Dammit, LBJ, you captivating sonofabitch.

I'm trapped in part two of the American Experience documentary. We've started recording all of these programs, which cover each president's term with extreme detail and first-hand interviews. Last week we watched his senate career, the assassination of Kennedy, the odd mistreatment and disprespect of him as Vice President by the country. Today I'm watching his second term, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the War on Poverty, the Great Society. Vietnam.

What, of course, is most interesting about Johnson is his dual-sided presidency. How does a president initiate programs like Medicaid and Head Start--how does a Southern president meet with civil rights leaders and work toward equality in the entire nation--yet still lie to the country about the war in Vietnam? How does a president change the homefront for the democratic better, yet send thousands of troops to Southeast Asia to die? How does he lie to the country about it? How does he get power hungry and allow a war to escalate, a war against a country that escalated because of fear of losing an election? How does a man choose which areas of a country to bomb, with fear that the bombing of the wrong No. Vietnam city might aggravate China or Russia and lead to WWIII? How does a president not have a plan for victory--and how does that last question change mistakes in history? Ah, yes. It's like a great train. You can't suddenly put it in reverse. You have to take it to a slow stop.

It's easy to love and hate Johnson. It's easy to admire a man who issues a war on poverty. It's hard not to want to playfully tossle the hair of a man who says I just need to get in a room with Ho and talk to him. I know we could come to a deal. It's hard not to understand, somehow, his remorse while still hating him. He fell asleep every night feeling physically tied down, hearing voices. Once some men died in vain, he couldn't feel they died for "his" mistake. He felt they died with honor. They were noble men. They died for a cause. He had to send more men to defend that honor. He said anything I do, they're will be more killin'.

Poor LBJ. That tall man. That insecure, paranoid Texan. He thought the Northern communists would fold after just a couple of bombs.What if hundreds of thousands of men died because you were that naive? What if your goal was peace and you caused the biggest peace battles in the United States?

Why. Why am I so addicted to this, when I should be reading homework, when I should be preparing something for class, when I should be writing the three reflections that were due a week ago. Why I am watching this, when I should be running outside, letting the cold air shock my lungs, when I should be blowing puffs of warm air into the cool dark.

I should be blogging about the weekend, but for some reason I won't let myself think about it. I just feel like I should still be with Jenny, the most darling bride I'll ever see, that I should still be having meetings of the porch society with Christina, Bevin, Liz and Darren. I can't think of white flowers in a clear, square vase in the center of a table, I can't think of pasta bars and amazing desserts and angora sweaters with beaded nipples and golden runways, or falling asleep in another room to the voices of my best friends outside the door, laughing and sighing and teasing. I can't think of the drive home, in the warm car, sleepy, as the first snowflakes of the season melt on the windshield.

I can't think of school right now, either, that conversation I had with Mr. O today, my parnoid nature, worried that things are going too well, and if things are ever bad, worried what I can do to make them better. That's the thing, of all of this: I worry that things aren't going bad right now, so when will they go bad? Why do I love going to work everyday, why do I look forward to the days that make me nervous because I know I'll be learning something? I'm going crazy. I overthink everything I do--this program, how I spend my days after school. I hate that I'm not running. I hate that I procrastinate so well. I hate that I bug Mr. O with some of these weird paranoid thoughts, that I wonder if Mr. O regrets me or if I'm failing. I worry that I'm going to step on the wrong toes, bomb the wrong city.

I have no answers. Sometimes I wake up and forget I'm where I am. Sometimes I'm sad for no reason, no reason at all--and I find odd comfort in that sadness. Not scary comfort like the sadness I had last year with no job, but, um, comforting comfort. Why does it feel good to be sad sometimes, to hate myself sometimes? Why do I sit in class when I'm not teaching and despise who I am--but still love what I do everyday? I've lost it. Why today? What will tomorrow be? Will I have motivation to do anything, will I stay after school and finish what I need to, will I teach a good lesson on haiku poetry, will I come home and sleep, will I pack my lunch, will I hit the snooze button?

Johnson was such a sad man. He lived on the ranch after the presidency, grew his white hair long, into a curled mullet in the back, drank himself to death. Wondering every day if the country would remember him as a good man. At least he felt bad. At least he had the heart to feel like a failure. A depressed man on that ranch, initiating staff meetings with the Mexican ranch hands every morning, just for a sense of routine, asking for progress reports just so he could sleep at night, feeling like he had control over something, that the status update gave him something to improve upon tomorrow.

And the war that ruined him ended with a treaty in Paris, 5 days after he died in 1973. Goddamn, goddamn.

Pro-something.

