girlfiend

I just watched Tuesday’s episode of the Real World. Embarrassing as it is to admit, I watch RW every season. This season is especially exciting because it was filmed in Philadelphia. I hate the cast but Philly looks beautiful. It’s funny to watch how the MTV version of life in Philadelphia differs from real life in Philadelphia.

The cast, straight out of an Abercrombie ad, lived in Old City. Outside of the historical sites, Old City is home to interesting record stores and markets, tons of art galleries and restaurants, and mostly young, good-looking hipsters. Unfortunately, 2nd Street sucks on Saturday when South Jersey and the suburbanites invade, with their big hair, cheesy sports cars, and girls with enormous hoop earrings wearing weather inappropriate tank tops. It seems perfect for the cast of such a mindless show. Sure enough, all of the Old City hot spots are making appearances.

The Real Worlders seem to be enjoying themselves, but Philly kind of hated them. We’re not the friendliest city and there seemed to be no end to the humiliation the RW cast suffered throughout the filming. They were heckled, drinks were thrown and the local press just made fun of them. I saw them in action only once. Two of the cast members, who I now know were Willie and Sarah, walked by me and the boy on 3rd street one night. They were moving quickly and the cameramen were shooing pedestrians out of their way. We thought they were assholes.

While I’m not sure of the particulars, the episode I watched tonight was filmed at a bar at or around South Street. Karamo, who plays this season’s black male, was enjoying his night when he was suddenly surrounded by six cops patting him down. Someone called in an anonymous tip and the police responded. I can’t even imagine how humiliating that experience must have been. Although they found no gun, they asked for his ID. Karamo yelled about the injustice of it all while his roommate, MJ, told him to stop overreacting. MJ was a total prick and Karamo was devastated. As a young, black male this has happened to him more than 20 times and MJ was just like, “chill, man.” This is all leading up to something, I swear.

So Karamo doesn’t want to be the angry black guy but he can’t help but distrust white people. He’s hurt about how his roommates reacted and hurt by the racism. The only reason they called in the tip was because he’s black. MJ kept repeating that it was just a prank. And probably it was just a prank. Some Philadelphian annoyed by these obnoxious kids with a film crew invading their bar probably thought that calling the anonymous tip line would be a surefire way to get rid of them for good. I’m sure it worked. Karamo will continue to distrust people, probably not fully realizing that while the color of skin probably made him the best target of the cast, the guy who made the call didn’t hate him because he’s a racist, the guy called because he’s an asshole who hates the Real World.

My usual Wednesday yoga class moved from 5 to 5.30 so more people could make the class. Directly after, at 6.30 is a Tai Chi class. The owner of the gym is a nice guy, but he’s never taken a yoga class in his life and doesn’t realize that yoga tends to go over. It’s usually only an extra 5-10 minutes, but it almost always goes long unless the instructor teaches another class afterwards. So last week was the first 5.30 class. When we went over the Tai Chi instructor started knocking on the door and loudly complaining. This was during shivasana, corpse pose, the relaxation segment at the end of the class. We were pretty annoyed.

This week we knew that we shouldn’t go over, but one thing with yoga is that whatever you do on one side you have to do on the other. Another thing about yoga is that since you’re using and stretching muscles you don’t ordinarily use you have to do complentary poses to balance things out. It’s 6.25 and we still had a whole series to go. One woman in the Tai Chi class was early and waiting outside. The door was open and we could hear her sighing and muttering under her breath. The instructor who obviously felt bad about going over, but didn’t want to rob us of the full yoga experience closed the door.

We ended up finishing at 6.40. The Tai Chi people came in as we were rolling up our mats. The woman who came early walked in telling us how “goddamn inconsiderate” we were. She was all, “Who give you the right to keep me waiting.” She just kept going and going, yelling at us and our instructor as we exchanged uncomfortable glances and nervous smiles. Some of the people in our class tried to appease the Tai Chi-ers to no avail. A few of us whispered about how we thought people who practice Tai Chi are supposed to be centered. After the enraged woman yelled, “I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with y’all,” for the third or fourth time our instructor picked up her bag, smiled, and loudly and clearly chanted, “Ooooooooooommmmmm,” as she walked down the stairs. The nasty woman glared and growled, “You keep right on humming, cause I’m gonna gather up my Chi and knock y’all out.”

I wrote tomes of bad adolescent poetry growing up. I dotted my ‘I’s with hearts and smiley faces, yet wrote about being a desolate place inside and how my “embers had burnt out.” At times I even dabbled in expressive prose. So I understand what it’s like to want to express yourself. I know what it feels like to have these deep, deep feelings that no one could possibly understand. I remember how good it feels to purge yourself in black and white composition books, or perhaps spiral notebooks decorated with broken hearts and arrows, with the names of your former loves scribbled over in black sharpie. However, I cannot abide reading that crap written by anyone over the age of 14. Which leads me to my point.

