MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

This is the Way the World Ends

...Not with a bang, but a whimper.
Not with a shot but a hanging at dawn
in a land so filled with death hardly anyone notices
the monster is gone.

Not with a tear but a funeral in state
and they will say he was good man, a righteous man
he forgave and he pardoned and changed another's Fate.

I am reading everything I can now...from magazines dating back to spring of this year to T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, The Wasteland...Eliot says life is long but oh these days are so short...especially when I sleep until noon and spend the rest of the day trying to stave off funereal thoughts of nihilistic doom. I know you well, I say to these thoughts, hovering on the rough edges of my mind...I've seen you before, every year at this time. They laugh, the hollow laugh of those who know they've already won the game. I am reading books and newspapers and the backs of cereal boxes...my mind again seeking, seeking, seeking constant information, constant stimulation while I dream of a drug that would shut the whole bloody mess off for just a few precious hours.

Don't mind me, I'm in my glory - I've looked forward to this break for four months...but vacations are always double-edged swords for melancholy freaks like me. Got to be vigilant - especially this time of year, the most depressing time I think...not the end really, and not the beginning, not the middle, not the high, not the low, the long, slow descent into January. Hallmark is doing its goddamned best to rid of us of the gun metal grey meaninglessness of January...today beneath the bright glare of the fluorescent lights I walked down the card aisle and while the banners said "Christmas Cards" the cards were all Valentine's Day cards. Jesus H! That has got to be a fucking new record. December 29th - hell they could've been up the morning of the 26th for all I know. We'll just move from one consumer-driven holiday to the next, nevermind our lives.

So yes I hate January, no hate is not the right word. Despise? January brings the black dog to me, and even time off to relax is spent in a constant battle not to give in to the idea that all is futility, all is futility. Two precious kitten balls are sound asleep on the bed behind me, safe in the size of their tiny brains. Today while walking back home after picking up my mail I saw the most beautiful long-haired cat rolling around on the landing of some steps. It is cafe au lait in colour, and oh it wanted my attention so badly. It meowed and batted its big, pale blue eyes at me, and rolled on its back and practically begged me for....for...for what? I'm not sure. I don't know if someone owns it. There were a couple of empty apartments around the area. The cat wore no tag. What broke me was the feel of the skeleton beneath the cat's fur. It is so thin. It cried and followed me as I finally started to walk away...but it stopped at a certain point and would not move anymore. Nevertheless I came home and opened a big can of cat food, mixed in some dry and took it back to my new friend. He/She was sitting on the stair landing again and desperately hungry by the way the food was gobbled down. Now even my well-fed, fat little cats often act like they haven't been fed in ages so I know cats can put on a good show...but this little kitty's bones weren't lying. If someone does own it, I feel like putting a sign around the cat's neck saying "Feed your fucking animal." I don't think it'll follow me home, which is good because I can't take on another cat. People already give me grief for the two I have.

Oh! God! She's single! And almost 40! And she has two cats! Fucking crazy she is! Spinster! Old maid! Loony. She's one broomstick away from being that crazy lady down the street. Last year on December 30 I got a call from the vet telling me Zoe's tumour was not cancerous. Those are the best calls of your life, huh? Oh to hell with anyone who doesn't love animals or at least try and understand those who do. I don't even want to be around people who don't love animals. Yet I am. It's annoying.

So I'm going through these magazines backwards for some reason. I'm starting at the end and moving forward. Strange huh? Well sometimes if I see something I want to read I have to start at the beginning. But I felt like starting from the end.

I have cleaned this place for days now. I gave two giant bags of old clothes to the Good Will. I am having the hardest time giving things away....throwing things away. I am somewhat of a pack rat - a sentimentalist fool...and all it's gotten me is an apartment exploding with things. What to keep, what to let go of? Why do I feel the need to hold on to so much? I can let go of people in a day and yet spend hours agonizing over a pair of pants, or a favourite book. I bought three giant plastic bins from the hardware store to store stuff in. Stuff. My life is just surrounded with stuff. Granted, much of it is school and/or work related...so I need it and can't toss it. I need a bigger place, that's obvious. Not gonna happen in L.A.

I really should've titled this blog "This Blog is a Rambling Mess" as I go off in all different directions. Alas, my mum is coming over tomorrow afternoon and as Catzy wrote in her blog, mums are able to see a speck of dust a thousand miles away. My mother won't give me that look, she'll just say something subtle, like,
"This place is a sty! How can you live like this?" So that's one of the main reasons I've been up close and personal with the Windex bottle for a couple of days. And damn if this place wasn't hellishly dirty. That's what ignoring cleaning for weeks at a time will get me.

I cannot believe how much shit I've thrown away. I've tossed a ton of video tapes - I don't even know what's on them anymore. I just can't stand the sight of them cluttering up the place. Bag after bag after bag of...what? The detritus of my amazingly meaningless life?

So they hanged Saddam Hussein, three years after they found him in a spider hole. And yet the war criminals live on. Who killed more Iraqis....Saddam or the United States of America? Oh don't worry, I'm no apologist for maniacal, murderous dictators. I'm not shedding any tears for the passing of that monster. It is hard to imagine going into 2007 knowing what insanity began in 2003.
My mind continues to reel. The laundry must be changed out. I wish I could drink. The killers killed a killer.

"And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss..."

- from "Preludes" by T.S. Eliot

Photo: My voice before I came to be...Thomas Stearns Eliot.

MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

And At the End You Will Begin Again

When I was 25 years old - oh god how long ago that seems now, so many, many lifetimes ago - I read a book called The Three Pound Universe. I still have it - although I think it was originally my brother's book. Had to be - it's a fascinating albeit reductionistic, mechanistic tome on the nature of the brain and human consciousness. Yeah, there I was getting my M.A. in art history, waitressing for a living and reading about things like split brain research at night. This book frightened me like nothing ever had. I remember it so vividly, though I feel no fear now. I suppose at 25 I still had so many luxuries - my father was still alive, my grandmother was alive and I hadn't become ill yet. So I had time and time and nothing but time to spend my days studying Neoclassical painters, serving cheeseburgers to grumpy customers and trying to pin down the very nature of human existence and consciousness. Fourteen years later I look back on this person and laugh, wearily, knowingly. Oh you had it all, I think. You young, naive fool. But how was I to know? We are all only responsible for our present; we cannot know what is to come, what will forever alter every fiber and cell and neuron of our beings.

So I read this book, which scared the holy hell out of me because it was written by scientists who essentially believe there is not only no God, but no soul. It's a little difficult to explain. Suffice it to say, I remember vividly the night I was in bed reading this, and seeking the answers to the Great Questions, I had turned to science, as religion had failed me too many times. Suddenly these scientists were my Gods. And they were prophets and seers and sages and they fascinated me with their data and experiments and tales from the laboratory and I read of deja vu's occurring in the temporal lobe in the brain and Roger Sperry splitting brains in half and men who no longer had short term memories and lived in Twilight Zone-like perpetual hells. And somehow, someway, these men and women, with their research and smoke and mirrors and test tubes, convinced me that there was indeed no me. That there was no soul, no permanent consciousness to be found anywhere within my being. And I sat there and thought, I am one severe head injury away from not being me. I mean come on, think about it. Where do people with Alzheimer's go? Are the brain and the mind the same thing? Is there not only no life after death, but no real life in our minds? Would I disappear if hit in the head hard enough? Where are people in comas? Vegetative states? Are they in a nether-world, waiting to return? Or have they left even themselves, not even knowing they were once people, and are now simply shells???

I don't know the answers today to any of these questions, just like I didn't know the answers almost 15 years ago. I suppose the major difference today is that I don't seem to care much anymore. I find this ironic - I was the 5 year old child whose first question to my mother was "Am I going to die?" - I was the child who was obsessed with death and the afterlife. I was always trying to find some kind of answer, some peace. Oddly, by not caring about the questions anymore, perhaps I have found it.

Nevertheless, I was utterly devastated. Why I chose to put all my faith, pun intended, in these scientists and their theories - for that's all they are really - just theories - and call them reality is beyond me. I walked around in a daze. I remember taking people's orders at the restaurant and wanting to say "Do you realize there is no you?" Luckily I refrained and didn't end up in a rubber room. So I really bought into this whole idea of there being no soul, no me. I was constantly changing. There was nothing permanent about me. Oh I can see that now, physically. I can finally start to see the signs of aging, on the tops of my hands, around my eyes...it's happening. I'm succumbing to what I never really believed would happen because when you are young and healthy and everything is basically OK in your world you are never going to get old. That only happens to other people. Aging and growing older - it's happening. My body has taken a beating by the fibro the last 13 years. I learned a lot of lessons a lot sooner than my friends and peers. Such is life.

So what got me thinking about all this now...all these years later. I'm no longer obsessed with the idea of there being no real me. Lately I've been far, far too busy to even have the luxury of having a philosophical thought. But I started thinking about 2006 as my first semester finally, finally winds down. I thought about who I was and where I was at the beginning of the year, and who I am and where I am at the end of the year. And two more different people you'd be hard pressed to find.

