Chipotle

Yes, I know it's been a long time. I've changed my blog address, too. Yes, I know that it is confusing and silly but due to extenuating circumstances, my previous blog address (this one) just didn't fit. So. Go henceforth to http://seesarsteach.blogspot.com. But don't go yet, for I have yet to post anything. But I will. After I get some tasty chipotle. Perhaps tomorrow.

GAH

The morning we left for Hawaii, I happened to have a semi-large (large by my standards, anyway) amount of cash in my possession. I didn't want to bring it all with me to Hawaii (for fear that I'd lose it or it'd get stolen or I'd spend it all), and we didn't have time to go to the bank so I could deposit it, so I ended up leaving it at the apartment, an apartment that just invites ne'er-do-wells to break in and run off with our stuff. The living room/dining room (because they really are just one entity) window - the main window in the apartment - looks right out onto the alley. It's ancient; the locks seem to work fine, but there are still cracks between where the windows seal, cracks where one could easily wedge something with which to open the windows.

So, in an effort to thwart any would-be money-takers, I hid the money. And now I CANNOT FIND IT. And the apartment is not huge. It's sickeningly small, actually. All I remember about where I hid it is thinking "don't hide it too well, you want to remember where it is." And now I can't. I'm beginning to worry that I threw it away, on accident. I don't think I did that - it was in a kind of a box thing, something that just would not go in the trash - but I can't think of anywhere else to look.

What I do while I'm not in Toronto because am too busy recovering from the flu...

...the kind of purely nasty flu that you get only when you're, like, 6 years old. It hits you in the middle o' the night and involves fevers and random barfing incidents and two days with only watered down ginger ale as sustinance. Except now you're an adult and you have a plane to catch and you're secretly kind of happy that this bout with your old friend the flu will ultimately allow you to, just maybe, and most likely only temporarily, fit into those capris into which you were last able to squeeze over a year ago.

So, I'm not in Toronto. I'm leaving on Saturday night, instead. Today's been the first day that I've been able to spend sustained amounts of time in an upright position without swooning and/or barfing.

I think this calls for a silly blog quiz.

Your Famous Last Words Will Be: "So, you're a cannibal."

I'll have the pictures developed in a few days!

I just spent the last week with Justin, my parents, Katrina, Shea and the baby, on the lovely island that is Kaua'i, technically to recognize and celebrate the eternal love of two of Justin's best friends. I brought all of my Teach for America Institute prep books. I did not open them ONCE. I did not turn on my cell phone. I did not read a newspaper. I did not even cast a glance at a computer screen; I think the only office-type building I even saw was the Budget car rental hut at the Lihu'e airport, and something tells me that casual Friday would be a bit redundant there. It was GLORIOUS.

Kaua’i was not what I pictured in my mind when I imagined Hawaii, and by the end of the trip, I realized that this is because I am so, so spoiled. My parents have a timeshare in Kona, on the Big Island. So every other summer or so we gather up our belongings and spend a week in a very nice condo in an establishment full of very nice condos just outside of Kona. The establishment is on a golf course and boasts several very inviting swimming pools, bars, beach volleyball courts and, lo, a blowhole! It offers massages and massage classes, lei making classes, coconut painting sessions, ceramic jewelry making lessons, etc. The weather in Kona is my idea of perfect: warm and sunny in the mornings, a nasty rain storm every afternoon, clearing up to a warm and calm evening. Groups of other young people with parents who spoil them, which include my sister and I whenever we are there, roam the main pool and golf course, especially late at night. We’d buy beers and food and cigarettes and bring them down to the golf course and drink ourselves silly, go back to the condos and sleep for a few hours, spend the day alternately lounging poolside or taking excursions to the actual town of Kona, which is charming and inviting and tropical, the volcano park or to Hilo or to a beach up the coast with parents, only to go back to the same store and buy more alcohol later in the evening. Every minute of it was easy and comfortable and warm.

Kaua’I is much smaller and less accessible than the Big Island. It hosts Mt. Wai’ale’ale, one of the rainiest spots on earth, and the east and north coasts of the island are regularly windy and cloudy and rainy. We stayed in Wailua, on the east coast, in a building right across the street from a Shell station where I’m sure dad could’ve scored some prescription drugs for his broken ear drum if he wanted. I think we saw two other families in the building; it was so quiet. The pool was small and freezing cold. Our room looked directly onto a beach strewn with drift wood and broken beer bottles. I think it must have been a good spot for surfing before 1992, when Hurricane Iniki hit the island, but now the undertow is so strong and the waves so large and the gigantic rocks so prevalent that not even the locals swim there. Extraordinarily pretty but inaccessible.

