Thank God Almighty, it’s FRIDAY AT LAST! Man. It has been some kind of WEEK. I honestly couldn’t even tell you where all the time has gone, but I’ve felt just ridiculously busy. So much so that I have failed to regale you with anything interesting since last Friday! For that, I apologize. I hope that you’ve gotten more done at work this week without Onward Hoe! to distract you from your responsibilities. Let’s see if I can catch you up on the exciting things that have happened.
First of all, Jill got married. It was sweet and beautiful, and she played the fiddle at her own reception. Because she’s awesome. Then I caught the bouquet, and Guthrie (her new hubby) ran over a traffic cone in their get-away vehicle. With all his wedding guests watching. Good times, good friends, good fun.
Then, there was a lot of teaching. And I started going to bed earlier so I could spend a few minutes writing every night in addition to my nightly reading. It’s been off to a bumpy start, but habits take a while to form. I’ll get there.
I had a date last night with Whitney. She ate dinner (I’d already eaten), and then we went on a field trip to Target and Lowe’s Foods. They share a parking lot, which was convenient because we were in a hurry to get back, finish our OK! Magazine article on the Madonna/Guy Ritchie split, and watch The Office. So we went to Target first, returned a sweater I’d purchased, then flew across the parking lot to Lowe’s Foods. It was dark, and you know how those parking lots are. There are little islands everywhere, and you never can tell exactly where the exits are. They’re like mazes sometimes. So I was driving quickly while trying to make sure I didn’t hit anything, which sparked the following conversation:
Whitney: You seem a little unsure of where you’re going.
Me: (Rabidly) A LITTLE NIGHT BLINDNESS NEVER HURT NOBODY!
We both survived, by the way.
When we got home, we watched The Office while peeling grapes for the “Haunted Classroom” my students put on today. The grapes, in the dark, feel like eyeballs. It is very disgusting. We also watched 30 Rock for the first time, and I have to say, I’m hooked already (DLF, you were right). Whoever writes for Alec Baldwin’s character is a freaking genius. I mean, the part where he was talking about the Dora the Explorer underwear that were clearly made for an obese child…that was amazing.
Last night, I had a dream that I married my friend Jim, except I wasn’t actually at the ceremony. I just asked him about it later. He said it had all gone well. He’d said “I do” and everything.
So then today, my class set up and put on “Haunted Classroom 2008.” They’d spent a large part of Thursday planning it, and then when they came in this morning, it was all I could do to keep them on task for the first hour and a half before it was time to start setting the thing up. And by “on task,” I mean learning vocabulary and putting the lyrics to “Thriller” in order.
Anyway, at 10:30, we stopped “working” and started getting the diddy ready, and by 11:30, we had creepy sounds, cobwebs everywhere, the windows blacked out, skeletons hanging from the ceiling, severed heads on every table, a Taiwanese mummy, an Argentinian witch, a Ukrainian demon bar wench, a Tibetan monk vampire, a Hungarian ghost monster, several multicultural under-the-table goblins, and a Korean clown (handing out candy at the exit). I tell you, friends, it was a thing of beauty.
So after the long break, I put on the werewolf mask and hands they’d brought for me and went around to all the other classes, one by one, inviting them to come experience “HAUNTED CLASSROOM.” And surprisingly enough, people were actually freaked out by it. And my students had a BALL. They all felt, afterwards, as though they were truly ready for their first (in most cases) American Halloween. And that’s what I’m all about, y’all. Preparing them to enter the culture. Normally, I would teach them more Mary Kay-approved makeup techniques than covering one’s face in green eye shadow, but that’ll have to be another lesson. Maybe for when the Tibetan monk is absent.