As much as I think the ‘next blog’ feature at the top of blogspot pages is a good idea and a fantastic time-waster, the next time I see one of those stupid heart cursors with stars shooting out of it, or click on a site that takes forever to open because of some crap ass midi file, I’ll immediately send the writer hate mail. I won’t link directly to any of these crappy sites I’m referring to, but why on earth would you post this on the internet for anyone to read:

“In a world of confusion my heart burns with a dwindling flame, fighting for survival in a fluid flood of betrayal, deception, and despair. My life goes on, knowing that devastation looms on the horizon of tomorrow with the hope that, like the many other tragedies that line the history of my past, I may survive yet another to live to fight the next.”

My friend introduced me to a game called Douche Waterfall a while back. In this game you log in to your Friendster or some similar account. They have photos of new people at the top. You choose the person who looks like the biggest douche. Generally speaking these are the people whose photos include them drinking beer out of a hat, or licking a stripper’s ass. In some cases, it’s a girl posing with her cat. Either way, you find the most ridiculous statement in their profile, copy and paste it into an email, ending with the word douche.
Here’s an example. Let’s say that the douche whose words I copied above wrote that shit on Friendster. I’d copy the last sentence and change it to read:

“My life goes on, knowing that devastation looms on the horizon of tomorrow with the hope that, like the many other tragedies that line the history of my past, I may survive yet another to live to DOUCHE”

Stupid and mean spirited, I know, yet it’s shockingly addictive. I thought you needed Friendster or MySpace or something like that to play, but I think that the “next blog” feature is just as good. Try it. It’s a blast.

I just opened the freezer to get some ice for my drink and found a frozen moth. Poor little guy.

I can’t for the life of me remember how I thought of this so bear with me. Every now and again someone will say something that will stick with you for the rest of your life. Sometimes they’re good things, sometimes they’re funny, other times they’re just plain bad. For example, someone once said to me, “He was a chunky lad, he wore Husky pants.” Why that has stuck with me, I’ll never know, but there it is. Or the time my friend in the midst of wrestling silliness said, “don’t put your eye in my nose.” But the thing I remembered today really creeped me out.

When I was a kid, both sides of grandparents lived in Florida. My dad’s mom lived in a trailer park near Orlando, my mom’s mom near Miami beach. My mother hated staying with her mother and refused to stay in the trailer park, so every year we stayed at the same hotel during my Christmas vacation. This hotel, a resort actually, was huge. It had golf courses, tennis courts, a huge swimming pool, and an incredible program to keep the kids busy. They had a guy on staff who arranged sporting events for the kiddies. Another guy arranged field trips. There was a free game room that had 15-20 different arcade games for free. Because the place was contained, parents let the kids run wild. It was a child’s paradise. I had a whole group of Florida friends from all over the country- Colorado, Oklahoma, Chicago, New York- many of whom I stayed in touch with for years. From the time I was maybe 5 or 6 until I turned 11, we were there every winter break.

So for some reason I thought of being in the game room today. It was raining outside and I was there with all of my Florida friends. I was probably 10 or 11. There were these older boys from Canada there. They were probably 17 or 18. I remember thinking their accents were funny. One of the Canadians joined me for a 2 player game of Centipede. Out of nowhere, he turned to me and said, “When you grow up, you’re going to have the sweetest, juiciest pussy.” I must have stared at him blankly, because I don’t think I had any idea of what it meant at the time. I remember feeling embarrassed and humiliated when I learned what he meant later. It makes me feel ill just thinking about it.

Who the hell says that shit to a pre-teen?

As the days pass I become increasingly intolerant. I hate people. I hate people who yell at the TV during football games. I hate the parents of the kids who don’t do a goddamn thing especially when said parents don’t show up for back to school night. I hate being the only Jewish girl surrounded by my colleagues discussing why they do or don’t teach CCD. I especially hate the teacher who teaches CCD because he felt guilty about something. I hate hating things. I hate being honest when it makes things worse. I hate lying about things I shouldn’t have to lie about. I hate when I forget to eat and I get a headache, but it’s 11.30 at night and I don’t want to go to the effort of making something to eat when I should be in bed. I hate feeling obligated to attend staff outings especially when these outings are late on a Monday. I hate going to work on Mondays. I hate that I haven’t been to yoga since Wednesday. I really hate doing cardio. Fuck cardio. I hate my career choice. I hate feeling anxious all of the time. I hate people who don’t look you in the eye. I hate weak handshakes. I hate everything right now.

Begin rant:

I am so frustrated. I just had this icky horrible conversation with B while he was driving. I hate trying to have a serious conversation when one or more of the participants is driving. He wanted to know why I was throwing so much heat at him lately so I told him. I told him that I don’t quite fully trust him, that I’m sick of waiting, and that it makes me crazy when he makes excuses for the behaviors that bother me. Of course everyone makes excuses, but this time I’m speaking specifically about how he says I’m the most important person in his life, he says I’m his favorite person, but he still flakes out on holiday dinners with my family.

