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• Yesterday at lunch I pulled out my chocolate yogurt, which I eat as dessert and pretend it’s chocolate pudding, and stirred it up really well to avoid another mishap. It looked a little funny, more of an orange color than the normal rich dark chocolate “sauce”. But it was a different brand than I normally buy so I figured, hey, maybe their chocolate is orange-ish? Uhhh, no. One spoonful proved me wrong- it was peach! With actual bits of peaches! In a chocolate container! I’m no peach hater, but if they managed to get the entirely wrong flavor into a container what else could they have gotten wrong with this batch? Some of my more litigious co-workers thought I should fake a peach allergy and call the company for a lifetime supply of chocolate yogurt. The thought made me a little ill- both the idea of suing an organic yogurt company and the thought of a lifetime of chocolate yogurt sitting in my fridge.

• One of my parent volunteers offered me her extra set of Genesis tickets at the Garden for the fall. So. Awesome. I’ll be able to actually see the sweat glistening off Phil Collins forehead. And hello? Peter Gabriel? If you’re reading this, I just want you to know that I always dreamed of Lloyd Dobler standing outside my bedroom with a boombox playing In Your Eyes.

• Last night my mother called me to tell me that I must turn on the Animal Planet channel immediately. No explanations. When I finally found the channel I was enthralled: it was the World’s Ugliest Dog competition! If those damn dogs didn’t live in the lap of luxury I would have felt extremely sorry for them for being so exploited. My personal favorite was Munchkin, but despite her little tiara she still lost out to Archie, the toothless Chinese crested. Anyway, Chris and I both decided that the real competition would have been the World’s Ugliest Dog Owner- we saw some stuff going on with those people that was just wrong.

• Spelling madness to ensue this evening. Last year I complained that my school had no cheering section. I thought I was complaining just to hear myself complain- usually my whining falls on deaf ears. It didn’t occur to me that anyone would take me seriously enough to show up at this event, but now I have a section of about 10 people coming with full-on signs and body paint. As long as they don’t blare “We Will Rock You” from the audience and throw water balloons while I’m trying to spell I think it’ll be fun to have some cheerleaders. I’ve been staring at the word eleemosynary for about 25 minutes now, trying to think of a way to remember it. Does that spell trouble?

Early this morning in the library, before the school bell rang, with a hundred kids surrounding me just begging me to confiscate their hot chocolates, iPods, and PSPs, I had this conversation:

Student: “Ms. NPW, do you know about that website that rates teachers?”
NPW: (warily) “I’ve heard of it, Sam. Why do you ask?”
Student: “You’re on there! Wanna know your score?”
NPW: “Not interested, Sam. It’s not a popularity contest here in the library.”
Student: “Oh don’t worry. It’s not bad! I mean, it’s not good. But it’s not bad!”
NPW: “Thanks for that info, Sam. Now step away from the computers.”

Counter to my normally curious nature, I actually couldn’t care less what my score is. But is it wrong that I want to know how the kids rate everyone else? I think it could be very interesting to compare my professional assessment of my co-workers with the kids reviews. Must… resist…

The internet: turning teaching into a popularity contest, one survey at a time.

Interestingly, no one seems to mind that I look like Carol Brady and David Bowie had an illegitimate love child; in fact, I’ve received more compliments in the past two days on my hair than I have all year long. Perhaps people really like me with the emo hipster wannabe hair (emobe? emoster?)? Or maybe people just like to see others change it up because they’re glad they didn’t have to do any of the changing themselves and they don’t have to spend 45 minutes blowdrying and styling their new hair. Whatevs. All I know is, it’s one thing for me to rock out to My Chemical Romance in the privacy of my own car, it’s another thing entirely for me to look the part at 28 years old.

Moving on, things here in the library have been steadily improving. Testing is over for the most part. The children have resumed normal levels of screaming and shoving. Teachers have stopped rolling their eyes and audibly sighing every time the word “test” is mentioned. Schedules are back in full swing. We’re through with you, MCAS! Until we meet again… in May.

