hippie dress

I did go outside yesterday, and spent money. I have a wedding to attend next weekend, and I was feeling I ought to wear something new. I've shopped off and on for this--and found this Jackie O. kind of dress (navy w/ polkadots), but I just didn't feel right in it. It seemed like something I'd only wear once and never again--unless I go to some similar wedding. Then I found a hippie dress and a little crochet cardigan and I bought that. Now, the whole point for the spree was to get something a little more dressy, since this wedding will be dressy. And I go and buy something not so. I don't know if I'll wear it or not. I decided I would wear something I already have if I decide not to wear it.

Anyway.

The wedding's in PA, near Lancaster, so I'll be staying with the illustrious R and H. Which will be very excellent. I've been to Lancaster before, but only for one night with an older couple who I'd never met in my life. Tom and I were there for another friend's wedding, and they put us up for the night. We weren't married yet, but I guess S hadn't told them either way, so they put us in the same room. The entire time they tried to pry it out of us, but we were very evasive with our replies. This was a nearly Old Order Mennonite couple, so you see why they were so concerned.

God must've been watching, because we got terribly lost on the way home, and had to drive through DC to get back to Harrisonburg.

back to life

Here I am dear faithful readers, if any still remain. My class ended yesterday (I realized when looking at my last blog I made it sound like a five-week course, but it was four), and I slept off and on till around 11 am. I say off and on because it has been damn hot these past few days. I've felt I haven't really slept in our unairconditioned bake box, just lost consciousness for a few hours.

I must've slept a little though. Last night I had a nightmare about the TESOL class--my first one ever. I dreamt that instead of a lesson planning course it was a cake baking class. The time had come for the critiques of our cakes, and I was yet to bake one! I tried to make a cake using just flour and water, but it wouldn't work. Then five cake mixes appeared by the stove! So I was rushing around, and my classmates were trying to stall our teachers and I was cutting strawberries for the top...it was crazy.

I'd never had one of these during the class. I guess my dream-mind decided it was safe to come out and play.

The apartment is a disaster area, and I've had thoughts of cleaning but nothing more. I've had thoughts of going outside as well. It isn't supposed to be as hot today. You can't really tell in here.

My responsible mind has said: It's time to stop stalling and look for work. And oh, hey, there's that book I slaved over for two years. You'd better dust that off as well.

But the irresponsible mind says: Forget work! Forget writing! Go out and play! Or stay in and let your mind rot on TV!

I'm thinking the latter will win, at least for today.

About the photos:

The first on the left shows Tom (the Canadian-Ted-lookalike trainer), me and Cindy. The second shows Yira, Jim and Rose. This is at a bar we haunted throughout the course. With ridiculously priced beer, might I add. The third shows Andy (the Ukrainian trainer), Jim and Sadie in the back, Yira, me, Cindy and Rose in the front.

one week down, four more to go

I've just completed week one of the intensive TESOL course. It feels like a month! I've gotten, at max, 6 hours of sleep a night, the apartment's a mess, my laundry looks like a mountain, and I've only had a snatching of free time. I've barely seen Tom, with our conflicting schedules. The most I've talked to him is during supper, and then I head to the computer or my class reading or making lesson plans...

But I like the course, all in all. The trainers are very nice. One of them's originally from the Ukraine, and he is as cute as a button. He's always enthusiastic and good humored. The other day I saw him in Bryant Park during lunch (the building where the classes are is on 42nd St., near the main New York Public Library), just wandering around in this kind of quiet awe. He said he was looking at the trees. The other trainer is a Canadian, who is the absolute picture of what I think Ted might look like in 15 years--only a little heavier. For those who know Ted, you get the picture. They (the Ukrainian and Canadian) both know their stuff and seem to enjoy themselves immensely.

My classmates are cool. Yira (she's from the Dominican Republic) and I have really hit it off. I thought she was a lot younger than she is--she has a son who's fifteen!

