New Time

Okay... did you know that the last time did you know that the last time neptune was where it is now, we had not fought the civil war? some of my ancestors had not immigrated to the U.S. yet. and the last time pluto was where it is now, the united states was not yet founded?
in Pluto time, the medieval age began, ended, the new world was founded, and the native americans were all screwed out of their land and lives within three years. 6.66 pluto years ago, jesus was immaculately conceived and was crucified probably within 3 degrees of pluto's revolution.

in light of my first entry today... I am inventing my own time...

Actually, now that I go to do this, it seems difficult, because I don't really like to plan a schedule, but I am going to try, just to prove the arbitrary nature of time to myself.

There is no today or tonight, there is right now. What am I going to do today? you mean, what am I going to do right now.

Right now I am going to: eat, sleep, read, watch tv, work, teach math, teach reading, have recess, play chess, play checkers... depending on what I feel like or hafta do right now.

There may be a tomorrow. you may ask me about a tomorrow. I will be indefinite.

There may be a later. I may have an idea about a later. More likely than an idea about tomorrow.

There is definitely a soon, or an "in a while", provided that I don't die earlier than that.

There are many past moments... or memories. I can tell you about these moments, but don't count on knowing "when" in your traditional terms.

How old am I? I have made it around the sun about 27 1/2 times... but you might say I am half as old as my mom. Or I have been under about 96 more full moons than my brother jake, 72 more than my sister becky, 48 more than my brother Dan, but 24 less than my sister tania, 60 less than my sister trina, 84 less than my sister tammy, 108 less than my sister Tracy, 216 less than my dad, 324 less than my mom (sorry mom), 3 more than my friend angie...

Don't ask me to do the math for sunrises, please!

I work for about one sixth of a moon cycle, and then I have one 15th of a moon cycle off.
this repeats about four times per moon cycle.

After working 9 moon cycles, I get three moon cycles off.

I am nine blue moons old, I think...

Another day, another degree...

I am just trying to occupy the "right nows" until I have to work... I will probably go to B&N to work on Miscue Analysis "soon" ... and maybe get some tea... or coffee... make it decaf, I want to sleep sometime before the sun rises again.

360 degrees versus 365 days

My brother recently brought up the idea that there are 360 degrees in a circle and 365 days in a year. This is an interesting concept, and I wondered again whether this has anything to do with the size of a degree.

Degrees in a circle are, I think, just another way to measure something. Inches and meters measure length, liters and cups measure capacity, seconds, minutes, hours measure time.

None of these measurements are divinely given. They are totally arbitrary names given for convenient, but also arbitrary to a degree, measures. For example, if I decided it was easier to measure things that were the length of my hand, I would call my hand one .... something, I could have called it an inch or a meter, but those are taken. I think I heard that some king in the past was standardizing measures and he decided that the amount of water that he could fit in his (divinely holy) mouth would be called a cup... or whatever, don't quote me. So then if his mouth had been a bit bigger, then recipes calling for a cup of something would have to change to 3/4 of a cup or something like that. I don't know what this king measured that was an inch...

Anyway, it happens that the earth, in it's imperfectly circular revolution around the sun, rotates one time for each "degree" it travels around the circle. Did the people who measured and named degrees use the earth's path around the sun as the measurement? I don't know. See what you think about the aztec calendar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_calendar. They had 360 days broken into 18 months of 20 days each (360 days), and then they had 5 days every year that didn't belong to any month. What would you do if you once found yourself not in any month? How did they survive in those days? What did they write on their checks? Did they just float around sucking their thumbs and crying, not knowing what to do? Maybe they didn't even cry, maybe they just didn't do anything.

Ummmmm... so I know that geometry was enhanced because people were using it to determine the distance of planets and stars or something.

Degree really sorta means extent or severity. To what degree were you burned? At what degree is the slope? How many degrees of the pie did you eat? How many degrees hot is it (to what degree did the mercury rise?)... It's not so arbitrary a name for measurements.

