Spread

Open sesame.

Because it can be cold here, and just because, I tend to walk through other buildings on my way from my office to class. I have to open eight doors, I think, to go teach. And darn it if four of those doors don't trick me every time. They've got the pushbar that crosses the whole door, so there's no real indication of which side swings open. And I hate being caught pushing on the wrong side of a door. So I try to prepare myself now. I used to look at the big hinge at the top of the door, but I it operates opposite of how I expect it to. Plus, there are four doors in a row, and I expect them to be two couples: right set of doors opens inside, left set of doors opens inside. But no. The two left doors open one way, and the two right doors open the other. If I can write it, you'd think I could recognize it in the moment.

This is seriously where my head goes. It's amazing I can teach at all once I get there.

But I can, and it's probably because I've finally devised a solution. I use both hands and push equally hard with both. Once I feel the door give, I know which hand is really opening the door and I act like I meant to do it just like that all along. Saves me a lot of stress.

Exactly.

There's a cartoon in the latest New Yorker. One person says to the other one, "I want to be a better person, but then what – a much better person?"

A little reading.

Check out this story about Andy Gibb on Night Train. If you happen to be a regular reader and have a brother named Bill, yes that's him in the story.

First snow.

Guess what I'm going to park in the garage when I go home tonight?

At the rail.

Peter got me out of the house last night and took me to a Rangers hockey game. What fun. He even caught a puck. It was foam, but whatever. It was so nice to be not on this yellow couch. Plus, today I have the remainder of a little hand stamp: a hockey stick crossed with a pick-axe.

Though the vodka tonics they made at the rink bar were enormous and today I'm thinking about ordering a pizza just so somebody will deliver me a two-liter of diet Coke.

Just because of that one goldfish scene.

Here's how the new Blockbuster "no late fees" thing works. I went there the other day to rent a movie I'm showing to my class, a movie I also happen to like. I said, "How much do you charge me if I just never bring it back?" and he looked it up -- $3.99. So I said, "Then I'll do that. Not bring it back." He said then we should just pretend I lost it right that second and we could take care of things. I said okay, gave him four bucks, and he printed me a lost report. It's all mine. Bizarre but fairly efficient. I'm just sorry no one in town will ever be able to see it now without my company.

Fourth-meal confession.

I have this bizarre fear of leaving the drive-through window of a fast-food place without getting my food. I don't know where it comes from, but I'm always certain that I'll place my order, pull up to the window and pay, put my change back in my wallet, and then drive away. When I'm putting my change in my wallet, I remind myself I'm not done, just to sit still. Because then what would happen, if I drove away? Would I pull back around again? Or go inside and tell them I forgot my food? Just never go to Taco Bell ever again for fear they'd recognize my car?

So I focus. As if I have to fight my own nature to do something stupid. Like the time I steered my bike into a telephone pole once, the only obstruction for yards on either side. Just don't hit the telephone pole, just don't hit the telephone pole… boom. Or when I thought the school day was over in 5^th grade and started to head home when it was only afternoon recess and my friend Dawn asked me, "Do you have a dentist appointment?"

Okay, so that last one's not really the same thing.

What’s your damage?

Thank goodness for Urban Dictionary. How else would I translate my students' emails? Seriously, today I had to look up "stfu." (Don't worry, he wasn't telling me to stfu. He was referring to himself.) I wonder what our teachers used to do, go to a reference librarian for help? Though now that I think about it, I doubt they had much trouble knowing what "gag me with a spoon" or "grody" meant. They were still whole words. In fact, the only language issue I can remember teachers commenting on was our inability to construct sentences without a "like" or two or three. Which I like totally still haven't gotten over. It's probably at the center of my word cloud.

But hold up – look what's on the home page today.

Haberdash

1.) A bunch of bullshit; unsupported bullshit; a notion stated a fact.

Aww, that's haberdash if he says he can jump across that huge river in one bound.

My own Haberdasher points out they probably mean "balderdash." But I don't care. This word's my new favorite.

Not another one.

I've got neighbor kid enlisted in my search for Willa. This is good, because if she's in somebody's living room, he'll find out. But he does seem to need to check in with me all the time about his progress. (He's got a printer that's also a scanner if we want to make more posters.) Today, he needed a flashlight because he thought he saw something in the aluminum culvert in the shallow ditch across the street. So we went and investigated a few up of these hiding places and down the block, but thank goodness, no cats. On the way, we were asked what we were doing by the little boy who lives diagonal from me. We told him, and he kept building his spaceship or whatever. I know this kid because he seems to be fundraising for something quite often. He sells chocolate, with or without almonds. I don't know what eight-year-olds need all this money for, but since it's Sayklly's, I'm a supporter. His mom always waves thank you from the street. But otherwise, this kid doesn't come over.

