wee hours

Listening to: Bela Fleck--Pepetual Motions
About to read: The Devil Wears Prada (I need some fluff)
Excited about: getting paid on Monday. Finally.


It's 4:25 a.m.

I can't remember the last time I voluntarily stayed up so late. Maybe it was on a road trip with Mateo a few years back, travelling through the muggy June air of the Carolinas. It could have been when I groggily watched movies and played chess with the boy I fell hard for (who didn't fall back). I haven't pulled an all-nighter since Senior Seminar, when we sat down at the diner with our literary criticism, injecting caffeine by way of bottomless pots of coffee and a dish of chocolate chips. I spent many nights worth the extreme lethargy that ensued the next day and have vivid memories of the bizarre conversations and fits of laughter shared by those with whom I stayed awake.

Tonight is different.

I don't hear the frustrated tapping of pens and the assignments no longer exist. I'm not feigning intrigue or energy to retain the potential interest of a man, and I'm certainly not in a truck headed to tomorrow's gig. There aren't any parents around telling me not to fall asleep on the chair and hassack and to make it an early night.

It's all together strange and lovely to be 25 and stay up near dawn just to think. When you're occupied with thought, the loneliness leaves you for a short while. What's strange is that I haven't spoken one syllable in several hours. The loveliness lies in the ice outside keeping me from a superficial social scene, giving me time to simply Be.

goat in the garden

Toying with a schedule is never a good idea when it involves hungry little people and bells. The genius with the dogs and the bells caused disaster with some sixth graders. Of course I made bunches of food references, intensifying the cravings...I really must enjoy self-torture in some sick, subconscious way, since I myself haven't eaten anything that required moderate chewing since the wisdom tooth ordeal last Tuesday--I've had enough jello, pudding, and soup lately to make me feel like a gummy hospital patient...or a person who'd just gotten their wisdom teeth out...no wonder the school's food looked so incredibly tempting.

Tonight would be different; it had to be. Tonight would be a night of change, of ambition, of chewing! I told my friend Hunter to forget about soup and spaghetti, that it was pizza on which we would feast! Considering that one of us is a vegetarian and the other can't chew mozzarella yet, deciding what to order wasn't simple. We finally came across a pie (pizza pie for you non-New Yorkers) that any pizzaiolo would have been proud to toss: fresh roma tomatoes, spinach, roasted garlic, and goat cheese. De-lish, right?

It definitely pleased my eager palate until I remembered its name on the menu, "goat in the garden." Who wants to eat anything called a goat in the garden? Who wants to eat anything from a garden where goats roam around? Or graze around? Or whatever it is that goats do? WHO came up with that name, and why does it bother me so?

Maybe I'm still trying to get over the mental block I thought I had passed with goat cheese. It sounds like cheese from the actual goat instead of cheese from a goat's milk...hmm..not sure which actually sounds worse.....either way...I send up a big hallelujah for getting back into the world of food tonight by meeting the goat in the garden.





P.S.
(It was from Bottoms Up Pizza here in the West End. It really was very good, just strangely named).

princess a definite misnomer

I have this phone from Steinmart that is an exact replica of the 1950s' "Princess" phone. It's a chrome piece that isn't cordless and has a fake-out rotary dial. Let me just say that I love this phone: it looks perfect on my desk, it fits perfectly in my grip, and it's reliable. I prefer it to any phone I've ever used and I can even deal with the fact that it doesn't have Caller ID.

What I don't love is the ring, which is a shrill, vibrating, soprano banshee of an alarm. The Princess phone strikes once and I'm summoned! I'm hurdling across neat piles of apartment junk, dashing into my desk nook, and praying with all I've got that the caller hasn't hung up after my Olypmian efforts to satiate the siren. The ring startles me so much that my heart rate zooms to an unhealthy pace every time someone tries to reach me on my house phone. If you've ever wondered why I'm out of breath when I answer, you know now.

I was nearly asleep when I heard it one hour ago. At 25 you can't worry about who might be calling so late; you're still young. All I cared about was how I needed to pick up that damn phone and extinguish the strident signal before it penetrated my eardrums any more...

I've had the phone since Halloween, and am (obviously) not used to it. How did the original 1950s users ever cope with it? Thank the Lord for writing. It takes way too much time to calm your breathing down after hearing the Princess phone clanging away.

Well, I'm tired now. It's 1 a.m. and as Jenny used to say, I've got to be a teacher in the morning...wait...in a few hours....maybe I am getting old, after all....

melting

It's hard to come back to work on a snow day, even if some part of you does want to be there. As a teacher, you use those snow days to recondition your entire being to know again what it's like to to not have to deal with crowd control, repeat yourself, ask for quiet, or be interrupted. Inevitably, a school's re-opening will tire you out by the time it's one o'clock.

