Julie Should Have Used a Ballot Cover

As Nicki and I left our polling place yesterday, we stopped outside a first grade class hearing their own votes read aloud:

Teacher: "....Obama"
The class: "Yay!"
Teacher: "Obama"
The class: "Yay!"
Teacher: "Obama"
The class: "Yay!"
Teacher: "Ok, students, let's tally up our votes. How many for McCain?"
The class: "One!"
Little boy: "That's Julie!"
Teacher: "How many for Obama?"
The class: "Five, Ten, Fifteen, Twenty...."

GObama! DON'TGOFrankenOrColeman!

Gargle.
Gasp.
Choking on my bubbly water.
I need to get to NYC stat. Chris just voted next to Serena van der Woodsen.
Vote, Jerks. I know you don't need the reminder, but I would be sad if you forgot that today was THE day, and you just went about your business, dusting the corner table, murmuring to yourself like that guy in Calhoun Square.
Also, Halloween.
Just to come full Gossip Girl Circle, here: if I thought more people would know who I was, I would have gone as Blair Waldorf, running for president. My platform: headbands for everyone!

They Do a Play, a Musical, but It's About Themselves and They're in It.

I gave blood! I have a total needle wound!
My little friend, Anna, waited until I was captive on the blood sucking machine, to reenact the entirety of HSM3.
I felt a lot nervous and a little chilly, but I had waited too long to back out. [A history of my attempts to poison America.]
Later I took my woozy stomach and some theater geek friends to the Guthrie eve to see Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, starring this guy. There was also blood in this! It is the human experience, is it not?! Tension! Tragedy!
If you're free this weekend, and you want to see something impressive, you have choices:

1. HSM3
2. Anna's rendition of HSM3
3. A View from the Bridge
4. My rendition of A View from the Bridge. Note: performance can occur while you donate blood, or not.

An Excellent Expressor of Reason and Logic

My book budget has tipped the scales. But just you try to say no to a hardbound anthology edited by Jeffrey Eugenides.
I thought so.
Bookclub made an out-of-state trek last weekend to Amery, WI. Lovely everything, except for the townies who gave us the stink eye for crashing their Saturday night bar party. Well, how-dee-doo, Alpha Females. Aren't we a little threatened by five women with unwashed hair and bits of yarn and paper stuck to their sweaters?
On the job front: had a meeting with the Big Bossman today and all went well, in that I did not cry. It could have gone better, in that I basically got the "Prove your worth to this organization in ways we can measure with test scores" message. I think my message: "Get me a full time masseuse and I'll change the life of your school forever or just actually hand me the damn tests and I'll take them myself" really came across.

Really?

Another long weekend gone. I love Castaway. It is one-stop shopping for sleep deprivation and Jesus. This year we heard from speaker, Bill Paige, about keeping it real. Don't front. God already knows.
I'm still waiting for his list of Christian hip hop artists cause Neighbor, you know I love me some hip hop.
Since I come bearing no photographic evidence of waxing Eddie's back on stage, here's Pelican Lake as interpreted with Microsoft Paint and a certain level of exhaustion.

Backing Slowly Away from the Cage

Two gems from the last week, since it was otherwise filled with rocks:

• Rin: "It's the dude with the billy goat beard. Can we all agree that 9 times out of 10 it's the guy with the billy goat beard?" In this case, the billy goat beard was the one smoking up in public, outdoors, at 1 pm.
• Chris: "I'd hire you to write my life, and to provide me with huge, fictional sandwiches." Because in my first screenplay rom-com ever, "Margot and Chris," about Margot, a Canadian, and the lovely Chris, who meet in NYC, they spend the third scene at a deli eating huge sandwiches. Perhaps that quote began with adequate context.
  

So it was another week full of drama and exhaustion. This job is killing me -- loudly, with punches, and scenes in the lunchroom. Get me out of here. In fact, get everybody out of here. Let's start over: a charter school for non-person-to-person violence. If you get into a fight at this new school, we will throw you into the lion's cage and walk away. Because we didn't say anything about animal-to-person violence. And everybody signed the waiver.

