Journal & Musing

The woods are very loud at night. I never think about how many critters are outside until they start chirping after the sun goes down. Crickets, frogs, whatever else. So many. The sound is deafening. Like how the gazillion stars fill up the night sky. There have to be at least that many critters in my yard alone. Granted, it’s an 800-acre backyard.

Multiple acres stretch between my house and the road, and on them roam ten bulls. Landlord’s wife said two weeks ago that there are ten but that one would go to slaughter soon. I counted nine today. I watch them watch me when I drive past them as I come and go. Today they watched me wash dishes through the kitchen window. They are nosy and a little creepy, but I’ve quickly developed an affection for them. Ernest has resting bitch face, or he is sincerely angry all the time. Pablo has goofy rabbit ears. Jim, Ezra, Joan, Fitz, Evan, Jules, and Passos have yet to show much personality, but I’m making an effort to find some.

The farmhouse is old but cute, and it’s comfortable. I feel safe out here, so far from the world. I bring my cat onto the screened-in back porch each night to satisfy her primal, nocturnal instincts. We listen for the coyotes together, their howls slicing through the din of chirps. No coyotes tonight, unfortunately. But kitty is content lying on the porch next to me in the dark, head darting this way and that. This corner of the world isn’t for little kitties. She’s a snack out here. I’m guessing she knows it.

. . . . . .

This is one of those summers that provides little down time for me. We sold the house, moved, and now we are settling in while I am also getting things ready for the new school year. I will have one very complicated job in two locations through two employers, and I start in about a week.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

I was worried that this adventure would be a difficult transition for me. On the contrary, I haven’t been so at peace in a long time.

I never begin writing with a title in mind because rarely do I know what I am going to write about until sentence two. Or in this case, sentence four or five. Here’s another for cadence.

I survived the year and every curveball thrown at me, and I could not have asked for a better ending to this chapter of my life. I am without words, which is unfortunate given this present endeavor. I received many letters and gifts from students, current and former, in the last few weeks of school. My favorite was from a former student, Gavin. Here’s the backstory.

Every year I ask a class or two what color the number eight is. I get a mix of responses: confused looks, random calling out trying to get the right answer, etc. There is not one right answer, but the people who know the answer to the question of what color the number eight is are not aware that their answers are unique in at least two ways. A) They know what color the number eight is, and B) their color is rarely the same as someone else’s. The correct answer is green, in case you are wondering. No, there is not one right answer, but to a synesthete, there is exactly one. And the synesthetes in the room, having never been told that eight is not a color in a normal brain, become confused as to why there are different answers and even more so that most people have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s a fun game I play. Synesthesia is super interesting, and students learn something they might never have learned about brains, even their own, had I not asked. One of the reasons I start the conversation is so that as the year progresses and they start to notice that I often confuse fours and sevens or that blue is sometimes Saturday, they won’t think their physics teacher is a total whack job.

The year before last, Gavin told me that I am forest green because I am happy all the time and also because of the way I walk. That was the best sensory mix-up I’d ever heard, and his group thought it was hilarious. Gavin thought so too, and they laughed about it all year.

At the end of his senior year, which was a couple of weeks ago, Gavin brought me a gift. Two candles: one in a purple frosted jar and the other in a forest green frosted jar. The purple one was called “Joy and Laughter.” He didn’t have to tell me what they meant, he just asked if I remembered.

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

Today I submitted my resignation. I pulled all of my folders and files off everything linked to my drive and email and anywhere else I won’t have access to after today, and all of those folders and files are now strewn about my desktop and shoved into other folders. It’s all very messy. The packing of my house started in a similar manner, but now everything is either tossed out, given away, put in storage, or put on display to make the house homey so that a buyer might buy it. Still waiting on that last part, actually, but I’m moving regardless. I signed a teaching contract last Thursday. Today I rewarded myself for getting through the madness of the last year with a hot-fudge brownie sundae. It was the best hot-fudge brownie sundae I’ve ever had.

Someone asked me today what I would do if I didn’t teach. I’d be a musician, I said. Or a writer. I will tell you, Reader, the truth. I’d be a figure skater. What a thrill that would be, dancing on ice with the cold wind blowing over me.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never been as overwhelmed by so many things in my life as I am right now.

My good friends at College Board decided to add a unit to the already packed content. I’ve never taught fluids before, and I don’t remember learning it in school. So I’ve been teaching myself fluid mechanics the last couple of weeks while trying to come up with materials and fun lab or two. I’ve achieved less than half of what I need to, and the new unit starts Monday.