Last night at dinner, he called and asked if we had eaten. I was excited, thinking that he was still going to try to make it. When I told him that yes, we had eaten, but I saved food for him, he responded by saying, “Oh, well I guess I’ll just go out with my family for sandwiches.” Of course I “threw heat” at him. Why wouldn’t I? He said he would do something, something else at the same time came up. He finished the thing with his family, but instead of trying to attend the thing he’d originally said he’d do for a short while, he went out for BLTs with his family. That makes me really mad. He could have made me feel better, just by showing up for a while and he chose not to. His choices don’t correspond with the claim that I’m his favorite person.

Weeks ago, I invited him to go to a play with my father and I. He didn’t want to go which is fine. So I’m going to this play tomorrow night. Tonight I have plans to go out with my friend. Now he’s all sad because he doesn’t get a weekend night with me. He had the option of going to the play tomorrow. In fact, it’s still an option because it’s not sold out. He still has the option of going out tonight but is too tired. So what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to drop everything because he’s sulky? I don’t have the patience for this.

End rant.

Here’s a mostly complete list of what I read last year. Many of these books are young adult novels, but since I teach young adults that’s to be expected. Perhaps at some point I’ll rate them, but until then, here they are.

August 2003

1. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay- Michael Chabon
2. 1185 Park Avenue- Anne Roiphe
3. Life of Pi- Yann Martel
4. Hatchet- Gary Paulsen (YA)
5. Third and Indiana- Steve Lopez
6. The Bad Beginning- Lemony Snicket
7. The Reptile Room- Lemony Snicket
8. The Wide Window- Lemony Snicket
9. Taking Terri Mueller- Norma Fox Mazer
10. Cool Clyde, Fast Sam and Stuff- Walter Dean Myers
11. Because of Winn Dixie- Kate DiCamillo
12. Scorpions- Walter Dean Myers

September 2003

13. Things My Girlfriend and I have Argued About- Mil Millington
14. Love That Dog- Sharon Creech
15. Wintering- Kate Moses
16. Coraline- Neil Gaiman
17. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress- Sijie Dai
18. A River Runs Through It- Norman Maclean
19. On the Fringe- Donald R. Gallo, ed.

October 2003

20. Bridget Jones the Edge of Reason- Helen Fielding
21. The House of the Scorpions- Nancy Farmer
22. The Miserable Mill- Lemony Snicket

November 2003

23. The Shipping News- E Annie Proulx
24. Summerland- Michael Chabon

December 2003

25. Tangerine- Edward Bloor
26. The Secret Life of Bees-Sue Monk Kidd
27. The Dogs of Babel- Carolyn Parkhurst
28. After- Francine Prose
29. Esperanza Rising
30. Hope was Here- Joan Bauer

January 2004

31. Shopgirl- Steve Martin
32. Vernon God Little- DBC Pierre
33. Freak the Mighty- Ron Philbrick
34. The Devil Wears Prada- Lauren Weisberger
35. Slam- Walter Dean Myers

February 2004

36. The Pinballs- Betsy Byars
37. The Girl Who Owned a City- O. T. Nelson
38. Crispin- Avi
39. The Princess Diaries- Meg Cabot
40. The Skin I’m in- Sharon Flake
41. Pardon Me, You’re Stepping on my Eyeball- Paul Zindel
42. When Dad Killed Mom- Julius Lester
43. The Ice Storm- Rick Moody

March 2004

44. Homeless Bird- Gloria Whelen
45. American Girl- Meg Cabot
46. Tunnel Vision- Fran Arrick
47. Death Watch- Robb White
48. When Zachary Beaver came to Town- Kimberly Willis Holt
49. Son of The Mob- Gordon Korman
50. Whale Talk- Chris Crutcher
51. The Giver- Lois Lowry

April 2004

52. The Da Vinci code- dan brown
53. The girls- Amy Goldman Koss
54. Kit’s Wilderness- David Almond
55. Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber-Adele Lang

May 2004

56. Skellig- David Almond
57. Nory Ryan’s Song- Patricia Reilly Giff
58. Olive’s Ocean- Kevin Henkes
59. Zazoo- Richard Mosher
60. The Conch Bearer- Chitra banerjee Divakuruni
61. The Tale of Despereaux- Kate DiCamillo
62. Make Lemonade-Virginia Euwer Wolf

June 2004

63. Blue Shoe- Anne Lamott
64. The Golden Compass- Philip Pullman
65. The Beast- Walter Dean Myers

July 2004

66. Among the Hidden- Margaret Haddix
67. Among the Imposters- Margaret Haddix
68. Among the Barons- Margaret Haddix
69. Walk Two Moons- Sharon Creech
70. Bloomability- Sharon Creech
71. Escape from Memory- Margaret Haddix
72. Money Hungry- Sharon Flake
73. The Subtle Knife- Philip Pullman
74. The Amber Spyglass- Philip Pullman