Well, the weekend's here. I plan on sleeping in, doing laundry and trying to clean the apartment somewhat. We'll see what happens.

complaining new yorkers, past and present

I will not do it justice. So I merely refer you to the Times and will let you read about the complaints that have been shared with various New York mayors since the 1700s. The letter at left is my favorite.

the jeans gods have smiled again

I found another pair of thrift store jeans, this time they're "just" Gap, but they fit the best of all my new pairs! And this store had all women's jeans half off, so I got them for 6 bucks!! (Shall I make another sentence that has multiple exclamation points? Yes!!!!!) I really think luck comes in groups. I had a thrift store stint like this last fall.

I think I'm really into school mode. I want to do everything but the task at hand. I'm blogging more, cleaning more, shopping more, reading more. And now there's a farmer's market that's come up at last to Harlem. (I guess the farmer's market gods have decided that minorities like fresh organic food just like white people. Imagine! Of course, I have a sneaking suspicion it's only because there's more gentrification going on up here, rather than original thinking. The amount of white folks I've seen in the neighborhood just this week confirms it.) I want to go, but I've told myself I can't until I get a section of my homework done.

responsibility or some such nonsense

The clock is ticking on my free time this week. On Monday I begin an intensive course on teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages, (TESOL) at Rennert Bilingual for a month. For most of July and the first week of August I'll be heading out the door at the god-awful hour of 8 a.m. for a 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. class five days a week. During those hours I'm going to try to stuff as much methodology and experience into my head as possible and hopefully clean up my grammar as well. When I emerge from this course, I will hopefully have earned a certificate in TESOL and will be on my way to getting some form of employment. We'll see what happens. I already have an assignment due on the first day of class: a fourteen page questionnaire. It doesn't look too difficult, it just is something I need to sit down and do. And my mind has been on vacation too long to make much sense of it.

This weekend Tom had a four-day break from work, so we did only hedonistic things. I shopped, Tom read this giant book he bought at Housing Works, we slept in, ate out, spent way too much money and last night tried to see the fireworks with Lady L but because of a very slow subway ride we got out at Rockefeller Center and merely watched the fireworks' after-light reflecting on the buildings around us.

It was a lovely weekend, to steal a word from Thomas's blog. We ate and drank in Lady L's air conditioned apartment, had spaghetti outside, drank tea and had a McFlurry with S and A, and ate sushi in Central Park by a pond surrounded by gnats. Lovely indeed.

But, responsibility calls me to the task...

"lucky" me

For the first time in my life I have something I never thought I'd own:

A pair of Lucky Brand Jeans.

Now, one would have to stroll through my high school years to fully appreciate this. You see, in high school, owning a pair of Luckys was the IT in IT-ness. This was in the 90s-women-still-wearing-body-suits era (thank Jesus-Allah-Bhudda that's over with--though I did see some body suit tube tops earlier), so if you were female, it would be obvious whether what you wore were Luckys or not. The boys all had their pants down to their knees so you could clearly see what they wore. There was also the ubiquitous Lucky boxers, Lucky T-shirts, sweatshirts--anything that could handle a logo on it had the brand name tatooed on it. And, on the inside of the fly, there's this little patch that says, "Lucky You."

I did not own a pair of Lucky jeans in high school. I remember fondling the denim more than once at the Brass Buckle, an uber-hip, at least to me, clothing store at Towne (yes, there was some need to spell town with an e) East Mall in Wichita. But they weren't cheap--at least for me--and my mother would only buy one pair of jeans at a time, and she wasn't going to fork out 60+ bucks for a single pair. Which meant, of course, that I was forced to use my own spending money (earned by my blood-sweat-tears at babysitting or McDonald's or, later on, Alco) to purchase more, since God forbid anyone repeat the wearing of jeans more than twice a week. (Honestly, I don't know how this was communicated to me. I just knew.) So, when it came to buying jeans, I went for the cheap stuff. I remember ordering J. Crew jeans a lot--back then, you could buy J. Crew jeans for 20 odd dollars. Now the cheapest, newest pairs are 70! But there was no logo to sport (back then, J. Crew made fun of brands that had the logos--now it has fallen), and J. Crew wasn't cool then.

