Ass Turned Toward Fire

That was hard.

That last semester and that Christmas vacation, both were excruciatingly hard. I won't bore you with the specifics because they bore even me. Let's just summarize: I worked my ass off; (most) of my students did not. It made me sad.

Then I packed my car, said goodbye to The Lady-Killer and Abbey, and I drove home for Christmas. I looked forward to the trip home. I'd been craving Buffalo for a while. I kept having dreams about pierogi.

At home, I thought, I could rest. Relax. Decompress. But what happened was this: I ran. I ran a lot. I had a billion things to do, a billion places to be. And I also had to meet and mingle with my father's new girlfriend.

And here's where I utter something that makes me extremely guilty: I spent the entire two weeks being really, really annoyed at my father.

I don't know what it was exactly, but I spent two weeks grouching my way around Western New York.

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?" I asked the girls, who I was not grumpy at. (It's hard to be grumpy at people who keep me well-supplied with vodka and M&Ms and chicken wing dip.) "WHY AM I SO PISSED AT MY FATHER?"

Everything he did infuriated me. If he asked me where I'd been, if I'd had fun, if I'd seen this person or that person, I wanted to punch him. I kept thinking about that scene in My So-Called Life, the one where Angela admits that lately she can't even look at her mother without wanting to stab her. I just wanted to call up fifteen-year old Angela Chase and say, I feel you, sister.

My father wanted me to do this with his girlfriend, do that with his girlfriend, attend his girlfriend's family's party, go to a movie with his girlfriend, eat breakfast with his girlfriend... and every time he requested these things, I felt my shoulders involuntarily rising until my ears were crammed down into them, making permanent shell-like indentations in the skin.

"I can't do it," I told the girls. "I just can't do it. I'm exhausted. I'm just so tired. I don't have it in me. I don't think I can go to a party filled with strangers and answer questions about myself. And I don't want to ask them questions either."

The mere thought of that made my eyelids go heavy. And then I felt guilty because I was being a brat. I was being selfish. I was being a nasty thirteen year-old version of my self, but worse because I'd never been that nasty when I was thirteen years-old. So I spent the entirety of my Christmas break breast-stroking through vast oceans of exhaustion, tantrum, and guilt.

And then came the incident with the fire.

It was a morning after my father had spent the night with his new girlfriend. I had the house to myself, and I spent the morning lounging in bed. But my lounging was interrupted when my father called at 10:15. "Hey!" he said. "Come to breakfast. We'll be there at 10:30. Join us!"

That last phrase--join us!--made my fingers clench into fists. I wanted to chuck my phone across the room. Why? WHY? I do not fucking know.

I declined breakfast; after all, a lady cannot get ready in three minutes to make it to the restaurant in time. But my father and his girlfriend made an appearance at the house after breakfast. I puttered around in the living room while my father collected things he needed for their New Year's party. I talked to the girlfriend, who is--it must be noted--very nice. And in the middle of the small talk, my father breezed in and said to me, "Okay, well, we're ready to go. I just threw some logs on the fire. Do you know how to use the stove?"

Okay. Okay. Now let's be clear: I am twenty-nine years old. I lived for more than eighteen years in that house, and for all those years that house was heated by a wood stove. When I was young, I was taught to respect the fire--to stay away, to warm myself from a distance--and I took to that warming idea with much glee: there are many pictures of a young me with my bare ass turned toward the stove, the white moon shining in the glare from the orange flame.

Later, when I was old enough, my father took me aside and taught me how to build a fire, how to teepee the kindling and feed the building flames. He taught me how to use the flue. He taught me how hot the stove needed to get before I cut off the oxygen and let it do a slow burn to last through the day.

Let's be even clearer: I have been making and tending fires for, like, fifteen years.

My father knows this. And even if my father had fallen and hit his head and that fall had erased his prior knowledge of me--his only daughter, his firstborn!--and my fire-making abilities, it wouldn't matter because two days prior to his asking me if I knew how to use the stove, he arrived home just as I, who had also just arrived home, finished building a fire to warm the icy house. He even complimented me on my fire.

So when he stood at his girlfriend's side and asked me if I knew how to tend the fire and use the stove, I almost committed a murder. I wanted to run to the family picture albums, pluck out any of the pictures of me warming my butt near the wood stove. I wanted to shove it in his face and say, "DOES THIS LOOK LIKE THE BUTT OF SOMEONE WHO DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO USE A WOOD STOVE, MAN?!"

I don't know what happened to me. I don't know what split open in my brain and let all that rage leak into my bloodstream, but it was awful. And I feel guilty still--worse, actually, now that I've admitted it here, to you.

I need therapy.

One of These People Puked in the Bushes Outside a Wedding Reception (Hint: It Wasn't Me)

Hey! I'm home for the next big Pink Torpedo weekend, which took place this weekend. I brought The Lady-Killer home with me for the event, and when he wasn't busy using my father's label maker to print off such gems as BUTT MUNCH and SHIT ASS and I HEART WIENER, he got to meet my friends and family. He also got to vomit up an open bar rainbow of wine, champagne, espresso vodka, Sex-on-the-Beach, and rum-and-coke. This was after I gave my brother, who was picking us up from the wedding, a no-puke guarantee.

I never thought I'd say this, but cleaning vomit out of a car in high heels and a strapless dress at 1:00 AM is a pretty interesting way to end an evening. Especially after peeling a boy who is murmuring, "Baby, I'm so sorry! I love you! You know I love you, right? I love you! I puked in my crotch!" out of his clothes and putting him in the shower, then to bed.

But you know what? It doesn't matter. Both of us--the late-night puke-cleaner and the passed-out vomitter--looked pretty good when the night started.

Because He Wanted It

I'm home. I'm back in Buffalo. ("I wish you wouldn't say that," Josh said. He was on the phone with me as I was crossing over into New York from Massachusetts. "You're misrepresenting yourself, you know. You're not from Buffalo. You're from the country. You grew up in a town an hour from Buffalo. Don't be a liar."

"Don't be a pussy," I said. "I can get to Buffalo in half an hour.")

Two days after I got home, my mother and I decided to spend a day making Christmas cut-outs and our family's (hard! ridiculous! pain-in-the-ass!) fudge recipe. Here's how that went: The oven started on fire and we ruined the fudge.

Later, my brother came home from work in a pissy mood. He's mad at our mother. He's avoiding her and not speaking to her. Why? Well, recently he passed the test he'd failed twice before--the test that allowed him to enroll in an intense one year nursing program his girlfriend had already gotten into--and this made him happy, but that happiness was short lived. Back when he started trying to get into the program, our mother told him that if he did get in, he could stop paying her rent, rent that he has been required to pay for a while now, since after he flunked out of auto mechanic school it seemed possible that he might just freeload off my mother forever. Since she has been collecting rent (forty bucks a week), my mother has been socking it away for Adam so that she can give it to him when he moves out. He doesn't know this. He has no idea that he has several thousand dollars saved up in his name for when he and his girlfriend get an apartment together. Surprise!

