dinner. Also, I can FEEL fall. Man, I am SO ready for fall. I just love that season. Right now, it is my favorite.

I swore I would only take 15 minutes on this entry (the amount of time dolphins can stay underwater, DID YOU KNOW?), but it's dragged on and on, as it always does. My mom called a few minutes ago, and with my sister in Costa Rica for the semester (wish her happy and safe travels whenever you can! She just got there last night), I want to talk to her and see how she is doing.

It always amazes me -- and Ari is on the phone with Kevin now, loving him with all her heart from this great distance -- how far we can be from one another and how close we can still feel. What a cliche that is... but there's something very comforting in it, too. So as I turn in, looking forward to another week, I'm sending as much love as I can across miles and miles, hoping you will feel it. Onward!

Funnel

2009-08-30T10:07:00.002-05:00

I am sitting outside on a hot hurricane-season day in New Orleans at the Fair Grinds. This is all well and good, except that the heat makes the mosquito bite on my ankle itch like crazy. Only since I moved to New Orleans have I learned to correctly spell "mosquito." Previously, I had resigned "mosquito" to being one of those words I would always have to let Spell Check correct for me. But now I've got it. Next up: avocado.

You and I have not been in great correspondence.

The amount of time I spend at work, and thinking about work, and generally immersed in some kind of work-related work, has ballooned to the size of a bloated rhetorical time-whale. But I think I had always imagined that teachers were supposed to work this much, so I don't mind it really. I have the rest of my life to sit behind a blog, making my life sound a lot more eloquent than it actually is.

That is, if I ever leave this whole Teaching At A Charter School In New Orleans thing. The more I am here, the more important it feels to be here. I guess I assumed that the gap would appear less severe if I worked at a school with parents who were involved, and a staff that was supportive, and with kids who weren't twenty years old and didn't know how to read. And yes, the gap does appear, in some ways, less severe. But in other ways, it is just as troubling, if not more so, to see kids who are still so far beneath grade level, swimming against the current. But they're seven, so it's usually a little more cute than depressing, and that makes the whole of this entire situation all the more pressing.

I am not particularly good at teaching. I don't even know if I am particularly good at babysitting. But I'm trying to work as much as is healthy, in good faith that if I take care of myself and do the best I can the rest will fall into place.

When kids are seven they say cute shit.

Example: "Oh Ms. Johnson, B told me that if you go to someone's house and have crawfish over at their house then you is cousins. Is that true?"

Or: "Ms. Johnson, you put coconut oil in your hair? Because your hair feel like the inside of a coconut."

Or:

(After reading a book about a raccoon, Ms. J hands out pieces of lined paper)
Ms. Johnson: Okay class. On this paper, I would like you to write a question you have about the book. A question ends with a QUESTION MARK. If you don't know how to write a question, I want you to make your best effort. So you will be WRITING. Not DRAWING. WRITING. A question. About the book. The book about the raccoon.
B (with a raised hand): I'm going to draw a picture of a giraffe, okay?

I get to work at 6 a.m. and leave at 6 p.m. and go home and work from my comfy bed and at night I DREAM about children and on the weekend I browse websites about leveled readers. My life has become a pathetic Teach for America poster existence. I'm kind of really proud of it.

There was a breath of sheer, unsullied fun in there, though, when Sam came to visit last weekend and I put everything on hold to show one of my favorite people in the world one of my favorite cities in the world. So prepare yourself for A LIST. Because these sorts of events can really only be cataloged in effusive, effulgent lists. We:

Stayed up too late, woke up too early, ate vegan jambalaya, cooked brunch (buckwheat waffles, avocados [sp?], mushroom and onion tofu scramble), saw assorted wildlife (two alligators, enormous black grasshoppers, myriad banana spiders, wading birds, lizards with electric blue tails) at the Barrataria Swamp, ate fresh fruit Snowballs, had alligator po' boys (mine was French fries actually, but Sam picked up the slack and ate some real life alligator), biked to City Park, opined about swans and turtles, biked to the French Quarter at night, walked along the Mississippi River and viewed geckos and ibises (is that the true plural of ibis?) in the slick swampy black water, chatted up the gutter punks about ECE, made pancakes with red plums, rode bikes on the ferry to Algiers, had carrot cake with the Sunday crossword puzzle, biked Uptown, ate vegan burritos at Juan's, found a wallet, returned a wallet, biked to Audubon Park, saved a child from red fire ants, counted one hundred turtles, listened to snippets of conversations as they passed by on the bike path ("I hear you can do the same thing with a turkey baster"), had free Indian food at Hare Krishna, slathered ourselves in grapeseed oil to lose the mosquitoes (no "sp?"!), went onandonandon and on about comic books (and on and on and on), ate black beans and eggs at the Oak Street Cafe while they closed up and the piano jazz player was starting to get a little wacky and the girl behind the counter decided she liked us because our glasses matched and gave us a free Arnold Palmer and plates of free doughnuts.

Unless you are Sam Alden (and maybe even if you ARE Sam Alden), you should have read that last paragraph with complete envy, because that, my friends of the Internet, is the archetype of The Perfect Weekend.

I pride myself so much in my ability to explore the beautiful world around me while I am alone. I have never had trouble going to the movies by myself, and I actually believe the art museum is always better that way... but sometimes, when you are so completely tangled up in your job that you can hardly breathe, you need someone to come in and pull you out of it and remind you that There Are Trees! and There Is Art! and Being Alive Is At All Times A Celebration And A Gift! So last weekend was like being handed a self-help manual to remember why we start Internet blogs to chronicle our fun levels in the first place. Because Everything is too breathtakingly wonderful to let pass by without stopping to take it in.

Yesterday was the four-year anniversary of the hurricane that brought so many of us here. I struggle to write about that because one year in New Orleans has taught me, without a shadow of a doubt, that no amount of books or trips to the Lower Ninth Ward will ever, in a million years, give me the perspective to understand the magnitude what happened here then.

I do know that the people who are here now -- the transplants, and those who stayed; those who know the intimate details of the Superdome, and those who came back; the visionaries and the misfits and the idealists and the anarchists -- are the best people, hand's down, that I have met in my twenty-three years. I am so grateful that this amazing city is a chapter in my tiny life.

And the sun has come out. We all, always, move forward.

funions.

2009-08-12T20:12:00.005-05:00

Take a good long hard look at that face. What does it say to you? Does it say, "I am calm and happy and sane and I have plenty of time to work a flattening iron?" If it says that to you, then you have to go back to Kindergarten and relearn the part with the posters where they talked about feelings. Because that is NOT what that face says.

Now, it MIGHT say to you, "Ew. I am seeing a naked person who I didn't really want to see naked." It's a misleading face. As much as it MIGHT look like that is what is happening with Sophie Johnson at this instant in time, unfortunately, it is not.

Look, I'll just tell you. That face says, "Really? You REALLY think I can teach second graders? Are you truly going to trust me with that?"

In the past two weeks, I've figured out the following: I am a trouble-maker. It's not my fault. I genuinely want to be a good, mature, professionally dressed, trustworthy teacher. My brain and my mouth BETRAY ME. Today I asked the sweet, wonderful curriculum director at our school -- who has been teaching for like thirty years and who is quite possibly my favorite educator I have ever met -- whether she wanted me to make her a cookie shaped like a penis. I WAS JUST EXCITED! She said I could participate in this amazing program which teaches teachers how to implement art into their lesson plans, and I freaked out because of how cool it sounded, and all I could think to offer as compensation was the penis cookie thing. This poor woman had no idea what to say. But you see how this was a potentially damaging choice? I'm going to lose my job by accident for sure.

And also: what am I supposed to do with all those blank walls in that classroom that I am supposedly supposed to be half in charge of? I, too, defaulted to asking Carrie (probably my second favorite educator, and co-teacher). But Carrie can't do it all. I should make a joke here about Carrie "carrying" the entire load. I would do that if I weren't so PANICKED right now about being IN CHARGE OF YOUNG LIVES.

We get the students on Monday. I called all their parents last night. You can't tell just by looking how much those two statements weigh, so let me tell you: They weigh A LOT.

I can't talk about teaching right now. I love LHA, legitimately. I would go to bat for this school. I really love what I'm doing. This is the kind of job that I might never walk away from because it makes so much sense to me.

And while I could go on and on about that, and bore you until you turned into a potato, I'll keep it brief and get the most urgent updates out there. Let's do a top ten. The top ten most important things that have taken place since we last spoke:

10. There are mice at our tiny, very clean house. I am always so torn about this. I know that you are supposed to be mad about mice. I mean, I get that. But they're so cute! I don't mind sharing my food with them. And while I understand that mice potentially cause diseases, they also potentially ask for cookies. And that's just adorable.

9. It's my mom's birthday on Sunday! This is the second year where I won't be there for my mom's birthday, and it feels very strange. Holidays and birthdays are just something that families always share. The most noticeable thing about living across the country is that I have to suddenly send birthday presents and Mother's Day presents, and I have to make phone calls, instead of just climbing in bed with her and kissing her a ton. My mom is one of my all time favorite people, so her birth should be super-celebrated. You can send her an e-mail if you want. Her e-mail address is LLucido49@aol.com. She's a great mom and a great teacher and she smells really good all the time and she just rode on one million roller coasters with my sister and my dad at Knott's Berry Farm because she (and I guess the rest of my fam) is a badass. Personally, I can't do roller coasters. They freak me the fuck out.

8. The first Crafternoons of the year was at our house. My goal was to make a shrinkable-plastic blue whale necklace like I saw at the art store in Portland. This proved to be reeeallly hard because the whale kept curling up in the oven, and it wouldn't lay flat again. Finally I settled for this imperfect version. I had to go with it because I ran out of Shrinky Dinks. I also made a similar one with a bicycle, and some Crest toothpaste earrings. We ordered pizza from Naked Pizza which has VEGAN CHEESE if you ask for it, and GLUTEN FREE CRUST if you ask for it, and you HAVE TO REMEMBER that this is NEW ORLEANS, so that's a pretty big fucking deal. I think I ate half of the vegan cheese pizza all by myself. Please don't think that's gross. It's only a little bit gross.

7. Speaking of making shit, living with Leah is the best thing that has ever happened to my diet. I mean, I've lived with vegans before, but never a vegan who likes to cook and bake the way Leah does. She's amazing. In the last three days I've eaten homemade vegan jambalaya, zucchini bread, and asparagus soup. I'm jealous of me too.

6. You HAVE to visit the NOMA. You HAVE to. Hannah took me to see the exhibit on the Art of Caring -- it's an exhibit of beautiful photography that has to do with: Family, Love, Caretaking, Health, Disaster, and Remembrance. It's incredible. It's like taking a journey. I don't know what's up with me and art lately, but it's been making me cry in a really good way. Art never used to quite do that for me, but now it does, and that freaking exhibit, man.... I cried like five or eight times. Openly. Children gawked.

5. Sam Alden is coming to visit! I know that's in the future... but it's a recent revelation! And an EXCITING one! We can go see the Art of Caring. Also, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this over the Internet, but he finished a really amazing art project he has been working on for seven months. How's that for ambiguous? I just want to let him tell you, that's all. This is like the gossip section of Sophie's Blog. It's basically Us Weekly up in here.

4. We furnished the house. This was such an expensive process, especially since Leah and I are both the kinds of people who are like, "Yes, that's good enough, let's buy that;" and not the, "Let's wait on that," or "Let's talk them down" kinds of people. We went to Target and bought a whole box of pots and pans for $100 that are light pink. Light pink. Also a waffle maker. But you know, it is this irrationality that makes us live together so well, and that makes our newly furnished house the belle of the Gayoso Street ball. ((Here is a short tour of our house. Notes on this: I say that this house is located at 917 Louisiana Ave. That's not true. I was confused. Also, the house is now furnished. Clearly, it was NOT furnished when this video was recorded. Now it is. So you can visit and you'll like it and think it is pretty inside.))***

3. My cat lost his collar. If you find it, please call. I'm pissed because I JUST BOUGHT IT FOR HIM and it had a BOW on it.

2. I got a new bike. It's a really cool 10-speed bike that you have to lean forward really far to ride on. You know that type of bike. A ROAD bike. It also has a men's frame, which I think is a ridiculous type of frame, because it forces you to kind of straddle the bike in a weird way when you want to get off, and I've had to buy bike shorts so that I don't flash my vadge every time I have to get off the bike. I named this bike Charley. Then I crashed this bike. It was a big, bad, nasty crash, and I whined about it a ton. I got reeeeally sick bruises and everyone at work was very concerned. I took Charley to get fixed (yes, this IS the bike equivalent of neutered), and I had the man give Charley a new seat, and that changed my life. Kind of utterly.

1. Radical Educators is a group that Hannah and Derrick started, and they probably wouldn't want me to blog about it because it has this kind of secretive air to it right now, but I am just so excited to be a part of it. We sit upstairs at the Fair Grinds on Sundays and discuss amazing new tactics to teaching, and support each other, and it sounds lame, but it's like THE BEST THING THAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME IN MY TEACHING CAREER, seriously.

So that's the top ten, folks. And I have been blogging for a hundred hours, and my alarm is about to tell me that it's time to read my book. And tomorrow it will be time to go back to work. And one day it will be time for me to buy a house. Inevitably I will someday get a dog. And a hug from a friend.

*** Blogspot would NOT upload this video in less than one hour. WTF. So you don't get to see the video. I'm sorry. It's only two minutes long, so I think that's pretty fucked up.

Complete with Photo Booth!

2009-07-22T18:32:00.006-05:00

Moving is very difficult. It's physically difficult and emotionally difficult and difficult in every other way you can imagine. I think for me moving just strikes me in the middle of the forehead with how much FUCKING STUFF I have. Box. After box. After box. And I thought that once I left all my books in Portland and threw out half of it, and abandoned the furniture and MOST of the kitchen stuff, I would end up with just five neat boxes, a desk, a bed, and a piano. And a cat.

But noooo. BOXES. Check it out.

(In lieu of having both my digital cameras stuck in one of those boxes, I am resorting to visually impacting you with the high-resolution and top-notch quality of Photo Booth. Prepare yourself.)

As I get readier and readier to move out of the 1230 house, I... well... I get readier and readier. When the house was full of everything, it felt really FULL. A large part of me just wanted to stay so my heart could be in one place for the rest of time, and I could continue accumulating more shit, effectively pack-ratting myself into a nest of compliance. But now that I have spent a cumulative 24 hours cleaning, boxing, packing, throwing, tossing, wheeling, and otherwise dismissing the sticky total mess that has become the summative artifactual existence of the last twelve months, I feel deeply relieved. Like I'm ready to move forward; and there's no other real direction, after all.

I got on top of my shit this week. I finally got myself a personal care doctor in New Orleans. I made an appointment to get the recycling picked up. I DESTROYED my first cockroach nest (I know: They nest? But yes. They nest. And it is the grossest thing I have ever encountered in the whole of my little life). I got my bumper fixed. I called my landlord.

Like a grownup, I have committed myself to personal problem-solving. When my shoe broke irreparably on my 12-mile bike ride today, I sucked it up and biked home without shoes. And when my cat got fleas, I took him to the vet.

This was an extremely traumatic experience. It is possible Satchmo (who has been seriously freakishly nuzzly for the last two days [see photo at left], and chatty, and sometimes clutches my arm and looks me deep in the eyes as if to say, "Please, please never leave again." Often, this is all we long for in life, I suppose) has always had fleas. I may have just been too self-obsessed to really take notice. Fleas are QUICK! And when they have someone as warm and chompable as Satchmo to bite on, they don't necessarily make the transition to me, so it would make sense that I might not have noticed my cat's obvious discomfort. Satchmo was kind of a rockstar at the vet -- everyone was very impressed with his quirkiness and compliance, which did not surprise me. The nurse brought in all the other nurses to talk to him, because she was so impressed with him. He truly is superior.

But the flea treatment they gave him was very difficult for both of us. The vet warned me it would be, but I went forward with it anyway. This medicine she forced down his throat made all the fleas simultaneously have seizures and die twenty minutes after Satchmo took it, which made him GO CRAZY. He ran all around the house and flung dying fleas at everything still not in boxes. For most of the time he just sat next to me with pleading eyes and let me help him pick suicidal insects off his fur. Poor thing. Now he is napping in the shower. And my sheets, which presently contain approximately two thousand flea corpses, are in the laundry.

I've changed my hair in an effort to fully embrace the new school year and perhaps take on a brand new and more awesome persona. In the end, I don't like change, and I can tell because even when I am pretty happy and things in my life are unraveling marvellously (for example: now*), I still go out into the night and feel freaked out by the darkness when things are changing, and everything seems a lot more lonely than it really is. Last night I rode my bike for an hour deep into the park to listen to the sounds of summer night: cicadas and bullfrogs and something that I can only describe as "heat." James told me today that he had done the same thing last night in Crete. I guess summer nights are sort of the same everywhere; even if they are radically different. They sound good. They smell good. They have bugs in them.

Now I'm off to say goodbye to Kittee (Alex introduced me to her last year by way of a birthday present, and it was one of the best birthday presents I've ever received. She is a crazy, beautiful vegan who organizes the Totally Vegan Potlucks in New Orleans and is now moving, irony of ironies, to Portland). I have been writing these totally frivolous and self-involved entries lately in a desperate attempt to encapsulate this pretty momentous time into a nice little packet. Impossible. I am listening to Otis Redding! I feel pretty pumped up. Outside it is thunderstorms.

* Oh, by the way, did you know [and James told me this, in a very polite way] that you are not allowed to put "i.e." when you mean "in other words?" You are only allowed to put "i.e." when you mean "for an example." This is a mistake I make a lot. And so do other English majors. So I'm pointing it out now to save you all a lot of embarrassment)

88 percent fun!

2009-07-20T11:27:00.003-05:00

Holla, PDX!

The Portland International Airport is simply more pleasant than any other airport. I have spent a lot of time at the Louis Armstrong Airport in the last year, and I used to say it was my favorite (1. It is named after Louis Armstrong. 2. It looks a lot like a post-apocalyptic wasteland and that is interesting to anyone who writes poetry in airports). But upon reevaluation, it's clear that Portland's airport is grandly superior in every possible way. I used to come here on the Red Line MAX train and sit in the little cushiony place where people wait to see the people they love come off planes. I stole this from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, it turns out, but at the time I didn't realize it and thought this was a very creative endeavor. In any case, I could spend entire afternoons here, creepily investigating hugs like a connoisseur. For that reason alone, PDX should be my favorite airport. And then it goes ahead and has a Powells right inside it, and that pushes Portland International over the edge.

Flying out of Portland today means that summer is officially over.

Although New Orleans will feel like summer for the next three or four months (with its humidity and swampy creatures taking over porches and backyard gardens). I start training for my new job on Thursday, and pretty soon kids in impossibly unhip school uniforms will overflow on streets and city buses. And so begins the year.

My last week in Portland can be marked by a series of re-discoveries.

Hannah and Leah (who both look good naked) and I went to the nude beach and looked (at least 2/3 of the way) good naked. We swam in the river, where the grimy sand has turned muddy and feels like wet felt on the ground (there's probably a grosser, more accurate way to describe that). Leah said, "Yep. This is what we are supposed to be doing."

We cooked vegetables, corn on the cob, raspberry cake and vegan mac and cheese, and had some pretty good-looking and interesting people over to eat food and discuss the merits and demerits of fungi in cooking.

This was really the launching point, and everything that followed either composed the largest group of mistakes I have ever made, or some of the best choices of my life. But let's be optimists here. After all, I was crushingly happy for four days. The only trouble was that then I had to leave, and I promised myself to never again get quite so attached to anything I had to leave.

But you know, non-attachment has never been in the cards for me. For the two weeks I spent lying in bed, reading books and sleeping for fourteen hours a day, I was categorically pretty depressed.

Honestly, I don't know why I am so addicted to commitment. I mean, I can love Portland and New Orleans equally if I want to, right? The way you're supposed to love children: exactly equal amounts of love for completely dissimilar qualities.

I kind of want to digress here and gossip about the people in my life. In my high school blogging days I would write mile-long LiveJournal entries about every single person I encountered in my life, as if every day was the Sophie Edition of Us Weekly (Vince Levy was wearing purple skinny jeans! Ian made an inappropriate joke over the phone! Trevor Hancy is scared of horror films!). But the truth is that relationships are beautiful as private quietnesses; and I have a paper diary, after all, to expound upon my thoughts on Ben Stevens' current wardrobe (hip). But, just in case you're out there wishing I would tell you about the fashionable and interesting people I surround myself with, I will write ONLY TEN WORDS on each of the ten people I have seen in the past week:

1. Jessica has grown up and fixes trails. She has dimples.
2. Ben Stevens is enjoying his life: Life's primary goal fulfilled.
3. Ben Malbin brings more people more joy than anyone. Underpants!
4. I wish I could sit inside Sam's mind for years.
5. Alexis is probably more mature than me. This is unacceptable.
6. My mom is still the best person to gossip with.
7. Leah makes me want to live my own life better.
8. Dad had lots of surgery and he still looks good.
9. It is impossible to be near Hannah and not smile.
10. Who knew Ethan was such a good farmer? Eugene did.

I'll mention here that I can't believe I got through this entire summer without getting my act together enough to see Andrew, or Nadim, or Ariana (who are all only four hours from me as I write). I think a pretty big part of me secretly can't quite go back to Whitman College yet. I need a little more distance before I can go back and not be a total nostalgia-obsessed basketcase. I know that basketcase is not a good look for me (trust me: I have experience in that department), so I stayed here. Maybe just for the vegan food.

For the coming year, I primarily want to learn how to build things. I went to Sam's house and I'm surprised that he was able to get me to leave (luckily, the Aldens have a forklift for exactly this purpose) because it was the best house I've seen in my whole entire life. The main reason for its perfection was all the cool stuff his mom built. I want to build cool stuff. I'm going to subscribe to construction magazines and hoard sun-bleached discarded wooden planks.

Also, I am going to fix my own bike.

I should warn you that I'm in the midst of consolidating all my blogs into one server, so someday you're going to have to change your RSS feeds in order to read all these fascinating and life-changing details about my existance in New Orleans. I am hoping that in the coming year I will suddenly be at 100% fun all the time, so I may have to start naming my blog entries after the names of songs just like they do on Degrassi: The Next Generation. Be warned. Change is on its way.

80 percent fun!

2009-07-14T01:33:00.002-05:00

Let's work backwards.

I am just getting home. The house is full. My sister, who has the world's brightest blue eyes and the kind of blonde hair that people kidnap babies over, has about 20 (drunk) people in the family room. They are all sitting in a circle and it smells like beer.

