potty mouth

Something that really made me laugh. From ask Natalie:

Q: My step-sister has had what she called a bacterial infection on her lips off and on for about three years. I've always thought that it looked like herpes, and she told me a few days ago that a doctor did in fact say it was herpes. We have been sharing drinks and lip glosses and such for quite some time, and I have been getting worried lately because herpes are not something I'd like to have. This morning when I was getting ready I noticed a bump on my lip and I'm pretty sure its a cold sore. This is making me pretty upset. Not only do I most likely have herpes but my boyfriend will probably get it too. Now to my question: Would punching her in the face be adequate revenge?

A: Let me reiterate what you told me:

Your sister had a 3 year-long "bacterial infection". You had reason to believe it was herpes, before she herself found out it was herpes. You chose to share drinks and lip glosses with someone who you thought either had a horrible, 3 year-long bacterial face infection or herpes. After YOU chose to rub face germs with someone with the creeping face crud and/or herpes, you are blaming your potential infection on her.

Either YOU were allowing HER to use YOUR lip gloss, and drink YOUR coke, or you were asking the person with the face infection/herpes to let YOU use HER various around-the-mouth items. She never held you down and rubbed her pop can over your face, or tied you to a chair and gave you a glamour-girl makeover with her infected, herpes-plagued cosmetics. This seems like a simple failure of your self-preservation skills. In the same way you wouldn't bareback with a bum you found shooting up heroin out behind the 7-11, or make out with someone with raging mono, or drink the vomit of someone with the stomach flu, one would expect that you would also not share beverages or cosmetics with someone who has lesions of any kind on their face. Personally, even if she DIDN'T have herpes, I would probably try to avoid a 3-year face infection just as stringently. That's just me, though.

So, you tell me, who needs the sense punched into whom?

so much for my laziness. lou reed wins again.

I have this misguided devotion to live music. It's ridiculous really considering how many bands I've seen. Not to mention that I've seen many of them more than once. Still, this week is the music & film festival SXSW where I never fail to see something pretty amazing. Being at Johnny Cash's VIP show at Emo's was orgasmic (he and the original Tennessee Three rocked that place) Tom Waits was fucking brilliant in so many ways. His is NOT _just_ a music show. Anyway...

This year it's Lou Reed. And while I do love him and want to go experience what might be left of him, I am so temtpted to stay home. After only 2 days of it, SXSW I mean, I am bone tired. All day I've felt this growing anxiety because I _have_ to go. I have to get up. I know I'll beat myself up about it later when I start hearing the stories but right now I'm thinking "I don't have to."

huh. I had no idea I could do this. Post from my phone I mean.

My nephew just told me he's joining the Air Force. I'm freaking out a little.

in a few days i will be 43 years old. if you had asked me how i felt about this or myself in general, say, about a week ago, i probably would have said, "old and tired." but somehow in the last few days and especially yesterday and today, i've had a change of soul. ask me now and i will tell you, "i am not old, i am well seasoned." i'm sure i stole that line from someone, but right now it doesn't matter. it fits.

i am toughing out a weird situation with my new job, but for the most part i love it. i know now that this is what i was meant to do. i think it is partly the reason that i am feeling so...creative? i don't know what to call it. here is what i have planned. i'll need to check this list often to make sure i stay on track.

• i've invited local friends from facebook to participate in an idea i have for photos. i want to do some "adventurous" portraiture. and i don't know what i mean by that except that i want it to be good/interesting/revealing regarding its subject. two people have shown interest. well 3 but one lives in germany, so that won't happen for a while. i want to start that NOW.

• podcasting. i've had the tools for a while now. even a good mic i bought while i was still working at the mill. i don't want to sound like i'm all that, but i have had an interesting life. i have a million stories that i have always wanted to get "out there" and podcasts have that wonderful combination of spoken words with pictures. i'd like to do the podcast anonymously. i want to start today.