I half-pretended not to care. And, for the most part, I didn't. I was against the system. Grunge was somewhat popular in USD 410, so I went that way, wearing oversized flannels and plastic barrets. But there was always that little part of me that whispered that my popularity would increase just a bit higher if I owned a set of those jeans.

Now that I'm grown up, supposedly, I can laugh at those feelings. But I know those things mattered to me at the time. And who doesn't remember something that meant so much back in the day?

And now that I'm all grown up I have a little little more money to spend, and I'll admit, I have a small fetish for jeans because of all that history. But, I usually stick to thrift stores because of this. My jeans were all falling apart on me at the same time a week or so ago, so I had a mission of finding jeans to fill the gap. I even bought a brand-spanking-new pair at Old Navy! So, the other day, I happened upon one of my favorite thrift stores, and decided to go in and see what I could see. And there, in the very back, was a pair of practically new Lucky jeans. Now, I haven't seen a whole lot of Lucky jeans on the east coast. In fact, the only person I ever saw wearing them was this chick from Texas. Maybe it's more a midwestern thing. Who knows? I'll admit, they're a little bit big, but I have high hopes for this wayfaring stranger. With a little hot water and a session in the dryer, maybe it will be perfect.

full-circle, of sorts

Tom and I walked in the Gay Pride march yesterday. It was great. The Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center had a DJ on a flatbed truck; well-endowed folk swiveled gracefully; firefighters and drag queens danced down the street. Tom and I made it briefly on local news. When we came to 23rd Street and Broadway, Tom commented on the fact that we had done a full-circle, of sorts. Watching the Gay Pride march at 23rd Street was our first official activity in New York. We had arrived the day before with four large suitcases, two backpacks and two smaller suitcases. It was muggy and hot, we had to go twice to Penn Station to retrieve all our luggage, and we were completely exhausted and bewildered. The next day, some of our fellow housemates were going to this parade I'd only heard of once or twice. Now I was in the march.

I found this picture on the BBC.

wheat harvest 2006

my dirty love

We went to Montreal for a mini-vacation last week. It was nice to see a different city with a totally different vibe from New York. The tourist attractions weren't great. There's a church near the top of what folks in Montreal call the Plateau, with at least a hundred steps to it. We were expecting something holy--we were confronted with this cold mausoleum. The guide book said the basilica was "refreshing" after all the iconography of other places, but the way I look at it, the icons are what make these churches beautiful and intimate. We did find a small chapel below the basilica that was filled with votives and piles of canes and crutches--apparently there's an idea that if one climbs up the steps on the knees, this person will be healed, and the canes and crutches are proof. We also found a church near the harbor that was dedicated to sailors. Little ships hung from the ceiling, and the walls were filled with sea-faring pictures. There was something about these little places that caught my heart. People were praying in them, calling to God silently or vocally. The tinge of votive candles and incense completed the scene.

I really enjoyed Montreal. I loved the way the apartments had little terraces on them, and how people hung out there to read or smoke or talk. But I feel like Montreal is a place to live rather than visit. You won't really know that city till you've wandered it for a bit.

At any rate, my second love (the first is, of course, obvious) will always be New York. New York is like that ex-girlfriend (New York must be female--there's no way she's male) you can't shake. She's dirty, smells bad, is freezing and sweltering for months at a time, takes all your money and crowds you into a dwelling a quarter of the size of a normal place for more than half your paycheck. Yet she has pieces of beauty that always bring you back. Gorgeous architecture next to homely towers, singers in the subway, readers in pompous bookstores, theater in every hole in the wall, clothes and furniture on the street for the taking, people watching galore...what more can I say?

grrr, tigers!