Also, I’ve been so busy whining the past few weeks that I’ve neglected to give full props to this Friday night’s main event: the annual town Spelling Bee! Picture, if you will, a scene of the utmost nerdliness. Businesspeople and town officials alike gather for a test of rote memorization skills. Who will come out on top? It’ll be a regular American Gladiator up in this piece. Minus the physical part. Hopefully this year I can lead my team to victory- I chose my teammates well. And by that, I mean I conned two new teachers into it and recruited one other due to the fact that she had a spelling bee trophy in her office. It wasn’t until much later that I found out she didn’t actually attend the spelling bee for which she has a trophy, but her team won, so she got one too. Kind of like getting a Super Bowl ring even if you were injured and didn’t play, I guess. Whatever- she has Bee experience.

I was mildly disappointed this year, Scripps has stopped producing the little 30 page books they printed to list all the words they use in their Bees. Instead, their website directed me to an intimidating 350 page PDF document and I am so not printing that out. But for once my packrat tendencies have paid off- I kept my booklet from last year and I decided to just re-study.

Now all that’s left is to actually take a look at the list of words and I’ll be good to go. How hard can it be?

It seems like haircuts have been a popular topic ’round the blog block of late, and it’s pretty easy to see why. I mean, a girl’s hair is the source of her power. Good hair can be a valuable asset, bad hair is a girl’s kryptonite. But rather than collect data from an informal blog survey on what my readers think, this time I decided to opt out of asking for advice from the internets- only because it seems like every time I ask for advice I just get even more worried and worked up. And then things turn out fine in the end and I realize I caused myself a good deal of anxiety over nothing. Well my friends, I know now that I should have reached out to you: I had the worst haircut of my life yesterday. No joke. I’ve been lamenting my poor chopped off hair for 24 hours and I think I’ve finally moved on from the denial phase to the anger phase.

When I called my regular Aveda salon yesterday afternoon there was no answer. No machine, no friendly receptionist, no little beep like they’re on the other line, please try back. Nothing. I should’ve taken that as a sign. Life doesn’t throw you unanswered telephone calls willy-nilly. Life was trying to tell me something. And being the impatient fool that I am, I didn’t listen. Well, you know what they say about hindsight being all Lasik and I’ve learned my lesson. Still, that doesn’t help my current situation.

After I didn’t get any answer at my regular salon, I called the fall-back salon in the hopes they’d have an impromptu appointment available. I’d been there a couple of times and my memories of the place were hazy but not entirely bad. As luck had it, they did have an appointment available. At 3:30, I asked? Oh, whenever. “No worries, someone will be free when you show up,” they trilled. They weren’t kidding. There were at least 8 people having a food fight with pieces of lettuce and discussing all the times they caught their parents “doing it” when I showed up. My stylist came to scoop me up out of the mess of salad dressing smears and I noticed right away that I was scared of her hair. My gut was wrenching itself into a knot telling me to RUN! Run away! You do not want a hipster mullet! Get out now!

Then the second major sign that things were about to go horribly awry occured as I sat down in the stylist’s chair and she popped the dreaded question: “So… what were you thinking for your hair?”

First off, I hate that question. For two reasons: 1. very rarely do I know what I want to “do” with my hair, and 2. even if I have some vague notion, I have no idea how to describe what I’m after. Apparently I never learned the crucial hair lingo required to survive a trip to the salon. I’ve always sheepishly depended on stylists to assess my hair and do their best with it. Hey, I never went to Blaine School of Hair Design. So I ventured a guess: “Oh, I was thinking some longer layers with longer, kind of side-swoopy bangs?” She wrinkled her nose in disgust (actually wrinkled it!) and exhaled loudly. “Long layers? Really? I’m not doing long layers. You need to take some of this hair off.” This did not bode well with me, but I hadn’t prepared myself to be ballsy enough to just stand up and walk out of there. Also, if I tried to escape I’m pretty sure this girl with her giant Elvis tattoos would have bitch slapped me back into the chair.