So, because he doesn't know this, and because he is under the assumption that my mother is collecting all his hard-earned Ass. Head Cashier money and then throwing fistfuls of it over her head as she rolls around in the rest on her bed, he is pretty angry because he came home and said, "Hey! I passed! Looks like I don't need to pay rent anymore!" and my mother said, "Uh, no. I said when you started the program you won't need to pay me rent anymore. You don't go to school until October." She told him to pony up the dough. He told her she was black and evil inside.

"I mean it!" he said. "You're black and evil for doing this to me, Mother!"

And then he stomped away and hasn't really spoken to her since (unless you count our family dinner on Sunday, when, after we finished our stir-fry, he brought out his recent acquisitions, a book called 400 Sauces and a book called The Encyclopedia of Cooking Ingredients, and gave us all a lecture on the superiority of European lobsters and the importance of a good Bernaise). He's still pissed about his money. He wants that $160. He's got stuff to buy. Important stuff.

Like a robe. A really good robe. A really, really good robe. This was at this top of his to-buy list this past week, and he made a purchase--sad because he didn't have an extra $160 to do it with--that he unveiled at dinner. He was chilly, he said, so he needed to put on a robe. Now, it's important to know that the child has a perfectly fine, perfectly good, perfectly normal robe already, but it's also important to know that this robe, this new robe, spoke to him. It called his name. It whispered in his ear: Adam! Touch me!

And Adam did. And he loved the robe. And he purchased the robe.

The only problem? It's a girl's robe. It's a red, satin-trimmed, fluffy-necked girl robe.

"Nice robe," I said.

"Thanks," he said. He petted it. He rubbed the fluffy neck against his cheek. "It's the best robe ever."

"It's also a girl's robe," I said.

"I don't care," he said.

His girlfriend rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

"You're wearing a girl's robe," I said.

"IT IS COMFORTABLE," he said. "IT'S THE MOST COMFORTABLE ROBE I'VE EVER TOUCHED. OKAY? I WANTED IT!"

"Okay," I said. "Fine."

And then he reached for some more duck sauce and another egg roll.

And Then He Put His Hands on the Jackson Pollock Painting

Yesterday, at approximately 3:45 PM we were entering the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.  This was part of my mother's Surprise Birthday Extravaganza! that her boyfriend had orchestrated.  He'd borrowed a friend's RV for the day, and I decorated it with help from his son, the boy previously known as the possibly-gay-black-belt-son.  (I say previously not because he has disgraced himself and is no longer a master of martial arts; instead, I say previously because I no longer have my suspicions about his sexuality.  Now that he no longer sleeps on the top bunk with 100 of his favorite Beanie Babies--remember? sparkling unicorns, angel bears, and the like--he seems to be solidly pro-girl.)

So, after we surprised my mother with the RV and the bevy of snacks we'd loaded into it, we were off for the first of several stops along the extravaganza route.  We did the Buffalo Garden Walk, which took us around the city to thousands of amazing gardens in front of or behind beautiful homes downtown.  It started raining early in the afternoon, so we cut our tour short and headed to the next stop along our route: the Albright Knox Gallery.  We tailgated there for a bit--we were in an RV, after all--and drank some wine and ate some chips and let my mother open some of her birthday gifts.

After that, we headed into the art gallery.  And in the very first hallway, just several feet from the door, as the rest of the group was striding ahead, desperate to get through this at a fast click--my mother's boyfriend, his son, and my brother are notoriously anti-art--my brother spied something that caught his eye, so he stopped in front of the tall canvas.

And then he reached out and touched it.

But more than touched it.  He pressed his entire palm against it, and leaned into it a bit, testing the canvas's give, its strength, its texture.

It was a Jackson Pollock painting.  I almost had a heart attack.

"ADAM!" I hissed, and in the quiet of that gallery that hiss was pretty loud.  Everyone--our party and the several other groups that were milling about the abstract wing--turned to look at me, the girl who hissed, and Adam, the boy who was leaning against a Jackson Pollock painting.

"What?" my brother said.

"YOU CAN'T TOUCH THE PAINTINGS!" I said.  "GET YOUR HAND OFF IT!"

My brother looked all put out, but he did take his hand off the painting.  "Oh, Jess," he said.  "Chill out."  

"Chill out?" I closed the distance between us, so that I was standing right next to him and able to hiss at him all I wanted without other people wondering if I was yelling at a poor retarded boy who didn't know you can't put your hands on a Jackson Pollock painting.  "Adam, you cannot, cannot, cannot touch art in museums."

"Well, I didn't know that," he said.  "How was I supposed to know that?"

"Are you stupid?"

"Listen, it doesn't say I can't touch it," he said, "so how am I supposed to know I shouldn't touch it?"

"How about using your head?" I said.  "This is an expensive piece of art by a famous artist.  What do you think would happen to it if everyone just came up to it and put their hands all over the canvas?"

He frowned.  "Fine," he said.  "Whatever.  And it's not very good anyway.  I mean, I could do that.  I could splatter paint on a canvas and make it look disgusting."

I sighed.  He sounded just like one of my students.  

But he'd already moved on, and he and his girlfriend were standing in front of another canvas.

"How is that art? It's nothing," he said, loudly, and some of the other people sent him withering glances.

"Ssssh," I said.  I needled him in the ribs.  "Here.  I'll ask you the same thing I'd ask my students if they said that to me.  Break it down into its parts.  What do you see?  Consider the colors, the brushstrokes, the shapes.  What does it evoke?"

He considered the painting for a minute and then he said, "A sunny day.  I see the horizon and a big sky.  I see the sun."

"See?" I said.  "That's a lot more specific than saying 'this is nothing,' isn't it?"

"I still think I could've painted it," he grumbled, "but whatever."

Around the next corner, my brother reached out and flicked a light switch that was part of an installation piece.

"ADAM!" I said.  "WHAT DID WE JUST TALK ABOUT?!"

He turned around and narrowed his eyes at me.  "Jeff just did it, too," he said, speaking of my mother's boyfriend, who had gone past the installation before Adam.

I wanted to die.  I wanted to curl up in the corner and wait until they had gone through the gallery so I could make my way through not in the wake of them, the group who was saying loudly, "Wow, that's a real piece of crap!" or "Holy shit! People actually pay money for this?" all while flicking and touching or leaning against the artwork.  (Later, when we were in the upstairs gallery, which featured a room that was filled with giant sculptures of tables and chairs, my mother's boyfriend leaned against one of the chairs and was scolded by one of the guards.)

But curling up in a corner and praying they would forget I was with them was not really an option.  I had to follow them--at a safe distance, so it might look to others like perhaps I was just a girl going through the museum by herself, and not with those crazy people in front of her. 

In another of the lower galleries, my brother dragged me over to a piece that featured long pendulums of different color rocking around and converging to make new colors every time.  

"LOOK," he said, pointing to the floor.  Underneath the pendulums were the words PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH.  "See?" he said.  "If there's something they don't want you to touch, they label it accordingly."

"You are a moron," I said.  

And then he bounded off to get his girlfriend, so they could go stand in another wing and whisper about how ridiculous they thought this was, how stupid it was to call some of this stuff art, and I wandered off on my own so I could stop in front of each of the paintings without feeling the cold breeze that kicked up as the rest of the members of my party jogged by without even the smallest of critical glances at what we had come to see.