Before this: I was at Pilar's house (I just met her. I'm pretending that I know her well enough now to put us on a first-name basis, but I don't. I didn't even have an entire conversation with her, except about how my once-aunt was named Pilar [she's not my aunt anymore... her name is still Pilar], and how Pilar [my aunt, not this woman I just met] used to sing erotic children's songs about the zoo). I was there with Katie Presley (remember her? Beautiful, creative, with a lovable affinity for things like "Degrassi: The Next Generation" and all members of NSYNC [is that band all caps?]). This is where Leah is staying. Everyone was dressed up like a French supermodel from 1963. Try to imagine anything more intimidating than that.

Well, HERE is what is more intimidating than that: not only were all these people unbelievably beautiful, with whispery voices and Size 5 shoes and bottle-platinum-white hair that would stop deer, but they also all played beautiful instruments. Classical guitars, mandolins, an accordian. They all sat about and played nonchalantly and sang with their oh-so-charming voices in French. This could not possibly last. I knew I was going to be found out (revealed to be, SHOCKINGLY, Someone Not Cool Enough At All) within minutes. Which is why I am home now.

This morning I was lying in bed catching up on this and that. I had epic phone conversations today with at least three people (for those following vicariously through me, James is swimming in a salty Greek ocean every single day. This is like my life dream, realized. Resentment and jealousy is bound to set in soon, stay tuned). I wrote letters. I started playing my iTunes library all the way through. I think it's time to delete all those songs that I have Just In Case. You know. "Just In Case I meet someone who will be, for whatever reason, looking through my computer and will want only to listen to ACDC. Just In Case I ever throw a party with a Seattle-1992 theme, and I need every Nirvana album ever all of a sudden."

Before that it was yesterday, and I got to split the day between Leah, my sister, Jessica, and Sam. If these people were not people, but were instead NetFlix movie rentals, I would intentionally "lose" them and pay NetFlix the $20 for each one so I could play them on repeat for the rest of my life.

Sam and I went to Laurelhurst Park, to which I had never gone. It is breathtaking. I say "breathtaking" here because it physically took away my breath on several counts, and that was a little tough for my lungs. But when they recovered, and then breathed in really deep, they joined with my nose in deciding that this Portland air is, for sure, the best air in the whole of the universe. I couldn't believe how good it smelled, in the rain. Likewise, the rain SOUNDED good, pounding on the leaves and slapping against the dirt. And you know how ducks LOVE that shit. And you know how I love ducks. There were bookoo ducks in the rain yesterday. And bookoo love.

Powells in the rain is the best, warmest place, and it feels like Portland, and in one thousand and one ways that feel Right with a capital R.

Before that we were driving through forests and past junque shops and Tie-Dye stands to get to the incomparable Oregon Coast. Above all, this is fun because my dog loves the beach more than I have ever seen any living organism ever more vehemently love any one thing. That just brings me joy to witness. Then there's that song by Le Ann Womack (I think) that goes, "I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean." I do, Le Ann. Very small.

She should know, too, that even without any kind of music or prompting or partner, at the beach, and anywhere else I should find myself emphatic and alone, I ALWAYS dance. I never sit it out. I am quite obviously good at following the advice of country song lyrics.

not very fun, but pretty relaxed.

2009-07-04T15:21:00.004-05:00

Man. It is going to be preeetttty hard to pull myself out of this sleeping-all-day-reading-when-I-wake-up-falling-back-asleep-eating-unhealthy-food-exclusively rut I have fallen into. It's pretty comfortable, honestly. I could do this for a couple of weeks, at least. It's a pretty unattractive state to be in, I guess. I just lie here getting fat, finding out about the history of handwriting and getting lost in Haruki Murakami novels. It's the life.

Generally, I love the Fourth of July. Last year I was already knee-deep into Institute, getting absolutely no sleep and working my fucking ass off every single day. On the Fourth of July last year I went with Leah and Sean to Whole Foods and then we lay on a bit of grimy grass and watched so-so fireworks, but so enjoyed just being out of the penitentiary that was the ASU dormatory.

I like this stupid little shitty little country called America. It's full of my favorite people! (WARNING: PREACHY LIBERALIST ANGLE ALERT!!!!) But I do think that today is one of those days that we should take to remember that everything we love in this country was built on the backs of slaves, immigrants, and the oppressed. I hold that reality particularly heavy in my heart every July 4th. And then... celebrate how far we have come, and remember how much farther we have to go.

Today has been awesome, as far as Fourth of Julys go. I spent the morning reading in bed and letting the sky get nice and warm, listening to Dvorak (classy or elitist?). Then Alexis, Foofy, Mom and I went for a lazy long walk through the ravine by our house (Foofy wasn't lazy). My glasses are broken beyond repair, and watching the world pass by me as a blur has cast it in a new light. I can't see anything for sure, but I can imagine how things look, and sometimes -- often -- my imagination is way more interesting than reality. For example, I fashioned a mushroom growing on a log into a little naked pixie sprawled out in the sun. Awesome. Way more erotic.

Alexis and I turned on the sprinklers and ran through them. That used to be fun. I don't quite remember why. Then we ate popsicles and played Mario Kart for the Wii for like two hours. Then Quiddler in the sun and cut up a watermelon. Tonight: corn on the cob with butter and potato salad and an overpowering smell of meat. Every year my dad buys the world's most excessive box of boring-legal fireworks from Fred Meyers, and then he only lights like half of them, so we have this bordering-on-comically large bucket of fireworks just chilling out in our wine cellar dating back as far as I can remember. Generally, we all sit in the front yard and Dad sets off the little fireworks on a plank and shouts unnecessary warnings of "Stand Back! Danger!" And we all drink beer.

There's a threateningly sad air draping my family lately. I want to see my mom laugh that big chest laugh she has at least once tonight.

I just spent my last two weeks with James, maybe forever. In Portland this meant swimming in natural bodies of water, eating blueberries in Gabriel Park and playing frisbee (I know you thought you would never see the day when I would play frisbee, so just to return your mind's eye to normal, I concede that the me-plus-frisbee phase of my life lasted appoximately five minutes before I decided to sit it out), Mario Party, downtown Portland and every kitschy little hipster vegan brunch joint we could squeeze in, and a lot of time with the Johnson family. In Colorado it meant unbelievably beautiful mountain towns (see photo at right: there were about six people total who lived in this town, and it was comprised of a tiny, faded post office, a bakery that still left bread outside, a church built in the late 1800s, a babbling brook, and a cafe where the menu boasted ONLY quinoa burritos, butternut squash soup and cherry-rhubarb turnovers), vegan fried food that made me unbelievably happy and simultaneously sick as fuck, dinner parties, guitar on back patios with buzzing mosquitos, ice cream inside while watching the hot rain and spending the day at the Museum of Science and Nature in Denver. General summer activities. It was a very full two weeks, that's for sure.

About every two seconds I catch my breath and say (often enough out loud), "Jesus fucking Christ, what a year it has been." This is the first time anything has slowed down enough for me to reflect, and it's been almost too much to handle. Often I'll be lying in bed and I'll be struck in the middle of the forehead by the immensity of everything that has happened, and I'll suddenly find myself sobbing quietly, all by myself in my parent's old bedroom, like a little girl.

I keep clinging to this word, "Forward." Look forward, Sophie! But I guess for a week or so I can just be in this present, letting the past wash over my toes like the littlest waves at the beach. And I guess it's okay if it makes me cry sometimes, because no one has to know.

Unless I blog about it. Oops.

EDIT: Looking back at old entries about the Fourth of July, I must say that this year, the holiday truly did live up to my every expectation. Thanks, Dad.

Flux fun!

2009-06-21T00:06:00.002-05:00

We are traveling.

This was my third "road trip," and this time it was from New Orleans to Castle Rock, Colorado. More than I ever, this trip has made me understand what I mean when I say that I want to go on a road trip.

It is not that the road trips I've taken haven't sufficed. In order to get here by today (which we did so we could help Aileen move, and more on that in a moment) we had to do the 21-hour trek in two days and one night. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, I remember when Grant and his brother drove from Northfield, Minnesota to Walla Walla, Washington without ever stopping to sleep. There were moments of delusion, of course. But it was, at its heart, a road trip, which became readily apparent when Grant called and said, "You have to drive through Wyoming at night. You just... have to." Those are road trip words.

On this trip James has been pretty knocked over by the landscapes. "Isn't the sky HUGE in Texas? I mean... it is just... BIGGER here. It just is. Isn't it?" And he watched out the front window as if he was watching someone perform a magic trick, trying to get behind its secret. And then in New Mexico, "Wow, it's really beautiful." "Wow, the sky." "Oh my god, look at the landscape here. It's so beautiful." And it would be beautiful -- rocks or fields or tumbleweeds pushed up against live plants pushed up against antelopes. The sky certainly did things that skies will only do on road trips -- it unfolded and changed colors and blew blackbirds around like they were bits of chewed up paper. This is the part of a road trip you can enjoy from the comfort of your car window, finding general images to hang up along the inside of your mind and attach to words like "New Mexico countryside," or "Louisiana bayou."

This works for me, and it is the only version of the road trip I have ever known. But there was this one point in which we stopped in this little town in Texas (whose name I can't remember, so don't ask), where everything was rusting or falling apart; where the paint was peeling from the old signs and barns; where the backs were torn off of saloons and shops, and construction projects lay abandoned or in wait; and THERE I remembered the real reason why road trips appeal to me.

In Walla Walla, my freshman year of college, Alan and Mac and Cat and Kuzo and I piled into this red Subaru and started driving east, with the only requirement of the trip being that we had to stop in every single town we passed on the highway. And although we traveled for three days, we BARELY made it into Idaho. Still, the trip was immortalized, and we talked about it the way other people talk about scandalous frat parties, recounting every little restaurant we ate fried food in, and every time we met someone who told us a story about the history of the place we were standing in.

I love poking around those little towns looking for clues about what used to be there, or what remains there. I love rust. I love the photographs you find left on those walls, or the footprints cemented into the sidewalks. I can't quite explain in mere English words how much I love small-town public libraries (it's practically a sickness). This, then, is what I want to someday get out of my All-American Road Trip. I want to spend the whole summer on the road, stopping a downright obnoxious amount to explore the back roads.

The idea is not remotely unique. I know that people fantasize about taking that kind of trip all the time. But too often I think we get too preoccupied with The Next Thing, trying to find the quickest way to get from Point A to Point B, without stopping, talking, waiting, breathing, or exploring. So someday that's what I want. And I don't care what the cost of gas is.

--

Colorado is very high up. It's funny, because I think I can actually feel the altitude change, which people say that you can, but I have generally not believed. I am a sucker for the placebo effect. If you tell me I should be feeling something, I assume that I am feeling it. Oh, so THIS is what love is! Oh, I am terribly cold on a hot day, so I SURELY have a fever! And so on and so forth. Last time I was in Colorado I was like, "I am POSITIVE that I feel this altitude thing. Oh man. It is making me feel GROSS." But then I walked away and decided that it was all in my head; that someone had told me I might feel the altitude, and so I'd assumed I had. But THIS time, I don't know, I just have a more prominent headache/ light-headedness that I am relatively certain I am not making up. James just told me that the first time I have a beer up here I am going to feel it. Which I completely believe because I always feel it when I have a beer. I have an exceptionally low alcohol tolerance.

Colorado is very high up and it is very much like Oregon in a lot of ways. For one thing, there are some non-deciduous trees, which, let me tell you, is a little mind-blowing after living in what is essentially a tropical rainforest. Also, there is a wider selection of health food at the supermarket, and a lot more liberal bumper stickers and hipster glasses here and there, and people know what "vegan" means, and there are definitely MOUNTAINS. It's weird to be in a place that is not Portland after having not been in Portland for a long time and feel like I am in Portland. I recognize that that does not make a lot of sense. You may have to experience it for yourself.

We helped Aileen move today, which I was awfully bitchy about. I am not all that good at practical tasks such as moving. James, who has worked concrete before, can withstand enormous amounts of discomfort without ever whining about it. Here are examples:

James played a game of basketball at the JCC (which I happened to also be at) and this guy started to give him shit. Then there was like a little bit of a fight or something, and the guy elbowed James in the face. Then James started bleeding all over the fucking place. Then we looked at his mouth and realized THAT HE HAD BITTEN ALL THE WAY THROUGH HIS BOTTOM LIP. And there was very little whining.
James went camping in the woods. He got a tick in his leg. I will note that I had also gotten a tick in my stomach, but James had pulled it out pretty readily, so I didn't have to suffer all that much. James' tick got stuck in there, and then he got Lyme disease. And there was very little whining.
James was teaching fourth grade, because that is his job. He took his students to the park to play with them, and his head got caught on the lip of the monkey bars (or something) and it got gashed open and he was bleeding all over his shirt and soaked an entire shirt in blood and he had to get nine staples put in his head. And there was very little whining.

Well. I am not like that. I whined like crazy. OOOh menstrual cramps. OOOOh heavy kitchen stuff. OOOOOOOh altitude. I am just not cut out for any kind of job that might be of any actual use to anyone in life.

And so we stay here until Tuesday, then off to Portland. Wow. Portland. My heart gets dizzy when I think about going to Portland, the way you feel when you know you're going to see your long-distance boyfriend who you're still totally in love with. Maybe you and I could visit when I get there?

90 percent fun.

2009-06-14T16:27:00.002-05:00

So I got this e-mail today from Alex which said, "Why was the other day your funnest day ever?" And I realized that I had hastily posted a 100 percent fun blog post. I think part of me wanted to know if my blog would explode if it ever were to reach 100 percent. It didn't. Now we know! It was for science.

I mean, at the moment, I desperately felt 100 percent fun. But 100 percent fun is not achievable by merely a feeling. Here are few things that I might list as activities that could raise one from being a medium percentage of fun (say, 63 percent) to 100 percent fun in one fell swoop:

If you rounded up all the giraffes plus a few other African Savannah animals (choose between hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and zebra), brought them all into your back yard, and taught them all the words to "Parents Are People" for a big African Animal Sing-Along, that would be 100% fun.
If you rented out the biggest water park in the world and filled all the pools with different kinds of fizzy soda, then had a gigantic soda pool party, complete with a clown, that would be 100% fun.
If you painted big smiley faces (approximately 25 feet in diameter each) all over the state penitentiary, then threw scented water balloons at the convicts on the yard to make them giggle, that would be 100% fun.

I didn't do any of those things, even a little bit. But I did have a bit of an end-of-the-movie climactic moment on Friday, and it felt AWESOME.

First, let me tell you that I have spent the last two weeks interviewing for jobs and sending off 30 or 40 resumes and cover letters. It's actually pretty demoralizing, as I'm sure huge unemployed chunks of America have come to realize in the last few months. I'd go through these big long interview processes, sometimes for jobs I didn't even want, only to hear principals tell me that they didn't have a job in my highly qualified area at the time. By Friday, I was weary. I had thrown a big dinner at my house for 2009 Corps Members and felt unqualified to tell them anything -- I mean, certainly they didn't want to end up like me, one of the last two '08 CMs without a school placement for next year. Cooking had ended up being stressful and not fun because I had to intersperse prepping the meal with working sessions at Tulane for Induction. I made portabello grillades, cheeze grits, herbed biscuits, French toast, Bloody Marys, and sweet tea, but I couldn't help but feel like my guests weren't fully satisfied with the meal... you know how these things go. It just wasn't perfect. And then finally on Friday, I kind of lost it a little bit, right in front of a TFA staff member. She said, "Aren't you EXCITED about your interview at Langston Hughes?" I was NOT excited. I was tired. I was done interviewing. I kind of just wanted a massage and an iced tea. So I got a little teary -- and in professional dress no less -- to the extent that I think I made that poor woman feel kind of bad. It's not her fault that I can't find myself a freaking job.

I worked all Friday. I was tired and hungry and hot and not on bike (as I prefer to be) for the entire day. Then I drove two other Corps Members (first years with the same placement as I have) to Langston Hughes for our interview. It was supposed to start at 4:30; it was so crowded and busy that I didn't get in there until 6.

But when I walked into the room and sat down for the interview, something about it felt different than the other interviews I had done. It felt like it fit. I felt safe and in control; the process felt conversational and real. When I got back to Tulane, two more awesome things happened: 1. TFA gave us Mexican food, which is exactly the kind of food I was craving in that moment; and 2. Hordes of people came up and started praising Avery.

I know I told you Avery made 5 years of growth in reading this year (WOOOOO!). Well, that's actually a pretty significantly significant gain for him. I spoke at Induction this year about his progress, and then the whole Corps watched a video of Avery reading with me -- a book on a 2nd grade level, with tough words like "birthday." He nailed the reading. Then he talked about how he'd graduated and how he was getting a job, and he was incredible. I guess he was more incredible than I had even realized, because I've never had more people approach me in my life than I had approach me on Friday night. I called him and said, "Hey guess what? You just changed the lives of more than 250 people." And Avery said, "That's nice. Can we go to Wal Mart?"

So I was feeling pretty good. I felt proud. The year, for all its disasters and missteps, had been a success, if just for Avery's reading progress. Also I was eating a burrito.

AND THEN Langston Hughes called me (not the poet; the charter school), and like a cheesy teen movie script, offered me a job teaching second grade.

So I was dancing on clouds, essentially, and came home feeling 100% fun. Also I had on a really hot dress so I felt both fun AND pretty.

I have been taking advantage of the calm, and have decided that there does not necessarily have to be a storm to follow it. We leave on Wednesday for Colorado. James is moving to Greece, which has not really cemented itself in my mind yet, but has been a reality since I met him, so maybe that has taken some of the edge off. Marianne is moving to San Francisco in a few weeks. Caitlin and Avery (non-student Avery) have less than a month left in the Big Easy, before they trek up the east coast in their own directions. And as I make my way back to New Orleans in late July, I'll be moving to a new house across town, with Ariana and Leah in Mid-City, with lots of bikes and looottts of cooking supplies. A lot of things are changing. My own personal history has taught me that change is uncomfortable but generally positive. I had a teacher in high school who told me that being liberal just means being able to embrace change. Well, I have listed myself as "Very Liberal" on Facebook; so bring it on.

Yesterday I woke up at 7 a.m. and cleaned the house, scrubbing the corners and meditating on the address which has been the first place I've really made my own home out of, from scratch, and without anyone else's help. I rode my bike to Octavia Books to buy my dad a Fathers' Day present, and passed a car wreck on the way. I stopped and kicked my bike to the side of the road. "What can I do to help?" Silence. It was a kind of a major wreck. "Have you called someone to help you? Would you like me to call?" Silence. Angry silence. As if I was intruding on something that did not belong to me. Finally, "No, it's fine. We're fine." And I said, "I promise it's going to be okay." But of course that probably meant nothing to them in that moment.

I bought fresh gingerbread and iced tea at the Laurel Street Bakery, where there was no air conditioning, and sat outside doing the crossword and rubbing ice on my legs. I lingered and watched people walking their dogs, trying to remember the names for the bright pink flowers.

Then I rode my bike to see Caitlin for what I think I know in my heart might be the last time. We had Cuban food at a CBD fancy restaurant, and I ordered a Mojito (the best one I've ever consumed). Then we bought beers and got tipsy-to-drunk on the Riverwalk. This guy passed by and pointed at Caitlin and shouted, "Girl, you so fine you make MEDICINE sick!" We didn't get it. Then he said, "That's real talk." Still didn't get it. But that's New Orleans.

Spent the next several hours drinking more and playing cards. And I rode my bike home across town in the dark without my glasses. I felt weirdly safe and protected in maybe a sort of false way. I felt lucky. I felt very, very alive.

So maybe these things do not make me 100% fun, but I'll settle at 90. I am enjoying my life, and exploring everything. I am saying "yes" a lot. I am looking forward, for a change.

See you in Oregon!

100 percent fun!

2009-06-12T20:54:00.001-05:00

I would be surprised if I found out I wasn't the happiest person in the world right now.

61 percent fun.

2009-06-03T16:14:00.001-05:00

Still no Snowball. Isn't there ANYONE out there who will go and get a Snowball with me? A lonely Snowball just doesn't sound that good.

81 percent fun!

2009-06-01T08:45:00.003-05:00

Alexis is in town. It's a casual visit; she's here with her new boyfriend, who is named Sam (hereafter referred to as "SamJam"). He is a very "cool" person. The kind of cool that you write about in "Nylon" magazine (or maybe "Nylon: Guys" magazine)... he plays music and sings in a growly loud voice; he makes paintings on heavy white paper with ink and watercolors; he has very shiny hair. Yesterday we went to the swamp and it was 95 degrees. It was too hot to be walking. I get this overwhelming feeling of guilt when I suggest activities which do not thrill the entire group. But the sky was VERY blue, and we ultimately saw three alligators, which is not an all-time high, but is not the shabbiest possibility, either.

Anyway, having Alexis here adds a nice symmetry to the year. Because it was about a year ago that we piled six suitcases, eight large boxes, a record player, a typewriter, a tube of college-dorm-era wall posters, a doomed cooler of camping foods, an REI tent, two lacrosse sticks, and two sleeping bags into DARYL -- the stick-shift green Volvo wagon who would, at her fateful end, flip upside down over the hill in Nebraska on that very trip. After spending a solid week assembling data which told me that Avery grew 5 years in reading in one year, and that my five Life Skills students had more than 50 percent average growth in objective mastery for their class; and that Derren had over 90% IEP mastery in a year and can now finally move into the 11th grade with all the appropriate Carnegie units in place, I wish there was a bar graph or Microsoft Excel Document I could use to measure the amount that Alexis and I have grown in the past year.

She and SamJam will help me clean out my classroom today. The bulk of this work has been done, and a neat little box of binders and graphic organizers and flash cards and fake money is sitting in the trunk of my car waiting for whatever job I end up getting next year. But there are still trash bags to move out and shelves to push around and a big old floor to sweep... it's just not done yet. It may never get done.

My goal for today is to get a Snow Ball. I feel like I've been sitting around for ages waiting for an excuse to get a Snow Ball, and the truth is that the main excuse to get a Snow Ball is being alive and having a functional tongue. Plus, there's a lot to celebrate. Today we're going to get one of those, and then we're going to go to City Park and eat on the lawn and explore the NOMA. SamJam is all about the art museum. Thank goodness, because he HATES Mario Party -- a huge blight on his otherwise clean record.

On Friday I went to a party with James where there were a lot of second year Corps Members. They all looked entirely excited, exhausted, and terrified. I think it was a goodbye party. James said that he said lots of casual goodbyes there, but to try to really know what "goodbye" meant in that moment was much too overwhelming. I think that was what it was like to leave Whitman. Life has so far been a series of events culminating in endings which feel like standing on the edge of a cliff, and the whole world lies there, ready. I guess Teach for America is just another one.

Lately I have been verrrrrryyyy reflective. That's pretty masturbatory, as far as blog entries go. I am supposed to focus on concrete facts and scientific evidence about what's going on in New Orleans. Well.

