4 Days.....

4 Days....
Just 4 days until:
a. I am free from pull-ups, pull-downs, morning headaches, disastrous field trips, school lunches, medications (for kids), bathroom breaks, temper tantrums, goofy songs, requests for cookies, puppets, tickles, music, and snacks....

4 Days...
That's all, just 4 more days...
until I am free of EVERY BLASTED VERSION of "Old McDonald", "Twinkle Twinkle", "Wheels on the Bus", "Parade of Colors", "Two Little Ducks", "Greensleeves", and "12-month Macarena", prevent bellyaches from occuring, kissing boo-boos, snatching away crayons, markers, pencils, and glue sticks so they are not bit, chewed, swallowed, or otherwise ingested causing gastric upset....

4 Days....
Until I am able to curse in polite company, eat my food without sharing it, not grumble under my breath, and not send another screaming out-of-control kid to the "quiet room", not have to dodge spit or kicks, wake up and realize that I don't have to go to work until 3 and that I can stay up and read until 2....

Just 4 days.

In 4 days I will be free of the constriction I call my daytime job. And guess what....

I do it all over again in 6 weeks....and I'm too damn tired to even think about it.

Blast.

"J-Chompz" in da house...

For anyone who doesn't know, I was picked up for the rest of the school year as a temporary employee at my internship. It's a therapeutic school, and the kids come in with a whole gamut of problems, ADHD, ODD, autism, and the like. I was put in charge of a 6-year old kid in the autistic classroom. I'd seen him around before---he's a little pixie of a kid, and super cute. Some vocabulary, but not much. What it amounts to is dealing with an 18-month old trapped in a 6-year old's body. I'm pretty much in charge of his day to day activities--making sure he does his work, sitting with him at lunch, and teaching him to use "nice touches" and to keep his shoes on (I spend half my day doing just that. I know his socks better than my own).
One thing he does to get a person's attention is to hit them. Yes, you read right. If he and I are having a "conversation" and my attention is distracted even for a second, "WHAP" right across my head. Now, the Homewood-raised auntie in me wants to go off, but instead, I say, "No, no, nice touches", at which point he demonstrates what I nice touch is by stroking my arm.
Another behavior he enjoys is biting---good old-fashioned, sharp baby teeth down on your arm, biting. And can this kid bite. More than a few teachers at the school have evidence of this kid's abuse up and down their arms in the shape of tiny, dark, crescent-shaped bruises. I haven't been privy to mastication of my dermis, but I'm told it stings. Just a little.
Yesterday I was sitting in the classroom with my charge, two other students, the teacher, and the mental health worker. I stared absently as he matched colors and numbers with Velcro in a manila folder as he hummed "Old McDonald" over and over again.
"Old MacDonald had a farm," I sang without enthusiasm. "Dude, we got to get you to sing some new songs. I can't keep singing these cheesy songs for the rest of the school year," I told him. He looked at me with a toothy grin and kept humming.
"I'm gonna teach you some Jay-Z. Nas. Something," I said as he turned to look at me, flapping his hands and smiling.
"Yeah, I know," I told him.
"We should give him a rapper's name," the mental health aide called across the room.
I laughed. "We really should though. We could call him J-Fizzle," I said cracking up. The kid kept smiling and flapping.
"I got it," the aide said. "J-Chompz. Cause that's what he does to every one's arms."
I fell apart.

For the love of lit....

Ahh.........

Okay so the spring semester is over. Finally. I lived to tell the story. Tragically, for the past 4 days, I have been in the throes of some type of post-spring semester stomach issues. That being said, I've been stuck at Seth's house able to do little more than grunt, and and click the television remote control. Yowza.

Well, I thought to myself, at least do something constructive today. Okay. Summer book list? Sure why not. You see, Mistique and I have this thing where we list the books we will (hopefully) read over the summer. It is a practice not wasted on those who...have social lives. That being said, here is my (premature) book list for the summer of 2010:

1. "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte - Now I know what you're thinking. "Gene! Its so sad, its so depressing! Why would you want to read it over the summer and be so sad!" Cause I bought it, that's why.

2. "Sense and Sensibility" by Jane Austen
3. "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen - Keep being told that this is a book I should read because Austen's women don't take shit lying down, and neither do I.
4. "Eragon" series by Christopher Paolini - Now I started Eragon, but it was during the semester, and I had to stop reading it. I've been threatened within an inch of my life to read these books, and dadgumit, I'm gonna read 'em! (sorry for that)
5. "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath - She killed herself. By sticking her head in the oven. 'Nuff said.
6. "The Hobbitt" by J.R.R. Tolkein - This is one of those books that I read every year, because it truly one of my favorites. True, Tolkein may take 65 pages to describe a blade of grass, but in that 65 pages, I'm in that meadow looking at that grass, not sitting in my apartment with a leaky ceiling.
7. "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Makes me cry every time I read it.
8. "The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Juster - Honestly, this book speaks to me more now as an adult, than it did when I was a kid. I lent out my old dusty copy I'd had since I was about 12, and had to buy a new one a few years ago.
9. "The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe" - Is there something wrong with me because this man is my favorite author of ALL time?
10. "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho - I love allegory. In all it's sticky, sweet, goodness....