This seemed to be the overall theme of the island, most of which is inaccessible by car. To see the lagoons and waterfalls and endangered birds and gigantic canyons for which the island is famous, you have to hike or row or helicopter your way into the interior of the island, which is not cheap and definitely not easy to do if you have a baby dictating much of your trip, as our traveling compatriots, Katrina and Shea, did. So, we all stumbled over our first few days on the island. Our rooms, while having a great view, were kind of depressing; the entire town of Wailua was kind of depressing. The weather was cold and rainy and windy.

However, once you get out and actually see the rest of the island, the “hassle” becomes totally worth it. There is great snorkeling and boogie boarding, and we saw several gigantic (and even a couple of baby) Hawaiian sea turtles at Po’ipu Beach. Mom and dad and Justin and I did this great tour thing where we kayaked up this river to this gigantic pasture where that part in Jurassic Park where all of those dinosaurs are running in a herd across the land was filmed. We rope-swung into a lagoon with our spectacularly gorgeous tour guide, Chaz (of whom I do have pictures but I haven’t gotten the film developed yet!).

Kaua’i is definitely less touristy and much more laid back than the Big Island, which I found inspiring and exciting, and I could see myself living there and being totally relaxed and happy and content. But, like I said, I’m spoiled, and my absolute most favorite activity we did on that island was spending a day boogie boarding and ending it getting drunk off of overpriced blue hawaiis posing as a registered guest of Marriott’s timeshare grand palace enclave.

Unemployed

So, Monday was my last day at work. People brought good luck offerings in the form of about 15 different kinds of sweets, the most notable including among their ranks cinnamon rolls, caramel brownies, molasses cookies, and gigantic chocolate chip cookies. I was the center of attention all day long – a position in which I normally am extraordinarily uncomfortable – but I drank a ton of coffee and inhaled all purpose cleaner fumes while cleaning my desk and felt much better after. I received many a warm email after sending out my massive goodbye/change of email email, and even warmer going away gifts. It was all so nice and appreciative and heart-warming as to lodge thoughts of reconsideration in my mind as I walked out of our doors and down the four floors of stairs in our weird, concrete building that last time. It was all so nice that it made me, for a few hours at least, start to re-think my decision to quit and take this radically different path. I came to my senses shortly thereafter, thank [insert deity of choice here].

I spent the my first evening of unemployment with Justin, Katrina, Shea and the baby, feeling surprisingly…maternal. At one point in the evening Ian, who had been sleeping in his room, started to cry, so Justin – who loves the baby more than sweet sweet beer, I’m starting to believe – naturally rushed in there. I walked in the room, too, and Justin was holding the baby who, upon seeing me, did that thing where he reached out with his arms, obviously wanting ME – not Justin – to hold him! So I took him from Justin and he instantly stopped crying and put his head on my shoulder and was so freaking CUTE. Even though I’m sure that while he was being so cute he was probably poohing or farting or getting ready to spit up, it was very heart-warming. Too heart-warming…

Anyway, yesterday Nicole and I went into San Francisco and thoroughly enjoyed the warm weather by drinking beers for lunch at a bar on Haight (one of the few places in San Francisco to which I had never been…my expectations were pretty low, but it was OK), getting sucked into the behemoth of stores that is H & M, and enjoying $3 champagnes at this fun saloony type of bar with one of Nicole’s friends.

So, I’m spending today doing all the things I should’ve spent last week doing in preparing for our week in Hawaii. This morning I became aware of the greatness that is doing errands during the times of the day where the fewest amount of people are in public. I’ve become used to going to Target and the post office and grocery shopping during those times of the day when getting a parking spot within seeing distance of the store is a good sign; when even all of the check registers are open and the lines are still 7 deep.

But today I went to the post office and was out in less than five minutes. Ditto for Target. The most annoying part of the morning was the crazy drivers that are out between the hours of 9:00 am and 11:45 am during the week. It’s an amusing combination of old people, ne-er do wells, and soccer moms – the overly wealthy ones who don’t have to work. Frustration was quickly overcome with awe while watching two gigantic SUVs navigate the notoriously tiny Capitol/Folsom Blvd. corridor near the Fantastic 40s.

I'm unemployed and going to Kaua'i and very, very happy.

Musings, After the Fourth in a String of Last-Week-At-Work Lunches

I spent all day last Sunday cleaning out seven years worth of accumulated files. I am both a pack rat and freakishly organized; this combination has spawned no less than six drawers chock full of thousands of documents, organized and clearly labeled and deliciously excessive. I figured it was time for these documents to leave the nest, and made it my goal to condense everything down to two archive boxes.