There was a potluck at Nady's house last week. Alex used to talk about walking into adults' houses and wanting that for himself, and I didn't ever really understand it. Then I walked into Nady's house and suddenly that particular longing became clear. The house was small and tidy, with minimal clutter, considering all the kitschy featurettes it included. There were little craft birds hiding all over the place, and a wooden table Nady tiled herself, and a big couch with a pretty old sheet on it (because they have dogs), and a compact music studio with a keyboard and a mixing board and amplifiers and all the other equipment you would need for that sort of thing. And in the back she and her boyfriend planted herbs and vegetables and marigolds; he resurrected the fallen fence and she watered the new green plants. I wanted it BAD. James bought me an orchid and I know I'm going to accidentally kill it -- just like I killed the star flowers and the herb garden from my big fall plans.

I know there is a mouse in my bookshelf. I thought the mice were in the kitchen, because they ate through a loaf of my bread and then they pooped in my frying pan. Well, maybe they WERE in the kitchen, but then they moved to where they felt it was safer -- the bookshelf in my room where I keep my bird seed and cat food. Here are two pieces of evidence which lend themselves to the idea that there are mice in my bookshelf: 1. My cat sits and stares at the bookshelf for like hours on end and can't be distracted by anything, not even fake mice, not even eggnog. 2. I just saw a mouse. It was adorable. It was just standing there on my books. I thought, "I want to catch that mouse." But I should have known that Satchmo is infinitely more agile and quick than I could ever hope to be and he has been trying to catch these mice for the last six days. So there was no way I was going to catch this guy. He bolted into some crevice in the wall and now he is gone. Leah gave me some humane mouse traps and I put one on the shelf where I saw that mouse, and I suppose it's just a matter of time before I catch him and put him outside. I look forward to this event with all my heart.

Furthermore, there are all manners of wildlife outside my window where I put the bird feeder. I had a colony of sparrows yesterday (you think I am exaggerating, but there were at least two dozen of them, and they all wore hats which said "Sparrow Colony"); there were twin male cardinals (read: RED) two days ago; and today I have morning doves which are cooing in this low, calming whistling way that makes me kind of want to date them (?) (.).

I am in a bit of a musical rut right now. Are there new albums out there I'm not paying attention to?

80 percent fun!

2009-05-21T13:44:00.005-05:00

My students have graduated. Avery graduated, at least, and a handful of others who tearfully received their passing GEE test scores two weeks ago and will finally get that photograph to put on their fridge of cap, gown, smile, and the symbol of "COMPLETION."

Elsewhere in the universe, Ariana Rampy graduated from Whitman College, after a slew of majors, a trek across Europe, x amount of starring roles in Harper Joy theatrical productions, and x-squared amount of all-nighters. Aileen Hamilton, too, from University of Colorado (Denver?), with a degree like Ari's in art history, and a big white canvas in front of her to paint something wild and new and original. And then roughly a week and a half ago we "matriculated" the second-year Corps members, and put their accomplishments in numbers, quantifying everything that can't be quantified, and pushed forward against the tremendous current.

I feel like I should write a Baz-Luhrman-Sunscreen speech with some haste. One year after I jumped into the ocean, I find myself with an arsenal of advice. But then, whenever has that not been true?

There are just a few things I am absolutely sure about. Most of the important things are still kind of up in the air, but you've got to start somewhere, and I can think of just a handful of tiny shreds which are Absolute Truths -- things I would have liked to have known last year, or in 2004, or whenever it was I decided to be independent 4Realz. In no order: Send birthday cards; send valentines; subscribe to magazines; keep one bottle of nice wine in the house; keep fresh flowers around as much as possible; know the single place in the universe you love to read by yourself the most (your bed doesn't count); do something really self-centered every once in a while (mani-pedis and excessive amounts of dulce de leche come to mind... preferably in conjunction); read the newspaper; spend a lot of money on dinner sometimes; complain out loud about 20% of the amount you would LIKE to complain out loud; learn to Do It Yourself (knit, fix your car, make seitan from scratch, paint interiors or exteriors or on wooden surfaces, etc.).

Now. After this year, I THINK this next one is true. But you know, this is the kind of statement I make and then less than a year later look back at and laugh out loud at because I was so many different kinds of wrong. I guess that really, everything is so complicated that something like the following statement is probably PARTIALLY true, or must be true for some portion of someone's life. Maybe it is only true for Sophie Johnson in the year 2009. Maybe it's not even true then. But. I think that you are supposed to live the things you believe. At least, I think that when you do that, you like yourself a whole lot more, and that makes you generally a lot more pleasant to be around. It is a very difficult thing to do, and I never used to do it all. Except for that whole vegan thing. And even then... I have been a VERY sloppy vegan. I will say this: I am a whole lot calmer and more satisfied with being alive when I know I haven't been doing anything knowingly wrong, per se. I like riding my bike. I like eating good, local food. I like working my ass off and coming to school as prepared as humanly possible every day. I believe in it and it makes me feel good.

Surely this will not last. It is likely that in ten years I will buy a luxurious jacuzzi bath and seventeen thousand pounds of Godiva chocolates and hole myself up in selfish excess until I weigh a metric ton and my body is a gigantic prune.

Last weekened I got to volunteer at the Special Olympics. This was totally fantastic. Here is a list of things that are totally fantastic about the Special Olympics:

Everyone wins a medal and gets their picture taken and gets to stand on the winners' stand, and that feels GOOD. I think. I've never won anything where you get a medal and get to stand on a stand, but it looks like fun. It looks like it is nice to be celebrated. Why don't we generally celebrate each other more often?
Bocce ball. Who knew?
The athletes train all year and are REALLY GOOD at what they do and it's just fun to watch really good athletes compete at sports.
Free stuff abounds.
People are happy to be there, very accepting and warm and open, and morale is pretty high for the whole day.

More and more this year I have started to wonder what makes us fear or reject difference. I wonder about it in myself, too... why was I so secretly unhappy when I got assigned to teach Special Ed? I know that I had opportunities to volunteer at the Special Olympics in Oregon throughout my life -- why didn't I leap at them? How is it remotely okay that we continue to live in a society in which we keep trying to shove everything that doesn't fit into our stupid little "normalcy" box into corners and away from light? And why can people still say "retard" like it's a generally acceptable insult? All obvious questions. Still, no answers.

For my birthday I had the greatest pies I've had since my mom introduced me to strawberry rhubarb and I asked seriously if it would ever be legal to marry a baked good. Leah made this mango kiwi thing which is absolutely one day going to be in a famous cookbook; Hannah did some savory vegan concoctions which seemed too good to be true; James made his first pie from scratch and it was alarmingly successful. This birthday I thought, "My. I am truly surrounded by multitalented, positive people, who are ridiculously unpretentious." I felt kind of humbled by that.

May weather in New Orleans is hot, rainy, gray, muggy, aggressive, biodiverse. There are more cockroaches and mice in my room than ever before. Outside, trees are rotting and bugs and bees and birds I had not previously acknowledged the existence of are wandering around, flitting chaotically, finding shelter when the thunderstorms are all-encompassing. Life seems to be oozing. That is the only appropriate word. As I walked down the street a week ago I practically tripped over a butterfly the size and color of a jar of blueberry jam.

The summer schedule looks like this, folks: I'll be in New Orleans until June 17thish, then driving to Colorado, then into Portland on June 25, then back to the Big Easy on July 22.

Let's hope by then I have a job again.

Fun things recently have included: A lot of really amazing cooking; volunteering all day at the New Orleans Veggie Fest, where Leah sold her baked goods and I demo-ed vegan cheese from Scotland; people pinning dollah bills to my dress in the rain on May 17; riding 16 miles on my bike for no reason in one day; new restaurants (and old ones); going to the Free Palestine lecture at UNO and learning all about the atrocious ways of the world; making clocks from empty pizza boxes and selling them on Etsy; a deluge of Crafternoonz and Veganedsays with Hannah and Leah; breakfast with James over and over again and practically beating the Crossword every time; reading like fucking crazy; listening to that rain break glass outside; my students moving forward, meaning the world to me. To name a few.

FUN!

homeostasis

2009-05-13T16:34:00.004-05:00

At our last (LAST?) PTP session of the year Monday, we were supposed to write reflections. That's rather unsurprising. Last Events usually involve some kind of reflection. I wonder what about us makes us want to look back so much, and forward so rarely, (oh, and what about that Present Tense everyone is always talking about?), but human beings LOVE nostalgia, that's for sure. I think we tend to look back at things in black and white instead of shades of gray -- "That hike was miserable;" "That relationship was perfect in every way;" and not, "That birthday party seemed a little long but I decorated a nice paper mache plate and felt very accomplished in that."

So we were supposed to answer any number of generic questions: "What are two things you are proud of?" "What are two things you would have changed about your first year teaching?" "What have you learned about yourself?" And then we were supposed to share.

So I picked to share on that last one. What have I learned about myself?

In Chicago, eons ago, my answer to this question was:
"I have learned how to be okay."

FALSE. I must have felt pretty good about myself in that moment. Oh, Sophie, you are going to be non-crazy, homeostatic, and OKAY for the rest of your life. Congratulations, 19-year-old self! You WON! You finished growing up.

Last summer, one time, Alex didn't call me back for like a day, and I decided that he had jumped off a cliff with another woman and that I would never hear from him ever again, and I threw up all over the floor in my dorm room while sobbing like I HAD CATEGORICALLY LOST MY MIND. I can't believe Marianne still wanted to live with me after that.

This was a complicated situation, of course. As always, as anyone, I was trying to control something in my life because everything else was a big whirlwind. More than usual, existence had become a proverbial dust storm of four-hour-sleep nights padded with COMPUTERLABCOMPUTERLABCOMPUTERLAB and nightmares about car wrecks and bad food and 120-degree dry heat and far-away-from-everything-that-meant-anything-to-me-ness. I very rarely got very deep under my own skin because there was too freaking much going on on the surface, but when I did, it was uuuugly.

Excuses, excuses. The point is, I was NUTS, and totally, completely, utterly, indescribably not okay. Oops.

Now I can look back at that like a nice little closed book of events. Water-logged, disheveled, but closed, and gone, and done with. And I look back at all that and say, "That was miserable." Of course, there must have been more to it than that.

I assume the reason we see everything in black and white and not shades of gray is because if we didn't, everything would be waaaay too overwhelming, and we don't have the capacity for that what with our 20% functional brain use. I'm still pretty embedded in My First Year Of New Orleans to Look Back yet, but that's what we were supposed to do on Monday.

So I wrote,

"I learned I didn't have as thick a skin as I thought."

To me, this was an enormous revelation. Let me just say, I used to think I was about the strongest, toughest human being in the whole world. I used to think that if you shot me with a bullet, it would bounce right off, because THAT'S HOW FUCKING THICK my outer layer was.

I used to say things like, "Whatever, I'm used to it;" and "I'm not a crier." In my mind, this was a huge selling point to my person.

Well our seminar leader started LAUGHING.

"Really? You thought you had a thick skin? You are the biggest softy I think I have ever met. And it was clear the moment you walked in here."

Flinch. Really? No Rambo suit? No bullet-proof vest? I was feeling peeved, but didn't mention it because I didn't want to get into an argument.

Soft, huh? Did I not get punched in the face and bleed all over the GEE tests in November? Did I not see someone get shot under stadium lights? Did I not get surplussed and unsurplussed and surplussed again? Did I not get peed on and shit on and menstruated on and otherwise bodily functioned on every day? And I'm still here, right? That's got to count for something.

But at some point, after brooding for a few hours and feeling bad about myself, I let that go and decided to adopt it. Okay. I'm soft. I'm a crier. I melt easily. I'm delicate. I can't really stand up to anyone. I was starting to come to terms with all this already, honestly. It was time for a full-fledged embrace.

Still, "still standing." Still standing. Kinda. Limping, maybe, or hobbling around on that decrepit bike that's gone through more than I have. And now I'm about to turn 23 and I have this feeling that maaaaaaybe I'm finally learning how to be okay. But I won't be so presumptuous again, like in Chicago. At least I can sleep without "Gilmore Girls" now, and I can (sometimes) kill my own cockroach (although, anecdote: last night I cut a termite in half because I was mad at it for creeping over my papers, and the front half stayed alive and the back half died, and then I had to smash in its brain, and I cried because I felt bad for it, and then I felt pathetic, and then I ate a popsicle).

Instead of feeling full like I did leaving Chicago -- a false feeling, I now realize, and fleeting -- I feel half-empty. I feel like there is still a lot of space for a lot more STUFF. And one day (one can hope) I'll be able to look someone in the face and say all the things I really need to say.

68 percent fun!

2009-05-03T21:06:00.003-05:00

I used to update every day about how much fun I was. I don't know how I was measuring it. I felt like I was walking around with, like, a speedometer strapped to my belly or something, and I'd check it at the end of the day and report back to you. Now that I have distanced myself (at large, for better or worse) from the blogosphere, I wonder if it makes me more or less fun. You'd automatically think more, because being off the Internet means I'm out, probing the world and enjoying existence. But that's actually wrong; I've just started pouring myself into my job kinda HELLA.

Which feels at times a little meaningless because last Friday I got surplussed for next year. That basically just means I won't be at my school next year because they don't have the budget to pay for me anymore. Oh, the economy. Yes, it's a little crushing. Luckily, I don't have to think about it just now; I can think about tomorrow or the day after tomorrow and not worry about the fact that all these relationships I spent the whole year painstakingly building must be shelved in July and I'll have to start from scratch; a whole new series of failings and successes that I can't even imagine right now.

Still, I feel like I am pretty fun. This weekend I took my students SCUBA diving with Mr. D, which was extraordinary. Before you start to flip out (you are inevitably already flipping out), you should know that we did this in a pool, and not in the Atlantic Ocean. I thought that sounded kind of lame, too, until I DID IT, and it was AWESOME. You sink to the bottom of a pool and you can BREATHE UNDERWATER. Regardless of my notorious fear of fish, I think I would like to one day ACTUALLY SCUBA dive in a real life ocean. And see some real life sea creatures, and touch some real life kelp.

And then after that Leah and I rode bikes in the Cinco de Mayo parade, which was quintessentially New Orleans (Leah: "Only in New Orleans would it be so acceptable to dress up like Mexicans and hand out Doritos on the streets"). This was an EXHAUSTING but brilliant Saturday, all in all. My bike, which I have been practically abusing with the amount I am riding it, is now decorated in enormous red and white plastic dahlias; lilies; garlands. It's a good look for ole Kim. In the parade we strapped a gigantic paper mache boro head to my handlebars, which was rough for my balance, but awesome in every other respect. It was a fringe parade, and Antonio danced around like an ecstatic firefly, handing people fresh jalapenos, dancing with tourists and strangling trees with beads. There was a pinata; a hat dance; the taco truck; "Tequila!"; and plenty of almost-inappropriate jokes about swine flu.

This, among other things, brought me joy this weekend. I know that I am not a grown up yet solely because I keep feeling like I am a grown up. That feeling is familiar; I assume when I am ACTUALLY a grown up I will quit feeling like I am one and will start paying taxes and discussing A27 politics more than I do now.

James came over and killed the most offensive of the cockroaches (it is not an exaggeration to say that it was larger than a small bird), and the rest were offed unceremoniously with a can of Raid sprayed strategically in cracks and around trash cans. Satchmo is really bored of cockroaches now and has moved onto all things bigger and better. For example, three days ago he chased a small mouse into my bed. I thought this was adorable; James thought it was evidence that my house needed to be immediately vacated. Whatever; I caught it and took it outside and hoped Satchmo hadn't stored a pile of its dead relatives somewhere in my closet. I can't fault New Orleans for being a place where so many organisms desire to just LIVE. I saw a kind of flower today that was a color of hot pink I had previously thought was invented by Mattel solely for Barbie; I never imagined it would occur in nature.

I am really trying to stop being a crier. I cry when I watch those AT&T commercials where the girl and the boy get separated and the boy sends all those iPhone messages or whatever... no seriously, I tear up BAD. I'm trying to stop doing this. I want to be way more tough. Maybe if I was a little bit better at video games.

Sunday night and I'm ready. I'm wrapping my arms around May and welcoming the summer as it topples on us all at once.

open letters.

2009-04-27T23:00:00.002-05:00

Dear Cockroaches:

This is just not going to work. I understand why you thought it was, what with my excessive love letters to New Orleans and my years upon years of veganism and my scheduled class trip to the Insectarium. You thought we could live in peace together, and I don't blame you for that. It almost might have been possible at one point in time, too. But if you had wanted to have a good coexistance, here are some choices you should NOT have made:

You should have chosen to NOT grow to be the size of mice. I mean, really. Bugs?! The size of MICE?!?! That is not supposed to be a thing. You are not supposed to do that. You are supposed to stay the size of bugs, like all the rest of the bugs do, and just chill the fuck out. But no. You all go off ballooning to unprecedented lengths and widths and then you scuttle about and you have little hairs on your legs and it is not attractive AT ALL.
You should have persuaded the cockroach who just FELL FROM THE CEILING ONTO MY FACE to have NOT climbed the ceiling. You KNOW your feet are notoriously slick. When he climbed up onto the ceiling, you should have ALL BEEN ALREADY AWARE that he was going to fall onto my face, and you should have TOLD HIM not to climb up there in the first place. Poor choices, gentlemen.
Likewise, you should have told your comrade who thought it wise to chill out in the cat food bag all day that when he jumped out of the bag, he should try NOT to jump onto my leg and NOT to climb up to my knees.
And for the love of God, fellows, STOP EATING MY FOOD! It's MINE. That is what the garbage is for. When I leave a nice biscuit on a plate on the stove to eat when I get home from work, I want to be able to come home from work and pick up the biscuit and put it in my mouth without also putting a cockroach in my mouth. Which is what I did today. And I'm sure it wasn't pleasant for that cockroach, either. That's what greed will get you, cockroach. Learn your place.
When you look at me with your freaky, hard-shell-eye-faces, please stop giving me looks that say, "I am going to pounce on you and eat you," or, alternately, "I am right now laying hundreds of eggs all over your house." These are not particularly alluring statements to make with your eyes, and they make me scared.

Maybe I should have told you sooner that there were rules. I believed that they could go unwritten. But regardless, a line has been crossed, and you are just going to have to leave. Please go out through the tiniest crack in the window I have left near my desk. If not, enjoy the debilitating roach spray I have spread across the floors and cracks of every part of my house. It smells dreadful, even to me.

It's not me, it's you. I am a pretty patient person. You are a disgusting insect with no evolutionary purpose. We are done here. Oh, and don't forget to give me back my black T-shirt.

Sincerely,
Sophie

Dear Dead and Rotten Tooth In My Mouth:

I am sorry I haven't had you removed yet. My health insurance does not cover dental. I noticed that yesterday you turned brown, and I'm sure that's very hard for you. I want to give you a hug, but it's rather difficult due to your present location.

I know it's a lot to ask, and I mostly just harass you by rubbing sugar and carbs into you, but would mind not causing the rest of my mouth to seize up in pain? Just because you're in a tough situation is no reason to be a bully.

Awesome! Talk to you tomorrow!

Love,
Sophie

50 percent fun!

2009-04-13T09:21:00.007-05:00

I swear, I have never gone camping so much in my entire life as I have this year. It's kind of interesting, considering that I have also never been so busy, or had so little time to go camping. I don't know that I even loved camping all that much as a child. Don't get me wrong, it certainly wasn't awful. Here are things that used to be awesome about camping:
1. S'Mores. Did you ever try to make S'Mores in your microwave? Because IT JUST WASN"T THE SAME, right? You needed to marshmallows to be perfectly seared on the outside from a camp fire. Tasting a little bit of pine on the skin of your marshmallow was actually the best part. To tell you the truth, I was one of those "just fucking burn it" marshmallow people. I liked them black. Preferably all the way to the middle.
2. My dog. Dogs think camping is THE BEST. They constantly run up to you with the face of a kid on Christmas: "WHY can't we do this EVERY DAY?" they say. And you say, "Because we have jobs and lives that aren't in the woods." Then the dog says, "What is a 'job?'" And then you throw the dog a stick and the dog LOVES IT.
3. Mom and Dad are way more likely to play games than they would be if they were not camping. And they'll even play games that are not even respectable games, such as "Run Through The Woods and Throw Pennies At Anything That Moves."
4. My sister and I were better imagineers than anyone else in the history of time. I'm convinced that this is true, and the moment we outgrew it I started to hate myself a little bit. We had an arsenal of make-believe games which we could only play when we were on vacation. The woods was a particularly good place to do this because there were way more things which could be other things. For example, fir trees could be secret government hide-outs; pine cones could be tiny bombs; pine NEEDLES could be secret recording devices planted by the Head of the Forest; bugs could be fairy messengers; etc. etc. etc.

Now I think what I love the most about camping is listening to the sounds outside when you're inside a tent. Two weeks ago, when we went camping in the thunderstorm, I had never heard anything so incredible as the thunder crashing like so many steel pots on the kitchen floor, and the rain pounding fists on the outside of my tent. Also, there is bird-watching, which I only get more emphatic about as I get older. Blame my mother.

Memorable camping trips through time:

1. The time we saw the diamond-back rattlesnake. I remember this with absolute clarity, unlike most of the memories from when I was seven. We had our bikes on this camping trip, and I had just evolved past training wheels. My parents made cocktails in the woods, which then seemed utterly normal, and now seems badass as fuck. We decided to all go on a hike as a family, which was actually not very common back then, because Alexis and I weren't yet old enough to appreciate hikes. I think to pass the time Allie and I probably sang very annoying songs very loudly and repetitively. Anyway, right around where this picture was taken, we started hearing this rattle -- and I was actually at the front of the hiking train, so I was the one who first saw the HUMONGOUS SNAKE slip across the trail. It appeared, at the time, big enough to entirely consume my family and still have room for dessert. Dad said, "Stay very still," and we all stood there in terror, acting like we weren't there. When I was seven, this was the closest I thought I would ever come to death. We retold the story over and over again, embellishing here and there so that it was clear that the rattlesnake was hungry, and had eaten human beings before. Now, in New Orleans, rattlesnakes, constrictors, and adders are commonplace in the swamp, and you just kind accept them as facts of life. Ah, how things have changed.

2. The time we had to camp on the beach and it was cold. This probably wasn't as bad as I remember it being. I remember being promised a beach camping trip, and picturing running in my bathing suit along the shore line. I remember picturing building a sand castle in my tent (bad idea, I now understand). But of course, that fantasy was doomed from the beginning, because my family is from OREGON, and we camp at the OREGON COAST, and even when you visit the beach in the middle of the hottest months of August you can't wear a bathing suit because it will STILL be too cold. Also, when you go camping on the beach, you do not actually go camping ON THE BEACH. You camp NEAR the beach, in the woods. So there's nothing really all that special about it, except that you can walk to the beach from your campsite. Well, la-di-da. Nothing about that seemed all that extraordinary to me. Shortly after we camped "on the beach," my grandmother died and my mom and her three sisters pooled the money Grandma Dorothy left and bought a beach house at Gleneden. Which is still, I think, one of the most perfect places in the universe. So now when we go to the beach and it is cold, we can go INSIDE a house afterwards, and watch Disney Channel.

