Spread

Little Early-Pearly came in by her curly-wurly.

One of my students brought a friend to class today. This is fine with me, and the friend even said he'd read the stories in preparation. Excellent. My student introduced him as what I saw in my head as "Douchet," i.e., /dooshay/. I was even thinking, isn't there a football player named that? Early Douchet? I'm such an idiot, but I don't know. People have weird names sometimes. Who am I to tell someone their name is stupid?

And the friend raised his hand to comment, and I called on him, though I un-Frenchified his name (probably because of Early) and pronounced it "Douchette." I thought it was an unfortunate name, but I knew somebody in college named Mike Unti, and this didn't top that.

They all loved this, of course. And my student was like, "I just called this douche Douchet because it sounded fancier." Turns out, the guy's name was "Timothy." Which, of course, I couldn't remember, and just pointed at him when he raised his hand from then on.

What walls are for.

Neighbor kid's hand just reached inside my living room window to pet the cat sitting on the sill. I'm on the couch reading student stories for tomorrow, and I already told him, at the front door where all interaction should take place, that I was busy. He reached in the window and it creeped me out, and I yelled, "Don't do that." He's too short for me to see his head through the window, but I could hear him like he was inside. "I'm just petting him." And then he reached inside again. I said, "I said don't do that!"

I can still hear him skulking through the leaves out there. Some days I think I'd give him one of my cats to keep if he'd just stay home with it.

Trick-or-treaters.

 

 

Call me Ishmael.

I know everybody in the world is named Jennifer, but come on, you wouldn't use your writing teacher's name in a story you were handing in to workshop, would you? So far, my students have used my name for a character who is sleeping with the narrator's girlfriend, a character who is being stalked by the narrator, and a character who died in childbirth. The always flash into realizing it during class. Oh! That's *your* name!

Yep. That's my name. But I'm just glad they're writing about worlds with names like Jennifer, I guess, rather than Xlyeron and Bloog, or Hermione. Or Spot.

How to write like a girl.

It's registration time. My nonfiction class for next term is already full, and mostly full of students I've had before. Got to love that, that I can walk into class already knowing what it is they should be writing about it. And 15 of the 18 are female. So I think I'll drop Friday Night Lights from the reading list and figure out how to take advantage of all that girl power. Two of the boys' names I recognize, and they're nice kids, but how great would it be to transfer them to another section and focus all writing toward getting published in Seal Press anthologies?

H, A, double-L, O.

Little Sweet is now officially taller than her mother.

Technology makes you a bad person.

I got an iPod Touch, and I'm just crazy about it. I can watch Dexter at the gym and play cribbage in bed. I keep track of my calories in one app, and if I ever need a level, it's right there in my pocket. I read my tarot cards on the way to school. But yesterday, I was walking to class and playing euchre, and I totally missed that there was a woman behind me on crutches who might have appreciated me holding the door open for her. I'm all about having less eye contact with fewer people, but I'm not such a fan of just becoming somebody rude.

Smiling with my eyes.

Betty and Poodle were here this weekend, and it was so lovely. We spent tons of time shopping for events we never attended, ran through a lot of rain and a little snow, and posed with the Big Boys and on the black rocks. We smized, as much as we could, with and without wigs. We cracked the case. I think we may have even convinced Poodle to get an iPhone. And we took so many pictures, though I don't think I got a single shot that doesn't have somebody else's camera in it, like this one. How cute are they?

My fantasy team, for example.

Earlier in the term, I found a bunch of little bits of scrap paper in the recycling bin in one of my classrooms. Turns out, each one had a job title on it: waitress, architect, chef. I pulled them out of the box and passed them around for my students to use in whatever they were writing, but at the end of class, I put the whole pile of them in my backpack. Now, I keep finding them everywhere. In my wallet, in my gradebook, on the passenger seat of my car. Mayor. Engineer. Journalist. Every time I find one in my hands, I consider it. Nurse?

And while a million other things in my life may be crappy, I have yet to draw the slip of paper that I'd trade for English professor. Sincerely, in that department, I have the luck.

Oh, while I'm on the subject of drawing little slips of paper: it only just recently hit me that our Can of Words and Can of Wagers plans are completely busted unless we make them iPhone apps. Do we know anybody who can program? (Because, yeah – Game Inventor might be a fantastic swap.)

Serving suggestion.

I cooked up a frozen pizza today, and what I thought was bacon turned out to be sun-dried tomatoes. Could there be any bigger letdown?