And we’ve started getting the house ready to put on the market. Hired fix-it people and a cleaning crew. Haven’t packed yet. Staging this weekend because the house gets the lockbox Monday, when fluids starts.

I spend my days studying and my evenings scrambling to get the house done. I teach, too. But that’s been easy lately. The kids make it all better.

I am virtually taking a running leap off a cliff. Where will I be in two months? No clue. What will I be doing? Good question.

So I pretend I’m a figure skater gliding gracefully through the air, and sometimes I sneak down to the practice hall after work—a hidden corridor connected to tiny rooms, each with a piano to choose from. No one knows to look for me there. A little surreal, it is. Cathartic. Like ice skating on piano keys with no one around to steal my joy.

I’m the little engine that could. Come Monday, I will be the engine that did. Come May, I will be a fucking rockstar. Or dead.

I’m leaning toward rockstar. But even rockstars need sleep. My alarm goes off in 4.5 hours. It’s like I don’t stop, can’t stop. Sleep? It’s getting in my way.

I’m going to be a grandmother again in a few weeks, too. Lol. I’m like, 90 years old, careening toward homelessness and unemployment in a new town. I’m a juggernaut unraveling my life at light speed.

I’ll be better Monday. Or worse. If I disappear altogether, check the practice hall.

It’s 11:30 pm, but it feels like time is on vacation somewhere. It can stay gone as long as it likes as far as I’m concerned.

Today I checked off another book from the 100-books-to-read-before-I-die list. The Picture of Dorian Gray. I think this one is worthy of the list. I liked going through and marking off the books I’ve already read. I also marked off a few I’m not interested in. And if you include the six I have been in the process of reading for some time now (three of which are on no one’s list), that leaves 52 more to go. But I have time. You know, since I don’t plan to die anytime soon.

I also relearned how to solve the Rubik’s cube today. I’m up to 4 minutes (give or take) from the 1-minute-58-second personal best back in the day. I’m happy with 4 minutes. The world record is about 3 seconds, and I saw a video not too long ago of a guy who solved three cubes simultaneously as he juggled them. Whatever.

I’ve been battling the flu all week, so this surge of energy to solve cubes and read books and clean closets (one closet) feels good. I feel normal again. And look there, I posted something. I’m doing all kinds of crazy things today.

I have 18 self-created playlists on Spotify and many other playlists that I follow, but I find myself listening to my liked songs most of the time because I forget all the other playlists are there. I am quite tired of listening to the current liked songs, however (mostly). I’m writing this post to the playlist I titled “write” because I am writing, though I’ve used it for inspiration only once or twice.

My classroom is connected to the adjacent classroom via a storage room, the doors to which are generally open for no particular reason. The teacher in the room across the storage room plays an endless loop of yacht rock, which by now I find myself replaying in my head much of the time. I have heard an increase in the hallways of the singing of Foreigner over the years. That teacher is making an important impact on the current school culture beyond academics. People need variety.

I have a “class time” playlist that I have played in the past that keeps the students happy and working. It’s chock full of Disney and Abba and other catchy tunes, though I slip in a few cheesy 70s songs. Watching students sing Tom Jones to themselves while they work is entertaining in an evil sort of way. I gain bonus points when I play David Bowie and the like, as though I someone my age listening to something so retro and hip is unusual.

I’m currently sitting in a chair in the living room in the exact middle of Labor Day weekend. Again, the house to myself. It’s raining, peaceful, and I cannot find an ounce of inspiration to do the work I stayed home this weekend to do. I have no choice but to do it, which is why I could not go with the rest of the crew to Galveston. My backpack is staring at me, and I’m getting texts of pictures of people on a boat on the ocean holding large salt-water fishes. The guilt is getting to me, as is the sadness of missing out—the kids are calling it FOMO these days—and the procrastination is fading.

My husband sent me a picture of himself with my daughter peering over his shoulder. I sent back a nearly identical picture of him and me that was taken in the same vicinity three years ago. My way of being there, I guess.

Enough. I didn’t miss out on the fun for nothing. And this damn writing playlist is depressing as hell.