This weekend Teddy was here, and I went museum wandering with him--we actually went through two museums in one afternoon! Which is one too many for me, usually. I get so drained by all the visual stimuli. We went to the MoMA and the Folk Art museum. The Folk Art wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I was envisioning a bunch of dust gathering knick knacks, but there were a few pieces of glorious artistry in the everyday--like the tiger pictured here. I wasn't sure if cameras were allowed, so I snuck this one in very fast. I felt like a detective in a weird glass and mortar jungle...

spring cleaning

For the first time in our relationship, Tom and I had a spring cleaning day for a place we can call our very own--at least, our own as long as we pay the rent. Now, Tom doesn't like the term, spring cleaning, and he has various reasons for it, but that's what we were doing no matter what it's called. We are only half--if not less than--done with the job, because we're doing all those dirty little deeds you always push under the rug: really cleaning the grout, organizing the fridge and the pantry, filing away all those bills, rearranging our bookshelves, etc. We are going to throw out our street-found lamp that has stood gathering dust tomorrow, and have put up some attractive Chinese lanterns (bought at a store called Surprise! Surprise!) instead. We also bought a new shower curtain that has the words shampoo, wash and soap on it, as you see here in the photo. It goes quite nicely with our fake wooden Michelangelo prints (found on a street near Menno House--they were some kind of Louvre souvenir) on the bathroom walls, which are a nice communist red. I'm quite pleased with it.

you're hopeless, just hopeless, Charlie Brown

The picture on the blog is not hopeless--it comes from a site by a friend of Tom's, called Hobosoup. He plugged it on his blog as well, so really I'm being a copy cat, but what can I say?

Annie (the woman in the photo) is one of the coolest people I know. She's this kick-ass, I've Been Everywhere, Been There, Done That chainsmoker I've known (through Tom) since I've lived in New York. She's kind of an underground celebrity--apparently Bjork is afraid of little Annie. (She's so tiny! I feel like a lumbering ogre around her--you should see her with Tom!) I've been to a couple of her shows, and they were fun. She has this gravelly voice that can soothe and excite at the same time.

I've been feeling like a Charlie Brown lately. Nothing I do comes out right. I wander around in front of my computer, sure that I should do something but I can't think straight enough to know what that something is. I've gotten some writing gigs--one paid, the other not-yet-paid--but I can't even do that right. I think one editor hates me, the other doesn't communicate even though I'm constantly emailing and calling. No one wants to hire me for a job that has health insurance. My MFA is a total joke in the real world. You have to publish before anyone, even an agent, will glance at you. I'm afraid I'll just be a professional student because that seems to be the only thing I'm slightly good at. The list goes on and on.

But, never fear, life goes on and I'll figure something out at some point. Something's got to happen eventually. So, maybe I'm not hopeless after all. We'll see.

huzzah! sort of...

I turned in my thesis last Tuesday. It was a rather anti-climactic moment. My thesis advisor is on sabbatical and rarely comes on campus, so I just left it in her mailbox at the graduate center. It looked a little sad to be shuttled off in such a manner, but what could I do? I felt like leaning in and whispering: It's okay, Carolyn will take you home soon. And she'll be firm but right and loving.

I think it's also a little sad because I know it's still a work-in-progress that needs to be sent out to the cold cold world of agents and editors who'll toss it out without a second thought. But I need to just put it aside for awhile.

I wanted to add something to my earlier post about music. It started out as a note to a friend but my egotism got the best of me:

I was surrounded by music all the time growing up. I honestly don't remember a time I wasn't singing or was surrounded by music of some kind. Especially in church. Everybody in the Mennonite Brethren Conference could hold a note, it seemed. It wasn't until college that I realized there were churches (and some were Mennonite!!) that couldn't sing well. That couldn't hold a four-part harmony. (I'll admit, there was a period in my life that I believed praise music was more heart-felt than hymn singing (believe it or not, I was a Christiany-handy-clappy-Christian for awhile--if you are or ever have been a Christian you'll know what I mean), but I found myself drawn back into the fold, so to speak, though there are some praise songs I still like.) I sang at church, I sang in school, was in the elite choir in high school, etc. I took piano lessons and played in the school band.