3. The time Jessica, Ben, Katie, and I went on a road trip. This was after sophomore year of college, and I think we just decided it was about time we went on a road trip, because that is something that college students do. We camped every night, except one night when we got lost and almost hit a skunk and were traumatized, and thus ended up needing to sleep at a skeezy motel; and the night we spent with Ariana Rampy at her house in Nevada City. This trip had a lot going for it. For example, it included more than one camp site at which we were able to swim in a river or lake. There is really nothing I like more than swimming in natural bodies of water. Because I feel like I have already blogged about this, I will reference now the 2006 LiveJournal entry I made about this whole experience. It's a winning post, let me tell you. A selected quote is what you would like? Ok, I guess I can do that:

the ground of the lake felt really soft and unsettling, and there were tiny dead moths all over the surface. the swallows would swoop in and eat them off! jessica and ben and i fought with water. we dueled. jessica won the duel, ultimately. then jessica and i climbed over all this brush and hiked for a few miles along a highway that overlooked the lake. every few seconds we were required to stop and be spellbound. we held hands and talked about boys and boys and sometimes family. for dinner we had bread and cheese and tofurky and lettuce.

Young Sophie really did know how to describe her camping experiences. Never missed a beat, that one.

4. The time Mac and I went camping. Regardless of all the times I have told my boyfriends "Hey! We should go camping!" Mac was the only boy with whom that actually ever happened (and more than once, at that!). This one was kind of a doomed camping trip, though, because there was a massive thunder storm in a very flat wheat field, and we forgot while we were driving if you are supposed to stay inside a car if the car is the tallest thing in the vicinity and lightning is jutting into the ground in front of you. You are. But we forgot that, and we got out of the car and lay on the ground because we were pretty sure we had pretty strong chances of dying. In the end we found a lackluster campsite and played Scrabble inside a tent. My main memory of this adventure is being very in love with life, and finding a little snail on the ground with which I was completely enamored. I guess I was just in one of those annoying transcendentalist moods. Mac was always very accepting of those.

5. The time Alexis and I almost died because our car flipped over. But before that, there was camping. And the camping was fun. Presumably, had our car NOT flipped over, we would have continued to have a fun time camping in this R.E.I. tent Alexis bought and thought was the shit. It was small and kind of cozy to sleep in with another person, but it was also the shit. We had really good camping food too, like cereal, and dried fruit, and sandwich stuff, and all that stuff got totally ruined during that car accident. Too bad insurance doesn't cover your great camping food.

So that was camping in the past. This year we have already taken the kids camping several times, and it is going to happen again in less than a week. I am getting pretty OK at pitching a tent. It seemed like a Mensa puzzle when I was a kid, and it has only recently gotten to be something I've felt remotely competent at. Before I started going on the school camping trips I would always go camping with someone who knew how to pitch a tent; someone who in fact took great pride in their tent-pitching capabilities; and someone who required no help, except for when they would sometimes say something like, "Can you shake this rain fly out for me?" And I never had any qualms with that.

I guess I mention all this because right now I am in the world's most comfortable bed at my grandmother's house, a day after Easter and the week after three incredible Passover Seders, and my Spring Break is unfolding thusly: I will leave Southern California tomorrow in the earliest hours of morning, and get in a car with James Hamilton, and we will drive to the Ozarks and CAMP. Then I will get in a car with James Hamilton on Friday and drive to New Orleans, Louisiana, where I will get in a car with four bright-eyed high school students and drive to somewhere in Mississippi where we will pitch MORE tents and see MORE outdoor scenery. Can't I get some kind of badge for all this camping? Or, rather, shouldn't I write a letter to Whitman College telling them that I FINALLY meet the requirements of being a student there (a year too late)?

Camping is fun. Southern California is relaxing (hence the bed). But there's a quiet storm in the form of lesson plans and PAS work that I am always avoiding, and which is looking me square in the eyes saying, "Sophie, you're going to probably try to cut off your appendages if you don't begin to address me soon." So I can't fill up on fun. Not until the summer, when everything dies down, and I return to the Blogosphere to complain of boredom.

funbo.

2009-04-06T21:21:00.003-05:00

Wow. It's been an unbelievably long time. Unbelievably. You can't believe it.

New Orleans in spring is absolutely my favorite thing in the known universe; it can only be described as emulating pages and pages of graphic novels I only wish I could write, about the quirkiest, rosiest, most erratic and messy and totally breathtaking place in the universe. Vignettes really don't suffice (Man on one of those tall, tall bikes rides down the cobblestone paths under the highway while a bright white egret pecks at empty bags of seafood-flavored potato chips; little girl with pink and white paint on her face lounges on a rusty pink lawn chair under a tent with her family, who play in a jazz sextet all afternoon on one of those offshoot streets near Decatur; rotting house erupts in a rash of butter-yellow flowers all over the roof, like some giant angelic mythical beast sneezed there randomly or something). It's caterpillar season. The caterpillars are 1) abundant; 2) black and fuzzy; 3) ABUNDANT. And you know what comes next: butterfly season.

Ari visited x weeks ago. Enchanting, obviously. The best day, to paint it for you, was when we rode the ferry to Algiers in the 70-degree weather and found ourselves the only two people at the world's most freakishly adorable coffee shop, playing Scrabble with the old-fashioned board, and drinking sweet tea with lemon. There was also strawberry shortcake, car rides with the window down, tromping tramping trolloping through City Park, outlandish meals involving barbecue shrimp cheesecake, and of course everything else New Orleans has to offer. Ariana felt like a missing puzzle piece. As if she was saying, "I know you knew something was slightly amiss before. You felt a lack; well baby, I'm it."

And beyond that, work is exhausting and overwhelming and world is unraveling at approximately 250 million miles per hour. There are just too many festivals and friends and meals and causes and NOT ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY. So I decided to break my summer up between New Orleans and Colorado and Portland and to rest and relax and breathe and take each instant at a time, because I'm rotten at doing that in general. It's been A LOT of summers since I've given myself that kind of freedom.

I kind of know that attempting to blog about all this is not only futile, it's counterproductive because I tend to come off as really pretentious when I'm trying to get something really enormous across -- like a huge desire or a big love of some kind. But I wanted you to know that I have not disappeared off the face of the earth, and I'm not lying beneath some semi-moist rocks crying my eyes out and woeing about the state of the universe.

I'm going to Leah's seder on Thurdsay; Philip's seder on Wednesday; my grandmother's house on Friday; camping with James on Tuesday (SPRING BREAK WIN); camping with my students again on Friday... EXHAUSTING, RIGHT?! We actually went camping last weekend, and it was A THUNDERSTORM. That was about the most badass outdoorsy thing I've ever done, and I have to admit, I wasn't always the best sport about the six or ten feet of water inundating our camp site. But I did my best, and my students did their best, and in the end we got to see the historic Vicksburg, Mississippi, where integral battles of the Civil War were fought (cooler than I think I'm making it sound).

Hannah fixed my bike; I have been eating much more exotic kinds of pizza than I ever have before; Totally Vegan Potluck is the best thing that has ever happened to my palate; it is 70 degrees basically every day; we saw the Human Rights Film Festival; my heart has been shifting between bursting with joy and tucking in on itself from being overwhelmed. And sometimes it breaks. Because school is harder and harder every day and the realities of the education gap are clearer and clearer, and the shitty stuff is more and more obvious.

But as always, c'est la vie. ONWARD.

12 percent fun.

2009-03-08T18:18:00.002-05:00

Here are things that are happening RIGHT NOW:

1. I am listening to this song (it's called "Skylark" by Arrah and the Ferns). Lately I have been swallowing a lot of pop music. When I'm in the car, I find myself almost afraid to get through the dreamy folk James put on the perpetually-in-play mix CD he made me months ago. Sometimes I flip over to 97.1 ("We Play All The Hits: Not Just Some Of Them") hoping with every fiber of my being that T.I. or Taylor Swift will come on. I guess the fear is not really fear of music but fear of the inevitable thought processes that come with slow songs. (What am I doing? Where am I going? What does my heart want?) All uncomfortable questions, frankly.

2. I am drinking Abita Amber and eating a Hubig's Apple Pie. Recognize how Louisianan this digestive choice is: Both are quintessential products of this state, and points of somewhat unfounded pride. Subfacts: A. Pie is my favorite food. I like that I moved somewhere where there is a famous brand of individually-wrapped snack fruit pie. I think that's appropriate for me. B. I didn't have my first beer until December 2007. Since then, I think I can finally make appropriate choices concerning the kinds of beers I like -- and I'm picky. I don't like light beers because they're too fruity, and they remind me of what I think pee would taste like. I don't like dark beers because they're too heavy and if you drink them really fast you think you're going to vomit and sometimes you do. I like medium beers. These days I'm in an Abita Amber rut. It's relatively cheap and always satisfying. Still, drinking alone? Is this bad? Are you allowed to have a beer alone?

3. My dashboard says it's 76 degrees outside. It's night. Bugs are making noises and I'm wearing a sundress and my fan is buzzing and there are bats screeching in the big oak trees and you'd swear -- I mean, you would positively SWEAR -- that it was summer. Friends have been telling me that Portland is the most depressed city in the country because of the gray skies (I said it's probably more likely that Portland is the most depressed city because all the emo kids in the WHOLE COUNTRY decided to emigrate there in the last five years; and it's also so hard to find a job since all the baristas and gelato-servers nationwide have taken up residence near Alberta). If this is true, New Orleans must be up there around the happiest cities because the sky for the last few days has reinstated my appreciation for the color blue.

4. I'm at my desk. This only happens when I'm DESPERATELY frustrated at my workrate. Generally, I work in a whirlwind of papers, food, magazines, and half-done crosswords cloaking my bed. But tonight nothing is coming out. This is possibly (probably) because I am burned out. Here I am blogging. There is work to be done. But since I hit a rut, I figured blogging might make things feel a bit better. Already I am experiencing relief.

I have concerns about the direction my life is going. I am feeling less fun than ever. I feel like when I see people my unfunness translates over to them. I feel like I am a depressing presence, in other words. I am less fun around my students, and on the phone with my family, and in my day-to-day interactions. I am hitting that deep bottom again where I'm working the minimal amount (well... the minimal amount necessary to get everything done, that is) and then lying in bed watching YouTubed videos of Boy Meets World reruns and sleeping while clutching bags of popcorn and Parmesan cheese. I am deeply undatable right now. I am acting like a depressed person. I am not pleased with any of this progress. This weekend I spent all too many hours locked away behind my laptop, browsing useless "resources" and Facebook stalking. It is time to turn it around again.

So I am building a plan for this week. And here it goes.

TEN THINGS I WANT TO DO THIS WEEK FOR THE SAKE OF GENERAL MORALE:
1. Check out a book at the library to read.
2. Double the length of my daily run.
3. See "The Watchmen" at the Prytania, despite the reviews.
4. Go to live music at least one time.
5. Do some recreational writing, reading, and listening.
6. Finish that fucking song.
7. Get to work at least one day this week without driving my car.
8. Write all four of the letters I have been putting on my to-do list for 10,000 months.
9. Cook something new.
10. Find some really funny jokes.

I'll let you know how it goes. I know it's pretty basic stuff, but look at how sloppy I've gotten. 12 PERCENT FUN!?!?!?!? That's unacceptable. Sophie Johnson, it is time to get a fucking hold of yourself.

And now: Thoughts about the summer:

Dear World,
What are you doing this summer?

I am not sure what I am doing this summer and now it is March. I have all of two months to figure this quandary out. Soon it will be May and I'll by lying in bed wishing I had made this decision in March, so I ought to make this decision in March before it gets to be May.

My options are these:

Adventures.
Adventures in New Orleans, because I have to pay rent here anyway.
Adventures in Portland, because I have all kinds of family and friends there, although no possibility for work whatsoever.
Adventures at summer camp, with children, and arts and crafts. I am very good at lanyards. I am a Girl Scout. That is why.
Adventures in Greece (?!).
Adventures with you. Where are you going to be?

Love,
Sophie

There are honestly few highlights since the last time I wrote. The week of Mardi Gras I saw improv in New Orleans finally, and James' roommate CJ is one of (if not the) funniest people I have ever seen perform. Otherwise improv in New Orleans is a sad state of affairs. I made a pact with myself to start going to Ogden After Hours every week after seeing Modern Skirts on Thursday night and feeling everything inside me swell with happiness. I realized I liked vegetables more now than I have ever like vegetables in my young career. James took me to Bennachin's for dinner; potlucks and picnics and more food than I can possibly communicate at Leah's; a big curry dinner and Catchphrase with general friends. A lot of food and access to people I love a lot. There's some element missing, of course. But I suppose (perhaps) there always must be or there would be nothing to reach towards. Today I spent an hour composing an updated handwritten list of all the things I love. Isn't it marvellous when that list is freakishly long?

I think my advice to myself in this instant -- which may translate to you and may not -- is to breathe deeply and enjoy all there is to love about being alive. Too often I forget and get lost in needless frustration. How lucky we are to have... this life.

Is that cliche? Here is something not cliche:

Tapirs.

48 percent fun!

2009-02-24T07:12:00.004-06:00

It has certainly been a while. I have probably forgone my entire readership from lack of finding the time to be a regular updater. Oh well; a blog is a mostly narcissistic thing anyway, and heaven knows I'll come back and re-read this entry four or five times when I want to feel smug about my abilities to write about my own life.

Guess what today is?

MARDI GRAS.

I like that no one really told me anything about Mardi Gras, because I had this very distinct idea about what it would be like (so far) in my head, and (so far) I've been hundreds of kinds of wrong. Here is what I used to think about Mardi Gras:

Mardi Gras only works if you are waaaaaaassstted.
To get a strand of plastic beads, you will have to do battle.
There are TONS OF BOOBS EVERYWHERE during Mardi Gras.
People will vomit on your house during Mardi Gras.
Only tourists do Mardi Gras. Everyone else stays at home and eats a Po' Boy.

These conceptions are almost all false. I got accidentally drunk for one parade, but other than that I have seen them all while very sober, and they're much more enjoyable that way. The floats are beautiful. Mardi Gras is a very family-oriented event, much like everything else in New Orleans. Sometimes this is annoying, because children get way better throws from floats than I do. But I HAVE gotten about 500 or 600 strands of beads. I don't know what I'm going to do with all of them. You're not allowed to pick them up off the ground, by the way. And you're supposed to throw coins at the men who walk around with the flaming torches. And I think you can sometimes throw Mardi Gras beads BACK at people in the parade if you really love them. I don't know if that's an actual rule. I haven't seen a single boob (although there are definitely a lot of tourists, and I'd be lying if I tried to tell you that there weren't also a lot of drunk people).

I like Mardi Gras. That's the consensus so far. New Orleans makes me feel like I am always surrounded by my family. Sometimes even more than when I am ACTUALLY surrounded by my family. They should clearly move here...

I am not technically supposed to talk about the reversal of my job placement decision. But I will say this, for the record: My students wrote the district THE BEST LETTERS they have EVER written. When Ms. McGough slapped them down on my desk last week, one after another, I started tearing up immediately, and then moved to absolute awe. It was the best writing some of them had ever done.

And across the board, from all corners of the country, people I loved took FREAKING GOOD care of me. I started hearing from people I hadn't spoken to in months, who said they would do anything to help out. You know how in life we are in constant flux between expecting the worst from people and situations and knowing that ultimately human beings are, at their depths, good? Last week I was stunned, in a way I have never experienced before, by the deep kindness inherent in human nature. This is the kind of event in your life that makes you say, "Ever onward."

Then Kim came to visit.

Kim Neer, of all my friends, is the best combination of "fun" and "beautiful" that there is. Kim, for example, appreciates good poetry. She appreciates fine art and reads long essays and nonfiction books. She listens to understated jazz music. BUT ALSO, she is down with Top 40, and she DANCES, and she will undergo any adventure thrown in front of her. So highlights, then:

The swamp, and 150,000 alligators; and turtles, and BABY ALLIGATORS, and all sorts of swampy birds and green finger lizards, and NPR-recording swamp sounds.
Trouncing around the French Quarter and drinking in public. HOW ARE HURRICANES SO FREAKISHLY ALCOHOLIC? Even though we got the ones made with fresh fruit juice, and they tasted like something you'd drink in the morning alongside pancakes and eggs, we got druuunnnk on just half a hurricane each and had to eat emergency beniegts. Which I can never spell correctly.
Bloody Marys, and free Indian food from Hari Krishna.
A field trip with my life skills class to the IMax, and mall food shopping. Subthoughts on this: A) 3D movies about SCHOOLS OF FISH SURROUNDING YOUR BODY are TOTALLY FRIGHTENING and WHY WASN'T I TOLD THIS? B) Students don't really like field trips unless all their friends are on that field trip. C) Mall food is overpriced.
Oh my God you guys, the Hornets SMASHED the Magic to FUCKING PIECES. It was amazing. It was just... a devastating massacre. It almost stopped being fun, the Hornets were playing THAT. WELL.
The NOMA, City Park, Bennachin's... a lot of aesthetically pleasing scenarios in the sun.

Since Kim left I have been reading A LOT and watching a LOT of documentaries on NetFlix "Watch Instantly." I'm astounded by how much I like to be alone, consuming. Maybe I am antisocial? I mean, I kind of know that I am antisocial. Well anyway, the space has been wonderful, although it is probably not all that much a demonstration of my ability to be fun.

Now I have the week off for Mardi Gras (I know, right? A whole week?), and I'm trying to find the most exquisite balance of work and play. I haven't landed there yet, but I am happy to be alive. Also my cat is GREAT. Really flirty lately. Ahh, the companionship. The camaraderie.

I ought to add that not last Saturday but the Saturday before (and it seems like an eon ago), James and I went to Lafayette, Louisiana. A true fact about me: My favorite trips are the small ones, to the little places tucked away that no one really chooses to visit. James planned this himself, and somehow found this little untouched world under a bright gray sky with flowers and enormous Spanish moss trees, and ancient churches, and a zydeco band with octogenarian waltzers. That day I felt 100 percent fun. Someday I want SO BADLY to spend no less than two months driving around the United States exploring these places for days on end. It's not a unique vision, of course -- we are all a bit fascinated with Little America. Regardless, I think someday I'll hole myself up in a Volvo with a video camera and a Moleskin and lots of ink pens and explore under the pretense of creating something. But really I'll just be seeing it all, selfishly.

You could come if you wanted. You're totally invited.

Today is Zulu's 100 Year anniversary. I have seen pictures of what this means. It means there will be a literal SEA of people. Good thing I have a costume, or I'd never catch ANY beads.

Ever onward!

things that just happened.

2009-02-12T15:26:00.002-06:00

1. I just got moved from my high school to an elementary school, completely out of the blue, to start Monday. This is otherwise known as, "I lost my job." It was a numbers thing, they said, nothing personal or anything. So why do I feel like I'm going through the worst break-up I've ever gone through in my entire life? My heart is BREAKING. I don't even have words to describe how fucking miserable I am and how unfair this seems, after alllll the work and hours and time and toil and late nights and early mornings and EVERYTHING after EVERYTHING... after I FELL IN FUCKING LOVE WITH THOSE KIDS and they became MY REASON FOR LIVING, I'm just supposed to let it go and move on somewhere else just like that with no fucking notice whatsoever? I am a pretty melodramatic person, but nothing has ever, EVER hurt this much in my entire life.

2. Then I got rear-ended.

I QUIT LIFE.

8 percent fun.

2009-02-10T15:44:00.001-06:00

Briefly checked out. Like a library book. Or a beach ball.

20 percent fun.

2009-02-08T08:58:00.003-06:00

It's not fair. In theory, being sick like this is supposed to be a little bit enjoyable. You're supposed to get to put your life on hold and just sleep for millions of hours and have people prepare soup for you and watch "Ferris Bueller" on repeat until your sinuses clear up and you see life with a renewed sense of appreciation.

Fuck that.

I'm in Colorado, and I'm about to get on a plane. Well, I'm going to INFECT EVERYONE ON THAT PLANE because I simply cannot stop throwing up or having a fever or being unable to breathe. And I should have invested in some of that "NyQuil" stuff because I freaking CAN'T SLEEP FOR THE LIFE OF ME.

Nothing about being sick like this is fun. I am also out of sick days at work. So tomorrow I have to go to work and feel like shit for the whole day, which SUCKS. I am NOT A HAPPY PERSON RIGHT NOW.

I did get licked in the face by a real-life giraffe. Also, my sister is the most amazing and impressive human being I have ever met. I am completely amazed by her in every possible way. More on this soon.

61 percent fun!

2009-02-06T12:30:00.006-06:00

I'm in Colorado Springs, feeling weeeeirdly grown up. Here is why. I am sitting here in the student center at Colorado College, with my Teach for America bag and the New York Times (p.s. - U.S. women set to surpass men in labor force?!), and I know that I appear to be a student, but I totally do not feel like a student. I feel like I'm sitting here and I'm cuh-leeeeearly a college graduate who now teaches high school. And I should therefore not have to answer to any authority figures on campus because I am just so freaking above everyone. You are thinking that this sounds dangerous. It's totally dangerous. I'd better not walk around with any open beer bottles or say anything racist about Native Americans because I'm sure it won't take long for me to remember my place.

Okay, so right now I am listening to this Taylor Swift song called "White Horses," and I don't understand what the voiceovers are going on in this song. But they're WEIRD. And funny.

It's been a long time. I'm happy. I think the most efficient way to talk about the last week would be to make a list of the Top Ten Most Awesome Occasions of Last Week: A List.

So.

Top Ten Most Awesome Occasions of Last Week: A List.

10. I sold the Corrado. And when I say "I sold," I mean, "I gave away." I think the title got stolen. The guy who I sold the Corrado to ("sold") just called me and asked for the title and I pretended like I still had it. I don't think I still have it. I might. But I don't think I do. I hate when I have to tell people things they don't want to hear. This is clearly not THAT positive a thing. That is why it ranks at number 10. I know there are probably other number-10-worthy things, but I can't think of them exactly now. So we'll go with that. It's potentially a relief.

