Today.

I took the dog for a walk when I got home from school, and I realize his plastic-blue-bone-shaped poop bag container didn't have any bags in it, so he shit in the street in a muted-brown pile of soft-edged oak leaves, and if you're planning on shuffling your new-school tennis shoes (on this fallish 54-degree day) in the street arm-pits of Central Avenue, you might want to think twice about that idea.

*

I've lost either five pounds or four pounds or three pounds or two pounds or one pound or zero pounds. My scale can't decide. For the last week, though, I've had some good runs alongside Lake Street, and the Halloween crafts are in the window, and the coffee-shop windows are foggy, and I get all sweaty and wet inside of my sweatshirt.

*

I made vegetarian chili, and I've never farted so much in my life. It was delicious. On Tuesday, I spent two hours at the grocery store, trying to find items on my list. I walked around in gray, 3-inch mary jane heels and a dress and thick black tights, and there was squash on display.

I hate you, "back to school."

I miss summer. I miss sleeping in, and I don't miss how I stay at school so long every day, always finding something else to do, somebody else to talk to.

I like being social. I don't like meetings.

I thought I lost two pounds on Weight Watchers, but then it came back. Water weight, I guess, no big deal weight, I guess. But when it said 1.6 less pounds, I was feeling pretty good. I don't understand WW. For example, I really can eat all the Fat Free Cool Whip that I want, according to the plan. But Cheerios and Fruit Loops have the same point values? I don't understand that.

But I've been sticking to plan. Eaten a lot of vegetables lately, actually. Ordered a salad when I was out to lunch at Old Chicago when I really wanted a big, fat thick slice of gooey pizza. I'm not hungry, but I've eaten a lot less today than I normally would've had I not been on the plan. I wouldn't have had vegetables for example, and that whole can of grilled pineapple all over my turkey burger. This is good. I wish I could look at an alternate universe and see what I would've eaten on a day like this. Much more of that candy all over the school meetings today, that's for sure. Not those damn peas.

I'm taking a break from activity today, feeling pretty guilty about it in hinsight, but on Friday I ran 4 miles, and on Saturday I ran 3 miles, and on Sunday I ran 3 miles. It all felt pretty good. I mean, your body is just like ah, yes, running. I remember when we used to do this.

"Ever heard of Slim Fast?"

The past weeks have been, for lack of a better word, annoying. But somehow inspiring and still somehow motivating.

After Colorado, I went to Georgia, and it was a grand trip, full of barbeque and hotels and walking and supposed-ghosts, and heat and car rides, and best friends. It was also full of goodbyes, which made it bittersweet, of course, those damn goodbyes.

I took Jenny to Wisconsin two days later, met Mark's side of the family--the full side, and was welcomed to Camp Susan. But then I left the next morning, drove home, slept and slept and slept. It was about three weeks straight of intense travel, and my body was tired. That night, I met Jessica at the pizza Luce block party. We ate pizza, I wore jeans and a tank top. That night, we walked around uptown, drank beer, pushed sweaty bodies out of the way to get to the beer.

I went home early. Walked to my car from Drink, walked past people in the drunken, post-haze of the block party, walked past a white, trashy man who said to me and only me ever heard of Slim Fast?

And I kept walking. I pretended I didn't hear him. Because, fact is, I have heard of Slim Fast. I heard of it in 1985 when it was popular, and I heard of it when I was in junior high school in 1995 and it was starting to lose popularity, but people were still using it to make insulting comments to the fat girl waddling around the hallways with her tight ponytail and tapered jeans--emphasizing the fatness--and her Timberwolves Starter jacket and her black Fila tennis shoes, the exact same ones her brother had.

I wanted to say to this man: every heard of not being a douche, ever heard of a shower, ever heard of not being white trash, ever heard of education. Really? Tommy fucking LaSorda, huh?

But I swallowed it and walked to my car. On the way, other memories. The time I was walking home from school in 4th or 5th or 6th grade, when the teenagers on the other side of the street said look at her! She waddles! She can't even walk straight, she waddles.