And then the slow torture began. Because once she started razoring the shit out of the sides, I knew it was all over. There’s no salvaging the razored hair. I simply resigned myself to months and months of awkwardness, and promised myself some mini Cadbury eggs and a good cry when I got home.

At one point during the shearing I commented, “Umm, my hair looks like David Bowie.” She kind of giggled and then said, “Wait, that’s a good thing, right?”

Oh, you want to see a picture of the new ‘do? Fine. Here you go:

When I got home and called Chris to cry about my hair he was only mildly sympathetic. He seemed to think I should have stopped her midway if I didn’t like how she was cutting it. Like I have the power to stop someone holding scissors right up against my neck?

“Wait, so are you saying you think your hair looks like Ziggy Stardust David Bowie, or I’m Afraid of Americans David Bowie?”

“Does it matter?! You’re supposed to tell me I’ll look beautiful no matter what my hair looks like,” I groaned.

“Oh, yeah. That.”

“Mmm hmm. Too late now.”

“What can I do to make you feel better? I’ll do anything. You want me to smash every mirror in the house for you? Duct tape your eyes closed? I would do that for you.”

I guess I deserve this for going to get my hair cut at a place named after a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

Sigh.

I don’t believe that I’ve ever blogged about television before because, frankly, it’s boring as hell to read someone else’s opinion on something you may or may not watch.

But let me tell you something, people.

When that show Heroes came out? I watched the season premiere and thought, “Meh”. I wasn’t keen on the idea of adding another show to my (admittedly scanty) list of Must See television. I already had Lost, and DVDs of Alias, and occasionally some Forensic Files if I was home at that time of day. Granted, in that one episode I realized that the deep characters and the cool plot lines and the fast-paced storyboard scenes were intensely gratifying after the monotony of Lost and it’s ridiculous back stories week after week. But I staunchly refused to get sucked in.

Then everyone kept talking about it! If everyone had just kept their traps shut on the subject, I never would have felt the urge to download the entire season (eighteen episodes, for those who’re counting), and Chris and I never would have watched 18 hours of television, almost back to back, in a period of two weeks. How is every episode is a cliff-hanger? One episode is twenty times better than the season finale of Lost. And speaking of, are we the last people left still watching Lost?

If I had consulted my doctor before I began watching, I’m sure she would have kindly reminded me of my family’s history of heart disease and discouraged me from speeding up the process by giving myself a mini-heart attack roughly every 45 minutes. But seriously with that “To Be Continued…” at the end of every episode. It gets me every time.

Last night as we settled in to watch the final two episodes I braced myself for the inevitable disappointment of a season ending. I knew there was no way they could make their final episode any more awesome than every one previous. But then they DID! I think I actually screamed, gasped, and cried during those final 45 minutes. Thank you, NBC, for creating characters I actually like.

And people, when you so blithely decided to get me interested in the show? You might also have mentioned that Heroes is like crack; I might then have been able to avoid it. But now I’m doomed to lay awake nights, fitfully tossing and sweating in the throes of Heroes withdrawal, with only the glimmer of hope that is April 23rd keeping me sane.

When my alarm goes off at 5:30, most times I mumble incoherently into my pillow and thrash around in the dark, usually managing to smash the snooze button a couple of times, and promptly fall back to sleep. I don’t know why I do this, since I never feel any better about being awake ten minutes later. It’s still dark. It’s still cold. And Chris still gets to sleep for another hour or three. Once I do manage to claw my way out of the blanets and stumble into the kitchen, I flail around a bit until I’m sure that I’ve turned the coffee on, and I peer out the window to check the weather. Because I am too cheap to buy one of those $10 outdoor digital thermometers, I guesstimate a bit and think up a suitable outfit.

Once everything outside starts to turn shades of gray- like it’s too early yet for even the colors to be up- I know I have to bust a move or risk screaming my little Civic into the parking lot two minutes after the late bell has rung.

Actually, that has never happened to me. But I’m still petrified that someday it will.