• travel. i want to go places. i love austin, but it's been a while since i've been out of the state even! nyc is first, then maybe cuba. i'm thinking since i have the summer off i can do one or two trips and one major house project.

ok that's a short list but they are all big projects for someone like me.

hello world. i am back.

last night one of my favorite bands of all time played at the Yard Dog. this band is called Half Japanese. They rocked it out.

On August 17, 2006, I quit my job. I had no idea what I was going to do and my live-in boyfriend, Ben, had been laid off the month previous. Having always wanted to teach, I decided to try substitute teaching, which I had heard would break anyone from wanting to teach if they didn't really have it in them. Ben eventually found a short term job at the Texas Legislature working for the Senate. Both of us had moved from pretty good jobs, to no jobs, to low-paying but somewhat interesting jobs, albeit short-term jobs.

Once I had my feet wet, I knew I wanted to jump in head first. I really loved teaching and was lucky enough to get a long-term sub for a 4th grade teacher at a school about 1.5 blocks from my home. By this time I had started my teacher certification "education" and aside from not having insurance (thank you Dr. B for being so awesome) and being mostly poor (I did have money from stock sales -- thank you Apple for your soaring stock prices), I was pretty happy until Ben's job ended and so did mine. I was lucky. I at least had a promise for work starting at the end of August. I had to survive about 2.5 months without a job (lots more training to do before school starts), but provided I passed all my tests (thank you Bush for making me "highly qualified" -- I feel so much better), I would have a job, in fact the same job I had had as a sub, come August. There was only one thing left. Ben had to get a job as well.

Well, I am happy to report that Ben has been informally offered a position at a software development company where he will be making about as much as I was making before I quit my job. And I will be making about as much as he was making when he got laid off! I nearly jumped out of my skin when I realized that we were finally going to be back where we left off about one year ago. Sure my insurance is not as good (damn those HMOs) and sure, I won't be getting a free iPhone, but what teacher needs an iPhone? (me)

When it finally sunk in that we were in the clear (almost), we did the jump-up-and-down-dance for about 10 minutes and talked about all the things we could have. We would be DINKs once more. Free to spend money on the things we wanted. I will have tons of time off so that I can travel. NYC, here I come! And best of all, no more "where's the money going to come from?" discussion every time had to spend some (like the panelling I decided to tear off one of our walls that now needs replacing).

Ahhhhhhhh. Yes. Now we can get a second "guitar"

i'm at the coffee house. people come here now to surf the net. no more books anywhere really. smoking is still allowed, which even though i don't smoke, i appreciate.

anyway. i am bored. i had a very slammed life for s while so i was really looking forward to the stillness of being "off" for a while. the first few days i got on chat. good ole chat. i thought, i have been avoiding it because i will get bombarded by people who haven't seen me on since. wow -- since March. oh so long ago. anyhoo, once the excitement wore off people stopped chatting me every five seconds and now it's boring again. i'm on it now. no chats open. i then turned to my online persona on myspace. i added some info and some pics from my flickr. i don't know why i wasted the time. the only thing i got for my trouble is my ex. and the thing is only people like him will ever be writing me there because a while back, on learning that i would be a real teacher, i made myspace private. friends only. so only people who know me can read all my drivel about myself which is pointless because they all already know that about me. it's now just an instant feed to my friends for when i update my flickr. my myspace friends anyway. that is not all my friends. so then came flickr. i spent almost a whole day (after the bill callahan in-store) uploading, scanning, and rearranging my pictures. i also made some new contacts. i need to do more of that. so that got done. now i am bored.

bored because all that is left is the boring stuff. groceries. cleaning. painting. i actually cleared off a wall in my huge living room/dining room area. the tub really needs a scrub. they called me from the school to get my summer info. i asked if they had any jobs this summer. the secretary told me i should work in a pawn shop. interesting.

now i am at the coffee shop. every time i have come here before it has been a little chilly. inside they have the AC cranked and outside there is a shaded area that is very cool. so today i got a regular latte instead of a cold one and it's boiling out here. i also got a cookie. bad bad carbs. it's oatmeal though.

i need a job for like 1.5 months. anyone have any bright ideas?

