Interview-o-rama

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I had two interviews today — well, yesterday, I guess, since it’s after midnight. About one minute into the first, I told myself that if that job were offered to me, I’d run. What was wrong? It was an alternative school, which I already knew and wasn’t happy about. However, the building was ancient and unkempt. It looked like a prison. The principal was wearing a purple shirt and matching purple reptile-skin shoes. I wish I was kidding. I cringed when I heard him explain the expectations he has for his “inscructors.” He answered the phone twice during the interview — one was a cell call from someone who spoke loudly enough that I could tell it was a family member or friend. How rude. During an interview, I give the interviewer my full attention. I expect the same consideration. The capper? It’s a middle school position. Middle school alternative school with a boss who wears purple shoes? No thanks.

The second was at a somewhat flaky, but interesting private school. We’ll see about that one. One other school is desperate to talk to one of my references. She’s a hard person to catch, so I hope they can get hold of her. If they listen to her, I’ll have that job. I have another interview Monday. Now the faculty at the Monday school would be great to work with, but the school is kind of similar to an inner-city school. Still, if you have a great faculty and good support from the administration, you can have good experiences with those types of settings. Or maybe I’m being optimistic. I do need to look at schools realistically. I know what my strengths and weaknesses are, and I really don’t need to be in a place where discipline is a big problem.

I need to go back and get my Master’s degree. It’s going to be hard with the kids being so young and Steve doing opera. Still, my career seems to be stalling, and I think the lack of the Master’s is one reason why. I also need to get serious about seeking National Board Certification. The money that will cost initially is daunting, but I think it would pay back exponentially.

I’m still working on The Rule of Four. I’m thinking I’ll finish it this weekend. I want to reserve my opinions until I’m finished, but I can tell you already the review will be mixed.

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Reunions and Networking

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Today, I went to a combination reunion party/retirement party/teacher network opportunity/collaborative examination of the student teaching program from which I graduated in 1997.

I didn’t want to get up and go this morning. My bed was warm. I told myself I might get an interview out of it, though, and that I wanted to see Sally. So I went.

This is Sally. She’s one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, something which is not commonly said about college professors (because they don’t teach — they profess), but is commonly said about Sally. She’s amazing. And she’s retiring. I’m really happy for her, but education is going to be a very different place without her. She leaves behind some big shoes to fill.

As it happens, I was able to snag an interview opportunity today. The English department head for one of the high schools near UGA is deeply involved in the student teaching program that Sally and her frequent collaborator Peg Graham designed.

I will always remember the moment at a GCTE conference several years back when I introduced Sally to Shelia, the other great teaching influence in my life. Shelia was my high school 11th and 12th grade English teacher and later my department head when I went to work at the same school. It is largely because of Shelia that I chose to teach English. It is largely because of Sally that I’m still a teacher. When I introduced these two women, I looked at them and told them they were the best teachers I’d ever had. It meant so much to see them there together, sharing one space.

We filled out memory cards for scrapbooks today, and I forgot to write about this then. I wish I had.

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Beloved

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This is a cross post of my journal entry at BookCrossing about this book.

I am not really sure what to say after reading this book. Of course, it was probably the most graphic illustration of the evils of slavery that I’ve read. So much literature I’ve read in the past really tries to whitewash that horrific institution. More than that, it taught me much about the reasons for problems in our current society. I admit to being shocked when I made the connection. Why should this or that still be so? Because it takes longer than 140 odd years to get over something this completely devastating. It takes longer than that to rebuild families, to learn how to swim in the world. I am very glad I read this book. I’m not sure I could read it again.

I felt Morrison’s way with words was incredible. When Ella said things that die bad don’t stay in the ground. When Paul D said Sethe had two legs, not four. Her characters were so eloquent that they made it look effortless. As I writer, I know making your characters sound this natural, but still say something profound is anything but effortless.

I think this is possibly one of the best ghost stories I’ve read. My favorite visual was the one of Beloved’s handprints in the cake.

I, on the other hand, am not feeling terribly profound today. I did receive three phone calls from administrators yesterday (on top of meeting with the headmaster for the school that can’t decide between me and someone else). Only problem is one was from Savannah, which is far, far from here; one was from an alternative school, and I’m not sure I can do that; and the third was from what looks like a kind of flaky private school. I’m calling all three back though.

P.S. I’m thinking of joining the SCA again. I’ve been told I’m a giant nerd. Okay. Well.

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Perfect Day

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Sarah and I spent the whole day together, just the two of us. We had been planning to go to the Renaissance Festival for some time. When I woke up, Sarah was already dressed and ready to go, simply waiting for me to get up. She asked me for what must have been the tenth time if I had purchased the tickets. I ran a load of dishes in the dishwasher, got dressed, and we left.

We had breakfast at Burger King on the way. When we arrived, the faire had only been open for about 15 or 20 minutes. We were busy all day. We didn’t really eat a whole lot — there was much to do and see. Sarah seemed to want to try everything, and I let her. She made a candle. She tried this bungee thing. She slid down this huge slide. She dragged me into a maze. We watched a hilarious parody of Macbeth, which she loved. She got her hair braided. She said that was her favorite part. We watched a joust, comedy swordfighting by Hack and Slash, and the Lost Boys — the renaissance rock and roll band. I bought some herbs for homemade first aid ointments I plan to try to make. I bought some earrings. I really couldn’t even go look at the hair sticks, because I love them — but I plan to cut my hair too short to be able to wear them. I didn’t want to be tempted. We had tea and scones.

It threatened to rain in the morning and early afternoon — it sprinkled a little. The cloud cover actually helped keep things cool. It didn’t get hot until late afternoon.

We capped off the evening with a mother-daughter only dinner at The Melting Pot. Cheese fondue, salad, and chocolate fondue. Sarah loved it. Not only was it fun, but it also tasted great.

She said it was the perfect day.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t give her a whole lot as a mother. We live paycheck to paycheck. This visit to the Ren Fest was brought to us by Uncle Sam’s tax return savings for dummies program. Her brother and sister demand a lot of my time because they are so little. She very rarely has me all to herself. That sort of fun is usually the kind of thing she associates with being with her father. I have the feeling she’ll remember today for a long time, if not always, and I am so happy I was able to give it to her.

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Finished

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Well, post-planning is over. I still haven’t received a straight answer about why I didn’t get the job I thought I had. I get the distinct feeling I’m being ignored, which of course makes me wonder about some things.

That said, I had a grueling interview with the principal of a private Jewish high school yesterday. It lasted for 2 hours and 45 minutes. It looks as though I am being seriously considered, along with one other person. She seemed very positive — she noted I should have received professional development credit for writing my Beowulf teacher’s guide. I had never thought about that before. Hmm. She liked a lot of the things I said and showed her — student work I’d graded, writing assignment ideas, my two teacher publications. I think it would be a rewarding place to work. And I should probably hear from her early next week. So. There’s that.

I’m very glad to be finished with school. I feel very tired. This worrying about the job search is too much. I’m trying to just do what I need to do and not fret so much. It’s hard.

Tomorrow I have errands to run. Saturday, Sarah and I are going to the Georgia Renaissance Festival. Sunday, I’m resting. I hope.

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Seventies Super Set

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Woot! We got more server space. I have been working on this set list for some time in anticipation of this momentous occasion. I am a big fan of 70s rock, and I have put together for your listening enjoyment, a mix tape’s worth of my favorite songs from the 70s. I hope you enjoy them. I’ll have to leave them up for a while, since there are so many favorites here.

Here is the set list, complete with album details and my editorial comments:

