Nonsense

As much as possible, I like to focus on the positive here. My love list grows: good sheets and flowers, bacon and soup, coffee and vodka (sometimes in the same frothy beverage), Lord & Taylor and Trader Joe’s. I love summer vacation and snow days, and a good bargain. Using coupons gives me a thrill, and I love that I can get them on line these days.

But I hate Coupons.com commercials.

They make me reach for the clicker, or leave the room. They are illogical. Nonsensical. Preposterous. Shoving handfuls of sample cheese cubes in your mouth while your baby shrieks in the carriage is not saving. It's making a pig of yourself, hoarding. Washing your hair in the aisle with spring water is stupid, and it's stealing. It's not saving. Shaving your legs in the produce aisle is just gross.

None of the ads depict saving.

I get that sometimes commercials are just meant to be funny, and not based in reality—like the talking e-trade babies. The Geico gecko. The monkeys on monster.com ads. But when the grocery store scene is over, and the Muzak stops (by the way, I have NEVER heard that kind of Muzak piped in to the three grocery stores at which I regularly shop--with coupons.com coupons) the tag line is “there’s a better way to save.”

Likely there's a better ad agency out there, Coupons.com. And better things for me to be doing than complaining about your annoying commercials.

Storm Provisions

I laugh at the amount of people at the grocery stores today, stocking up on provisions for the storm that supposed to hit us (hard) tomorrow. As if we’ll be snow bound for days. I know we haven’t gotten hit hard yet this winter, but it is New England, people. We can do snow. Baltimore? DC? Not so much. In these parts the roads will be plowed and passable within hours (tops)—back roads and side streets included.

Thank goodness I’ve been watching the news for days and had faith in this one materializing and don’t need to go out in the madness tonight to wait in lines with people buying milk and spring water or at the Red Box kiosk. I’ve got what I need and water and milk aren’t on the list. Shocking, I know. After all I’m a tried and true New Englander, so I’m not in emergency mode. Rather, I’m in snow day mode, readily supplied with everything and anything I need for a delightful snow day.

Snow Day/to do/have

Coffee √(duh)
Cinnamon rolls? Eggs and bacon? √,√
Vodka √ (ditto on duh)
(OJ? Tomato juice, etc.?) √,√
Bugles √
Fritos √
Detergent and softener √
Stuff for: Fish tacos? BLT? Tuna melt and tomato soup? √√√
Netflix √
Chocolate √
Mags √ (ditto: catalogs)
Correcting
Vodka √

What?! It never hurts to double check…

Meetings

Nothing evokes instant dread in me like a department or faculty meeting. In fact, just the thought of a meeting, seeing a meeting written in my calendar, or getting a friendly reminder that “we have a meeting tomorrow”—or Thursday, or next week— puts me in a bad mood, too. A fouler mood than wearing uncomfortable underwear does. I’d rather have to keep readjusting a persistent, stretched-out-underpants wedgie than sit with my department or the entire faculty for an hour the one time a month I am required to do so.

When I was the health educator at a formerly all-women’s college in Massachusetts, I had 40 hours of standing meetings a week at some point. They weren’t all dreadful, but the sheer amount of time spent in meetings precluded any attempts at finding balance in my on-campus job. After those meetings I still had programs to run and attend and plan and let’s just say that was the end of my career in higher education.

One of the things I looked forward to when I eventually started teaching was, well, teaching, not meeting. (I also looked forward to not being micromanaged, and that’s not working out so well these days either. But I digress.) And while two hours of meetings a month is nothing compared to forty a week, for those two hours I sit and we get nothing accomplished all I can think of is the papers I have to correct, the photocopies I have to make, the lab I have to prep or take down, and how poking my eye with a sharp pencil would feel better.

I don’t mind meetings if they are productive, if we were to get something done. However, it’s not like we’re rewriting mission statements or deciding on new disciplinary policies. We go through an agenda that can be handled as a memo—do this, don’t do that, we’re changing this no matter what you think. Sometimes we go through the motions of sharing our opinions, but they ultimately don’t matter in the end. Save me the time. Hand down orders in an email and let me do my thing. Or at least provide freshly sharpened pencils or mind-numbing pharmaceuticals to get us through the agenda. A few blow darts to put out the teachers who cannot go a single meeting without speaking up would be nice too.

Since I’m really not a fan of violence or torture, cancelling a meeting would be stupendous. Almost a good as a snow day…(Fingers crossed.)

February Vacation

Anyone who thinks February vacation for public schools is unnecessary needs to shut up. Seriously. I can’t even be gentle about it. I am so tired I can’t stand it. I make it to the gym after school and then feel so fatigued and sore that I have to swallow some ibuprofen to get through the evening as I clock watch until it seems reasonable to head to bed. I resist the urge at 7, and 7:30, make it through till 8:30 then, but by 9 I’m grinding coffee and setting up my coffee maker and turning on the timer and heading upstairs. In the morning I drive to school in the dark, and do it all over again.

I love February vacation because it is relaxing. There are no holiday obligations eating up some of the time and I don’t travel anywhere (as I might in April). Other than spend a couple of days in Boston I will mainly be home, relaxing. Staying cozy and warm. Resting. I can hardly wait. I need February vacation. I need it now.

So I can’t help be a little excited about the weather forecast. I’m trying not to read too much into a memo that came out about a potential snow day and what will happen to our schedule should we not have school on Wednesday. I’m trying not to take it as a sign that I’m not the only one who watched multiple local news meteorologists this morning and therefore not the only one who is hopeful. I have no business asking for a snow day—as I promised I’d stop praying for one and put all my energy into praying for more important things, like Donna’s recovery. (By the way, Thank you, God, for getting her into a clinical trial!)