By the way, if my writing seems imperfect or unclear or unfinished, to a degree, I read in a book that all your writing doesn't hafta be perfect, you should have lotsa crappy writing and it should (now I am adding my own thoughts to a degree) be an emptying of your mind onto paper. Good thoughts are like pearls, or a diamond in the rough. You will never find them if you don't search the rough.
That's what I say about people who love to read quote books, they are reading all the pearls, and they never search the rough. When you find a pearl in a book, you find it in it's context. You know exactly the thoughts surrounding that quote. There is a quote in the fellowship of the ring, early on, where the hobbits tell frodo that they will never leave him and they will be loyal blah blah blah... The quote without the context of what is going on, and all of frodo's emotions and reservations about putting his friends in danger but also not wanting to go into danger alone, means less. Within the context, it means a lot more.

I em sircheeng phoawr the teyemund in the ruff.

Overall, I think that you may study a concept; you may name things anyway you want to. In the end, it's all perception. We could so easily have never made it out of medieval times. Would we be better off or not? old questions, I've heard them before... but sometimes you wonder. there's no harm in asking old questions that haven't been answered yet, is there?

i'm getting back to that wrinkle on the brain thing... I think each person has a wrinkle in their brain that gives infinite answers to impossible questions. you probably pass over that wrinkle a million times a day when using your brain. you probably have a 1 in a million chance of accessing that wrinkle and even less of a chance of understanding what it tells you.

look for it - maybe when you find it that's when you go crazy.

new lows in laziness

I've been so unmotivated lately... I mean, teaching the kids, I've been doing great. But like now, it's 12:30, and I don't wanna go to bed. I have to teach a special weather lesson first thing tomorrow, and I have parents coming in to help with that. Then I have cub scouts after school. But here I am, nursing an addiction to the internet and my lovely computer...

This weekend I am going to see an old bud - davies. he's sent an evite to a 24 hour theater thing... so I'll go to that performance, then they're havin a party after the performances. it should be a good time... and i'm hopin to see shaun sperling... that would make the weekend!

Revelation

I had a friend once, she probably would say she still is my friend, and I guess I would say that too, whenever we talk we subconsciously pretend we just saw each other yesterday... But she said I floated on a cloud. She was sort of acting like eeyore, but that's beside the point. She said that things always worked out for me, and I just floated through life on a cloud and everything was flowers & sunshine. She even bought me "The Cloud Book" by Tomie DePaola when she was leaving for home that summer. I really had fun with her, and I thought of her today when something mysteriously worked out and it affected me kind of deeply.

It starts with the memory I have of "putting up corn" in the fall with my family. The day was always planned and executed the same. My grandparents always came for this day, as they did for making apple-sauce, canning tomatoes and freezing green-beans. I don't know if it was that they liked to help, or because we needed their help, but it was the spoonful of sugar that made it easier for the kids to want to help too. We loved it anytime our grandparents came, even if it was to help us work.

My grandparents periodically had words with each other, telling stories on each other, generally bickering throughout the day, and that was entertaining to all of us. Papa used words like yardbird and yoo-hoo, shots at my grandmother's intelligence. He swore to us and they argued sporadically about whether she'd ever earned a high school diploma. Gam focused on Papa's waning memory and his inability to part with money.

One year while putting up corn, we had already picked & peeled all the ears. The corn-stalks had been hauled off to feed the cows, and we were inside now. Dad had the corn boiling on the stove, and Mom, Gam, and Papa were cutting the corn off the ears. It was my job to take the cut corn and put it into ziploc bags, weighing each bag at a pound, I think. I don't think any of my brothers or sisters were around, but I may be mistaken. My grandmother was telling a story that was making fun of herself, I don't remember the story, but I remember in the conversation after the story Papa called Gam a "basket case."

This is where I piped up, "What's a basket case?" My contributions were always in questions, and frequently about the meaning of words that Papa was using. I was very curious about this expression, but no one could define it for me. They could just say that Gam was a basket case, and that was all the context I got.