I don't know where I'm going with this because frankly my brain has pretty much turned to mush and I've beaten this poor tired body down into a heap of pain. I've spent the entire year working towards this credential program and the last three months in the program and all I can say is I never, never, never, never want to be that busy again in my life. Slowly but surely I lost all contact with everyone and everything. I guess student teaching and taking 6 graduate classes will do that to you. Plus my health took a dive - like I thought it would. I keep telling myself it'll be worth it in June. Right? Right?

So last January I began this insane race. I spent six months studing for three CSET exams and being a T.A. for a kindergarten class in one of the wealthiest areas of Southern California. I spent time with kids so young they had no idea how rich they were. Too young to act like spoiled brats, but I suppose it will come in time. In between days I did strange things...I met my journalistic hero, Anderson Cooper in June...that experience feels like it happened about 10,000 years ago. I saw a play with Al Pacino in May, and spent a wildly surrealistic time with the Church in June and August. Did that really happen? Perhaps that's what I mean about there being no real me anymore. Who was the girl running around selling Church merch? Santa Barbara? Steve's paintings? Who was I? Why does it all seem like a dream now? Who was that girl? Was she the same girl painting the feet of 5 year olds in January? The same girl taking the State-mandated tests in March and July? The same girl who spent three and half months in a nightmare LAUSD elementary school on lockdown half the time trying to avoid gang bangers on the way to her car every day? I feel like I've been a thousand different people this year.

Certainly I am not the same person I was when I started this program. You cannot go into the crime-ridden, poverty striken area I did and come out unscathed. If you do, then I feel sorry for you. And yet I did get to come out of there. What of my beautiful kids who don't get to leave? What will become of them? How I grew to love these children. My crazy, unruly, wild, loving fifth graders. So smart, so troubled, so sad, so funny. So many tragic stories I couldn't list them here. Student teaching ended December 8th, the day I took my mom to the hospital for a small outpatient surgery. I came back to the class on the 13th to give the kids their Christmas cards and stickers and candy and unless you've experienced it you have no idea what it feels like to walk into a room and have 28 kids scream your name, run at you like banshees, hug you for dear life and clap like you've just performed a great concerto! Gosh I felt like a rock star! Yep, we bonded. I didn't get to teach the whole class as much as I'd liked, but I worked very hard with them, in small groups and one on one, which might've worked out better in the end because they so desperately need the attention and the caring and I got the wonderful chance to get to know them as individuals and people.

When I came to see them on the last day before Christmas break, they were writing essays for a contest sponsored by the Screen Actors Guild. The essay topic is "What Love Means to Me" and I was in tears as they read me their essays. These kids may not know perfect English (but their English is still better than my Spanish!) but there hearts are still so amazingly pure and grateful despite their living conditions. They are so, so grateful...so amazingly grateful for any little thing you give them. A bag of candy? It might as well be a bag of diamonds. A card with a note in it? I saw a boy staring at it like he'd found the Rosetta Stone.

And what they gave me...can never be measured in gifts...although they did give me some wonderful gifts. The best gifts were their plain, pencil-written notes written on plain college-ruled paper in wonderful albeit broken English - notes I will keep and treasure for the rest of my life. Yessenia gave me a snow angel and Ariana gave me a beautiful little teapot and for a moment I feared they were giving me things from their own homes. That is how poor they are. I promised them 2 things: I would come back in January to spend a day with them and I would come to their graduation in June. And come hell or high water I will be there for them. People come in and out of their lives; they have no consistency and I do not want to let them down.

So who am I now? After the lockdowns and shootings and months spent with the children of illegal immigrants? Where do I stand now on all these issues? I started the year with children who have every material thing in the world and ended the year with children who are lucky to eat and wear decent clothes. And yet what grateful, happy hearts they have so much of the time. I didn't think my place could ever be in an urban school; now I see that that is where you truly make the biggest difference.

I feel like I am wholly changed; like every cell within me died and has been replaced. I feel like my soul is different and my views I held in August are different than the ones I hold now. Perhaps those scientists were right. Perhaps there is no permanent me.

I am still so sorry that aside from the kids the program was such a miserable experience. At the end of January we will be taking all our classes and not teaching; just 6 weeks of intense classes and then 9 weeks of full-day student teaching. I think I will be teaching second grade - probably at a different school - but that's another story. Let's just say I had a meeting with the program director and I wasn't the only one unhappy with my situation there. The kids were great - the school and its staff sucked. Articulate, I know.

I lost total and complete touch with the outside world and although I have one final on Thursday I feel like I am re-entering the world again. I don't suppose anyone could or would believe how busy I have been. Hell, even I wouldn't have believed it. How busy can you be? I'd think. Well, sadly, between my fibro, getting about 4-5 hours of sleep a night, getting up at 5am, teaching til noon, classes til 4pm, homework, errrands and pain...I lost the world and everyone in it. I never, ever ever want to be that busy again and pray that next semester is a little better. I knew I'd be busy but that was insane. It was worse than my M.A. program.

But now, I am a new person again....a person who just wants to take this stupid final, get it over with and relax for 6 weeks. I must have 70 magazines piled up around here, unread. I gave up on watching TV a long, long time ago. I think I saw three movies over the last 3 months and I haven't rented one video. For me, the movie queen, that's crazy! I have a lot to catch up on.

So as the year comes to a close, I wonder. Who will I be next year? Who will I be in the program? I will be turning 40 in April; it's a big one no matter how I play it. Because in my mind, in so many ways, I am still that 25 year old girl, stuck forever reading The Three Pound Universe, walkind around and wondering if there is really a me inside of me.

Photo: Five of my kids, at the annual Halloween parade.

MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

31 Days to Freedom

I'm stunned I haven't written anything since October 29th. Then again, I'm not. I have been so busy mere words cannot describe it. I am leaving for Atlanta Tuesday morning to visit my brother and his wife for Thanksgiving. The program has turned into a nightmare of a different kind. Forget the gangs, the lockdowns, the shootings. That's all just become commonplace. No big deal.

I'm too tired to go into it all now. Suffice it to say I haven't been very happy at all and neither have my 16 fellow cohort members. I've done a lot of things in life in the corporate and academic world and nothing - NOTHING - comes close to the idiocy of this program. I regretfully must say the women running this thing are morons. Complete and utter stupidity reigns. I am not alone in this assessment. We are all suffering because of their inability to do their jobs correctly. I am disillusioned beyond all belief that these women were once teachers. They are all retired, collecting a pension from LAUSD and a paycheck for being our site supervisors as well. They evaluate our student teaching. These are women in their 60' s and 70's who haven't been in the classroom in over 20 years. They are disorganized. They are disrespectful. We are tired of being treated like we are five years old. I have a fucking Master's degree and taught college and yet I am treated as if I am in first grade. My ego has struggled mightily in this program. You cannot please these women. They contradict themselves at every turn. I really can't explain how awful this program is. I am beyond disappointed.

The kids are great. And yet I hardly ever get to teach them. My mentor teacher is a nice person but for whatever reason won't let me teach. I've tried to talk to everyone about it. No one cares. They are putting more idiots into the classroom. This is why there are so many bad teachers out there. I'm spending my student teaching experience sitting in the corner like some fucking T.A. No matter who we talk to, nothing ever changes.

The classes and work is killing me. I'm taking a ton of work with me to Atlanta to do on the plane and in the hotel. I get no vacation until December 21st. I feel no pride in getting a credential through this program; it's obvious they took anyone and everyone. There are some people in the cohort so stupid I can't believe they can dress themselves in the morning. God I know I sound arrogant and harsh. I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone. I don't sleep much anymore and I'm in a great deal of pain because of it. But I can't tell anyone about my condition. I don't trust anyone. I'm so far in now I won't quit. I'll jump through their stupid, meaningless hoops and kiss their idiotic asses until I get the credential. Really, it's hard for me to believe these women have jobs. They are inconsistant, they don't communicate with each other or with us, they don't show up for our evaluations. I am bored with the program. It is not intellectually stimulating for me in any way.

I have come to love my kids even though I don't teach much. I have gotten to know them and we have a great time. I do teach them in small groups. I am, not surprisingly, learning a great deal of Spanish. Tomorrow I have to teach an English Language Development lesson. I'm being evaluated for the 4th time. No matter what I do in the lesson, it's never good enough for the nutjob I have as a supervisor. I don't respect these people at all. It's hard to take this seriously when I think they're buffoons.

We had a drive-by shooting last week - three guys shot for tagging. No one died. Lockdowns are now commonplace. The gangs no longer freak me out. Nothing frightens me more that stupidity. The gangs have nothing on the women who hold my credential in their hands. I am almost ashamed to be in a program with such sad, pathetic mentors. They are not mentors. They are examples of what happens in a bureaucratic system. They should be fired and replaced with younger, capable, smart educators. I don't know what other credential programs are like. Remember, I am in a Carnegie-funded special program. The Carnegie foundation has NO IDEA how wasted their money is. People from the foundation are supposed to come talk with us. I would tell them honestly that this is one of the worst experiences of my life. I am only here to get the credential. Otherwise, it's meaningless. How my life has changed in three months. How very, very sad.

MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

No Life

Ok ok I know I signed on for this 'fast track' credential program. I KNOW THIS. But I'm starting to really resent having NO LIFE. I'm cranky and depressed and angry and I keep telling myself it'll all be worth it in June. Right.

I realised one problem with this program today. It's going so fast I'm having trouble processing all the information we're supposed to learn and know to become great teachers. The problem is, the time has gotten condensed, but the amount of material/lessons/classes is the same. So it's going so fast I barely have time to digest it. I suppose I'll get better as a teacher on the job, haha.

I did see a movie last night, Prestige. It was good, but as the semester has progressed and we're getting more and more work I noticed my attention span is all over the place. I had a hard time NOT thinking about school work during the movie. It was VERY annoying. I just wanted two freakin' hours of escape. Next time I'm trying vodka.

It's only going to get worse in the next month. I keep telling myself...on December 13th I'm free for 5 weeks. Free. Free. Free. To sleep as much as I want to and need to. To read - for pleasure. To watch as much TV as I want and as many movies as I want. To actually see friends, talk to friends and email friends.

I'm pretty happy even with the fibro I've been keeping up with my cohort, even the healthy 25 year olds. This weekend was hard though; I slept a lot. I seem to make up a lot of sleep on the weekends as I don't get much during the week. I've had a lot of pain too. Par for the course, right?

Nothing new or exciting in this blog, just me bitching about missing my freedom. Once I have the credential I'll always have it - if I keep it current, right? Right. It'll be worth it in June. I just keep telling myself that. Somebody pass the Kool-Aid.

MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

Serenity Now!

For those of you who were/are big Seinfeld fans, you'll know what the title of this blog refers to. I'm actually MUCH more serene than I was one week ago. I read my own blog and realised how out of control my emotions were. It scared me.

I've started the teaching part of student teaching. I really do have a good class and a great mentor teacher. She's a hard-core Irish Catholic chick from New York and she doesn't take shit from these kids. She has two M.A.'s (one in Education and one in Math) and taught high school math for 16 years. She's from Rockaway, Queens and I really love her. My lesson went on and on today because I wasn't sure what the kids were understanding since their English is so so so so limited. I also sat in with a psychologist and one of the female students because well, let me just say this girl is a problem. I can easily see her getting into a gang. She's already lied and said the teacher hit her when the teacher never hit her. These are damaged kids.

Yesterday was R's 12th birthday. She is a plump, quiet, sweet girl. I brought her a card and a butterfly bookmark. I knew the class was having cupcakes for her later in the day (I have to leave at 11:30am to go to my own classes). Today I asked her if she had a good birthday. She looked at the ground and mumbled "Noooo...." I said, "Why not?" She said, "Because my mom didn't say anything or do anything." You hear about this and it's sad. You hear it come from a kid's mouth and your heart breaks into a million pieces. You want to buy them all the gifts in the world, say all the right things, but you know nothing you can do will ever replace the love they're NOT getting from their parents. I don't understand it. My mentor teacher told me this same thing happened to another student in the class - a very smart but beaten down boy. J is very obese. No one, NO ONE recognised his birthday either except Ms. M, who brought a gift for him and cupcakes. The teachers really are the only people who care about these kids sometimes. WTF? Why do they have these kids if they can't even SAY happy birthday to them? Is the lousy fucking Church that powerful? I want the cycle to stop but there's only one way and that's NO MORE KIDS. Sad, but true.

So far this week, no lockdowns. Yay. But Ms. M did tell me another really famous gang works the neighborhood. This gang is notorious for being the absolute most feared and worst gang - not in L.A. - but in the entire nation. They're international in the scope of their terror. I won't give any of these scumbags any mention here. However, this gang makes the others look like choir boys. You never jump out - the only way out is a body bag. I just hope and pray the shitheads are asleep when I walk to the school. I say that half-kiddingly. I joked in class today at the end of every week without a lockdown we should have a party or something. I'm only student teaching here. I'm not working here; I don't know whether to admire the teachers there or think they're crazy. It's a different feeling every day.

I have a midterm tomorrow in Special Ed. My tire blew out on the way to school this morning. My cat Fletcher has a bad case of - get this - kitty acne! It's on her chin. It's SOOOOOOOOOOOOO gross. She's on her second round of antibiotics. My house is a mess. I haven't emailed anyone back in weeks. I'm more swamped than ever with work. I'm over half-way through with this semester. I'm going to Palm Springs next weekend for - hold onto your hats - a math conference. Yes, ME who hates math. My friend Penny and I are going and getting student teaching credit for it. I'm sure a few martinis will figure into the equation at night.

I need to go study more Sped as we call it. I never get enough sleep. I drink coffee regularly now. I bought a coffeemaker so when I get up it's already made. Never thought I'd be a coffee drinker. Never say never my mom keeps saying. She's right. My life is so completely different than it was a mere two and a half months ago. My perceptions of life, of poverty, of my own city, of immigrants, children, education - everything has been turned upside down. Whatever innocence and naivete I had left seems to have disappeared. I struggle daily with feelings of fear, frustration, hope, sadness, joy, anger. Complete turmoil.

I'm reading a lot about Buddhism. Years ago in my 20's I dabbled in reading about it. Now I feel more serious about it. I've never been able to find any religion or philosophy I could ever live with. I'm always searching. I'm Christian by birth but don't believe the only way to God is through Christ. I'm sure to many people that means I'll burn in Hell or be rejected by God for all eternity. That's Ok. I'm not even sure what eternity is or if I believe in Hell. Then again...

Maybe this is Hell.
There's a kid in my class, a good-looking boy named R. His mother is really sick with something - very drawn, thin, haggard. For whatever reasons, she won't accept any of the social services offered to her - and believe me, we offer everything. She's what the teachers have referred to as a 'dumpster diver.' She picks out trash I guess - recycles cans, etc. R must live in the neighborhood as so many kids do. When the other kids see his mother, they said "Hey R, isn't that your mom?" And he says "No" because he's so embarrassed and ashamed of her. Today another boy told the class how his mom works two jobs and is only home between 2am and 5am. That's it. For sleep, for everything.

This week we've been working on "Why I Will Stay Drug Free" essays. The fear is horrendous, knowing how close these kids are to drugs. Their lives are already intertwined with drugs, alcohol, violence. They share stories of arrests, beatings, etc. in class freely. One kid, D, seemed oddly obsessed with meth labs. Crystal meth this, crystal meth that. When he started to tell me how they make it with the battery acid, I shut up him. "Meth is so bad we don't ever ever ever talk about that" I said. What good does it do? Another kid asked "What's AIDS?" They should know by now; we talk about I.V. drug use. I did a little dance around that one; he didn't need all the details. Yesterday I got a great story from a boy whose mom apparently was growing a marijuana plant. He seemed so earnest when he said "They're really hard to grow! My mom rolls her own!" Oh my god, I was trying really hard NOT to laugh. I just looked at him and said "Oh. That's illegal you know." LOL! What the hell! Who cares, right? Even *I* don't give a shit about marijuana.

The big story today was someone passed a note. A gossipy note. Ms. M freaked. I mean she tore into the guilty parties like nobody's business. She's so fierce I felt scared and I didn't even do anything. They keep telling us sarcasm has no place in the classroom. I disagree. I think a well-placed sarcastic remark is quite refreshing. So everyone who admitted to passing the note lost their recess. No one would admit to writing the note. As I left for recess they all sat there dejected and complaining. Ms. M was outside talking to someone. I said (in my best sarcastic voice) "You know, you could get out of this very easily. "
How how, Ms. D? "Try telling the truth for once." Well, that didn't go over well because you see, NO ONE was guilty! The note wrote itself! Everybody in prison is innocent! They immediately started chattering about their innocence. I kept walking.

TV Alert! I am so pissed. Last night I forgot to tape Nip/Tuck and tonight I forgot to tape Jericho and last Sat. I forgot to watch Kidnapped! My TV watching is going down the tubes! No pun intended. Luckily NBC ran the full Kidnapped episode online. And pathetically, I watched it ONLINE. Because I LOVE that show and the fact that they cancelled it still frosts me to no end. I still have about two Nip/Tucks on tape I need to watch. Something tells me I'll be catching up on DVD again.

Well, that's it from the down and dirty barrio of my life kids. Acne Cat is sitting on the bed sleeping. Tomorrow I have to take my midterm after teaching, then come back and buy new tires. Joy. Just what I wanted to spend my money on. Tires. I hear they're all the rage now. Halloween is coming up and I have nothing exciting planned. It'll be mayhem at school. I can smell a lockdown coming....

MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

God Is a Bullet

I really, really wish I had something else to write about other than the surreal nightmare my life has become since entering this teaching credential program. But I don't. I am at my wit's end today. Or as I said in my Reading class today after my group presentation, I am at the end of my proverbial rope.

Where do I begin? With the dead body on the church steps on the corner yesterday as I sat at the light waiting to turn left onto the street my school is on? A homeless person died. There was a shopping cart next to the body. A cop car pulled away. The ambulance sat silent. No one was with this person. I just stared and felt nothing. Kids walked by, on their way to school.

