March 29 - 6:52pm

Birthday tomorrow! The March flower is a daffodil and daffodils are the first flower to pop up in spring. Growing up my mom would pick me a bouquet of daffodils from our front garden every year for my birthday. Whenever I see the daffodils start to bloom near my birthday I feel like it's just for me.

March 27 - 7:16pm

The street I live on started getting torn up last summer to replace the lead pipes. They seemed to work on it forever. Now it's almost a year later and the street is still getting torn up. For a long time it was shut down entirely. Recently they put the pipes it but haven't repaved anything. The result it that bits of the road are cut out like someone took a giant box cutter and hacked out squares and rectangles of road to reveal the dirt beneath. Cars continue to barrel down the road and I can hear them ram up against the hard edge and smash the front of their car into the pavement while their wheels skid through the missing patch. Then they slow down and sometimes get out, talking to a friend on the phone or maybe themselves.

"What the fuck was that??"

"I think my tires are okay?"

"Oh my goddddd"

At my parents house my room has a long window that faces the front of the house and the driveway. Whenever there is a siren coming up the canyon my mom drops whatever she's doing and careens into my room pushing apart the blinds to look out and see where the ambulance is going. It's very retired behavior of her.

But recently I've been leaping across the apartment at the sound of the collision to see if the people end up getting out of their car to assess the damage or not. Hoping I might get to see a tire explode or a front bumper fall off.

I'm actually taking bets on Poly market right now about what the next person who hits our special speed bump is going to do.

March 27 - 10:53am

My students are making movies in my film class and they've started to write them this week. This is an email I got from a student yesterday:

"Ms. [redacted], I might not be saying things that are true. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I thought you told me to get off my phone once, and I complied. Also, that day we were working on our projects, and my old team leader was trying to make me a transgender furry after I stated countlessly that I didn't want to do that."

I still didn't give him participation points for the day. But it is really a new frontier when teachers have to discuss with their students whether or not their movie can have transgender furries and whether or not they can force people to be transgender furries who don't want to. I think I decided transgender furries in the movie is okay but being one of the transgender furries has to be voluntary.

This is the radical liberal education of the witches you couldn't kill.

March 24 - 10:17am

I've lost my voice. I lost my voice a lot the first time I taught. Maybe 3 times. The modus operandi is that I get sick, take a day off work when I feel the worst, get better but some symptoms still linger and then a week later I lose my voice.

I sort of like losing my voice. It makes it feel like a have a delicate secret, like The Little Mermaid, batting my eyelashes coyly until it's my turn to respond and when I open my mouth nothing comes out.

My favorite thing that always happens is I get frustrated at my students and then I try to yell at them and my voice is so strained that the offender goes "oh my GOD Miss! You gotta stop talking." Would that I could. Would that I could...

My 6th graders are watching an episode of Our Planet and my 8th graders are watching a documentary from PBS about a book called The Gene: An Intimate History. I watched them both last night and I wrote a viewing guide. Only one flamingo dies in Our Planet because the salt from the African Salt pan where he was born adheres to his legs and makes it so he can't walk. The wildebeast gets away from the hunting dogs in a very compelling chase scene and there is a great bit where the Manakin's show their mating dances.

March 20 - 10:47am

I have today off work and I had a date last night.

One time I was at a party with Maddie and we were both standing by the railing of the porch outside. Neither of us were saying anything and then Maddie said something about the quiet and I realized I was thinking so much and my thoughts felt so loud and happening that it didn't occur to me that it was quiet.

When I got back from my date last night I watched Moonlight as I fell asleep. That movie really is one of my favorites. I find it to be so beautiful. A student asked me for three movie recommendations and I said the social network, the departed and moonlight. What an honor to be asked!

March 10 - 9:15pm

Thinking tonight about the difference between admiration and envy. I think sometimes I feel hesitant to say compliments because I am worried it will make me seem envious. Or like I am less than them because I'm coveting something they have and I don't.

I think that's a wack way to think about things. I'm thinking more about trying to admire things in others rather than envy them. It's easy to be nice to people you admire. And what are people you envy if not people you admire?

