Thursday, November 17, 2011

Moving on: The blog is back in town!

So a lot of people have been whining about the lack of blogs lately.

To those people, I would like to say, WHERE ARE YOUR BLOGS? Oh, that’s right, most of you don’t have them! Do you think I’m just some monkey who’s supposed to dance for your amusement? Sheesh…



You all just collectively said yes to that, didn’t you?

Crap.

Okay, well here’s my attempt to rationalize why there haven't been any blogs lately with some semi-valid excuses.


Excuse #1: I’ve been busy! I’m at a new school this year and in addition to meeting all new teachers and students, I’m responsible for starting the newspaper there. So while, in past years, I had all of my little newspaper lackeys (no offense guys, I love you!!!) in place ready to do my bidding, this year I’m on my own. Which means my desk looks like a scene from Hoarders, no one brings me yummy snack food (which does mean I’ve lost a little weight… who would have thought there was a correlation between cake and weight gain?), and I actually have to do horrible menial tasks like grading quizzes. Myself. Oh the humanity.


In other words, teaching sucks when I don’t have my newspaper slaves—I mean students! I said students, right? Besides, they’re not really like SLAVES. I don’t make them build pyramids or pick cotton. They’re more like unpaid interns or fraternity pledges. (Note to self: once I actually have newspaper kids next year, make them wear pledge pins.)



Excuse #2: I’ve been… well… happy. And it’s hard to make fun of stuff when I’m one of those annoyingly happy people who I normally mock in my blog.

But it’s true.  I've been happy.  Last year, I was miserable because life at my old school had gotten absolutely unbearable.  Literally.  I used to cry.  Every day.  Because I didn't want to go back there.  So blogging was a good escape.

When I found out that I was switching schools last spring, I drew this picture to show how much better I thought my new school would be.

Clearly, I should quit my day job and become an artist. I have an undeniable gift.

You see, my last school was a bad place. I like to describe it as being kind of like The Shining. It takes normal, relatively sane people and turns them into axe-wielding, family-chopping up, entire-books-composed-of-only-“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”-writing lunatics. And I was little Danny Torrance, with everyone out to get me. But it wasn’t like the newer version of the movie when the guy from Wings runs around trying to be menacing with a croquet mallet. Oh no. It was the full-out Jack Nicholson, scary dead twins, and really ugly wife version. So it was easy to be miserable there.

But I got to my new school and realized that my drawing wasn’t exactly accurate. Because I hadn’t known to include the magic fairies and pixie dust and glitter that’s on everything. Seriously. It’s that much better.

And, up until a couple weeks ago, I even had a boyfriend.

But, as we all know, as soon as something in my life starts going well, something else goes spectacularly wrong.


So I spent a few months being irritatingly happy, before getting dumped.

In a text message.

Yeah, you read that right. A text message.

Which is probably the only thing worse than the Sex And The City post-it note breakup.


But I’m a survivor.  I'm not gonna give up. Ain’t nothing gonna break my stride. Nobody gonna slow me down. Oh no. I got to keep on moving.  (Sorry for switching songs there.)  So I spent a day crying, then, less than 48 hours later, went on a date with someone else.

That, my friends, is what my students refer to as “swagger.” And I have it. In abundance. (Which is a word they don’t know… sigh… the life of an English teacher…)


But it took that date with someone else to realize something that I probably should have realized several months ago: I’m an idiot.

Why am I an idiot? (I really, REALLY hope you just asked yourself that...)

Well, I’ll tell you. Because I actually STAYED with this guy long enough for him to dump me. Despite the fact that he was only 25 (which is definitely too young for me—but no, I’m still not telling you how old I am!), lived with his parents, hadn’t finished college, smoked, worked at a tire place, and WORST OF ALL, was a Republican who listened primarily to electronica.

Oh, and he gave me crap about watching True Blood because "vampires are so fake," yet was COMPLETELY convinced that a zombie apocalypse was imminent.  Seriously.  Like he had a legit survival plan prepared and everything.


And HE dumped ME.

Of course, to be fair, not EVERYTHING about him was bad.  He was a Redskins fan, so he did pass my dad's criteria for dating me.

I normally wouldn't blast someone for their personal shortcomings on the internet like this.  Or I'd at least feel bad about it if I did.  And if he'd had the balls to end the relationship in person, or even over the phone, I wouldn't be writing any of this.  But he didn't.  And as the old warning goes,  "Woe to ye who dicks over a writer."  I'm pretty sure Shakespeare said that. 

And I’m not a total snob. I didn’t judge him for having not finished school yet. I mean, my absolute favorite person on the planet, Bruce Springsteen, never finished college either.

Of course, when Bruce was 25, he put out Born to Run (which is indisputably the greatest album of all time) and was the first non-world leader to appear on the covers of both Time and Newsweek in the same week. I think he wins that round.


But let’s look at another example: Me.

When I was 25, I bought my condo, finished the first draft of Beyond the Palace, and won my first national award for the school newspaper that I sponsored. Hmm...

Granted, I’m an overachiever in every field. Except dating apparently.  Otherwise, I would have gotten the hell out long before he had the chance to peace out via text.


Come to think of it, my lack of blogging probably had less to do with me being happy and more to do with me not being able to mention the boyfriend without making ten billion excuses for everything that was wrong about him.

And I have to admit that even though I spent a few days wallowing in the misery of the end of the relationship, I think it was more about the damage that the text message did to my ego than anything else.  Because I'm DEFINITELY in a better place now than I was when we were together.

So now that I’m single and don’t need to justify any poor decisions, I promise to get back to the blogging.


And if it’s not frequent enough to satisfy your demands, I’d like to invite you, at your earliest possible convenience to…

BUY MY BOOKS AND READ THEM ALREADY! Jeez, couldn’t you have taken my hiatus as an opportunity to do that?

Come on, you knew that was coming.

Some things don’t change after all.

3 comments:

  1. One day that boy will have an epiphany and think WTF? Why did I do that. What was I thinking? And he will send you a text begging you for another chance. But. alas, by that time you will barely remember who the hell he was.

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  2. Hah the truly sad part is that if he did try to get me back, it WOULD be through a text!

    Fail...

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  3. The first problem dating a Redskin fan (of course as a Cowboy fan I'm biased).

    Glad the new school is going well. I did do my part during your break, I picked up Roman Glass, read it and enjoyed it. It is a wonderful love story and a very nice follow up to Beyond the Palace (I wouldn't mind a sequel to Palace in case you were wondering).

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