Or should I talk about how over the weekend some fuckheads broke into the school, completely trashed several first grade classrooms, and tagged all the beautiful murals painted on the exterior walls of the building? What kind of good feeling does a person get in trashing a FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM? I'd like to find the motherfuckers that did it and cut their hands off.

Then again, maybe I should talk about the gang banger murder that went down early this morning across the street from the school. Driving down the street I saw six cop cars and an entire building roped off with crime scene tape. Retaliation shooting I heard.

There's a 42 year old woman in my cohort who is on my last fucking nerve. She's one of those "I grew up on a tiny island off the coast of Vancouver but I know what it's like to be in the Mexican barrio and I'm smarter than everyone, I'm going to show everyone up, and my shit doesn't stink." Granola eating liberal fucking ignorant bitch. When I said I was feeling culture shock at being at this school she says smugly, "Oh I'm not." Oh right! I forgot - you grew up where? On a tiny island with all white Canadians! I grew up in L.A. and I ADMIT I find this shocking. But I defer to YOU, gang expert. She tells us there's an ordinance in place against the gang that runs the street my school is on. Well, my dear, tell that to the gang bangers who were standing on the street today practically pulling their dicks out and pissing on the sidewalk to mark their territory. She told us they moved to Palmdale. Yeah? Tell that to the stiff the coroner took out of the apartment building this morning. Tell that to US, the student teachers who RAN to our students today, because we heard GUNFIRE and we had ANOTHER lockdown where the teacher started screaming "Shut and lock the doors and windows!"

Maybe her liberal ass can just 'reason' with these poor, misunderstood guys. Oh no! I forgot. They're in Palmdale now! I must've had a hallucination when I saw them on the street today.

I swear, I was NOT going to talk shit about my cohorts or let anyone get to me, but I have HAD IT WITH HER. I just had to do this huge presentation with her and another girl. She is beyond an overachiever. I thought *I* was an overachiever. She just kept adding more and more shit for us to do - even ordering me via email last night to get our materials on transparencies this morning. Between the hail of bullets, I'll see what I can do. She BITCHES non-stop about America. Now normally I am the first person to bitch about this government and America. But I have HAD IT with her fucking supercilious, arrogant attitude. If you hate it here so fucking much and we are all so terrible, GO BACK TO CANADA! What the fuck has Canada ever done for the world anyway? I am typing this so fast I am completely out of control. I am totally irrational. But if I hear ONE MORE WORD ABOUT HOW HORRIBLE AMERICA IS I'M GOING TO SHOVE MY FIST IN HER FUCKING SMUG FACE! She rides the bus and has done nothing but harp on us because we don't. Bitch, shut it. It's L.A. We have cars. We're using them. If you had one, you'd use it to. Your husband has the car, that's why you're taking the bus. You're not saving the fucking free world from greenhouse gases. I noticed when a few of us offered to give her a ride home, she didn't decline the rides.

She's 42 years old and you'd think with all this overachieving, she'd have accomplished more in her life. She just finished her B.S. this year. In P.E. But she won't teach P.E. because according to her, no one is teaching P.E. correctly. NO ONE can do ANYTHING as good as she can. I don't say "Well I got my Master's degree at 29 and taught at two colleges for 7 years. What the hell have YOU done?" She's MARRIED you know, and ALL BUT TOLD ME I'll never get married at my age. So I guess I haven't accomplished anything because I'm not married.

This bitch is making me far more upset than any shooting. And yet I have been in tears for the last several days. What the hell am I doing? How did I get here? I hate it all! When they said urban school in the valley, I thought OK. I didn't know they'd literally be shooting at each other and the school would be in the fucking MIDDLE of it all. There's a part of me that wants to quit. And another part that says no, I'm not a quitter. I don't quit things.

The program is a disaster. I hope the foundations that funded it know their money is being wasted. Even my reading professor today said they should shut down the elementary school and let the State take it over, although I don't know that the State could do any better.

All I can say is Antonio Villaragosa, our mayor, can take his kids out of private school right now, and kiss my lily white ass. He wants to control LAUSD? Let him start with this school. Go ahead Antonio, fix it. You and the new Superintendent Brewer. Fix it all. Tell me what you're going to do to make this shit better. Because I wouldn't even know where to begin.

I told you. Don't admire me. Because I may not even be in this program in a month. Or a week.

MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

There Are No Angels Here

Today, Friday October 13th, capped off an excruciatingly hard and emotional week. All week we've been at the elementary school where I'm starting student teaching on Monday, meeting with various staff and specialists. I've talked about the school before, but I don't think there are really any words to describe how horrific this school and its surrounding neighborhood is. The irony is that it's a Title I school - meaning the Federal Government has thrown millions of dollars at this school for every conceivable type of help and program you can think of. You name it, the school has it. They have 1200 students (100%) on free breakfast and lunch. The school qualifies for everything. They have a full time psychologist AND a full-time psychiatric social worker. That should give you some idea of the problems these kids and their families have. They have Special Ed teachers, aides, Resource Teachers, Reading Specialists, two full-time literacy coaches, a math coach, a beautiful library stocked with brand-new books. They have a nurse who acts like a small medical clinic. The kids get free glasses, immunizations, medical care, hearing aids, speech therapy, deaf and hard of hearing therapy, hearing tests, vision tests. The nurse does a lice head check every Friday in different classrooms.

I am so afraid of getting lice - there are no words.

The day we met with the mental health experts I thought I was going to run out of the auditorium screaming. The school sits in the center of one of the worst neighborhoods in L.A. County. There is a prominent gang who works the area, although an injunction was put on the gang 7 years ago...but nevertheless this gang runs the biggest crack cocaine business in the entire area. They have ties to the Mexican Mafia. When walking to and from my car, I keep my head down, I don't make eye contact with anyone and I pray no one drives down the street. I've been in Mexico over the Arizona border. I'm now in Mexico again. Out of 1200 students, there are only 100 who are classified as EO - English only - meaning English is their primary, native language. There is one Russian student at the school, one Armenian, two Vietnamese and the rest of are Hispanic descent. I truly feel like I've stepped into the ghetto of Mexico.

The stories the psychologist and psychiatric social worker told us are searing in their brutality. There recently was an 11 year old girl who was raped by her step-father. Incest is very common, as many families live in very small quarters together. Sexual molestation, domestic violence, alcoholism, drug abuse, child abuse, truancy and abject poverty are all the norm for these kids. Single mothers have 4 and 5 kids. I blame the culture AND the Catholic Church for that. The Catholic Church can rot in Hell for telling these people "no birth control." I have no words to express my burning hatred for the Church. Every time the Church says "no birth control" they condemn these kids to horrific lives. Kids are literally starving - they have no food at home. One kid said he didn't do his homework because he literally didn't have a space to do it in. There are two, three families living in a SINGLE - imagine it. Young girls beginning puberty have no privacy. They wear heavy coats in June because they're tired of all the male eyes staring at them.

Believe it or not, there are still truancy officers. They're just called Pupil Services Personnel now. We met the woman whose job it is to make home visits and track down the reasons why kids aren't coming to school. Yes, the schools get money for every child that attends each day, but it's also the law and the D.A. doesn't fuck around on this issue. The families don't answer their door; they're afraid. They're illegal. They're in debt. They're in a shitty neighborhood. One woman told the PPS lady the reason she couldn't bring her daughter to school was that her 18 year old daughter has cancer and is in the hospital and she also has two other kids, one who is an infant. The PPS woman said the infant was FILTHY. She had to teach the woman basic hygeine. A lot of the kids can't or don't know how to clean themselves.

The school is literally the best, safest place these kids can be at all day. Their clothes are filthy; the nurse said some of the kids accidentally wet their pants and when she asks them to put their wet underwear in a bag, the underwear is often too small, and so full of holes it's barely hanging together. There are many charities around the area that bring in clothes for these people. Even the parents aren't immune to the problems; one parent become so suicidal the psychologist put them on a 72 hour hold in the hospital. The kids are angry and threaten violence; one little boy took an ax to his stepfather and the stepfather beat him senseless. Many of the children say things like "I don't want to live" and have suicidal ideation.

The school, acccording to the standards set forth by No Child Left Behind, is failing. It's a PI 3 school - meaning it's a Program Improvement 3 school. It has only two more years to get its API scores up before the State comes in and takes over. They start cleaning house by getting rid of the Principal and the administration first. What really frosts me is that they'll get rid of teachers too - and so many are so bad they need to be FIRED. But you can't be fired because the fucking union is so strong. So like the pedophile priests were shuffled around form church to church to just molest more students, the bad teachers are moved around from school to school to inflict their shitty teaching on more students.

