Living in a Suburban Ghetto
Shawn's dad bought us a very nice gigantic outdoor grill for Christmas and so we went to Super Fresh last night and got some meat and threw it on the grill and then ate it all up like the all-consuming carnivores we are. Meanwhile, because we are in the midst of global warming, our windows were open, allowing us to hear the screeches of the wild packs of teenage gangs in flip flops who streak through our neighborhood. I happened to glance outside and counted nine fourteen-year old boys as they ran, one after the other, past my window toward some drama on the corner or away from some drama on the other corner--it's hard to say which.
So now I'm at Rocket Cat listening to Belle and Sebastian and trying to get motivated to write fiction--even just a little teeny tiny itsy bit. The nice barissta is here--she's small and wears a knit cap over her short curls and she moves quickly as if it actually matters that you're waiting.
Though I won't go into details, we are currently experiencing a lot of changes at work and it's making me have a stomach ache. I don't like the unknown and am scared of change and don't like to have to assert myself to be sure that I'm protected when things are sort of falling apart. I wish, wish, wish I could write more about it, but I can't as I am trying very hard to be professional. Good news: I may have a new office with a window! Bad news: I have no idea when that will happen, what I should do in the meantime, and who I'm supposed to report to with any concerns/crisis/fears/anxieties/temper tantrums. I keep having work dreams that also involve kittens. Last night, I dreamt I was talking to one of our VP's about these 3 kittens that I'd help to birth. In a very professional tone, I explained to him how the mother cat was refusing to nurse her kittens and that we might have to find an alternative source of breast milk. He seemed sympathetic.
Just finished reading Francine Prose's Blue Angel. I didn't like it at first because the first person narrator, a47 year old writing teacher, was an unsympathetic narrator but I was compelled by the situation--he starts finding himself more and more attracted to one of his talented writing students, Angela Argo--this tattooed, multi-pierced mess of a girl who may or may not be a pathological liar and expert manipulator. Reading it reminded me of this story I started awhile ago about a teaching assistant who finds herself dating one of her boy students. My friend Irina and I were brain-storming humilating scenes: she finds herself at a frat party doing a keg stand, they're unable to go to a bar because he's underage, they go shopping and someone mistakes her for his mom, etc. And then he breaks up with her. He has to. Like, through a text message. And then she's faced with giving him his final grade. In real life, there were times as a TA where I found a student attractive and interesting, but--well, wait, I was just going to say that it was never anything too serious or too in danger of being more than a crush, but that's not true.
There was this kid in one of my upper level writing/rhetoric classes who had a full beard and was really smart and funny and mature. We actually hung out together a couple of times outside of class. I distinctly remember one time when we went to The Creamery to get ice cream and ran into another one of the kids in the class. That was strange. But we never went out at night and we never were alone in a room together and I never had any real designs on him, though I definitely had a crush. I'll have to think harder about other students; I'm positive that there were male students I looked forward to seeing and possibly imagined kissing, but the divide between teacher and student is so large...You'd have to have a fairly aggressive male student; someone who was brave enough to be direct and the power dynamic makes that difficult and weird--you're still grading them, after all.
So now I'm at Rocket Cat listening to Belle and Sebastian and trying to get motivated to write fiction--even just a little teeny tiny itsy bit. The nice barissta is here--she's small and wears a knit cap over her short curls and she moves quickly as if it actually matters that you're waiting.
Though I won't go into details, we are currently experiencing a lot of changes at work and it's making me have a stomach ache. I don't like the unknown and am scared of change and don't like to have to assert myself to be sure that I'm protected when things are sort of falling apart. I wish, wish, wish I could write more about it, but I can't as I am trying very hard to be professional. Good news: I may have a new office with a window! Bad news: I have no idea when that will happen, what I should do in the meantime, and who I'm supposed to report to with any concerns/crisis/fears/anxieties/temper tantrums. I keep having work dreams that also involve kittens. Last night, I dreamt I was talking to one of our VP's about these 3 kittens that I'd help to birth. In a very professional tone, I explained to him how the mother cat was refusing to nurse her kittens and that we might have to find an alternative source of breast milk. He seemed sympathetic.
Just finished reading Francine Prose's Blue Angel. I didn't like it at first because the first person narrator, a47 year old writing teacher, was an unsympathetic narrator but I was compelled by the situation--he starts finding himself more and more attracted to one of his talented writing students, Angela Argo--this tattooed, multi-pierced mess of a girl who may or may not be a pathological liar and expert manipulator. Reading it reminded me of this story I started awhile ago about a teaching assistant who finds herself dating one of her boy students. My friend Irina and I were brain-storming humilating scenes: she finds herself at a frat party doing a keg stand, they're unable to go to a bar because he's underage, they go shopping and someone mistakes her for his mom, etc. And then he breaks up with her. He has to. Like, through a text message. And then she's faced with giving him his final grade. In real life, there were times as a TA where I found a student attractive and interesting, but--well, wait, I was just going to say that it was never anything too serious or too in danger of being more than a crush, but that's not true.
There was this kid in one of my upper level writing/rhetoric classes who had a full beard and was really smart and funny and mature. We actually hung out together a couple of times outside of class. I distinctly remember one time when we went to The Creamery to get ice cream and ran into another one of the kids in the class. That was strange. But we never went out at night and we never were alone in a room together and I never had any real designs on him, though I definitely had a crush. I'll have to think harder about other students; I'm positive that there were male students I looked forward to seeing and possibly imagined kissing, but the divide between teacher and student is so large...You'd have to have a fairly aggressive male student; someone who was brave enough to be direct and the power dynamic makes that difficult and weird--you're still grading them, after all.
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