i just looked at his myspace page more closely. he just set it up yesterday and it's under his old (and I'm talkin' mid-eighties) band's name. it just smells wrong, right?

after successfully dodging my exhusband for a few years, he has finally found me on myspace. god damn the evils of myspace and also god damn me for getting on that thing. i'm still not sure that i see the point except that i do get a sense of somehow being more attatched to people i can't see often. i'm not a very good correspondent in regards to email. i like letters and if someone writes me a letter i will always reply. anyway, i digress...

my exhusband has found me on myspace. i hate having an exhusband. now what? do i respond politely and let him be my "friend"? shite. no i don't like that. i could just respond without adding him. or not respond, which is really what i want to do. look, i know this seems trivial, but when a guy has put ads on craigslist trying to contact you after having lost your email address.

he originally found me, in 2001 i think, via a website i had done for school several years earlier. for some reason the site was still live and provided my school email address. it took them a while to turn it off i guess. back then i was like, "OK, hi, how are you? (I'm not thrilled to hear from you, but hey, maybe you have something interesting to share.) I'm good. Best regards. etc." after several emails that didn't make much sense and sounded a bit desperate, i stopped responding. he thought he lost my email address. i know this because he emailed me at one of my many random email addresses saying he wasn't sure if it (the email address) was still live. i never responded again.

not long after that, he posted an ad on craigslist in austin looking for me. "Hey I lost your email address, write me here if you see this." a friend found it and forwarded it to me asking if i knew this guy. i decided then to leave him be and did not respond.

the next ad came on my birthday. a random friend emailed me saying "Happy Birthday according to some guy on craigslist." it was him again. this time with a picture of him with his dog. again i did not respond.

now what? i don't use myspace much. but once i make him a friend he can see all my insides. grrr. i will sit on it for a while.

in the mean time, and more importantly, question b:

should i go take new pictures or scan old ones?

here is one of us ( he and me )

yesterday was perfect. lovely people all evening long. i wore ( too much make up )

Wow! Being unemployed in Austin is great! On today's agenda:

5PM - My hero Bill Callahan will be doing an in-store performance. I have been waiting for some "magic" energy to get me back to the record store to (a) use some store credit to buy new music and (b) to see if I can get some temp work soon and this is the best reason to do that today. Yay for record stores!

7PM - Waxing. Need I say more?

7:30ish - Meeting friends for drinks and dinner at El Chile tonight. I will wear my new dress that is a size small (I swear it). i can't believe it but this low-carb thing is working. im not even doing the serious diet and I've lost 5 lbs of belly fat. My waist is so much happier and so am I.

It's pouring rain outside. A perfect day for Smog. I hope he stays to sign records.

so my job ended a while back. i haven't been looking for another because i have a 2 week stretch where i can't do anything between 9-5. that starts in about a week. then i have the end of june and all of july free. then i start my new very real and exciting job August 5thish (training, then school starts late Aug).

sigh. i have no excuse other than this stupid schedule to not be looking for some kind of employment. i could go over the to the record store and see what's up. they would grumble a bit but prolly i could get in for a while and earn some money. this is actually very importante since i have only enough left to last me until the end of July and then I don't get paid until the end of Sept.

anyway, i have been getting up later and later. today i didn't get up until 10:30ish. i had weird dreams. i am bored and bad things happen when i am bored. i should go and prime my office. it needs new paint. although the living room needs it more. oy. lazy. piece. of. crap. i can't even play WoW because i cancelled my subscription. and i can't afford to start it again. i can't afford anything and yet I will be going out tonight to celebrate a friend's b-day. my debt-o-meter is starting to peak out. although none of it has a high interest rate, there is still quite a bit.

blah. i am hating life today.

so my job ended a while back. i haven't been looking for another because i have a 2 week stretch where i can't do anything between 9-5. that starts in about a week. then i have the end of june and all of july free. then i start my new very real and exciting job August 5thish (training, then school starts late Aug).

sigh. i have no excuse other than this stupid schedule to not be looking for some kind of employment. i could go over the to the record store and see what's up. they would grumble a bit but prolly i could get in for a while and earn some money. this is actually very importante since i have only enough left to last me until the end of July and then I don't get paid until the end of Sept.