What is the problem here? We decided it isn't money. The government has thrown millions of dollars at the school and the kids are still failing academically. My friend P doesn't think it's the parents or the language problem. I disagree. I do think it's the culture - the family, lack of values, lack of education, the poverty, and coming into a new country and trying to learn a new language via a horrible, horrible, highly scripted reading program the district has implemented called Open Court. It teaches kids pure phonics - without teaching them any meaning or comprehension. So the kids learn English - they just have no idea what they're reading. They sit for hours on end making phonemic sounds. My whole cohort hates Open Court so much and yet for our student teaching we HAVE to do it. On Tuesday the literacy coaches were teaching it to us and I kept asking over and over "Yes, but when does COMPREHENSION come into play? And they just kept saying, "Oh no, it doesn't." Like it's not important at ALL to understand what the fuck you're saying and reading! I can sound out gobbledeygook words all day, but that doesn't mean I can fucking understand it! Who ARE the morons who decided THIS would be good for students?

A friend of my cousin's, who's been teaching high school English at a MUCH nicer school in a much nicer area, tested positive for being exposed to TB. So now she's on all these heavy drugs to make sure she doesn't get it. Fuck the lice - THAT scares the shit out of me.

And today...today was the cherry on top of the urban school sundae. We were sitting in one of the meeting rooms, when a woman came over the PA system and announced the entire school was in 'lockdown.' NO ONE was supposed to leave the room they were in; all teachers had to keep their students inside and keep the doors locked. Our seminar teacher idiotically opened the door and saw two policeman outside. We could hear the helicopters above. I was a little nervous.

Later, I found out there'd been a shooting in the neighborhood. I'm going to go to the police website and see if I can find out anymore information. Oddly enough, I'm not really scared of being shot. I am freaked about being exposed to some airborne illness.

I met my 'master teacher' today. She is really sweet. She seems to be around my age, not married, very nice, caucasian, also an EO (we're all labeled now with these lovely acronyms). Her 5th grade students all said hello to me and said my name perfectly. They seem sweet.

Earlier this week, we sat in the library while the ELD (English Language Development) director talked to us about the different struggles these kids have not knowing English. A class of students came into the library. I was so depressed that morning. I heard the kids laughing. Our site director, whom I refer to as a Stepford wife, went over and told them to stop laughing. It was all I could do not to stand up and yell "LADY! Let these kids laugh. These kids are the only thing that's keeping me from running out to my car, getting in it, driving away and never looking back."

My friend Gena said "I admire you. I couldn't do this." Don't admire me. I don't know if I can do it. I'm scared. I'm mostly scared I won't be a good teacher. I'm scared there's no way to make a difference there. I feel like all they're doing is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I am much more jaded and cynical than the 22 -25 year old girls in our program. But I've got over 15 years of life experience on them. I don't think my life story is going to be "Stand and Deliver." Maybe I am too pessimistic. Only time will tell.

Photo: Cartoon mocking the highly scripted and idiotic reading programs used in many schools today.

MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

Middle School P.E. Class: Fitness for a Fat Generation or Institutionalized, State-Sanctioned Torture?

I'm gonna go for the second choice, because my GOD how I despised P.E. way back in the day. Oy! I had Mr. Oliver one year and I swear he was straight outta the Marines or something. I still fear him. Let's face it, I stunk at sports and pretty much anything athletic. And P.E.? My God, except for maybe 6th, there was no good period to have it. You'd get all sweaty and gross and if you didn't want to shower in front of anyone (and gee, at 13, or 14, who does?) you'd have to just get back in your clothes at the end of it and move on to the next period.

I was taken back to my early '80's nightmares today as we were told to go down to the field and observe a P.E. class at the middle school I'm working/studying at. We had uniforms we had to buy, with our names stitched on them in - get this - cursive. White tops and blue shorts for the girls. The boys had reversible gold/blue T-shirts - the colours of our school. Every Monday we had to roll 'em out for Mr. Oliver and show him that they were clean. God that man could yell. I stood there today and Mr. Chapman didn't have to yell because he had a whistle and better yet, a bullhorn. Man, I want a bullhorn. He needed one too. The kids are, yes, sadly apathetic and totally refuse to or are unable to follow directions. They couldn't do a three minute run correctly so he made them run over and over and over until he was satisfied. Then they did push-ups, sit-ups and stretches. Well, half-assed versions of them. I was flashing back like I was on ACID! Then they got to play hockey. On the asphalt. For about three minutes. Because Mr. Chapman spent all his time disclipining the students, they got no real time for P.E. Now we never got to play hockey. I had to play volleyball and softball and I tried to hide from every ball I could. Sometimes we stayed in the gym and did the balance beam and climbed the rope. I sucked at that too. Mr. Oliver loved to make us run around the entire school. I remember saying "If we fall down off school property because he made us run I'm suing!" God, 14 and already thinking about my first lawsuit.

Honestly, it's really sad. The kind of P.E. they do with kids is bullshit. My friend Peri got a degree in kinesiology or whatever they call it but she won't teach P.E. because she agrees it's bullshit. I'm telling you. Fuck Gitmo; get those high-priority terrorists out on the hot asphalt, get a middle school P.E. teacher on their ass and we'd have Osama in no time flat. I felt badly for the kids, even though they were misbehaving. I related to their torture in a decidedly personal manner.

Mr. Oliver eventually married another P.E. teacher at our school, Miss Jensen. What's really sad is that one of their children, a son, died a few years ago in an accident. I was so sad for them...and I'd finally grown up enough to realize Mr. Oliver wasn't a monster...just a teacher and a human being. I still think of him a lot. I could be wrong, but he might still be at my middle school.

I still hate P.E. and really am trying my best to block out the haunting memories.

On a happier note, I did my presentation of children's literature today in my Reading/Writing class. I presented my great Halloween book, called The Twisted Sistahs which is about the very first Halloween started by these three witch sisters who are looking for men and throw a big party for their suitors on October 31st, but then decide the men are so idiotic they just decide to keep throwing a massive party every October 31st. The entire story is kind of long, and rhymes and it's a riot, and so are the pictures. At the end, my professor was laughing and said, "D, all you were missing was the costume!" I admitted that yes, I'd wanted to be an actor when I was younger. So that was my highly dramatic reading of the day.

Speaking of acting, one of my new favourite shows is on tonight...the one with Mr. Tim Hutton, "Kidnapped." Yay. Something to look forward to that doesn't involve a damned book. What's scary is I realized the kidnap retrieval specialist the Cain family hired to get back their son is the actor Jeremy Sisto, who I first saw many years ago when I was in my early 20's and he was in his late teens in the movie Grand Canyon. I distinctly remember seeing that with my friend Jill, and how she remarked how cute he was. Fifteen years later, I agree! I'm like, shit, what happened to that kid? When did he become a man? A smokin' hot man? Although I will say his face looks really big. I mean, huge. Like his head is bigger than normal. He's the only man I've ever seen that I think looks better with facial hair. I'm sure if I saw him in person the first thing I'd say is, "Oh he's so small." That happens with almost every famous person I see. TV and film magically makes people huge. Although I really do think Jeremy might have a significantly bigger face than most of us. I like this show, so naturally, I'm waiting for it to be cancelled. I'm a cynic, I know. A cynic who likes to read children's fairytales about Halloween, and who hates P.E. Go figure.

Photo: Jeremy Sisto in "Kidnapped."

MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

Discombobulated and Melancholy

Those two words pretty much sum up my feelings right now. For some reason this weekend I've been very disoriented and feeling down with no real reason for feeling down in sight. Ambiguous melancholy. I hate it. I don't know why I get it. It's not depression per se, but a lonely kind of sadness, a feeling of total disconnectedness from the entire world. I know some of it has to do with this insane program I've started. OK, I knew it would be intense, but I don't think I knew just how intense. I wake up at the crack of dawn, I get home and am too tired to do anything. I've spent the last four weeks in this whole new world; I feel like I've been dropped in the middle of the ocean even though I'm working with 16 other people - my 'cohorts.' Most of them seem to be as overwhelmed and confused as I am so at least I'm not alone in those feelings. Yet the feelings of isolation and discombobulation persist. I was tired before all the time and now I am tired in a different way. I have homework and projects constantly in my mind. Both daily work and some huge projects looming over me. I've actually been doing pretty well health-wise, considering the fibro. I started a different med which has helped a lot; I'm not getting my hopes up long term however. I've been on a few meds that have helped me a lot in the beginning but in the end their side effects were too horrible or they just stopped working. With less pain however came a little more energy, although I noticed as I started getting more homework in this first month, I also got less sleep.

Two days last week I walked into the teachers' lounge at the middle school and drank a cup of coffee. Now that might not seem like such a big deal but I've never had a full cup of coffee in my entire life and I'm almost 40! I just don't drink coffee. I prefer tea. Obviously you can see I'm a little tired in the morning. Three people in our program are really sick too. I start week 5 tomorrow. I'm actually surprised I've made it this far, haha. I'm happy I'm doing this - although I have a lot of self-doubt and my cohorts and I are less than pleased with the way this program is being run. In fact, we're so confused and feeling quite angry that we've called a meeting with the professor who's running the program; we are supposed to meet with her this week. Oh I can't wait for that. These women (and they're all women) are like Stepford wives. I think they're all on a Valium drip or something; they seem totally out of touch with reality. All of the teachers are "wonderful" and I swear they're like robots. The only other school in CA to have this program is Stanford University; so we're in good company. However I really wonder how Stanford's TNE cohorts are doing. I can't imagine anyone more dingy than these ladies. Hate to say it, but it's true.

