Something Excellent Happened & I Will Say Something Positive About My Self

Something quite excellent happened, at work. And I was due. I have been soldiering forth, my head up, my mind finally calming down. Today I must have given twenty reading assessments. Holy shit it gets boring. But I teach a lotta kids who are way below 'grade level,' so it has been a righteous, if not thrilling task. That combined with recovering from my co-worker's true craziness (the really crazy people are rarely the ones who know they have mental health issues).

So, so, so, my boss, aka Lou Grant, who is such a bossy pain in the ass and also a good person, told me, finally, today, what the plan is. I will be teaching reading and writing to the kids at risk - about 1/3 of the kids - at the same times I taught them before. Lou had thought previously that I would teach reading only, and that had been a painful idea. Hence the soldier metaphor.

I will have lovely little groups of personable hilarious and adorable students (I know them), and the students who really drove me to wanna valium will stick with Opie, or Opie's evil twin, as it were. Mean girls, farewell! Attitude boys, seeya! Okay, it's true that some of the stronger students are okay, but the ones I am truly attached to come visit me anyway. And not all of the weaker students are hilarious, but a lot of them are. It's a combination of defense-mechanism and their smarts leaking out in other places apart from literacy. I am a very very very happy lady.

My vindictive little tidbit, too, is that Opie/Satan is also extra-fond of the students who will now be my charges. Not his. For all the mishegas (nuttiness) about my being bothersome, the fact is that I am experienced, and he is not. So in the end, or what is the end at this particular time, I am doing what I like to do best.

You know it may seem weird, but I do love teaching. Today in one of my classes, I joked about being "reluctant" to come in to the classroom - we were studying vocabulary - and Georgia said "Miss, that's not true! You are always smiling when you come in here!" I guess even when I was flipping out I managed to do my job. Actually, yes: even when I was flipping out, I managed to do my job.

Quiet As A Monk

Big Kid doesn't talk to me. It is not his way right now. Man of few words, stuck with a mother who's all 'how do you feel/how-do-I-feel.' So a solid piece of my home life is controlling my impulse to speak, inquire, opine, or chat in Big Kid's direction. It is a vow of almost-silence for me, but I break it to much. Hello, good-bye, and whazzup are okay, but I may not initiate substantive conversation, and over-excitement at his conversation initiation is also a communication-killer. Big Kid does not say these things to me, as that would not be his style, of course.

And when he is doing or saying something obnoxious, I hafta work terribly hard to swallow my sarcasm and these icky nasty remarks that pop out of my mouth before I realize how goddawful I sound. This is not a theory. Big Kid and I have talked about it. It is one of the rare instances in which being a bitch is not working for me. I pray to the Goddess of Chatty for wisdom. Perhaps I should switch to a Silence Goddess, but that seems so dull?

Tonight, I drove Big Kid to the movies. It was really far. We took his friend too. Friend had to look through all of the movie listings once we were on the way to a particular movie. Then he had to read off each movie and listen to my summary. I did pretty well. I thought maybe Big Kid was getting irritated at Friend, so I tried to sound relaxed about the fact that I was already driving toward the theater where the original movie choice was playing. And it was a million fucking miles away, and I am a saint, a Jewish mother saint. (I finally said it - it's a relief to come out with the truth.)

Friend alluded to paying for himself, but I assured him I would pay, even as I was getting nervous about how much that particular theater costs. Big Kids eat like swines. Pregnant swines. So it took me a few minutes to locate the theater, and I dropped off the Big Kids to go get tickets. The excellent movie we were supposed to go see was sold out. Big Kid looked bummed and mopey. Friend popped around chatting about which movie to see, sorta like a Pez dispenser, but without any offer of candy. He seemed to have missed the concept of all other movies having started half an hour earlier. There were no goddamn choices. I behaved, though, like a pious monk. That was a foreshadowing of the bad-as-crap movie we would end up seeing. (Monks featured, and they were not Tony Shalhoub. They were draped, colorless, and silent.)

We "chose" the monk-y British King flick with Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton. I was so preoccupied at that point that I forgot that they're both dead. It was a fucking sixties epic, except there was no fucking. It sucked. It was not Children of Men. It was not Clive Owen. It was the disturbing mashed-potato face of Richard Burton in a big religious dress and a crown to match. It was agony. I kept looking over at Big Kid - I had assumed I would sit in the back, but they were both like sit with us, whaddevvah - for some sort of sign that we were sharing the this-movie-sucks moment. But we weren't. Friend had actually studied the King Henry number something history and now had an interest. The very idea of an interest in conflicts in England hundreds of years ago is science fiction for me. I'm a world history dumbass, with the exception of a few "explorers" who claimed they discovered shit that was already here and belonged to someone else.

In the car on the way home (finally), friend said he really liked the movie. He asked me what I thought, and I told him I didn't like it. Thinking he needed to defend his opinion, he said "Well, I don't get out much." I thought that was hilarious, and I reassured Friend that everyone is entitled to his or her own taste. So perhaps Friend had simply been very anxious to go to just the right movie, or perhaps he was a tad nervous being out, hence the pre-movie ruminating about what to see.

