Y’all, seriously. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. I put things down, and they disappear. I can’t find my mailbox key, I keep forgetting to buy more almond milk, I have no idea what I was going to write about here just now, and I feel fairly certain I was supposed to do something. Oh. I remember. Please hold.

Ok, done. Whew. Apparently I haven’t blown all my brains out of my nose this week along with twenty pounds of snot. Hang in there, gray matter! I still need you! I know I haven’t used you much this week at all, but that’s just because you got such an intense workout last week, and I wanted to give you a rest. Plus, I’m tired. Oh so tired. But don’t worry, I have every intention of pulling you off the bench very soon because I feel like not being in school has made me stupider, and I’d really like to work on that.

I’ve been reading about William Tyndale, and one interesting thing I read last night was that while he was at Oxford, he used a book by Erasmus called De Copia, in which there was an exercise to give “no fewer than one hundred fifty ways of saying, ‘Your letter has delighted me very much,’” the point being to force students to “use of all the verbal muscles in order to avoid any hint of flabbiness.” I’m always telling my students how rich the English language is and teaching them new ways to say things so they don’t have to use the same, tired words all the time, but that only challenges them. It doesn’t challenge me. And I’ve found myself recently unable to think of the words I want. Simple words like “radiant” and…oh, see, I’ve forgotten them again. Something must be done.

I know I’m still recovering from a crazy week last week and a cold, but those are poor excuses for losing one’s marbles, and I’m far too young for that. I know I’ll never be one of those old people who does Sudoku to keep her mind sharp because Sudoku already makes me want to punch a baby, but maybe I’ll be a prolific letter-writer or something. Something.

And maybe one day I’ll find my mailbox key.

I’m supposed to be finishing my lesson plans for next week right now. Technically, I was supposed to do them yesterday, but since I’m the one who set that schedule, I was also able to issue an executive order to obsessively look at Pinterest and watch Psych instead.

That’s lesson number one, friends. If you set the deadline, you can change it too.

So here I am. Blogging. Something I’ve also procrastinated on quite a bit of late. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Oh wait, I do. There is nothing going on that is of any interest to anyone. So lesson number two: Find nothing of value in your activity, and you will not have any motivation to do it.

Because I didn’t have any trouble at all focusing for an hour last night at craft night on making my Madonna skirt. Nope, none at all. I even recruited L-Josh to help. Because I had a party to attend, and there were going to be boys there. That’s right. I’m a 31-year-old woman who is still highly motivated by the presence of boys at a party. What? Don’t judge me. What motivates you? World peace? Pshh. A likely story.

Lesson three: Turn your procrastination into a discussion of something else entirely, AND make that discussion about someone else. That way, people forget that this is about you not doing what you’re supposed to be doing.

If only boys at a party could motivate me to finish my lesson plans. Could I do a whole lesson on flirting? I’m pretty sure this week’s list could be a list of bad pick-up lines. Oh, it’s starting to come together. But I only do lists on Thursdays, and I still have to plan for Tuesday. I suppose I could do a list of slang words for good-looking one day and the list of pick-ups the other. And I could teach dating terminology like “blind date,” “go Dutch” and “crush.” What else?

And just like that, I’m back on track! Thanks, y’all.

Oh y’all, this semester is going to be FUN! First of all, I’m going to be teaching a new class (that I’ll be inventing as I go) on phrasal verbs, idioms and slang. Now, for those of you who are not total grammar nerds, a phrasal verb is a verb composed of two or more words which, when put together, convey a meaning different from the meanings of the individual words. For example, “hang out” can be literally hang + out as in, “I hang (action) my towels out (where) on the balcony railing to dry.” Or, “hang out” can be a phrasal verb as in, “Ryan Gosling and I were hanging out in his hot tub last night…”

Ok fine, so that last one might have a possible double entendre, but you get the idea.

Anyhoe, that class is going to be awesome. But my other class, my morning class, is also going to be lots of fun. I’ve recently discovered some new podcasts that I’ll be using for listening practice. All from HowStuffWorks.com, we’ve got Stuff You Should Know, Stuff You Missed in History Class, and my personal favorite, Stuff Mom Never Told You. Well, I was listening to a Mom Stuff podcast just now in preparing my lessons for the first week of class, and as I was writing down a few vocabulary words from it, I began to wonder whether I should also use this podcast for the slang class.