And Yet Ryan Miller Is Still Not My Husband

My mother has a habit of collecting magazines from the girls at work.  She takes their O magazines and Cooking Lights and Real Simples, and she puts those in a pile with her own Better Homes and Gardens and Country Homes, and when she's done reading them, she puts them in a giant box and gives them to me.

When I came home at the start of July, she hefted a box into arms.  

"Here you go," she said.

"I haven't finished the last box of magazines," I said.

"Take those magazines!" she said.  "Bye bye!"

So I did.  And because I didn't have the last box of magazines she gave me home, I dipped into the new box.  Last night I was in bed, tolerating Jimmy Fallon only because Alec Baldwin was on, and I think Alec Baldwin is some sort of comedic genius--seriously, that episode of 30 Rock where he channeled Tracy Morgan's father? AWESOME--and the two of them were actually being pretty funny together, and I was ignoring the fact that I think Jimmy Fallon is sort of a tool, and I was doing all this while flipping through one of Oprah's magazines.

When I got to the back, where there are a slew of inspirational, motivational articles, I got sucked into one about making your own luck.  Most people who consider themselves lucky, the article argued, actually make their own luck.  They approach life with a charming, outgoing attitude that appeals to other people, thus opening seemingly "lucky" opportunities with very little effort on their part.  People who consider themselves unlucky actually make themselves unlucky, and they often walk by amazing opportunities that could be blossoming before their eyes.

The article centered around the story of a psychology professor who had been trying for tenure--she'd worked nonstop for, like, four years and then finally got her tenure--and the day after she was awarded it, she woke up and realized she had no life.  So she made a promise to herself.  She was going to get a life.  She was going to enjoy things more, and she was going to try to make herself appealing to men.  She was going to be more outgoing and spontaneous.

A few hours later, she pulled into the drive-through dry cleaners and handed off her clothes to the man in the store.  They flirted.  She gave him her number.  He called later that evening.  They fell in love and eventually got married.

The article advised this: if you think it, it will come.

And I started thinking about that.  I wondered if maybe I'm always setting myself up for being unlucky.  It's not that I think I'm unlucky in everything.  I think I've been very lucky in lots of areas of my life--family, friends, and especially work--but I seem to be the resident sad sack when it comes to men.

And maybe I do talk myself into being unlucky in love.  Maybe I always start off poorly.  You wouldn't believe the level of neurosis brewing in me at the beginning of a relationship or even when I've decided there's a boy out there I think is cute.  I immediately start making lists in my head, and at the top of those lists of things that make me unappealing to men is this: my teeth.  This guy will never like me, I think, because I have jacked up teeth.  I look like a jack-o-lantern.  A beaver.  A woodchuck.  I look like a beaver or a woodchuck carved into a jack-o-lantern.

Before I left Maine for Buffalo at the end of June, my office-mate and I were discussing the possibility of me doing some Internet dating, and I said if I decided to do something like that he was going to have to be my profile editor, my picture approver.  I said, "I'll have to make sure I have a close-up picture that shows me with an open-mouthed smile."

"Why?" he asked.

I smiled for him, to show off my gap.  "Because of this," I said.  "Guys need to see that.  It's a pretty big part of my face."

"Because of WHAT?" he asked.  He narrowed his eyes to peer at me.

"My gap."

"Oh, give me a break," he said.  "I didn't even notice it."

I told him he was a liar.  I told him it was impossible to miss the gap, which used to be much bigger before I had braces, before they did the frenectomy to eliminate the flap of skin that caused my teeth to sit so far away from each other, before they added resin to my two front teeth to make them appear even closer together.

"You have a beautiful smile," he said.  "I don't want to hear anything more about the gap."

"Just the same," I said, "if I ever do this, I am going to make sure my profile picture has an open-mouthed smile just so the guys aren't shocked when they meet me."

He thought that was a whole bunch of worrying about nothing, but then I told him stories from when I was in middle school, when my arch enemy, a boy named Dallas--he nicknamed me Beef because he thought I was chubby and ugly--leaned across the table in science class and stuck a pencil between the space in my teeth.  He laughed and jabbed that pencil at me while I shrieked and tried to get him to stop.

And then, of course, there's that night from grad school, years after anyone had made fun of my teeth, when a drunk girl harassed me about them and made me feel like I was eleven years old again, and I spent the night gluing my lips together so no one could see my teeth.

And while those are compelling reasons to be nervous about how I appear to the opposite sex, maybe (definitely) I dwell on them too much.  The author of the article would probably say that if I changed my attitude, if I really believed it, felt it, wanted it, if I woke up thinking I was going to meet a good man, a nice man, a man who doesn't care how different my teeth are, then that would probably happen.

But you know what? Telling an author to visualize something, to really live and believe the things in her head, is like instructing an accountant to spend the day using her addition and subtraction skills.  I'm a skilled visualizer.  I've pictured it and hoped for it and--the article said this step was important--prepared my mind for the potential opportunity every day of my life.

And yet Ryan Miller is still not my husband.  

To be fair, I've spent a lot of time over the years preparing myself for what it would be like to finally get it together and get a good guy in my life--even guys who aren't even celebrities; guys I went to school with or worked with or met through friends--but none so vividly as Ryan Miller.

My Ryan Miller love clicked along at a healthy pace that year I came back to Buffalo after graduate school.  That year while I was adjuncting at the big university in town I was driving the 40 minutes each day and spending a lot of that drive time, which was happening during the Sabres' seriously hot streak, imagining ways I could somehow happen into Ryan Miller and make him love me.  

Everywhere I went, people were telling me stories of how they bumped into Ryan Miller or knew someone who bumped into him or knew someone who was the sister of the girl who was dating Ryan Miller.  My students said they saw him at one bar.  My friends said they heard rumors Ryan liked to be at another bar.  People were full of advice that was given to get me a chance at glimpsing the goalie who looks so good with stubble and a winter hat.

But I never did get to see him.  In person, at least.  (Well, okay, except this time.)  On my drive to school each morning, I constructed elaborate plans that were surely going to get me close to him.  Generally, my daydreams--my visualizations, my mind preparation--involved my friends and I going to some swanky bar, wearing swanky clothes, and drinking swanky drinks when a few of the Sabres happen into the bar.  One things lead to another, and Ryan Miller--shy, uninterested in scoring with one of the blonds throwing themselves at the team--will be introduced to me by one of the other guys, who decides I look smart and savvy and like a good match for their thoughtful, brooding goalie.

Don't judge me.  I was bored on those drives.  I was scared I would never get a real job and that I'd be an adjunct forever, stuck trying to teach students some of the most important things they'll ever learn, all for $2,500 per class.  I was angry with the Wily Republican and fairly certain I was never going to love anyone as much as I loved him.  

I was cranky.  I needed an active fantasy life.  And so I busied my mind.  I prepared for the potential opportunity.  

And yet, yet, yet.  No Ryan Miller.  Still no Ryan Miller.  