After that, The Big Kids talked about science fiction authors, and plots, and books they had liked a lot. I hummed along, eyes on the road, very proud that I had seemed so patient, even during the half hour we had to wait for the monk movie to start. After Friend got out of the car, I did not ask if he is a good friend. I did not ask if he was more of a buddy or a confidante. I said absolutely nothing about feelings. Big Kid, however, said several sentences to me! I responded appropriately. I did not thank him for talking to me. I did not tell him how much I love him, or how mature he seems compared to Friend. I was so good. Now I will pray for a few more sentences in March.

Notes on Nurses & Other Pearls of Rage

It was the welbutrin what fucked me over. It's not even clear at this point whether I will continue to have bipolarish symptoms, or if that was a reaction to the medication. I thinka little bit o both. So beware side effects, even if you have been on a medication for a while.

The Nurse Practitioner, Nurse Sobedda, who was covering for Distracted Doctor, was remarkably attentive and also had excellent fashion sense. One of those great short haircuts, and a noticeably appropriate affect when she heard my story. Sobedda had chutzpah, too. She said something about being comfortable contradicting what Distracted had said, and having her own opinions. Well, sign me up!

Once she heard my story, she said she was sure that I had been through so much trauma that that was first thing to address. It was validating, and it also really sucked to hear the truth. Couldn't we pretend that 18 months is plenty of time to regain one's footing after the loss of a sibling? Oh, okay, the sudden loss? The violent loss. Ach.

It is all so Joseph Heller ala Catch-22. I would be crazy not to be crazy. And what is it to not be crazy? Is it marching along with life and looking like I'm okay? I can do that. Is it managing to be consistent, or keeping from being depressed? Ball & Chain said that I will need to accept Baby Brudda's death. We were on the phone, and I had one of my I-wanna-reach-out-and smack-you moments. I am not going to accept that someone killed my brother. I refuse, and I consider it an insult. I completely reject it. I need to 'face facts,' or whaddevvah, but one cannot make nice, emotionally or otherwise, when a young man is robbed of a huge portion of his life.

So I say fuck the stages of fucking grief. Fuck the bullshit about everyone experiencing the same thing, and to hell with the idea that someday I will accept my brother's murder. I keep going, and I do a lotta shit, and I hafta know what I know and proceed. But I don't accept violence; I don't accept cruelty. Death is as natural as birth, but not when a person deliberately kills another. That's a fucking crime against humanity.

Calmed Nerves, Friendship Requirements, and The Difference Between Late and Early

Mania Receding. Anyone who actually read the longest-fucking-blog-I-evvuh-wrote (that's you, Suzanne ): hey that's not a weird blog frown, it's a colon after end parens Thank You for tolerating the unbottling of feelings and thoughts that probably should have remained in an unwatered seed form, left to dry up and blow away. ("Oh, dry up," my former friend Shithead's mother useta say.) Shithead dropped me after twenty years of friendship because she said, basically, that I was too fucked up. That was very sweet, especially since we'd already drifted apart and I assumed we weren't hanging out anymore. But as a "good Christian" she said she had to be honest with me - in writing. What a Shithead. I had the nervous breakdown, got over it, and she lost what would have been the most entertaining moments of her life. Dumped by a friend, though - that's harsh.

I have about 577 unfair and biased litmus-tests for people who apply to be a good friend. Friend, fine. Good friend: fuck off. That's test number one. Can you take a joke? Have I known you for awhile? (Otherwise you may be a former beauty queen, or who knows what?) Have you been a beauty queen and now you realize it was ridiculous? Are you super-polite (deal-breaker - too much etiquette freaks me out, unless you're my mother). And on and on, of course. Do you believe everything happens for a reason? If yes, fuck off, unless you passed 576 other tests, and then I'll take it into consideration if you compliment me a lot. Okay, considering my state of reality, I cannot list the other 567ish other tests. A few days ago, the number would have been bigger, and I could have enumerated each requirement. Like I said, mania receding.

So I stopped taking Welbutrin and ta-da, I'm kinda sad and sleepy and the way any normal gal would be during the month in which her late Baby Brudda was born. Funny thing is, Baby Brudda was always late. I couldn't stay mad at him, though. He was the one person in the world I could not remain irate at, or with, or whaddevvah. Regarding the description of dead people as "late," it is absurd. Late for what? Late for lunch? They can go wherever the hell - or heaven they want. It's been proven, time and time again. Think of all of those walk-through-walls ghosts. Or maybe it means late like 'seeya later, in the after-life?' BB was early, folks. Early. By about sixty years. His bald spot had just started and he pouted when I inspected it. His band was mid-recording for their newest CD. He and Sweetheart were planning to start the fuck-for-a-baby program.

Well that's why I'm sad, that's why I am anxious, that is why, if you are able, you should listen to music you love and hang out in your pajamas and watch movies and eat a lot. Because that's what BB did, and he passed virtually all of the 577 tests. No one can pass all of them, because I cannot remember them all. I just know they're there.