Delor.es.Defacto

The book, the page, the line, the word, the letter.

The title of this post is from (at least one of) my favorite Jack White lines of all times. If I ever had the money, I would totally buy his old house. It would be like Jack Kerouac buying Charlie Parker’s house. Jack White lived on Seminole Street even. That’s just too perfect.

Charlie Parker looked like Buddha

Charlie Parker, who recently died

Laughing at a juggler on the TV

After weeks of strain and sickness,

Was called the Perfect Musician.

And his expression on his face

Was as calm, beautiful, and profound

As the image of the Buddha

Represented in the East, the lidded eyes

The expression that says “All Is Well”

This was what Charlie Parker

Said when he played, All is Well.

You had the feeling of early-in-the-morning

Like a hermit’s joy, or

Like the perfect cry of some wild gang

At a jam session,

“Wail, Wop”

Charlie burst his lungs to reach the speed

Of what the speedsters wanted

And what they wanted

Was his eternal Slowdown.

Jack Kerouac reading “Charlie Parker”

But at the rate I’m going, I won’t have enough money to buy a cup of coffee. I’ve discovered that my life is on the “B” list of writing. I have included an excerpt from an email to Laura to explain:

Okay, so all of our assignments were sent to the professor in the “dropbox” section of the class website. It’s like an AIM screen so you can send a message and then attach the Word document file to the message. It’s different than the email section and everything you get in your class email gets automatically sent to your home email address. All right. Well, I just finished writing the anthology and sent it in, mind you he never said when it was due, but since the class is over tomorrow, I just did it today and sent it in.

So, I’m looking at the stuff I had sent in the list and it says in my inbox I had messages. Never noticed that before and never realized he was sending us messages that way. Well, for my story, the rough draft that I sent last week, he gave me a freaking 80%! He said that the story “fell flat and needed to be longer.” Okay, first of all, yeah, it wasn’t great, but he kept saying that the word count wasn’t something to concern yourself with. So I responded and said, “Well, I hope the revision was better for you, thanks.” The stories were only suppose to be like 1500 words max and I always went over anyway. The final draft that he wanted three days after the freaking rough draft was done, ended up being 4000+ words. I told Fran that if he gives me a B for the class I’m going to be pissed. I really want to know how he can give me a B for doing a better job than these other fruit cakes in this stupid class. Fran said, “Yeah, if he likes that other shit and gives them an A, that would really suck.” What the hell? I have no idea where these people come from. The guy never put any of our grades up except for the notebook assignments that were like 5 points each and I always got all of my points for that stuff. Now it says my Grade to Date is 170 out of 190 points, bringing my average down to an 89.57%. Ugh. If he gives me a B on these last two things I’ll get a B and be pissed off. :-/

Man, that makes me mad…

But I’m going out tonight and having dinner with Fran before hand. I have a new gray skirt I want to wear but I don’t know if it’ll end up being right for the occasion. We were talking about this yesterday, how if you can’t get your look to be exactly the way you want it, then you don’t bother dressing up at all. I hate when I go out because I always have this idea in my head about how iI want to look but it never comes across as exact or perfect so I’m never happy with what I have on or what I look like when I go out.

Maybe that’s why I’m a “B” quality writer; because I can’t make things turn out the way I imagine them. Sigh…

Now I’m looking through the clothes that I’ve strategically piled on the laundry room floor, trying to find something decent to wear tonight. You know, when I went out all the time before, I had a specific collection of stuff that I kept in easy reach. I never was happy with the outfits back then either, but at least I knew what I had to pick and choose from. Now since I go out every once in a while, I’ve tossed the dress up stuff in places that aren’t visible to the naked eye. I have to search for it, spray some wrinkle remover on it, hang it up and know damn well that I’m going to hate it once I’m running late at 9 o’clock, wishing I had prepared a little better.

I have a few options: the black and white polka dot dress with a black t-shirt underneath, the red jumper with a white t-shirt, the gray skirt with a red, black and silver t-shirt or the black on with the buttons that I will most likely opt for but I think it’s too big and long like a tunic and it won’t work with a poofy, flowy skirt. It’s so hard to be a girl sometimes. It’s especially hard when you try to look nice, get there, realize you don’t look great, see girls with better dresses and better shoes and better hair and better makeup. The worst is realizing that probably no guy in that place gives a shit either way.