9. Vince got a 100 percent on his Biology test! Let's get some context here. Vince has a 0.1 GPA right now (he made like a D in Fine Arts survey one time, I guess, but other than that he has been kind of left out in the cold). He smokes a llloooootttt of weed. But I don't know, we bonded somehow. There was some turning point last semester and he started calling me and then all of a sudden he was going to class, and then he started to shock me. He was voluntarily answering Biology questions! He was taking his notes home to study! And then on Thursday there was test -- a vicious, hard test about organelles and types of cell transport -- and not only did he ACE it (all by himself), but he got an unheard-of 100 percent. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that means Vince accurately sketched a cell in a hypotonic solution. Which I am relatively sure I could not do. FTW!
* Here are some Biology tips and tricks I've been using to explain the more difficult memorization stuff. You will be grateful I told you this stuff next time you are playing Biology Trivial Pursuit. Mitochondria - The first part of this word is "mite." Like those little bugs that run around your house really fast, right? So those have a lot of ENERGY, which is how you remember that mitochondria are the organelles which transfer energy in a cell. Also they kind of look like a little mite cut in half, which is a bonus. Ribosomes - The first part is "rib." When you eat ribs you get protein. So remember that ribosomes make and transfer proteins for the cell. Active vs. Passive transport - Look at that picture to the right there and think about a Lil' Wayne concert. Imagine the line (cell wall) is the WALL between the concert and the outside. Inside the concert there are bookoo* people, and outside there are a few people trying to get in. Is it going to be harder to get INTO the concert or to leave? It's going to be harder to get into that cramped space, huh? So when you're moving that direction, it's active transport. Go the other way, and it's passive transport. Now you "get" Biology. You are so glad I shared this with you. I think Biology is probably ENTIRELY about mnemonic devices. And fetal pigs in formaldehyde.

8. There is an all-you-can-eat buffet at Nirvana (the Indian restaurant on Magazine Street) on Sunday nights. I had always thought Nirvana was a little overpriced, but when you can eat UNLIMITED AWESOMENESS for just $10.95, it is difficult to argue that there is a better deal. And sooo much of it is vegetarian. I have been fantasizing about this meal since I had it. It's been almost a week now. I had a dream about it last night. In the dream I was lying atop a giant bed of Naan getting Chana Masala poured over my body. You say "gross," I say "great."

7. I wore myself pretty thin this week, getting Sophie-amounts of sleep ( >4 hours). On Wednesday this started to manifest itself in the way I interacted with people. I was kind of tired and a little bit moody. Darren, wonderful Darren, the student who I arguably wake up for every single morning (I know, I know, I wake up for all of them, but Darren has a special place in my heart), took notice immediately, and was instantly certain that some man was "playin' me.":

Ms. Johnson, what motha be playin' you? Ms. Johnson, you tell me right now. I'mma get out here right now, you heard me? I'mma get out here right now and I'mma show this playa who he be messin' with if he be messin' with Ms. Johnson. 'Cause that's my favorite teacher up in here, ya heard? Tell me who that man is, Ms. Johnson. I'm tellin' you, I'mma take him out. That man be sorry he was ever born.

You may not think this is as adorable and heart-warming as I do. But let me say this to all the men out there who are considering playing me: Don't. Because Derren weighs like 400 pounds. You would be FUCKED. UP.

6. I am in Colorado. It is my sister's birthday. This is only ranking so low because I have only just begun my amazing time here. Right now, Alexis is in class, and my inkling is that she is going to only be in class for a little bit longer, and I will therefore have to abandon this particular blog entry and save it for another day. Alexis just turned 20 years old. I bought her a Nintendo Wii. She is my favorite living human being. And she is so unbelievably good-looking. I remembered that that was why I was happy she moved away from New Orleans. When she was living there and we would go out together, she'd get hit on by everyone and I'd get hit on by no one and that would make me feel inadequate. Now I get hit on equal amounts as my female companions and I feel a little bit better. Allie bought me a calzone last night. I would probably be prettier if I ate less calzones. But too bad, because I really like calzones. I would rather look like a gnome than not eat calzones.

5. Last weekend we went to the Vietnamese Tet New Years, which was only THE GREATEST THING I HAVE EVER BEEN TO IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. I know that usually my superlatives are gross exaggerations, and this is probably not an exception, but man, it was definitely DEFINITELY Top 100 in Events I Have Enjoyed Since Being Born. And there have been bookoo* events, so I think Top 100 is a pretty high rank. Imagine the best birthday party you could have imagined when you were six, and then you invited EVERY PERSON of even vague Asian descent who lived remotely nearby to the celebration, and then you got your mom's church's awesome cover band to play music and rap badly, AND THEN beer was only $2 and all the food appeared to have been taken out of "Freakishly Sumptuous Food Magazine," and you could buy it for the cost of bus fare. And then you have the Vietnamese Tet New Year. Silly string was involved. The highlight for me was when I helped the children outside the front of the church name the 28 goldfish they had won. No, I didn't mistype "28." They WON 28 goldfish! AND I convinced them to name one of them "Eggboot!" Eggboot, by the way, is what I believe to be the most hilarious combination of two words that there is. Alex and I used to name our Paper Mario characters "Eggboot." It is a name which will forever dance and swim in my heart. Like a goldfish. Or a dolphin.

4. Leah and I cooked an amazing meal on Wednesday night. We have decided to do this every week (we're now on Week 2), and it's a good idea, which I am now recommending to everyone in the universe. It breaks up the week really nicely, and cooking with another person is about the most enjoyable way to spend time socializing. This is probably because you get to talk, and eat, and drink wine, and see beautifully-colored vegetables, and you feel productive, and it just BRINGS YOU JOY. Got a lot off my chest. Chilled. ATE. Sal, Leah's cat, started getting pretty intimate with the noodles we'd cooked and did this adorable play-with-noodles-eat-noodles combo thing that was about the cutest thing I've ever seen a cat do in person. Or in cat. In cat-person. Anyway, weekly rituals are an excellent increase in funness.

3. EPIC GROUNDHOGS' DAY PARTY ON SUNDAY. Reasons why this was awesome: decorated the best groundhog-themed cupcakes that have ever been committed to baked goods. Marianne found 98 words WITHIN the words "Punxsutawney Phil," which may seem impossible to you, but it indeed happened. I bought a ton of beer and it didn't get drunk AT ALL so now I have a ton of beer at my disposable. The "Groundhogs"-themed music was very hoggy, and I will probably keep that playlist forever. There was silly string. I know, I know. You are thinking this is the best-sounding party you have ever heard of. You are thinking, "How is this NOT the number ONE best thing that happened to you in the last week?" Well, here are the reasons why: It was on Superbowl Sunday, so there was a lot of stress to get to Superbowl parties and the like. And it was apparently a really good Superbowl, but I totally missed it. I just... it wasn't for me this year. So I feel a little weird about this because last year I thought the Superbowl was one of the greatest inventions of all of television. Also, the party size was a little bit small. It could have used maybe four more people. I think our number clocked in at (LeahAveryCaitlinJazzyLaurenMarianneJames) seven. A ten-person gathering really requires ten people. Also I think the groundhog saw his shadow and now there are going to be six more weeks of winter. Hilariously, my students were DUMBFOUNDED by the concept of Groundhogs' Day, and they took it very seriously. "How can ONE groundhog know SO MUCH about the weather?" they wanted to know. Needless to say, they remained dubious, even after I had done my best to explain the unflinching accuracy of Phil through the years.

2. James Hamilton had a potluck at his house. The only thing wrong with this potluck was that it was the best party I had ever been to, and I was embarrassed that I didn't throw it. It was a vegetarian potluck (WIN), with loooottts of dessert and loooottts of beer and looottts of really nice, really non-awkward people to talk to. And I guess I was there for like seven hours or something ridiculous like that. People started playing music towards the middle of the party, and then we played rap games, and there was a drum, and a ukulele and several guitars (I brought a shaker egg). I got DRUNK. The only really bad thing that happened as a result of that was that James started playing the musical saw at one point and it made this really awful noise and I accidentally blurted, "I hate that," and now he will probably never play the musical saw in front of me ever again. Which is too bad because... MUSICAL SAW! I mean, I don't actually hate it. I love it. It was just that one note. It was really grating. And I was really drunk. Rap games are fun. I wish I played the guitar. Right now I also have lost my voice, which has been true for about a week. This is sexy when I talk, but it makes me sound like a dying horse when I sing. Annnnyway, this was a tremendously fun and successful party; obviously what all people literally daydream that their parties could be.

1. BLAZERS VS. HORNETS. Guuuuuuguasdgiuasidf!!!!!!! Okay. First of all, I didn't know who I was going to root for at first. Last week I called Alex, my mom, my sister, and Leah trying to mentally sort out who I ought to cheer for. But when I called Alex about it he was like, "Um, cleeearly the Blazers." And when he said that, I said, "Yeah, but I was at the Nuggets game tonight and they lost, and the Nuggets fan at the game was really sad." And as soon as I realized that I was sounding like a totally fair-weather fan, my mind was made up. We went to the game in blazers (mine is an actual Blazers blazer, so that wins), and PDX was down by 20 going into the third. But then CHRIS PAUL got INJURED and GUESS WHAT: The Hornets are NOT A TEAM without him! Which, yeah, I guess that's kind of really depressing and I feel sad for the Hornets. I do. But what followed his injury was a series of the most beautiful fucking plays I have ever seen in my fucking life on the part of the Blazers, and an immense feeling of joy that I had never experienced in my basketball life as I watched them SHATTER the Hornets in the fourth quarter. SHATTER. ANNIHILATE. STOMP PASS IN THE WESTERN CONFERENCE. Also, I'm sorry, but why did no one tell me that Jerryd Bayless is like a POEM on the court?! He's fucking amazing. He's probably my favorite Blazer right now. He's really poised to be our team's MVP in a few years if we hold on to him. Such young talent! Really brings a tear to my eye. And Oden didn't even play COMPLETELY embarrassingly at one point, so that was good too! It was a GOOD. GAME. James (Nuggets fan) went and, despite my embarrassing outpouring of Hornets support during the Nuggets game last week, completely signed over to the Blazers team with me from the get-go, which made it all the more enjoyable to win. It also demonstrated to me how James Hamilton is a better person than I am. But that's fine. I'll get over it. I don't pride myself on my kindness or altruism.

*Yes, that is how you spell "bookoo." I have already looked it up. I like my grammar, and my spelling, and I try not to get it wrong.

55 percent fun.

2009-01-28T23:12:00.002-06:00

This week I have wished profoundly that I was a little less who I am. A little quieter, calmer, more thoughtful, less caffienated. I go to bed wishing I had more hours in the day and more control over my feelings. My effusiveness is out of control. I am a bit too madly in love with being alive right now, and after my summer, the feeling is terrifying.

So I dropped my fun percentage so I could be sure to track this stuff again. It was good to have that continuity.

1. Hornets vs. Nuggets was triumphant for Hornets, but I felt the fanfare was a bit lackluster, and the playing was all-around sloppy.

2. Los Campesinos! was cut short by my love for napping, propensity to talk to James for much too long, and inability to get from one place to another with any kind of expediacy.

3. But James is a really talented musician. The Internet needs to know.

4. And there were good moments with: Kim (she's coming!) and Ari (also coming!) and Alex and Leah and almost definitely others. Jessica.

5. BFF weekend was the BWE.

5. My Behavior Improvement Plans are getting publishable for their awesomeness.

6. I wrote "5" twice.

7. Rabouin Falcons beat the Jefferson Whatevers 108 to 32 on Tuesday. BLOWOUT! Fuck their high GEE scores!

the funnest people in new orleans

2009-01-25T10:10:00.009-06:00

It's been since September that I gave an installment of the "The Most Important People In My Life." That's a LONG TIME. Eons. (Crosswords LOVE the "eons" clue. They LOVE it. I've noticed that since I started doing the crossword, I have also started speaking more frequently with words with a 90-percent-or-higher vowel composition. I digress).

And guess what? Ben Stevens, my best friend from home, IS VISITING! We are having a 100 percent FUN time. Except that I'm inexcusably sick. Why does sickness happen? It's such an inconvenience to everyone. The Common Cold should realize that it's not really all that powerful; it's not going to do much to help thin the human species; it's known far and wide (probably even among OTHER viruses) as a major annoyance; and it should just give up. Alas, alack.

Anyway, Ben is visiting (highlights so far: swamp walk, Bourbon Street, beignets, hipster coffee, hipster burritos, The Pixies on shuffle, relationship ranting, grocery adventure at Winn Dixie, Indian food, tourist hot spots, jazz jazz jazz jazz jazz, college parties, beer, more jazz, more beer, oldies singalongs, etcccccc.), and he said to me last night, "Wow Sophie, you really have a LOT of interesting and attractive friends in this here Greater New Orleans area." And I said, "You know Ben Stevens, I really do." And he said, "I think I shall move in with you and attempt to bone 8 out of 10 of your besties." And I said, "Okay Ben." (That whole transgression is true except for the last part).

So obviously: Important People in my New Orleans, Volume x+1:

The incomparable (clockwise from left) Nick, Jazzy, Avery, Lily, and Caitlin in the middle. These are the gentlemen and ladies whose numbers I obtained while drunk and at Penn. When I talk about the greatest people I have met in New Orleans, it doesn't seem like enough of a superlative for this group. They are more like the greatest people I have met in my LIFE. Avo is a freelance illustrator for a limited edition of "The Odyssey" to be released in the next year. Jazzy has some high-end government job and used to be Vince Levy's boss at that Penn paper. Nick works for the NOLA Green Project (which is about the most badass thing you could do here). Lily is right out of a comic book -- she knows everyone and everything and smokes her cigarettes from long ancient cigarette holders. And Caitlin... holy shit. Well, Caitlin works at Bennachin's, Caitlin works at the NOMA, Caitlin is thinking of opening a coffee shop. Caitlin got invited to go to The Eagles concert last night by the guitarist from The Eagles. Caitlin got offered 10 or 15 EVEN AWESOMER jobs while backstage at The Eagles concert. And for these reasons, among other reasons, I asked Caitlin to sign my boobs last night. And she did.

Leah Hope Fishbein. I will know Leah for the rest of my life. Here is how I met her: when I first got to New Orleans all those many moons ago, Teach for America gave us Teach for America LookBook pages with everyone's names and favorite this-and-thats, and Leah's favorite listed book was "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World." And that is how I knew that Leah would be my friend. We officially met in an elevator in Phoenix. I thought she was probably too cool for me. Then Leah started taking me to every cool vegan restaurant in Tempe in her Hybrid electric car. After that it was a downward spiral into utter infatuation. Leah organizes the Crunkical Mass; she has pages from children's books tattooed on her calves (actually, last Friday night some drunk guy cursed her out for having them, and called her a "fancy tattoo haver." That was funny. Drunk people are funny). What makes Leah the best is that for all her adventurousness and whimsy, she will ALSO stay at home with you and eat take-out and watch "Clueless." She is the only person in New Orleans who is currently in my speed dial. That's love. Also her cat is named Sal and is orange and is actually still a kitten (i.e. FREAKISHLY CUTE).

Hannahhhhhh. I have known and loved a lot of Hannahs. But never in my life have I been more completely in awe of a Hannah as I am of this Hannah. Hannah is the kind of person who is so unrealistically genuine and nice and kind-spirited that you are taken completely aback when you figure out that she's actually FUCKING EDGY AS FUCK. Like... if I were going to have an orgy, I would probably invite Hannah, and Hannah would probably say yes. If I were going to bike 100 miles in one day, I would probably invite Hannah, and Hannah would probably say yes. Hannah dreams about living in a real life tree house. She worked on a sustainable farm in Vermont for an enormous chunk of her life. This Christmas, she bought dozens and dozens of local Meyer lemons and invited us over to spend the entire afternoon canning jars upon jars upon jars of lemon curd. Hannah is what I would call the ideal Pocket Person: The kind of person who makes you so consistently happy -- indeed, the kind of person who MAKES YOU A BETTER VERSION OF YOURSELF -- that you wish you could pocket-size-ify her and carry her around in your purse so you would never ever ever have to be without her. In this picture she is eating her birthday brunch. That's because she's the kind of person who has a handful of wonderful friends who want nothing in the world but to bring incredible homemade foods over to her house to celebrate her birthday, brunchily.

Oh, Karaline. I think Karaline would make a very good wife. She is a wonderful cook and picks out the most beautiful foods when she goes food shopping; she wears really sexy around-the-house clothes; she has this amazing cooing voice for when you are miserable or surly. But Karaline would be wasted if she were only a wife. Beyond all these things, she's also up for any adventure, good at dancing late at night in sparkling outfits, and absolutely won Bananagrams today. I felt I was pretty close to winning. But Karaline won, fair and square. She is from Massachusetts, and she instantly makes everyone around her feel like they are her lifelong best friend. For this reason, she is possibly too popular for her own good. but I guess that's not really a problem. I should think of an ACTUAL Karaline problem. Hmm. Too good in bed?

James Hamilton (left). Obviously needs both names to identify him, right? It's just one of those names. We went out for dinner a couple of weeks ago and he told me that my name ("Sophie Johnson") was a strong name. I have never received a compliment on my name before -- at least, not the whole name -- and I didn't quite know what to do with it. But once the dust had settled, I recognized what was BEHIND that compliment: the fact that "James Hamilton" is FAR AND AWAY the strongest, most regal name that has ever been bestowed on any human being. This tells you nothing about James, except that he eats food and gives compliments. He does both those things (and the former he does as a vegetarian, which is a BFD here in New Orleans). James plays bookoo instruments. He can do that thing where you're talking to him and he's talking to you and AT THE SAME TIME he's making beautiful sounds come out of a ukelele. James is also a cat whisperer and can thus get cats to do tricks. It's becoming clear to me as I write this entry that a fondness for cats is listed as very important in my particular rating book. Last night James went with us to see "The Wrestler," then he drove us back to our car, and called to tell us interesting things we could do with our days tomorrow. He's CLASSY. That's the bottom line there. Also has GREAT taste in music. AND BASKETBALL!!! Well, I mean, his team in the Nuggets. But at least he HAS a team, and he loves them, and they are a really really good team. And we can have educated arguments about Western Conference. Blissful.

Ms. Ward and Ms. McGough. Jayda and Kristen are amazing, colorful people, and they have completely saved my life. They are some of the greatest teachers in the entire city, and they have really single-handedly transformed the entire Special Ed department at my school. Seriously, fellows: I don't know what I would do without them. I don't. I would probably have gouged out my eyes by now. With forks. Kristen has the BEST LAUGH OF ALL TIME. Whenever something is REALLY shitty at school, Kristen laughs at it and it all seems a little bit better. She's always pissed off at exactly the right times, and when I'm going through something, she's the one who drives all the way to my house to make sure I'm okay. Jayda, who is pregnant with twins, is sarcastic and funny in one of those ways you thought was plausible only in well-written Hollywood comedies. She also is AMAZING with her students, and somehow whips all the Sped. paperwork into place. These women are the main reason I wake up every morning and feel okay about what I'm doing.

End.

fungi!

2009-01-20T21:20:00.004-06:00

Ok, blog. I have to say: I am feeling uninspired. Not in a large, overarching sense. I mean, I DID watch the Inaugural Address today (AND solved the Inaugural New York Times crossword), so in that sense I am deeply inspired. I agree, the poet was kind of bad, and it was kind of really funny when Yo Yo Ma was playing at the moment that Barack Obama constitutionally became president (!??!!). But I shed a tear. I admit this fact now to the internet in a moment of true openness.

The weekend was unbelievably long, and for the first time in my New Orleanian history of long weekends, I did not leave town. I had a brilliant time riding my bike in the sublimely seventy-degree weather; cooking extravagent meals and eating them with glasses of expensive wine; lesson planning the long way (not the "holy-shit-I-have-class-in-four-hours-I'd-better-get-the-fuck-on-this" way I'm so used to); going to sleep laaaaate after DANCING or BAKING or just TALKING with people worth talking to. All in all, a perfect weekend.

We took the kids hiking again, which was a winning scenario. Except that I accidentally stepped in a huge fire-ant nest (and when I say "accidentally," I mean I looked at the huge fire-ant nest and said, "That's way too big to be an anthill. Let me step in it and see if it is indeed an anthill." And then it was indeed an anthill and my pants filled up with fire-ants). But other than that, I got a lot of good bonding in with some really superior students. I have to give them credit: when I was in high school, no one would have done this on a weekend. Kids were way too busy playing with their Sega Dreamcasts to do school-related activities on weekends. But a lot of the Rabouin kids seem genuinely into the camping stuff, which never ceases to amaze and impress me.

Lots of time with James. Lots of time with Leah. Lots of time with Hannah. Lots of time with Karaline. These are among my favorite people I have ever met, so this was all time well-spent. On Hannah's birthday (!!!) we tried to go dancing, but because it was Sunday every club was terribly dull. So instead we went to Mother-In-Law's and we had the whole back lot all to ourselves. Picture this: A place with a huge wax statue of Ernie K-Doe, decorated with perennial Christmas flair, owned by a little old woman (who used to be married to Ernie and knows OPRAH and SPIKE LEE and had her bar personally rebuilt by USHER after the storm) who will open the door for you and welcome you in wearing pajamas, before plopping down on the sofa to watch "Friends" reruns on her jumbo-screen projector. And in the back, past the weird alters and church memorabilia, is a door to a back patio with a Tiki lounge and bathtubs full of flowers and bright pink and orange and purple chairs chained to tables and a jukebox that plays Kenny G and a big archway made of flowers. Honestly, that description doesn't do it justice. It's one of those places you have to see to believe.

And Hannah's birthday brunch was truly spectacular; I can only describe it as being indescribably warm (and not in terms of temperature -- in terms of, like... attitudes). Last night James made dinner for me and I racked my brain but couldn't think of another time anyone had ever truly made dinner JUST FOR ME and it was AWESOME. I am going to let that happen MORE. On Saturday night Leah and I stayed up until 1 in the morning making cupcakes. And on Sunday afternoon I got a squirrel at the feeder. Which you would think was a bad thing but I think squirrels are adorable, so I'm thrilled.

Prospect.1 died, and I participated in its jazz funeral. I put a light on my bike so I started to ride it at night, which is an unprecedented experience, and I strongly recommend it. I cooked a LOT of vegetables and decorated the guest room because GUESS WHAT: Ben is coming on Thursday. I KNOW, RIGHT!?????

My friends at Whitman are starting up again, and this time I am not there (last semester I was, for hurrication reasons). I'm okay with it. Time to move on. Seems very healthy.

My cat is cheating on me regularly with my Mario plush doll. But it's fine. I forgive him. I'm not around as much as I used to be.

So I guess I'm uninspired because I think all of that is a little boring to report on. My only advice to the wandering soul is this: Bike everywhere, talk to everyone you meet, and learn something new every day. And if you do that, I think you'll always feel accomplished no matter what, and go to bed wonderfully exhausted and happy.

funally!

2009-01-17T07:31:00.005-06:00

This morning the perfect metaphor for my life happened. I woke up at 6:30 a.m. because there were birds at my window.