And then I go about my day. Once I’ve had some coffee in me and my body has readjusted to not slumbering I’m almost always right on top of my librarying. Until this week. Dreaded, dreadful testing week. I knew it would be bad. It was bad last year. It’s always bad. It has made that morning bit harder than usual and my days seem forever long.

I’m working hard not to be a Molly McBitter about having to sit on my ass all day watching children take tests. I’ve tried looking on the bright side of things. I’ve thought (extensively) about how much worse things could be. I’ve even contemplated a foray into Not Whining About Things mode for a whole day. But… it’s just really very hard. Especially when I have SPRING FEVER and I want to get outside where there’s actual air and sunlight that hasn’t been filtered through layers of mold, asbestos, and ancient drop-ceiling tiles, not biting my tongue to keep from screaming at the plodding, slow-poke children pondering main ideas and topic sentences to just HURRY UP ALREADY. I mean, it’s not really their fault my day sucks.

No one is happier that it’s Friday than me. Except maybe every other teacher in the state of Massachusetts, and who cares about them?

Watching children nervously rock back and forth, hands shaking as their pencils scribble across standardized test booklets is not my idea of a good time, but it does allow me to get a good bit of reading done. I thought I’d start in on some of the kitschy-looking 1970’s fiction I’ve located in my library (not all that hard to come by) and I’ve found a couple of real winners in the collection. But after four days of that, I had reached the saturation point.

This morning was so boring that I could actually feel my brain atrophying inside my skull. My eyelids were begging to be propped open Tom and Jerry style, toothpicks straining to keep me from slumbering. Please, Baby Jesus, just let me sleep away a bit of the boredom.

What could I do to entertain myself? There had to be something so exciting that I would no longer be in danger of embarassing myself by having my Principal shake me awake by the shoulders, sprawled out on a desk with a little puddle of drool pooled under my cheek. I quickly ruled out my idea of “borrowing” some of the band instruments to “test out”, as well as my half-formed plan of building a fort made of books. I didn’t have enough Krazy Glue to do anything that would hold my attention for very long and I wasn’t desperate enough to try out the new hot glue gun. But then, as my eyes fell on my mini-fridge, I had an idea: I’d eat my fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt without mixing it up.

I. KNOW!

It kept me entertained for all of 4 minutes and nauseous for 4 hours. Who knew that the fruit on the bottom was actually just super-sweetened fruit product? It always tastes so real when it’s mixed in with the yogurt. Then I started wondering about whether I had consumed the live cultures in the yogurt part or the fruit part, and I started to actually feel ill. It also made me very sad that all I had for the rest of my lunch was a salad and a Clif Bar.

Screw testing. Tomorrow I’m bringing a deck of cards and some Girl Scout cookies.

This might help pass some time too. Holy addictiveness.

I was having a pleasant chat the other day with a friend when I mentioned that I had seen one of my all-time favorite movies, Goonies, in the theater at Harvard last weekend. I was elucidating all of the reasons why it has stood the test of time and why it’s the perfect young adult movie when I realized suddenly I couldn’t remember the woman’s name that played Mama Fratelli.

“Anne Ramsey”, came his immediate reply- too fast to even have IMDB’d it.
“How the hell did you know that?”
“Huh, no idea. Six years clerking in a video store?”
“Well, yeah, anyway, so Anne Ramsey. She is one ugly lady. If I only had one wish, it would be that I never ended up looking like her.”
“Too late.”

With the threat of bodily harm he eventually rescinded his statement with a “obviously you’re hotter than Anne Ramsey”, but still the thought remained: what would I do if I looked like Anne Ramsey? I mean, she’s worse even than Kathy Bates, and that’s saying something. At least Kathy Bates never wore a beret (that I know of), and never starred in Throw Momma From A Train. But if I were Ms. Ramsey I think I’d try to steal One-Eyed Willie’s gold, too. Just to fix those jowls.

NPW here; just perusing my past entries and I realized I’m well over the 300 posts mark. That gave me pause for a moment. How, I pondered, is it that I have no problem updating this here forum of farce almost every day, and yet sitting down to actually work on some writing that might make me some money proves nearly impossible for me to accomplish?

