Whaaaaaaat?

Y'all, did that just really happen? It's like when we are sitting at the bux and a woman walks by in one of those outfits. You know what I mean. Our collective jaws drop and we stare in disbelief at the train wreck with a two-tone, double decker weave and a leopard print mini-skirt.

So... when McCain picked a woman as a VP, well, yeah. Whaaaaaaaat??

I know at some point I said something to someone about people voting for Barack just because he's black. Yup, I totally said that. Well, you know what? McCain improved by like, I don't know, A THOUSAND PERCENT in about 10 seconds. And why is that? Because he picked a woman? Yup.

Remember in high school when all the cool kids wore hypercolor? I do. And then all the uncool kids (read: me) got hypercolor shirts. Suddenly hypercolor wasn't so cool anymore. Now that there is minority status on both ends, maybe we can actually look at the issues!! I am so excited!

Sorry I am all over the place with this. McCain picked a woman. I bet Barack is wishing he had picked Hill now. Dude, he kinda got one-upped by McCain. Ha! That's like getting beaten in a fight with a one-armed, little person. A blind, one-armed, little person.

Baracktoberfest

Meh. I'm just not there, y'all. The cliches, the ridiculous "you know you love me cuz I'm so down" accent, and the attitude. What I mean by attitude is the way he belittles the last 8 years and John McCain as easily as breathing, but he offers very little about the actual plans he hopes to put into action.

He just keeps talking, and they just keep clapping, and I just keep wishing I felt as good now as I did the other night. It probably is the part of me that wishes it was her up there, but it is also the part of me that can't live through another term of half-hearted attempts at (ugh) change.

If I never hear that word again...

Someday I hope to look back at this and berate myself for disliking the man that made America a better place. I hope...

Mrs. Clean

He's got some tough shoes to fill. He will never be as good as she would have been. Why isn't Hillary our nominee for President? Watching her right now, listening to all of her genuine desire for a better America, I just wish this was her party and not his. I swear, I am all teary and weepy just thinking about how close we were to having the right person in the right place.

Who is better for the job? We will never know. The speculation and bias will always be there with the constant what ifs and maybes. These things will keep us from ever knowing if our President is the best one we can possibly have. This world is so corrupt. She knows that. She is part of it. He is, too. I just think she is better about using it against itself. You know what I mean? Look at her life. She knows how to clean up messes. We need that.

Revisited

So I am feeling more and more like my old self (for better or for worse), and I feel like I can finally say a few things that have a feeling of, dare I say it, optimism to them.

The job? Yeah, I am still in shock over that one. Three days ago I was overwhelmed with the the sense that I was joining the ranks of the permanently searching. Today I am wrapping up the final parts of the syllabus for my classes. It is surreal. For real.

The cancer? Man, oh, man. Seeing it like that in that cup just changed it all. There it was. This thing that has been on my mind since May. There it was. This thing that had kept me up at night, made me sad, made me cry, caused me to think about things I had never wanted to consider. Ugly, rotten, moldy, and small. The small is what gave me the calmest and eeriest sense of completion. I am not empowered. No. I am humbled, over and over again. That thing brought me to my knees. That thing gave me a new perspective. That piece of awful gave me a new wonderful. Words won't get where I need them to go. Somewhere in that cup was an old view, a misunderstanding realized, and a piece of me gone forever.

Cue the music? Let the credits roll? Nah. Turn the page. That is what I am feeling. Watch the next season creep into the picture. Feel the rays of a dying sun. Smell the leaves go from pungent green to mellow gold. Taste the chocolate beneath the candy shell.

I am taking a lesson from my Grandmother today. I am going to live it like it's short even though I am nowhere near done with it.

No shirt, no shoes, no cervix

Le sigh... There is so much I could say, but I really lack the desire or energy to get gushy about any of it. A summer spent soaking in suppositions all lead to today. The whole thing ended today. After a painful morning of actually smelling my burning cervix, I got to see my cancer in a bottle. It was insanely cool. Ridiculously humbling. Terrifying. What did it look like? Have you ever seen a grape rotting in a bag? The white mold, slightly fuzzy, covers the fruit while some sections reveal what looks like a yummy, juicy grape. That's it. Well, a grape from the bottom of the rotten grape bag. It was kind of smooshed.

Pain and agony later, I already have great news! I got a job at JSCC teaching developmental writing. I have 2 sections, one that meets at 8 am on MWF and another that meets at 9:25 am on TR. Slightly problematic is the fact that I have in-service tonight from 4:30 until 9 pm. Ugh.

I need to rest, and so I will. My insides kind of feel like someone put a cheese grater inside me and went to work. I am looking forward to organizing my syllabus and planning the semester. I am happy to have seen my cancer in a bottle.

What a looooong, strange trip it's been.

Counting down

The "procedure" is just around the corner, and I am dealing with it.
My stomach hurts for no reason. (Yeah, right.) My cuticles look like they have been through a paper shreader. My lip is tired of being chewed. Ugh.

What it didn't say

I didn't get to know my grandmother for long enough. My mother married her son at a time when I was just beginning to fix my broken life. I was a single, uneducated mom and I needed a place to live. I was so nervous to ask her if I could live in her old house. She barely knew me, and it was a request I would have been petrified to ask of anyone let alone a woman I didn't really know. And so I asked her. And she said yes. She said yes like it was the most natural thing in the world. She said yes to a stranger who was in need of something she could give.

