Think before you eye-roll my way, please

I got stuck in an impromptu queue leaving Whole Foods today. A woman searching in her purse had parked her cart diagonally in front of the small sliding doors. She remained oblivious as the stymied line of shoppers behind her grew. An older woman next to me was in a hurry, apparently. She fluttered her nylon grocery bags and clicked her tongue but never said a word to the woman rummaging through her purse. After a few beats, the line blocker realized she was in the way and moved her cart without a second glance to those she had impeded. Before leaving, the older woman looked at me and said, "Finally! You know, some people!" as she rolled her eyes.

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I Heart Libraries

My summers have always been irrevocably linked with Willy Shakes but while writing my previous post I realized that my childhood summers are tied to other nerdy things: like libraries.

Summer meant no bed time, or at least a greatly belated one. When we were finally ordered to our rooms I could stay up as long as I wanted, without my mother's threats. You see, my years in school never taught me how to spread out my reading. If I can not read a book in 2-3 sittings, it will never be read no matter how well-written or enthralling I find the novel (i.e. East of Eden). During the school year, my parent's would threaten me with the wrath of God to turn out my nightlight and put my Nancy Drew books away. Unless I wanted the ten plagues unleashed upon the Earth, I could only read on the weekends. But not in the summer.

The Play's the Thing

I can feel the rumble of anarchy bubbling in my students' breasts. They are ready to be out of school.

Oh Summer. For most school children, summer is synonymous with freedom, summer camps, and family vacations. My summer was synonymous with Shakespeare.

An Actual Conversation

Me: Now read your paragraph aloud for me, please.

Student: So as soon as Boo saw that Scout and Jem were in trouble, he went balls to wall  because he wanted to protect his kids...

Me: Stop reading. Did you just say "balls to the wall?"

Student: Yeah.

Me: This is considered a formal essay.

Student: So?


Me: That means we should refrain from using slang. (dumbfounded look) Like "balls to the wall."


Student: But it's not slang, it's a quote from a song.


Me: Take it out of your essay.


Student: (grumbling) Okay,fine. But it just won't sound as cool.

I LOVE teaching.

Hemingway and Hoarders

It's the 1oth of April and I am nowhere near the estimated number of pages I need to hit my ScriptFrenzy goal.  My original idea has splintered so often that the pages I have written are a disparate mess, two of which are devoted to a SNL sketch about Ariel's inevitable appearance on Hoarders. (You know it's true.)

"Done is art, Courtney. DONE is art."

That was the mantra my father repeated throughout my school years. The perpetual procrastinator, I left every project until the last possible nanosecond even when I should have known better. Dad would get home from a late rehearsal and see my work sprawled across the kitchen table and me, frantic and delirious, trying my best to produce a masterpiece. After sleeping fitfully for a few hours, he would return to the kitchen for an early morning snack of Triscuits or spicy V8 and I'd still be there, hunched over my work. He'd survey my mess, add a few encouraging words but always end with, "And you know Courtney, done is art."

Reasons Why Not Cursing This Lenten Season Has Been Difficult

1. Moving from our tiny loft apartment to an actual house. The effort to not curse while moving a U-Haul's worth of boxes across Dallas is Herculean.

2. Waiting for a dilatory TimeWarner cable repairman who showed up 3 hours AFTER his scheduled time only to announce he could not set up our cable because the house needed to be rewired. A few days later, two more repairmen came and fixed the problem in five minutes. Apparently, the first repairman didn't bother looking outside to see the wire had been unplugged.

What a Monday

I think my boss offered to be my life coach today.

My "unprofessional" personal habits, of which there are many, she alluded, include my perpetual tendency to yawn when tired and my stomach's audacious insistence to growl when hungry. She also dislikes my handwriting and is aghast that despite my efforts at self-editing I still misspell words and transpose numbers.

What a Monday.

The start of Lent or those 40 days that it's socially acceptable to be anorexic

You know who you are. Are you giving up sweets, or bread, or calories this Lenten season? Perhaps my CoC roots have skewed my notion of Lent; I won't even pretend to know enough about the biblical and historic groundwork for the observance. My wikipedia-esque knowledge derives from conversations with MDiv friends and the bits of early morning sermons in which I was miraculously awake.  I've only observed it once, my freshman year in college when I gave up carbonated beverages, though that self-denial was brought on less by my spiritual asceticism and more by the fact everyone I knew was doing it (Spirtuality through peer pressure is the BEST kind!). I've made several half-hearted attempts since then, but I usually caved within the first two weeks "accidentally."

Penmanship Permutations

Every time a child reaches a milestone in his program with us, we try to celebrate his success. Though I am prodigious at giving high fives, most of our parents enjoy a more tangible accolade, i.e. fancy certificate on equally fancy paper. So after I had compiled a list of student's and their accomplishments, I turned to by co-worker and said, "Would you  mind writing these. My handwriting isn't really certificate-worthy." My boss' head appeared from around the corner and shouted, "Great idea, Courtney, your handwriting is TERRIBLE!

Gal who cried wolf

I need to update more often, and not just say I'll update but ACTUALLY do it. I have no adoring fans waiting with baited breath for my next post. I have no grade that would be comprimised by my dilatory writing. It's just little 'ol me and I'm terrible at keeping up with things on my own.