Um, I’d just like to point out that we are already through almost 1/12 of 2012. What? Where has this month gone?! Oh right, lesson planning, old episodes of Wings on Netflix, and Words with Friends. And about 50 cups of hot chocolate. I’m having one now as a matter of fact, but I made it with water instead of almond milk because it has less sugar that way, and I want to be asleep by 10 tonight because tomorrow’s a hair washing day. And that, friends, is my life.

I know I said I wasn’t going to make any New Year’s resolutions, but I do want to do a few slightly more exciting things with the next eleven twelfths of the year. But we’ll just call these whatever the annual equivalent of a bucket list would be. Is there a word for that? “Goals” doesn’t seem exciting enough. It’s too corporate, too type A, too…predictable for me.

The Awesomeness Conspiracy

In the pursuit of awesomeness in 2012, I will:

• make videos for the interwebs
• surprise people
• surprise myself
• not be afraid to fail
• go swimming
• flee the country
• make crafty things
• salsa dance
• send real mail
• party like it’s 1999
• stay up past midnight (but not on school nights)
• make rockin’ playlists
• not beat myself up over not finishing the crafty things I started
• frolic in parks
• sing karaoke like nobody’s business
• be grateful
• be sneaky
• tell people how great they are
• go to New York

Word.

Y’all, I have one more week in this long, long, long, long, long semester. Not bad-long, just long-long. And I’m ready for a break, but what I’m really excited about is organizing all the boxes of class materials under my bed into spiffy binders. And these spiffy binders will all fit into one box, making it possible for me to get rid of all the others. Then, I’m going to adjust my prices and re-list my books on half.com in the hopes that they all sell so I can get rid of that book case. And after that, I’m going to go through all my clothes and sort them honestly based on what I wear and what I don’t. I’m going to get rid of the ones I don’t wear, and then I’m going for a run.

When I get back from the run, I’m going to shave my legs. Both of them. All at once. Then I’m going to catch up on all my stories and take a nap. When I wake up from the nap, I’m going to go to the movies. I don’t know what I’m going to see, but it’s going to be good, and then I’m going to do my Christmas shopping.

After that, I’m going to read. I don’t care what. I’m going to go to the ‘Bou, get the free drink they promised me after making me the wrong drink last time, and read until I’m over it. Then I’m going to look at Etsy and Pinterest while I watch Bones and, let’s be honest, probably Elf for the fourth time in a month. I’m going to lie on the floor and watch the lights on my Christmas tree twinkle while I listen to all my favorite music. And I’m going to talk to people on Skype at all hours of the day and night when I would normally be asleep or at work.

If you would like to join me in any of these activities (except the napping and leg-shaving), you are welcome to do so. It would please me very much. We can make gingerbread houses and eat cookie dough and go ice skating and maybe even hold hands.

Ok so now that everybody pretty much knows, I guess I can talk about it.

I might be moving to Europe. It’s weird to type it out into the world like that. So far, it’s just been discussed privately among a few close, trusted friends and people I knew would understand and be excited with me. Honestly, I have no idea what’s going to happen. I’ve been taking things one step at a time, and really, at any point, the whole process could just be over, and that would be it. We’ll see. But for now, we press on.

I’m applying to go with World Team either to Italy or Spain. This is the same organization I went to Italy with back in June, and so far, this process has been…quite thorough. It’s been very cool – I’m learning a lot about myself as I go – but it has also been taking up lots and lots of time that I might have otherwise spent blogging. Or (let’s be honest) watching every episode of Bones (again) on Netflix. The application alone was at least twelve typed pages, and then they sent me the personality tests, the spiritual gifts test and the Bible tests (one of which I told you I flunked miserably, the other I haven’t been brave enough to take yet).

Then they sent me the official invitation to join them for a week of information, evaluation and mutual assessment, and suddenly things got really real. First of all, I need about $700 to make it happen, which is the first real commitment I’ve had to make. Until now, it’s all been literally on paper. Just theoretical. Just a really, really amazing dream of a possibility. Just paella and/or pizza, European public transit, Romance languages and adventure abounding on every side. But when it hits your pocketbook, it hits home.