I think lucky people are still just inherently lucky.  The article said a person who thinks she's unlucky will never see a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk as they breeze past, but I have a good streak of finding lost money--one time my father and I found something like fifty dollars scattered in small bills in an Old Navy parking lot--but I can't find a man who will stay to save my life.

But even so, this doesn't mean I'm giving up the occasional Ryan Miller daydream.  Sometimes during a particularly rough day on campus, I'll glance up at my bulletin board, where there are two full-color spreads of Ryan from the Buffalo News--and I'll think, Christmas break.  I'll be at a bar.  We'll meet.  We'll talk about the musical loves we have in common.  I'll give him good books to read.  A few months later, the cameras will cut to me during the game--I'll be sitting with the other girlfriends and wives--and the commentators will talk about me, about how Ryan Miller has been especially on, especially good, especially precise since he started dating that college English professor, and aren't we all lucky that happened?

It's not a bad daydream to have.  And if it in any way gets me closer to a hockey husband--or, hey, just a good guy who will love me and my jacked up teeth--then fine, then okay, then bring it on.

Lend Me Some Shellac, Would You?

Yesterday at 5:00 I was standing on the beach of an island that floats just beyond Boothbay Harbor. My shoes were back in the car, and my toes were sinking into a spongy carpet of seaweed that stretched from sand to tide pool to the water's edge. I had a plastic bottle full of white wine in one hand and a Tupperware container for shell collection in the other. My office-mate was ahead of me, scaling the higher rocks because he still had his shoes on. He had a plastic container of wine, too, and he was remarking about how insane it was that the entire beach was littered with periwinkles.

I was picking up the more remarkable ones--green as pistachios, striped--and trying not to spill the wine--which was surprisingly difficult to drink out of the type of bottle that is designed to use while exercising--and it was the first time I'd been happy in weeks. We'd already been to the aquarium, where I'd held a lobster and a starfish, where I'd petted a shark and a sea cucumber--and then we'd wandered Boothbay Harbor to see the ships and the band and the wares being sold at its annual festival. I bought fudge. I got my picture taken in front of giant sailing ships that had docked for the festival. It had been a nice day despite the clouds, despite the occasional mist. I felt better than I had in weeks.

I don't know what it was there for a while. I guess it was a lot of things. Maine has been under the cover of clouds and rain and clouds and rain for the last two weeks straight, and there hasn't been a day where the sun came through even for a few minutes.

There are also the nightmares. I haven't gotten a good or full night's sleep in weeks. Each night I jolt awake, terrified from one or two or three different nightmares where a variety of people I love or people I don't even know--Conan O'Brien, for example--are dying horrible, unsightly, and very public deaths right in front of me. Or if the people in the dream aren't dying, they are close--like in the dream where I gave birth, decided I didn't want my baby, and left him alone in an apartment while I went out for Chinese food with some friends from grad school.

In addition to all that, the Boy From Work and I decided to quit trying to get ourselves back together earlier this week, so everything has been kind of a mess. And this rain wasn't helping anything. I just need some sun.

And you know where it's sunny? Buffalo. So I pulled out my suitcases tonight, and I started packing early. I'm not waiting around until the middle of next week to go home. I'm leaving as soon as possible. And I'll be gone a long time, which requires some skillful packing. A lot of packing. Every-shoe-I-love-and-a-variety-of-purses kind of packing. So I dragged everything out of my closet and surveyed the mess. Some of my more casual summer purses were filthy with the grime of sand and melted gum, so I began emptying them so I could toss them in the washer. One of the purses had a small writer's notebook in it, and it's an old one, one that was around during grad school and beyond.

I opened that up and found the most ridiculous gems inside. Completely stupid, completely bizarre snippets and ideas and even a romantic intervention. To give you an idea, here's a few things to consider:

Quotes:

1. "I want to shellac the world." -- Me, at Diana's
2. "I'll conjugate his verb." -- Author unknown, although that sure sounds like something I'd say
3. "Will you diaphragm his sentence? UGH! DIAGRAM! I MEAN DIAGRAM!" -- Amy
4. During a discussion on the magazine Cosmopolitan: "It's a female magazine." -- Amy; "A female manatee?" -- Matt
5. "Those girls are big, bearded, plaid-wearing, campfire-making lesbians." -- Jeff

Notes to Self:

1. Sign on 169, heading to Minneapolis: COWS IN ROAD. USE CAUTION. BE PREPARED TO STOP.
2. Oglala. Lakota.
3. Pig! [The exclamation is dotted with a heart]
4. Teacher (young). Gets attention from student (failed a few grades?) Scene: teacher chaperoning @ h.s. dance.
5. Amy wants her gravestone to read: SHE LIKED CHEESE.
6. Unsalted butter. 3 1/2 oz. 2 cups heavy cream.
7. Congratulations Seth & Amanda. Congratulations Seth & Penny. Both on parents' business billboard. Two pregnant girls. Will the parents really announce both?
8. Amy's students think the word sectionalism is dirty. (Caucus too.)
9. My brother thinks these words are gross: seminary, rectory, masturbation

Series of Letters Written by Josh (with My Help) at the Bar Where We Use to Work (The Letters Are for The Spunky Russian He Was Then in Love with):

[KEY: blue = his writing; red = my writing]

1. Dear Baby, What's crappenin'? Here's what I think: my thoughts are not complete. You are one of my favorite people in the world. When you were here it was amazing. Now you're not and there's a little empty space in me. I've been thinking about that emptiness a lot. Instead of cutting you some... I blame geography and I would love so much to be your BF. I'm not sure, though, that either of us is capable of being in a long distance relationship right now. Let me tell you what I think: you used to intimidate me and that made me communicate poorly with you.
2. Dear Baby, What's crappenin'? Are you capable of being with me even if you're in grad school? I simply can't deal with this random on-off shit.
3. Dear Liza, I like your ass. Also, I like your hair. Do you want to be my girlfriend? We can have babies if you want. You can't cheat on me. Promise. Love, Josh.
4. Dear Baby, I'm sorry for this but we have 2 options: (1.) Be my girlfriend and don't cheat on me. (2.) We to back to talking minimally like before (this doesn't mean I'll never see you again.)

None of those letters got sent. (And for anyone keeping track, the night those were written was the night this memorable and urine-soaked event happened.)

That notebook and everything written in it just about made my night. And it--like the few hours yesterday that I spent kicking around the salty town of Boothbay Harbor--made me feel a little bit lighter for the first time in weeks, and I've got to believe that there are going to be more things like that--things that make me feel a little bit lighter, a little bit less like Saturn is continuing to bitch-slap me until the middle of August--coming my way soon, as I run around Buffalo, soaking in everything good that is waiting for me.

This Is What Happens When You're No Longer Around a Whole Bunch of Polish People

This was the scene today in the local grocery store's pasta aisle:

I was stalking up and down the aisle, looking high, looking low, scouring the shelves. I was not alone. A silver-haired grandpa was stalking up and down the aisle, too, and he looked nervous, concerned, overwhelmed. It was clear he wasn't finding what he needed. Neither was I.