Craig's friends, whatever it was they said. The rumor that was started about me at STMA for being a lesbian, but really, it was just because I was fat and that was how they decided I couldn't fit in. Gym class. Gym class.

I guess most of the memories about it are vague, save for the waddling 4th grade Jean, and the rest are just the reprecussions of fatness.

Whatever. Where I'm going with this is that my self-esteem is a big pile of shit. It's shitty because the trashy guy verbalized what I've been thinking since grad school ended 4 years ago. I've let myself go--go where, I'm not fucking sure--but I've put on weight when I promised myself I wouldn't goddamned do it. 30 pounds since Mankato. Now, 30 pounds in 4 years isn't the worst thing in the world--I guess that's less than 10 pounds a year. But it's added up, and I'm not happy, and I want my Mankato clothes back. I want the Jean in the Mankato pictures, I want the runner, I want the feeling that I've accomplished weight loss, I want to feel lighter.

Thursday, I went ahead and ate a bunch of gross food at the fair, and then I got sick for the rest of the day, and I sat on the couch and felt sorry for myself some more and thought about how good it used to feel when I put on pants and they were too big and how I'd just stare at my smaller-self in the mirror and say Jean, this is you, you did this, this is really you, you lost this weight, and you look good. And I would stare and stare. In awe of myself. And when I put weight back on, I stopped taking pictures--you can see the big fucking gap in my files, and I'd get mean at the mirror and say what the fuck are you doing? You are so fat. You are a cow. You promised this would never be you again. And then, I'd forget all about it and sleep and sleep and lesson plan instead of run.

At the same time, I don't think I eat crazy ridiculous bad food. A lot of candy, sure. Big portions, sure. But my body isn't jiving with it. I think it's mostly the inactivity. I have to run. I can't be consistent at the gym. The good thing about wanting to lose weight is that I've done it before, which lessens the pressure of can my body actually do this? Because I know it can. It did it two times before, and I just had to run two miles a day and then pick it up so I wouldn't plateau. But something made me not run two miles a day anymore. That thing was teaching.

Fuck you, teaching, you made me fat.
Last week, I went on a date with a guy named Tommy. I keep my profile on OKCupid, and I wait for people to email me if they don't think I'm too weird, or too fat, or obviously only funny because it's my fat/formerly super-fat defense mechanism. I pursue nobody, that would involve confidence. So, Tommy found me. We quipped for a week, set up a time to meet.

Great conversation, a great guy. His story is that he lost 130 pounds, so he talked about it a little while I kept my fat mouth shut. He mentioned that he'd done it with Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers, I thought. That's what mom asked if I wanted to try last week. Two days later, I wrote him a message, four days after that, he wrote back and told me that he had gone on three dates with this other girl, they were three great dates, and our great one date couldn't trump the three. This is the same line that Ben guy who I went on a date with while living in Hutchinson gave me, the last date that I'd ever gone on before this one. I'm pretty sure the Ben guy was giving me a line, but I don't know about Tommy.

Still in my head, this translates too, if I could be attracted to you--if you were thinner--this probably could've happened. And that's the truth of it, and that's how it is. I'm not going to pretend it's not, because then I'd be denying what I owe myself--and denying what I think about people most of the time. I mean, if Tommy still weighed 130 pounds more than he does, would I be attracted to him? Probably not. Fat people, mostly, are not attractive. I'm not super fat, but I'm fat enough to notice. That's what it is.

So, I decided it was some stupid sign to start Weight Watchers. Why the fuck not. It's $60 for three months, and I don't have to go to meetings--I just track everything online. My excuse for not joining in the past was that I thought it'd be expensive (I have a salary now, we're fine); that I thought it was just for really fat people (that's how I've felt for the last three years); that I thought it was for old people (hi, I'm almost fucking 30 years old). Why the fuck not.

I also used to think that a weight loss program would force me to obsess about food, which I don't want to do. I don't want food to run my life. I don't want to count calories and question what I shove in my face. It's time consuming, and obsessive, and annoying. But I guess I have to. Right? I mean, I already am fucking obsessed with food, just after I eat it and feel guilty. And how will I know what I'm really doing wrong unless I track it? We'll just do this for three months and see what happens. I really just need to find some new habits. To find some healthy recipes (and to cook, yikes) and know that they're fine to shove in my face. To be careful when I go out to eat. To exercise more.