Who was this woman? Who was this amazing and compelling and giving charmer? We all have different ways of describing her. A mother, a grandmother, a friend, a bowler, a teacher, a story-teller, a gardener, a cook, a saver, a fighter, a survivor. She was a single mom before there was such a thing. She understood hard work and wasn't afraid of it, no matter where it took her. She stood at the bottom of mountains and climbed until she could savor the view. Even in her 80s she had youthful optimism. She was made up of such a delicate recipe of experience and inhibition.

We all have our stories that we love to tell. I remember sitting at Grandmaw's house watching Tony tinker with her seldom worn hearing aid. I remember how we all laughed when the squeak was intolerable and she sat there with a smirk. That smirk!

How I will miss Grandmaw's smile. It said so much! It radiated genuine mirth at life's funny ways but it resonated with this feeling of I-have-learned-from-this-and-you-will-too-but-you-are-going-to-have-to-figure-it-out-on-your-own. I got that look a lot. A lot a lot.

Her birds, her books, her flowers, her plastic sacks, her Mistys with the butts cut off, her insurmountable presence that has affected the lives of too many people to count. Her force, her determination, her strength, her humor, her knowledge that life is short no matter how long you live. For those that knew her, you know that there isn't a list of qualities and idiosyncrasies that would ever be complete when it comes to describing her.

She is in us, in all of us that ever listened to her stories or heard about her. We carry her sweet soul with us. On those days when the world is just too much, we can think of her. Think of her driving her big car in her sparkly hat, cigarette in one hand, sunglasses on. We can remember the Fay Yanessa we knew. The one woman who was so many things to so many people.

We're on drugs

I encourage you to look at this and see what thoughts come into your head. Tennessee's place on the list isn't a big shocker. My first thoughts were of course influenced by my current state of affairs. Where are people getting the money to pay for their scrips? Also, I thought about how medicine is viewed differently in those states lower on the list.

Nathan is a pretty healthy boy. When he does get sick, I really hate going to the doctor because I know they are going to give him and antibiotic as some kind of cure-all. There are so many documented cases of antibiotics that kids become immune to because of over-use. Where do we draw the line?

And crazy meds... How many times has it occurred to me that my problems wouldn't seem so big if I had a chemical in my blood calming the effect? Where did this idea come from? Is there a bigger problem lurking beneath Tennessee's drug-dependency? I think there are several.

One that I am going to suggest is that we are increasingly dependent on a science we don't understand and that we lack the ambition to live life with an attitude of intolerance for complacency. Dig that.

Full Circle

Hey! The air is fixed in my car!

Nathan started school on Friday and had his first full day today. He is going to the school I went to for 13 years. Certainly I have reservations, anxiety, and general unrest about my son going to the school I hated. I am trying to deal. In the end, I do not doubt that Nathan is receiving a wonderful education.

Friends are getting their lives in gear and I am hopeful about mine. I am enjoying this crazy-good weather. Even if it rains tomorrow, I will find a way to enjoy the outdoors.

They called today. They moved my appointment up from 2 pm to 8 am. The knots are forming. The fear is rising. The "procedure" cometh.

Summer Sun

Whew! Everyone is saying it, but I might as well chime in. It is hot out there! Last week the air went out in my car which made me feel simultaneously miserable and ungrateful. There are people all over the world living in horrid conditions, and I am the tool worried about not having air in my otherwise working vehicle. There is this big part of me that knows I am in no place to complain. But this other part...

I turned in resumes to two different places last week. The first one was for a job in Memphis teaching ESL. No, I am not qualified. Sadder still is that this detail is not really standing in my way with this job. People from other countries are so much better at learning English as a foreign language that just about any native speaker can teach them. When I think about how I struggled through Spanish and Latin I feel like a douche for having the convenience of having experienced instructors and complaining that it was too hard.

The other resume went to one of my formerly attended institutions, Jackson State Community College. I have an "in" over there and am hoping that she has enough pull to get me at least one little class. With these adjunct positions the notice about the job usually doesn't come until a week or so before classes begin. So now I wait and do not even attempt optimism. I am a wreck hoping that I will get one of these, and then even more ridiculous that I am actually hoping to get them both.

Got to go on both of these job searches with a lovely sheen due to the AC malfunction. I think the heat index was 105 the first time and 101 the second time. I actually apologized for my appearance during the sit-down with the lady from the Memphis office. Jackson to Memphis without AC kind of shows, if you know what I mean.

Keeping my fingers crossed and as much hope as I can stand. I went to see The Dark Knight this weekend and there was one of those lines about it always being darkest before the dawn. Yes, it was much more poingnant when coming from the mouth of that guy who played Harvey Dent, but I have decided that is just how I am going to have to look at this. Big changes are coming, I can feel it, and I am hoping for that same feeling of a sunrise to wash over me when it does.

I am thinking back to those days before the school bug had bitten me. I used to stay up all night doing all sorts of things and then I would watch the world wake up, shedding light on the mess I had created while it was asleep. Later on, I remember pulling all-nighters at the Smith computer lab getting my American Lit paper finished at the last minute. When I would open the doors, the sun practically mocked me for not being in better charge of my time.

These days the sun is the source of some very similar feelings. I just need to think that this time, when the sun does finally come up, that there will be something new with it. If I can survive how bad it has been lately, then I want to finally bask in its rays.

It's funny. I think I am suffering in my little un-airconditioned car, but all I really want is the light and the heat of a new day to find me. The dawn is coming I can feel it. Until then, I guess I will just have to roll the windows down!