I know where I'm going with this, of course, and I guess you have to, what with that "pro" line in the title up there.

I've declared this before, that I let myself have no opinion on abortion. I vote "present" when it comes to the abortion talk. I grew up in the church, which formed a lot of ground for me. I know, for sure, that I could not have an abortion. I just know that for sure. But that doesn't necessarily make me pro-life, and I know that for sure, too. I know for sure that anti-abortion laws probably shouldn't exist, or even be made on a state government basis, because women will still have abortions anyway, and their lives will be at risk, and that laws likely would insinuate an argument of church versus state, because abortion, mostly, is a moral issue, and we can't tell people what morals to have. We can tell people that "murder" is wrong, because it affects a million other people, and the same for stealing or beating the shit out of your girlfriend. But abortion is a woman's thing, she deals with it. Murder you can define, abortion you cannot, and it's pretty straight forward. I also know for sure that I get really annoyed when folks, instead of saying "pro-choice" say "anti-life," because it's just a ploy to make pro-choice supporters look evil. And, although we don't want to, we do have to think about how insane the population would be if we outlawed abortions. We have to look at that, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry that pregnancies happen when people don't want them to.

I guess I have more of an opinion about this than I thought. Look. All I know is that I don't think that the government has the right to tell people what to do. I know you can argue, then, why do we have laws, but the reasoning there is just obvious and not, for me, worth the debate. (Am I fighting with myself here? Probably.) I know that Catholics right now are a little pissed at me, and that's fine--but can't you still be Catholic and not tell people what to do? I only like to tell people what to do in the classroom, not with their fetuses. Know what I would do with my fetus, don't care what you do with yours. Moreso, I think it comes down to this: Most women don't have abortions for malicious intent. They aren't like: I'm gonna kill the crap out of this baby. I think that's a big part of it. Are you evil? Is always a good question to ask.

I'm going somewhere with this, or at least explaining why I've come to this conclusion. Yesterday at school, kids who are pro-life had a day of silence. They wore red tape over their mouths with the word LIFE written on top of the tape. It creeped me out actually, almost in a bondage kind of way. But in their silence, they were acknowledging the potential children who'd been lost due to abortions. They kept those stickers on all day, and last night, I had a nightmare about a student in my class who'd taken the sticker off, and when I tried to talk to him about something he became irrationally angry. We were sitting on the floor, leaning against the back wall of the room in this nightmare.

I would also like to note that two of the three people in my class who were wearing the tape were boys, and one was a girl.

Today, the pro-choicers took that message of the pro-lifers from the day before, and they took white tape and wrote CHOICE! on it. But they didn't put the tape over their mouths. They displayed it on the leg of their pants or on the front of their shirt, or on their notebook. They didn't silence themselves with the tape--they let the tape speak for itself, and they let their voices speak as well.

I liked this. It made sense to me, and I guess--well, I know--it made me think of my view on this issue I've voted "present" on for so long. The Life argument silenced everyone. It was life, or it was nothing. Red tape, barrier. There was no middle ground. But the choicers--at least you could discuss things with them. At least you could ask them questions, if you'd wanted to. At least they would let themselves speak. Their argument wasn't a definitive this is this. It was something they just wore on their sleeve.

Okay. I really might not know how I identify myself on the abortion scale, but I do know this: That analogy of not speaking versus speaking aloud speaks to me. Having no voice, versus having a voice. That's a damn good metaphor, that action.

And I trust nothing more than I trust a good metaphor.

The headache sits on the top of my head like a helmet.

This morning was the first frost of the season--lines of crystal were parallel in the fields, along the rows where there was corn a week ago. My pink begonias were topped with a layer of silver dust, presenting the illusion that I could've blown the frost away. The brown leaves were stuck together. They are dying slowly. I scraped off the windows of the Intrepid, only of course, after finding the car scraper I haven't used in months. I wished that my coffee thermos, just for the morning, would let the heat escape into the palms of my hands and my fingers.

This morning I taught freshman the five paragraph essay, and for my school program I had to videotape myself teaching the lesson. There are serious problems with this. First of all, I had to watch the video and write a reflection about watching myself teach. This is torture. This was torture. I wasn't feeling good about myself today. I looked fat, I didn't look awkward but remembered I'd felt that way, and I'm not as funny, clever, or quick as I want to be.

I ate school lunch today, found myself in the lunch line. Nothing good can come of this, I thought, and nothing did.

I worked one on two with a couple of ELL girls today, one who speaks Spanish and the other who speaks Arabic. They're darling. I have no idea if I'm helping them; this scares me.