I kept asking for better explanations, but they gave no more. I decided to guess, and the context I used was that Papa was always calling Gam names that had to do with limited intelligence. So when someone answered me again by saying that Gam was a basket case, I ventured, "What, does it mean stupid?"

I got a quick, amused but disapproving glance from Mom and realized how I sounded. I tried to backpedal, but there was no going back. I doubt my grandparents recall this specific conversation, probably no one does, but I remember it sometimes very clearly and feel uncomfortably hot inside, recalling my embarrassment.

In context since then, I have come to think that "basket case" is someone maybe who panics easily, someone who is a bit flaky, someone who needs help from people a lot.

So today, I was reading one of my favorite books, "How Not to Say What You Mean: A Dictionary of Euphemisms." And guess what word I came across? Right there between "Basket" and "Basted" was my word: "basket case."

At first, I assumed I knew the meaning, and I was going to skip over it. The memory of the corn freezing incident wasn't really in my head right then, and the monumental importance of this euphemism eluded me for a moment. However, I decided to read the definition, just to be sure I was right about what it was.

basket case a destitute person or society incapable of self-reliance
this is the container in which food might be distributed as an act of charity. It is used of
a person, or of a nation, and also figuratively:
- The other part of him couldn't understand why a nurse in a nursing
home should be so grief-stricken over death... an obvious basket
case. (Peck, 1990-the arms and legs of the person who had died
had been amputated).

- Poland, which is economically a basket case ...(Daily Telegraph, Feb. 1982)

- I will not print the vulgarities of the third entry in my blog

So, it does follow that my grandfather was again attacking the flaky nature of my grandmother, or as he would put it, "She's a yardbird." I know I am known to be flaky, or I would say distracted; I probably get it from her. I prefer to say that our heads are in the clouds.

cheating

ummmmm... i don't know if this is allowed. but I'm gonna link to my friend's blog, to my favorite entry so far. I hope it's allowed. If not, i'm sure she won't hesitate to tell me to change it. Here it is anyway, my favorite blog entry.

my word for today is suture... it popped into my head when I spelled sure wrong while typing above, and it occurred to me that I like that word. even better than stitches & scalpel.

while constructing shelves for an elderly lady yesterday, she told me about her day to day life, which is her habit when I do work for her. after finishing, I always try to find the shortest path to the door and get out. something about that place makes me uneasy, but I can't say no when she asks me to work for her. She was telling me about how she was going to rearrange her bookshelves & office desk & other furniture in this room (where I doubt she spends 4% of her time currently. A thought came to me, that I was ashamed of, that really, why rearrange this room... why, when first of all, you never come in here, and when you die (here's where I feel bad) which will most likely be soon (how can I be so mean) what will it matter where your stuff is. Really, I have this same philosophy about a lot of things, not just when things concern an elderly lady. I guess the philosophy seems more pronounced when someone is so close to the other end of life. What would you do, if given the choice of going out for fun & games, perhaps bingo or just going out to eat, or rearranging a room where all your kids' old belongings & your 20 year old bills are stored? I'd go play bingo, or something. That's pretty much what I do now. I mean, I don't play bingo, much, but I go out instead of working around the house. I don't know ,I'd rather be having fun.

Here's what I meant to say at the beginning of writing this: she told me about her daughter's foot and how the bones have somehow seemed to have transposed themselves, and so one is on top of the other where it should be the other way around. ummm that was painful to listen to. it really bothered me, especially because I had thought I was out the door when she started the story. in fact, my hand had turned the doorknob when she began, and the inner struggle created by my impulse to just leave and my conscience telling me to stay and feign interest... I was torn... I hate medical stories where bones are broken or ligaments are torn or ankles, wrists or whatever is sprained. damaged appendages are hard for me to think about without being squeamish.

I made it out alive, and I was sure she watched me get into my car, where she noticed I had a Kerry-Edwards sticker on my bumper. That probably hurt her. I would live with that... if the pain caused her to find a more conservative house-hand.