In college I had a slight, shall we say, falling out, with music. Though I was in the "common" choir, it wasn't enough for me. I wanted to be in Chambers, but they didn't let first years in and the director leaned towards actual music majors as far as selection went. I could have auditioned for it my sophomore year, but at the end of my first year the director of Swing Sisters approached me after I'd sung a few solos in concerts and told me I ought to audition for his group in the fall. The way he played it to me, it was merely a formality--that I was in. So I didn't even try out for Chambers. Swing Sisters would be a change from what I usually did, and I wanted to try something new. And guess what, I didn't get in. (The director put a stupid rose in my mailbox, and a note telling me how sorry he was, how talented I was, yadah yadah yadah...)

To compound that situation, I received a C+ in a voice class that semester. I can't even remember why. That fall I edited the campus paper; I don't really remember a whole lot about that semester beyond staying up till six in the morning. I think it was because I don't sight read very well. Even with all that piano, flute and voice in my past I depend more on my ears than my eyes. I don't quite understand it myself. I think I get the general idea of what to sing, but it's only once I've heard the harmonies once or twice--sometimes more, but usually two times is enough--I can more or less "read" the music. Genius? Laziness? I must admit the latter is more likely.

So, for awhile I stayed away from singing other than the hymn sings at chapel or church. When I was on cross-cultural we would sing in the little nooks and crannies of holy places. My favorite memory is when we went into these underground caves and sang old 606:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below,
Praise Him all creatures here below.
Praise Him above, praise Him above,
Praise Him above, ye heav'nly hosts...

The fellow showing us the caves was so drawn by the music that he demanded we sing again when we went above, but no one wanted to do it. Maybe we felt the holiness only there in a cave--maybe it was laziness, but who knows?

I slowly glided back into music after awhile. I did get into Chambers the second semester of my senior year. I heard through the grapevine that the director was quietly auditioning new people, and I got an audtion. I guess he'd heard enough about me to take me, because I sang for about a minute and the rest of the time had me try to repair this tiny fountain! As I left, he said, Well, rehearsals start next week. I'll see you there. And that was that!

blah blah blah

I've been feeling especially dried up about writing lately. And cynical to boot. I went to a reading on Friday that was made up of MFA students from around the city, expecting great things and came back with only a few bright moments. One of which was a classmate's performance--which, though I may be biased, but I thought went very well. However, the paltry scheisse I was forced to listen to beforehand was mind numbing. In particular, there was one reader (the first one (who goes to Columbia, of all places!)) whose prose was a wandering, self-absorbed nightmare. There were, I'll admit, a few sprinklings of insight, but they were dwarfed by the waves adverbs piled upon adjectives that were totally superfluous. (Not unlike this blog.) This story kept going on and on and on and I wondered if I would ever live to see act number two. And this is someone who beat me out of a place at Columbia!!!! If that's the kind of crap Columbia likes, well, I don't know what to think. Then I had to sit through another reading of poetry that was badly read by this traipsing little tight-jeaned, forward-motioning-breasts girl. As soon as I saw her I thought, uh oh, another perky one! She tried to do the poem nyorican style. I'm sorry, she was white as a sheet, and unless you're black or Spanish or just damn got it going on, it doesn't work.

The reading was scheduled for 7--it started after 7:30--the whole thing went till 9:40. Of course the person I had come to hear was the last of six readers, so I couldn't sneak out after she was done.

One bright spot was Palm Sunday. I sang with some folks at MMF and genuinely felt chills as the service and the singing progressed. I've said it before and I will say it again: the only time I'm pretty darn sure there is a god out there is when I'm singing and the harmony is blending and you barely need to look at the music because it's there inside already, pumping through the blood and muck of the body, ready to pulse out because the deity is out there tapping her toes.

spring, anyone?