So, I’m decked out in my penguin pajama pants, ancient Sublime t-shirt, sipping some amaretto and ice while going through all of my old essays – and I’ve saved all of them – and inserting them into paper protectors and organizing them by date, oldest to newest (I’m keeping the essays, of course, one never knows when a 12th grader’s analysis of biblical imagery in T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” may come in handy), and I come across an essay dated 4 September 2001, the first page of which had a sentence that said “…when the Shah was installed in Iraq…”

The professor, knocking it off as a simple misspelling, made a little correction, probably sighed about the uninspired lack of this student’s attention to detail, and moved on. But the thing is, I meant to type Iraq.

At least, I certainly did not mean to type Iran. I was operationally ignorant of world history and politics, including American foreign policy, when I changed my major to international relations in August 2001, during my second year at Sac State (which was my third year in college). My formal education in history and government up to that point looked something like this:

K – 4th grade: Native Americans hunted and fished and ate acorn mush. I got in trouble for trying to make own acorn mush. Apparently it’s quite poisonous if not purified correctly before consuming. Also learned that British people, against whom we fought the American Revolution, drank tea. Got in trouble for trying to brew my own tea by soaking poison oak leaves in water.
5th – 8th: Native Americans concentrate themselves in the less resplendent parts of the country. Columbus, a dude from somewhere not in America, eventually discovered America, but America didn’t become America until the American Revolution. In 5th grade it’s fun to make a construction paper collage of Paul Revere on his horse. In 8th grade it’s fun to pass notes with your best friend while the teacher is lecturing about the American Revolution.
9th – 10th: Native Americans? American Revolution? Went to a delightfully ghetto high school, the administration of which was more concerned with preventing the inevitable riots that will occur when you sequester a couple thousand students, 80% of which are dispersed between two rival gangs, on a closed campus comprised solely of portables and Taco Bell stands, than with hiring a permanent Freshman world history teacher.
11th – 12th: Moved; transferred to a very average high school, the curriculum of which included very average classes on American history and government. International history/government teaching was secluded to the foreign language classrooms; I gained a healthy appreciation of Spanish soap operas and Selena.

So when my Intro to American Foreign Policy professor at Sac State assigned a brief diagnostic essay outlining the basics of what we knew about American Foreign Policy up to that point, I had almost nothing to write. I didn’t even know that there was an actual country called Israel; I think I thought it might have been the name of the capital city of Iran!

You know, I had a point when I started writing this, but now I’m not sure what it was! I think it was somehow connected to the eminence of standardized testing at the expense of quality history teaching in the younger grades…maybe with some commentary on how ignorant many American kids are of what’s going on in the world outside the U.S. I think I also wanted to tie in something about how lucky I was to get such awesome professors at an otherwise pretty crappy university. To be honest, I have no clue!

Hell, these days my mind is spread so thin over so many things that I’m hardly ever where I am supposed to be heading and what I’m supposed to bring and what I should have done at home, etc., etc. I’m finishing up projects here at work but mentally I’m anywhere but at work. Then when I’m home I’m trying to pack up as much as I possibly can, but mentally I’m reminding myself of all of the TFA-related things I need to be doing, like finishing my Institute texts. Then while I’m at Tupelo reading my Institute texts I’m trying to calculate how much longer I can go without doing laundry before I run out of clean underwear. Then I find myself debating the benefits of underwear at all, especially when faced with an offensively small income and lack of time to do something about always growing pile of laundry that has manifested itself behind Justin’s golf clubs that really need to be moved to Folsom…

Findings of a Disconcerting Nature

What I Learned Yesterday:

• A brand new part-time FedEx courier (requirements: at least 21 years old; high school diploma or equivalent; ability to lift at least 75 pounds; passage of a basic skills test) makes more than I do now, as a state employee ranked as high as utterly possible given my bachelor's degree and experience (4 years part-time and over 1 year full-time experience).
• The government spends something like 8 times more money annually on a prisoner than on a public education student.
• Annual day-student tuition at Robert Luis Stevenson High School, in Pebble Beach, is $22,800. Annual boarding-student tuition is $37,800, which is chump change, really, when you consider that some parents paid over $65,000 for their spawn to have the best parking spot at the campus last year. A 20 minute drive from this school will deposit you at Mt. Toro High, a public high school in Salinas that has an English Language Arts proficiency rating of 31%, and a math proficiency rating of 24%.
• I can't remember how to form basic sentences in Russian - a language I studied for 5 years - but I still know all the lyrics to Whitney Houston's How Will I Know and Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby.