A Single Middle-Aged Woman...

Red and green indicator lights from the appliances watch m pay bills online in my black coffee living room somewhere around 6 a.m. as the dawn creeps around the edges of the closed curtains on the patio window. Toggling back and forth between the web bill pay screen and the calculator on my dashboard, my eyes fixate on the calendar date 19 in a font size of at least 300. Quickly I type into the calculator 2011 - 1988 to see how many years have passed...23; and it dawns on me, all I really needed to do was remember how old my son is and subtract a year. My son was a year old when my father died of pancreatic cancer 23 years ago on this day in 1988. I wasn't close to my father; at least not emotionally but then my father wasn't the kind of man you could get close to emotionally.  In retrospect, we are a lot alike.   A friend of mine told me once I am a hard nut to crack. That was my dad.  He was a nut; always clowning, cracking bad jokes, telling tall tales, never r...

I'm going to make this introductory post rather short and to the point. As the title suggests this blog is my attempt to chronicle my first year teaching.  I am also going to borrow an idea from a friend of mine who committed to writing for 100 days straight.  I'm going to stretch that a bit and commit to writing on this subject every school day until the end of the school year. I wish I had started it back in August when the year began because it has already been an eventful year! My car was totaled the first week of new teacher training so the stress associated with that, getting my first teaching job in a new school with new students in a room with a reputation for conflict, and working to complete the magnitude of requirements for my certification...and the list goes on and on. There is always more work to be done than there is time or energy to do it, and it may never meet my personal standards of excellence a.k.a. perfection. The bottom line is....I love what I do....

When you can walk into their life after 20 years and pick up where you left off. 20...Seems to be a recurring number with me lately. Some 20 years have passed since I last saw a woman with whom I had, for the previous 10 years, spoken to almost daily and saw nearly as frequently. Until 3 months ago, I had no idea if she was still living for the last I'd heard of her she had been hospitalized with heart failure due to an eating disorder. She's remarried now and I'm still single. Her husband is a dear man who babies her like fine porcelain. She deserves it after the unfortunate 1st marriage. We spent three days catching up, and will, with good health, spend the next 20 years making new memories.

I agreed to go to my daughter's this evening to walk her dog as a favor. I get there and there are all these police cars lining the drive. No biggie, I keep going. I leave my purse in the car with a sweater over it because I'm just going upstairs, get Sadie, walk her long enough for her to relieve herself, get back in the car and go home. I get out of the car with my daughter's apt key in my hand and lock the car door with the flip switch by hand and just as I'm closing the door, I'm cussing myself. Yep, left my keys in my damn purse! Well, I have a spare car key in my apt, way the hell across the community, but my apt keys are in my purse too! Well, our community has a courtesy lock out service whereby the security guys will go to the office, get a spare apt key, and let you in your apt; so I call them. They arrive but they are not allowed to drive me in their vehicle to my apt though. Did I mention my apt was way the hell on the other side of the commun...

A few years ago I went into my office and found the following poem. I can't remember if I found it printed and lying on the desk, or if the computer was on and the document still open on the screen. As I read it, I remember thinking what a sad little poem it was. There was no atribution and I wondered who in the world wrote this lovely little, haunting poem. Later that day or the next, I showed the poem to my daughter, who at the time was maybe 16 or 17, and still in high school. I asked her if she downloaded it or found it in a book. Much to my prideful surprise she admitted she had written it. That was my introduction to the talent that my child possesses. She is a gifted writer. Moody as hell, sometimes, but those right brain thinkers are a beautifully, weird bunch. I love them all, even the ones I did not give birth to. I asked her if I could share with you that poem titled O She, the Dreamer, and along with it a link to her budding blog. She has many, many journals full of th...

I just left one of those outlet malls. You know the kind where they have all sorts of designer stores with supposedly good deals. My friends warned me to be careful. I argued , "You don't understand. I hate shopping." The deals would be so good I wouldn't be able to pass them up, I was told. I'm not a normal girl. I hate shopping. I forced myself to go into the stores. One after the other. Yes, some of the deals were pretty good. I could have bought a Coach bag, not a wallet, a real purse, for around $100. OUTRAGEOUS price for a purse but for Coach, that's pretty good, real good. I love purses. I actually had the hundred bucks in my account but I'm not one of those girls who will sacrifice the water bill, or gas money to carry an empty purse. I don't care whose name is on it. Besides, I refuse to crawl in that box. You know the one with all the pretty labels on it. No thanks. I'd rather not fit in. I fought back wave after wave of nausea. I asked m...

I'm a little tipsy so keep rhat in mind as I ask, wouldn't it be cathartic when one is out in publix to, for one tme, say exactly what one was thinking? Such as...if one was at a drive in hamburgwr joint,the old-fashioned kind with carhops, and their sign said turn your blinkers on for service. When what they really meant was turn on your hazards, and when they fussed at you for turning on your blinkers,which in actuality one cannot turn on but One blinker at a time, one might yell at them in an uncharacteristically condescending tone explaining the differnce between blinkers and hazards? How's that for the mother of all run-on sentences? By the way, this scenario was merely a figment of my imagination brought about by a sign I read at such a joint and in no way reflects the genuine stupidity of said burger joint or of the author of this email. I fantasize about having the freedom to express, just once in my life, my negativity unfiltered.