Our seniors gave a disappointing presentation today, our juniors are preparing for a Chinese poetry project. Tomorrow our freshman have a test on A Separate Peace and I intend to give them a hearty pep talk beforehand. Really, I may even ask them to "take a knee" before the test. I'll call it efficacy.

The day was exhausting because I am too often tired. But as I was walking to my office, defeated, Ms. M. approached me, waved. I love Ms. M. She's brilliant, ridiculously hard-working. She doesn't sleep. She's absolutely the funniest teacher I've seen in action. She has grandchildren, she's scared of retiring. She said to me in the hall, she said to defeated me, Jean, we've been talking about you. I've heard such good things. You can't tell Mr. O I said this, but I have to tell you that he speaks so highly of you.

Stop it, I said. Thank you.

Really. Ms. M. said. I...we know that he's not the easiest guy to please and we said before he'd have a hard time letting go of his classes. But he thinks you're really smart and he can't believe how prepared you came into this.

You make me feel so special, I said. She said, See, and that sense of humor helps.

!!!!

Sometimes it's physically painful to get such kind compliments. But I'm so happy this pain came today. I'm so glad Ms. M. found me in the hall today after a long day, after I was questioning my work and my goals and my everything. I don't even care if it's not true. I don't care if Mr. O. was just trying to be nice and none of what he or she said is true. I'm going to walk a little taller tomorrow. And when the headache comes back, when the teacher nightmares start again, I'll feel a little less consumed. I'll learn to treat them as more of a side effect and less of a disease.

I came home and slept. I could feel the chill trying to settle in my bones, just like it did all of last winter. I have to rub my feet together to generate heat. This makes me warm, and sometimes tired enough to sleep.

And now it's time to run down the dirt road in the cold. Evening comes so early now. I can't believe it'll be an hour earlier in a couple of weeks.

how to cook dinner

In the middle of the day, decide to make dinner. Know what to make--pumpkin enchiladas--but don't know the recipe. In fact, it turns out the recipe isn't even pumpkin enchiladas. It is just enchiladas with pumpkin sauce. Buy pumpkin, tortillas, and enchilada sauce. Those ingredients aren't right.


Call Christina, the foodie. Of course. Say: I need you to fix my dinner. Then tell her what you have, and then she'll tell you about the Aztecs and she'll give you a recipe for pumpkin enchiladas. It is the one you claim she successfully pulled out of her ass that one time. More cumin than chili powder, to make it more smoky. Put the sauce down in the sprayed pan first. Put some of the cheese in the pumpkin mix to thicken it up.


Hells yeah, Miss Christina. You tell her to expect future phone calls about what is in the refrigerator. Dear Miss Christina: I have a can of corn, a popsicle, and mustard in my fridge. Fix--my--dinner! Now it sounds like a game show.


Of course, it turns out you were wrong about the chili powder. You don't have any. The closest thing you can find, actually, is taco seasoning. The impromptu dinner? Pumpkin, cumin, taco seasoning, salt, and chives. The dinner gets classier by the minute. You wonder if it's worth the joke to call Christina back and let her know that really, the only thing you can find in the house are those fucking box elder bugs that have taken over the front door.



And of course, per the advice of the Michigan chef, you'll engage in drinkin' while cookin'.

You wish Christina were here. You wish anyone else were here. But you have beer, so you're okay.


You will remember that you are an adult. You must finish cooking the dinner, making the enchiladas, instead of shoving the pumpkin down your throat, uncooked. Have patience, young chef.

Soon, you will shred pepperjack and then sharp cheddar cheese. Some of it will go in your pumpkin. The rest of it will go on top of your enchiladas. You decide that you're especially clever and fancy. Before assembling the enchiladas, you warm the tortillas in a frying pan, making them just a little more crisp. The edges brown.


Christina told you to close the ends of the wraps, but that's the one thing you didn't listen to--you left them open, thin, tightly rolled. They're in a bigger pan. You think Christina would be okay with this.







Don't forget, as you channel the mighty Phone-cook: towel over shoulder. Preferably a checkered patterned or plaid towel. This substitutes for the apron. This is for wiping your hands and waving the smoke away from the pan when you accidentally burn the rice.

Hm. Cooking that dinner was so fun, that while it's in the oven for 30 minutes covered in foil, 10 minutes without, you decide to make a crumb cake. After all, you bought that coconut today, and cakes are fun.


Get out the cake flour. The milk, the eggs, the sugar, the vegetable oil, the vanilla. Make that mix. Easy. Put it in the pan. Tastes like white cake. Then start on the crumb part.