Then, speaking of home, I started thinking about all the things I’ll miss if I leave. Weddings, birthdays, family reunions, my godchildren growing like weeds, Baby Josh, maybe Moravian Sugar Cake in my PJs with my family on Christmas morning. I don’t know what I’ll miss and what I won’t, but I know I’m asking my family and friends to make as big a sacrifice as I’d be making in going.

But then I started thinking of all the things I’d miss if I didn’t go, namely the chance to do something awesome, something bigger than myself, something impossible, something I’ve felt compelled to do for the last seven years. I don’t know the details of what’s in store for me. I just know that if I don’t at least try, I’ll always regret it and wonder.

I think y’all would too. You know me. You know I’ve got this crazy pull toward Europe. I honestly think if I didn’t at least try to go, some of you would be disappointed. So I’m asking you to sacrifice with me, but also to share in the awesomeness, knowing that your letting go is fueling something incredible.

I didn’t intend to make this a fundraising post, so you can stop reading now if you want it to not be about money. But if you’re still with me, and you want to give a little bit to help me get to the assessment week, please contact me. Comment, call, email, text, smoke signals, carrier pigeon, dream invasion, note in study hall, whatever. But maybe don’t send me a pigeon. You know how I feel about birds.

Well, what I thought was going to be a relaxing weekend of nothing at the beach turned out to be a busy three days of hanging out with lots of people, not sleeping very much and designing stage lighting, but that’s just how things go sometimes. No? Some of you are shaking your heads no. Is that not what you do on your relaxing weekends at the beach? Is assembling/disassembling giant paper lanterns and hanging them from 20-foot ceilings for complete strangers’ weddings not a part of everyone’s vacation? Huh. Interesting.

Well, despite the manual labor and the fact that I didn’t ever actually step foot on the sand, I had a great time in Wilmington. I got to hang out with most of my Wilmington peeps, and I only ended up paying for one meal the entire time I was there. See? The manual labor paid off. Literally. And I got back just in time for Community Group last night, which is always a pleasure.

And speaking of pleasures, I think I slept for about ten hours last night. Then I caught up on all my stories (The Office and 30 Rock) and watched Born in East LA, which was loaned to me by a student who recommended I watch it. It’s pretty bad. Cheech Marin gets deported to Mexico even though he’s an American citizen, and he can’t convince anyone that he’s not an illegal immigrant because he accidentally left his wallet (with his ID in it) at home, and apparently all Americans – particularly those involved in any sort of border control – are complete a-wipes. Oh, and his mom and sister have gone to Fresno, and he can’t get in touch with them. So he works in Mexico for like a week with Daniel Stern while his Mexican cousin stays in his house, clueless as to what’s happening because he doesn’t speak English, and believing the entire time that Jesus is speaking to him through a creepy holographic picture that’s covering up the answering machine.

In the end, he’s able to get across the border with a handful of new friends even though by that time, his mom would probably be back in town and able to answer the phone and help him. Oh the silly problems we had before cell phones. Breaking down on the side of the highway and having to walk to get help, forgetting what you were supposed to get at the grocery store and having to go back home for the list, getting wrongly deported and having to work for Daniel Stern in Mexico. God bless technology.

So it’s 2:00, and here I sit, still in my jabambas. My options at this point are to either (A) take a shower and watch more movies, or (B) skip the shower and watch more movies. I suppose I could get a head start on my lesson planning for when class starts back up in May, but I had a pretty exhausting weekend, so I’m thinking I’ll save that for tomorrow. Or next week.

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.

Yesterday morning, I heard a radio commercial for a boat show in Greensboro this weekend where everyone’s favorite waterskiing squirrel will be performing LIVE!! I got a little excited and then a little nostalgic about my own encounter with Twiggy, but not quite enough to make me want to drive to Greensboro and pay money to attend a boat show.

Little did I know that small, furry, woodland creatures would be a theme for the day.