Let me back up. I bought a bird feeder at the beginning of my time here in New Orleans. I filled it up and hung it from my roof outside my window, hoping that I'd get some company that would help make me feel a little more at home. Of course, the birds never came. And that was six months ago. They never came and never came and never came and I figured the bird seed was going to start to rot pretty soon, but I wasn't about to do anything about it. I just let my bird feeder sit out there, and wished the birds would come.

And then this morning, for no reason at all, they came. Dozens, if not hundreds. Just like that, for no reason at all, except that time had passed.

That's exactly what life has been like lately. For some reason, everything seems to be falling into place, and I'm happier than I've been... for a long time.

So I've been very neglectful of my fun blog. Blogging about being happy and thinking life is great and enjoying one's job is kind of boring. No surprise element. No selling point. Just boring old sanity.

In the last week, some updates: CRUNKICAL MASS bike ride around Prospect.1 last Sunday, with some of the greatest people currently living in New Orleans, was beautiful, exhausting, cold and moving; someone is putting my a cappella cover of "Whatever You Like" in a film; we won a major battle for our students with disabilities at my school. I'm teaching my own class now, with a 25-page unit plan that follows the whole P.1, P.2, P.3 formula; we have a new student, Tracy (as always, not her real name), who I have gotten to know very well and who Avery's consistently tries to get to marry him; Avery has grown four years in reading in one semester, which is kind of unheard of in the world of teaching; I am co-heading Adventure Krew (you know... camping club, hiking club, whatever you want to call it) -- actually, we're going on an MLK hike in less than an hour -- and I feel like once I'm done with this I'm going to have to lead a Girl Scout troup. I'm proud of New Orleans, and I feel like I watch it change every day. I can now do the Wednesday New York Times crossword all by myself. I shampooed my cat (without using a toilet). I'm painting like crazy, my room smells like vanilla, I have read more wonderful books in the last six months than in the rest of my entire life. I keep meeting people I want to know forever, and the learning curve on relationships here is fast.

This is an Avery video. I don't know where he heard the term "I'm strippin'," but he pulled it out during his resource period yesterday and it was ABOUT the funniest thing I'd ever seen. And of course he decided that him being naked was a good reason for girls to marry him. WIN.

The only thing is that now I am going to have to start buying birdseed. Oh well. There are worse things in the world.

96 percent fun!

2009-01-09T23:13:00.002-06:00

Every day I fall a little more in love with New Orleans. It's probably obvious by now. You're probably getting a little tired of my infatuation with the Big Easy. Perhaps this is natural, to fall so in love with a place. I generally am happy in all environments. I am about the easiest human being to please. I love final exams. I enjoy all-nighters. I find doctors' waiting rooms fascinating and beautiful.

Which is why I think my growing love (it's definitely love -- not just infatuation) for New Orleans is so special to me. At first, I didn't love it. At first, I was miserable. I thought I had picked the wrong city; that I had chosen to live with people who didn't give a shit about politics (why else would their political system be so broken?) but who lived to get drunk and party. And certainly, those people live here. And they're probably very happy, because New Orleans accommodates that lifestyle.

But I went to an "Anti-Racism Working Group" potluck this week. My fear was that the potluck would look a lot like Whitman College Race Symposiums: 90 percent white, and for many people, 100 percent of the social "activism" they participate in for the entire year. It's great to talk about race, but what does it DO? Kind of masturbatory, I guess.

At first, the potluck looked very similar to a Whitman event. Yes, it was 100 percent white. And yes, there was organic food on the table (a lot of freaking organic food, I might add. Maybe New Orleans' entire supply of organic food). But when we went around the circle to tell who we were and what we do, I recognized the significant difference: every single person there was actively involved in the community in one way or another, stretching for change. They were law-fighters, picket-crossers, UU church workers, volunteers, homeless shelter starters, or workers, or renovators. They built houses, grew food, canvassed. Almost all of them were community organizers. None of them seemed to have day jobs -- they were activists, and that was all.

At dinner, we actually talked about race in a very real way. We talked about FBI informants and gentrification and the racial divide in the activist movement. I learned a lot. It was a difficult, uncomfortable, challenging, wonderful conversation. I left feeling larger.

I walked home with Leah in the dark along the potholes in the pavement, listening to kids playing basketball in the street and families chatting on their porches and drinking tea just like they do in the movies. It was warm at 10 p.m.; we didn't have to wear sweaters. I fell asleep listening to bullfrogs and feeling at home.

So this is all very poetic and good. You are reading this thinking, "Yes. That sounds very nice. I think New Orleans sounds lovely and activisty." And you are right. Except for one thing: THERE WAS NO VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT. Not one. There is an African restaurant called Bennichan's which has vegetarian food (Caitlin works there now, which means I can potentially bribe her for fried plantains). Sometimes if you are lucky there are such things are French Fried Po' Boys, which are like real Po' Boys, except with French fries and not meat. The only problem here is that they are gross and disgusting. It was just not a good city to be a vegetarian.

Did you note the "was?"

Past tense. As in, used to be.

Because YESTERDAY a man named Aji (I know his name because I met him after giving intense and creative compliments to the chef via my waitress -- but I'm getting ahead now) opened Bamboo Gardens. It's a totally vegetarian restaurant with fake chicken and fake ham and REAL FLAVORS (yeah, I said it). The chef (this is Aji, who as I said, I met) learned how to make his vegan chicken from the folks in New York who make vegan chicken (for New York is where he went to culinary school and met all the vegan bigwigs there, like the owner of Red Bamboo, with whom Aji is allegedly "tight"). THIS IS THE CHICKEN I CRAVE MORE THAN ANY OTHER FOOD IN THE WORLD. Guys, I have seriously considered buying a plane ticket to New York SOLELY to eat this chicken. That is how much I love this chicken. It's an unreal concoction. I would sell several body parts for the recipe.

Leah and Hannah and Karaline and I sat there for three hours and bought a $150 meal (plus wine), talking and eating and drinking and I was SO HAPPY. Completely.

So anyway, this is a very long way of saying to family and friends who are on the other coast, I'm sorry, but I think I am going to live in New Orleans forever.

another top 10

2009-01-04T13:51:00.001-06:00

I just spent like five hours going through stacks of books I read this year and making a year-end list of the Best Books of 2008. It's the first time I have made a books list. It makes me feel very post-collegiate.

a different kind of fun

2009-01-03T22:51:00.004-06:00

New Orleans and Portland feel like they are at opposite ends of the universe, that's how different they are. I feel like a kid going back and forth between parents -- one quiet, reserved, sweet, subdued if not a bit sad, patient, calculating, lonely and poetic, reading Mary Oliver poems and making coriander-spiced tempeh after blogging about endangered birds and hybrid cars; the other eccentric, loud, unkempt and ravaged, salty, impolite, wearing no bra or underwear, not giving a flying fuck what anybody thinks, eating drippy meat things without napkins and making freeform, cheerful music. It kind of makes you wonder why they even got married in the first place. Then you realize that Portland and New Orleans never DID get married. I just call both of them "home."

Regardless, flinging myself back and forth between them for week-long stretches is incredibly emotionally straining. It's a cyclical series of motions: holding on and letting go perpetually, never feeling completely grounded. When I got home (New Orleans home) last night, the house smelled like hurricane. It smelled muggy and swampy because the heat and air conditioning had rested for two whole weeks. And it felt empty, because we have nothing on the walls and very high ceilings. We don't even have a couch. Just wood floors and stairs and the fireplace we haven't broken in yet.

But then I saw (or rather HEARD) Satchmo, with all his charm and annoyance and unconditional forgiveness (which I don't deserve because I DID leave him in this desperately uninteresting house with very little outside contact for ten full days, which I think legitimately deserves a grudge, but he's a bigger man than I am), and I felt comfortable again. And I discovered "Instant" NetFlix, which by the way is the BEST INVENTION EVER. So things were good.

And walking around my neighborhood this morning things started to come back -- which, considering I had only been gone for two weeks, I was surprised I had forgotten in the first place. Like the way people here ALL say hello to you, no matter what. "Hey! You look so pretty in purple." "Hi there! Did you have a nice New Year?" "Well hello. Think it's gonna rain." People just aren't like that in Portland. I think it's a "The South" thing.

And the way everything -- EVERYTHING -- smells like hot pepper sauce; Cajun cooking; fish or crab or seafood of some kind; deep frying fat. Even at 9 in the morning people seem to be barbecuing.

And you don't have to wear a sweater, or socks, and you don't get carded when you buy a bottle of wine, and you can get groceries for the whole week for less than $20. Dogs waltz around as if leash laws are not only obviously a joke, but embarrassingly unfashionable. Likewise, I jaywalked across a major street and almost got hit by a police officer without even thinking twice about it. And people are drunk by about 11 a.m.

There are two things that suck:
1. When you ask the barista if they have soymilk, the response is generally, "WHATmilk?"
2. It floods. Really bad. And the thunder is really scary.

I know I'm supposed to love thunder. It's some kind of unspoken rule that deep and intelligent people find thunder unspeakably beautiful, like the lonely cry of nature or some similar bullshit. I once dated a guy who would stand outside in a thunder storm for hours taking pictures of the swollen purple sky, muttering that it was the most spectacular thing he'd ever seen. Now that's all very well and good for people like him. But has anyone else noticed that it SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE GUNFIRE? And is ACCOMPANIED BY UNPREDICTABLE AND OCCASIONALLY FATAL FLASHES OF ELECTRICAL CURRENT? THAT'S. SCARY. Especially when you're alone. And here, the thunder goes on forever. Every single thunder clap is like one of those really long, comical farts that goes on waaaay longer than a fart is supposed to go. Only scary and not funny. Luckily, Satchmo also thinks thunder is terrifying and he balls up against me wimpering like he has a flesh wound and that makes me feel like way less of a wimp.

So right now I'm a little scared on a Saturday night and my car is almost entirely underwater, so there is no going anywhere. That's probably okay because I've had a pretty eventful day.
1. I saw a jazz concert at the Historical Jazz Museum and participated in a Second Line.
2. I had beignets and chicory coffee at Cafe Du Monde. Which is reason enough to want to live in New Orleans FOREVER, by the way. I am reminded of that every time I pay the (almost always Asian) waitress $2 in exchange for PURE HEAVEN.
3. I visited the VooDoo Museum in the French Quarter, which was indescribably kitschy and wonderful. I will recount only the moment when I was making a monetary sacrifice to the god of snakes (I forget his name), and as if on cue, an old fat priest came out of the back room with a live albino python wrapped around his neck. (Leah's brother apparently heard this man later tell him, "I have a 39-foot one upstairs. But it hates women.")
4. Leah let me come over to make cashew-pineapple-fried quinoa and cabbage with peanut sauce. !!!. As a sidenote, cutting ginger is one of the most immediately gratifying physical activities I can imagine. It smells so good and sounds so good and tastes so good. It's really a win-win-win. We also watched "Enchanted." Actually, at that moment, I was grateful for the rain and the thunder and the flooding because it made me feel really not-guilty for cuddling up inside where it smelled like ginger and watching a movie. Which was all I wanted to do.

I feel I get full fun points for today. Now I'm lying with this wonderful cat pressed against me as if his life depends on it.

I should mention that I have quite a lot of New Years' Resolutions. Here are ten:

Ten of Sophie's New Years' Resolutions:

1. Get over my fear of fish. I secretly believe that I am already over my fear of fish. Well, I believe that SOME of the time. Rationally, I understand that my fear of fish is irrational. And I understand this in ways that I don't understand that my fear of the dark is irrational, or that my fear of zombies is irrational. So I'm going to do something symbolic like go SCUBA diving. I'm not really ALL-CAPS excited about that, it's just that SCUBA is an acronym and you're supposed to capitalize it.

2. Ride my bike to work, even when it rains. In Portland, I saw people riding around with plastic bags on their bike seats. This is doable. I don't have to drive just because it's raining a little bit. I WILL sacrifice the bike, however, if it floods. Which it is doing right now.

3. Go to all the museums in New Orleans. WOW, there are a lot of museums in New Orleans. They are all over the freaking place! And I have gone to probably about half of them. Knowing New Orleans, there are probably a lot of secret museums that I don't know about. I plan to find all of those.

4. Watch one movie per week. I know this does not seem like a very ambitious goal. But I watch a surprising amount of television on DVD, a surpringly tiny number of films. I just find it a lot easier; a much smaller commitment. With movies, you have to really sit down for two hours and you can't do much else. You can do mindless tasks, but you can't, say, browse Digg. You CAN do that while you are watching television. So it's a lesson in self-control and non-multi-tasking, really. I used to love going to the movies, too, and I want to go more often.

5. Take a class. There are a lot of classes I want to take. I am willing to settle on resolving to take only one. I would like to take a writing workshop (I know there are some good ones around town); or to take dance classes. I would love to take an art class, a cooking class, a yoga class, a language class, whatever. Just something that's not learn-to-be-a-teacher-class. I'm bored of that class. I want one that brings joy to my heart once a week.

6. Cook all the recipes in my cookbook that I've marked with a Post-It but have never tried because it's too easy just to make the ones that I already know are winners. This basically means I'm going to need to make a lot less Pad Thai. Which is okay. It's time for me to expand my horizons.

7. Perfect my stand-up comedy routine. I have been secretly working on this for about a year, and I just started trying it out at open mic nights. I want to do a show and walk away from it feeling like I OWNED it. This is difficult because I have a vagina, which usually is a hindrance to people who are trying to be comedians.

8. Finish my freaking novel. This is an annoying resolution. I hate people who write novels. They're usually annoying pricks who write novels just because they want to say that they have done it. Actually, that is basically why I am doing it, and I admit it completely. And yet, I have been poring over my "work" for two years now. I have 350 pages of mess, and all I want in the world is to tie a ribbon around it and put it to rest. Find me as annoying as you would like.

9. Go to an NBA Championship game. This will only be possible if the Hornets make the finals. So Chris Paul, if you're reading this right now, know that a lot more is hinging on you being awesome this season than you might think.

10. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER EVER EVER call anyone ever again in a fit of tears and desperation and sob into the phone like a fucking moron. Except for my mom, who will love me no matter what.

Weird, reflecting on 2008, it was a pretty superlative year. I think it was the best year of my life. That is partially offset by the fact that I think it was also the worst year of my life. And in a truly uncharacteristic turn, I think I will leave it at that.

Perhaps adding that I hope 2009 is just as exhausting, full, heartbreaking and life-changing.

top ten albums...

2008-12-28T00:09:00.001-06:00

Just finished my Top Ten Albums of 2008. It took me waaay too long to make this. I kind of let it make me crazy. So enjoy.

Oh, (ginger) snap!

2008-12-25T02:36:00.001-06:00

I woke up in a start realizing that I totally forgot to put out milk and cookies for Santa! I hope he comes anyway...

I am never leaving Portland.

2008-12-22T16:15:00.003-06:00

Look. I know I'm supposed to hate this snow. This snow is keeping people from leaving the airport, it's keeping people from going Christmas shopping, it's making it so none of my Amazon.com boxes are ever going to get here in time, it made it so my dad and I had to cart my 50+ pound suitcases half a mile uphill in the snow (and my sister is absolutely facing the same fate when her plane is scheduled to come in tomorrow). I get it.

BUT LOOK AT IT! IT'S BEAUTIFUL! I shoveled for an hour. And now I'm going to go outside and shovel some more. And I know I'm supposed to hate shoveling. But shoveling is like playing in the snow for grown-ups! You get to build SICK ESKIMO WALLS! Your dog thinks it is the funnest game EVER when snow is being tossed all around! I like shoveling, and I like snow, and I don't mind staying inside all day and reading novel after novel and listening to Best of '08 music lists and talking to Avery on the phone. Christmas break is THE BEST. I LOVE being trapped inside with my parents and my dog and my cats. The only thing I want in the world is for Allie to come home. But otherwise I'm pretty fucking happy. 100 PERCENT FUN!!!!

76 percent fun!

2008-12-21T15:44:00.003-06:00

I just need to tell you this one story. I mean, there is a lot to tell, honestly. There have been a lot of fun experiences had lately. On Friday night I stayed out until 2 a.m.! I am a PARTY ANIMAL. That SAME NIGHT I experienced for the first time in my entire life the wonder that is Baked Brie (also known as the greatest food man has yet invented). There were other triumphs of that night, involving lighting little plastic army men on fire and also involving Brazil, but that's not the story I want to tell you.

The story I want to tell you is ALSO not how I spent eight hours yesterday in Hannah's kitchen making and canning amazing, authentic lemon curd (from local Meyer lemons!). Lemon curd and butter cookies and mushroom tomato sauce and cauliflower curry and New Wave Dance Mix and "Harold and Maude." I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, "ALL IN ONE DAY!?" And I am here swearing on the legacy of Bud Cort that I am telling the truth. This may sound like the perfect day to you. That is because it was. But again, that's not the story I want to tell you.

I want to tell you a story (surprise!) about Avery.

Maybe I haven't told given you very much background on Avery. Here are some things about him: 1. He has fetal alcohol syndrome. In Sped Speak, this translates to being one of those uncategorizable "OHI"s (other health impairments), because he is moderately retarded and severely physically impaired. Avery lives Uptown. Last summer, his mother died in front of him. He doesn't have a father, and he lives with his 8osomething grandmother, who broke her hip last month. Avery doesn't really have a lot, and he doesn't ask for a lot. And despite all of that, he is SUCH a good person. He loves people, he makes people laugh, he enjoys being alive. And all he wanted in the whole universe for Christmas was a cell phone.

So you know the punchline here: We got him a cell phone. We got him one of those WalMart ones with 500 minutes to put on it. All in all, it cost the three of us (me, Kristen, and Jayda) like $60. And SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS: No kid has EVER been happier in his LIFE, EVER, to receive ANYTHING. Avery started freaking out and spazzing around the room and shouting, and he peed all over himself because he was so happy. I can't put this into words. I should have committed it to film but I didn't have the foresight. Imagine the absolute best Christmas movie you've ever seen ever about a kid finally getting the present he has always dreamed of, and then magnify that climactic scene by a googleplex.

I kept thinking about how when I was a kid I never really cared all that much about my Christmas presents. I remember one year I got this really expensive keyboard (which I still have), but all I wanted was a Polaroid camera, so I just kind of sulked for most of the holiday. I don't think I even said thank you. I mean, that's typical of a kid like me, really. I don't feel all that bad about it. But you know, Avery has called me twelve times in the last two days. Just to say, "Hey Ms. Johnson, how you doin'?" "Hey Ms. Johnson, I'm just chillin' right now!" "Hey Ms. Johnson I'm watching Court TV are you watching Court TV?" Next year I'm gonna get that kid an iPhone.

75 percent fun!

2008-12-19T06:04:00.003-06:00

Wow. So. Most successful Christmas party of all time. I mean, honestly, it was the perfect party. And now I feel completely prepared to tell you what you need to do to throw the perfect party, in ten easy steps:

The perfect number of guests to invite is 9. This is particularly perfect if you have exactly 9 chairs on hand. This is the perfect sized group to allow for little break-offs and to accommodate all-group conversations at the same time.
Martha Stewart has the best cut-out cookie recipe. I should have known that. Martha Stewart probably IS a cut-out cookie.
White elephant gift exchanges are awesome.
When making the invite list to your white elephant gift party, be sure to invite at least two artists who will take the "white elephant" thing literally and will bring a present that in some way actually incorporates a white elephant. Perhaps by transforming a pudding Snak Pak into an elephant by coiling wire around it. (You'd probably have to see this to understand what I mean.)
Catchphrase is awesome.
You don't put vodka in eggnog (or soynog). You put brandy or rum or whiskey. Makes all the difference in the world.
As "good" as your homemade apple cider was at your Halloween party, the expensive apple cider they sell at Whole Foods is better. Like, way better. And you can definitely put a cinnamon stick in there and say you made it yourself.
If you put chips and salsa out for your party because you think it's possible your guests will want to eat something besides cookies and frosting, know that the artists you invite to the party (see number 4) will use the chips to decorate their cookies. And this will be awesome.
Putting a Star of David on your Christmas tree cookie is funny and ironic and also pretty inclusive.
"All I Want for Christmas Is You" should be played often and loudly and preferably on repeat at any party you throw during any season regardless of theme or religious affiliation.

Yesterday we lost four hours of the school day because of a "fire."

On Tuesday we took the kids on a field trip to the Contemporary Art Center (which is an unbelievably cool place in general, and has some of the best Prospect.1 exhibits in the whole city [I was especially in love with the Bob Marley video piece, and I notoriously HATE Bob Marley, so that's saying something]). The trip was horrible because of this one woman who was so incredibly rude and condescending to my wonderful students and actually quit her job in the middle of leading them in a workshop. She called them idiots and told one pregnant girl that she shouldn't have gotten pregnant in high school... I don't know. I can't communicate in words how hurtful she was. She broke Derren. Derren is this wonderful, 450-pound boy who I work really closely with. No matter what you do to him, or say to him, or try with him, he is always chatty and loud and playful, bouncing back from whatever comes his way. But after meeting this woman, he shut down for the rest of the day and refused to talk to anyone or do anything.

But the whole experience helped me realize how much I love these kids. I mean, I haven't cried in about three weeks, but seeing the kids beaten down like that, I had to step away and cry for a little while. I couldn't stand seeing the people I love more than anyone in the world hurt like that. After it was all over, I took my group aside and told them I was so impressed with them and proud of them, and that they were the reason I woke up every morning. As soon as I said that, I realized how true it was.

And then on Wednesday we dissected fetal pigs. FTW.

A quick happy story

2008-12-16T06:40:00.002-06:00

I met Chlora May at the post office a few weeks ago, and I gave her a ride back to her nursing home. I loved hearing her stories about her life and her children and the way New Orleans has changed over time, and at the end of the ride we exchanged phone numbers. At first, Chlora May called a lot and I visited her once a week. But then after Thanksgiving, the phone calls abruptly stopped, and I assumed the worst. But yesterday I called just for some kind of closure and found that she was not only alive and well, she had fallen in love. She apologized for not calling me in a while, but she said she was too busy going on hot dates with William!

I thought I should share that, as corny and cliche as it is. It kind of made my heart swell.

72 percent fun!

2008-12-14T20:59:00.005-06:00

It was a really, really good weekend. When I woke up at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning, I had my doubts. I thought to myself, "I get myself up at the crack of dawn every single day. What the hell was I thinking volunteering to take eight kids into the wilderness where we inevitably won't sleep and we'll have to cook meat over a fire?" I was clearly grumpy, so I ate a Pop Tart. Then I felt better.

