Engagements and Weddings

Midges are running rampid in Daytona, right now--Claire and I picked up the flier today outside of our room. They, thankfully, don't drink blood although they do resemble mosquitoes. We picked up the flier on our way in from dinner. At Bubba Gumps to celebrate my birthday I enjoyed shrimp, but not Forest Gump trivia which I always win. Claire told the waitress it was my birthday and she came with a sundae and then demanded that I stand and dance. Really, I thought, stand and dance. My face got hot, my glasses steamed in the left corner and in my head I got up and did a jig, but in real life my heavy thighs pressed to the vinyl seat and I felt embarrassed.

The first year I was in Daytona I had the sensation of empowerment that I've not felt as strongly since. When I first got to my hotel room, I had the sudden realization that I could do anything I wanted. For what was maybe the first time in my life I didn't have anyone else to help me figure out what to do or where to go. It was intoxicating, almost, but also a bit frightening. Once in a while I have the feeling that I could wander off--take the money I had on me and travel somewhere alone. Be a totally free person. Of course, then I shake the feeling and come back to what is my reality. I have family. A life that I love.

Yet, that first time in Daytona I didn't have the feeling of family. I had friends, and I had Witt, but we weren't married, so the attachment, though very realy wasn't set in stone. The first evening I went to the beach I sat on my towel for a long time. The beach is always more romantic in my head. When it comes down to it, and the sand is in the crevices of my rolls and I have to shake out my hair, I'm not really a fan of it. But something possessed me that evening to jump into the ocean. I got in full force and left my glasses and engagement ring with my book on the beach.

The water and the waves were strong, and when I got out I was disoriented. My things weren't enough of a marker to help me (everyone had white beach towles and books), so when a nice lady pointed out my belongings , I felt silly. In one fell swoop I had picked everything up and went back to my room.

Later that evening, I was eating with my new friends Lisa and Karin. Karin had just gotten married, and Lisa engaged. They were actually comparing their rings, and talking about plans that seemed foreign to me since I had already decided I would have small wedding. I looked down at my ring to notice it was missing. My face went white, and I ran to the beach. Fast.
Of course when I got there the chairs were gone as was any other marker I could have used for where I had been.

The girls had followed me down to the beach and were with me when I burst into tears, listening to the first bars of "Money Can't Buy Me Love."
When I called Witt, in my room, I was heaving with sobs. "I-I-I-l-l-l-l-lo-lo-lost-lost-mah-mah-mah-my-r-r-ring. " He couldn't understand me, and when I had calmed down enough to say it, he was relieved, I think, that I hadn't been attacked.

The next year, I walked the beach, but knew better than to trust it with my things. I was older, wiser, and Heidi was with me. We looked out at the sand and I pointed to the castle area where the band had been. A distant story that we could laugh about. My ring with the tiny diamonds and crescent sapphires was long gone.

After that week I drugged myself with Dramamine to suffer the plane ride home. The lack of sleep and drugs had caught up with me when I landed in Springfield and stumbled toward the baggage claim. When I saw my family, I thought I was hallucinating, They must have thought they were too, as they grabbed me and posed with me for pictures. I'm sure they never show those shots to anyone because my frizzy hair and bleary eyes were shocked beyond belief.
My dad and his fiance smiled, and inquired about my trip in Florida. As I explained that my bags were waiting, it occurred to me to ask about what they were doing in the airport. My dad, as far as I knew had never flown anywhere.

"We're going to Las Vegas" they explained, "to get married."

There's that song in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, "When You Get Married in June" all about how women swoon to be married in the summer month, yet I never equate June with marriage. For me, marriage will always be the fall--the grass freshly cut under my bare feet, the smells of late summer and early fall melding together in my nostrils. A sweating glas filled with peach margarita, and Witt's steady hand and unwavering gaze as we repeated our vows under a tree just beginning to turn.

The BIG Review of American Wife

Curtis Sittenfield's novel based on Laura Bush's life started off strong, but did not end the same way. The early years of Alice Blackwell's life and marriage were intersting and strung together well. In many ways she explained better than most anything else I've read how much a single event can change your life. The one night or event that shapes how one can see everything. The tactic is something I plan on remembering for when I write about my own stories--if there is one event, like the genisis of everything else.

Alice and Charlie fell in love easily and quickly and in a believable way. Yet, the later years were a bit less believable--perhaps because Sittenfield didn't have the personal material to finish the characterization, yet had political material. How would it feel to be a liberal living in the pro-war White House? Sittenfield's ideas do not quite get to me in the same ways that the earlier portion does.

Sittenfield's broad narrative is chronological with plenty of flashbacks througout that focus on earlier problems or conversations Alice has. The narrative style became quite tedious during the final portion when the entire story was flashback for the most part. Also, some parts of the story seemed a bit too neat for reality.

Overall, I enjoyed the story quite a bit.

Anti-Valentine: Will You

Brad Smith refused to be my valentine in the third grade.
I asked him on the card I dropped
in his valentine box.
He laughed at the card.
On the playground, I rubbed
his face in the dirt.
I missed recess the next day.