Just when I was convinced that my kids hadn't been learning anything, David shocks me by asking what the word "modify" meant. His next question: "So, an adverb modifies a verb, right? And an adjective modifies a noun?" Glory hallelujah! My boy had apparently been paying attention and soaking it in the whole time. But my feelings of pride and triumph didn't last long--I want to teach them something bigger, grander, deeper, more necessary than identifying part of speech. Sure, I have "done my job," but it doesn't seem good enough. Have I made an impact? Have I imparted both wisdom and love to my students? Is what I am doing really making a difference?

One little cutie pie, Travis, came to see me as I was packing up at the end of the day. He was complaining about another teacher, about how she screamed at him again today, about how mean she is. (I secretly agree). Of course, I couldn't really allow my student to keep bashing this colleague. I unconsciously made a face, a face that said I understood and it was ok-- Travis had the same look about him, and we shared a smile. He gave me a huge hug and said, "I love you, Miss Frazer! Thanks for not being like" you-know-who. I couldn't help it; I had to laugh.

A day where I'd rather be anywhere else turned into something good because the kids unknowingly got rid of my recent self-defeating attitude towards teaching. I must have been engrossed in our classroom world today; I didn't even look out the window to see that the snow was melting into slush outside. For the first time in weeks, the sun was shining.

signs

listening to the Aunt Hoo Fung mixed CDs from Bubba
finished reading Saving Our Schools: Saying No to No Child Left Behind
excited about going the Elton John concert in March!!!!

Can I just say one kind word to the city of Richmond: Thank you for breaking me of my intense shopping addiction. ~We thought it might be a fiscal nightmare to have me living directly across the street from the Short Pump Town Center, which houses BOTH Ann Taylor and Ann Taylor Loft. Whether it's a cold January, an open-air mall, or the way prestige, status, and image run this part of town, I just don't have it in me anymore. This Long Island girl has about called it quits with her power shopping. I'm almost afraid and ashamed to even type that, but it's the truth. I just can't shop like I used to anymore. It might just be a temporary condition...not sure if this is good or bad, but it's definitely a sign....

It astounds me that Ray Charles' version of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" did NOT make it to the "Sleepless in Seattle" soundtrack. I've had the soundtrack for years, but never actually seen the movie until this evening. I must be the only person in my generation who hasn't seen this Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan film (which is particularly awful of me, because my favorite films are the Meg Ryan kind). I keep holding onto this pyschotic shred of hope and surreal idea that my life will develop much like a Meg Ryan movie...I know, I know better than this, but what's a girl without hope?

One underlying theme of the movie? Destiny; specifically, signs. In my own life, I have spent hours wondering about them. Talk about having an overactive intuition: I see a commerical for Italian hotels--should I go; does it mean something? It all means something, surely. I can't get more involved with it than that.

What I'm learning is that signs aren't tangible, they aren't lightning bolts, they aren't even feelings all of the time. The biggest one today was a phone call from a dear, dear friend--he and I are in the same place in life. He was driving home to Tennessee from California, and so we chatted during the three hours to go before he reached Nashville. The sage advice and encouragement that he offered: that we are not stuck. We are capable. We are qualified. A college degree does mean something. Most of all, that we are to go after our happiness and ignore the opinions and values of the world.

I came to Richmond seeking change and what I want more than anything is change again: to rewind time eight months past and try again in another way. Other then a lease to complete, a binding legal contract, and a Nebraska wedding, June is looming and I have nothing planned-- I know the signs will come, so I will listen.

my first time

Blogging, that is. Get your minds out of the gutter, kids.

I suppose a girl can spend an enormous amount of time thinking about life and everything right and wrong with it after 4 1/2 snow days, wisdom tooth surgery, and way too many hours alone in an apartment.

It was bad enough to be by myself after oral surgery--and then the snow started. Combine the snow with Richmond's infamous black ice and you have insane driving conditions, even though my crazy Czech neighbors were pulling in and out of the parking lot like it was in their blood, ya, to be travelling about in the nasty wintry mix. So, except for the sound of the Czechs pullng their car out of the garage, I'dbeen isolated for five days. That may be plenty of time for the biggest introvert to be alone, but at some point, you have to have human contact--otherwise you turn into the woman from "The Yellow Wallpaper."

But it is this otherwise dismal hibernation that provoked my thoughts. I found out a lot; I found I knew very little:
I thought I had finally discovered "what it is I am supposed to do" when I started teaching. I'm from New York, so I thought I wanted to be near a bigger city and that it didn't matter to me how far or near my family lived. I thought a lot of things. I thought I KNEW a lot of things, about myself, my beliefs, and my surrounding world.

In order for me to know myself better, to give fuel to creativity, and to just figure it out, I need to return to writing. It's time for me to start over again, in all of the contexts that 'starting over' can entail--I begin by deciding what it is is that I really hold to be true, and venturing on from that point.

Yes, it's definitely the hermit lifestlye forced upon me a week ago that made me decide to blog.


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