Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Two Post Tuesday: The Lost Post (or, The Last Day of Camp)
My drive home is the same every day. The same not-quite-level roads, past cotton and rice fields, through school zones and road construction, coming into town like every good country girl should do as often as she can. Only today, listening to my obnoxiously girly music, rethinking the soap-box lecture I gave 7th period (where I sounded more like my dad than I ever have in my entire life, and used the phrase "personal responsibility" an embarrassing number of times), it dawned on me that all of this as I know it is about to come to a close.Next year I'll come home to a different house with different roommates. Next year C. won't race me to school and J. won't be around to bitch while I silently ponder how he must be the most wonderful teacher in the world. Next year will be different. Not better, not worse, only different. One of those squint your eyes and tilt your head to the left sorts of changes where everything is the same but not. And even though I know that I've made the right decision and steadfastly repeated to everyone (including myself) that my work here is not done, that my heart isn't ready to lead me out of the Delta, sometimes those moments still come when the windows are down and it all gets overwhelmingly sad.
Walking away is something I've always been good at. I've left towns, boyfriends, family. I've gone off to do my own thing in places that made my friends worry and my parents check their checking accounts and insurance policies. This is the first time I've realized that there is just as much perspective in planting one's feet firmly on the ground and refusing to budge.
Even in all of this, when we're far apart and rarely in contact, we are all there. We've been in this together. When it was time to cry because something horrible happenned or simply because the stress and frustration had brought us to the breaking point, there were at least a few someones who knew exactly what you were feeling. I haven't told enough people how much they've meant to me or how much I'm going to miss them. And even though this weekend and next are both to be a celebration, I know now that there will be tears. I know I won't be able to look at these faces, know what we've shared, and not burst out with silly stories followed by that creeping knowledge that none of it will ever quite be the same again.
I didn't cry at my high school graduation. I laughed knowing that I wouldn't stay in touch, that it was the first step in a line of many. I didn't cry at my college graduation, thinking of the car I was buying the next week, of the drive to Oxford, of unknown adventure. In ten days, I will cry in The Grove because I finally get it.
Heather at 5:58 PM
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Two Post Tuesday: Shit That's Cool
1. My dad's comment on my brother's blog last Tuesday, challenging future themed daily entries. In case you didn't catch it:First there was "200 Word Wednesday" now there's "Two Post Tuesday". What's next "Freakin' Fuckin' Friday" or "Satire Soaked Saturday"?
*We are planning a "Freakin' Fuckin' Friday" post from the glorious Holly Springs for later in the week.
2. Your Pantone Birthday Color, only mine sort of sucks. (Be sure to click on your month color to find the color for your particular birthday.) I ended up with something horrifically titled "Lavender Frost," which looks more like a color for the Mother of the Bride than anything I'd ever slap on a wall, but at least the description fits me perfectly: "You are extremely bright (of course) and may become bored if you are not stimulated or surrounded by people who can keep up with your keen intellect."
3. The long-awaited end to my insistent procrastination. I finally ordered my cap and gown, and also found it necessary to order a kickass graduation dress. (dress also to be featured at the SHS prom and the wedding of an evil pseudo-friend from high school)
Heather at 4:47 PM
Saturday, April 24, 2004
I am precisely this lame.
And what have YOU read? (stolen from Ms. Frizzle)Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son
Heather at 5:47 PM
Thursday, April 22, 2004
The Heather FAQ
I'm getting bored of this, so here you go:1. What are you doing next year?
As far as I know, I'm teaching at the same school, and moving across the street and over one house. As for the smaller details, you can always email to find out where I'll be eating/drinking/sleeping on any given night, if that's the sort of information you're after.
2. Why in the hell are you staying?
Because I'm in love with my children. Crazy first-love kinda love, where you scream all the time but everything still exciting and new. I kinda like it, so there.
3. Are you single?
Define "single".
4. Can I have your autograph?
Sure.