It's definitely spring. Yesterday I was walking to the subway and saw the old men playing dominoes on the sidewalk, and kids were running around, screaming like banshees. It was a nice gentle warmth, though it got cold in the evening. But it's finally arrived. It's very dry, though. It's been the driest month of March ever for New York state since they started keeping records. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, but who knows? I hope it isn't a drought coming on. That means it'll be like our first summer in the city. It was ridiculously hot and dry. We went to movies to keep cool.

Our housing complex was bought a few weeks ago, and there's already some obvious changes. People who've been subletting illegally have been kicked out, a bunch of the "maintenance" workers have been fired--and rents are going up. It doesn't affect us, thank goodness. We have a lease until next year and the mayor just signed the Rent Stabilization article for another few years--till 2009, I believe. That means, I think, that they can only raise our rent the amount of inflation percentage. That means, however, that the landlords will be looking for more reasons to kick people out. Most importantly, it means that anyone who rents a space like ours will probably be paying market value for a studio in New York.

Ah, gentrification. More and more white folks are showing up in our neighborhood. I even saw this white hipster chick walk into our building yesterday! With rents going up, that means a different crowd will start living here. I don't know what I think about it all. I do know I don't want the folks living here to think that I'm one of them. At least my Laundry Buddies won't think so...

west side snobbery

Well, the other day I went to Erica Jong's reading at the Broadway and 82nd Barnes & Noble (since I wrote a review of her newest book I figured I may as well see her in the flesh), and I got a fresh view of West Side snobbery. The people attending the reading were just plain selfish, mean, crotchety folk. One old dude berated me for saving a seat for Lady L (who was dashing uptown from work):

You can't do that, he said.

Yes I can, I said.

You can't keep a seat like that, he said.

My friend's coming any minute, I said. People did it to me.

What do you mean? he said.

Other people were saving seats elsewhere. I found these two, I said, turning away from him.

Now, he was rather old, and I might (I can pretend to be altruistic here) have given him the seat and stood in the back (the place was packed--the reading space was ridiculously small--I have no idea why they had such a big-name reader in that space), but the way he acted I knew he never would have done the same for me, even if I was with a walker or something.

Others were being horrible as well. One lady was berating a poor floorwalker about the lack of seats.

There are no more seats here, he said.

Well, you go downstairs and get more!

There aren't any seats left in the building.

Well, there ought to be more somewhere!

And so on. I ended up having to give up the extra seat anyway. Lady L wasn't there by the start of the reading and I had to raise my hand when the MC asked the crowd to. (The woman who sat in front of me kept leaning in my way, completely obliterating my view. She was wearing these low low cut jeans and her bottom kept peeking out further and further like a plumber's. There weren't any panties to block the sight.)

Erica Jong was an interesting person. She had this mothering sort of air that made you feel as if you could hang out in her kitchen with a mug of tea and talking about Plath and shoes at the same time, yet she had this I Know I'm Famous and I Won't Let You Forget It way about her. Which pretty much fit the way of her book seemed to me. She mentioned more than once how intelligent and neatly well-off Upper West Siders were, having been one herself:

I can't afford to live on the Upper West Side, she said. I have to live on the Upper East Side. (This comes from a person who has a house in Connecticut or someplace like that.)

and,

Well, you know no one reads anymore, except for people on the Upper West Side.

The crowd, mostly former hippies who've managed to "live" the bohemian lifestyle in single family townhouses, all laughed in agreement. Now, I realize this statement was tongue-in-cheek, at least on her part. But I wondered about the audience. The way they laughed seemed that they believed it in their heartest of hearts.

I had her sign my book that I'd gotten (for free since I reviewed it--one good thing about being a reviewer) and even told her about my review and gave her a piece of paper with the link and my name on it. I doubt she'll look at it, though she confessed to being a blog and email junkie, but I figured you didn't always get a chance to tell the author about a review you wrote. She was, as I said, a nice sort of person at the core of it all.