I miss everyone - S, Holly, Sandy, Veleska, my friends here. I have no time to write letters anymore, no time to even update my own blog. I'm making a concerted effort right now to get something new down on my blog because I'm sick of that stupid quiz being there. I got home Friday night and tried to catch up on my taped TV programs. I was actually happy House was going on hiatus because of the world series because it'll be one less show to tape. And watch. LOL! This is supposed to be enjoyable - watching my shows. I really love the show Kidnapped with Tim Hutton, Dana Delaney and Jeremy Sisto.

Oh god, Tim Hutton. Now there's a story. He was my first actor/celebrity crush. I was around 13 I think. My friend Jill and I went to see the movie Taps. I can remember it so vividly, 26 years later! I remember the exact theatre we went to, the exact place we sat and how fucking hard we cried at the end of that movie. I mean honestly, you would've thought someone had really died in our lives. I laugh so hard about it now. What were we, insane? Taps was full of today's big movie stars. Tom Cruise, Sean Penn. But I fell for Tim and his boyish good looks. I fell hard. I read that Tim frequented a restaurant in Beverly Hills called The Gingerbread Man (it's no longer there). I tore out articles on him. He was hot stuff after his stunning performance as the suicidal son in Ordinary People; he was 19 years old and received an Oscar for that performance. It didn't help that at 14 I was really, really into my drama class and wanted to be an actor desperately. I still think that's the one thing I would be if I could be anything at all in the world. Funny, I don't even know if I can act really. Thirteen years of living with fibro tells me I can, haha.

Anyway, I badgered my mom into taking Jill and me to Beverly Hills. If I couldn't see or meet Tim, at least I could go there. I was fascinated by it - and I was a native of L.A.!!! She took us to Neiman Marcus for lunch. We were about 14 at this time. I remember that was the very first time I ever had bernaise sauce. To this day, I will do anything, anything at all for a great bernaise sauce. I mean, I seriously love that sauce. My mom was so cool; she hung back and let us go into Tiffany's!!! I'd already been to the Tiffany's in New York City (which has several floors and is a must-see for any girl and fan of Breakfast at Tiffany's!!!). I remember we went to New York when I was 12 and my dad was buying my mom some jewelry there. For some reason though, I just had to go into the Tiffany's in Beverly Hills. I look back now and wonder, what were those sales people thinking when they saw two gawky girls in their early teens walk into the store? Well, we must've behaved because I don't recall being kicked out, haha.

It's interesting; living in Malibu and Brentwood and spending so much time in Santa Monica, West L.A. and the Valley I have seen so many celebrities I cannot count them anymore. Also, while working in the entertainment business for several years I ran into more than my fair share. But I never have seen Tim Hutton. I don't know much about him anymore. I know he was married to Debra Winger, which I found odd, and has a son named Noah. I think he might have another child, I don't know. There are probably a million things I don't want to know about Tim.

So I'm watching him on this new show and I see the grey hair at his temples. I think to myself, "Oh Tim, it's been so long hasn't it?" I hate to say this, but I was always surprised Tim didn't become a 'bigger' movie star. He's a terrific actor. What happened? Bad choices? Timing? Luck? When I was in love with him at 13, he was a MAN of 19!!!!! LOL! He was SO MUCH OLDER! Now, I've caught up to him. We're all getting older. A lot older. Why is it so easy to see yourself age on other people's faces?

A couple of years ago when I was in New York city I went to a restaurant Tim co-owns called P.J. Clark's. It's fantastic. It's in a really, really old building and serves awesome burgers. I wish I was in New York now. Anywhere but here.

So I've spent the majority of this weekend either doing homework or catching up on a) sleep and b)tv shows. I took my friend Gena out for her 43rd b-day last night. Somehow I managed to get us lost in L.A. - my own damned city. That's how screwed up my head is. I'm preoccupied all the time now with homework and this program. There is no life outside the program. I have drunk from the well of the Kool-Aid people. I am lost now; abandon all hope, all ye who enter here. I swear they should've put that on the program forms we got on the first day.

Tomorrow we don't have to go to the middle school because of Yom Kippur. But I do have my Ed Psych class. I start my student teaching on October 23rd with a 5th grade class. I am seriously scared - yes, of a class of 5th graders!! I never in a million years could've imagined the amount of information we're supposed to learn and know and apply as teachers in such a short time. This makes getting my M.A. look like a walk in the park.

In other exciting news, it was overcast here all day and even rained a tiny bit. This is very exciting in a city where it can be hotter than hell all through October. I am so bloody sick of this infernal heat I could scream. The pumpkin patches are out in full force - yay! I still need to get my own Halloween decorations out. It's all I can do not to buy Halloween candy now and eat it. Those damned Reese's pumpkins should be illegal they're so addictive.

I have a quiz in ESL on Tuesday. Did I mention my teacher is this Hispanic Communist? Ok, I don't know about that, but she rambles on incessantly about her own political beliefs and basically spent a lot of class time talking about how us white folk just don't understand race relations. Um, bitch, I've lived in the biggest multicultural city in the U.S. my whole life. I was here for the 1992 riots. Two of my best friends are Hispanic. The city I grew up in is a hotbed of racial unrest. I'm not the dumb ass cracker you think I am. Seriously. There were people in the class who were shocked to find out that Mexico treats the Central Americans about as well as we treat the Mexicans here. No shit senora! And my friend P was stunned to find out that even within races, there's a hierarchy based on the colour of your skin. The lighter your skin, the better you are perceived and the better chance you have in life. I'm not making this shit up. It sucks but it's true. I am so sick of this Latina and her reverse racism though I'm gonna flip out one of these days. We have her class on Halloween this year. Maybe I should start cutting up my white sheet now. And I ain't talking about coming as no ghost either. Apparently me and my peeps are responsible for keeping the other races down. Look, I'm no dummy. I know being born white, although it was totally out of my control, has afforded me great opportunities. But I didn't have any more control over that than others have being born black, Hispanic or Asian. I don't look at these kids and think "I'm not teaching these inferior beings" - Jesus! I look at these kids and think "They deserve only the best from me." She can kiss my lily-white ass. Professors who use class time for their own personal agendas make me sick. I made sure I never got political in my classes. It'd also be nice if she actually did her job and took the time to teach me how to teach content material to English Language Learners, as the students are now called. Somehow though, I have a feeling she's gonna go on and on about that border wall bill that passed recently. I can't believe this is the best person the university has for this job. Here's a comment she'd appreciate: it was probably affirmative action. So chew on that, and viva la raza!

Photo: The lovely Timothy Hutton, 26 years after I first fell in love with him.

MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

This Was Going to be a Beautiful Article on the First Day of Autumn But Now it's a Quiz Because Netscape Ate My Blog (see previous blog) So Now I'm Giving You This Instead

What song makes you cry?: “All I Know” by the Church, “Fix You” by Coldplay, “I Hope You Dance” by Leeanne Womack

What do you like to listen to before bed?: The wind, the rain, my cats purring, Steve Kilbey’s voice, Alan Rickman’s voice, Peter O’ Toole’s voice, Clive Owen telling me I’m the love of his life and the best sex he ever had (I listen to that inside my head)…silence

a p p e a r a n c e
HEIGHT: 5'9"
HAIR COLOR: brown with blond highlights
SHOE SIZE: 9
PIERCINGS: 2 (one in each ear)
TATTOOS: None, thank God because you aren’t allowed to show any as a teacher (stupid but true). For myself, I’m not big on tattoos anyway. Can’t commit.
UNDERPANTS YOU'RE WEARING: white, cotton, boring
WHAT SONG ARE YOU LISTENING TO?: A Design For Life – Manic Street Preachers
WHAT TASTE IS IN YOUR MOUTH?: diet Pepsi
WHAT'S THE WEATHER LIKE?: Gorgeous, blue skies and hot, dry, windy air. The Santa Anas have arrived, thank you.

d o - y o u
GET MOTION SICKNESS?: Yes, while reading in cars and on some flimsy boats
HAVE A BAD HABIT?: Try about a hundred or so
GET ALONG WITH YOUR PARENTS?: My dad yes (although he’s dead now so it's super easy to get along with him) and my mom – well, we fight but we love each other like mad

f a v o r i t e s
TV SHOW: Nip/Tuck, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, House, BBC Mysteries
MAGAZINE: Vanity Fair, Time, Newsweek, Details, Esquire, GQ, Psychology Today, More, Oprah, Archeology Today, The New Yorker – sorry you asked? It goes on….I am addicted to magazines. I have a rare magazine gene.
THINGS TO DO ON THE WEEKEND: Sleep! Go to the movies late at night. Watch videos. Go to a book store and spend endless hours looking at books. Read magazines. Eat out. Stay up late. Now, anything but homework.

h a v e - y o u

BROKEN THE LAW: Of course
RUN AWAY FROM HOME: Yes, when I was 16. It lasted about a day.
SNUCK OUT OF THE HOUSE: No.
EVER GONE SKINNY DIPPING: Yes
MADE A PRANK PHONE CALL: God yes! When I was a kid that was THE thing to do. It was grand fun.
USED YOUR PARENTS' CREDIT CARD: Yes -only when allowed to.
FALLEN ASLEEP IN THE SHOWER/BATH: No. It would scare me to fall asleep in the shower. I think that’s called passing out.
LET A FRIEND CRY ON YOUR SHOULDER: Yes

do you l o v e

CHILDREN: More than I ever thought I did and yes, as long as they're old enough to communicate with. I especially love kids in kindergarten and first grade. Smartest people on the face of the earth. Really, they've been my best teachers in life. However, I don’t think I was meant to have my own children. I want to help children become the best damned people they can in this great, wonderful, crazy mad, sad world.