More flour. Brown sugar. Cinammon. Then: 1 cup--that's right, two sticks--of butter. You gotta make it crumb. That yellow butter, hot foam.


As you dump the butter into the bowl, you think of the episode of Down Home Cookin' with Paula you watched on the Food Network yesterday. She says: That's right, y'all, we're just gonna add that whole stick 'a butter in there. That whole sticka butter. You remember the drinking game--the one you invented with the Highland girls last October--where you have to drink every time Paula confesses a whole sticka butter has ta go on in there. Or when she confesses that her meal is worth the calories.

Looks like your cake might be worth the calories, too.


And by the time you finish it, by the time you do the dishes, the pumpkin enchiladas are done. It is 7:30. There are dishes soaking in the sink, because you learned as a kid--while doing the dishes at grandma's house--that if you claim dishes are too hard to wash now because they need to soak and then leave them in the sink, that mom will do them.


Plate that shit up.

Help yourself to another adult beverage. Drink to all of the friends who should be there with you. The roommate isn't home yet, so eat alone. It's delicious. It tastes like Christina, maybe, made it.

And, Friday, thank you for always being there, right after Thursday. So reliable.

After Mr. O and I give the students their vocabulary quizzes and chapter quizzes every Friday, we have them turn over their papers and draw pictures for us. They draw the pictures when they are done with the quiz--this way, we know which students are done and which students are still working, because sometimes students stare at their answers for seven minutes after they complete the quiz and we don't know if they need more time or not.

Mr. O doesn't like to draw, but I do. So I give the students their drawing assignment--one week it was to draw what they expected of the pep fest, the next week I asked them to draw a picture of their favorite animal playing their favorite instrument--and I draw mine on the board. Today I asked them to draw a picture of what they are planning to do this weekend.

So, after we collect the quizzes, Mr. O and I go through the drawings and make fun of the students. Like, one kid drew himself playing golf with a flag in the hole, and I told the class that Peter was planning on landing on the moon this weekend. One girl drew herself having a PARTY!!! and I announced to the class that Jordan was having a party this weekend and that we were all invited. It looked like some kids were planning on getting in car accidents this weekend, or having gun fights, but their drawings weren't clear.

My drawing, on the white board, looked nearly exactly like this:

I thought it was pretty obvious that I was judging a debate tournament this weekend, but the students asked what is that on the board?! And I said, what do you mean? And they said:

Well, it looks like you have people in buckets or something.

Yeah, another student said. It looks like you have children in pots or something.

I laughed pretty hard at this. I said, yes students. These are my plans this weekend. This weekend I plan to boil children on my stove.

p.s. Chad, please start blogging again.

This one is for Christina, who sends me threatening emails that none of you know about.

Random pictures from the camera include

Red Velvet cake from late August, waiting for that big fat cream cheese frosting cover that hides all the red:
The new specs:



The new specs and the new haircut/color (this picture is way serious, as you can tell--I'm not smiling):

I wish Mike were my bf, especially in see-through white pants at the River Hills JC Penney:


I am much better at piano than Chad is, but don't tell him (and you know Mike and I rock because the "piece" we are playing has cartoon pictures on the top):

Slutty pony, slutty slutty po-ney.

***

During 8th hour today, someone lit a garbage can on fire in a boys bathroom, and the World Lit class, Mr. Olson and I hugged the curb while fire trucks drove to the school to make sure all was clear. What adventures!

The vertigo hasn't gone away yet, and in an odd attempt to alleviate my dizziness I took a nearly three hour nap and then went for a three mile run, which turned into a one mile run and a two mile reflection walk. My stomach hurt, and the night was too nice for a run, almost--it warranted one of those walks in the dark, arms up, catching the strong, warm South wind. I didn't run on the busy road tonight, but ran up the dirt road path, between all of the corn. Instead of fearing cars on that path, I worry about creatures jumping from brown rows of corn to steal me in the dark. I think that the light on my ipod is really the light from some alien space ship looking for young runners to take with them to the dark sky. But I can run in the middle of the road. Different path, different fears.

Then, to counter the 400-some calories I'd burned, I came home and made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, poured handfuls of milk chocolate in my hands and shoved it down my gullet, scooped spoonfuls of cookie dough and licked the spoon, my fingers into a sticky mess. And I've burned a new CD tonight, tunes for the students--the top hits of 1942 to set the scene for A Separate Peace, because how else can you really understand Gene if you don't know what songs he's been listening to on his ipod while walking around the Devon campus, while waiting to be drafted into the second world war, fighting those goddamned nazis?

7 inches don't none matter.