August 2004

75. Cut- Patricia McCormick
76. Chasing Redbird -Sharon Creech
77. Out of the Dust- Karen Hesse
78. Stowaway- Karen Hesse
79. Surviving the Applewhites- Amy Tolan
80. The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseini
81. A Corner of the Universe. Ann M. Martin
82. The Dream Bearer- Walter Dean Myers
83. The Report Card- Andrew Clements

Last night I had another telling dream. I was living with some girl. I have no idea who. I decided that things just weren’t working out. I told her to go. I believe I said, “This just isn’t working out. You have to go. Please. Just take your things and go.” I guess we had a lot of shared belongings. She started to pack and there was stuff I just didn’t want her to take. I also had stuff at her house that I needed to get back. So rather than waste a ton of time getting stuff packed up when I just wanted her to leave I said I’d get her a shopping bag to put some of her things in. I went to get a shopping bag. The only one I could find was strangely long and skinny- it was a plastic shopping bag with sturdy plastic handles. It was empty except for some yarn and knitting needles. My mom was in the room wearing a lovely black strapless dress. It was to the knee and fitted with a heart shaped neckline. She looked lovely, but for some reason, dress and all, I noticed that she was wearing my underwear. I said, “Mom, why the hell are you wearing my underwear?” She said it was because she needed to wear a thong with the dress. She apologized for the living situation not working out. I guess it was her house. I gave the girl the bag and I assume she left. I woke up shortly afterwards.

I think that the dream means that I’ve had it. With the boy. I’m fed up. I’m thinking about taking a bit of a break. There’s this whole saga going on with his sister that he feels he needs to be involved in. Although he got pissed at me for saying it, he seems to feel that his parents are incompetent and can’t deal with the situation on their own. They’re going to talk to a lawyer today and he invited himself along because he doesn’t feel that they know what questions to ask. This meeting coincides with Rosh Hashanah dinner. He often flakes out on my family dinners. I don’t think he knows how to be a man. I don’t think he knows that being a good brother shouldn’t make him a bad boyfriend. I think he’ll be a lousy husband in that regard. It’s infuriating and frustrating. I can’t be supportive of something I don’t feel he should be involved in.

I wish that I could be more patient. Not outwardly. Outwardly, I’m pretty damn patient. I rarely lose my temper at work- last year, I only yelled once. That’s right. I taught 7th grade and only yelled once. I was even patient with the boy when he dumped me. Even when it got to the point where we were seeing each other 4 or 5 days a week and he STILL refused to admit we were a couple I was patient. It made me crazy too. In fact, I’m so worked up just thinking about it right now, that I have to write about it more.

He broke up with me in November. I saw him once that week. Then once the week after. After that, it was more like twice a week. So in my head we were dating. We got together, talked, had dinner, had sex and went to our respective residences. Sounds like dating, right? By Christmastime we were seeing each other more often- 3 or 4 times a week. We started to have sleepovers around this time as well.

I got a weekly calendar for a gift exchange at work. The last week of December I started drawing a little heart on the days that I saw him. We saw each other no less than 4 times a week for all of January and February. Most weeks we saw each other 5 or 6 times. The whole time this was happening, he refused to let me interact with his friends or family. He refused to admit we were a couple. It was absolutely infuriating, and yet, I was fucking patient. I felt like an ass. I felt like he was walking all over me, and he probably was, but still I put up with it and waited.

It felt like forever that I had to wait for him to make up his fucking mind. So many times I was ready to say screw it and move on but instead I waited. I was very patient. Outwardly. Inwardly I was fuming. Patience is a virtue. What the hell does that mean. I was patient and patient and patient and I feel like I was left with nothing. At least he fucking admits that I’m his girlfriend now. Wow. I guess I’m still pretty angry.

I had a dream last night that he proposed to me. He gave me a ring with the smallest diamond I’ve ever seen in my life. It was like one of those rings you get in a vending machine. In my dream I was absolutely devastated. It really symbolized how he valued our relationship. But in the dream I tried to pretend that it didn’t bother me. I tried to act like this 25 cent ring didn’t make me feel worthless. I walked around wearing it trying to smile and act excited because I was engaged, but I just felt sad. I bumped into something and the ring cracked. I looked down at it and the “diamond” had just split, jagged, across the middle. It was just glass. He had bought me a glass ring. I showed him and he seemed genuinely upset. I asked him if he bought a diamond that came with a certificate. He pulled it out of his pocket and it was hand written in an old fashioned slanty script- like the Declaration of Independence. I was so, so sad.

Patience.

I need more patience.