And, P.S., Wordpress, no, I am not going to buy into your new upgrade this time. Not until I know for damn sure everything is locked, sealed, saved and safe. Until then, I’ll deal with the old just fine.

http://www.deloresdefacto.com/?p=32

You have changed cause I still feel the same

So last night I ordered:

A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 , Suite Francaise: A Novel , I Don’t Want To Be Crazy, This is Forever, and set up an account with Boca Java because of WinZip 11 and their stupid Trial Pay. Eh, whatever. At least I can look forward to having banana coffee and a pink travel mug in my mailbox now.

In my massive collection of new books that I’ve started cataloging on Shelfari, last night I picked up the book I wasn’t so sure I was going to be interested in. I started reading the introduction and felt compelled to pick up a pen and underline important passages. I do this often with my Russian non-fiction but never in a “girlie” book. I’ve accepted that I should be more open to reading “girlie” books and while I’m not into the moronic characters of chick lit, this book had an interesting title: The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine . I always had women at school and at work telling me how they loved The Secret Life of Bees but it seemed overly sentimental and, in fact, girlie. Not for me. But this book is non-fiction and has a very interesting theme, hence the title, so I ordered it and last night realized how glad I am that I did pay the $6 to have it sent from Powell’s:

I parked in front of the drugstore where my daughter, Ann, fourteen, had an after-school job…

I spotted her right away, kneeling on the floor in the toothpaste section, stocking a bottom shelf. I was about to walk over and say hello when I noticed two middle-aged men walking along the aisle toward her. They looked like everybody’s father. They mad moussed hair, and they wore knit sportshirts the color of Easter eggs, the kind of shirts with tiny alligators sewn at the chest…

My daughter did not see them coming. Kneeling on the floor, she was intent on getting the boxes of Crest lined up evenly. The men stopped, peering down at her. On man nudged the other He said, “Now that’s how I like to see a woman — on her knees.”

The other man laughed.

I had the exact same thing happen when I worked at the grocery store when I started college. We had this old man who worked as the daytime bagger / janitor / all around “nice” guy whom everyone loved and whom other old retired customers in the daytime hours would only allow to help them out with various needs. They would actually tell me that they didn’t want me or one of the other girls or the manager or whomever that they only wanted him to do something and to call him because we wouldn’t do it right.

One day, my friend, Kelly, a girl about 30 at the time, married with a little boy, was helping a customer clean up something that had fallen from the cart and shattered on the floor while they were in my line. She was bent down at my line, as I was hanging her paper towels to help her clean up the spill. The old man bagger said the exact thing to Kelly at that particular moment. In front of everyone at the store. Kelly, normally kick ass and brassy, a former security guard for crying out loud, looked up at me with her big blue yes even bigger, silently saying, “You’ve got to be freaking kidding me.” I don’t even remember what she said to him because she was so astonished that she couldn’t even come up with a proper, polite yet jabbing retort.

Sue Monk Kidd. I’ve only read a few pages so far but, yeah, you’re absolutely right to write this book. You are right to say, “We tell tell our stories for ourselves, of course. But there are also those thousand other women.” We have all seen this happen and I’m glad you spelled it out for us so well.

For some reason, I think I can almost hear a group of men laughing as they read this. Hhmm…

Anyway, so while I’m mentioning the journey of women, let me go into the infuriating story that Fran told me on Monday:

On Monday the teachers had their in-service classes and all the department have to get together from other schools to meet up and sit in a class for eight hours and do hands on crap and are taught by ex-teachers who think they are still experts in the trade or are elementary teachers who talk to other teachers like their are five years old. It’s an experience like no other and you cannot understand the magnitude of the situation unless you experience it for yourself. I was always the one in the back of the class, slumped back in my little desk, writing notes to my teacher friends who had come with me or chatted with my new friend next to me and felt above it all. You know, like I did when I was sixteen.