Whenever I run three miles, I earn 9 activity points. I like this. I like that I can calculate all of these extra points and watch them grow in my food cue. If Weight Watchers doesn't make me eat better, maybe it will make me run more.

I don't like that I have to think about how this will all work when I'm out to eat, out with friends, when I don't know nutritional information.

Today, I went to Target, and I bought a scale. A scale. I promised myself I would never own a scale, because then I would get obsessed with weight. But I am obsessed with weight, just after I gain it. So, now I have a scale. It will probably make me really depressed. I will probably realize that I am not losing weight and want to quit. If I didn't weigh myself, I wouldn't realize I wasn't losing weight and then I wouldn't want to quit. But Weight Watchers requires I weigh myself every week. Those motherfuckers.

Right now, I weigh 231 pounds. That's pretty gross. And I'm publishing it on my blog, because, well, I think it's better to just say it. I think my driver's license still says 200. And when I say still, I mean that I totally fucking lied 2 months ago in June when I renewed it.

Plus, if everybody knows I'm just all about this, it will be easier. When you secretly try to lose weight, it's easier to cheat, or give up, or not care. I emailed Shannon, I said help. She's lost like 60 pounds. I think she only ate 1200 calories a day, which I probably can't do. I'll just lose slower.

I went grocery shopping. I bought a bunch of produce. Fruit and vegetables are no points on the plan, so I can eat as much fresh fruit and vegetables as I want. A tablespoon of Olive Oil is 1 point. A fruit cereal bar is 4 points. Usually when I buy produce, it just goes bad. Some of it might go bad. We'll see.

One of the tricks is fat free cool whip. I'll just put that shit all over my fruit. It's not that many points.

I bought some stir fry kits. A couple of weeks ago I bought a Foreman grill, so I can just grill meat, easy, without having to use a real pan, which would involve real cooking, which I mostly suck at. I am going to be chicken's worst enemy. I'll eat so much chicken, chickens will fear me.

The healthy recipes at All Recipes all have nutritional information, so I don't have to do much second guessing. The portions seem small. I'll just have fruit and cool whip on the side.

Or maybe just cool whip.

Shoes for Crews, OR: On Dumbness

Today, it was a bad idea to wear this dress, because it's short enough that it doesn't cover my chicken-flesh thighs when I sit on this chair, and I have to constantly readjust to prevent sticking to the seat. Like peeling off a band aid, but the chair is the band aid and I'm aware of tiny hairs on the back of my legs.

This week, I am learning how to teach AP Composition, and I am learning wonderful skills and finding wonderful new websites that I add to my AP Comp blog as the teacher names them off. I am also getting free textbooks and learning how to get more free books. My suitcase will weigh 50 lbs. more on the way home. I still will not be able to identify it in luggage claim, like always, because it looks like everybody's suitcase.

I will also weigh 50 lbs. more on the way home, because I'm stuffing my face with two free breakfasts, and free lunch, and two free snacks a day.

This week, I am also learning about myself being-in-Denver-by-myself, having flown in alone, and renting a car alone, and going up to my hotel room alone.
When I had my first observation meeting last fall, my principal said to me, I was surprised to see you so funny, and open and casual in your classroom--when I would see you in the hall before I knew you, you were always so stoic and serious.

And I thought: no. Silly. That's not me. But when I told this to the other newbies at school they were like yeah, that's you, that's what I thought, that's you.

That's me. I'm avoiding people here. I get sick at the thought of awkward silences that might occur if someone sits at my lunch table. So I sit on benches and face my back to the crowd. I click on my phone to look as though I'm about to make a call.

I smile, and I respond, and I engage, but I rush to my car at the end of the day. I won't initiate small talk.

I'm always talking about how I can't stand socially awkward people, but at times during this class, I've been socially awkward. Perhaps perceived as negative. Maybe even a bitch. I can learn from this group, I should ask them questions, I should take advantage of the experience that they have and I do not. But my shyness takes over.