Dogsittin' again

Yep.

2 weekends in a row, I'm hangin with the bassetts again. They are so funny! They sleep on you and, for some reason, it's not uncomfortable. In fact, with this weather, I appreciate the warmth. I'm gonna put some pics on here now...

Watched Fellowship of the Rings with the pups today. We had chunky beef soup and crackers and tea. I didn't share the tea, they're happy with water. We had a good time, and I got some grades done, as well.

I'll tell ya what.


clancy, the crazy one


all of 'em

my attempt at squirrel animatography - just 3 frames in the life of 'nutty the birdseed thief'

Pennyroyal Tea

One of my long-time favorite CDs is Nirvana Unplugged in New York... MTV

One of the songs from that CD is Pennyroyal Tea, I don't know all the background like which cd that was on originally or whatever. I just wanna talk about the message of that song for a bit now. Okay, first I'm gonna listen to Ben Folds & talk about other things.

My stomach hurts a lot these days. when I eat at night, like dinner time, the food sits in my throat. Today I went to a doctor who specializes in the parts of your body that turn food into energy and crap. he's gonna do an endoscopy and find out what's going on down there.

I don't know why I have these problems but I am gonna make some guesses:
(some "I" statements for psych/counseling people)

1. I worry a lot (seems beyond my control)
2. I eat junk (It's not my fault!)
3. I sleep on my stomach & not well (I can't sleep any other way!)
4. I stay up late (I don't wanna go to bed!)
5. I'm never satisfied. With anything. (Idealists, what can I say?)

Jeez, it's not like I snort, sniff, smoke or shoot any drugs, I should be healthy for crying out loud. I even exercise sometimes!

But I do worry all the time... even when I don't realize it. and I don't breathe right, I think. I should meditate or do yoga. I need to settle down. My legs shake when I sit for a while. Imagine trying to tell a bunch of first graders to sit still while your feet are tapping beyond control.

So I sit and drink my chamomile tea and hope to settle down soon.

The words I remember of that song come to me as I self-medicate. I was gonna try and listen to the song on the ipod, but that's not working with the computer right now, blah blah blah.

sit and drink pennyroyal tea
distill the life that's inside of me
sit and drink pennyroyal tea
i'm anemic royalty
.......
I'm on warm milk and laxatives
Cherry-flavored antacids


Well I'm not on warm milk, cuz that sure won't stay down. This is all a bit dramatic, but it's fun. Food is really unnecessary, right? Maybe I'll just get a portable IV & never have to physically eat again.... but as Peregrin Took says in The Two Towers, after drinking "food" from the walking trees, that liquid food is very refreshing, but there's something about solid food that is more satisfying. Who needs satisfaction, really. Not me.

Dog-Sitting

This weekend I dog-sit for a teacher in my school. She is absolutely devoted to her dogs, and I feel when I dog-sit, or baby-sit, I should do my best to simulate the care given by the primary caregiver. So I am pretending to be devoted to these dogs. It's not difficult, because they are adorable.

She and her husband have raised so many bassets, and she currently is raising 2. I am dog-sitting for three bassets, because her son's dog is over for the weekend. Their names are Katie, Heidi, and Clancy. Clancy is the visitor, and as named by my friend the teacher, Clancy is the devil-dog. I didn't appreciate this name until Clancy started bothering the magazine rack. I don't know what she thought the magazine rack had done to her, but she was hollering at it while I was trying to enjoy the Simpsons. Heidi and Katie had taken what I assume were their everyday places on the couch.

I went to find out what the magazines were doing to provoke Clancy, and she decided I should stay out of it. She bit my hand, I think to protect me from the magazines. That's when I swatted her behind, to protect her from the magazines. She decided the magazine hunt was too dangerous and she assumed her place on the chair across from the couch, where she took up a battle with the television across the room. This didn't involve physical contact with the television as it had with the magazines, just more barking.