The terms in question were “guyliner” and “manscara,” but they also got me thinking about “manscaping,” which made me curious as to how many other such words exist. So I looked it up and was not shocked to find the following:

• guylights
• boytox
• manbag
• brozilian

I WAS, however, both surprised and very, very amused by mantyhose. Yeah. Just you go look that up and enjoy. Feel free to come on back here when you’re done and leave comments.

Last year, for my friend Eden’s birthday, she requested that all her friends make her CDs in lieu of throwing parties, buying dinners, giving gift cards or scarves, etc. Since I love music and making fabulous playlists, I was very excited about this idea. In fact, in the future, if ever you want to give me a CD (for any occasion whatsoever), please do. This is quite possibly my love language.

So I made a playlist for Eden that ended up requiring THREE CDs to burn, but oh my was it ever worth it. And since then, I’ve added to it, making it into a 4-disc, 72-song, epic and fabulous playlist. I have mentioned it to Amaris many times, and she always asks for the list. I always say, “Yes of course you can have the list,” and then I always forget to type it up for her. But the time has come.

Y’all, this is a random, random assortment of music that pleases me so much, I think I may never need to get married. Here we go…

1. Throw Down – The Whistlestop
2. Meet Me by the Water – Rachael Yamagata
3. LoveGame – Lady Gaga
4. Bye Bye Bye – *NSYNC
5. Yellow Ledbetter – Pearl Jam
6. So Much Better – from Legally Blonde the Musical
7. Africa – Toto
8. F*** You – Lily Allen
9. Why Don’t We Do It in the Road? – The Beatles
10. Forget You – Cee Lo Green
11. Piece of My Heart – Janis Joplin
12. One More Road – Roman Candle
13. Hometown Glory – Adele
14. Against All Odds – Phil Collins
15. Gravity – Sara Bareilles
16. Fantastic Mr. Fox (aka Petey’s Song) – Jarvis Cocker
17. Bust a Move – Young MC
18. I Wanna Dance with Somebody – Whitney Houston
19. Ora Basta – Giorgia
20. Faithfully – Journey
21. Born – Over the Rhine
22. Float On – Modest Mouse
23. When You Are Not Enough – Thad Cockrell/Matt Stevens
24. Fango – Jovanotti
25. Leave – Glen Hansard
26. All You Need Is Love – The Beatles
27. Sympathique – Pink Martini
28. By Thy Mercy – High Street Hymns
29. Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana
30. Bron-Y-Aur Stomp – Led Zeppelin
31. I’ll Cover You (Reprise) – from RENT
32. All I Want Is You – Barry Louis Polisar
33. Cherry Cherry – Neil Diamond
34. Jump (for My Love) – Pointer Sisters
35. You Don’t Know Me – Ben Folds
36. Live Again – Better Than Ezra
37. A Whiter Shade of Pale – Procol Harum
38. Rolling in the Deep – Adele
39. Papers in Order – The Old Ceremony
40. Staralfur – Sigur Ros
41. Jesus and Gravity – Dolly Parton
42. Little Wing – Jimi Hendrix
43. Elenore – The Turtles
44. I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues – Elton John
45. Nice and Slow – Usher
46. Vito’s Ordination Song (acoustic) – Sufjan Stevens
47. Heaven Help Us All – Stevie Wonder
48. Andar Conmigo – Julieta Venegas
49. I Can’t Even Recall – Roman Candle
50. Bad Romance – Lady Gaga
51. Under Streetlights – Brooke Annibale
52. Shelter – Ray LaMontagne
53. Reason Why – Rachael Yamagata
54. Soldier Girl – The Polyphonic Spree
55. Call Me Al – Paul Simon
56. Beat It – Michael Jackson
57. SexyBack – Justin Timberlake
58. Ring of Fire – Johnny Cash
59. Someone Like You – Adele
60. Black Water – The Doobie Brothers
61. Nobody Does It Better – Carly Simon
62. Rehab – Amy Winehouse
63. Kyrie – Mr. Mister
64. I and Love and You – The Avett Brothers
65. Somebody Told Me – The Killers
66. The Chain – Ingrid Michaelson
67. Judy in Disguise – John Fred & His Playboy Band
68. Just Dance – Lady Gaga
69. Forca – Nelly Furtado
70. Fade Into You – Mazzy Star
71. Empire State of Mind – Jay-Z/Alicia Keys
72. Your Love Is My Drug – Ke$ha

Yes, I realize there is a hymn right next to a Nirvana song. I also realize that there are at least three Lady Gaga songs on the list. What can I say? I want to be too cool to like her, but I think she’s ridiculously talented, and I just can’t help myself. And I realize that not everyone likes songs they can’t understand. If you want to copy my playlist, but take out the foreign language songs, feel free, but I will not be held responsible for the outcome. This list is perfect, I tell you. PERFECT! Good for parties and cleaning and reading the Interweb and organizing the boxes of crap in your front room. It picks you up right when you need it and brings you back down just at the right moments. It fluctuates between empirically good music and absolute guilty pleasure songs. It has many genres spanning many decades, and because there are so many songs, you can listen to it over and over and never get tired of it because by the time you start it over, it’s been almost five hours since you heard the first song, so you don’t even realize you’re back to the beginning! Once again, PERFECT!