What I needed was kluski. I didn't know what the grandpa needed, but after four trips up and down the aisle I was beginning to suspect that he, too, needed some kluski and, like me, was becoming convinced that he was going to have to rethink that chicken soup he was planning on making this weekend.

I guess I'd never stopped to really think about kluski before. I just always assumed it was in the pasta aisle of every grocery store that ever existed, next to those other flimsy-looking egg noodles that schools everywhere roll out for the buttered noodle side on chicken cutlet day.

I knew kluski was Polish, but I didn't think it was one of those items you can find everywhere in very-Polish Buffalo but not find anywhere outside of it. It was just so available and so common that I assumed it was available and common everywhere. Everyone's mother had a bag of kluski stocked in the pantry because they are as close as you can get to homemade noodles without mixing the dough and piping it into boiling water yourself.

And today, as I stumbled through the grocery store on a comfort food bender--I had plans to make lasagna, banana bread, and chicken soup in the span of two days--I was getting irritated that I couldn't find something that should be right there, right next to the No Yolks.

I finally gave up and bent down to get the lasagna noodles I needed anyway. I sighed a heavy sigh.

The grandpa--brightening suddenly, seeing that I'd possibly found what I was looking for--came over to my side. "Excuse me," he said, "but did you happen to see the lasagna noodles?"

So he wasn't after kluski after all. He was after lasagna noodles, which were stocked in many varieties on the bottom shelf.

"Right down here," I said, gesturing to the whole wheat, the no-bake, and the regular lasagna noodles.

"Whew," he said. "Thanks."

Clearly he was running a very important errand for someone else, someone who needed lasagna noodles as much as I needed kluski. He would be able to walk out of the aisle satisfied, but I would not.

Still frustrated, I wheeled around to the small ethnic aisle and scanned the falafel mixes, the chow mein noodles, the basmati rice just to make sure kluski hadn't gotten lumped in over there. Nothing.

I had to call in reinforcements. I plucked the phone from my purse and called my mother.

"Okay," I said, "I'm sure this is going to sound like a completely bizarre question, but kluski is always in the normal pasta aisle, right? You've never seen it anywhere else, have you?"

"No," my mother said. "Kluski's always next to the egg noodles."

I sighed and shook my head. "Mother," I said, "there is no kluski in this store."

"No kluski?" she said. She sounded like she didn't quite believe me.

"No kluski," I repeated. "None. This is what happens when you don't live in Buffalo. All the good things go away. I think kluski might be considered exotic here." I sighed. "I'm going to have to drive to the big grocery store and see if it's in their giant Foods of the World section."

Which is exactly what I did. I drove from one grocery store on one side of town to the other grocery store on the opposite side of town. I made a beeline for their long (and pretty impressive, for such a small town) Foods of the World section, which is one of my favorite aisles in the whole store. It's where I can get my fix of the candy bars I would normally eat in Canada. It's where I can get my fix of cookies that are bundled behind packages featuring strange animal mascots. It's where I can get my fix of that thick peach juice that comes in tiny tin cans.

It's also were I can get my fix of kluski. There is an entire Polish section--I already knew that; I've been steadily working my way through the various Polish cookies for the last few months--but I'd never bothered to look for kluski there. It was there, but I'd never noticed it before--probably because I'd just assumed that if I ever went looking for it, I'd find it in the pasta aisle.

I snatched up a bag of kluski and then thought about taking all the bags because there were only three left, and how could I be sure that the grocery store would think to refresh its kluski stash, which was relegated to the bottom shelf in the Foods of the World aisle?

In the end, I talked myself out of stockpiling the kluski. I told myself that there was hope--that surely they had originally ordered more than four bags of kluski, and now that there were only a few left, that must mean there was someone else in town who'd grown up on chicken soup with noodles tastier than the normal fare stocked in the pasta aisle. In fact, I was so hopeful that I walked toward the registers wondering if that person was at home right that minute, stirring a big batch of borscht and cracking a palm of dill into the broth. And then I wished she'd call me up and invite me over for dinner.

The Problem with Boys

Last night at midnight I was leaning against the deck railing of one of the small-town bars not too far from my house. It was a rare December night. It was sixty degrees, and most of the people out on the deck weren't even wearing coats. And it might've been that--the warmth, the surprise, the unexpected spring-smelling world--that made everyone a little reckless and crazy.

I'd come to the bar to see my friend Josh. He was there with some of his friends, boys he'd gone to school with in the district next to the one my friends and I attended. During school, I had very little contact with people from Josh's school. I was friends with only a handful, and that was because those people were dating someone I knew--my cousin, maybe, or my best friend. But when I got my first real job waiting tables at a restaurant close to my house, I was pushed into that district's world. The waitresses, the bus-boys, the dish-boys, the cooks--all of them were attending or had attended Josh's school. I was the only person at the restaurant from my district.

This worked in my favor because no one at the restaurant knew me. It was a clean slate, a fresh start. It was wonderful. I could walk into that place and have people form opinions on me based not on what I had been like in sixth grade but what I was like now. Of course, that worked vice-versa, too. I didn't know these people or what they were like at school, what they were known for, who they dated, what kind of trouble they got into on a daily basis. All I knew of them was what I saw at work.

I won't lie: what I saw in some of them--most of them--made me wonder what the hell went on over at that other school district. It was bigger than ours, sure, and it was a slightly more rural area, but it seemed like the student population--based on what I saw at the restaurant, where employee turnover was fast and vicious--was completely, completely, completely different than ours. The girls were all having sex with each others' boyfriends and spreading nasty rumors behind each others' backs, and the boys were smoking pot and guzzling from the taps at work before talking about who they were going to beat the shit out of later.

I worked at that restaurant for three years of my life, and the situation never really changed. There was drama, rage, violence, and an awful lot of people who got fired for things that involved drama, rage, or violence.

Years later, after I moved back from Minnesota to adjunct during the semesters and pick up waitressing work again before I got my full-time job, I worked at another restaurant that sat squarely in the middle of that other school district. Again I was the only girl from my district, although it had been many years since I'd graduated. I was one of the oldest waitresses. Most of the other girls were sassy-mouthed high schoolers who tied ribbons in their hair before coming to work to talk about that fucking cunt they were going to punch in the box the next day at school.

The boys weren't much better. In fact, they weren't better at all. They were worse. They traded sexual partners and beat their girlfriends and threw punches in the parking lot. They slept with married women and knocked their girlfriends' cousins up. They swore in front of customers and talked loudly about sexual positions while they were making, say, a hot fudge and marshmallow sundae for that table of church-goers at the counter. They were mean. They were rude. They were dumb. They said the foulest, nastiest, most evil things I'd ever heard said, and there were an awful lot of days I drove home from work thanking God I had been born two houses away from the two districts' dividing line.

And, to be fair, I know there are boys I graduated with who acted like that. I know that. But there were less of them. There were an awful lot of sweet, polite, smart boys in our school. They were bumbling and goofy, and the things that those boys from the other district were saying or doing wouldn't have ever occurred to them. Not in a million years.

And last night, when I was standing on the deck of that small-town bar, surrounded by people from that other school district, I couldn't help thinking again about the differences I saw in us.