Friday after work I went to the liquor store, and three hours later I was toast. Today was even better. I had a productive morning after a fabulous night’s sleep (thanks to rum), took an unruly dog for a walk in the warm sun, and watched Fast Times at Ridgemont High because no one was home to complain about the movie choice. I then got in my car, drove out of the neighborhood with no destination in mind, and called a far-away friend whose birthday I missed yesterday. Turned out she was thirty minutes away visiting her parents, so my aimless drive turned into a fun day at the park and a cheeseburger with my friend. Something I said reminded her of a song by Kiss, which she played for me in the car. I have never been a fan of Kiss and have no intention of making an effort to find value in their music. All I heard when she played the song was a middle-school guitarist in a garage with his friend playing tap-ka-tap on the drums. I felt an immediate need to replace the noise with Neil Peart, which I did, promptly. And the rest of the day was spent talking about random thoughts that all ended with discussions about music. She knows infinitely more than I do about musical artists, and she taught me some interesting tidbits. David Byrne, for instance, had a girlfriend who frequently joked about weirdos being psycho killers, and she was later killed by one. I have to look that factoid up, because I don’t really believe it. She also added Geddy Lee’s self-narrated autobiography to my Spotify playlist to further my knowledge. We listened to Pigs by Pink Floyd, which reminded me of the time I got a record player for mother’s day. A few albums came with the gift: The Dark Side of the Moon from my husband and Joe Cocker from my oldest daughter because I used to sing to her “You Are So Beautiful” when she was a kid. I cried when I saw the album, and then she cried. And no one knew why. My youngest got me Kenny Rogers because she thought that would be funny. I think Kenny Rogers is pretty great, so the joke was on her. I told my friend the story of the mother’s day gift, which led to a short discussion about country music—short because neither of us are avid fans of the genre aside from the bluesy stuff (and Kenny). We agreed that Chris Stapleton’s version of The National Anthem is the greatest of all the versions. We agreed on a lot of things, in fact, which is probably why we have been friends for most of our lives.

I am too tired to continue writing or to end this post with any level of wit, so I’ll let Rush take over the rest.

Night.

The thing I have always wanted to do seems so far from my capability now and even farther from ever becoming a reality. I wrote a thing, a little thing, an introduction to a book that will never be written. I wrote it in five minutes (give or take) for the purpose of having a snippet to display my talent to potential employers—publishers that need people to churn out 20,000 words to sell. The gig seems like a great opportunity. The idea of ghostwriting is pretty cool. But the commitment…

I take pride in my job. Teaching is a calling that brings meaning to my life beyond being a mom and wife. I worked in the corporate world for a while, and the time and energy it stole from me, from my ability to give everything of myself to my family, made me angry. What good was I to this life if nearly all of my waking hours went to writing textbooks that nobody would ever use? What good was I to my kids if they were left to be raised by a daycare? I swore when I moved away from that place that if I had to work then I would make that time stolen from me be for something noble. So when teaching fell into my lap, I gave in to my fate. At least I would be on my children’s schedules, I thought. And I was. And life was mostly okay.

I exist for other people. That’s my calling. My job. My life. But I want to do other things. I want to write. All of that effort I would put in, though, would feel as though I am throwing away precious time. I’d be a ghostwriter of cheap novels. It sounds fun, but the time required…where would I steal it from? What sacrifice would I have to make to do something I want to do? I can answer that, but I don’t want to hear myself say that I’d be robbing my servitude.

I read a few things to my dad tonight that I have written over the years. I warned him they were bad, but I wanted to share them in the hopes that I would in some small way get an encouraging nudge. A sign, even. I now know that I should stick to cheap novels for cash if anything. That is me feeling sorry for myself.

I have bigger fish to fry. I will save my sadness for when I have time to lament any failed attempts at real writing.

Living without the comforts that electricity affords has its benefits. The only good that came of having no air conditioning was that I didn’t have to go outside to experience summer. What I mean is that when I spend all my time in the cool indoors during summer vacation, which lately I have tended to do, I forget that the season I love the most is passing me by. Summer is my favorite season and not because I get a bit of a vacation. I love the heat, the blue sky, the dark greens, and the vivid crepe myrtle blooms. I love walking in sunshine and feeling a thousand miles away from everything in this world. But lately I’ve stayed indoors. Lately, I’ve been watching tv. That’s not a terrible thing in small doses, but I have let the indoors replace my outdoor, summer sanctuary. Last week, though, a hurricane swept through and took away my air conditioning and tv. I stayed indoors still, but I spent my time reading. The heat was unrelenting, and I felt consumed by summer. Hidden by it. I was forced to go without contact with the outside world, and I hadn’t felt so at ease since I don’t remember when.

The air is back on, and now I have important work-related things to do. But I can still go for a walk if I want to. I should. I will.

I am also now knee-deep in Game of Thrones. I will make time for that, too. But I am aching to write.

Oh, how I yearn for last week when I had so few choices.