The Adventures of Kinky Reggae: A Vagabond for Beauty

So I am watching A Haunting, which always scares me so bad. And I have noticed a pattern: bad stuff usually happens to the wife or kids first, and the husband never believes them. Like in this episode, the sink started filling up with blood, and something tried to push the lady's face into the sink. She told her husband and he didn't believe her. Seriously, what a douche. Why would she make that up? And that is not an uncommon response. I would be so pissed if I told my husband something like that and he didn't believe me. I think I'd divorce him. When I start seriously dating someone, I need to remember to ask them if they'd believe me. If not, it's a deal breaker.

This song has been stuck in my head all day. I am so blessed. I was in a bad accident this morning. I was driving on 94 (not talking on the phone, not messing with my iPod, leaving a safe distance between me and the car in front of me), when suddenly everyone braked. I hit the brakes, not even that hard, but there was black ice and my car skidded all over the place, hit the median, and when I stopped spinning I was facing oncoming traffic. I still don't understand how no one hit me. I thought I was going to die. My car is pretty messed up and not driveable. So my principal came and picked me up. I almost burst into tears when I saw her; I ran and hugged her. My car was towed and I went to work. I spent a while on the phone trying to figure out what happens next, because it's all so complicated. Then I began my day of teaching. The kids were pretty happy to see me. When I told them I'd been in an accident and was still there to teach (my principal really wanted to

Sarah once told me that I need a personal assistant. This is probably true, as is evidenced by today's situation. I have almost no clean clothes. This is because of the stupid snow; you wear a pair of pants outside for 10 minutes and they get salt stains all over them. So they're not really that dirty, they just have stains. Although I guess that's the definition of dirty. Anyway, last night I went to bed not knowing what I was going to do today. I can't wear a skirt because all my pantyhose have runs in them. When I woke up this morning, I was so excited to see that it snowed! So I can wear my black dress pants with the salt stains on back because everyone will just assume they are fresh. I really need to do laundry.

Most of my class behaved well today. I felt like I was able to teach. They even liked the Pablo Neruda poem we talked about today for our poetry unit. But about 45 minutes into the day, my autistic boy started throwing pencils at people and stabbed someone in the face with one. Then at the end of the day, he tipped over two desks. Thank God I'm good friends with the security guard. Oh, and I later found out that while he was in the office, he called 911 and told them the school was on fire. But I'm doing my best to overcome the stress. Xanax got me through the day. I just got home and moved my furniture and had a little private dance party. I'm breaking out the champagne in a little while, and Pete might come over later. I'm determined to not give into the stress.

I got tagged to write this note on Facebook. I'm copying it here because I want to save it and see if these things are still true a few years from now. 1. I sleep with my kitchen light on sometimes because I watch that show, A Haunting, and it scares me to death. 2. I desperately want to be like Martha Stewart, but I hate cooking and suck at keeping up with cleaning, and my crafts almost always turn out wrong. 3. I collect vintage romance novels. 4. I play pretend a lot in my head. Like the other day, I took my little sister ice skating and pretended I was an Olympic skater. And yesterday, as I was reciting poetry to the class, I pretended I was Anne Shirley. 5. I want to live in Star’s Hollow. 6. I think Disney World is the happiest place in the world. 7. I love to embroider, but I’m bad at choosing colors. My friend has to help me. 8. I heart Barack Obama. Election night was one of the most exciting nights ever. 9. I believe that Love Wins. 10. I rarely cry about real life, bu

Wednesday Morning: Kajuan asks if he can talk to me in the hall for a minute. I tell the class to pass in their homework and Kajuan and I step outside. He shows me the hickey on his neck and tells me he needs to put Vaseline on it every hour. I launch into my now-perfected you're not ready for this you could get a girl pregnant you have all the time in the world ahead of you don't rush things speech (I've been giving it for 3 years now). All of a sudden a bunch of kids in the classroom start screaming and jumping out of their seats. Asia has spilled glitter everywhere, and they're a bunch of little drama queens. I'm about to go yell at everyone to sit down when my autistic student jumps out of his seat with his hands over his ears yelling, "Everyone's fighting!" over and over and runs out of the classroom. This all happened in the first 10 minutes of school. This is what work is going to be like now.

Today, I. cracked me up again. During math I asked him to tell me what a shape was. His reply: "Cheesecake! Pow!" It was a triangular prism. I got four new students today. One of them is autistic. He is high functioning, but a behavior nightmare. It's going to be a long four months. Any ideas for stress relief?

Did anyone notice how Aretha Franklin paused at an unfortunate spot in the word "country" and was kind of off-pitch? I'm so excited. That doesn't begin to describe it. Today I am hopeful and inspired. Obama's quote from Washington at the end of his speech was beautiful. He makes me feel like we really can overcome these obstacles that seem insurmountable. I think we finally have a president who believes that Love Wins.