Last night we slept in the guest bedroom, the dogs needed help getting up on the bed. But they insisted on protecting me all night, as I was their guest. Katy even insisted on personally keeping me warm. Everything that happened cannot, and should not, be related. What happens in the guest room will stay in the guest room. I will just say that I was warm and cuddly all night long.

This morning I went to sit on the couch in the den, which has sliding glass doors that allow a direct view of a tree with a bird feeder. There was a bluejay there eating of the feeder, and there were several squirrels there eating seeds off of the ground. One of the squirrels had an ingenius trick for eating out of the bird feeder, because apparently those were better than the ones on the ground. This squirrel would climb the tree to the height of the feeder (about 4 feet off the ground). He would then cleave to the tree with his hind legs and lunge toward the feeder with his forelegs. He would hold the tray of the feeder with his front paws while eating frantically until his hind legs couldn't hold him anymore. When he fell, he would eat the seeds off the ground until he regained strength enough to climb the tree again for some more warm seeds.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

I'm reading this book that my mom got me for Christmas, Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris. It took me a few chapters to realize it was not really a novel but more a collection of chapters of Sedaris' life... it is so funny sometimes! I just finished reading the chapter that the book is named for. In this chapter he is studying french in France with an ego-maniacal teacher. The class is talking about holidays and a muslim person asks what Easter is all about. The class goes about explaining the holiday, in broken french, "...he call his self Jesus and he die one day... on two ... morsels of... lumber."

The members of his class end up counseling and coaching each other: "Sometime me cry alone at night." "That be common for I, also. But be more strong, you. Much work and someday you talk pretty. People start love you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay."

I love it! There is much more in the book, obviously, but me not want plagiarize lot much.

The Neighbors

I am at my neighbors' house - Dallas & Caryl. It's something I've been wanting to write about but it hasn't seemed time yet... I don't know how to explain it, but it's like I want to include my neighbors in my daily blog, but I have to introduce & explain our relationship before I just start throwing their names around.

I moved in here in Peoria in 2001 and Dallas & Caryl are my landlord's parents. My landlord lives in Chicago, and so my neighbors take care of the paperwork and maintainence on my rental. They are very good to me, and I do some work around the house for them.

It's appropriate that I introduce them now, because I am sitting in their kitchen. Caryl offers lots of ice cream, tea, cookies, coffee, all kinds of treats. When I was without a computer, I could always come and use theirs. They pay me to cut their grass, and my grass.

Today is Caryl's birthday, so I say happy birthday to you, Caryl. And I say good night, and from now on when I refer to my neighbors, Dallas & Caryl, everyone knows who I am talking about.

commitment

I am afraid of commitment. Today at the dentist, I couldn't even commit to an answer as to whether my tooth hurt when he blew cold air on it and poked it with his sharp pick thing.

"uhhhhhh... it feels different..." i replied

"Different - good, or different - bad?" he re-inquired

"uhhhhhhhhh... I don't really know..." i replied

Everything I write ends in an ellipsis, and I am starting to realize that my speech does the same thing. I can't define anything. I feel like the best way for me to express myself would be in a multi-page report on all my possible viewpoints and opinions.

When I was much younger I was surprised to be asked my opinion on a restaurant's fare by my parents.

"Is it good?" they had asked

"Well... I ... only ate there a couple times..." i mumbled from the back seat of our aerostar

"Well, when you ate there, was it good?" they asked again

"Uh... I don't know what you guys like... but, they have a lot of different kinds of food..." i tried to avert the real question

"Well, is any of it good?" frustration & voice volume growing

"Uh... I liked what I had... well, one time I did, but..."

Oh my god! I don't know why I can't answer any question directly, I guess it's because I don't want to be wrong. I don't want to say something and have it proved totally unsubstantiated... I could never go into politics (or maybe I could: I don't know if the food was good mom, what is your definition of good?).

As I worked in a construction office while on summer break in high school, my good friend, the president of the company, delivered me to a bunch of different professionals at the office. An accountant, a marketing executive, construction project managers from various colleges, engineers... He said "Here, Marc, talk to these people and maybe then you'll have an opinion of your own about where to go to college and what to major in." (Italics restated to omit sexist generalizations and expletives)

I related this story to my Dad and he basically said my friend was right on, I needed to be pushed to make a decision. A commitment.