Josh was standing with a small group of guys. One of them was a friend of his I've met a few times, and another of them was a boy Josh and I had worked with back in our restaurant days.

He grunted out a greeting to me and then, after Josh--who enjoys challenging people--told this boy that I was a liberal kind of girl, he started in with this: "Fucking idiot liberals!" he said. He ranted. He raved. He went on about predictable things. He mentioned that he couldn't wait for Obama to get into office and foul everything up just so he could rub the noses of everyone who voted for him right down into it the mess he made.

I could've predicted the words falling from his mouth. He sounded exactly like Ex-Keith used to sound, exactly the way the Wily Republican sounds now, the way so many military boys sound after they've done their tours. They talk to you like you're an idiot, like you could never comprehend the things they know, like you could never understand the political climate in the intimate way they do, like your opinions, causes, and concerns are not important because you don't really understand and appreciate America.

These boys are drunk on testosterone and their own self-love. They have done something beautiful and brave, and they feel entitled to something now--something like your immediate respect, no matter how disrespectful they are being. They think you should respect and defer to them because, well, how could you possibly be as savvy as they are? Nothing bothers me more than that. Nothing bothers me more than knowing boys who think they are greater, smarter, and stronger than the normal American citizen just because they made the choice to serve in the armed forces. And I'm sick of these boys telling me and anyone who will listen that we are stupid, naive, silly.

Last night, after the boy I used to work with had talked his talk about the president-elect and all the things he was going to royally fuck up, after he told Josh he was smarter than Josh because he read more books over the course of a year, and, later, after another rant he turned to me and said, "That was a metaphor. I was being metaphorical. Do you understand that?", and after I told him I was so thankful he took the time out to explain that he had just used a metaphor because there was very little chance I was going to understand that since, gee whiz, I was only a professor of English--after all that, he stubbed his last cigarette out into a melting snowbank.

"Take me to get cigarettes," he said.

"There are cigarettes inside," I said. I knew for a fact that there was a cigarette machine in the back of the bar.

"There are not," he said.

"There are," I said.

"Not the kind I smoke," he said. "Take me to Wilson Farms so I can get some."

"No," I said. I was appalled at his assumption that I--the girl he was just sassing up and down--was going to turn around and let him sit in my car so I could drive him to get some cigarettes. And he looked confused when I told him no. He seemed shocked, surprised, irritated. Again, it seemed like he was relying on entitlement--he was entitled to treat people like shit and then demand they do things for him because, well, he was in the Navy.

But before he could protest and before I could explain just exactly why I was not going to be driving him up the road to get a pack of cigarettes, one of Josh's other friends stumbled toward us and punched the beer bottle out of the boy's hand. It flew over the railing and cracked on the pavement. Then he punched the beer bottle out of Josh's hand, and it spun across the deck slats.

It had been empty, but Josh, sensing an opportunity to get a new beer out of the situation, shouted at his friend. "Hey!" he said. "What are you doing?! Go buy me a new beer right now!"

But his friend didn't. Instead, he punched the drink out of his girlfriend's hands. This drink was full and pink, and when it launched into the air, the pink liquid spread and landed everywhere. It rained down onto Josh, onto me, onto my white jacket, onto my purse.

"You need to go home," someone told the boy, but he was still staring at his girlfriend. His eyes were narrowed and wild. His fist was still clenched. Then he punched her. He punched her right in the hip.

She screamed. She slapped him. He howled and stumbled and fell into the railing, then launched back against the wall.

"Fucking bitch!" he hissed.

She rubbed her hip, but never took her eyes off him. She glared.

It was only going to get worse. That much was clear. There would be more spilled drinks and thrown punches and shouted insults if someone didn't do something.

"Man, you should go home," Josh said. "I'll drive you home. Come on."

"How many drinks have you had?" I asked.

Josh started doing the math in his head.

"Forget it," I said. "I'll drive him home." I paused and nodded toward the boy, who was still leaning against the wall of the bar and holding his side, nursing some kind of injury. "Where do you live?"

"Arcade," he said.

"Okay," I said. "Fine. Let's go."

"Okay," he said. He stood and tried to find balance. He swayed one way then the next.

I started walking away, hoping the boys would follow without any more incidents. "Where in Arcade do you live?" I asked.

The boy narrowed his eyes at me. He glanced quickly at Josh and then back at me. "Is she retarded?" he asked, then raised his voice. "ARE YOU RETARDED?"

I anchored one of my heels in a snowbank and turned to look back at the boys. Josh looked startled. The two other boys were laughing.

"Like Arcade is so big?" the drunk boy asked. He swayed on his feet and the Navy boy held him up. "You're retarded."

And then I felt so tired and sad. I knew that this was the kind of thing, the kind of talk and actions, this kid was allowed to get away with all the time. No doubt his girlfriend heard these kinds of things--and worse--every day. She let him talk to her that way, call her those things. She stood by him as he punched people, threw their drinks, told them they were fucking idiots or stupid assholes or ugly bitches or just plain retarded. It seemed like a different kind of entitlement. This kid didn't think he was entitled to act in whatever way he pleased because he'd served his country--because he hadn't; instead, he thought he was entitled to act in whatever way he pleased because he was a man, he was important, he was bigger and smarter and tougher than anyone else. If he wanted to drink three pitchers of beer by himself, so be it. If he wanted to lean up against the railings of this small-town bar and drink even more--half of it making it into his mouth, half dribbling down his chin and onto his shirt--he was going to. And he was going to tell his girlfriend what he really thought of her--that she was nothing more than a stupid fucking bitch--and he was going to walk up to his friends and swat the beer from their hands because, well, he could. He could. So he would.

"Jess," Josh said. His look was saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

But that was part of the problem with this kid. Everyone around him just went along, never told him he was wrong to act like that. They swept up his messes and said I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. His parents, his friends, his girlfriends--they probably spent a lot of time following him around and explaining away his bad behavior.

And thinking about that made me tired, sad, and even a little bored. This kid was just like the majority of dish-washers, cooks, and bus-boys I'd known over the years. He was predictable and angry for no good reason.

"See you later," I said and turned to go home. I reached into my purse and found my keys. I carefully climbed around the snowbanks and went down the stairs to the back parking lot. Josh was calling my name and telling me not to go, to stop, to wait, but there was nothing that could've kept me there at that moment. Not even Josh, who was now coming after me and trying to explain what had just happened.

In Honor of the Long Ride Back to the Land of the Chicken Wing

Today Abbey and I making the long trip back to Buffalo for our extended holiday vacation, and the video below--carefully crafted by my father--accurately expresses just how we feel about that.

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I Am Famous

Going home to Buffalo for Thanksgiving break means more than pumpkin pie, wine, and racist grandfathers. It also means this: The World's Largest Disco.

