Doing the pee-pee dance

Several years ago, my mom and I went out to the county to see a movie.  (I wish I could tell you which movie it was, but I honestly have no idea.)  So the movie ends and we leave the theater to find that it has started snowing.  That's no big deal, except for the fact that Maryland suh-uuucks at dealing with snow.  An inch in Maryland is like 12 inches in New York.  So we get in the car to head home and what is supposed to be a 30 minute drive turns into a 3 hour ordeal.  Of course, due to the large diet sodas that we both consumed during the movie, our bladders are full to the brim, and we start feeling the urge early in the drive.  But here's the thing--somewhere around Hour 2, the need to pee sort of goes away.  It's like our bodies went into survival mode.  The trip passed without incidence.  However, once we were within 10 minutes of our house, it's like our bodies suddenly woke up.  The bathroom was so close, and yet so far, and all of a sudden we were having to do the pee-pee dance in the car. 

That whole story?  Basically sums up my experience of having to wait for my fiance to go through the Peace Corps experience.  When I knew that I had two long years ahead of me, I just sort of settled in for the long haul.  But now that there is less than a month to go before he comes home?  I suddenly find myself doing the emotional version of the pee-pee dance.  I need him to come home!  It's all I think about....

Bow chicka wow wow

For the last few days, the kids and the teachers at my student teaching placement have been playing "Guess My Favorite Food" during lunch time.  The kids love it--they get to ask questions like "what color is it" or "what letter does it start with" (although that one has been somewhat problematic, such as when one girl said her food started with the letter R and it turned out to be Macaroni).

So yesterday, we were all trying to guess a boy's favorite food.  I had already figured out that it was popcorn, so I was trying to help the kids guess.  One little girl said "corn!"  I looked at her and said, "So close!  Remember that it starts with the letter P...."  The little girl furrowed her brow as she thought hard, looked up at me and said, "PORN!"  whoops.  Wonder what the dinner table conversation was like at her house that night...

I have officially joined the circus

I have never had very good hand-eye coordination.  I can't throw an accurate dart, I can't catch a baseball, and I really can't even begin to try to put a basketball through the hoop.  And yet lately, I have found myself having to spend a lot of time juggling.  Specifically, I'm juggling a full course load and student teaching schedule, a wedding to plan, and my third ball (heh heh) that I have most recently thrown into the mix is finding a job.

I hate the job search.  I hate having to find new and un-cheesy ways to "sell" myself to prospective employers like a cheap hooker working her bit of the street.  (Although, I am from Baltimore, home of the corner hoes, so maybe it's just in my blood.)  Today, I went to a convention set up so that educators can interview for jobs within the private school network.  From 8am to 3pm I hopped from table to table, and it got to the point that I had my spiel down pat.  I felt like a baseball player rattling off my stats.  (You like the sports metaphor?  I think I even used it correctly!)  And the worst part of it is that I am so desperate for a job, any job, that it got to the point where I lied about my educational beliefs and made up a bunch of stuff that is completely against everything I believe in about teaching young children.  All so that an uptight woman would deem me worthy enough to apply for the teaching position at her school.

I feel cheap.

I hate being a stereotype

Have you guys heard about this new show on Lifetime, "One Born Every Minute"?  It's a reality show, narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis, who is kind of awesome, about this one OBGYN wing of a hospital.  Each week, the show focuses on two or three women who are in the hospital to give birth.  It's at times scary, bizarre, disgusting, pixellated, and hilarious (those poor families who have to wait through 24 hours of labor start to get a little loopy after Hour 18).  The other day I caught the last 20 minutes of the show as I was finishing up some grad school work, and all of a sudden I found myself having to hold back tears at the tenderness and sweetness of seeing the new parents with their babies.  What the F?!  I wasn't even invested in the show and I still got sucked into the cuteness of it all.  I mean, when I saw one dad carefully stroke his baby's teeny tiny finger with his huge adult sized paw, I almost lost it.  And I don't even want kids!  At least, not any time soon.  Stupid hormones, making me devolve into an "ooh"ing, "gagagoo"ing mess.

Like Jane Goodall, living among the gorillas

Last night, I went out to celebrate my friend's 25th birthday.  I'm going to skip over all the melodrama my friends and I are feeling about the fact that we're all reaching the quarter-century mark, because that's not the point of this post.  This post has a more anthropological focus.

Before I begin, let me give you some background information.  I am marrying my high-school sweetheart.  That means that I stopped dating when I was 17 years old.  We met in math class.  We flirted over parabolas and the quadratic formula.  We actually had a real first date, in which he picked me up from my house, and we went to see a movie, during which we blushed when our hands touched in the bag of popcorn.  It was all very chaste and Pleasantville of us.

Well apparently, while my fiance and I were making googly eyes over malteds and going to sock hops, everyone else went to college and learned the age-old practice of the drunken hook-up.  Ah yes, the romantic moment when you lock eyes across the beer pong table.  You stumble towards each other, clutching your red solo cup of natty light and try to come up with what passes for witty conversation at 2am.  Some people turned these encounters into relationships, however many people graduated from college still single.  That takes us to the 21 and over dating population, which can be found in bars all across America.  And this takes us back to last night, when my friends and I went out for a birthday celebration.