7 songs

Apparently there's this thing Wunelle has about telling the blog-world what seven songs you're into at the moment. He mentions he'd like to hear from me. I'm horrible with names and titles, so it might take a few minutes to look them up. Basically, there's this pile of CDs next to our player, and I rotate them around because I'm too lazy to go through the huge books:

1. Neil Young - Old Man
2. Bob Dylan - Not Dark Yet
3. Cat Stevens - Trouble
4. Gillian Welch - The entire album of Soul Journey (it doesn't have the names listed on the CD)
5. Sarah McLaughlin - the album Afterglow (same reason)
6. Indigo Girls - Midnight Train to Georgia (actual song)
7. Ryan Adams and The Cardinals - the album Jacksonville City Nights (the lazy excuse)

People I'd like to hear from as far as albums. Frankly there's a lot more than 7, so I'm going to have more than 7:

1. Linda
2. Dan
3. Diana
4. Brian M.
5. Tom (I want to know what he listens to when I'm not around)
6. Bianca (if she has time for that...)
7. Holly
8. Reuben
9. Jenny
10. Kirsten
11. Jason
12. Teddy
13. Sarah D.
14. Szenga
15. Alex
16. Lady L
17. BJV
18. David
19. Ben
20. Anna
21. Kansas (a real person, not the state)

rejection

Well, I didn't get into the NYC Teaching Fellows. On the one hand, I am upset that anyone would reject me (me of all people!!!), but on the other hand, I'm slightly relieved. I wasn't totally sure I wanted to enslave myself to the New York Public School system. So, I'm back to looking for work--though I unoffically have been since the interview.

On the positive side, I'm about to be published on an online journal: LostWriters. I have a book review that will come out March 20th.

the ubiquitous grindstone

Well, the interview is over and done with. According to my interviewer, I could find out whether I've been accepted in two weeks or two months. So, I'm back in the rat race, because there's no telling what will happen. The group I interviewed with was pretty good--save for one sweet girl who tripped and nearly fell and didn't finish her lesson plan on time. If she gets in she'll be eaten alive by kids. She's just so nice and has horrible self-worth issues.

I held my own, I believe. My lesson plan went fairly well, was less than five minutes and people were eager to get involved in answering my questions. In the discussion time I had some trouble getting a word in edgewise--the two women I worked with were very very talkative, and they were both at least fifteen years my senior, so the whole "children should be seen and not heard" mantra kicked in. Which is somewhat bewildering to me, because I don't think that came from my parents at all. Then there was a writing assignment. You only had twenty minutes and it took me ten to write an outline. And sometimes it's hard for me to write because my hand starts shaking after awhile from my bout with the Tumor. I could've mentioned it at the one-on-one interview session, but I've always hated to use that excuse. I did mention some of the gaps between college and work were because of "medical issues." He seemed fine with that, though he did make sure I hadn't been working the last two years because of school. I think with the writing thing they're not worrying so much about the content but the tone of the draft, because he asked me about that first.

So, anyway, what's done is done. Ben came for a quick visit that evening and we bought gin and tonic and got nicely drunk at home. (He came to the City to talk to a prospective Author who lived on West 90th, and when he mentioned his sister lived in Harlem the Author was shocked. Is one of them black? he asked. Mind you, Ben is about as white as white can be. Blond hair, blue eyes.) The next day we went to a kick-ass brunch and went home and took a nap.

I'm back to applying for editing positions and now I'm writing my curriculum vitae for adjunct positions at community colleges. I need to sign up for the LAST (Liberal Arts and Sciences Test), which is required for people to pass to teach in New York. I wish I could wait and see if I got in before I foray into the standardized test world, but that may not happen. I hate those things!!!

Oh, the Antonya Nelson master workshop went well. She had a lot of good things to say. I feel pretty good about that. At the dinner we talked about Kansas. I was so nervous I couldn't remember what highway led to Hillsboro! I kept wanting to say 42, but that's the one through Harrisonburg.

My one concern that's surfaced is regarding my writing. If I do get in to this fellows program, I'm going to be pretty immersed in it. I have the feeling that it will be tough to find time to write. I don't want that to happen. I've made so much progress these last two years, I would hate to see that slip away.