Every year, after we have spent the week stuffing ourselves and having possible run-ins with people we went to high school with, people who have come home to stuff themselves and have possible run-ins with us, we end up at The World's Largest Disco (yes, it's actually a world record), where we descend on the Buffalo Convention Center like some spangly, polyester-clad mob. It takes a lot of preparation. Some of us comb thrift stores and vintage shops; others haunt eBay. After all, there are afro wigs to buy. There are platforms to find. There are Farrah-flips to coordinate. Things need to be done so that when we walk through the doors and ride the escalator up into the giant, humid space, we fit in with the 7,000 people who are thrusting their pelvises to the beat of "Hot Stuff" or "Car Wash" all while drinking cheap boxed wine that they will later throw up into the garbage cans placed in strategic locations across the room.

This year, my preparation paid off. This year, I became famous. Why? Because I made the newspaper the morning after. Behold:

Okay, to be fair, I am neither one of the people featured prominently in this photograph. I am, however, the spectral vision directly behind them--the girl wearing the lavender pantsuit with crocheted top. Oh yes. It was a sight.

And in that picture, it might appear as though I am throwing down some fine disco moves, that I am hustling to the beat of "It's Raining Men." Or maybe it looks like I am sliding across the floor to get closer to (my secret crush) Christopher Knight, one of the Bradys who showed up as an emcee for the event. However, I am doing none of those things. Instead, I am being grabbed at by Steph, whose braceleted hand you can see reaching back for mine so I don't get separated from the group as we herd toward the bar for our own glasses of boxed wine.

Still, even though I wasn't doing anything interesting enough to be the focal point, the actual reason for the shot, I feel pretty honored to have made it into the paper at all. That pantsuit sure did right by me.

And if you want to see more 1970s fashions from our group, here are the girls:

And here are the boys:

You should've seen us strut during Stayin' Alive.

And off We Go

I'm on the road, off to my hometown, off to the place where this man and this restaurant is the Biggest of the Big, and that's precisely where I'll be on Wednesday morning. Maybe I'll get the giant cinnamon bun. It's the size of his hat.

There is so much good food coming my way...

You're Doing It Wrong

On Tuesday at 5:00, right after I finish teaching the most out-of-control but utterly charming section of College Writing I have, I will start the ten hour drive back to Buffalo. I will get into town late at night, and I will have to catch up on my sleep quickly because the next five days are going to be a streak of liquor! food! shopping! disco! liquor! food!

I'm looking forward to all of that. And there's something else I'm looking forward to, too, and it's this: I am looking forward to seeing my friend Josh.

We're coming up on eight years of knowing each other, and in those eight years we've been through a lot of weird things together (for example: this, this, and #3), but it never seems like enough. When I realized that I was going back to Buffalo after grad school and not to some maple syrup-soaked New England location where I would be a professor of creative writing, I was pretty upset and I sulked for days, but then I realized there was a bright spot: I'd be around Josh an awful lot. That thought cheered me. It cheered me until Josh told me he'd been accepted to do a semester in Quebec and would be gone most of the year.

We have the unfortunate luck of never being in the same state at the same time, so we have to soak up time together whenever we can, and this week is one of those times.

Josh has had the unpleasant task of listening to me whine a lot lately, but when I'm done unloading my line of woe-is-me, he always give me a little something to cheer me up, a little something to make me laugh, a little something to put it all in perspective. Like this story:

Not that long ago Josh was out with his roommate/best friend, and they were sitting at the bar and talking to some of the other people around them. Eventually his roommate/best friend wandered off, and Josh was left by himself. Josh being the type of boy he is--socially bold--he struck up a conversation with this cute girl near him. The cute girl was sitting with a boy, and Josh could tell they weren't a couple, so he was thinking maybe it would be in his best interest to try to get the girl to make out with him because if there's one thing in the world Josh likes the best, it's making out. So he tried to lay down some lines. He tried his best come ons.

That's when the girl asked him if he was gay.

"What?" Josh said. "No, I'm not gay."

The girl gave him a look--a look that said Oh, come on.

"I'm not!" Josh said. He didn't mind being confused with a gay man because he found that offensive; it was just that he minded losing the possibility of making out with this girl because she assumed he was into boys.

The girl turned and whispered something to the boy she was with. They laughed together. Then the girl turned back to Josh. "Do you think he's cute?" she asked, jerking her finger in the boy's direction.

"I don't like guys," Josh said.

And so it went for some time. The girl kept insisting that Josh was gay, that he was secretly laying down his lines to get closer to the boy she was with, when, in reality, Josh was just trying to get into her pants.

Josh got frustrated by all this. He wasn't sure how to convince this girl--this cute girl he wanted to kiss--that he was honestly interested in her, that there was nothing he'd like to do more than take her into a dark corner or out into the alley and make out for a few hours. The situation had gotten out of hand. Now he was sitting in this bar and waiting for his roommate/best friend to come back, and he had to suffer through this girl's attempts to set him up with the boy she was sharing vodka-Red Bulls with.

Finally, Josh--frustrated, tired, bored--got up and wandered outside to wait for his best friend. He sat on a bench outside the bar and looked off in the direction she'd wandered. He waited and waited and waited. He waited some more. Then the bar's door swung open, slammed shut. The girl from inside was now sitting next to him on the bench.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," he said.

"I was wondering if you'd like to make out with me," she said.

Those words are Josh's favorite words, and as soon as they were uttered, he completely forgot how frustrated this girl had made him when he was inside the bar. He perked right up.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I want to make out with you."

And so they started. Josh leaned over and put his hands on the girl's cheeks. He gave her one of his best kisses.

She pushed away immediately. "You're doing it wrong,"she said.

No girl had ever told Josh he kissed wrong. No girl had ever complained about his style. He stared at this girl, dumbfounded.

"Again," the girl said, and leaned back into him. She demonstrated how she wanted Josh to kiss her, and so Josh started kissing her again. And apparently it went better this time because she had no complaints. Until he started to move to places other than her mouth. He'd begun to move on to spots that indicated he was interested in things more than kissing, but this girl stopped him. She put a hand on his chest. "You're doing that wrong, too," she said. She hitched her shoulders up to her ears, as if to itch his kisses off her neck and ears.

Josh waited. He waited for her to instruct him how to kiss her and where, and when she did, he paid very close attention and tried again, doing exactly what she wanted. This time, her reaction was exactly what he wanted. She curled close and sighed and kissed him back and back and back. And Josh went on thinking this was nice, this was great, but wasn't it a little bit strange how this whole night had started? An hour before this girl had been convinced he was gay, he wanted her friend at the bar, he was trying to get in good with her to get in good with the guy so they could go off and have some man-on-man action. He wasn't exactly sure what about that--and his subsequent exit--acted as an aphrodisiac. And he still wasn't exactly sure what he was doing wrong for her. But it looked like as long as he behaved and did what she said, things would work out just fine. Josh doesn't have sex--he did when he was younger, but he's over it now, and he's waiting for the right girl to come along--but he does do other things, and he was thinking that maybe, just maybe, if he played his cards right, he might get to see this girl naked. He'd like that.

The girl broke away, and Josh was concerned for a second that he'd done something wrong again, but this girl wasn't going to scold him this time. She smiled sweetly. "Do you want to have sex in my car?" she asked.