I later entered into an email conversation with Mrs. Emily Furr Hogan that turned at some point to the topic of transferring VHS videos to DVDs – something neither of us is capable of. She then made the following statement:

I’m pretty sure Matt’s grandma knows how to do this. I need to call her. And yes– I did just admit that a lady in her 70′s knows perhaps more about technology than I do. I think she uses the VHS / DVD thing when she’s making videos of her chipmunks. I’ll find out details.

Now look, friends, you cannot say that someone’s grandmother makes videos of chipmunks like it’s a normal thing and just leave it at that. It is not a normal thing. Please acknowledge that. Since Emily and I had not previously established that things of this nature must be adequately presented both for their creativity and incredulity, I requested more information. Here’s what I got:

It’s all true.  She sets up these dioramas on her back porch and lures the chipmunks that live in her yard to come into the dioramas via a little trail of sunflower seeds.  Before you know it, you’ve got a scene that features a chipmunk driving a covered wagon.  Or hanging laundry out behind its teeny tiny house.  Or “wearing” a santa suit in a little Christmas scene.  (She props up the outfits & as soon as the chipmunk stands perfectly behind it, she snaps a photo.)

This stuff is AMAZING, and I’ve been dying to get my hands on some of it.  She’s got video and ALBUM UPON ALBUM of these types of photos.  I remember her expressing genuine, deep excitement upon finding the tiny covered wagon.  “And I told the store clerk that this would be just PERFECT for my chipmunks!!”

Y’all, this story expresses so many things I love about Emily:

• She knows someone who builds dioramas for chipmunks and then lures them into tiny covered wagons with sunflower seeds.
• She is related by marriage to this person.
• She sees both the humor and the amazingness in such an activity.
• This sort of thing comes up in the course of a normal conversation for us.

I must see these photos/videos, but more importantly, I must find a single cousin of Matt’s to marry so that I too might join this family.

I’d been feeling like my life had developed a large void where fictional books ought to be. I read a fair amount, but mostly I gravitate towards memoirs, humor, books about writing, and Christian non-fiction. And then suddenly, I needed to read fiction. What probably happened was that my brain knew it was turning to mush because I’d spent several days watching several seasons of Friends, and my brain decided it needed to tell me to read something as a last ditch effort to save itself before it turned to goo and oozed out of my ears.

I wanted a good story I could just lose myself in – a page turner – nothing that required a degree in philosophy to fully enjoy, but nothing so vacuous and formulaic as Nicholas Sparks either. So I turned to my facebook friends for advice, and here’s what I’ll be reading this year:

• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• Rescue by Anita Shreve
• Her Mother’s Hope and Her Daughter’s Dream both by Francine Rivers
• Into the Woods and The Likeness by Tana French
• Silent in the Grave by Deanna Rayborn
• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
• The Magicians by Les Grossman
• Monster by A Lee Martinez
• His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik
• My Old True Love by Sheila Kay Adams
• The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
• The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins
• The Confession by John Grisham
• Lush Life by Richard Price
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

I don’t know if I’ll actually get to them all, but I’ll try to give y’all a book report after each one. Starting now…

At the advice of another friend who did not chime in on the facebook discussion, I just read Phantoms by Dean Koontz. Now. I asked him specifically if it was a book girls would like, and he said he didn’t see why not. What I should have asked was, “Will girls who are reading it alone late at night in a quiet house like it?” But he probably wouldn’t have seen a problem with that either.

Y’all. That mess freaked. Me. Out. It’s not even that the writing is all that good. It’s long-winded, he repeats details unnecessarily, homeboy’s editor seriously should have removed half the profanity (he actually probably did, and what was left was quite minimal in comparison to the original manuscript, which is frankly scarier than the plot itself), the characters’ names stole the spotlight from the action, he used the word “said” almost every time someone said something (answered, replied, stated, exclaimed, queried, asked, wondered aloud, whispered, breathed, shouted – just a random sample of alternatives), and don’t get me started on his flagrant overuse of adverbs.

However, when you’re reading a plot like that in a dark, silent house alone, it doesn’t matter that the writing isn’t perfect. All that matters is that you don’t want “it” to get you like it got everyone in Snowfield.