I'm not good at this. I won't go downstairs for happy hour and plastic cups of wine to start small conversations about small topics, I don't find any desire to establish common ground.

At least, not in this environment. I have no confidence in this world.

*

If you put a group of teachers in a room, then it will became an elaborate competition among most of them to out-smart the other, to raise a hand in order for a chance to throw out a multi-syllabic vocabulary word, to arouse some sort of controversy (or to introduce a controversy that isn't really there, but to appear smart by doing so).

There are a couple who dominate the conversation. I'm in the back row, so I only see the backs of their heads. I know them as see-through shirt white bra, and egg-eater, and Shoes for Crews.

Of course, there are teachers in here who seem normal, versions of us. One of them gave me a cool resource for teaching fallacy with movie clips. She said she teaches at a school that is half Indian Reservation, half white in Utah and that it's crazy racist and the white kids blatantly call the Native American kids lazy. How would you not totally favor all of the Native Americans and hate the white kids?

Some teachers here say actual smart things. I like the three who are sitting near me in the back of the room and become the rest of my group of four. We analyzed pictures today. Found secrets in the images.
There are mostly unattractive people in my class, if that matters, save for a couple of youngish female teachers and maybe one or two men with rings on their fingers that I've noticed as they use their male-English-teacher scrawl. One of them looks and behaves exactly like Lance--crosses his legs the same way, gestures the same way--and I want it to be Lance. He is never Lance.

The older men wear shorts with cargo pockets with tall socks. Today one of the men ate a hard boiled egg for breakfast, in the classroom. Currently, he has a pile of food garbage on his desk. Why not throw that shit away. He looks like Artie Lange. I can see the outline of his wife-beater through his gray polo, and I imagine it is the same color of his egg.

But, what has moved me this week is the biggest dick of all. Some guy from Utah who wears shoes for crews, so in my head I call him Shoes for Crews. He volunteers for everything and he thinks everyone in the class thinks he's just hilarious (although I heard one of the male marrieds sigh silently at him today, and I was secretly like yessss).

Case in point, the teacher asked for a volunteer reader, and he read a student essay, but he read it in this goofy, extravagant voice. The kind of thing that if a student did, you'd be like, oh fucking great, just read the goddamned essay and stop starving for attention for five minutes. But what was really annoying was that people in the class were encouraging it and laughing, and I was like I hate everything about you, Shoes for Crews. Today, he read twice. Once, the teacher called on him to read, and I wanted to stand up and storm out of the room. I never would like to hear Shoes for Crews read Lincoln again. Instead, I will prefer Sam Waterston. SFC's not even fake good. It's a high school freshman Great Speeches round, and I'm giving negative speaker points.

Anyway, in class we had to write mock-up multiple-choice questions for the AP test, and we used a section of Dillard's An American Childhood for the prompt (a small piece about the Polyphemus moth that the students in the essay eventually killed by studying it), and we had to write questions based on some lead-ins. I chose to do one about tone, and I figured that since this test measures vocabulary, too, that I would use "fancy" words about tone to add to the question. I pulled up a document I used in Upper Comp with a bunch of "words to describe tone," and because I didn't know what all of them meant, I shift F7ed some of that shit. And it turns out I nailed the definition of pithy and supercilious, but in my "right" answer about tone, I noted that it would be "best identified" as altruistic and poignant, and while poignant was dead on, my interpretation of altruistic was not.

So, up went my question on the overhead, and the class fell for my "distracting question," and I did a great job of explaining why nostalgic and empathetic wasn't accurate. But when I said the answer was altruistic and poignant, goddamned Shoes for Crews was all, condescendingly, douche-illy, yellingly, attackingly, UM PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THE TONE OF THIS PIECE MEANS THAT SHE MADE SACRIFICES FOR THE MOTH. And I was, in my head, hey, thanks for putting me on the spot, fucking Shoes for Crews, I can tell your students hate your guts because you are so goddamned self-serving (opposite of altruistic).