After dinner, we ended up at this bar on the Upper West Side.  We picked this particular place because the birthday girl shared her last name with the name of the bar, so of course we HAD to go in.  The experience started out spectacularly when an old drunk guy ran his hand up and down my friend's arm.  Blerg.  The fun continued when two (thankfully younger) guys came up and started chatting with us, and it became clear that Lame Guy #1 was desperately trying to get laid, while Lame Guy #2 was just there as a wing man--and not even a very good one, since he spent more energy staring at his phone than engaging in conversation.  Yuck.  Finally, the night came to a close after a wasted douchebag came running up to us, and started out by just staring at us before pointing to each one of us and saying, "Wow.  You: Gorgeous.  You: So hot.  You: Beautiful.  Ladies, you're incredible."  The best part of it was, apparently he was at the bar with a girl.  (Well, I used the term "girl" loosely.  She had to be in her late 40s.  He was not.)  Ew. I mean, come on!  It's bad enough that the single guys are creepers, but now the ones with girlfriends feel the need to creep as well?

All I gotta say is, if these are the kinds of experiences that I'm missing out by having my last first-date in high school, it doesn't seem like I'm missing out on much.

And now I lay me down to sleep

I can't sleep.

I hate that.

When your mind is racing a mile a minute and you just can't shut it off.

And you lie there in bed knowing that you only have 5 hours until you have to get up for work. And then it's even harder for you to fall asleep because you're hyper aware of the minutes slowly ticking away.  And it sucks, cause it's not like you can make yourself fall asleep. 

sigh...

When I was little, I used to have nights like these, where I was awake long after I should be.  Except back then, it was because I smuggled books underneath my covers and read all night.  My problem, as it so often is in my life, was that I had no will power.  I didn't have the ability to stop myself at a reasonable hour so that I could get a good night's sleep.  I would tell myself, "I'm just going to read until the end of this chapter."  But of course, chapters always end in a cliffhanger.  So then I would think, "I have to find out what happens.  Just one more chapter and then I'll go to sleep."  It was always just one more chapter.

A year and a half ago, after my boyfriend left for the Peace Corps, I also had nights like these.  Except it wasn't becuase I wasn't tired or because I was wrapped up in a book.  It was because the apartment was too quiet.  The bed was too big.  The room was too dark.  For months I slept with every light blazing and my DVDs of Dirty Jobs playing in the background.  I piled up the pillows around me and curled up as I waited for the emptiness to go away.

This is going to sound like a non sequitor, but you know what was on tv the other day?  Three Men and a Baby.  I know, classic right?  Back in the 80s when the Gut was in his prime.  It's one of those movies that comes on so frequently that it's like an old ratty sweatshirt; it's may be old and faded, but it's so worn in that it's become one of your favorite things to lounge around in.  So I had the movie playing as I did some homework, totally not paying attention to what was going on in the movie, when the lullaby scene came on.  You know the one--Ted Danson, Steve Guttenberg, and Tom Selleck are crouched around the baby's crib trying to get her to fall asleep.  So of course they start singing a song from the 1950s called "Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight."  And it's one of those moments that makes every woman's ovaries sing; three grown men (one of whom is Tom Selleck for criss sakes) softly crooning to this teeny tiny baby.  Whoever isn't moved by that moment has no heart.

Anyway, my point is: I could use some a capella doo-wop from the boys right about now. 

Apple pie without some cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze

So you know how certain tastes, smells, pictures will trigger memories?  Like, the smell of cinnamon gum always makes me think of this guy I had a crush on in high school, or the fact that I can't look at a looney (a Canadian dollar coin--shut up, it's a real thing!) without thinking about walking down to the corner store by my grandparent's house to buy penny candy after dinner.  Well, I'm currently eating a Braeburn apple, which (in my opinion) is the best kind of apple out there.  Every bite gives that beautiful, crisp crunch sound while your mouth fills with sweet juice.  And tonight, with each delicious bite comes memories from when I was a kid, of my dad making apple pies. 

Nowadays, my dad just makes them for holiday dinners, but when I was younger there would be an occasional fall weekend when he felt like baking a pie.  I would sit there at the counter and watch as he smoothly sliced apple after apple (Braeburns, of course) into a large mixing bowl and then tenderly stir in the sugar and cinnamon.  And he would always give me a bite of an apple, coated in a sugary glaze, and ask me what I thought, as if I was his sous-chef giving him advice.  Sometimes I would help sprinkle the flour onto the countertop so that he could roll out the crust dough without it sticking to the surface, and I would watch as he spread out the circle of dough so thin it seemed impossible that it wouldn't rip.  Then, carefully, lovingly, he would line the pie pan with the crust and pour in the apple filling, until it was so full that I was sure some will spill over, but of course every time it was just the right amount.  He would gently lay the second crust on top, and I would get the honors of sealing the two crusts with a fork.  I was so deliberate and neat about it, making sure my little row of lines marched neatly around the edge of the pie.  And always, the finished product tasted delicious--the pie would emerge from the oven with a beautifully browned top and juice bubbling up from my fork indents.  The whole process from start to finish took several hours, so when my dad and I finally had a slice of that pie it felt like a mini-celebration, even if it was just an ordinary fall weekend.

So, as I sit here taking this mouth-watering walk down memory lane, I just want to say thanks, Dad, for filling my childhood with weekends of homemade apple pie.