Life As a Pearl

So...who else spent the afternoon listening to This American Life and taking buzzfeed quizzes? Don't be jerks. I've seen your posts on Facebook. You should really live in Vermont! You are Posh Spice (me too)! You are Lucille from Arrested Development (how am I not  Lucille?)! And you ? Your spirit animal is the turtle. Me? I apparently failed the "How Many Kids Should You Have" quiz, because the answer was zero. I mean I agree that I shouldn't birth them, but can I keep the one I've got? She's stupid cute, buzzfeed, and I love her pretty hard. Maybe I shouldn't have kids because if I was a dinosaur, I'd be a pterodactyl. Evidently, that's because I'm small and scary as hell. Not entirely untrue, I suppose. Too small to grow a whole human inside me, and too scary to nurture it once it pushed its way out. There's no question my classic writer soulmate is Anton Chekhov. If that doesn't make sense to you, you probably do...

...this guy At least that's what I must have thought last year, when I took this picture as an homage to Valentine's Day. Now before you go judging me, I spent that auspicious holiday with two of my very best friends, and neither of them was charmed into my bed with this token of affection. Dummies. Even though his message is lewd and his eyes are a little wonky, I rather appreciate this guy's frank approach to a holiday that has been forever fraught with mixed Hallmark messages and trite platitudes etched into hearts with expiration dates. Somewhat like the grinch, this guy's holiday comes without chocolates, it comes without flowers. It comes without jewelry and cards. But it comes, perhaps,  with cold showers? I mean really. I can't imagine anything, heart or otherwise, growing three sizes at receiving this message. Whatever. It's no big deal to me how people want to mark this day. I, for one, will be in the hospital this year. It doe...

Right now, I mean at this exact moment, my daughter is shoveling Kix cereal into her mouth. There is juice dripping off her chin. She has one kix (or is it a kick?) lodged in her post-nap afro. She is breathing   really, really loud through her mouth because she has a stuffy nose. And as busy as she is with all that, she's also saying over and over, "I want play game on dat. I want play game on dat. Mom. Mom, mom, mom. I want play game on dat." She is not going to get to play game on dat. Dat is my computer and dat doesn't even have any games. I have no  idea what kind of fun she imagines happens on this machine, but she's wrong. I work on here, and work is the opposite of fun. And even if I had 107 kid-oriented games, I wouldn't let her play them because I'm mean. Or at least that's what I'm sure she thinks. But here's what I think: I think three year olds are old enough to entertain themselves for more than three seconds at a time. I ...

Um, okay, I know. I haven't written in awhile. I could give you excuses--I actually have them. But you don't care and I'm not hurt that you don't care. You've got your stuff and I've got mine; let's leave it at that. But just in case the dearth of my voice in your blogosphere left such a hole that you went searching back through the archives (all 29 of them) to "hear" me yap, I want to clear something up. Some delightful (anonymous) friend made a comment a few posts back about my grammar. In friend's world, my grammar is single-handedly bringing down the education system in this country. Nay, across the globe!  That  is not why I stopped blogging. I also did not stop teaching writing, as this friend backhandedly suggested. So you can just heave a collective sigh of relief, readers. I'm still at it--poisoning your minds online and your children's in the classroom with my run on sentences and Oxford commas. Like a boss. I have...

You wouldn't know it from my loquacious bloggery, but as a writer I generally subscribe to the sentiment that less is more. Someone famous and writerly (please don't ask me to look up who) once said, "If I'd have had more time, I'd have written you a shorter letter." Point being, it takes a lot of work to distill your thoughts. That's why poets get paid more than Bill Gates. (My dear poet friends, I heard you laugh all the way in Pitkin.) But we don't just stack sentence on top of sentence because we're lazy; sometimes, beneath the pile of articles and contractions and 5 dollar words, we're burying our truths. And by sometimes, I mean during the holidays. You know exactly what I mean now, don't you? Because there's no way I'm the only person with a distant uncle who sends out the itemized list of family accomplishments, followed by an awkward confession, followed by a didactic paragraph on the Reason for the Season. Let me j...

So here's a true story about me: I have a daughter who is turning three on Thanksgiving. This will be the third birthday I've celebrated with her--the only one I missed out on was her actual birth. So, day of birth aside, we've spent some time together. During that time, my daughter's hair has grown [out of control]. It's grown and it's grown and because maintaining hair is the responsibility of the parent, I've made numerous appointments to cut her precious little afro. I have not, however, pulled the trigger. Why, you ask? It's just hair, you say. Wild hair, for that matter. Why don't you just take that baby [not at all a baby anymore] to a Great Clips and get her shaped up? Well, aren't you smug. I think I mentioned earlier, I've tried. I really have. But beyond the fact that my little lady would sooner stick her hand in a wood chipper than sit in a salon chair, I. Just. Can't. I could lie to you. I could let all this be her ...

To Sir With Love Dangerous Minds Dead Poets Society Finding Forrester Boston Public Mona Lisa Smile etc. I love lists. Did that list do anything for you? Did it, at the very least, get a song stuck in your head? Come one. You're either humming Lulu or Coolio right now, depending on your era. I'm humming both and it's kind of an awkward mashup. If you're good at anything other than getting songs stuck in your head, you might have noticed a pattern to my picks. If you're not actually good beyond the song thing, read on. You'll surely understand the connection before I'm done here.  For a few years now, I've been teaching college writing classes--some creative, some academic. And while I know my actual job is to get them proficient at writing, I'm an overachiever. I look at these students and I see infinite potential. Then I put my glasses on, and the reality comes into focus: I'm staring at a room full of incredibly lucky k...