BEEN IN LOVE?: Sadly I don’t think I really have. I love people and animals and things like songs and movies like crazy though. I feel like I’m in love with those things.

r a n d o m

YOUR CD PLAYER HAS IN IT RIGHT NOW: Rob Dickinson, Fresh Wine For the Horses
IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?: Yellow. It’s happy.
WHAT'S THE NEXT CD YOU'RE GONNA GET: Don’t know. Whatever strikes my fancy. Probably a soundtrack.
LAST TIME YOU CRIED?: About three days ago. Man, that’s a record for me. I cry a lot. I'm one of those highly sensitive types and if you don't like it, well fuck you!

PART TWO

Have you ever licked the back of a CD to try to get it to work?: Kind of.
Have you ever puked at a bar or club?: God no. Never have been a big drinker.
Have you ever dated someone you met online?: Yes, I’ve gone out with some people – but nothing huge has ever developed. Although my brother got married to someone he met online so I don’t think it’s a big deal. I would prefer to meet men the old-fashioned way: at a barn dance.

Have you ever smoked pot at a concert?: Yes. Actually in the parking lot at the Greek Theatre.
Have you ever dated/fooled around with a coworker?: In the places I’ve worked? No.
Ever been involved in a hit & run?: No, thank God.
Have you ever been on a blind date?: Yes. They suck. Dating sucks.
Are looks important?: Naturally. It’s biology.

Do you have any friends that you've known for 15 years or more?: Yes. I’ve known my best friend for 32 years.
By what age would you like to be married?: Before I’m dead would be nice. Obviously marriage hasn’t been a huge priority for me but I’d like to try it once.

Does the number of people a person's slept with affect your view of them?: Only if it was an obscene Paris Hilton-type amount. Also, I think it’s best to sleep with more than one person in your life. Variety IS the spice of life….
Have you ever sacrificed yourself so your friend can get in good with a person of the opposite sex?: Hell no. For some reason, like S, guys always go for whatever girlfriend I’m out with.
Have you ever drank milk that was past the expiration date?: Yes and the horror is still with me. Therapy helps.
Are you a good tipper?: Yes. I was a waitress in grad school; I know how brutal that job can be. However, if you are horrible as a server, I mean, TERRIBLE HORRIBLE THE WORST I HAVE EVER SEEN…I will tip poorly or stiff you to get the message across.
What's the most you have spent for a haircut?: Probably close to $200 for cut and colour
Have you ever had a crush on a teacher?: No. But once I had a really hot Scottish student when I taught college; I had a crush on him. He was flirtatious but I wanted to keep my job. My friend encouraged me to sleep with him. But she didn't need to work. ; )
Do you know all the words to the first verse of Ice Ice Baby?: No, my brain power is used for more important things.
Have you ever had crispy bangs?: Christ on the Cross, what are those?
What was the worst style of the 80's?: Oh yeah, the hair. BIG. Bon Jovi big.
Have you ever peed in public?: Does kindergarten count? ; )

Photo: Clive Owen, actor. Now this is a fucking MAN.

MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

FUCK YOU NETSCAPE BASTARDS!

FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!
FUCKING FUCKERS FUCK IT!
FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK!

There are no amount of fucks to get across how angry I am right now. I just wrote a beautiful blog about autumn and other things and Netscape shut my computer down. FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I know, I know, I should've been writing it in Word, or saved it. DON'T TELL ME I KNOW! But I didn't this time. MOTHERFUCKERS!

I could throw this fucking computer out the window right now.
Other than that, HAPPY FUCKING FIRST DAY OF AUTUMN!
THE MOTHERFUCKING SANTA ANAS ARE HERE!
It's hot and windy and dry. I hope NETSCAPE BURNS IN HELL!
Yes I know that makes no sense.

DO NOT FUCK WITH ME NOW.
And it's such a pretty day too.
Fuck it.

MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

The Young and the Restless

Nope, not talking about the soap opera. Talking about the little munchkins that have taken over my life these past two weeks. I'm almost halfway into my third week into my credential program and in my second week at L. elementary where the shock has warn off, only to be replaced by hideous disbelief at the two lousy teachers I've been placed with. First I get Ms. M, who made Cruella de Vil (sp?) look like a saint. This witch is the meanest, nastiest, coldest 1st grade teacher I've ever seen. She pounded so hard on those kids it broke my heart. I truly, truly believe she should NOT be in the classroom - or anywhere near children. She's bitter, angry, short-tempered, mean and I am going to have to specifically request that I NOT student teach with her if I pick first grade as my student teaching grade. I HATE HER. Not just because of her style, but because of the things she said to the students. She belittled them. She made them feel less than and they already have such hard lives. I've never seen anything like it in any school in my life. I was literally stunned.

Monday I was moved to a third grade class right across from my 1st grade class. I've been seeing my first graders all week - they come up and say "Hi Ms. D!" and yell it across the playground. The saddest moment is when they asked me why I wasn't coming back to their class. You know, it's not that I'm so great, it's that they are desperate to be around someone who's not going to verbally tear them apart. Yesterday a little girl named Jessica ran across the playground and just hugged me - while I was on my cell phone! They are fearless and full of love at that age. What happens? People like Ms. M happen to them. Sad.

Anyway, now I am in a third grade class that would make Ringling Bros. weep with envy. I mean, all we're missing are the freakin' three rings. This teacher, another Mrs. M, is older and I believe has taught longer. She knows what she's teaching - but she has NO CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT skills. Or she just chooses to let her students act like screaming howler monkeys. It's not the kids. Almost all the kids are just being kids. Except one kid in the back who kept mumbling things to himself and looking at me strangely; him I worry about. But seriously - without classroom management, nothing gets done. Instruction time is lost. No one learns anything. To give you an idea of what was going on in the class, picture the following: 20 students at their desks, all doing something different at one time while the idiot teacher alternately reads from a story and barks at the students. We had

- one student lying on the floor
-one boy who kept falling out of his chair
-one boy who insisted on switching chairs every ten seconds
-one girl who got up every three minutes for a Kleenex
-one boy who kept moving his entire desk back until it hit the wall
-one girl talking to another girl
-one boy who yes, put his pencil up his nose
-one boy who continually YELLED OUT at every opportunity, and no he doesn't have ADD or Tourette's to my knowledge
-one boy who kept sticking his pencil in another girl's armpit
-one girl wandering the class for no reason

The rest of the students were either sleeping, playing with a friend, yawning, staring at the walls, ceiling, their pencils or talking. It was SO LOUD I thought I was going to have a stroke. I debated whether or not to look in my bag for any kind of pill that would dull my senses. I am only half-kidding. This sad classroom is due to a horrible, boring, scripted reading curriculum called Open Court Reading that the school district implemented because of NCLB and it's due to the teacher's inability to control her students. Some of my fellow cohorts got to see some really good teachers in action. I am angry I didn't. Why did I have to see such lousy teachers? I mean, BOTH my teachers suck and suck hard. Sure, it shows me exactly what NOT to do....that's a lesson I suppose. But I never would've talked to those kids like dogs in the first place and I will not allow 5 warnings in the class before you get in trouble. You get one warning with me, then you'd better start praying to God because you may never see recess again.

We had our ESL class today. Half these classes are what we call 'alphabet soup' classes. ESL, ELD, EO, RIFL, LEP, LRE, MDC, SST - I'm not kidding - all of these acronyms mean something. I'll tell you now - if English is your native language then you are EO - English Only. We were being taught how to administer the CELDT exam - which is an assessment of where a student is in terms of speaking and understanding English. At the middle school we are at, almost 1000 of the 2000 students need to take it. If you are a student who doesn't speak English well, and you never make it out of the ESL classes, you are hugely likely to drop out of school and never do well academically. Parents, even if you don't speak English - make sure your kids do, somehow, someway. You come to this country, your kids are going to either learn English and thrive or fall into an educational black hole. Sadly, culturally many of these people don't value education. There's no importance placed on it. I hope that will change.

When kids are struggling academically in school, they learn to hate it, and you, the teacher. Statistics show by middle school they've made the decision to drop out. That's 6th, 7th and 8th grade. It's shocking and sad and if things don't change, it's the future of this country.

So today after class I went to the bookstore to buy a 'multicultural' book for my students to 'welcome' them to school and make them feel warm and fuzzy. Honestly, I couldn't really find a 'multicultural' book if using that term means having people of different ethnicities in it. But I did find a really cute book about the first day of school. The teacher is a flamingo and every one of her students is a different animal. It's so cute. It scares me how much I like to sit in the children's book section in the bookstore. And it'd be even better - if there weren't children there. LOL!