Anyway, so when Fran was with her teacher friend from her school, they started talking to a girl who said it was her second year at my old school. Fran said she asked the girl if she knew me and the girl rolled her eyes and said, “No comment.” Fran rolled her eyes back at her and said, “Whatever.”

Whatever is right. The girl ended up being one who I talked to fairly often and who came and ate lunch with us. I talked to her all the time and never had a problem with her. This just goes to show that the evil supervisor that I use to have not only has misrepresented me to my principal, assistant principal, students, parents of my students, the union, the school board, any potential employer I may have in the future who needs a reference and Lord knows who else…she has also spread lies and gossip to the girls I use to be friends with who still work at my school. Of course it’s obvious that most of these people kiss my old supervisor’s ass and look up to her like she’s the genius of middle school English (no rhyme intended). They always did. What pisses me off is that while I’ve gotten away from that situation as much as I possibly can, she is still spreading lies and making me look like some horrible person when I was totally victimized by that woman. I can’t even begin to explain how much the anger builds inside of me when I talk about that woman. Even Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada ended up being like-able in the end. At least her character was running a multi-million dollar business. This lady is a mole at a tiny school and once she’s gone the forty teachers that feel her wrath will dance a jig of glee.

I’ve never, ever given anyone a reason to be despised and treated so maliciously. That’s why the whole thing baffles me still. Why would anyone believe that I did anything to cause someone else enough reason to roll their eyes and make “no comment” and the mention of my name? Absolutely amazes me.

The ironic part about the whole thing is that last week I emailed my closest friend at the school just to ask her how her year was going and she said, “You know, everyone keeps asking me if I’ve heard from you. They’re wondering how you’re doing.” Those are the normal ones who would ask. The ones who were sincere and friendly and who had the sense to stay away from my evil supervisor so they didn’t listen to her bullshit gossip to know anything about everything that I was going through with her.

So, hence, my picture for this post. While I am not sitting in Maine in my little New England dream house that overlooks the bay, I am much better off sitting in my tiny Floridian apartment that overlooks the retention pond, being poor and bored instead of working and being torn to shreds at that job anymore. While those women are hauling their asses to school each day to complain about each other and their kids, I’m sitting here writing my blog posts, writing my stories, reading my books, wandering around town and not having anxiety. I use to get so upset each morning when I would get up that I would put off taking a shower as long as I could because the minute I did, I would start getting ready for work and think about all the things that that woman was going to say or do to me once I walked into the door. Just thinking about it now makes me heart start pounding. I was helpless every day but, by God, I stuck it out until the end. I never gave up the money I deserved just to make her smile as she squashed me completely. Every week she would spout some ridiculous complaint about me so I looked like the most ungrateful, incompetent, loathsome, idiotic, lazy, disrespectful and unprofessional piece of shit that ever walked the earth. She would go around talking about me to everyone else because she didn’t teach any classes and had nothing better to do but go around gossiping to everyone about everyone else. She gossiped about what a horrible piece of shit I was while I spent all of my time trying to teach 120 kids how to read and write when they didn’t even know what a syllable was. (I love them though; they were funny as hell.)

I worried every day that she would somehow find a way to take my summer pay away from me. I worried that she would take the bonus money I received from the school board. I worried that she would be the one to answer the phone when an interviewer called for a reference. I even worried that she would find out that I wrote about her in my blog and she would report me so I never talked about anything that was going on at work to anyone other than the people I knew I could trust. I emailed them from a separate account and even used pseudonyms. My heart would jump and my skin would crawl whenever I saw her. She wouldn’t even say hello to me in the hallways because she hated me so much. I could stand there with five other people and she would speak to all of them and exclude me, like we were the kids in this adolescent zoo. I mean, can you imagine being so harassed that you would sit there and cry in front of children because you were so afraid of one little old woman? Thank God that nightmare is over.

Incidentally, I asked the secretary before I left about references and she said the supervisor wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone who would call for a reference. I seriously doubt that old woman would adhere to any kind of rule like that though. What would stop her from talking to a voice from human resources about me? She use to talk smack about me to my kids. The best thing was though, at the last day of school she said something to one of my kids about me and he told her off in front of everyone in the office. It was the best thing. Ever.