anyway, i have been getting up later and later. today i didn't get up until 10:30ish. i had weird dreams. i am bored and bad things happen when i am bored. i should go and prime my office. it needs new paint. although the living room needs it more. oy. lazy. piece. of. crap. i can't even play WoW because i cancelled my subscription. and i can't afford to start it again. i can't afford anything and yet I will be going out tonight to celebrate a friend's b-day. my debt-o-meter is starting to peak out. although none of it has a high interest rate, there is still quite a bit.

blah. i am hating life today.

Yesterday I undertook a teacher challenge that would really put my love of the profession to the test. I got on a bus with 4 other teachers, one vice principal and about 60 5th graders. On the bus behind us there were the same mix of people. We all headed to Sea World in San Antonio. Once there, I was left alone with 8 boys. From 10AM until 3PM it was my job to watch them, escort them, make sure they got fed, and had a good time. WOW. This is a class I will be subbing for on Monday and Tuesday so I decided I would try to make an impression and ride one of the rides with them. It was called Rio Loco. It wasn't all that loco until we got to this one bit where our floating car (a inner tube the size of a small dinner table with seats on top) approached a water fall. Guess who's side of the car went directly under the waterfall? Uh huh. As I saw it coming I thought, "Oh shit, my bra is going to be totally obvious under my white t-shirt once it gets wet. I'll be kicked out of school before I ever begin for indecent behavior." So I curled up on a ball with my arms over my head and let the thing splash all over my back. I was soaked except for the very front of my shirt. whew! The boys got a real kick out of it seeing as how they were just a tiny bit wet. I took my lomo and hopefully got some good pictures of the park and of them. I think I earned some cool-teacher cred there. We'll see on Monday.

Meanwhile back in 4th grade, I had my last day with the class I have been on a long-term sub for. We had a little party, musical chairs and all. I mixed some orange soda with orange juice. Some healthy-ish cookies, nuts, healthy-ish chips and not at all healthy chocolate ice cream. I got some cool looking plates and napkins (50s kitch) and also some souvenir straws (thick plastic with polka dots). Everything was going great until about 10 minutes before school ended. I had them clean up and get back in their chairs so that I could let them know how much I appreciated them. I gave them each a little heart-shaped sticker and told them my door was always open to them (I had to explain that one. "What door?" was the common response) Some of them started crying right off the bat. Some it took a while, probably seeing their classmates cry didn't help. But by the time I was marching them out of the building I had 14 bawling kids. I tried to joke with them, saying that they needed to stop now because someone would think I had hit them. This normally would have had them screaming with possible endings and laughter. But no. Just more tears. Even from the girls that never ever cry. Even from the boys. Wow. I was not excepting that at all. Suddenly they did not want their old teacher back. Suddenly she was mean and not at all patient or fun. They could not understand why I could not stay. They were especially ticked off that what would have been my last day (yesterday) got taken away so that I could go with the 5th grade to Sea World. I thought about them when I was there. How awesome it would be to take them there. Crap. That was hard. Shit it is all hard. There is nothing easy about being a teacher. If it is easy, you've been doing it forever or else you are not doing it right IMHO.

I have a job there for next year. 4th grade again. yay! I have learned so much from this experience. I'm so glad I will be at the same school.

What an amazing year I've had. It's had its ups and downs. Soon I will have a little bit of a down again (no subbing in the summer), but it will give me time to plan and get ready for what is to come.

I love my job. And this time I really mean it.