I didn’t have to ponder long before the answer came to me: I’m lazy. No, really, it’s as simple as that. Here I can just freestyle, I can wing it, I can pontificate on the most inane, ridiculous, or amusing thing I can think of and then ramble on for a full five paragraph essay. But when I’m working on something with direction? Not so into it. Ok, so good- at least I have that much figured out: sheer laziness.

Then I started to wonder at my complete inability to ever keep a journal or a diary in the past. It’s obvious I enjoy writing, why wouldn’t I have wanted to fill page after page about my angst-y, drama filled days? Well, duh- journals and diaries are meant to be kept secret, hidden. Why would I want to write hilarious and often apt entries about my life if only I get to read them? Seriously. I don’t have to go far to amuse myself, I do it all the time. And if I wanted to keep a secret diary, I don’t think I’d choose to do it on the world wide web. This is no livejournal, folks. This here is the real deal.

Second conclusion: I want to amuse the masses.

So basically what it comes down to is that I’m a lazy ass, but if I can make people laugh in my own lazy ass way then at least I can feel I am contributing somewhat to life in general. Here’s to all you other lazy asses out there. I tip my hat to you.

For a city that prides itself on it’s Irish heritage, the Southie parade sure did suck. Thousands of people crushed into the train, alighting in the dangerously over-crowded Broadway station to gusts of bitterly strong wind and equally bitter gusts of beer breath. But even with the tumult, I was absurdly excited. I turned giddily to Chris; “This is going to be so awesome- I didn’t know so many people came down here for the parade! Why have I never done this before?”

We quickly discovered the answer to that question.

While I’ve always vaguely understood that when people call themselves “Irish” they may as well just say “Alcoholic” (i.e.: “Oh, my family? Well I’m German and Italian on my mother’s side, Alcoholic and Dutch on my father’s), the euphemism became much more clear in my mind once we got above ground and saw the festivities that were going down. It quickly killed my naive excitement from the train station: what amounted to gas station attendants hocking $5.00 Southie t-shirts, high school kids in gothwear with hair dyed electric green drinking lime flavored Mad Dog 20/20 straight out of the bottle, college girls who used the holiday as an excuse to dress slutty and then loosely interpret their idea of St. Patrick with a green boa, a woman who tried to lay a blanket out on the street so she could get a good view (subsequently sitting in a large puddle of melting snow), authentic old Irish dudes dozing in rockers with blankets and pipes, and a sea of Red Sox hats covering frat boy and construction worker heads alike. We also saw lots and lots of puke.

That’s not to say we didn’t have fun! Fortunately for us, my friend Kelli hosted a party at her Southie digs and we had a third floor view of the parade, which was close enough to see that we were very lucky not to be down on the street. Right before it started I asked one of the girls what her favorite part of the parade was. She kind of made a face, adding: “Well, I personally like when the Unions come through. At least they have banners.”

Ha ha, I laughed! What about the giant balloons and the floats and the brass bands? She just kind of snickered and went back to eating lime Jell-O shots like Bill Cosby himself had bought them for her. Oh, if only I had heeded those early warning signs and got myself smashed before everything went wrong the parade started!

And then, without fanfare, it began. I won’t mince words here. The “parade” consisted of clusters of children walking with clover antennae, a few ragtag baton twirlers, a couple of men in kilts, one large Elmo, and a horde of Storm Troopers. Oh yes, and the Unions. All kinds of Unions, huddled in the back old pickup trucks waving frozen banners.

All in all, much of the party consisted of making fun of the parade and drinking a few token bottles of Guinness, which was A-OK by me. Thanks to Kelli, our trip to Southie did not end in getting puked on or screamed at and was, in fact, a great time. Her place is lovely, her friends were fun, and bonus: we have video footage of a couple of Boston dudes doing the ATM Dance.

I’d also like to thank Southie for showing me that all it takes to have a party in Boston that everyone is sure to attend is Bud Light in Solo cups and the promise of girls wearing green.

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