Ferocity Mill

My new favorite word is “crikey.” Yes, like they say in Australia. I started using it a lot last week because my mom was visiting, and I didn’t want to offend her sweet nature by saying “Christ on a fucking CRUTCH” like I normally do. So after a week, “crikey” slipped into my lexicon. I found myself using it once again while I read all of your amazingly supportive words of wisdom and cynicism, as in, “Crikey! Other people have to pay bills too!”

So, I backed away from my computer (yes, even from Facebook, the site which will probably go down in history as having prevented more intellectual pursuits than a medium-sized war) and took action. I calculated my debts, organized my bills, finished my homework, found a bus schedule, wiped the tears from my vagina, and got on with life. I also reminded myself that there are plenty of people all over the place who have things far less together than I do, which definitely helped, along with the knowledge that I’m not required to call anyone “Sir” anymore.

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My classes have been scooting merrily along this semester. I’m taking two Education classes, partially because I think I might possibly want to be a teacher someday, and partially because it never hurts to learn how to teach people things. If anybody remembers my less-than-capable co-worker from my first deployment, you may recall that I was less than patient with him during our little training sessions. I have since learned that most people tend to stop listening to you after you call them an incompetent idiot a few times, especially if you follow it by inquiring about the whereabouts of their head, specifically, if it has recently been seen anywhere near their ass. So now I get to go to class every Tuesday and Thursday to learn about educational psychology and have spirited discussions about how No Child Left Behind could only be more counterproductive if it required teachers to simply smack students in the head with a brick as they walked into the classroom. It’s hugely enjoyable, to say the least.

I’m supposed to start observing classrooms in the next week or two, which means that I first had to actually go to schools and ask them if they minded me lurking around and taking notes. I chose my schools using the Variety is the Spice of Life method, and ended up with Oakland High and a private Catholic primary school down the street from my house – both of which, amazingly, were more than willing to subject their teachers to the watchful gaze of a heavily tattooed stranger like myself. I’m also planning to do some tutoring in a high school English class, Chris Farley-style: “Oh, you don’t care about run-on sentences? Well let’s see if you care when you’re living in a van down by the RIVER!” Then I will casually mention that I know how to operate an M16A2 semiautomatic rifle, and isn’t it time to work on grammar, now?

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A bit about my current living situation: it is more or less wonderful. Back in April, my former housemates, a soon-to-be-married couple, informed me that they had just bought a new house, and would be moving out June first. and would I like to take over the lease here? Although I was disappointed to see them go, I decided it would be pretty excellent to be able to choose three new people to live here, so I agreed to become the new master tenant. There were several shaky weeks of “Eeek! No furniture is here!” and “Eeek! Craigslist is full of weirdos!” but at last, all is well. I am living with three other fantastic women, and also Eric, whose Most Supportive Boyfriend In The Entire Known Universe award is currently being crafted out of a tiny slice of heaven.

When Previous Housemates moved out, you see, they took all of the furniture which was theirs. To properly emphasize: they took all of the furniture, which was theirs. What remained was a pine kitchen table, four chairs, a couple of plates, a refrigerator, some shelves, and a couple of huge empty rooms. After a few minutes of gaping in the dark, I got it together and went to Eric’s place to use his silverware and whine for a while about how I was all alone and had nothing to sit on and could you please refill my glass of wahhhh. He gave me a back rub and told me not to worry, and yada yada yada, we now are living together with said fantastic women in a home full of lovely, cheap-or-free furniture, a dog, two cats, two goats and a beautiful backyard garden.

(Yes, there are two goats living in our backyard. It is a temporary thing, but we all love them, and we have a special Goat Dance that we do when we greet them. They don’t care that we live in Oakland, as long as they have alfalfa.)

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My traveling has not stopped, I should add. Nor has my propensity for enthusiastic partying. However, I have been slowly learning how to integrate the world of drunken frivolity with that of ever-growing responsibility. Eric and I call it “mindful recklessness,” which pretty much means that one should never celebrate life in the form of blacking out and becoming incapable of carrying on a somewhat coherent conversation. Tomorrow we’ll be heading down to a friend’s ranch in Santa Cruz to continue putting that philosophy into practice. Don’t wait up.