I have been SO busy and oddly enough I love it. Sure I wish I had some free time now and then, but even when I do, like now, I feel like I could be doing something to get ahead of the game. It's amazing to me that I am actually a little over stimulated lately. Before I would read work stuff before bed to make me sleepy. Now I have to put down the work stuff for fiction or news. Otherwise I might be up all night. It's very weird. I think about teaching ALL the time now. This weekend I spent almost all weekend making a jeaopardy-like game for my kids. It was the last day before standardized testing and I didn't want them to have to go through the drill again. So I put all the questions in a jeopardy game thing I found on the interweb. It took forever! And it was in Power Point! Did I mention that PP sucks ass??? God it was awful. But today we had fun and played a game they had never heard of and maybe learned a few things too. I am super motivated to make learning fun, because honestly while the other kind is easier for me, in the long run fun is better. :)

I do miss my friends. Although I got to see my sweet angel MissAmy. But I haven't seen anyone but Ben, teachers and students for a while now. Freakin' Erin and Chris had a baby and I still haven't met him! Sara called yesterday to ask me to go to Fry's with her, which in the past would have had me salivating like a Pavlov dog, but no. I was busy fighting with PP making my TAKS game.

The next two days are going to be awful. Testing all day. I am an administrator. I have to walk the room. Luckily I get to have a co-worker there and it's one I like too.

Did I mention I cancelled my WoW and my Netflix? Why bother? Who has the time for that?

.

on feb 8, i turned 42. oy vay. what is happening to me? i try not to be worried about it, but i just can't help it. i'm not going to be embracing my jowls anytime soon.

lucky for me i have the best boyfriend ever. and also i am moving towards having a great post-punk life. i don't mind so much BEING older. i don't need to be hip. i am what i am -- i have never shied away from that. but why do i have to LOOK so old? ew. i'm done.

p.s. happy VD!

this week it got cold. perfect timing. with the release of the new expansion to the world of warcraft, the burning crusade, a blizzard seemed appropriate. (pun intended -- sorry :)

so as you may or may not know i have been a more than casual player of this game, but managed to never really take it seriously. and by that i mean, i was in a "guild" that my boyfriend got me into. also a guild where no one much spoke to me unless they knew me in real life. so whatever. it was a social thing. then one day four of us decided to leave the guild (too many nerds), and apply to a new one. this is where the trouble began.

since i had never invested much of myself in the game it had never been a "player" in my day-to-day life. since then i have applied to a guild. i had to write a statement of my specifications and also give reasons why i wanted to be in the guild. who i knew in the guild. it was a lot like a college application. so i "sold" myself. once i started playing with these folks, many of them knew who i was because of the application and spoke to me on chat. we also use Ventrilo to speak in realtime with each other. and now i have friends who are teenagers, dads, engineers, two with Russian accents (so nice), an Aussie, several women, all of whom i've never met before. and that brings us to the ice storm and the release mentioned earlier. the release of the burning crusade was anticipated with all the buzz and pop one would normally hear about a good movie or a new record. very hot. some people waited in line at midnight. many, like myself, had pre-ordered the game online. at 12am Tuesday Jan 16 i was on the game and watching and listening as people began to play the new version of it. man i was psyched! but there was nothing to do but wait for mine to arrive the next day.

the next day came and the ice from the day before had shut down the city. snow was falling. i called amazon. the game wasn't going to ship until Jan 21. i said ship! what???? i told them to cancel the order while i looked out at the newly falling snow. still, i had to get the game that day right?? i mean i was about to be ice-bound to the house for at least a day or two and i didn't have THE GAME. gone were the days when i read a book all day or watched movies -- all i wanted was the game.

i called the mall. they were open and they had it. and off i went. into the falling snow with my fuzzy hat and big coat and big shoes on. i got to the mall and there were 2 other cars there with 2 men getting in them. i know for sure i saw one gamestop bag. i was blizz-fully happy walking in the snow toward the entrance. crunch crunch said the snow. i looked up and let a flake hit my face and thought "this might be my one trip outside for a while." then i slipped and almost, but did not, fall down. oh yeah. best to look where you are going.

in the mall there is nobody. most stores are closed. the gates are down and the windows are dark. kinda spooky. there is no one at the information desk and i had forgotten to get the actual name of the store so it took me a while to find it. i got there i think with minutes to spare. had i reserved a copy? the clerk asked me. no, i said. he still had a few. and one of them was now mine. oh my god. it was about to begin.