Anyway, my new thing was going to be that I wasn’t going to dredge up old crap but this new story made me re-assess the monstrous hell I went through. It made me sort of look at it in an objective manner. The old woman supervisor is a miserable woman, hence, she has to make everyone else miserable. No one honestly likes her and she knows that so, all I can do is feel bad for her. I have hope for the future of being honestly liked for who I am and the knowledge that I don’t purposely try to get someone just to make myself feel superior. If there’s any consolation in any of it, that is at least what I have on my side.

I said, pointing to her, my finger shaking with anger. “You may like to see her and other women on their knees, but we don’t belong there. We don’t belong there!”

Well, it’s not just men, Mrs. Kidd. Women like to put other women in that place too. Their anger and gets so overwhelming that they shake the foundation of this sisterhood we are suppose to establish. Hence, Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye; the next book on my wishlist.

With that said, I’m going to start typing up my damn story that I have to submit to class tonight. I was going to start working on it Monday but I didn’t bother. Instead I ended up taking the old box full of CDs that were still at my parents’ house and started rumuging through them as they now sit on the back seat of my car. (Tori Amos, R.E.M., Peter Murphy, Catherine Wheel ((I’m hearing them all over XM now. I thought I was the only one who knew about them in the 90s)), Concrete Blonde, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins ((the best of the best of the best)), industrial mix CDs, 80s compilation CDs, and the list goes on.) After hearing that story I was sidetracked mentally for the rest of the day. At least I have the thing started and all I have to do is type up what I have. I’m not superior as a writer in any respect but, man, some of the stuff people submit each week baffles me. Just as an example, people are actually writing stories that include, “As I woke up, I realized it was all a dream…” Give me a flipping break. This is something that warrants an eye rolling. Of course I would never do it in front of their friend. But that’s just me and that whole polite, nice, classy, mature thing I can’t seem to shake. Sigh…no comment.

http://www.deloresdefacto.com/?p=28

I’ve decided that I like Justin Timberlake. Not his music so much, and not his style (I’m just not into the thug, b-boy shit at all) but he actually has a freaking personality. I’m sure he’s probably an arrogant ass but at least he acts like he’s not taking himself too seriously at all times. He actually smiles, like he’s enjoying himself, when he’s on stage. And, come on, that SNL episode with him as the host was classic.

At this week’s Mtv VMAs, he was the only one who wasn’t trying to act like a pretentious pimp. He jumped up and down, smiled, gave some "yay!s" and generally looked like he was totally comfortable being different than everyone else. (And then he even said he was sick on top of that but still maneaged to have a good time.)

When I read Lesley Afrin’s book, she said that Justin Timberlake was the only nice celebrity that she met while working as a stylist. He even called her sister for her, so she could talk to him. I totally believe it. Even if it’s a put on, it’s a good put on. He seems like a cool guy.

I don’t think he’s super hot or listen to his music at all (okay, yes, I have "Sexy Back" on a CD I made, but that’s my only guilty pleasure…along with Britany Spears’ "Toxic"…yes, I’ve danced to them both at least once in a drunken, "why the hell not" moment at the club.) I honest am confused as to why the boy never has his shirt on in pictures (but hell, if I were a boy and I looked like that, I’d probably run around topless too.) And I’m sure this whole fame thing has gone straight to his head. I mean, you take a cute guy and then turn them into the biggest white boy pop star on the planet. There’s definately little effort in creating an inflated ego in a young guy’s mind.

But, again, he’s likeable, with or without the music. He’s likeable with or without his shirt. He’s always smiling and not afraid to act silly. He could have totally been a snob and given off the aura of "I’m better than all of you and I know it" but he doesn’t. He gives off the aura of "okay, let me see what I can do this time to make you guys smile." That’s extremely cool. Good job, Justin!