So I won’t pray for a snow day per se, but I did touch my lucky snowman. And will be so thankful to have one, if we do... because February vacation can’t some soon enough.

[Heart] Note...to Flowers

Last Sunday I bought myself these flowers from Trader Joe's...It was so nice to have them sitting on my coffee table this week; they were there for me to stare at while I was having phone conversations of a difficult kind, and there to distract me from the pile of expired coupons and junk mail that needed attention. They reminded me that doing something nice for myself makes me feel good, and they prompted me to count forward to spring and realize that only 4 months from now I will be spending most of my free time by the pool.

They last longer and cost the same as a bottle of wine and make me feel much better. Well, they don't give me heartburn, anyway...Another of many reasons why I [heart] flowers.

A Cousin's Prayer

Dear God,

...It’s me, Margaret…Ha! just kidding. It’s not even Judy Blume. It’s Joanne again.

This morning, when I was on my way to school, ON TIME, and bitter, because unlike surrounding towns my district didn’t have a delay, and I really could have used a little extra time this morning with some cold compresses on my eyes, I thought God must be a teenager. I figured you weren’t trying very hard—happy with the bare minimum effort like so many of my students—to give me that well-timed snow storm for a well-deserved snow day. A snow squall here, overnight flurries there, but no Nor'easter. No snow day. Or maybe you weren’t really paying attention when I was talking, which could likely mean you’re a man. A male teenager. What a kicker!

But I got to school, and saw my eyeliner was doing the trick, and I got busy doing what I do, and I got over the hissy fit. And then during lunch, when Fran and Tim and I were planning labs and activities in our next unit on Mitosis and Meiosis—(much less boring than photosynthesis and respiration), during which we teach about cancer and show a Nova video Cancer Warrior to our students about the groundbreaking research of Dr. Judah Folkman, who unlike the rest of his colleagues did not focus on genes in his cancer research but on angiogenesis, and who didn’t live to see his life’s work take a giant step last year when it was found that people with Down Syndrome are less likely to get cancer perhaps not because they don’t live as long (as had long been held to be true), but because they have three copies of an angiogenesis inhibitor on their chromosome 21—I broke down. As soon as my mental video review got to the part about the man in “clinical trials,” that was it. I lost my sh*t.

And now I’m home. I’ve texted and talked and watched Oprah and I can’t get out of my own way. I don’t feel like writing or posting the picture I took of the gyoza soup I made last night, because everything just seems insipid and insignificant and oh-so-inane right now. I don’t even want a snow day anymore.

What I want is this, dear God. For Donna, for everyone who loves her including me, and for everyone else who has a Donna in his or her life, please let there be a cure for cancer, that stupid bully who doesn’t know when to quit. And if you’re still operating in teenager mode, dear Lord, then please find a clinical trial for Donna. It wasn’t supposed to spread again. Keep whispering in her ear to fight the good fight. Remind her that she is strong and tell her it’s okay, while she fights, to demand a cocktail.

This time, I promise I will give up any and all requests for a snow day AND for new members at the gym to fall off the fitness wagon and for vodka in a pill form. I will live with the dimples on my thighs and don’t care if I never make a million dollars. Really.

Please, God.

Make. Donna. Better.

Amen.

[Heart] Note...to Sandwiches

A few years ago, on a rainy Sunday afternoon in Rome, Amy and I snuck into a café a few blocks from St. Peter’s Basilica to escape the rain and the crowds, and to have a bite to eat. I had that day one of the best sandwiches of my life. It was a ham and cheese sandwich, only we were in Italy, so the cheese was sliced fresh mozzarella, and it had both olive oil and mayonnaise on it, and it didn’t go from deli case to my plate. My panino stopped in the panini press first, just to take the chill out. My stomach just growled just thinking about it.

After returning home, my sandwiches were inspired. La Crosta was my bread of choice that summer, and mozzarella replaced Land O Lakes American. I remember making Caprese salad and letting it sit at room temperature so the olive oil and salt and pepper could work their magic, and then making sandwiches with those slices of tomato and mozzarella to bring to the beach.

Eventually school started and Rome got further away, and I probably started eating salads for lunch. I do [heart] a good salad, and admit to having quite a repertoire of main course lunch salads that I bring to school—from my version of a taco salad: a plop of chili on mainly lettuce, to a trimmed down Cobb, to a blackened shrimp Caesar. I also like leftovers for lunch. Well, certain leftovers. And soup. You know how I feel about soup.

Yet every once in a while I get tired of having to plan for salads, or having the right container, or needing to stand in line at the microwave with my leftovers, whose flavor and texture fate is uncertain after removal from said machine and all I want is a sandwich. I find myself choosing rolls from the bakery bins, and then at the deli counter ordering roast beef, or turkey, or ham, and—dare I say—American cheese. Or I’ll make my curried chicken salad with mango chutney and Craisins and nuts or my Ina fave with grapes and celery. Lettuce usually finds its way in to my sandwiches, even if it’s starting to brown and no longer appetizing enough for a salad. If I have leftover bacon, well, do I even need to tell you? Oh, and I love my mother's bread and butter pickles on a tuna sandwich (but only on a tuna sandwich).

That’s what so great about sandwiches—you can put in it whatever you want or have and you can make up your own rules. Only meat touches mayonnaise, mustard touches cheese, you know, that sort of thing. Make the masterpiece and it’s totally portable. All the food groups held in your hand and delivered in one bite. After another.

Oh how I [heart] a good sandwich.