:with love and squalor

thresholds

yesterday for the first time in my limited adult life, i exchanged house keys with a partner.  mostly it’s for convenience—i have an automatic deadbolt which is great but easy to lock yourself out with, and in the summer, he leaves my place before me in the mornings and has to leave my front two doors unlocked, which isn’t safe and makes me feel guilty about my upstairs neighbors.  although in a few weeks, i’ll be the girl getting up earliest in baltimore when school starts again but whatever.  and for him, well, this way he doesn’t have to walk out of the warehouse every time he lets me in.  i still expect we’ll give each other some notice if we’d like to hang out and not just drop by each other’s houses, which is something we both agreed to at the beginning of our (poly) arrangement, but it still feels really ~*~grown up~*~ to have made an extra set of keys to give to someone and feel good about it.

i’m in a really different place right now than i was at this point last year.  as a result of our tumultuous move, things with my brother aren’t so peachy at the moment, but i honestly don’t care.  he was such a gigantic jerk to me throughout the whole thing and he can apologize to me any time he wants, but until then, it’s not my responsibility if he feels somehow “wronged” by me.  one thing i’ve learned from TFA, if I haven’t learned anything else, is to let shit go.  This is a skill no one ever taught me before and it’s still one I’m working on honing, but it’s a salient one for all aspects of my life.  As one of my students used to say, “Ain’t no one got time for that, Miss A!!!”

Speaking of TFA/my students, I’m feeling mighty guilty looking at all of these updates and comments by my friends who are starting out in their own classrooms this fall, whether TFA or not.  Everyone is so excited!  REALLY wish I could say the same.  I’m marginally less terrified than I was last year, because I know what to expect, but I’m still, like, anxious and disenchanted.  I feel soooo guilty that I’m not more excited.  Maybe because I know the first month of pre-k is a lot of crying and pain and struggle.  I miss my babies sometimes—particularly if I’m in an uncharacteristically good mood—but I just don’t see how my next class could be as smart and funny and weird and good as my first class was.  It makes me nervous.  What if I get another little Zach, the kid who tried to murder me for a few months before his mom got the lock up and he moved to Glen Burnie?  Boy, I do not wish that on myself.

This time last year I was in the throws of an emotionally abusive relationship, while desperately enamored with someone (else) I couldn’t be with, while heartbroken over leaving Simon’s Rock, while in debt and penniless, while unsure of what was to come, and skeptical and hateful towards TFA, and already wary of my new school.

This year, I’m, just, whatever, sort of blah.  And for once, whatever feels better than the alternative.

retailers who are putting out BACK-2-SCHOOL stuff in july

please stop.  just stop.  please, please, please, just gtfo.  just stop.  because honestly, just don’t.  i just can’t.  JUST STOP, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.  LEAVE ME ALONE.

The spectre of work haunts me ALWAYS.

something cool that once happened to me

is that a few weeks ago i was finally mowing my lawn after months of not mowing it and found, inexplicably, an unopened 6-pack of natty boh hiding in the shade of the sugar magnolia tree.  i have no idea where this beer came from (i’m not really the type to absentmindedly do anything, especially leave alcohol i paid for somewhere stupid like, um, outside).  the better thing that happened is that i’m currently drinking the beers and they are not—i repeat, NOT—skunked!  and people say there is no god.

anyways, an uncool thing that once happened to me is that today i was in a really bad mood because i realized summer is basically over.  i know it’s only the first week in july… okay, the second week in july, i guess, but two weeks ago i got a Lakeshore catalogue that was all BACK TO SCHOOL~~~!!!!!!! and i cried.  and then a man at rite aid told me while i was buying a kiddie pool that i should buy more “summer seasonal” stuff because he was about to change it over to school supplies and i cried some more.

at the end of the year, i was all, okay, my job is okay, and my kids are GREAT, and i can do this.  but now that august is virtually upon me, because, let’s face, i’ll probably essentially waste july as i did june, i feel the doom setting in.  august will be, like, the longest sunday evening dread fest EVER.  i don’t know if i can do it.  especially with the anxiety of not knowing if i’m gonna have my wonderful para anymore, things look sort of grim.  especially with the school being reconfigured, turned over to the state, and us getting a direct instruction curriculum next year, i’m basically terrified.  and miserable.

but did i waste june?  i mean, i’ve done a lot of stuff this summer that was really fun and i spent really fun days with my friends and done a lot of relaxing and sleeping in and a little travel and i’m hoping to do some more travel and more sleeping in and more hanging out.  i’m so conditioned to feel guilty if i’m not DOING THINGS ALL THE TIME that all this free time has made me even more neurotic and irritable than ever.  my partner even said that he thought i might have been happier while i was working—which is something i never thought i’d ever believe.  but maybe it’s true.

and then i listen to myself and realize i’m complaining about having the awesome leisure of doing nothing for two months while still being employed and knowing i’m going to start getting paid in a few more weeks and i sound like a privileged idiot and i feel even more guilty, like, oh, summer is awesome but it’s not ~*~awesome enough~*~ for me?

i should just enjoy my lawn beer and relax, right?