Justin Timberlake SNL Moments - Part 1

Justin Timberlake SNL Moments - Part 2

Justin Timberlake SNL Moments - Part 3

Justin Timberlake & Kelly Osbourne — Punk’d

And how can I not make a "Justin Timberlake Best Of…" list without including: SNL - Digital Short - A Special Christmas Box The best part is…he even does this song live at shows. Now that’s classy.

P.S. This is my first entry for my "tel·e·vi·sion" category. If Lost didn’t take its sweet ass time starting a new season, I would have had this category filled already.

http://www.deloresdefacto.com/?p=23

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
~ Martin Luther King Jr.

It is Red White and Blue day here in our public eye. I don’t have anything really touching or significant that I can say about the subject but it’s today and I have to say something. This still upsets me. It still makes me cry. Looking at the pictures of the ceremony and remembering watching the news footage in my dorm apartment still shakes me.

And I’m still pissed. We all should be.

Today middle school kids far and wide and given the important lesson of September 11th. Teachers, like myself, freaked out last year at the kids’ disinterest in watching the news coverage about the anniversary on TV. They made the comment of “So, people died. We get it. What’s the big deal?” Yeah, I don’t think I ever yelled like that in my life. I’ve been told this happened in classrooms for grades 6-12 all over the county. Isn’t anyone teaching their kids anything anymore?

I have no freaking tolerance for people voicing the opinion that “we need to get over it.” Do they have a freaking conscious at all? This wasn’t just something bad that happened, this was the bad thing that happened. This is our Pearl Harbor. This is our Hiroshima.

Get over yourself. As if this has no freaking relevance at all to your life right now. Please.

Heads bow in memory of 9/11 victims

In 9/11 remembrance, a turning to good deeds

Families of September 11

MyGoodDeed.org

“Just so long as we continue to do something special every year, so you don’t wake up and say, ‘Oh, it’s 9/11.’ ”

In all, 2,974 victims were killed by the Sept. 11 attacks: 2,750 connected to the World Trade Center, 40 in Pennsylvania and 184 at the Pentagon. Those numbers do not include the 19 hijackers.

