I don’t know if it’s election fever, the hunk of dark chocolate and two cups of coffee I had for breakfast today, or the fact that my daughter has been playing the song “Status Quo” from High School Musical over and over again and it’s stuck in my head on a continuous loop, but I’m all over the place today.

I’m calling a time out for ctrl+alt+del* and a system defragmentation.  (Oh my god when did I become such a geek?  And why didn’t anyone stop me before my geekiness became so advanced?!)



I teach in a high school that houses a pre-school program during the morning hours.  I love love love to see those little poppets running around in the halls and riding tricycles. 

Lately I’ve been catching myself lingering over baby pictures of my two urchins and fondling baby clothes in stores.  I recognize that this is a symptom of bad, bad things and am hopeful that by admitting I have a problem, I am on the way to recovery.  I will not go to babygap I will not go to babygap I will not go to babygap.

The fact that my hair is, I suspect who knows nobody has actually seen it in years, white as white can be under the dye is small potatoes next to this hideous fact of aging:  if I even enter a room which contains trace amounts of carbohydrate, that carbohydrate zings across time and space to paste itself to my body. ”Small POTATOES.”  Get it?  Potatoes…carbs.  Never mind.

I feel really good about caring so much about this election.  It feels great to be able to envision living in a country that feels more like home to me in terms of what I value and place my faith in. 

I am really proud of the way that I have been able to have reasonable and intelligent conversations with people with whom I disagree about the state of the union and the upcoming election.  I’m sure that he is far more enlightened than I am so it’s not that big a deal to him, but I have learned a great deal about walking in someone else’s shoes from Clayjack.  And I am grateful for the chance to have the kind of exchanges we have had.  Even when he is so totally and completely wrong and I am not.  It’s easy for me to not see facets of the “other side’s” argument because I am usually surrounded by people who feel much as I do, politically speaking.  I try, but not very hard.  So thanks for that.  And hooray for me.

I keep waiting for the honeymoon to be over with my Keurig coffee maker, but it isn’t ending.  It not only thrills and delights me, but it is changing me in subtle ways.   To wit:  I now will openly admit that I like flavored coffee.**  WRH+Keurig+TLA.

I’m going to California in a week to see my grandmother.  On the one hand, my grandmother is getting on in years and I struggle with the feeling that I might be saying goodbye for the last time, I’m visiting her immediately after an election about whose outcome we will most assuredly disagree and neither one of us is known for tact and diplomacy, I hate traveling without my kids***, I feel bad leaving TWGH with the kids and all their various activities and crizzap all weekend ****, if I am going to travel without my kids I’d sure like TWGH to be there.  On the other hand, I’m going to California for a weekend.  I’m going to have my own hotel room for a weekend.  My grandmother lives in a weird part of California where there isn’t anything to do except visit your grandma for a few hours a day.  Did I mention that I have my own hotel room for a weekend?

I rejoined Facebook and I am having trouble striking a balance between thinking it is the dumbest thing ever and quitting my job so I can play some asinine game called Scramble ALL DAY LONG.  No thanks to you Brandon and Simon for beating me.  Jerks.  I’m going to own you.  And for those of you who will email or call me privately and express your concern:  Hellz no.  I ignore “friend” requests from students.

The television in our bedroom***** blew up yesterday.  Not the crappy old television in the family room, but the nice one I bought TWGH for a birthday present.  You know, the one that belongs to this century and not 1978 like the other one.  Anyway so it blew up.  This is the tv I watch at night despite the fact that I swear up and down repeatedly that I will not lie in bed and watch tv when I want to watch cable news, Jon Stewart, and The Colbert Report and Entourage and The Office and that show where the British lady looks at other people’s poop and tells them they are fat and anything that has Dr. Oz in it and most decidedly NOT anything with Rachel Zoe in it and sometimes Chelsea Lately because DAMN she is funny and I think we could be friends.  And by watch, of course, I mean lie there like a passive lump and let other people’s ideas and opinions wash over me in a tsunami.  I miss Jon Stewart something fierce, but I don’t miss the news.  In contemplating this realization, here is what I thought:

“…There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on the plot of ground which is given him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. It is not without pre-established harmony, this sculpture in the memory. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. Bravely let him speak the utmost syllable of his confession. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. It needs a divine man to exhibit anything divine. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not pinched in a corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers and benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay under the Almighty effort let us advance on Chaos and the dark…

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man, must be a non-conformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world…

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with pockethread, do. Else if you would be a man speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood! Misunderstood! It is a right fool’s word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood…”******

Reboot and defrag complete.  Let’s hope.

*Best boat name I ever saw was ctrl+alt+del

**With one caveat, the only flavors I actually like are Green Mountain Pumpkin Spice and Green Mountain Gingerbread.  I can deal with French Vanilla, but don’t getting all Mudslide and Blueberry Surprise on me.

***I recognize that this is probably a decent sign that I have an advanced anxiety disorder, but I will confess that if I must fly, I’d like to fly with my entire family so that if the plane crashes we all die and none of us has to go on without anyone else.  Yeah, I know.

****Not that he can’t handle it.  He can.  It’s just hard.  Really, really hard.  And I don’t like owing him that many PBU’s.  What?  You don’t know what PBU’s are?  Parental Bargaining Units (I totally stole that from my friend Sara).

*****This was a tough call for me.  I had always been pretty vehement about remaining a one tv family, and not in the living room, but in its own place where it wasn’t treated like an important piece of furniture or wouldn’t become the automatic go-to distraction.  But when we moved into a different house and the tv room moved to what is now “kidworld,” it seemed like the thing to do.  Ask me how much I love watching tv in bed.  Go ahead.  Ask me.  SO MUCH.

******OK.  You got me.  I didn’t think that, Emerson did.  And I’m so glad he shared.  Excerpted, by the by, from “Self-Reliance.”

You tell me…creepy?  funny?  ironic?  interesting?  compelling?  I can’t decide.



Photo/tech help courtesty of Ca$$ Money…college student and WRH cub reporter.