Is that psychopathic ? Or normal ?

March 10 - 3:27pm

Today a student came up to me and asked if something that lays eggs could be impregnated. I said, "yes or else how would they have the eggs?" and he said "so a snake can get pregnant? How??" and I said, "well, sort of the same way anything gets pregnant." and he said "but snakes don't have a butt????????"

March 7 - 7:47pm

Today it was wet outside all day but I never felt any rain. I walked around a lot.

I should probably start with the toilet.

I flooded my toilet before my workout class and I almost used it as an excuse to not go to the workout class but I did anyway. After I sopped up all the water I left to go and I saw that my downstairs neighbor was standing there with two pots by his feet and a paper towel dabbing at his door frame. I said, "Hey! How are you!" (idiot). He said, "Did you just take a shower? Because it seems like the ceiling is dripping?" I really just hemmed and hawed for a bit because I couldn't decide at all what I wanted to say. I think I sort of wanted to lie and it just seemed immediately impossible. So I told him my toilet flooded, but just the clean tank water! It's not like gross sewage water. And then I offered to help and he said he was all good and I said okay well bye! and then I went to my workout class.

Then I came back home and felt like I was dealing with that the whole day. I also bought a rotisserie chicken and I am using the meat for chicken salad and boiling the carcass for pho broth. I think I saw a woman do that in a youtube short but there is no way I am going to find that video again, so I am just winging it.

I decided I was going to quit smoking today but I decided maybe I'll try again tomorrow.

March 3 - 6:55pm

I have the aspiration to write short stories but nothing to write about. Maybe my first task needs to be writing short story ideas down in a notebook and then I can try to translate that into a story of some sort.

Tonight I'm cooking some sort of ground beef gyro something. I was going to do some sort of crazy New York Times recipe but I ran out of parchment paper and had to improvise.

Today we took the 6th graders on a field trip to see something called Jazz for Freedom. It was okay. I've been feeling interested in jazz and the history of black american music lately. At the beginning of this year I was listening to a lot of 80s and 90s hip hop. Then this weekend I watched a PBS documentary about funk music and black liberation and I've been listening to pusherman by curtis mayfield over and over again on a loop. something about the way he says pusherman is hypnotic.

One of my students in my film class was asking me why I like old movies or watch old movies. I think I was so flustered I didn't even really know what to say. But I think old everything is so amazing because it's like, you know how we have like 2 great movies and 5 great songs come out each year? well imagine if every time period there was a best of and you have access to all of it. it's awesome.

March 2 - 3:33 pm

Feeling frustrated today. I have one kid who I really struggle with named E. We don't really click. My least favorite thing to do as a teacher is to accuse someone of something they didn't do. I hate it. It makes me feel stupid and like a cop and cruel.

I remember at my first school one of the substitutes lost her phone and the school decided the 8th graders did it because they had been in her room last. They told me I had to keep all the 8th graders in my room until someone gave the phone back. The 8th graders were furious and hurt and I could understand why. An hour later the substitute found the phone in her bag. No apologies were made to the students, I was just called and told that I could let them go.

However, kids also lie. They lie lie lie. That's the thing with this kid E. One day he was working in the hall on a project and when another kid came into the room from the bathroom E came back in the room talking about, "she just ripped my paper and cursed at me!" So I sat her down and grilled her about it as she rolled her eyes and told me he was lying. But I believed him, I don't know why. And it turned out he was lying. He said that for no reason. Because it was funny?

Today we turned off the lights so I could show them Thriller (short film unit LOL) and someone started throwing craisins. By the time the lights flipped back on craisins were all over the floor, with the wrapper to the craisins and the wrapper all on the floor under E's seat. But he says he didn't throw anything. He swears he didn't throw anything. So, what am I supposed to do? Sweep them up myself? Figure all my evidence is circumstantial and won't hold up in a court of law? Or do I tell him to sweep anyway? Do I quit? Go back to being a barista? Give up? On everything?