I got into it. So help me I got really, really into it. Then Whitney got into it too.

I was telling her about it as I was getting ready to go to bed on Saturday night, and she agreed that it was not a good suggestion for me to read. But then on Sunday afternoon, somehow we started reading it aloud to each other, and before we knew it, we’d read nearly 200 pages. I won’t lie. It was better than TV. You might feel silly at first, but seriously, try it. If you have a spouse or friend or roommate who’s willing to read with you, go for it.

In our case, reading aloud made the monster less scary, I think because we weren’t left alone with our imaginations. But it was really fun to get into the story together. Also, there were several parts where, alone, we might have just glossed over the wording, but when we read it out loud, we could hear just how ridiculous it sounded. This provided us with some levity as well as a great deal of entertainment.

All in all, on a scale of one to five, I’d give Phantoms by Dean Koontz two stars for holding my attention from start to finish, keeping me guessing until the end, and freaking me the cuss out. **

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.

Whew, y’all. This week has just been non-stop so far. On Monday, I taught until 1:00, and then I went immediately over to the main ESL site to prepare for and lead a training that afternoon. All of Wake Tech’s ESL sites have blogs, see, and each site has a blogger who publishes two posts a week about lessons or community events. They’re doing a great job of it, but a lot of them are fairly new to blogging in general, and the whole system just switched from Blogger to WordPress, and they had a lot of questions about how to use it. I am apparently an expert, so I gave them the answers. Well, a lot of them.

Anyhoe, I left there around 6:00 and then had Community Group at 7, so I went home for a few minutes before heading out again.

Then yesterday, I taught until 3:15, came home, planned my lesson for today, picked a chapter to read at my writing group, ran to Kinkos to make copies, and then went to the group at 7.

And today, I taught until 1:00, had a meeting at 1:30 that lasted until about 3, ate freshly baked apple pie over at my sister’s house, and now I’ve just gotten home. I have about 2.5 hours to prepare for tomorrow’s classes before I have to go to work again tonight. Like I said, whew.

I don’t think I have any plans or obligations after class tomorrow, so that’s nice, and honestly, it’s been a really good week. Being busy helps to keep me on top of things. I just haven’t had time to spend with you guys or go running, which is a shame. I’m definitely going to have to start over on Week 4. I’m ok with that, though. I’m not in a hurry, and I know I’ll get there eventually.

I know this is not a very exciting post, so allow me to share with you this video that was brought to my attention last night by G.Lover (and KimSko). It pleases me greatly. I hope it does the same for you.

Dang, y’all. I’m sorry. I do not know where the week has gone, but I sure do feel like it’s been a full one. Here’s what I remember:

• I went running on Tuesday, and I’m now finished with week 3 of the Couch to 5k program. When I go tomorrow, I’ll step it up to week 4. Wish me luck on that.
• I’ve somehow gotten sucked into Oprah every day this week, which has been interesting because I’ve never been an Oprah watcher. I’ve probably watched it more this week than in the whole rest of my life combined, and because this is the first week of her last season, every day is CRAZY. On Monday, she announced that she was taking thw WHOLE audience to Australia for a week. John Travolta will be their pilot. I’m pretty sure some of them had to be resuscitated. And just now, she gave two full rows of brides-to-be a $250 Kohl’s gift card, a Vera Wang wedding gown, a $4,000 Marriott Hotels & Resorts gift card, and a United Airlines travel voucher to go anywhere in the U.S., Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands or Canada. It really has been almost exactly like this (and seriously, enjoy the moment at 1:58 when Tina Fey pees her pants).
• I played Neil Diamond for my students. They didn’t like him as much as they liked Johnny Cash. They did, however, enjoy Stranger Than Fiction, which we watched today.
• I had dinner with the dean last night. Well, me and 200 other people. It was…free.
• I finished listening to that Nicholas Sparks book and hated myself for getting as into it as I did.
• I went to the mall.

I don’t have any plans for tonight, and I’m just fine with that. I’ma sit here on the couch, watching the TV and resting my feet. If you want to come over and watch a movie with me, you are welcome to do so.