5. Why do you never answer your phone?
Bitches, I DO answer my phone. I think you were trying to call someone else. Either that, or you were drunk. Probably drunk.
If I missed any, drop them in the comment box. I promise to leave profanity-laden responses. In other news, we now have a flower. Feel free to leave any and all inappropriate "deflowering" jokes in the comments as well.
Heather at 9:05 PM
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
200 Word Wednesday: For Lizzie
I know now how it feltAll those times you talked about going back
And you’d get that far off look in your eye
(that I couldn’t help but want to slap off your face)
Sometimes that “L” word just doesn’t play fair
And you end up looking into eyes
That shouldn’t be that close to your face
Then your shirt’s on the floor…
And you’re not thinking, “My best friend
Will think I’m an idiot when I tell her.”
You’re thinking, “I had forgotten
People can look at each other like that.
I shouldn’t be here. I don’t want to be
Anywhere else in the world but here.
If every moment with you could be
Exactly-like-this-moment, I could stay
Next to you forever, and I know
I could work really hard to forget
All the things that made it fall apart.”
The only truly sad thing is
I remember how the story ends
I remember how this has to drag itself out
Until everyone is so tired of it
They want to scream when the phone rings.
And so my strategy is this:
Don’t speak a word of it.
I tried to tell the beginning
Of this second chapter tonight
And the word “magic”
Obliterated everything else.
So I’m leaving it at that.
Heather at 9:05 PM
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Linkety-Do
God bless my kinja.*note: post specifically designed for the blog obsessed (esp. those who check blogs incessantly from work.) We know who you are.
Heather at 12:51 PM
Monday, April 19, 2004
Boring as black coffee
Every once in a while this sadness creeps over me, and everything feels really lonely, and I'm distant (especially from the people that I love/adore/talk to on a daily basis). It dawned on me last night that it wasn't PMS or garden variety single girl loneliness, but genuine summer-camp-esque homesickness. (except for the fact that I was never actually homesick when I was at camp)So, in short, I'm sad, and to date I've only found one person that can lessen the tension of the screws that are simultaneously holding me together and making me crazy-sad with missing my family. Thanks Ashley for answering your phone.
A short list of things that have made me want to cry and/or hit something tonight:
1. Idiot shallow boys
2. Nonidiot, nonshallow boys that call and then make me sad
3. The fact that I need new tennis shoes
4. The cereal being a little stale
5. My phone not being charged
6. Mosquitos
7. Frizzy hair
8. Not being carefree enough to go for a drive and listen to the new Ani cd I burned
9. My inability to take a full breath/ keep my eyes from watering
10. Not being tan
p.s. For everyone that has been following the budget cuts in Mississippi, as far as I know I still have a job. Pink slips were handed out on Friday and addressed in meetings today. I had neither a slip nor a meeting. However, I'll only believe it when I have a new contract in my hand.
Heather at 7:19 PM
Friday, April 16, 2004
Friday Five
Top Five Things That Rock:1. Mississippi school lunches, where a fried pie counts as fruit.
2. The fact that I totally DONT GET the whole Apprentice thing.
3. No more horribly annoying Jon Peter Lewis.
4. My poor little sensitive skin has FINALLY recovered from Eyebrow Waxing Extravaganza 2004.
5. 2 periods left until I can go freakin' home to my couch.
Top Five Things That Suck:
1. Owing money to the government.
2. Owing money to Ole Miss.
3. Not having better weekend plans than "get drunk and attempt to have fun."
4. Not knowing whether or not I'll have a job next year.
5. Not having a boyfriend/crush/significant other/person to sleep with on a regular basis.
Top Five Incredibly Stupid Things I Did This Week:
1. Waited 'till yesterday to file my taxes, just because I'm that lazy.
2. Wore the same cute-but-painful heels three days in a row, thus rendering my lower back a weak-throbbing mess.
3. Answered the phone past midnight more than once.
4. Neglected to put away 96.8% of the laundry I did last weekend.
5. Put off ordering my cap and gown. Again.
Top Five Weekend Plans:
1. El Charro with the "cool kids."
2. Drinking with the real Cool Kids post El Charro.
3. Saturday and/or Sunday morning hangover.
4. Bitching about how many more weeks fo school we have left.
5. Plotting and preparation for wild-n-crazy summer romance.
Top Five Quotes of the Week:
1. Student: "Do you have any alcohol?" Me: "Rubbing or Drinking?"
2-5 To be announced post drunken antics of the weekend.
