Best German Teacher

Lame blogger

My December resolution is that I'm going to get better at this. Likely that will mean telling my boyfriend please ask me every day if I blogged, and hope that I don't just whine at him to leave me alone. November was a big month, though. Our new president!!!! That is the big news and I don't know what I can say that hasn't been said. I am tentatively hopeful.
My son turned 18! I'm the parent of an adult. It snuck up on me.
I am now officially poor enough to have medical care, so I've been rushing around testing cholesterol and getting mammograms. Yesterday a doctor shot my hips up with cortisone or some such steroid. He promised me pain relief in 2 hours. I can barely walk. But, it appears there is a thing that happens to some people, it's called a cortisone flare. Apparently the cortisone crystalizes in your muscles or something and for 24 to 48 hours you are in WORSE pain than before you were treated for pain. Great. The solution is rest--so I am going to take my laptop to bed in between driving teenagers to and fro--and icepacks, to which I say, no damn way. I already where a hat, scarf, and sweater in the house. So I won't be taking off my pants and slapping a bag of frozen peas on my hips.
Soon: news about a grant. Don't want to put it up until I get the paper with the rules for publicity.

Rejection

I found this rejection from a Chinese publisher in Noah Lukeman's book, The First Five Pages:
Most honorable Sir,
We perused your MS.
with boundless delight. And
we hurry to swear by our ancestors
we have never read any other
that equals in its mastery.
Were we to publish your work,
we could never presume again on
our public and name
to print books of a standard
not up to yours.
For we cannot imagine
that the next ten thousand years
will offer its ectype.
We must therefore refuse
your work that shines as it were in the sky
and beg you a thousand times
to pardon our fault
which impairs but our own offices
--publishers

p.s. from me: ectype--a reproduction or copy

where to find me

This week I posted as a special guest at 2poets.blogspot.comCheck them out.

check this

www.grizzlybay.org/SarahPalinInfoPage.htm

and this

The Perils of Community Service

I volunteered to help out with LAAFF--Lexington Avenue Arts and Fun Festival, I believe. I like it because it's local. Local artists, local bands, local attendees. It's a refreshing change from Bele Chere, the annual traffic jam of food, beer, and generally lousy music that takes over our town once a year.
Anyway, I volunteered for Trash and Recycling. I pictured myself with a colorful plastic garbage bag, walking around and picking up things people had dropped. Turned out, my job was to don big gloves and go to stations where there were 3 cans: one for landfill, one for recycling, one for everything else, and DIG through them, find the stuff that was in the wrong can and move it to the right can.
Later, when I got sick, it occurred to me that I spent two hours handling peoples' half-eaten food, cups, diapers, kleenexes and napkins. That was in addition to the muscle spasm that started in my shoulder blade and crept to my neck, incapacitating me for several days.
It's all better now. Next week's community service: House Manager for Moving Womens' Dance for Peace. That can't be dangerous.

Masons and Megachurch

The Masons opened their lodge to the public a week or two ago--they gave tours, answered questions, and there was a fundraiser dinner. Here are some of the things I saw: A book called The Great Psychological Crime--it had a chapter called "post-mortem hypnosis."; a fragment of stone from the corner of King Solomon's Temple. I learned that the Grand Master sits to the East. No one sits to the North because it is too far from the sun. I found a program for a Service of Remembrance. It opens: "It is the hour when the veil of the Temple was rent in twain, when darkness resigned and consternation oppressed all the earth. When the Flaming Star was eclipsed and the shadow overcame the Light; when the Columns and Working Tools of the old Masonry were shattered and when the Cubicle Stone sweated water and blood; the instant when the word was lost."
Two days later I visited a Baptist MegaChurch. I forgot my notetaking tools. Here is what I remember: County police direct traffic in and out of the church parking lot. It looked just like on TV, and if you wanted, you could make it exactly like TV by watching one of the two giant TVs. Nobody was sweating or fainting. The pastor started off with a sexist joke. Every body laughed. The music had neither the solemnity of hymns in say, the Methodist or Episcopalien or Catholic churches. Nor did it have the charisma of gospel or the pentecostal churches. We left early.

who knew this song was so good

Faith in action

Fled

Today I had an interview appt. at Books-a-Million. It was a desperate move; I've worked there before. Christmas had been the final straw that sent me running for an MFA program. So now I have the MFA, and well, you know.
I was ok when I went in. But then I saw someone who used to work with me there and she STILL works there. And she is excited. Because soon they will really and truly keep their promise to raise her pay to 7.25 an hour.
Could I take a job where I make less than my son makes bagging groceries? It's money, right?
Then the computer went down, and my former co-worker brightly informed a customer, "could be 3 minutes or 3 days." And then she reminded me that I had to sell discount cards, and the pressure's on for magazines too.
All this time, the rather hefty (more butt than stool) manager talked to the appt. before me and ignored me. I asked my former co-worker to tell him I was there. She laughed. Time passed. I caught his eye. Time passed.
Then I started straightening books. A lump formed in my throat. My fight or flight impulses kicked in. I chose the safe and obvious course: Flight.
I know something will turn up.
Where I make more than my kid.. It's just got to.

Debut

and a stunning debut, I might add.