http://www.deloresdefacto.com/?p=22

<img src="http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g180/deloresd/147526607_fe26e22214.jpg" align="top" title="wine" border="0" hspace="0" vspace="0"><p>
I’ve decided that my body just does <i>not</i> like alchol anymore.  I don’t know that it ever did, but I dealt with it nicely.  We’ve said it over and over again that once upon a time in our years of initial going out all night days that we could sleep for four hours and get up and function the next day.  We could go to work and to school, take a nap and then do it all over again.  Every night.  I’ve accepted the fact that those times are gone.<br>
Now after drinking during the evening I feel the nice comfortable fuzziness that beer or wine brings on.  But sometimes I can’t get to sleep and if I do sleep it’s on and off all night and I can’t get up and throw in the towel on sleeping the fuzziness off because it last the whole next day.  I sleep as much as I can and still get up to a groggy, half conscious mind set.  I eat, it doesn’t go away.  I lie on the couch and watch TV, it just annoys me.  I take a shower, I feel sleepy.  Unless I stay put in my bed the whole time and try to not do anything that requires some kind of advanced brain activity, I’m frustrated and distracted.  <i>This</i> is what having a brain like pancake batter is like.  I’ve just never realized that the description fit so well before.<br>
I never use to get hangovers.  I would just stay drunk the next day.  I would go to class and be drunk.  I would have the taste of vodka and tequila and rum and Southern Comfort and Wild Turkey (yes, there was that one time…) and still freaking move out of my bed and not just hate life.  I just hated that people just <i>knew</i> I wasn’t sober.  Now I just hate feeling incapable of doing normal tasks.  I can’t even talk on the phone or do the wash without being pissed off at life and my lack of brain function the next day.  <br>
This was just from having wine at dinner last night.  We went to the Knights’ benefit dinner last night.  We had rolls, salad, prime rib, green beans, potatoes, more rolls and coffee.  It wasn’t like I was drinking on am empty stomach.  It wasn’t like it made me sick.  I was sleepy all night after shopping and having dinner and hanging out and talking from 6:30 - 11:30.  And I only had three glasses of wine.  I wasn’t nursing a bottle to myself or anything.  (Although I did take home a bottle for myself because, at the time, it seemed like a good idea.)<br>
I fell asleep easily but woke up over and over in the night and morning, wishing I didn’t feel the urge to move from my spot for anything.  Now I’m trying to do the laundry, make macaroni and cheese, watch <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081283/" target="_blank">Ordinary People</a> (for the twentieth time — <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001527/" target="_blank">Elizabeth McGovern</a> was just beautiful in the 80’s) and trying to write this freaking entry.  None of it is working without frustration and distraction.  (The best part was the "easy open" pouch for the cheese that I fought for 30 seconds and damn near breaking my teeth trying to rip it open before realizing I had the stupid thing upside down.  Very nice.)  Reading is out of the question, writing is becoming complicated due to the whole making complete, logical sentences part.<br>
I need to just not drink anymore. I don’t think the whole feeling out of sorts for 24 hours afterwards is worth it.   I don’t even drink the beer that I keep in the fridge.  I drink when I’m around other people, but I just don’t even feel like drinking anymore otherwise.<br>
I feel the same way about smoking a lot too.  It’s totally just a habit to do to get away from whatever monotony I have in front of me.  I should just not buy any and see how long it takes me before I go nuts.  Last night when I was outside smoking with with Marie, this lady came up to up, too close to us, and gave us the speech about how we’re going to die and she was going to die 20 years ago unless she had quit.  We gave her the usual, "Yeah, we know, we know.  Good for you for quitting."  She didn’t let up and the whole intervention lasted longer than need be.  But it <i>did</i> make me think.  Last time I tried to quit I told people about it and I shouldn’t have.  I should have done it on my own without disussing it.  Things are so much easier to handle when you keep it to yourself.  Other people’s opinions have a way of infesting personal situations.<br>
Anyway, so I was going to wake up early yesterday so me and Fran could go shopping for our party dresses.  I had taken my allergy pill and slept soundly until 12:30 in the afternoon.  That was the best I’d slept in a long time.  I guess I was tired from staring at the computer, working on my class the night before.  We went to a few stores and for some odd reason we couldn’t find plain old Homecoming type dresses during this time of the school year.  It made no sense.  I was going to get a super cute ivory dress with big black polka dots on it at first.  I tried it on and it fit perfectly but the zipper broke when I was in the dressing room.  For $60 it was not worth it.  Fran was willing to pay for it too for my birthday but I just couldn’t stomach a faulty dress for anything over than $20.  The dress I ended up getting was plain cotton, black with white polka dots, totally my taste and when Fran took it to the register to pay for it, it was on sale for $9.99.  Too perfect.  The only problem was the dress was strapless and after I talked to my mother about it, she made the oh so positive comment of, "Well you don’t have a strapless bra, do you?  You didn’t plan for this very well, now, did you."  (I swear, I don’t even know why I bother to discuss anything with her most of the time.)  Anyway, I came home and took the quickest shower possible because by the time we got back from shopping, we had an hour to get to the benefit.  I just wore my regular black bra so it looked like the dress had straps (or so made myself believe but the girls confirmed my belief.)  <br>
We had a good time but it was just a long night.  Fran won every freaking raffle they had, I swear, and even got a trip to Key West out of it.  Laura says she waiting for some of her luck to be thrown her way for a change.<br>
Aside from these things, the <a href="http://www.mtv.com/ontv/vma/2007/" target="_blank">Mtv Music Awards</a> are tonight.  I seriously doubt <a href="http://www.whitestripes.com" target="_blank">The White Stripes</a> are even going to bother showing up, even though they should freaking win for <a href="http://www.mtv.com/ontv/vma/2007/category.jhtml?categoryId=group" target="_blank">Best Group</a> but the overwhelming crap that ends up getting all of the attention outshadows the actual good stuff on <a href="http://www.mtv.com" target="_blank">Mtv</a>.  But they are going to be <a href="http://www.whitestripes.com/tour/tour.html" target="_blank">in New Mexico on the 13th</a> so maybe that’s close enough to stay in Las Vegas for a few days.  {shrug}<br>  <br>
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