And I said that my interpretation of the definition of word was not "unselfish" in the way that she made sacrifices for the moth, but that she was generous and considerate of the moth. And then the class half-bought it but mostly went along with SFC's outcry, and then the teacher said well, we just need to be FULLY prepared to defend our answers and then I felt humiliated because she implied that I wasn't. And I wanted to raise my hand and just be like, you know, this isn't the best word to describe it, and it wouldn't be a great test question, but if you give me a minute, I can really defend this shit, because this piece is written from a child who should be really fucking selfish about a science experiment in class, and she wasn't, and this opposite-of-expectations makes the tone altruistic but I didn't, because who would do that.
Also, I feel like a dumbfuck for not knowing what altruistic means. And now I will probably never forget. I hate classes where I feel dumb. I just sit in class and stew and feel like everyone is staring at me and judging my dumbness, and I want to redeem myself, but equally fear I will make another mistake and be seen as more dumb or possibly, even worse, desperate.

Here, I think, we are all desperate. Desperate for approval, desperate to be taken as smart, desperate to be the best, the leader, the most successful, the one who, when people pass in the hall, think man, she must move students, man, she was born with this, man I wish I was her, or even more, I wish she'd have been my teacher.

Welcome to Denver, Summer's almost over.

I made a blog for my AP class, and in doing that got excited about blogging again. Then I got unexcited again, then I got lazy, and then I didn't care.

So I took advantage of blogger's new design features and messed with this one. And maybe I'll get excited again. In fact, I arrived at the hotel ready to blog away, but then I ate too much and kept designing and got nervous about my AP training starting tomorrow.

Lenny is with my parents for two weeks, I'm going to Atlanta in a week, and I know that when school starts in a month I'm going to be all hey remember when you didn't have shit to do.

Or, remember when you used to blog and you could turn some of that shit into poems or essays or real life sentimental writing? Remember when you were devoted to that? What happened to you, Jeano. Just like how you used to be in shape, and you used to have commitment other than simple frustration and a schedule packed with shit you didn't want to do. Have I mentioned I'm training for next year's Warrior Dash? Blog. Exercise. Optimism.

I let my first couple years of teaching slip under the rug. For now, I'll enjoy the mountains in the horizon, my new gray khakis, and my free pass for an assload of ice cream in this giant hotel bed.

Friday in June, days from the end.

During his morning piss, Lenny saw a fox standing in the middle of the road. It looked only slightly orange, mostly white and gray, black highlights around his face. Lenny took off, and I had to take off behind him. The fox stared for a second and then turned 90 degrees into the neighbor's yard, and his shaggy tail tucked between his legs.

Yesterday, my 10th graders did an assignment with PostSecret. They were to write PostSecret cards for the characters from Raisin in the Sun, but before they could do that, they had to know what PostSecret was. I said don't go to the website without your parent's permission, it can be kind of scandy and as I was saying this, Dan was at the desk behind me, pulling up the website. And this was the secret that came up.

And the entire class laughed, and he blanked the screen, and Dan said it said she really wants to put a cucumber in her salad, and George, the student, said yeah, to toss the salad and I was laughing and laughing and laughing. And then apologizing.

Later in that class, I read a PostSecret about a post-it a ten-year-old had written that said I hate my life and then a girl said Oh my God, I would kill myself if my kid wrote that.

A few minutes letter, a couple of girls came up to me and said Ms. P, there is something wrong with A. And I looked over at A, and she had crawled under her desk. She had crawled under her desk and was sitting with her legs crossed as though she was in a little desk-fort with a protective writing-surface roof, and she was crying. And I went and sat cross-legged next to her on the floor.

I said, A what's up? Is everything okay? What's going on? And a single tear slid down her cheek, a bag of freezer peas slowly thawing.

She wouldn't look at me, she said it's just that comment about somebody saying they'd kill themself.

This is not the first time A has cried because somebody brought up suicide in class. When we watched Othello stab himself in the stomach a couple of weeks ago and a kid in class said dude, not realistic, if you stab yourself in the stomach it takes a long time to die, and then kids said yeah, he would be like oh, hey guys, what's going on, after he killed himself, like he'd be bleeding out of his stomach and then he'd be all, so how about those Knicks while he's waiting to die.