Since I was back in richie rich WASPville, I encountered two screaming young boys. One was literally ordering his mother to do something and she said, "Jason, don't be so commanding." He was! He sounded like a drill sargeant. A spoiled drill sargeant. I can't spell that word. This teacher is too lazy to look it up now. Ha. Now I know, I'm not a parent, but if little Jason ever spoke to me that way, we'd be out of the bookstore and on our way home for a long talk, and an even longer time out. However, my favourite moment of the day had to come with the Screaming Mom and Son team.

This woman walked through the bookstore literally (I am not exaggerating) YELLING at the top of her lungs for her kid. "MATTHEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MATTHEW WHERE ARE YOU!" It wasn't that he was lost per se, she was just annoyed. And she let the ENTIRE bookstore know it. "MATTHEW I AM GOING TO GO NOW! ARE YOU COMING!" I stood there, my jaw on the floor. Did this woman not have a shred of dignity? Was she not the tiniest bit embarrassed to be acting like this?

And then we hear little Matthew, who isn't that little, YELL right back, "I HAVE TO GO POO POO!" And mom says, equally loudly, "Well you don't have to advertise it to everyone!!!"

Too.fucking.late. That reminds me. In the 3rd grade classroom, they have a list of rules on the wall. (Why I don't know as you can see no one follows them). But the one that really shocked me is "No swearing." NO SWEARING! These kids are 8 or 9 years old! Even I, the motherfucking sailor/truckdriver swearing queen didn't start swearing until high school or maybe even college!!! I couldn't even imagine a "No Swearing" sign at my elementary school. Probably because that was 30 years ago and we were at a much higher socio-economic place. Sad, but true.

Have I told you all lately how happy I am to have cats? BTW, Fletcher is cone free, as free as the cone goes...a few mornings ago I woke up and she finally managed to take the cone off. She's good. No more bruising and her incision has healed nicely. And when she has to poop, she doesn't even tell me. It's bliss I tell you, bliss.

I'm actually finding other teachers who don't have kids, which is kind of nice, because I've already had some people look at me like I'm nuts because I don't have my own rugrats but am willing to teach other people's kids. Yeah, that's the point. At the end of the day, I get to go home to PEACE and QUIET. I'm still going to be considered a biological freak by many, but so be it.

So that's the report from the trenches this week. I'm hoping to blog soon about something other than school, but it really has taken over my life. When I read a magazine or watch a TV show I actually feel guilty - like I'm wasting time and I should be doing homework. Homework is still manageable but I can see it's gonna get ugly. When it does, this blog will probably go black for a long, long time.

MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

The Greatest Love of All...Is No More

Whitney and Bobby are breaking up.
It's true.
I read it today. Oh the humanity!
DIVORCE.
Oh man. Just when I thought things were starting to settle down a bit.
I don't know. This really pulls the rug right out from under me.
Whitney and Bobby? I mean, shit, who could have predicted this one???

Crack is wack.
Oh Whitney, you crazy coke fiend
someday you'll want your Bobby beard back.

Photo: Whitney, who's gonna hold the mirror while your snort all that coke?

You Can't Always Get What You Want...


....and sadly, sometimes, even if you try, you can't get what you need. What a day I've had. We started our new observations today at L. elementary school in the inner valley. I want to say inner city, but it's really the valley. However, it might as well be the inner city. The middle school we were at last week is only about two and half (fairly long) blocks away and as bad as that was, this elementary school is a thousand times worse. I feel like today was one of those seminal days that changes you forever. S. Middle School is like Beverly Hills compared to this K-5 school. The neighborhood goes from bad to really, really fucking scary in only 3 blocks. I parked on a busy street, but was still paranoid my car wouldn't be there when we were let out. There's absolutely no parking in the parking lot. The cars are stacked three and four high. The neighborhood is beyond poor. It is the very image of poverty, hopelessness, fear. It's a densely populated area, and the school is impacted with about 1200 students. About 98% are Hispanic and 100% are on both Federally funded breakfast and lunch programs.

According to our site manager, this place is the safest place the students will be in all day. This food is probably the most food, and the best food, they'll get all day. Most students come from immigrant parents. Many are agrarian workers. The site manager said that on average, the parents were only educated up until the 6th grade - maybe even less for the women. So not only do they not speak English, many of them are semi-literate or just completely illiterate.

Many children live with several other families in one room in one apartment. Sometimes they have no permanent address. Some kids live in a car. This is one of the few schools that has both a full-time psychologist on staff AND a psychiatric social worker. The problems at home for these kids are monumental. Divorces, abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse, incest, violence - and bad parenting...whcih isn't a crime but should be. The nurse at the school has the biggest job of any school nurse I've ever seen. She not only treats cuts and bruises, she gets the students glasses if they need them, medical care...even handing out soap. I mean, these kids don't even have SOAP sometimes! I took one sick little girl to the bathroom (she was a first grader I was observing - oh please don't let me get sick!) and she didn't even know how to wash her hands properly. So I gently asked her to use soap and explained to her why she should do that. Her name is Jessica and she was so sweet.

I have been placed in a first grade class all this week. I have to say, the teacher is really short, blunt and abrasive with these kids. She's not a bad teacher it seems; her style just grates on me. Many of these kids are very bright, although almost all of them come to kindergarten speaking no English. Yet these kids all spoke English pretty well. I could not stop thinking about the kindergarten class I worked with earlier this year and how much those kids have - not even in terms of material goods, but in terms of a place to live, and parents who are able to take good care of them.

These parents are at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. They are in total survival mode. One mother keeps bringing her daughter to first grade an hour late every day. The teachers usually need translators to talk with the parents. Many parents don't care; there are a rare few that do.

Regardless of how I feel about their parents coming to this country as illegal immigrants (somehow I get branded as racist for stating a fact) I do know that all they want is a better life for themselves, and possibly more importantly for their children. Most, if not all of these children have been born here, so they are U.S. citizens. Sadly they move around a lot, so the school has a very transient population of students. I fear the U.S. will simply become like Mexico one day. There will be two classes of people. The very rich and the very, very poor.

I will say they had a beautiful, colourful library with tons of nice, new books. I was so happy to see that. The school itself is quite old. The bathrooms were filthy. I thought I could handle it. I think of that cliched line, "You can't handle the truth!" No. I was stunned. It's one thing to hear about poverty in the abstract. It's one thing to drive through a poverty-stricken neighborhood or see the occasional begger. It's an entirely different thing altogether to know how these children live, and see them up close.

I was introduced as Ms. D, because my last name is a bitch to say. They all said "Hi Ms. D!" They were writing a sentence or two on the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Some wrote beautifully. One student should've been held back in kindergarten according to the teacher because he can't write at all. But for some reason he wasn't held back. This is why we have people at the college level who can't read and write. His mother didn't want him held back. The principal wouldn't back up the teacher. It's fucked. I walked around, said hello to each student and complimented their writings and/or drawings. They're sweet - they're just 6 years old. A lot of them seemed fascinated by me for some reason.

In other news, Fletcher abused her cone-free privileges and licked herself so hard it looked like she had internal bleeding. I called the vet from school and they told me to bring her in. So I missed the first class meeting of Educational Psychology. Thank God the professor was understanding. But it put so much pressure on me to miss that meeting. You get a feel for how the class is going to be in the first meeting. Although my friend P. will tell me about it and give me her notes, it's not the same as being there. I fucking NEW I was going to miss something due to this cat. I feel like even if I am sick and DYING I have to attend every class session no matter what. And little kids are always sick. I remember only too well how sick the kids at WR got me last spring.

At least they took Fletcher's stitches out. But that head cone is back on and back on for another week. I HAVE HAD IT with this cat saga. It's not her fault. But I knew in my heart I'd miss a class or an observation because of her somehow. I guess it was my own stupidity in freeing her from the cone.

Driving from the elementary school to our college for class, my friend P. said sarcastically, "We can't educate the Mexicans. Who will clean our houses?" Sadly I think a lot of people feel this way. But these kids do deserve an education. I just don't know if I have it in me to give it to them. God help me, but I don't know that I could do it. That makes me feel sad and ashamed. One thing I will always feel from now on, in a way that is completely different, is grateful for my upbringing. Grateful to the Fates, luck, whatever that I had two loving parents who provided me with a healthy, wonderful childhood for the most part. You think you have problems...then you go to a place like this. And suddenly, you have no problems at all.

MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

The Ruins of September

What great ruins now sleep eternally
on the broken ground of this grey city
Like souls prostrate in mighty grief
In all the world, black disbelief

Human eyes will never again see
the views to Heaven once conceived
in man's own mind
a three pound universe
the same which brought these giants down
tis now the view of Hell unbound

Who were the men, the hands indeed
that set in stone
the hopes, the dreams
birthed by Rome in concrete, stone

Of greatness built to Gods and men
and leveled in seconds by Hell's condemned
A city keens for fallen friends
Yet bent not broken in the final end.