A Crossover from Facebook

My friend Chad posted his 25 things on Facebook. I figure my blog needed a boost. It's been too long, old friend :)

1.) I have been listening to WICKED songs for the past six days. Anytime I'm by myself, I sing the song Defying Gravity as loud as I can, and sometimes I pretend I'm a green witch.
2.) I love T.V. a lot more than I should. Maybe more than anyone else does.
3.) I do not enjoy learning about copyright. Not even a little bit.
4.) I have a blog. I don't let many people read it, and I haven't written on it since before Christmas. I also have journals.
5.) I start things. I start cleaning. I start writing. I start books. I start diets.
6.) I lollygag. I don't finish any of those things I start. I forget diets. The kitchen stays dirty. My blog remains unpopulated. Books aren't finished.
7.) I have a lot of books that I've never read, but I can't give them away because I know one day I will want to read them.
8.) I am an English teacher, but I often wonder if I would be better doing something else. Or perhaps not much at all.
9.) Witt is my best friend. Everything I do is done in the hopes that I make him proud of me.
10.) I am afraid of mice. One lives in my garage and we call him Swervin' , but I hate Swervin' with all of my heart and I wish him dead every time I think about him. I hope everyone who reads this wishes him dead too.
11.) I have washed and folded five loads of laundry today, but I don't know that they will ever be put away. Laundry: one more thing I start but don't finish.
12.) I want to write a book, real bad. I have some ideas, but I haven't even really tried writing them down, yet. I am afraid that if I start writing I will never finish. Or worse--maybe I will.
13.) Sometimes I am struck by how much I miss my mom. Still, after seven years I hope that I am 1/2 of the woman that she was.
14.) I wonder if I will ever stop feeling guilty for leaving my mom to die in the hospital bed while I went to call people.
15.) My dog Snap snores louder than most people. He sounds a lot like my Grandma Margie snoring.
16.) I love Scholar a little better than Snap. Not a lot, but enough to feel like I would save him if they were dangling from the cliff.
17.) I have never been good at sports. I hate baseball, and I always hear my dad's gruff voice in my mind when I try to throw, catch, or bat something.
18.) I am constantly amazed at Witt's ability to see small details like a crooked line on a PowerPoint. I could stare at that damn slide for an hour before I see an uneven line.
19.) I curse too much.
20.) High school students may influence me more than I influence them. So far this year I've started saying "I know, right!," "Idiot!," and "Motherf***er" aloud more often because I have heard them at school. I bet there aren't kids walking around saying "soliloquy" and "exposition" because they've heard it from me.
21.) I hold grudges. I try to talk myself out of them, and I know it's wrong to, but I hold grudges bad. I have to practice forgiveness often, and I'm not really all that good at it.
22.) When I'm sad, Witt always says or does something that makes me laugh or helps me realize that whatever I'm sad about isn't all that permanent.
23.) I cry a lot more than people would think. I cry at pep rallies. I cry at church when I go. I cry at the end of T.V. shows. I cried when Obama was elected president.
24.) I just realized I could tag Laurie Halse Anderson in this message. That's right, she's my Facebook friend and she may respond. She may not. She probably has degrees of Facebook friends, and I'm lucky to be on the fringes. I think she has over a thousand. I have barely over a hundred and I feel pretty happy about it. Her friend list is a bit intimidating.
25.) I hate finishing things. When something is over I feel a sad empty dead feeling. Except when school is out for the summer. That may be the only exception.

Women Should be Beaten

The sub who's taken over Danyel's classes while she's been on maternity leave has been the equivalent of introducing a toxin to our school. He tells girls who live in this depressed rural area that men are over women. "Women should bow down to men," I hear him explaining to a young girl who's dating sleaze from this town. Let me just state that again--he says in the hallway on a Monday morning that "women should bow down to men," that "it's been true [his] whole life." That it is still a truth now.

What I know is this: he is an ignorant joke of a man. Even though I teach and live in this lilly white conservative area, I don't often meet such openly closed minded people. I don't like it. It has been a long time since I have felt so small and ignsignificant. It has been a long time since I have felt an urgency to stop something. I hope I'll never forget it.

The BIG Review of New Moon

The third installation of the Twilight series is a bit better than the second--at least Bella isn't whining the whole time about how much she misses Edward--but she is still a bit over the top. This novel covers the revenge of Victoria who enlists the help of several newborn vampires to help her lure Bella away from Edward to murder Bella. A subplot that runs rampant through the novel is the treaty and truce between the vampires and the werewolves (who turn out to be shape-shifters in Breaking Dawn). This truce, brought on by the inexplicible urge to protect Bella Swan from the newborn vampires is a bit difficult for Edward and Jacob, but Bella is finally happy.

Fat Twin

For the past year, or maybe two, I've been searching for my fat twin. Someone who is about the same body type as me. I'm sure one such twin exists, but finding her is difficult. So now, I'm looking for people to be on the lookout. I have taken pictures of the women who may be my fat twin, but Witt assures me that they in fact are not my fat twin.

Jenflinn, who has never been fat, told me to just take a picture of myself. What a fool. I've seen pictures of me, and I'm always distracted by my fat face or my frizzy hair. Plus, people I know don't take full body pictures of me if they value their lives.

So, if you--readers of this blog (few you are) find my fat twin, please take her picture so we can immediately post it here to the blog. I will leave this space safe until we find her.