A couple of weeks ago, I told y’all I had succumbed to the boredom of being on vacation and to the persuasive prowess of Alyssa Milano and bought the Wen® Hair Care System by Chaz Dean. And having used it for a week now, I can tell you that it sucks. It might not suck for everybody, but I’m definitely returning it for a refund. Here’s the full review:

Pros

There were definitely a few things about it that I liked. First of all, the stuff smells amazing, and it does feel like it actually cleans your hair. I’ve read a lot of advice for girls with curly hair, and one of the biggest trends is “washing” your hair with conditioner, which is such a joke because that’s not what conditioner is designed for. It’s not surprising, then, that conditioner does a crappy job of cleansing your hair. Before I got the Wen®, I read one review that said it was essentially the same thing. I’m  here to tell you that it’s not. Conditioner doesn’t feel like it’s cleaning anything; Wen® does. And I did like only having to put one thing in my hair in the shower rather than shampooing, rinsing, conditioning, waiting and rinsing again. But that was about it for the pros.

Cons

I’ll just list these out bullet-style as they are numerous.

• In the shower, it feels like it’s very moisturizing, but once I rinsed the stuff out, my hair did not feel like it retained enough of the moisture to keep it on its best behavior. Here’s a little tip about curly hair: It needs a LOT of moisture to not go all frizzy, and the Wen® did not help me in that department, so as long as it was still wet, it looked ok, but as it dried, my hair just got bigger and bigger with the frizz.
• Furthermore, my scalp was extremely dry and flaky. If you are at all prone to dandruff or have any other, more serious scalp/skin problems, I would not recommend this product.
• The next problem is that I’ve only washed my hair FOUR times, and already half the bottle is gone. That means that in another week, the whole bottle will be gone, which means that what they call a month’s supply is really only two weeks’ supply, which means that what should cost $30 a month will actually cost $60 a month, which is just outrageous.
• AND the laughably tiny bottle of styling creme is long gone. I was being very conservative in my use of it, not using enough (and ending up with enormous horrible hair) or supplementing it with other products, and still, that bottle is empty after a week. Honestly, if I’d used the amount of it I needed each time, it would have been gone after the second use. I realize that I have a metric crap-ton of hair, and that I therefore use more styling product than most, but seriously, they give you a travel-size. That mess would barely get me through a weekend, much less a month.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would NOT recommend Wen® if you have:

• a tight budget
• curly hair
• LOTS of hair
• thick hair
• extremely long hair
• dry hair/scalp
• dandruff
• psoriasis
• any other scalp irritation

It might be ok for you if you have:

• an unlimited budget
• short hair
• thin hair
• fine hair
• oily scalp

If you live in Raleigh and want to try it, I’ll pump you out a trial amount before I send it back. Let me know.

No, I don’t think I’m going to lose 30-50% of my body mass this year. That would be a little frightening. But as you know, I do have a long-term running/training plan in place to get me ready for next year’s Disney Princess 1/2 Marathon, and I figure if I lose some weight in the process, so be it. This here is an update on my progress. You know, for anyone who cares.

I finished up Week 2 of the Couch-to-5k training today, and while the first two days were surprisingly hard, today was noticeably easier. I was actually able to run and walk faster as I got closer to the end of the workout. I mean, I’m still no Flo-Jo. Shoot, I’m not even my friend Sally, who runs nine-minute miles (I’m still closer to 12). But I’m getting better. Incidentally, I’m also working on a one-legged spandex getup to wear to the Y.

So next week, I’ll start on Week 3, which is the one where you jog for 90 second/walk for 90 seconds, then jog for 3 minutes/walk for 3 minutes. I know I was skeptical that I could do it last time and surprised when I could. And I know that I did it and went on to do even more, but still, right now I’m thinking, Ugh. Three minutes?? At ONCE?! I don’t know…

But I’m just going to fill my mind with images of gazelles and my ears with music and the encouragement of Chubby Jones, and I know I’ll be just fine.