Until tonight. I hear this shy knock on the door. He says, "You said you were looking for a cat." Both boycats are slinking around the porch doing their usual dusktime rituals, my real-live gargoyles getting ready for bed. The kid waves his hand at them like he's Vanna White.

"Thanks," I told him, "but I wasn't looking for them."

It was a sweet gesture, and maybe he really did pick one up on his side of the street and carry him home, as opposed to just seeing them in my yard and coming over to point them out. I don't know. But it feels good to have some deputies on the watch with me.

Service.

I thought the wiper fluid sprayer on my car didn't work. There's a little icon of sprouting water and the word "Pull" at the base of the lever, but pulling didn't do anything but make the wipers swish once. No wiper fluid. I actually opened the hood to see if there was a tube dangling somewhere, but my engine is so neat and compact and new, and unlike the Buick, I don't feel like I should experiment. So when I got the oil changed last week, I told the guy it was broken. He said, "You know there's a button on the end of the lever, right?" No, I didn't know that. What I did know was that all I had to do was ask for help out loud to a man-person, and it would suddenly work. He said not to worry, that everybody has the same issue, and at least I was nice about it as compared to men, who come in and yell at him.

Afterwards, in the parking lot, I felt the end of the lever for a button, and sure enough, it's there and it works. I had to lean way to the side to see the end, since the steering wheel blocks it from my view when I'm sitting regular. What I couldn't see from my driving point of view is that there was another little water icon, and the word "Push." Never saw any of it even once.

I guess it's been there all along. (Though I continue to take issue with the false icon that led me astray. Why would I look for a *second* place to pull or push for wiper fluid?) Still, I wouldn't be so wrong about things if maybe someone drove me around once in a while, so I could see the world from another angle, or if I had a passenger to point out things in my blind spots.

Catter.

Little girl and I were klutzes this weekend – hitting our heads getting out of the car, tripping over computer cords. I re-stubbed my poor baby toe on the totem pole, and I pinched my neck in the clasp of my bike helmet. She tried to reenact a story I told her about falling off the rolling footstool when I saw a mouse, and not surprisingly, it worked the same way for her too.

Mostly, though we just searched for poor Willa. We made little signs and went to the humane society and then we left our own scent tracks all over the neighborhood in case she couldn't find her way home.

Soap the bird in my closet.

We made soap last night. It was all very Fight Club.

Boss cat brought in a bird this morning, so that's what we woke up to – the sounds of gnawing on bird-belly and cracking bone. Little Sweet wasn't grossed out at all, which was impressive. I thought vegetarians were more sensitive souls.

I cleaned up, but I'm sure there are still feathers stuck to the closet doors and trim that are lying in the hallway. I imagine I'll have to explain that to my dream carpenter boyfriend when I meet him. Who am I kidding? My imaginary future boyfriend hardly has to be a carpenter. I looked at the directions for hanging the doors and they draw it being done by one girl with a ponytail. He just has to be nice enough to help me out. He just has to show up already.

(Kiddo's in charge of blog titles again.)

Road trip tomorrow.

Sometimes I think I'm losing it. I pulled my car up at the wrong side of the gas pump, I went to the library and then discovered I'd forgotten to zip up my pants, I killed another fish. I keep forgetting to wash my hair, and I think one of my cats has moved out. I wear brown with grey. I wrote only one comment on a student's writing exercise -- "Great first line!" -- when in fact the assignment had been to steal a great first line and then continue their own story. But sometimes I get all chaotic like this before my little girl comes up. Mark my words, when she's here, I'll be calm as a cucumber (cucumbers never fret or forget to turn off the oven), and even if I fail to do things, it'll be because I just don't care to. It'll be because I'm doing something so much better.

Things I don’t want to know about.

I'm busy watching the Steelers, but if anybody wants to turn to TLC and watch the following, please report back with details:

"Pregnant for 46 Years. Follow two amazing stories of pregnancies that occurred outside the womb. The first story details Zahara'a pregnancy that began in 1955. At the age of 75 doctors discovered her unborn, calcified baby that had grown to full term."

Under the bed.

I think there's a chipmunk in my bedroom. Earlier, I saw him get chased into my closet. Thank god it has no doors or anything, so it had nowhere to really hide. I call the tableau, "Chipmunk on Drywall with Cat."

I need a key clapper.

I lost my keys yesterday, and the moment put me in a weird spot. I had just arrived at my office from my classroom, so I needed to go back. Trouble was, I wanted to leave my bookbag, which was heavy. Suddenly, I was at a loss. I needed to pick some open office door and say, "Hey, can I leave my bag here while I run back to Jamrich?" But whose open door? It was a horrible moment, not really having a go-to open door. I finally picked a near-stranger, a nice lady I don't know at all. She was lovely, and when I came back from my run across campus, and back, in the rain and ended up finding my keys in the very bag I'd left leaning against her chair, she was sympathetic.

Several of you used to work on my hall, and now I'm mad at each and every one of you for leaving. At least I still have your couch.