Guilty Pleasure

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I'm on a winter break. Vacation.
I am a 3rd grade public school teacher, now 3rd, after years in 1st (the funniest grade there is) and many more years of my 30 teaching in 4th, 6th so on, but the last few days I've just been a regular person on a much needed break. Before this all started, I was an artist. But we are talking a 30 year hiatus.
Some folks don't think I'll ever find a way back, I hope to.
Not a single moment went this last week to thoughts about school, well not consciously in the last few days.
Yes, I realize I'll really pay for that. I have decided on this coming Friday to go over to school, pull out a thousand things I'm trying not to recall. And get ready for "next year." This is not "the post about this 2011 year teaching" or the ever popular "2012 Resolutions" one we all so love in those hilarious Ed Bloggers posts, because I'm still thinking about it all resolutely.
Last year you will recall I dedicated my resolutions to better understanding comedy. especially the role in child's dynamics, in teaching, in relating with peers.
Or I recall saying it was a resolution, actually.
Like art or beauty- it's a water through fingers thing. Comedy, laughing. Humor.
But I learned a lot about it. I studied. I'm applying it in my work,listen to what gives children a laugh, watching the close relationship to hurt, to social ranking, to the unexpected, but...
This is rather the "Guilty Pleasures" post instead.

I bet you never saw that coming.
After school, after everyone goes home, while I'm doing my work I search out podcasts. I discovered comedy ones. So I listen to Larry Miller and hear about his hamper, and then I try an interview from this kinda angry guy who, frankly I fast forward through his monologues, but I like to hear the guests. I never know the guests, almost never, but I knew the first one, Levar Burton and I enjoyed that. Despite the awful volume issues it had, it was cute.
There are lots of other comedy podcasts on line so pretty much this keeps me going as I work on homework or whatever I'm doing. I'd recommend more, but cripes I've only heard about ten in all. It takes me awhile to get through a podcast. I stop a lot to go to copy machines.
Since I started reading about comedy a year or so ago, my project for the year, I notice that a lot like storytelling comic's comedy works in circles, say with a running gag, and I try to incorporate this into the relatively boring things I teach and talk about. I learn a lot from them, believe it or not. Try to notice when I actually laugh.



If I were teaching this week I'd be talking about "Brittany."
Her real name is "Annie." (which reminds me of John Denver and his wife, 1st wife and a section of a biography I read in which he chainsawed their bed. He had some issues.)
Brittany is my daughter's insane kitten. A Kamikaze.
She just ripped as I typed my other daughter's tights running and ruining them. We can't reprimand her as she won't remember doing it. She is the ultimate representation of zen.
She's here "now."
Sophia, my other daughter- the one that will never own pets, named her "Brittany" after Spears. She said she's the same "person" if you will. But she really is exactly like my mother, more than the dim wit star- so as they've pointed out we really need to just call her "Jean." Both Mom and pussy play the door game all day, are underfoot, don't mind biting you a bit, and generally have no short term memory for what they did.
One thing Brittany enjoys is racing for the doors if they rattle. She cannot go out, she is under house arrest with a bell as her leg/ankle bracelet, but on the neck. She cannot go out because she'd never find a way back -due to her tiny brain size- her head is sooo small-plus coyotes would definitely get her. My cat Robespierre, who is relegated outside right now, is planning her extinction. He's ten times her size and likes the ladies but will definitely make an xception in her case-he watches her thoughtfully through the window. The screen is ripped to pieces from his attacking it.
Thus, with all of that, she's been out hundreds of tension filled times. She is a force completely focused on escape. The best game we've got.
Night escapes have honestly given me heart attacks.
Brittany likes to strike things at high speed with her head. She also enjoys eating the plastic Christmas tree. I'm going to write a personals ad for her actually. She needs someone special.
It gets a little funny because the girl's father despises cats.
So watching him be face bitten, something she loves to do, and seeing her attack his weaving, it's quite funny.
We are basket weavers- as well as God's Eye and small pouch weavers.
Ah Brittany messed up those tights good, drew blood.