I’ve been to the gym exactly twice since we got back from New Orleans. Yes, that gym that I pay to be a member of. Twice. And while I’m starting to feel a small tinge of guilt for the money that’s being wasted every day that I don’t go, I don’t want to go.

I’m actually supposed to be over there now for a meeting of the “Wellness Challenge” group. I can’t remember if I’ve told y’all about this or not, but basically, we all set individual goals six weeks ago. Then they broke us up into three groups:

• people who LOVE exercise
• people who like exercise ok
• people who would sacrifice limbs to get out of exercising

I’m in the last group. I mean really, they can’t actually expect us to keep showing up at the meetings, can they? We are self-proclaimed haters of all things exercise-related, and that includes the gym. If they wanted us to meet weekly, they should have held the meetings at IHOP.

So instead of going to the meeting, I’m blogging about how I’m not going to the meeting. But also, Amaris and I were talking yesterday, and we agreed that we’re just not ready to start exercising again. In the month or so leading up to the race, we were SO gung-ho about it, so focused, so determined. Then we got there, and it was all fun and exciting. Then we got back, and our bodies had to just keep going because we had obligations to fulfill.

We’re pretty sure we were running mostly on adrenaline until a few days after we came home. Then we started to come down off that high, and we needed a break from all non-essential activities. I’m still taking that break.

I’m starting to have thoughts here and there about going for a run, but I’m not yet to the point of being excited to put my running shoes on. I think it’s a little bit like a mourning period.

1. First, there’s denial. Nope, nothing’s sore. I feel great! I’ll be at the gym tomorrow!!! (Now let me go to bed. Is it 8:30 already?)
2. Next up, anger. Why won’t these stupid blisters HEAL ALREADY?! I NEED TO GET BACK OUT THERE!!!
3. Bargaining: Maybe if I “take care of” these blisters, they’ll heal right up, and I’ll be able to run by the weekend.
4. Depression: What’s the point? I’ll just give up running forever and spend the rest of my life on the couch watching 3rd Rock from the Sun on Netflix.
5. I’m not sure how the acceptance phase is going to play out yet as I’m not quite there, and I think the parallels start to break down there anyway, but I hope it will involve running.

The plan right now is to (at some point soon) start back up with Chubby Jones and finish that Couch-to-5k training. Somewhere in there, I want to sign up for a 5k so I can have a new goal to shoot for. Once I get there, I’m going to work on 10k training and ultimately work my way up to finishing a 1/2 marathon in three hours, running/walking regular intervals (3:1?) the whole way. In a tutu.

I just don’t feel like it yet. Maybe when I’m 31.

Dear Mr. Bon Jovi,

If you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’d like to tell you a story. In 1988, a 14-year-old girl from Wilkesboro, NC got the best Christmas present EVER – tickets to your February 17, 1989 show in Charlotte (I believe this was the New Jersey tour). This girl was not me, but having grown up in Wilkesboro, I can tell you that this was an extraordinarily stellar gift. We didn’t even have concerts in Wilkesboro until MerleFest started in 1988. MerleFest didn’t become really popular for several more years, and even then, it was Bluegrass. Now I’ve got nothing against Bluegrass, but let’s be honest. It’s no Bon Jovi.

So this girl was stoked to say the least. She already had New Jersey on heavy rotation, but she threw Slippery When Wet back into the mix just to make 100% sure that she knew ALL the words to every song. “Livin’ on a Prayer,” check. “You Give Love a Bad Name”  – yeah you do. “Wanted Dead or Alive” – She could sing it IN HER SLEEP. And the songs from the new album were quickly becoming new favorites. (I don’t know about her, but “Lay Your Hands on Me” is still one of my favorites.)

As the day of the concert approached, she got more and more excited, and then, without warning, winter happened. On the day of the concert she’d been looking forward to for over a month, a snow storm hit western North Carolina, and the girl’s parents couldn’t drive her the two hours to Charlotte for the show.

She was so crushed that her bangs deflated.

And I don’t know why – perhaps to remember what might have been, perhaps out of devotion to you, perhaps out of a bitter sentimentality, perhaps to present you with a desperate plea through her sister’s blog 22 years later  – she kept her ticket.

So here it is, JBJ. The girl lives in Raleigh now, and she would absolutely pee her pants with excitement to be able to see you in concert after all these years. Could you make it happen for her? She couldn’t go in 1989, but I’ve ridden with her through some pretty bad winter weather, and I can tell you that absolutely nothing would stop her from going this time…if only she had a ticket.