But I felt even BETTER when we loaded the kids into the car and headed out for Mississippi cranking Lil Wayne like it was our job and identifying all the many brown pelicans along the swamp. Two hours later I started to realize that the students at Rabouin High School -- even a sample size like this one -- are far and away the most energizing and entertaining people I have ever met in my life. While we sat around making Pudgie Pies (these are basically glorified grilled cheese sandwiches, and they are also AWESOME) the students asked with genuine intrigue if it was true that I was really a "veterinarian" (vegetarian). Yes, I was. What did I eat? Vegetables, bread, things like that. Did I eat fish? No. Didn't veterinarians eat fish? No. How was I still alive? I wasn't sure, but I usually didn't question it. Didn't I wonder what turkey tasted like on Thanksgiving? No, I had a Tofurkey. It was lucky I had brought some Tofurkey with me. All the kids decided they wanted to try "just a tiny bit." Only one boy liked it. Everyone else said it was disgusting (with complaints ranging from it tasting like baby food to it being made from mashed up lima beans).

We also went "birding," but that became a problematic endeavor once I saw a tufted titmouse and "titmouse" proved to be too hilarious a word not to dwell on for approximately an hour. And we DID make meat in tinfoil, and it was AWESOME. I wish I could have video taped the whole weekend; I don't think I've ever laughed so hard. Definitely not while camping.

But in some ways it was hard. December 13 this year marks one of those personal anniversaries for me, and I didn't want to be alone. The wilderness is a place where it's difficult to not be alone, even when you're with exuberant teenagers. Probably good, though. I did get to see a really old cemetery, and you all know how deeply thrilled I become over really old cemeteries.

There is one week of school left before I trek back to Portland. The traveling is growing a bit exhausting. But I'm getting that kind of excited feeling in my chest about Christmas. Who in their right mind doesn't love Christmas? Well, I guess a lot of people whose religions don't adhere to it. But the smell of it, and the sweaters, and the things you get to eat, and the music, and the red-and-green jigsaw puzzles. Apparently there is even snow in Portland right now. It's difficult to have an aversion to that stuff, I think. Maybe I'm wrong and I've just been spoiled with really wonderful parents who make Christmas this fabulous, familial time. And if that's the case, you can just come over to my house for Christmas this year. Because chances are, I miss you.

69 percent fun!

2008-12-12T22:38:00.003-06:00

Okay, WHY do I not give myself food points!? I went to this guy Phillipe's house for dinner tonight and he's a chef at Houston's and he made these extraordinary zucchini fritters and cauliflower puree and I thought, "Heaven is currently in my mouth."

Isn't this an extraordinary picture of Avery? I love that he finds joy in everything about being alive. This is basically his expression all the time. Except when he is making his "sexy face."

Speaking of "sexy face," my cat is being the best boyfriend EVER right now. He's making all these sexy breathy little gurgles and purring and resting his head on my shoulder. WIN.

What I have NOT been doing a good job of lately is exploring the city. This is partially because it gets dark so early, but partially because I've been lazy and I haven't been prioritizing having fun. Luckily, I HAVE been prioritizing staying sane and quitting smoking and eating well and teaching. Which are probably more important than having fun. Maybe.

But tomorrow I'm taking my students camping. Yep. I'm loading them into my car, along with sleeping bags and pillows and fleece blankets, and we're driving to Baton Rouge at 7 in the freaking morning. And for this I am giving myself one point in advance. Because that's pretty fun. And if we see an endangered species, it's going to be THROUGH THE FUCKING ROOF.

68 percent fun..

2008-12-11T20:29:00.002-06:00

I've spent a lot of time very involved with being a teacher lately. And that's good. Publishing adorable quotes from students seems kind of cliche and unnecessary, but that's just what I'm about to do.

Derren: Ms. Johnson, it's true that when you drink wine coolers and eat a lot of cabbage when you're pregnant then your baby gonna have pretty skin?

Sophie: Vince, do you know what a pelvis is?
Vince: Yeah, he's that dude from Memphis right? From, like, the '40s or some shit?

Derren: I want to be a nurse when I grow up. You know, 'cause I want to do something where I be helpin' people. (pause.) And you know, there ain't no men up in that job, ya heard me? So I get bookoo ladies.

It snowed in New Orleans today. People acted like it was both the apocalypse and also the most awesome thing that had ever happened. I wished we could let the kids run around in it like they wanted to, but we kept them inside and by the end of the day it was all gone. Such is the inevitable nature of snow in the deep south.

Also, Ben is coming to visit. Thank GOD.

On Tuesday I drove to Baton Rouge to visit John and June, who Alex and I stayed with during Hurricane Gustav. As the story goes, the storm hit much harder there than it did in New Orleans and we stayed around for like four days, trapped by fallen water oaks and smashed power lines. It was amazing to see the neighborhood cleaned up, and the house with all the lights on, and the tiny dogs who wore diapers. We ate peanut butter-pear salad and pasta with roasted pepper sauce and blackberry cobbler, and I wanted to give myself 50 food points, but then I realized I don't give myself food points (partially because I'm not in Weight Watchers). Anyway, Baton Rouge is automatically fun. Spontaneous hour-and-a-half nighttime solo road trips are bonus points.

Things are quiet; fine. I am continuing to get pretty hilarious Craigslist responses. Marianne is wearing bundle clothing (you know -- zillions of sweaters and wool scarves and skiing hats and shit like that). I am reading a great deal so I can buy people up-to-date novels for their Christmas presents. My cat is sleeping on my feet. Awesome.

68 percent fun!

2008-12-07T19:34:00.003-06:00

It was a really good weekend. If you're wondering if I bought you a Christmas present, my answer is this: YES. YES I DID. I have never had such a euphorically successful shopping day. I recognize how completely and totally girly that sounds. But cut me some slack, I spend a lot of my time liking Star Wars and the NBA and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, so I think I'm allowed one stereotypically girly blog statement.

It was a beautiful day here, and my mom and I talked on the phone while simultaneously watching cat videos together over the internet for an entire hour. That's when I realized my mom was the perfect long distance boyfriend. Too bad we're related. And in that case, too bad I live in Louisiana and not Tennessee.

Last night I played Hoopla with Jayda, Drew, Kristen, and Jayda's cool friend whose name I can't spell but phonetically starts with a T. Did you know how AWESOME Hoopla was? ME. NEITHER. I am totally buying that for everyone who I didn't find New Orleans-themed Christmas presents for today. I think that game could actually stop most violent crime and several wars. I am now envisioning Al Quaida members playing Hooplah with George W. Bush. AND IT'S AWESOME.

Things are generally fun right now. There are just two short weeks of school until Christmas, and I realized (as I continually COULD NOT STOP TALKING ABOUT THEM ALL WEEKEND) that I'm totally crazy about my students. We had some really rough spots last week (total crying-over-events-that-happened-at-school tally: 4), but such I suppose that's just part of it. As you can see by the fun-o-meter, I'm feeling pretty fun. I have been staying out LATE and chillin' with people WAY more than normal. I have only made about fourteen emo statements TOTAL in the last week and a half. And that's kind of whoa-y because over Thanksgiving break I was essentially speaking Emo as if it was a language.

Lots of fun planned for next week. Stay tuned. I'll teach you how to make lemon curd (!) and a cool lampshade out of string (actually you can just click on that link to see how to do that. I read about that in the latest issue of ReadyMade. But I made one and that is a SICK CRAFT. Sick as in good. Not the bad kind of sick.)

something real.

2008-12-05T23:29:00.002-06:00

I felt really, really, genuinely happy tonight watching French films and drinking champagne with Karaline, Hannah and Leah. Easy, normal, college happy. Not excited happy or think-of-the-prospects happy. But happy. And safe. And it's been a long time since I've felt like that.

assorted fun

2008-12-04T19:56:00.002-06:00

I was not sure if I was going to be able to go to an NBA game for a while. This was a sad feeling, because nobody loves the NBA like me. Well, of course, some people do. These are the other people who (like me) have season tickets to their hometown games, who (like me) subscribe to "Slam" Magazine and who (like me) dream about three-ways with Brandon Roy and Chris Paul. Actually, I think it's just me and Chris Tognotti. Anyway, I was not sure if I was going to be able to embrace the NBA this season because it is just a little too attached to the past, and I am in a "moving forward" kind of place right now. This was all too bad because I DO have season tickets to the Hornets, and they're a pretty good team this season (PRETTY good. Not as good as I had hoped.)

But I went last night to the Suns game with Caitlin and Avery (Penn friends!) after having dinner and lots and lots and lots of beer at their house (we walked the 2 miles to the Superdome down Bourbon Street, which is always an experience). And the game was awesome and I obviously can't give up the NBA. At long last, that's been decided for sure. Oh, what a game. Sad to miss Nash and Shaq, though. But on the other hand, without them, the Hornets obviously slaughtered.

We met up with 5+ others at the game and as we were leaving Avery started to sing the national anthem. It wasn't long before everyone was singing it, very loudly, very happily, to the amusement of the throngs of people leaving. That was COOL. I guess you had to be there.

See the picture up there? It came in a three-part letter from a boy I've never met who I sent an initial letter to earlier this month. What I love the most about it is this image -- birds on the wire, my favorite aesthetic in all of the universe. Now, this boy could not have possibly known this fact about me, but he included this sketch anyway. The world really does come together in nice ways.

Portland was good. Good not great, but it will be great next time. Mostly the "not great" part of it was that I got really, terribly, pneumoniaey sick on Wednesday night. Blame Ariana. But we got to cuddle and chill and watch ABC Family Christmas movies in wool socks and eat grand platters of slumber party foods for hours and hours and hours, and she can sleep with the television on, so she was a really good significant other to have for the week. We also embarked in lots of girly retail therapy and "Sex In The City"-y desserts and hour-long boy-related discussions. So that was all very plussy. And seeing Alex was very plussy, and seeing Alex's family as well (although I spent no more than 10 minutes with them and I wish it had been more). And of course MY family, who put up with me and put up with me and put up with me, even when I made putting up with me quite impossible.

Easing back into school. I had a bit of a backslide there, but I can feel myself approaching a certain point. It's like the point in a swimming race where you are crouched on the little diving board staring down at the water and you know the whistle is going to blow soon and you have this moment of experiencing how wet and sandpapery the diving block feels on your feet, and you poise yourself and decide you definitely, definitely want to be in the water.

cab

2008-12-01T21:58:00.003-06:00

The most powerful Katrina stories I have heard have been from cab drivers.

Two precursors to this thought: 1. My students probably have very good Katrina stories. Most of them spent a very long time in Texas because of the storm. But it's one of those subjects that comes up on its own, and generally, my students don't let it come up. There have been times when I have asked, of course. Once a student told me about how he watched someone get raped in front of him at the Superdome. But see, it's too painful, even for me, and we change the subject; talk about math instead, or Biology, or Final Fantasy, and pretend like Katrina was a long time ago, and that everything is safe and okay now. For some, that's what school is for. So that's the first thing. And 2. I am very, very good with cab drivers. I would say that my way with cab drivers is among my greatest talents in life. Almost without fail, I can get a cab ride for half the asking price by being personable. Keys to this trick: Be female, be wearing something kind of tight and/or skanky, and be sitting in the front seat. Sometimes I can even get the ride for free if I'm lucky, but I always pay anyway. I am genuinely fascinated by cab driving.

I mean, it has to be a pretty amazing profession. First, you have to be a map. I don't like riding in cabs with GPS systems. What's the fun in that? Part of being a cab driver is that you're supposed to be able to hear "Mount Avenue on the South Side" and know exactly where that is. I like maps, so the idea of being a human map is very attractive to me. Second, I hear people have sex in the backs of cabs, so that would be interesting if you were a cab driver. Third, I imagine you meet a lot of terribly interesting people, see a lot of terribly interesting road blocks, and witness a lot of little punctuations in your usual scenery every day because you spend all your time staring at it. From the bottom of my heart, I love to talk to cab drivers.

In New Orleans, the conversation in the cab always starts about the weather. "Isn't it cold?" "Isn't it warm?" "It's been raining an awful lot, hasn't it?" This segues kind of naturally into the subject of hurricanes.

I'm amazed by this, but ten out of ten of the last cab drivers I've had in New Orleans came back after Katrina. I don't know if I would be able to come back. But people here regularly impress me with their strength. They wear it like a beard you know you can't grow: "Yeah, whatever, I'm emotionally strong and weathered, what're you going to do about it?"

Once a man told me about how he plucked his indignant mother off her lower 9th ward property days before the storm, but how her best friend stayed and drowned and they saw her on the front page of the Texas paper, facedown in the deluge. "That was the week I learned how to text message. Because sometimes your phone wouldn't work but you could somehow text message. All I wanted to do was text message."

And the driver who came back and didn't have electricity for a month but he and his wife started to write short plays for each other to perform and they'd stand behind the kitchen table and pretend they were the television.

And yesterday, coming home from Thanksgiving break in Oregon, the man who came from India, who had family in Mumbai. And I said, "That must be awful, you must have been terrified last week, is everything okay," and he said, "It was nothing next to Katrina. My daughter still cannot drive through a puddle."

fun hummingbird.

2008-11-25T12:08:00.003-06:00

A hummingbird just landed on me. I'm not kidding! It was a purple hummingbird. I forgot how much I loved birds. My mom has these dozens of bird feeders outside her window (which kind of make her appear to be a little bit crazy) and she has everything: sparrows, flickers, multiple varieties of finches, EVERYTHING. Watching the birds out her window makes me feel safe.

Ari is visiting. +150,000 points.

things you should know if you ever reach out to girls who post ads on craigslist:

2008-11-21T20:39:00.002-06:00

A comprehensible but in no means comprehensive guide:

For your first e-mail, you should capitalize the following words: "I," the first word in a sentence, and "Barack Obama" (NOTE: You must capitalize BOTH "Barack" AND "Obama." Very important.)
Here are some words that you don't need to capitalize: "Basketball," "Television," "You," "Me," "Car," any words which follow the word "my" (examples: "my Television, my Car, my Cardboard Box Business")
Seriously, why are you capitalizing all these words which are clearly basic (not proper) nouns? STOP DOING THAT.
The only time it is tolerable to say "ur" instead of "you're" is in a text message. With a girl you have been dating for like a year already. Even then it is a stretch. It is NOT appropriate to use this "conjunction" five or more inexplicable times in a 25-word e-mail.
Please don't send an e-mail which says only, "U seem like a qT but ima hafta C A pic."
I'm probably not going to send you a "pic."
I don't really want to see a "pic" of you. I especially don't want to see a pic of you with your "muscles" showing. Or other things. Seriously, dudes of the Internet: exhibitionists much?
If you send an e-mail that says, "I voted for McCain, did you?" I am probably just going to blacklist your e-mail address.
Take a hint: if she doesn't write back within three days she's not interested. Multiple follow-up e-mails are not necessary. Nor are more "pix."
Uninteresting qualities that you don't need to brag about in introductory e-mails: Fondness for organized sports, fondness for getaway vacations to places like beaches or mountains, fondness for beer, fondness for dogs, being a SWM, working at an "Office Space"-type job, living in a suburb, having an obvious nickname (example: Spud).
I don't want to tell you what kind of music I like to listen to.
Come ons work waaaaay worse over the Internet. Just because I'm articulate on Craigslist does not necessarily mean that I'm tired because I've been "running through your mind all night." (You think I'm kidding. It happened.)
Just because I mentioned enjoying pie in my post does not 1) mean I want you make sexual innuendos involving pie, or 2) mean I'm going to think your pie pun is particularly clever.

Long after taking the post down, I'm still getting e-mails. Highlight: A man who sent me just a naked picture of himself wearing a porn mustache, black sunglasses, and a coyboy hat titled "hotbiscuitboy.jpg". The rest of the major highlights are described above. Woe.

bun.

2008-11-20T22:30:00.003-06:00

The last two days... so much. Too much for right now.

In short: I met a woman whose house was built from the ground up by Usher; a boy with paint on his shirt who works for the New Orleans Green Project; older teefers at the Hookah Bar (the Hookah Bar is excellent); a girl who smokes from the long cigarette holders they used in the twenties. I learned secrets. I slept in my car. I read three novels in two days, I talked everything out with my cat, my best (non-cat) friend in New Orleans moved away. I shook my students, hugged my students, laughed with them, listened to their inappropriate poop jokes during the period of covering the digestive system, someone else got shot. There are 206 bones in the human body and two kinds of fractures they can get (I just learned that today). Spent $50 on candy, rode the streetcar, had someone put flowers in my bike basket while it was parked at the park. And more.

But most importantly: "Yours Mine and Ours" is the worst, most implausible, completely inexcusable movie I have ever seen. And NetFlix should have told me that. Instead, NetFlix told me I would LOVE this movie. And I was skeptical, but NetFlix knows me, or so it claimed. Well, that's the last time I trust NETFLIX, let me tell you THAT.

fun folk!

2008-11-18T20:16:00.002-06:00

YES. WIN.

So while I was pretty drunk at this party last weekend this girl I barely knew named Shosh was like, "I have FRIENDS in New Orleans!" and she was beautiful and I was feeling the weight of being unbelievably lonely here, so, appropriately, I flipped out with happiness. And then I entered their numbers into my phone, and then I promptly forgot that I had done this.

But this morning, as if from a guardian angel, Shosh (who knows how she got my number) texted me and said, "REMEMBER to call my friends in New Orleans!" So I called her friends in New Orleans, completely aware of how weird and creepy it was going to sound for me to be like, "Um, hi, you don't know me, but I barely know some of your friends from Penn. Would you like to chill?" And these friends (actually, it was only one friend, and I didn't call, I texted, and her name was Caitlin) was like, "YES."

So I met Caitlin for a beer in the Marigny. And it just CLICKED. Just... "click!" And I felt this enormous wave of relief, like I had sat down across the table from my mom (if my mom was 22 and had an awesome boat purse). We bonded like crazy, and I wanted to say, "You have no idea how lost I've felt," but I didn't say that. That's one of those things I would say while drunk that Joe Stadolnik would find unattractive.

Speaking of which, Joe is moving on Thursday, which I found out on Friday, adding insult to the grand injury which my life was then. I guess it's what's best for him, but it blows for me.

After feeling great about discovering Caitlin (and her subsequent GAGGLE of people from Penn who also live in New Orleans), I went and sang karaoke alone. Finally. And it was awesome and I want to sing karaoke forever and for a living. Two people bought me drinks after that, so I took the streetcar home.

We had a halfday today and here is the dream I had while enjoying my halfday off:

(IT WAS A WEIRD DREAM. Interpretations will be appreciated):
(I now forget a lot of it. I hate that. I should have written it down. But I didn't. But it's okay I still remember the highlights):
A bunch of stuff happened before this part, but the first part I remember is that I got back together with my ex-boyfriend, Mac. Who was suddenly... very hairy? And we started doing all the things together that we meant to do but had never done, which in this dream included having sex in a lot of public places and adopting a tree and flying a kite. While we were in the middle of doing all these things (simultaneously, somehow), we ran into Jayda (my dept. chair and good friend at school in real life) with her (real life) boyfriend Drew, and they had a baby. It wasn't Jayda's baby, though. It was her sister's baby. So we decided to all go to the mall. In this dream Mac 1) was from New Orleans and 2) could fly. So he started talking about how he used to live in New Orleans and it wasn't like this before; now there were way more gangs. Also he flew around so I could never see his face. Then we were at the mall and the baby had been not waking up for a while, but we were for some reason not worried about this. Then at the CINNABON of all places Jayda realized the baby wasn't breathing and Drew started giving it mouth-to-mouth and they were PANICKING their brains out. When I saw the baby, it looked kind of green and really still and I could tell it was dead and this very dramatic music was playing. Then Mac started screaming about the dead baby (which Drew and Jayda were still trying to revive, to no avail), and he turned into a puddle. Like Alex Mack.

mostly fun.

2008-11-16T20:49:00.003-06:00

Worth mentioning: Philadelphia.

I should go into depth about Philadelphia. Frankly, it took essentially everything I had to get myself out of bed this morning (Vince let me have his this weekend and he slept on the floor, so I felt like a princess). I just thought, "What if I didn't come back to Teach for America and just moved into this beautiful house where it is snowing outside?" Well for one thing it would probably be kind of frustrating for Vince, who lives in the best bro-pad ever, complete with Did-You-Get-Those-Hand-Me-Down-From-Hugh-Heffner black leather couches, appropriately crinkled posters for indie bands with cute girls in them, lots of tall stairs, a huge projector screen in the attic, and a Eurotrash roof with perfectly moldy roof furniture.

This is Vince Levy. It's from when we lived in Williamsburg together (yes we were once that hipster-trashy). Barring Ben and Jessica, Vince is my oldest friend. We used to sit up late at night in the high school newspaper office discussing things like Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" and Rilo Kiley and running a marathon (funny story: Now, more than six years after those conversations, Vince is finally running one next week). This is one of those good friendships you try to document twenty years down the line in a schmaltzy scrapbook.

The trip to Philadelphia was as perfect as it possibly could have been. If I don't brag about the highlights I'll be doing a grand disservice to the entire underlying unspoken rule about personal blogs that they must either a) be spotlights for the activities you desperately want credit for participating in or b) be muffled little internet cries for help about how shitty everything is. Well, it would be a disservice to Idea a), at least.

So: Highlights From My Trip To Philadelphia:

We went to a party at a Secret Society. I don't think I understand how cool this was. I mean, yes, I saw the line of people who were not on the list waiting to get in, and I saw Vince stride right past them to get let into a secret entrance in the back. I saw how beautiful everyone was, and how well-stocked the bars were, and the DJ with his one headphone pressed to his face with calculatedly religious focus. But I know in my heart that spending hours at a party at a SECRET SOCIETY is the kind of dream that wannabe-coke-dealers jack off to at night.
I got drunk and was definitely not awful. I even think I was kind of charming. Which is good because last week Joe Stadolnik told me that I should opt to never ever get drunk because it's desperately unattractive on me.
The food of the weekend was: BIG sandwiches with lots of cheese and salt and pepper, skinny-crust east-coast pizza, more of the first two, strong black coffee and imported beer. Nothing more delicious or unhealthy.
THE ROSENBACH. I don't even know how to talk about the Rosenbach. It is far and away the coolest place I've ever been. I expect Vince realized that I would think so and whisked us over there on Saturday afternoon for the most worthwhile hour-long tour I've ever been on. The Rosenbach is a rare book collection, library, and historical house from two lavishly rich and prolific book collectors in the 1800s. It has the manuscript from "Ulysses"; the first edition (and every subsequent edition) of "Moby Dick" as sent by Melville himself to Nathaniel Hawthorne; an exhaustive collection of Shakespeare; extravagant "Alice In Wonderland" editions; seriously, you name it, they had it. I have never had such a hard-on for books before. And that's saying something, as I briefly majored in Book Arts. Truly, I've never seen so many beautiful books and I literally stood around DROOLING for an hour. On top of that, The Rosenbach is maintained on the first floor exactly the way it was when the family lived there. Philip Rosenbach was obsessed with birds and had tons of bird stuff (sound like anyone you know?). The woman who gave us the tour told us about how the family had dozens of exotic birds flying around the house at any given time, and a huge aquarium of turtles in the attic for making soup.
We shopped at H&M and then started to walk home through all the sight-seeing sites. In Love Park there are hundreds of skaters doing sick tricks (no other way to describe this) and the Statue of Penn looks like he has a boner. For a while, amidst a "Fuck Prop-8" rally at City Hall, we watched bird formations curl and fall against the sky. A good, time-stopping moment.
Vince bought me tickets to go with him and his friends (read: needlessly beautiful, glamorous and interesting) to the M83 concert. I let myself get into it for a while (they are the kind of band that plays with a deep seriousness and intensity as if to say, "This Music Is God"), and then chilled with Vince at the back watching the well-dressed college kids flit around and flirt with each other. I felt a little too old for concerts. And then I felt like I wanted to stay at that concert forever. Those were conflicting emotions. I let myself weigh them both appropriately.