A's response was to cry. I felt horrible. I'd laughed at their joke, and she said suicide is not a joke and I was a very bad person and a very bad teacher. I took her in the hall, and I apologized that I had laughed, too, and I said that people always deal with things that are uncomfortable by laughing and making jokes, and it was hard for the class to watch that scene. I think people are not always cognizant of what happens around them or who their comments might hurt.

I said the same thing to her yesterday, I said that the student's comment was just an over-dramatic teenager thing to say. I brought tissues into her little fort, I sat back on the floor and chatted with her some more. The bell rang, she left. I emailed her counselor.

On Tuesday, a girl cried in front of the whole class when we were talking about racism. Her father, from Mexico, had his car searched, and the dogs tore it up, and it was all without probable cause, and it was in Wayzata, and it was so racist. I brought her tissues. I hugged her in front of the class and thanked her for sharing. I chatted with her after everyone stopped staring at her in their sympathetic I-don't-know-what-to-do-I'm-fifteen way. I asked her more questions. Her nose started bleeding.

Yesterday, when we were talking about racism, a girl said, after I mentioned that sometimes dogs can appear racist because of what they are exposed to, so, but, can dogs be racist? No, no, I mean, not toward people, but like, toward other dogs.

My laughter made me bend at the middle to gain composure.

Yesterday, the turd-eater handed in his last essay. The purpose of the essay was an ad analysis, to discuss the cultural and sexual implications of an advertisement and how offensive images (constantly seen) can affect the way a culture or gender perceives itself. From his essay:

the white dress which is very inocent [sic] as though she's a virgin, makes her seem a little naughty and that she's already a little tipsy and feeling good.

...it looks like she wants it pretty bad. ...she wants it pretty bad. She's wearing some cowboy boots, showing she's not afraid to get down and dirty, in meaning more than one, and this wine puts a little cowgirl in everyone.

...some Cockatoo Ridge wine she'd like some of the actual COCKatoo. It portrays that some women are sluts when they've had that tasty wine they like so much. The bird on her arm is the replacement for what she really wants, a little bit of dick.

...the girl is really cute and is showing she likes to have fun, all girls do. ...she has naughty written all over her. ...this ad has a very sexy lady...she lives on a farm, which usually [sic] the best things are made by farmers. The advertisers using sex alone [sic] to sell their product. Nothing else. But it looks like a good advertisement because of how they put the girl with the bird looking all sexy.

Wednesday in May.

I wore jeans today, on Wednesday, because I'm tired of dressing up. The office is hot, the lunchroom on the 4th floor is pizzeria-kitchen hot. The sun beats in like it's the lightbulb and we're the oven. I need to move more. In May, I'm not a teacher, I'm a babysitter. But today we reviewed for tomorrow's Othello test, and I'm always excited when they nail the practice questions. I want to say: can you believe it! You're quoting Shakespeare, and three weeks ago you were groaning about it. Ha ha, I taught you. Ha ha, you learned. Suckers.

I just finished my big essay dump of the year, 90 essays. Tonight I don't have any, and tomorrow night I don't have any, and on Friday I collect 30 more. But I have 2 days of freedom. Well, I mean, I have some tests to grade and some homework to grade, but fuck that.

The turd-eater fell asleep in class today, yesterday, and the 20 days before that. When I called his mom two weeks ago, she cried into the phone, and she said all the teachers had called that week. We had to. It was the "probable senior failure" phone call. The turd-eater is called the turd-eater because on the first day of class he fell asleep with a chew in his mouth, and when he woke up, the chew dripped down his chin and into a pool of brown on the desk. It looked like he'd been chewing on a turd. Or, as I told my friends in an email, he was a robot and his mouth was leaking oil.

Lenny and I walk 2.5 miles a day, now, down to Wayzata beach and along the bookstore and coffee shop and ice cream shop and BMWs in the street and trees that flower white lilac-smelling flowers. Everytime we walk under the tree, I think of Hutchinson. It was around this time last year, when I was complaining of the vagina-smelling tree in my front yard, how every time I stepped outside, it stunk of vaginas.