Heather at 11:05 AM
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
200 Word Wednesday: Half a memory
I was sitting on a bench, the artsy yet institutional kind commissioned for public universities and corporate outdoor smoking areas. Some conglomeration of brick and concrete, angle and curve. It was before I knew you, before I had this life full of short jaunts and disconnects, before I knew I was a writer. Back when everything seemed too good to be true, back when moments were scary instead of the scary of years and decades of blank in front of me. I remember watching people and thinking only of what they thought of me, of my clothes, of my unwashed hair, of my posture and my pen scribbling in my notebook. In everything there was fear. Fear of what I could write next, fear of what I might say in class that afternoon, fear of who I might eat lunch with. Nervousness and sweaty palms, everything a hesitation.I left three weeks later, backpack strapped securely, hugging my pillow, walking slowly behind my parents. From that moment, there is one face. Max, with his dark hair and acne, looking down at my tear-streaked face. Max, whom I’d only shared a couple brief, unimportant conversations with. “You gonna be okay, H?”
Heather at 9:20 PM
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Of some importance
Dear 2 kids that asked if I'd "had my eyebrows arched" over the holiday,By the power vested in me, you will be promoted to 10th grade, if only due to your immense observational skills.
You're effing welcome,
Ms. J
Heather at 9:05 PM
Easter in Review: The Holiday List
Thursday:1. Attend pseudo-get-together with well dressed TFAers, while I came complete in the Heather uniform, complete with appropriate footwear.
2. Emergency phone call to inform a certain someone of an inappropriately short skirt.
3. Golden Girls, Monty Python, and mocking conversation until the better-dressed crowd made their way to the bar and I made my way home to the bed.
Friday:
1. Ash and friend come to visit.
2. Porch drinking, loud music, and other activities intended to draw police attention.
3. Plan created to get underage sister and friend into bar.
4. Bar event goes well for sister and friend, and poorly for everyone else, including multiple instances of unsolicited drunken kissing.
Saturday:
1. Early morning trip to resupply on cigs made for interesting learning experience concerning pop-on rims.
2. Lunch trip to The Crown with unlimited pie.
3. Really really bad movie at Sam's.
4. Thunderstorm that was supposed to be really awesome cool, then wasn't cool at all...
5. Until two hours later when we realized we hadn't eaten dinner and went to Wendy's at 10:30 in a hail storm.
Sunday:
1. Easter dinner not intended for the impatient. (seriously people, these things take time.)
2. Very smoky kitchen due to grilling/oven accident of a week ago that was never properly corrected.
3. Broke in a "new boyfriend," (J's, not mine) with a wealth of off color dinner table jokes.
4. Had the most boring evening of my young life, but managed to learn the following:
A. Other people are just as bored as you are, but don't talk about it as much.
B. Sparking grape juice and amaretto do not make an appropriate after-dinner beverage.
Monday:
1. Drizzle and unusually cold temperatures lead to...
2. Seven loads of laundry
3. Immense consumption of left-over Easter dessert.
Heather at 10:02 AM
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
200 Word Wednesday:
How to Become a Stalker
1. Have an unsuccessful adolescence. Be awkward. Go home and watch Mister Rogers when you’re fourteen and know you shouldn’t. Like boys. Wear stirrup pants and long sweaters. Make sure the boys don’t like you back.
2. In high school, find the boy who sums up the whole of everything you will ever want in a man. Place too much value on popularity, athleticism, and shiny dark hair. Perfect the after-school-drive-by with the help of your mom. On your way to Wal-Mart, pray that you will see him there and that he will suddenly realize you’re cool.