It's going to frustrate you that I don't have any photos to accompany this post, and I'm sorry. I got home late last night--well, later than I wanted, and my plans of eating mashed potatoes and then grading papers and then going for a run instead just turned into mashed potatoes, other food, other food, then grading, which was about three hours of [insert fart-poop noise here].

On Friday some weird synapse fired in my brain to remind me that I hadn't had a haircut in awhile, and then some other synapse fired that said: CUT IT OFF and I had the idea of cutting it off all day, so on my way back to Albertville I stopped in an Aveda salon and said: I'm scared as hell, but let's cut it off. Seven inches later, I have shoulder length hair; I have hair that hasn't been this short in four years. I cut off grad school. I spent so much time growing out my hippie-long hair, my blonde locks, and I became a long-haired girl in grad school, and now it's gone. It looks good, and I like it, but it's still hard not to think that all of the "work" of growing out my hair is now sitting in some weird "hair garbage" in a salon dumpster, that seven inches of Jean was on that floor and swept away. I asked if I could donate the hair, but it has to be twelve inches of locks to give to the hairless--and that would've left me with little left of my own--so it went to waste.

I have a thing about hair that I let myself suppress in Mankato. The thing is that I get in my head that something about me has to change, and the quickest thing to change is hair--so hair gets the sacrifice. In high school, if I came to school with a new haircut (or, in college, a new haircut or color) you could tell that there was something up with me. You could know there was something wrong, or I wasn't happy with how I was, or I was so happy with how I was that I had to show it on the outside. It's a weird thing, hair. I said my long hair was the source of my power: now it's gone. Maybe I've decided that in this job, teaching, in my office, being around high schoolers--that's my new source of power.

Or, maybe I was just sick of buying all of that shampoo and conditioner. Maybe I was just sick of untying hair knots all day.

Maybe I need to talk to my school counselor, as I tell the students.

I went home, dyed it blonder, closer to the real color. But it doesn't look changed, really.

And the cut doesn't look changed, really. Because nobody, um, noticed. I went home, chatted with Rich, the dad, for awhile. The dad, I said. Didn't you notice my haircut? I had seven inches of hair cut off!

Looks like it always does, he said. Not that I would ever expect the dad to notice. (And, side note: The dad changed my oil this week, and then he noticed that the driver's side headlight of the Intrepid keeps coming out. Oh, I'll take care of that, I'll fix it, he said. I didn't notice until the car was parked outside of David's house yesterday that "fix it" meant putting a little tiny piece of duct tape in the corner--a piece that has obviously and very carefully been cut into a square. It's the cutest little square I've ever seen, and I laughed at that little tape for about 10 minutes. I called the dad and said, the dad. Your idea of fixing the light is to put a piece of duct tape on it? Nice. He said: Hey, that's not tape. I said, of course, that it sure looks like tape, but dad said it's a special aluminum holder and I said a special aluminum TAPE? and he condceded.)

(Another side note: Because I sometimes act like I am five years old, I invented a game this weekend called: GHOST DOG that consists of taking Bourbon, the brother's rat terrier, outside at night and having the little white thing chase after me as I tear through the yard screaming: GHOOOOOOST DOOOOG! Travis played too. I did the oooooohhh a ghooooost voice that Jenny loves so much.)

Where was I? Oh yeah. My mom didn't have anything to say about the haircut other than it didn't look much different, and David didn't have anything to say about the haircut because it didn't look much different, and my students didn't notice the haircut, except for a couple of them who asked as an aside. The students did notice that I wasn't wearing my glasses today--did you forget your glasses! --Yes, student. I can't see who is asking me that right now, because I forgot them. And another girl noticed that I had my cartilage on my ear pierced (it's been pierced for a good four years).

I don't really give a shit if people notice my haircut, but it's really got me thinking about what changes when you just cut seven inches of yourself off and leave it on the floor. I mean, I feel like a chunk of me is missing, and when I go back to move hair from my eyes I am physically reminded of that loss. How can someone just lose such a big part of herself and nobody else sees it? Is this not the literal equivalent of some emotional loss?

Am I going crazy? Mostly, I don't know anymore. I've run out of the medication I've been taking for the last six months, and it has caused some pretty severe vertigo, dizziness, confusion, for the last couple of days. I feel like I'm floating, drunk, not on this Earth, not moving in time (in fact, suspended in time) and there isn't really anything I can do about it. A weird thing, feeling as though your brain is like a balloon in your head that keeps filling and then deflating--as though you're losing the air you need just to stand up. My head is floating away, and there is something hiding behind my eyes. How long does this last? I can feel my brain right now. I can feel it, and it's gross.

Issues with the head this week, apparently. Issues with the head.