Like I said, this list is early, and it is subject to change. This is for the lovers of lit everywhere. Happy reading!

I must be nuts...

Everytime I open my eyes in the morning (usually between 7:00 and 7:15am...it should be 6:45, but screw it, I'd rather sleep in and be late) I ask myself if I am nuts. Really. When I started off, I decided that I wanted to work with criminals, and work with them to get the behavioral and psychological help they needed to make their lives work. Somewhere along the line I made the decision to work with kids. Right. Okay. If we help them as kids, they won't have as many issues when they are adults, right? right. Only what I am discovering is that the blasted kids have problems too, big problems: psychosis, bipolar disorder, depression with psychotic tendencies----damn if these kids don't see stuff the same way the adults I used to work with do. I mean really, have we really gone so far as a society that our children have no choice but to sink deep into the depths of severe psychiatic disability to cope? So I thought about it, and I said, "Forget it. I'll go back to working with adults. Adults are easier, they make their own decisions, no need to go through case workers and get forms signed by 80 million other people to get them help...they can CONSENT." But when I finally get into my car, at around 8:00 am (should be 7:45 am, but who can get ready that fast) and drive to see my clients, and walk into a classroom and see their eyes light up as they run to knock me over with a hug, or watch with a smile as I park my car and they are jumping up and down on the sidewalk in front of their house with excitement, or see them use their words for the first time instead of their fists to get their point across, I think, "Maybe I am where I'm supposed to be." And as I am looking down at my dirt-smeared jeans, and the fingerpaint that decorates my sleeves and hands, I know I am.

That don't make you smart

So I've come to the realization that I have spent more than half of my life in school in one form or another. People have actually looked at me in awe and said, "Wow, you must be so smart and intelligent." I quickly correct those people with a line from "Corrina, Corrina": You went on and graduated from college but it don't make you SMART. It's true. I know lots of people who have gone on to graduate college and go on to earn a J.D., or an M.A., and their complete lack of understanding of the world outside of their profession is a mystery. It's scary what people consider "smart" or "intelligent." A perfect example was my college roommate.

The year I turned 18 I was on cloud 9. Not only was I an "adult" (in the legal sense anyway) I was going away to college. Ooohhh! Late nights! No mom on my back! Yippee...not so much for me. I had one focus: To graduate and get the hell out of Homewood, and, if it could be done, Pittsburgh altogether.

So there I was, up at Penn State McKeesport. I got roomed with this Chinese girl from Queens (won't mention her name here). She was nice and all, we had polite conversation. We talked about our families.

"Well yeah, my dad is a CEO of his own company, and my mom is a fashonista," she said in her thick New York-esqe accent.

"Interesting." I said. Not really finding it interesting. "My dad died when I was 11 and my mom works as a secretary at her church." Silence. I could tell where this relationship was going to go.

"Oh," she said as if the idea of my mom having such a shitty job gave her card blanc to give me sympathy. I'd rather have someone hate me than feel pity for me. Thanks Ponyboy.

We didn't talk too much after that. Polite greetings, no real exchanges. Until the iron incident.

One Friday night, when she was getting ready for a party, my roommate decided that she should iron a blouse she had.

"It's so wrinkled!" she exclaimed. "What am I going to do? I can't go out like this!"

I turned around slowly from my desk where I was pouring over my algebra homework, and tried not to smirk. "How 'bout an iron? Irons usually work really well to get out wrinkles," not bothering to mask my dripping sarcasm.

Her face brightened. "Oh yeah! Thanks so much! That's a great idea! Now, where is my iron. I know I have one..." and so for the next 20 minutes I listened to her mutter to herself while she dug through her Versace shoes and Coach handbags to find her elusive iron. I tried in vain to keep my mind on the Pythagorean Therom.

My roommate finally extracted her iron from her plethlora of designer shoes, handbags, and t-shirts that cost more than my entire wardrobe. She put up my ironing board, plugged in the iron and set to work.

I continued to plog away, making corrections and revisions on my work, until I heard her grumble, "My iron is broken!" I closed my eyes, gathering my patience.

"What do you mean, what's wrong with it?" I asked.

"You come from a family of housekeepers, Gene-Leigh. Can you please help me? I've never had to use an iron in my life." I looked at her dumbstruck. "Huh?" I asked, my eraser poised in midair.

"My maid always ironed my clothes. I never learned how."

So Pythagorus and his theorum would have to wait. The girl who never ironed was much more interesting.

"You've got to be kidding me," I said before I could stop myself. "Okay, what's the problem with it? The light isn't coming on, or what?"

"There's no steam," she exclaimed.

I tried the iron, and sure enough, there was no steam coming out of it. I changed the setting, and still: no steam.

Then I checked the water level.

"Honey, you need water in the iron to make steam come out," I said calmly.

And do you know what that airhead said?

"Oh."

Just cause you in college, don't make you smart.