Here is her ad:
"Wanted playmate to a ADHD, happy go lucky, Mehitabel inspired (as in Archy and____), What the hell kinda gal. Loves Cheetos, neck nips, feet, toes, bras, fol de rah. Adventurous, humorous-would jump down on you from great heights shamelessly. No long term memory or short term. Wildly impulsive.
Beautiful, silky, sleek, thin, fit, athletic. Loves a good fish dinner. Fears water so water sport is out. Drinks excessively. Loves to roll around in bed, preferably with claws out. Purrs like a train. If you are brave enough to give this gal catnip, hope you have an exit strategy."

So that's one thing I do. Guiltily. I make jokes.Out of things when I can't think of what else to do about it all-that and commit grammatical heresy.

My daughters bought me a CD for Christmas, The Flight of the Conchords.
I know I'll listen to that thousands of times grading or doing whatever it is I'm doing after school-again when I've cleared out the kids of course- but need to accomplish a couple hours work.

This is one of my favorites:



But listen to this for a late holiday treat...I recall first listening years ago :










I always figure the genius of the piece is -it's probably what happened to Sedaris...I find that infinitely hilarious actually. Just like every job I ever did.


So I also like to stop for a short chapter reading the book
"If Men Could Talk"
I've easily read it 50 times.
It is presently interred in my memory.

I have yet to unlock anything. I've decided the operant word is "if."

So I keep rereading.

Just today my daughter saw me writing some silly poems.
I've been finding the less gross Craigslist personal ads, ones I find funny, and writing "replies" which are my poems, no, not to really send....well, not to send to engage in that way...just to laugh and she suggested I try reading The Best Of Craigslist.
Turns out that's fun to do.
Some of these are killing me today.
And I am just home trying to recuperate from a job that is often so absurd it makes Theater of the Absurd look like the soaps. A lot of hard reality in my work which I have to honor and hold.
It takes a lot out of me.
Especially at this time of the year.
More on that in the next posts.
You spend six years administering standardized tests to six year olds by the hour and get back to me.

Well it makes me laugh, this Craigslist stuff, and isn't appropriate if you are under 35 or maybe at all for anyone, so I don't know how she found this out, it must be people she knows, but I heard her in her room last night listening to a comedian on her new Kindle Fire and the subject was so racy I had to stand at the door for several minutes until it was over to be sure when I shamed her about it I had all the details.
It was very bad.

Mothering is a thankless job.


(well this admission of my guilty fun really is dedicated to, or coming from thinking of, one of the first people that taught me the real value of laughing, my cousin Bobby Lucas.
Who once famously suggested we freeze bananas. We laughed a week over my grandmother trying to deal with us.
Bobby was so funny we laughed through what really were the painful realities of our young days. On my visits to see my grandmother in Saint Petersburg, Florida, he served to make my days just infinitely fun along with my other cousins, and Aunt Merilee who did so much for me out of her kindness.
I've just learned that he battles a disease I am coming to understand as a true monster-alcoholism- and family tell me he has recently been found again, and things were scary for awhile-even ICU. I'm just taking in this news.
That, combined with my concern for another friend who is in his own battle with this nightmare, are some of why my defensive systems are in play. That friend first explained to me humor was a defense. I regret not having the courage to ask him at the time what he was defending against.
Surely he never told me anything of his heart. I can't always just laugh.
I can't hope to ever have Bobby know what he meant to me as a girl, so much, but he surely opened my naive Appalachian eyes to many things as he dealt with his identity.
I can't think of Yellow Brick Road, Elton John, Liza Minnelli, Caberet, without thinking of him....also days in St. Pete-those mermaids in Mass Brothers, yogurt, avocados,my first really scandalous dress which is a story I cannot tell here, so much more that I either tried for the first time or hysterically laughed about on his reality tour.
If you want to know why I'm often irreverent, you should have known Bob then because for years my inappropriate laughter found him and others and just released all the stuff I couldn't carry alone in the form of laughter.
Bob, I'm still off enough to post a recipe on this site for a chocolate cake in -which I put "onions" 1 1/2 cups onions over "chocolate chips." Not much has changed. Still a slip in any clutch situation. I'd love for my daughters to tell you their "best of" mom stories. Yes the one about the Scottish sword, the idiot in the parking lot and the other about the woman I velcroed in the Getty elevator)

For Bobby I will put this tune:



Man you gotta make it.

(One day I want us to laugh together again and I can't lose you kiddo, 2011 took enough.)