3. In college, fall in love with a professor or three. Have vast, vivid sexual fantasies about them. Be too shy to answer questions in class, but take notes furiously. Graduate summa cum laude.
4. After college, continue to fall in love with the wrong type of man. Don’t give someone the time of day if you think they’d actually call the morning after. Write poetry about trysts you thought were love but were actually little more than sweat and boredom. Perfect the art of sounding vapid and intelligent via voice mail. Learn the magical chemistry of being emotionally unavailable yet insistent.
Much thanks to Lorrie Moore and "How to Become a Writer."
Heather at 7:34 PM
Updates and boring stuff
Everything has been a bit blah for a while. I thought it was time to move into spring and leave my Diana DeGarmo-black-and-pink getup behind. That, and we've been lacking profanity lately.I updated the links, and I think I'll add a few more before the day is out, mostly in a shameless homage to Lizzie's unfailing taste and my neverending efforts to steal her stuff.
My only contribution is Roxy. I've been reading here for a while and she's entirely foul and devastatingly funny.
p.s. I think I'm trying to arrange links by size (?). Sorta like the time J.R. decided his archive links were starting to look like a penis.
Heather at 9:14 AM
Monday, April 05, 2004
Bonfires, Daylight Savings, and Snot
Now that I have seven more hellish periods behind me, I have to admit the weekend is a bit of a blur. How I ended up being the perpetually sober one this weekend, I'll never know. Maybe it had something to do with my lazy day off on Friday. Maybe I was in mommy mode. Either way, I don't think I lived up to my party-girl-potential. Friday night was some sort of Spectators-One Block-babysitting-mess. Not enough beer, not enough drunk dialing, not enough people to fill my living room, much less a bar in Greenville. However, while the horrific frat house wrestling matches left two friends with seriously bodily injuries, all I have to show for it is an attempted purple mushroom tattoo. Don't ask.Saturday, in reverse order, VH1 until 4 a.m. keeping J. awake, One Block emergency rescue team, bonfire without any boys and with one communal marshmallow roasting stick, nap in someone else's bed, basketball, pizza, realization of moderate sunburn, catfish festival complete with cute boys and me in a halter top.
And Sunday was Sunday. There was lots of driving and lots of asking "What time is it again?" And it's all a big blur, but even in its bluriness and time-wasting-ness, it was a hell of a lot better than today. Today where I feel fat and useless and tired with a capital "T." In spite of my unfailing adoration and enjoyment of the fact that the entire state of Mississippi has sprung into bloom, my allergies are coming back with a vengance. I can feel that slight sting in the back of my throat. I doubt I could pop my ears if I tried. And the sneezes are coming at such regular intervals that if they were contractions, I'd be on my way to the hospital right about now.
Heather at 7:54 PM
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Yes, a pen.
I'm taking the day off tomorrow, mainly because I freaking can (but partly because sometimes you go to school and everything goes really well and you need some time to bask in the glory of the academic process) except for the following horrors:1. The Distance Learning equipment completely not working for the bazillionth time this year and the subsequent phone call inquiring as to why I didn't fix it. (Good lord, people. I have degrees in English and Anthropology. If you need your eqipment excavated, call me. Otherwise, back the fuck off.)
2. A student getting stabbed in the head with a pen.
3. My principal hiding out in the library to avoid the flood of teachers attempting to turn in their notes requesting subs tomorrow. Wonder if it's ever dawned on him that if he got a backbone, he'd spend significantly less time avoiding people.
4. Stabber-girl's mother who reeked of old cigarette smoke and came very close to "bringing it" to the principal right in front of my face. (If this had actually come to fruition, I know I would have stood and laughed and perhaps applauded. But then again, I'd probably be minus one job for such behavior.)
But no, really, it was a good day. A day to be celebrated. And I intend on celebrating, all by myself, while those little suckers attempt to dehumanize another substitute. God be with her.
Heather at 6:39 PM