Accountability

I'm getting angry. In the five years I have worked here, I have seen too many students come back to visit me with giant proud grins: I'm gonna have a baby!
Um... great.
I ask about their plans. I ask about the other half of the DNA. "Are you together?"
Most often I get something like, "Oh, no. That piece of trash? All he's good for now is sending child support."
And what I really want to say is this: That piece of trash? Really? You let somebody put part of their garbage self inside of you? So that you could feel loved for a moment? You selfish brat. For the record, almost anybody can make a baby. And this one deserves two parents who are fully present to care for it. You are not special, nor are you original. You are a pretty unimpressive statistic, on the whole. At least you graduated first.

Late September, Early Onset Diabetes

As I Was Saying
Do you ever get the feeling that your work is cutting in to your happy houring? Yes!
Thank you. Me, too. Mondays are hard because the weekend helps me unlearn all the--Shit. It's Tuesday.
Listen, I'd really like to finish pulling this report, it's just that Jill wants me to see her wedding photos, so....? Maybe? Next week? Thanks for being so understanding. Ooh, actually? I need to go to coffee with Lori to talk about some stuff. Heh. I'll be back next Thursday afternoon.

The Latest in a Dull Series
Rather than actually do the things I'm supposed to be doing, I'm breaking them up into manageable chunks. I'm going through a new organizational phase of small notes affixed to three-hole punched sheet protectors. It's hard for me to believe the amount of joy I derive from organizing to-do lists. Let's all air the vaguely OCD habits that shame us!

BabyStalkers, Inc.
Brunch-style bookclub on Sunday morning, 'cause we're unpredictable like that. And we didn't read the book, 'cause we're lazy like that. (Or we've been drinking at church Oktoberfest the night before and getting picked up by the cops for passing out under pine trees.) Anne brought the Jimster and I watched him sleep, as a safety precaution in case one of the other women tried to steal or bite him.

That Oktoberfest Passing Out Story is Matt's
Matt wins because he yodeled and schuhplattled. And he can keep that story because Wells Fargo is being an asshole to him. I said it. I SAID IT.
My Oktoberfest story is two parts strudel, one part text message: "Too dry k. Can't code my eyes. Spinny. So spinny."

AMERICA! Home of the Free and the Well-Educated!

This commentary makes me giggle a little. I know it shouldn't, because sexism is bad. But that's not why I'm laughing. What's funny is when somebody with a glamour shot on the byline is writing about sexism with such fervor and simultaneously, such vapid content.
In particular:

By treating Sarah Palin differently from other candidates in this race, you are not showing her the respect she deserves.

Free Sarah Palin.

Free her from the chauvinistic chains you are binding her with.

While you're at it, free Campbell Brown from her dangling prepositions.

Meet Pearl

She's here! I am the new owner of a used Subaru named Pearl (runner up name: Morty Fitzbaum III). I have one image, which does not provide a tremendous amount of context, but it does show you the junk in her trunk:

One lovely thing about having a trunk is that people cannot so much see that you are, in effect, living out of your vehicle*. Subes was a hatchback and thusly the trunk was more of a... three-season porch. I had a pair of crocs in there. One croc found a hiding spot among the laundry piles, greeting cards and the singleton mittens of yesteryear. The other croc stayed in the light, perched above all the other crap with the sun beating down day after day through the window.
I present to you The Raisin Croc (Expertly modeled by Carly. More cell phone pictures! More average quality visual media! Love this blog anyway. Please.):


(Raisin not because it's nature's candy, but because it has shrunken and warped.)

Moral of the story: Cut off some toes if you're keeping rubber shoes in your hatchback.

*The bad thing is that sometimes you forget even after you take a picture that you've visited the grocery store and your milk product goes into the questionable temperature zone.