I find that this "problem" is not fading as my youth does. I thought, as a kid, that there would be some magic age when I would stop biting my fingernails for recreation. I still do it, and I think if I stopped it would be like losing a friend... or maybe worse. (just kidding, friends) (no I'm not, fingernails). But I am not getting better at making decisions. I hate to make decisions that affect other people. If it's affecting me, whatever... I'll do what I feel like doing when the time comes. But making decisions that will affect others, I have to make a decision now, and I have to follow through on it. And they have to like the decision and if they don't, will they still like me?

So as people ask me, "How are the roads tonight, is it icy like on the news?" I continue to mutter an ambiguous response that leaves them regretting their decision to ask me a question.

I wish I could change the way I make decisions... then again, I like the way I make decisions.

Maybe other people should just lay off me or change their ways.

You know what I really don't like? olives and stupidity.

School Closings

... and now for the list of school closings

... we've had a lot of central illinois school districts closing due to slick conditions

... here's a list of schools closed due to road conditions


... EVERY SCHOOL DISTRICT EXCEPT FOR PEORIA 150 WILL BE CLOSED TODAY... DISTRICT 150 WILL BE IN SESSION TODAY...

Sometimes I wish I lived in a rural district where they can never salt & plow all the roads in time for school.

& okay, if today is Wednesday, which it is... and you know road conditions are so bad you need to cancel all extra-curricular activities after school today, why not just cancel school for tomorrow? Yeah, you shoulda canceled it for today... but it's a bit late for that. So cancel tomorrow. Then I can stop and get marshmallows on the way home for my hot chocolate, and I won't leave the house for 36 hours...

illin'

I'm sick today... I went to school and made it but I feels like poo.

time item me it mite time

I like the weather these days, in Illinois. I shoulda rode my bike but I didn't wake up till 10:00 or so, and I had to start getting ready for work tomorrow!

I have always done something weird with regard to time. Most of the time, I forget about it completely. Because I am fidgety, I can't wear a watch. Because I am lazy sometimes, I don't check the clock. So I just don't think about time a lot.

It started with Christmas a long time ago. I'm 27 now, and when I first started doing this, I was probably about 9 or 10. I would convince myself that going to bed on Christmas Eve was a good idea, because sleep seemed to make things happen faster. Excited in wait for whatever gifts I wanted, I tried to bring sleep with this philosphy. Time is funny with regard to sleep.

When I was 11 or 12, I would think about the fact that it was Christmastime and that I had waited a long time for Christmas to come. I would think, in the days before Christmas break, I kind of don't want Christmas break to start, because once it does, it'll speed through and I'll be back in school waiting for spring break. Ultimately, because I can't stop time, break would come and go and I'd wait for spring break and always be pushing time.

Around the same time, I started something I haven't stopped doing yet. When something good comes, like the weekend or Christmas break, (I still celebrate the coming of Christmas Break, cuz I get 2 weeks off!) I think... "hmmm, I am standing here about to leave my classroom with 2 weeks ahead of me, and at the end of that 2 weeks, I'll be back here with the break behind me." I set up a sort of time capsule in my memory where I project my thoughts to the future "me"... I think this concept is not as impressive to communicate as it is to behold just within your head.

But time is funny, you have to give me that. I think that you could prick, with a needlepoint, a concept as big as the universe itself, or a thought process within someone's mind. A wrinkle in someone's brain could carry their entire childhood. Or it could carry a novel... and every night when you dream, you could live the whole novel or childhood within seconds because of the tiny wrinkle being in your brain - you can access the whole thing at once - because you know what's there.

Happy 2005

2004 big huge earthquake

we're here for more constricting snake

despite the man big tsunami

his evil plan call your mommy

to kill us all buy new clothes

to make us fall blow your nose