Come on, Jon. I bet I could even talk her into teasing up her hair real big for you just for old times’ sake.

What do you say?

Beth

Y’all seriously, I don’t know where time comes from or where it goes. On the one hand, I have no idea how I’ve gotten done the things I’ve gotten done this week, and on the other hand, I feel like I didn’t have a moment to spare until yesterday evening. I am thankful for both hands, though, because I like being productive, and I like a week that goes by quickly in a good way like this one did.

I stayed up way too late every night reading Water for Elephants, which I finished on…Wednesday? Geez, I have no idea. Anyway, I finished it, and let me just tell you, it is good. It has a few racy parts and a lot of cussing, so if you’re not comfortable with either of those, I might not recommend it to you, but if you don’t think you’ll be bothered by them, the story is just really great. It’s told well, it’s interesting, it’s engaging, and the ending, I thought, was perfect. It doesn’t give you the feeling that the author is intentionally trying to keep you guessing, but it also doesn’t reveal everything up front. The timing is just right.

It’s also really interesting to read about the circus in the 1930s. I don’t know how accurate a portrayal it is, but it does seem that the author did a lot of research on it, and a lot of the characters and events were based on true stories from the time, which is neat.

I had a little bit of trouble keeping the minor characters straight. A lot of times it felt like when you’re talking to a friend who’s talking about his/her co-workers, but instead of explaining who they all are every time they’re mentioned, your friend just uses their names as though you know them, and you piece it together. In the end, it doesn’t really matter most of the time whether you know exactly who’s who or not. That’s why they were minor characters.

Anyhoe, the story is about a kid named Jacob, who is in his last semester of veterinary school at Cornell when his parents are killed in a car crash. In his despair, he sort of accidentally winds up on a circus train, where he pretty quickly becomes the show’s vet even though he didn’t finish his final exams. I won’t give anything else away, but from there, you get love, betrayal, murder, schizophrenia, friendship, loyalty, lots of animals, and an old man who can never remember if he’s 90 or 93 years old.

Read it before the movie comes out (in April, I think) because I’m not convinced it’s going to be good. I’ll see it, no doubt, but I’m really just not sure about the casting. I’m excited to see Christoph Waltz in something new because he was so incredibly amazing in Inglourious Basterds, but I’m not crazy about Robert Pattinson or Reese Witherspoon in their roles. I pictured Jacob more, I don’t know, alert-looking and less brooding – more wide-eyed and innocent. And I thought Marlena was closer to his age (Pattinson and Witherspoon are 10 years apart in real life).

If given the choice, I think I’d put Rachel McAdams in the role of Marlena and maybe Ryan Gosling or Jake Gyllenhaal in the role of Jacob. But we’ll see.

Oh! And it seems that the film has done away with Uncle Al entirely and maybe merged him and August into one character? I don’t know, but I do not care for that at all.

Oh well. Like I said, we’ll see. But back to the book.

I’m giving Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen four out of five stars. If I could give it another half, I might (because I think I liked it better than The Help), but I don’t have the ability to type half a star, so four it is. Once again, I wouldn’t say it’s my new favorite book, but I thought it was beautifully and fearlessly written, and I would highly recommend it to anyone. ****

The students in the classroom next to mine are always learning American idioms. This makes my students jealous, I think, because I rarely teach them idioms. I used to teach them all the time. I have lots of units on idioms, some of which we use today, but many of which left the corpus of American speech a full generation ago. That’s one reason I don’t teach them any more. I don’t want to be responsible for dozens of immigrants saying things like, “Today is a red-letter day,” or, “Good bulgogi is as scarce as hen’s teeth in the U.S.”

The other main reason I hate teaching idioms and slang is because a lot of times, they are so generational and/or subcultural. It just doesn’t sound right when a 60 year old says that something is “dope,” or when a 19 year old guy exclaims, “heavens to Betsy!” My job is to help them assimilate, not get them beat up.

But by golly, they just love learning those idioms. It’s fascinating – dare I say, seductive even. Learning an idiom in another language opens up a whole new window through which to view and understand the culture, and there are SO MANY of them, it’s ridiculous. I mean, idioms ARE English. If you don’t know them, you don’t know squat. Unfortunately, they’re like the secret English that only native speakers and a few lucky learners are privy to. Others might learn them intellectually, but they may never be able to use them in a way that sounds natural. Not all of them anyway.

Here is exactly what happens when you teach an ESL class a list of idioms and new vocabulary, and then have them make up skits to practice using them.