And, bless his heart, Josh actually thought about it. In that moment he considered going back to the parking lot with this girl, ducking into her car, crunching their bodies into tight angles to get things done. And he doesn't even have sex. At all. But this girl--this idiot girl who spent time trying to convince him he was gay when he wasn't, this idiot girl who had the audacity to announce he was kissing her wrong instead of getting that message across in the more subtle ways that girls all know--had made him think, Huh. Okay. Maybe?

If that had been me, if I'd been scolded more than once on my technique, I would've been out of there so fast, I would've been one hot streak of girl, glowing red with embarrassment, a tornado of horror that was spinning herself so far from that situation she'd never, ever, ever, ever have to think about it again.

Sometimes I am incredibly jealous of boys. So, so jealous.

If His Hair Were Any Sexier, I Would Faint. FAINT.

The new hockey season has begun, and even though I am no longer in Buffalo, this pleases me. It pleases me because it means my life will now have 90% more Ryan Miller in it. And more Ryan Miller? It's always, always, always a good thing--especially when he's sporting this hairdo:



Oh, Ryan! Ryan! Ryan! Ryan! You aren't the most exciting person to listen to--in fact, if you were a college professor, I guarantee your students would write snarky little things about you on your evaluations--things like, Professor Miller has as much personality as a dry sponge or Professor Miller can put me to sleep quicker than that sound machine I bought from the Sky Mall catalog--but that doesn't really matter to me. I know that if I had the chance, I could make your voice elevate above that I-am-calm-I-am-in-control voice you serve up to reporters. I am confident I could find some sort of pitch in you.

I should probably also tell you, Ryan, that the other day someone left a notebook in one of the classrooms at school, and it kicked around for a few days, so I finally opened it to see if I could figure out who it belonged to. There was a name in the notebook, but it wasn't a name that belonged to any student at school. The name etched on the inside cover was your name. It said RYAN MILLER and it had an exclamation point after it. RYAN MILLER! And I instantly knew that, yes, that notebook belonged to one of my students because on the first day of class when I introduced myself to the class I told them all the important things about me: where I grew up, where I did my schooling, and what I love. And one of the things I love is hockey. And one of the things I love about hockey is you. And I tell my students to remember your name because if they do it will be very beneficial to them in the future. It might help them to ace that one category called Totally Random! I throw into Grammar Jeopardy. It might help them win candy, bonus points, and the eternal respect of their instructor, who spends way too much time in her office gazing up at the picture of you from the Buffalo News that's tacked up on her cork board--it's the picture where you're standing in front of City Hall and looking all steel-thighed and skyscraper-legged.

God, you're hot.

Sprung

Amy left Wednesday night. She'd been here for a week, and that was a week full of loveliness. I don't know if there is a phrase I can turn to accurately capture how nice it was to have a girlfriend in town. When I came home from work, Amy was there watching What Not to Wear, and I would sit next to her and begin very important discussions like how we could get Clinton to make out with us if ever the situation presented itself to us. Do you know how nice that is? Do you know how nice it is to see someone else have to fan themselves off after Clinton has said something witty about Crocs or Mom Jeans or Shoulder Pads? It's just not as fun when you have to do that by yourself.

What Not to Wear wasn't the only thing that graced the television when Amy was in town. There was one night when we--tired, lazy--decided to pour wine and flick through the channels. We landed on an episode of The Dog Whisperer. And when that episode was over another was on. So we watched that. And we watched the next one, too. By the end we felt one with the animal kingdom. We were walking around the apartment (and, days later, around Maine and Massachusetts) hissing tsssst! at anyone or anything that looked at us wrong.

Of course, watching television wasn't all we did. We toured extensively. This was just the right time for Amy to visit. Maine is suddenly leaning toward lovely again. Everything is melted. It is warm. People are smiling. The number of curse words I utter each day have decreased substantially. Things are looking up all over the state, and so we took advantage of it. We went to Freeport, to Popham Beach, to Bath, to Portland. We even hopped The Downeaster and went to Boston for the day last weekend. We drank cosmos and margaritas. We drank wine. We mixed orange vodka with pomegranate pop and raspberry-lime ginger-ale and Loganberry (official name: The Cowboy Daddy). We posed, too. We posed by lighthouses and moose and historical statues and bronze ducks. We posed by Indians and boots. We posed in the rain, in the wind, in the sun. We hammed it up all over New England.

The whole trip felt just like spring should: kicky, free, happy. It felt the exact opposite of the last few months, which have been gloomy, painful, and sour.

When we were at lunch one afternoon, Amy and I overheard a bunch of gossipy old ladies tut-tutting over how awful, how wretched, how foul this winter had been. Amy spooned more soup into her mouth and raised her eyebrows. "Was it really that bad?" she asked me. What she wanted to know was this: was it as bad as Buffalo Winter?

Well, it wasn't. There weren't days when I couldn't see a foot out the window to the street beyond. There weren't days when I was convinced I had somehow woken up in some wintry ring of hell. But there was snow. And there was always drama. The weathermen would get on the TV and prepare us, warn us, caution us, and everyone would get worked up for what turned out to be nothing. And when it did snow--really snow--it came in big, consistent gobs. It would go away in a day or two, then it would come back again. It was a constant here-gone-here-gone-here-gone that drove me crazy. And living on a narrow road that arcs over a surprising hill in a quiet section of town is different than living on a well-traveled country road during the winter months. My road here was hell, there was no snow removal, the banks towered high and then spilled over into the road, making it even narrower, even harder to navigate. It was demoralizing. I longed for a driveway of my own, for the comforting rumble of the snowplows making their passes at the country road, for space for the snow to move, to fall, to not build toward the sky, blotting it out, making the dark winter sky even gloomier.

But all that is over for now. Now nothing matters. The sun is out, the breeze is blowing in the salty smell of ocean, and I had a good week that reminded me of what's important in life. And no matter how many times this semester I thought What the hell is happening? or Kill me now! or Are you for real? I know that it's all going to be okay now. I'm very close to a summer spent touring to Mexico, Canada, Buffalo, and Michigan. Just a few more weeks. Just a few, few more weeks.

And until then, here are pictures from Amy's visit and our mini-New England vacation.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Spring Break

As of this moment, I am on break. You won't find me in Cancun or Bermuda or Hawaii. You'll find me here:

The Mandatory "I Live in Western New York" Picture

There's been an awful lot of discussion about winter lately. People are complaining. Forwards about the horrors of winter, the horrors of snow, and the horrors of storms are zipping around left and right. And the other day one of the members of my department sent me an e-mail that was filled with pictures from Buffalo--you know, pictures that put this year's Maine snowfall in perspective.

I've seen a lot of those pictures before, and I've also been posed in a lot of those pictures before. It's kind of a requirement, a mandatory right of passage for anyone living in the greater Buffalo area. When it starts flurrying, when the snow starts piling up on the back porch, that's when you get out the camera and strike a pose. Then you mail that photo to everyone who doesn't live in Buffalo. You say, "See what we have to live with?" After all, we've earned the right to make a big deal out of it. Trust me.

Well, tonight I found one of those mandatory photographs that features me, my back porch, a building bank of snow, and a facial expression I am sure came from my parents saying, "Look scared! Look like you're about to be swallowed whole by that snowbank!"

What can I say? I tried my best.