You know, Penn is beautiful. The people are beautiful, the architecture, the trees. Since I've moved to New Orleans I've been floored by how old things are here compared to on the west coast. But in Philadelphia, old is even older.

Vince remains one of the smartest and most valuable people in my life, and he will have to work to avoid success. I was genuinely jealous of his whirlwind, glamorous existence. But I don't know if I'd be able to pull it off; I'm too attached to being alone to have a gorgeous posse like that.

On the other hand, the norms of my life continue to be depressing. I have start having uncontrollable, quiet outbursts of crying whenever I am confronted with something I want but cannot have. Examples:

When the flight attendant said with trembling fervor, "We're going home" on our way to Memphis.
Re-reading chunks of Barack Obama's acceptance speech. The thing I am saddest to have lost since I moved here is my sense of belief that change is simple or easy or even probable. I mean, I always blindly assumed that it was. And now, here, I see that it's not.
Any mention of getting a dog. Especially with a significant other or family member.

Back to school tomorrow. Who knows how.

25 percent fun.

2008-11-12T21:49:00.003-06:00

Okay, I'm going to go ahead and fess up. I posted an ad on the "Personals" section of Craigslist. On the "Strictly Platonic" part, I promise, but nevertheless it was desperate move. I'm just really looking for some best friends who fit me. I don't know why I figured I'd find them online. I guess I just thought that because I am online so often, all my kindred would also be online in New Orleans. So here's the ad I posted:

I'm really, really lonely. I also suck at meeting people because I think I come off a little strong. I'm seeking a partner in crime. Past crimes have included: planting flowers where they don't belong (not a euphemism), making baked goods in dirty shapes, writing letters to strangers, sidewalk chalk murals. I understand that it may seem like I'm not a very dangerous criminal. I'm not. I like: Nintendo over PS, the Hornets (I have hella tickets for this season), Scott Pilgrim and kin, things related to birds, eating out, Charlie Parker, pie, catching lizards and/ or frogs. I dislike: sloppy drunks (I kind of am one, though, so I'm a hypocrite), super-low-brow humor, crime drama shows, regular Hershey's chocolate, people who chew too loudly. Note the pie. I really like pie, and I like to make it for my friends. Lately I have had very few friends because I just (read: five months ago) moved here from Portland, Oregon and things swing differently down south. But maybe you'll be one?

See? Pretty harmless. And I figured if I found anyone who knew who Scott Pilgrim was (thanks Nadim) I would have found a soul mate and everything would be right with the world.

But I found NO ONE. NOOOO ONNNNE. I got 112 responses to this post, and they were all (except one) from men who were obviously trying to get laid. And, um, they were way too old for anyway. And they all attached pictures of themselves and EVERY SINGLE GUY looks EXACTLY the same -- slightly overweight, white, probably pledged Sig, baseball cap, I'm-disguising-my-beer-belly-with-this-ugly-facial-hair goatee. I am not exaggerating when I say I got 112 responses. I got 112. And not a single worthwhile partner in crime.

Actually, I wrote one person back. I even asked him good questions and set up a very charming scenario about peanut butter sandwiches (don't ask), and here is what I got back:

"ahahhahaha idk ru watching top chef? did u think my first response was clever? did you like the subject line?"

New Orleans, I am disappointed. Why am I failing so miserably at meeting cool people? I have never had this problem before. Did I get fat? Do I have a really foul stench? Do all cool people hang out at some bar on the other side of town? What is going on here?

Tonight: Pizza, beer, Scrabble, pie with Joe. Cut his hair (myself one night... oh Regina) and watched "Escape From Witch Mountain." Pretty average on the fun-o-meter. I'm clearly in a rut.

25 percent fun.

2008-11-11T19:02:00.003-06:00

Since we last spoke, there was another shooting. Yesterday I spent my entire day off cooking slow foods (beans, lentils, rice, potatoes, vegetables), taking care of sick Marianne, and writing like a maniac. The weather is starting to become more familiar and northwest... y. I have fake flowers pinned all over my walls and pictures of birds. I'm faking it.

School was fine. Devin looked at his new behavior plan, which I had decorated with various prizes for showing up to class and getting his work done (Devin is always at risk of being expelled, but he always narrowly avoids it, usually because we all love him so much). He could win Hornets tickets, parties, candy... all kinds of great swag. And I don't really care if he meant it, but Devin said, "I want this. I want to do this. I don't want to do it for any of that stuff, I want to do it for my mom." His mom died last year. I really think he meant it. Peoples' humanness still startles me. I forget, sometimes...

Most of my music got deleted from my old hard drive because it started eating itself. My iTunes library is depressing. All I want to do right now is read and write and listen to all the pretty albums I had backed up. Alas.

25 percent fun!

2008-11-09T10:01:00.003-06:00

Nothing is as remarkably boring as being sad. People aren't interested sadness. I should take that back: people are interested in sadness if it is new and fresh. They are interested in sadness if they are uncharacteristically bored, or if they think they can easily cure the sadness. Personally, I treat sadness the way my mother does: as something that the sad person is trapped inside of, like a fairly basic wire cage with the lock on the outside. I always assume I can find the magical secret key that will free my friends from their sadness, and then they will feel better and I will be rendered an instant hero. I am always much too talkative on the phone with my sad friends, suggesting antidotes for their problems at a chattery-fast pace (You should go out on weeknights! You should start a blog! You should listen to Swedish pop music! You should read graphic novels beneath sycamore trees!).

Of course, no one is going to solve it for you. My mother, in her infinite kindness, put up with me last week while I brattily rejected every one of her misery-elixirs for my particular ailment (You should buy a new pair of shoes! You should find an entirely new set of friends! You should balance your checkbook! You should drop out of Teach for America and move to Walla Walla and try to relive your college life for as long as possible!). I'm deeply grateful to her, because she is probably the only one who is not bored with me being sad. After my embarrassingly egomaniacal summer of crying every night and nervous breakdowns, I've officially run out of emotional IOUs and shoulders to cry on.

No one really wants to read a blog where some 20something waxes poetic about how much life sucks. There's nothing profound in that; we all know it. I need to pull myself out of it. Again.

I've done a lot of things that have been FREAKISHLY fun (Read: Grant Park on election night). Then I offbalanced all of those things by crawling under my covers, panic attacking (a new verb?), and eating exclusively foods of the 90 percent carbohydrate set. I've left woe-is-me voice mails ("Mary? ... It's... Sophie. I'm just... things are so.... hard right now. I'm just... I think I should go to the hospital... I'm so miserable... I don't know what to do... I am going to lie on a bed of nails... I am going to drown kittens to distract myself from my current... unbelievable... melancholy... Anyway (snifffff) you don't... need to call back..."). And then I indefinitely logged myself out of GChat (I didn't just Invisible myself, I actually LOGGED MYSELF OUT), deleted my Facebook account (briefly), and effectively hid from the world.

The world did not particularly miss me. The world did not call, nor did it write e-mails, frantically wondering where or how I was. The world continued on its axis, perhaps glad that I was out of order for the time being, because it had other things to worry about -- like, um, THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT (+342894723894723984723 points for the country!!)?!

So that's the long-winded excuse for my Internet absence. I could explain away the sadness, but you've heard it all before (shootings, terrible reading, gang fights, bad names, threats, friendship trouble, etc.). I just have to start working my way up again...

I went on a critical mass last night (5 points!). I'm not very good at riding a bicycle. I know that seems like one of those things that you can either do or not do (such as rolling your tongue or snapping), but when you ride in a critical mass you realize there are varying levels of goodness when it comes to riding a bicycle. For example, I cannot a) Ride with no handlebars, b) Pass items from my bike to another bike and back again, c) Fix iPod speakers in my bike basket while also riding, d) Be drunk while also riding (I don't know if this is true because I didn't try, but I wasn't about to because THAT SEEMED DANGEROUS), e) Not make a face that implied that I was focusing a lot on the actual activity of bike riding. Everyone else in the critical mass COULD do those things. But it was still cool. People honked at us because the didn't like the critical mass. People also cheered because they were drunk and they thought it was cool to see a lot of bikes.
Karaline took me on a picnic yesterday (3 points!). We went to City Park where all the trees have Spanish moss and Whitman-y artists' creations hanging from the branches like in a fantasy novel, and there is literally every rare shore bird in North America just chillin' in the various bodies of water. She made something really luxurious involving pasta and basil and we drank hard cider and iced tea. Then we saw this tiny train going along these tiny train tracks in the park and we thought, "We are going to find where that tiny train sets out!" And so we followed the tracks and realized that CITY PARK HAS A MAGICAL WONDERLAND INSIDE OF IT (Read: amusement park). We snuck in the back without paying admission and took the train ride. Why is it that if you are riding on a tiny train it is acceptable to wave at everyone you pass and expect them to wave back at you, but it is totally not acceptable to do that in everyday life?
We got $120 Thai food and ate for three hours (1 point!). I made earrings out of 10-cent mini motorcycles (another point!).
Grant Park is the ultimate bragging right (10 points!). It was everything you might have imagined it was when you watched television, but then multiply that by about thirty-thousand. I can't really describe it without a string of cliches. But I was with Kim and Alex and let me just say that I have never been so happy in my entire life.
Alex and I went for brunch in Hyde Park and we ran into Spike Lee going into a barber shop (2 points!). I can't not mention that because the stars are still kind of in my eyes.
For Leah's birthday we went to a freelance pedicurist, which sounded really sketchy to me but turned out to be AWESOME (3 points!). How is every single apartment in New Orleans cooler than the last apartment I thought was the coolest apartment? At this rate, the next apartment I see is going to have actual clouds hanging from the ceilings and celebrities mixing in the parlor room. We drank hot apple cider and discussed the weary ways of the world, along with the merits of Democracy Now and cheap flip-flops. My toenails are exceptionally clean and also orange. We had dinner at Nighthawks again which is absolutely my favorite restaurant here. We ate at the bar and they gave Leah a free Bloody Mary with sprigs of asparagus in it and onions and olives. Some old man came in with his impossibly young puppy and let it run around on the bar top. That puppy smelled really good.

So things are good. Fine, really. I really miss having a family. Define that however you want. My parents arguing over Halloween costumes, my sister walking with me for miles in Birkenstocks, Alex doing work in my room when I come home from running errands, Ari and '80s movies on Friday nights, dancing for an hour straight at Kim's house after consuming an entire pizza, Jessica and Ben lying on an oversized couch at one in the morning watching "I Love The Nineties." Feeling deeply safe and not alone. I miss that. A lot.

0 percent fun.

2008-11-06T17:52:00.000-06:00

Indefinitely miserable.

rant.

2008-11-02T20:12:00.002-06:00

I'm just so angry. I don't even think that legally I'm allowed to write about school or about this shooting that took place at our students' homecoming game, but I think it's fair for me to say that no kids should be growing up this fast, period. And it hurts my feelings that Barack Obama hasn't been here in ages. I just can't imagine a place in this country more important (or more seriously broken) than New Orleans. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's this bad everywhere. But if that's the truth then I am seriously, seriously sad for this country. This is not our students' fault, it's not the teachers' fault, it's not the administration's fault, it's not Paul Vallas' fault, it's not the RSD's fault. We are all doing the best we can. But something deeper is more fucked up than we realize.

Let me just say this: if a single student had been caught within 100 feet of a gun at a football game at my (90 percent white) high school in Portland, it would have been on the news immediately, and for DAYS following the incident. But here, I tell my roommates what happened and they say, "Oh that sucks. I'm sorry." It's just pretty run-of-the-mill.

62 percent fun!

2008-11-01T23:51:00.002-05:00

I want to sit down and blog for a long time, but I also want to go to bed while watching Gilmore Girls and reading Scott Pilgrim Volume III (which just came in the mail today). So here are things I learned today.

1. Things that help you feel better when you are feeling down:

Cooking with your favorite people in a really clean kitchen. Involving lots of spices like saffron strands and coriander and whatnot.
Riding your bike in the sun.
Listening to Joanna Newsom with people who also like Joanna Newsom.
Eating food from bullet point one.
Finding one million dollars that you can keep or spend on opulent things.
Holding your sister's Buddy Bear like it is a man.
Listening to the Lite Rock station.

2. Things I love about Prospect.1 -- the United States' first biennial ever, which just happens to be in New Orleans (I plan to blog hardcore about this tomorrow, so stay tuned):

Everything.

3. Miscellaneous things that were exciting about today:

It was Leah's birthday. We all ate food for hours with dozens of people on the Bayou St. John and saw nutria. IN FACT, Joe and Dave tried to throw seashells at the nutria in order to "catch" them. Failures, all attempts. Good food, drink, etc. Tomorrow Leah and I are getting mani/pedis from a freelance nail lady.
My letter got published in the Times Picayune! I'm famous. People were texting me all over the TOWN about it!
We saw a lot of desecrated robot costumes on Frenchmen, and I was secretly glad I didn't go out last night. It would have been too much for me. The aftermath was almost too much for me.
People put bright flowers on graves for Day of the Dead. I like how beautifully death is treated in this city. With such respect and wonder...

Cakes:

Angel food
Chocolate
The band
Yellow

58 percent fun, and falling fast.

2008-10-31T21:26:00.004-05:00

What is happening? I used to be so FUN! And now it is HALLOWEEN, my fourth favorite holiday (which as holidays go is pretty damn good. It is preceded, by the way, by Groundhog's Day, the 4th of July, and Valentine's Day, respectively. Which will merit further discussion on another day). And I am just lying in bed, having spent the afternoon cleaning the kitchen, blog-browsing, and reading comic books. AN EXCESSIVE AMOUNT of comic books (graphic novels, really). Four graphic novels. In one day. And it's not like they were short little smarmy ones, either. Those were investments, let me tell you.

Yesterday I took the day off. Had sushi with Joe and we went to the BIG book sale in Kenner. After robbing them of some amazing, amazing treasures (first edition of Audubon illustrations for 50 cents?) we sat on the boat ramp to Lake Pontchartrain. It was 72 degrees, the sun was shining, there were... birds. It reminded me of driving out to the lake in Walla Walla and feeling relatively content. But that was then and this time something was unsettling... or maybe just, as hopelessly cliche as it is, unfamiliar. Sidenote: how has NO ONE (including the desperately cultured Joe Stadolnik) heard the Hulkamaniac rap? It's a sick, sad world. Daria was right all along.

After two weeks of quitting, I'm smoking again. I don't understand the sudden lurch in funness. Despite my best efforts I've been inexplicably not-fun for days now. Glum, cat-happy, unproductive. A bit lost.

These mood swings are utterly baffling. I am not menopausal or premenstrual, so rule the hormones out. Maybe I'm just lonely.

My sister sent me a letter today that made me feel so sharply human that it made me cry in that way that we like to cry. And then I was like, "Screw this. They need teachers in Colorado Springs, right?"

Today at school some kids got in a "gang fight" and were stapling each others' skulls so the police officer sprayed us all with pepper spray or mace or something. IT WAS SO INCREDIBLY PAINFUL for the REST of the day. In high school when I got sprayed it wasn't this bad. Then we were on lockdown like prisoners until everyone got to leave at 3. We all started to go crazy, no matter how many B-movies teachers had on file for just such an occasion. I dressed like Madeline. Big hit. Even when the kids didn't recognize the character, they recognized that my coat was made out of bright blue felt and they thought that was neat.

That's a picture of Avery playing Connect Four. Which is all he did all day. But let me tell YOU: that kid is GOOD at Connect Four. He is also the funniest person in the universe, and he knows it. I wish I could just video tape him existing.

65 percent fun.

2008-10-30T07:31:00.001-05:00

I'm taking the day off. I felt like I needed to because I was freaking the fuck out last night and crying like crazy and being really unattractive but now I feel incredibly, incredibly guilty about it. Maybe I should go to school right now. It's not too late, after all.

72 percent fun!

2008-10-28T21:48:00.003-05:00

Real talk: I have found the cure to EVERYTHING.

Go to dinner at a top Zagat rated Tunisian restaurant where the tablecloths are linen and the owner serves you himself and the food tastes like butter made by GOD HIMSELF. And then eat there for three hours and order dessert. And have good company. And then you'll feel better. Seriously: I was feeling defeated at my job, miserable in my personal life, deeply unfun, and actually a little physically ill. Now I feel like Atlas. Also I'm really full and I have leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

Also I have a fairly seriously question:
I have this bumper sticker on my car (see below and to the right). I love it, but some of my students saw me driving and they made this face that kind of said, "That's really funny but we think that is kind of inappropriate and might get you fired." Should I take this off my car in favor of something less offensive such as "I love kittens and peace"? Because I also have that bumper sticker lying around...

71 percent fun.

2008-10-26T21:14:00.003-05:00

On the plus side: The pumpkin party was an enormous success. The weather was EXACTLY PERFECT -- 75 degrees, blue skies, but somehow still crisp. I made the apple cider from scratch for the first time and it was good (good not great, but what are you going to do for your first time?) and the cookie decorating portion of the party rivaled the cookie decorating parties of my mother's infamy when I was in the 4th grade. PLUS there was a parade that passed by our house (FUN!) and I'm totally losing weight (FUN!) and Leah brought her five-week old kitten named Sal (FUN FUN FUN!)

But on the minus side, I had a for-serious breakdown and a "what-is-it-all-for" moment which reminded me terribly of high school episodes. I thought I was so over the whiny my-life-is-an-underground-cesspool-of-doom phase, but apparently not. I don't think cesspool is a word. Doesn't it sound like a word?

Other words that are not real words but sound like they should be real words:
Pampalegic
Magnimatrimony
Plaudious
Grull

Words that are obviously fake:
Prapplelobble
Cluffimonk
Lwo

Words that really sound like they should not be words but somehow made it into someone's vernacular at some point:
Vernacular
Milquetoast
Bowyang

This is an interesting article about words which are not real words.

Excuse me while I crawl into my little hole to sulk my migraine away. Pathetic.

71 percent fun!

2008-10-26T10:06:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I actually spent eight hours in line just to VOTE EARLY. It was kind of cool -- hundreds of people waiting in line a full week before election day just to do their civic duty, giving up their Saturdays, you know -- but on the other hand, I had to give up my Saturday. And I had plans, let me tell you. There were like ten festivals I wanted to go to. And I didn't get to go to them. I sat at City Hall. For 8 hours.

But I was fun as possible at City Hall:

When we all got shoved into the back room for "phase 3" of waiting I started a sing-along of T.I.'s "Whatever You Like." And people TOTALLY participated.
I met six people. One had spent several years in Tanzania volunteering, and one claimed to make the greatest sweet tea in all of Louisiana and said I could come over and have some.
I made a collage using chewed gum and various How-To-Run-From-Hurricanes packets and pamphlets
I bought three packs of Lifesavers from the vending machine and taught the little girl behind me how to play Lifesaver Solitaire. Then we ate them. And her dad thought that was gross and she wasn't allowed to hang out with me anymore. Which was too bad for him because we were stuck in line together for eight hours.
I read the entirety of Scott Pilgrim Volume II. This is my new favorite comic book. Thanks Nadim!
Beat ALL HIGH SCORES on cell phone Bejeweled!
Voted for BARACK OBAMA! YAYYYYAYYAYAYA!

Other weekend highlights:

Ran into Weezy (plus body guards) on Magazine. No big thang. HE COMPLIMENTED MY BELT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!! Whatever. Happens to everyone.
TV on the Radio
Saw Assassins at the little theatre in the French Quarter.
Aidan had his first beigniet. BFD.
Lasagna and gin and tonics at Leah's where we played Clue.
I finally watched Camp Rock. And then I puked all over myself.

TODAY is the PUMPKIN PARTY. My favorite day of the ENTIRE YEAR. Besides the day in the spring when it has been raining all week and all the flowers bloom and then FOR ONE DAY it is sunny and beautiful and I skip school. But pumpkin party day is definitely number two. My parents used to throw the best Halloween parties every year. Now a good pumpkin party co-thrower is my only prerequisite for marriage. Good partnership in crime is also favorable. Also good hair. And good-smelling deodorant. And a general liking of dogs, Star Wars, comic books, and the NBA. I guess I'm pickier than I thought.

69 percent fun!

2008-10-23T21:13:00.002-05:00

Besides being beaten up by a student, today was good.

I take it back. Today was not good. This evening was fantastic, though. ToDAY, I lost a lot of blood because I got in the middle of a fight; someone set the basement of the school on fire and the firetrucks had to come; and one of our students is wanted for murder. All in a day's work.

This evening, though, I went to the Ogden Museum After Hours (thanks, Andrew), and it was all I could have hoped for and more. The new exhibits were asphyxiating, particularly the work by Douglas Bourgeois (I wrote in my notebook, so as not to forget what stuck out to me: "women; birds; people in varying stages of despair, displacement, contemplation, isolated bliss. Brand names and '50s sensibility. Race, religion, modernity, pop culture.") My favorite was a piece called "Sanctuary" which featured a black man surrounded by Lucky Strikes, electrical outlets, and gorgeously intricate birds. The pieces were intimate and haunting; they are painstakingly crafted and cathartic to look at. I was standing in front of a portrait of a queenlike woman surrounded by birds' heads, moved almost to tears, when I realized that the other man standing in the gallery was THE ARTIST HIMSELF. So of course I talked to him for some time, recommending him all the Daniel Clowes books I could think of...

I colored at the kids' table and drank Abita Amber on an empty stomach. Then I think I hit on the security guard accidentally.

I know it's been said by everyone who's anyone, but TV on the Radio's new album is perfect, and I've also lately been wrapped up in M83's new one. Listening to these as loud as possible on the streetcar I closed my eyes and thought about the scene from the smoking roof at the Ogden: birds spilling out like paper confetti to a fan across a sky colored like a cocktail and an aging silo labeled "Cotton Mill."