as i drove back home on the empty roads i thought about how foolish i had been. now i was thinking about my safety. what if i crashed my car? i don't even have a real job. holy crap i was really one of them. those guys with no jobs who play video games online and have no friends. wait i have friends. yes. and i do work, i just don't have a real job. and i socialize outside my home. outside the internets.

the rest of the story is as you might suspect. i got the game home. installed it. started playing it. haven't much stopped for about four days. my right arm hurts from click-clicking, but i am feeling the pleasant buzz of leveling my new paladin. look for her on azgalor. her name is pallyndrone.

today the world is bright and shiny. the holidays are over and i had a nice rest. now it's time to get down to biznezz. recruiters seem to be in love with me, but jobs don't seem to be falling into my lap. still waiting on a couple of interviews. i actually did have one offer but they said i had to be flexible all the time, so i would not be able to take a class and work there at the same time. ummm, no thanks. i sold the rest of my stock (of course it went up over $5 today because of macworld) so I'm OK for a while. my first class is tonight. i'm very excited. in just a few months, i will be a real life teacher.

staying home is a bit better now that i get the day to myself. ben is off working (yay), so i get to lay about and do whatever. it really is different than when he is here. not that i don't love him tons but, a girl needs her down time.

since i had no job to go to this a.m. i played WoW last night until my fingers bled. and now the freaking game servers are down so I can't go get my snazzy new gear. i can't wait for burning crusade. watch out you freakin' pallies, i'm going to get you now! i am getting way to into this game. i even quit my current guild and applied to a new one. i never had to apply before so it was kind of weird. now there's this obligation to play more and get better at the game. isn't it enough that i am female and talk dirty on vent?

For xmas this year I worked at Waterloo. The holidays is a perfect time of year for this type of work. Everyone is either really snappy or really happy. Customers and employees too. You really can't escape the holidays if you are out in the world. Still, it was an OK week for being at the store.

• The incandescent lighting at dusk, when you can see the traffic outside and the inside of the store is mellow gold and makes me feel so sublime. Especially when good music like Danque!! or The Black Angels is charging the place with crazy energy.

• Watching people flock to good music when you play it in the store is also really satisfying. I always manage to sell a few copies of Sharon Jones or Lou Barlow or Isobele Campbell and Mark Lanegan when I play them.

Of course there are always the crazies.

• "Shouldn't Gnarls Barkley go under "B"? one customer argues. No, the band is called Gnarls Barkley. "But the guy's last name is Barkley." Well even so (and there is no such person in the band, I just decide not to go there), the name of the band is Gnarls Barkley. This takes a few minutes before he probably changed it himself.

• "Do you have any "cowboy music"? an elderly foreign couple ask me in stilted English. You mean like Johnny Cash? "No no." says the old gentleman. "That is not cowboy music. Like Michael Martin-Murphy." he says "Johnny Cash is country music." Of course I had misunderstood them, thinking they were using cowboy to mean country but still. Michael Martin-Murphy? I would have suggested Gene Autry, but Whatever!

And there's the miscellaneous crap like:

• Putting your favorite bands on the display racks. Thom Yorke is a much better choice than whoever had been there before.

• Wondering if you've lost your mind when it takes you 20 minutes to figure out where Layla is after going through the entire Eric Clapton and Cream sections, but I came up with the guy who covers Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" on so many prime time TV shows recently fairly quickly. Oy.

• Playing butt bumper-cars with everyone trying to move around and look for CDs in out of the way places. I touched way more strange ass than I have in a long time.

• Grousing with other "long time" employees about the state of laziness that has infected most of the newer employees, while the phone rings and customers look hopefully at us for help. We of course ignore them, proving that we are just as guilty, but more boring since we're no longer discussing crazy nights we had and are instead just being tired old folk.

I'll be happy to get back to my kids. Time to try and sell the last of my stock to make it through the next few months. Life is back to normal. And the best part is: Ben started his new job and I have a few days to myself. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

i am a 41 year-old woman. i asked my mother to get me the World of Warcraft expansion for xmas. these 2 things seem to clash. "mommy, can you get me a video game for xmas?" oy vay.