I am in the midst of a lovely weekend. We have 5 days off- 2 days where school was canceled and MLK day. I am ahead on lesson planning and homework, and my apartment is halfway to being clean. I even spent several hours on my genealogy for the DAR. When we go back on Tuesday, I'll feel like I can breathe again, which is the opposite of last week. Friday night I had dinner at Lalo's with Nancy and Sarah, which was fun, as always. It was supposed to be a night of bar hopping, but we were too tired for that. When will we learn not to have a huge meal before going to the bars? Last night I hung out at Jen and Ray's and spent some time with my adorable goddaughter, Parker. She just gets cuter and cuter. She's 5 months now and loves to play, and I'm not scared of breaking her anymore. She's got the most hilarious personality; there is mischief in her eyes. I'm so glad I get to be a part of her life. And when I was leaving, I kissed her goodbye, and she

My kids were nuts today for several reasons: it is a full moon, and someone smuggled Pixie Stix into the classroom. I tried to keep it under control, but I couldn't stop it and they were all on sugar highs all day. Then there was some drama with a boy who somehow just found out he was adopted today, and he told his friend but someone overheard and yelled it out to the whole class. He's pretty upset (understandably). So I'm going to have lunch with him tomorrow and we'll talk about how being adopted means you're "twice loved." (That's what my cousin used to call it when he talked about being adopted.) One good thing did happen today. I have acquired a new nickname. A lot of my kids call me Miss B, and today Elijah turned that into Miss Honeybee. It caught on, an I love it. Isn't it cute?

I am slowly working myself into a rage. The quickest way to make me mad is interrupt my sleep. My brother and I used to have screaming yelling fights when I lived at home and he'd turn his bass up loud when I was trying to sleep. Tonight I was really tired and had a bad headache, so I went to bed early, around 10. I fell asleep for a little while and awakened to doors slamming and things crashing around in the apartment downstairs. And then the vacuum started. I would never vacuum at 11:30 on a week night! What is wrong with people? I finally got up to check my email, knowing I wouldn't be able to sleep while that's going on. If it were my old neighbors, I'd go down and say something. But my old neighbors wouldn't do this. They just had their Saturday morning fights, and that was all I heard from them. What should I do? Say something next time I see them? Go down there right now? (Although there's currently a lull, so maybe they're done.) Mak

by I.M. (one of my students) Have you ever had sleepless nights? You know, the kind of nights when you can't sleep. Sleepless nights can come any time. Most of the time it happens when you are going somewhere fun or on a vacation. For me, sleepless nights are kind of fun. Sleepless nights will have you wondering what the next day will be like. Like for boys, if you buy a girl something for Christmas you'll be wondering if she likes it or not. I don't know how the girls' sleepless nights are, but I bet they are pretty weird. Sometimes you have sleepless nights because you stayed up too late, and you can't go to sleep. I mostly have sleepless nights because of who I'm thinking about that whole day. When you have sleepless nights you try to go to sleep but you just can't. You will just be laying in the bed with your eyes closed but not asleep. Then every five minutes you'll look at the clock. But me, if I have a sleepless night I just write. Jus

Getting a tattoo is one of the best feelings in the world.

When I got home today, I immediately changed out of the skirt, heels, and stockings into a tee shirt and jeans. I thought to myself, "This is the best feeling in the world." Then I started thinking of other things. I polled some friends, too. Here's our list of best feelings in the world: -Resting your head on the cool side of the pillow (Sarah S.) -Walking barefoot in the grass at Millenium Park (Me) -Slipping into a hot bath (Me) -Walking in the door from being gone on vacation a for a long time (Kris) -The hug that speaks a thousand words when you find out bad news (Kris) -Biting the lime after you do a shot of tequila (Me) -Getting into bed after you've just washed your sheets (Me) -Waking up in the morning (Pete) -Warm desert breeze (Rachel) -Freshly shaven legs (Rachel) -Your man's freshly shaven face on your cheek (Rachel) -Jumping into a pool of cool water on a hot day (Nancy) -Waking up next to someone you love (Nancy) -Finally getting to pee after yo

Today it occurred to me that I am a professional bitch. Seriously. I get paid to do it. I spend excessive amounts of time concocting punishments that are bad enough to make my students behave. I delight in making my students miserable, because it means that I've found something I can use to manipulate them into behaving. Of course, I give lots of rewards, too. And I'm the nicest teacher in the world to the kids who do the right thing. But most of my class just doesn't get it. Whenever our assistant principal sees my class, she starts muttering about how she doesn't like them. And I don't like them either. I guess it's not all their fault, though. When a girl stabs a boy with a scissor and kicks him in the balls and receives no consequences, it sends the message that they can get away with anything.

Disney World this time around was... interesting. Nancy and I originally planned to just spend the day at Epcot. We wanted to go on Soarin' and Test Track and drink our way around the world. We got there as the park opened and joined the stampede for Soarin', which was, as usual, amazing. It is so peaceful and relaxing; I could go on it all day. There's this part where you swoop down over the ocean, and I could have sworn my bare feet were going to get wet. As soon as we got off, we got Fast Passes to go on it again later. After Soarin' we did Test Track, then got margaritas in Mexico to begin our day of drinking. It felt strange to say, "Good morning, I'll have a strawberry margarita please." We had pastries in Norway and went on the Norway ride (which Nancy loves), looked in the shops for a little while, then headed back to Mexico for a lunch we were very excited about. It was here that the day started to go downhill/become interesting. My mar

I've always been curious about what it would be like to see a psychic, and while I was in Florida, I had the opportunity. This woman came highly recommended, and I could tell right away that she was the real thing. It was a 45 minute reading, and without knowing anything about me, she spent the first 20 minutes talking about my past, present, and future. She didn't ask any questions, just talked. And some of the things she said were things that most people don't know. I know a lot of people don't believe in this kind of thing, or think it's a sin. I'm not sure what I think. If she had a Ouija board and was trying to contact spirits, I would not be excited about it. But I think God gives people all kinds of gifts, and this is one of them. She didn't use cards or anything; she said she just gets images and impressions in her head. Most of what she talked about was predictions for the coming year. I just listened to the recording she made and took