  1. “Here Comes My Girl” — Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. This song originally appeared on my favorite Tom Petty album, Damn the Torpedoes. Originally released in 1979, Tom Petty’s third album is rightfully an Amazon.com Essential Recording.
  2. “Behind Blue Eyes” — The Who. I heard Limp Bizkit’s cover of this song the other day, and it simply can’t hold a candle to the original. The drummer doesn’t have near the chops that Keith Moon had (but few do, I suppose). This one comes from Who’s Next, another Amazon.com Essential Recording, which, according to Genevieve Williams (of Amazon) is “one of the defining albums of 70s hard rock.” It was released about a month before I was born, in August 1971.
  3. “Lola” — The Kinks. Released in November 1970, this one comes from Lola versus Powerman and the Money-Go-Round, Part One. It’s another Amazon.com Essential Recording. Steven Stolder at Amazon refers to “Lola” as the album’s “linchpin,” and I can’t disagree at all.
  4. “Jeepster” — T. Rex. Before Marc Bolan died, T. Rex was actually a serious competitor of David Bowie’s (and probably the reason for Bowie’s many ch-ch-changes in the 1970s — T. Rex was glam). I think their music is infectious. I disocovered in high school after reading a book about classic rock history. I was intrigued enough by what I read there to purchase a cassette tape of an album that must not be in print anymore, because I can’t find it on Amazon. It was a best of compilation. This song originally appeared on Electric Warrior, which came out the very month I was born — September 1971.
  5. “Maggie May” — Rod Stewart. From 1971’s Every Picture Tells a Story. Michael Ruby at Amazon calls it his “desert island disc,” adding “Rod Stewart made such a perfect record with this 1971 classic that he never really recovered.” I agree totally. Yet another Amazon.com Essential Recording. There seems to be a pattern here.
  6. “Ten Years Gone” — Led Zeppelin. A “deep cut” from 1975’s Physical Graffiti, which many Zeppelin fans (myself among them) count as their favorite album by the group. Led Zeppelin is my favorite band, and they have so many excellent songs, but this one has always resonated with me. I think it’s because Jimmy Page makes his guitar weep right along with Robert Plant’s plaintive voice. And yes, it’s an Essential Recording. How’d you guess?
  7. “Sara” — Fleetwood Mac. Before we go on, yes, 1979’s Tusk is an Essential Recording. I named my daughter for this song, though I like the spelling of “Sarah” with the “h” better, so I used that one. If that isn’t a recommendation, I’m not sure what is.
  8. “Bell Bottom Blues” — Eric Clapton (Derek and the Dominoes). Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Obviously an Essential Recording (probably Clapton’s most essential, in my opinion). This song is often overshadowed by the epic “Layla,” but it’s just as good, with bluesy guitar and sung with great emotion.
  9. “Tiny Dancer” — Elton John. From 1971’s Madman Across the Water (yet another Essential Recording). Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters) loves this song. He has performed this show on television, introducing it with the following: “Tiny Dancer…..two words that strike a chord in the heart of every sensitive 32 year old man in the country.” That is something else, isn’t it? Anyway, it was featured in Almost Famous. I’ve noticed a lot of these songs were released in the year of my birth. Hmm.
  10. “American Pie” — Don McLean. From 1971’s American Pie. Poor Don McLean. Did he do any other songs? Seriously, a classic like this overshadows everything else he’s done. I cannot listen to this song without singing it at the top of my lungs. It’s a pity Madonna butchered in with a cover and it became (however nebulously) associated with that film of the same name.
  11. “Captain Jack” — Billy Joel. If you are my age or younger, you grew up with a Billy Joel who was basically just a pop hit factory. In the 1973, when Piano Man was released, Billy Joel was as poetic as Simon and Garfunkel, in my opinion. A damned fine song writer. I can listen to this song over and over. Who doesn’t remember being in high school and wishing they could get out that one-horse town? This is another song that gets overshadowed by a bigger hit on the same album — “Piano Man.” And yes, an Essential Recording.
  12. “Blue Sky” — The Allman Brothers Band. It’s a crime what the Allman Brothers did to Dickey Betts a few years ago. Setting that aside, this tune is performed by Betts on 1972’s Eat a Peach (an Essential Recording). You know, I heard a story that the title of the album came from the circumstances that surrounded Duane Allman’s death. He died in a motorcycle accident while they were recording this album. I heard he hit a peach truck — hence the title, Eat a Peach.

We went to see Shrek 2. It was wonderful. Antonio Banderas as Puss in Boots (one of my all-time favorite fairy tale characters). We must get the DVD as soon as it comes out. Lots of laughs. Very cute movie.

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No Server Space

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I had to take one of my songs off my radio blog. I am now out of server space! Situation critical! Hopefully, I’ll be able to buy some later today, thanks to Uncle Sam’s nice IRS check, but my e-mail is down right now, and that’s where I need to go to access information to purchase said server space. My server gives me unlimited cosmic bandwidth with itty bitty living space.

More later.

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The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

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I finished Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells this evening. It was a good read, if not a fantastic one. I felt that the narrative had some holes in it. Threads were taken up, dropped, and not mentioned again. The writer hinted, but not strongly enough, that Connor looked like Jack Whitman. I suppose by extension that means that Sidda will have the life-long love her mother missed? I wasn’t always happy with the poetic way the characters thought. It didn’t seem natural to me. An example: “Okay,” Vivi said, and sank down into the massage table. This table, she told herself, is held up by the floor, which is held up by the building, which is sunk deep into the earth, which is my home” (Chapter 22, p. 242). Maybe I’m too prosaic, but I don’t think like that. Sure, use poetry in description, but in the way characters think? It struck me as false. This seemed to be Wells’ favorite way of ending a chapter, by the way. I didn’t feel fulfilled by the ending, and I can’t put my finger on why.

I loved the Ya-Yas. After reading the book, I wished desperately for friends like that. I don’t have any close friends. I did as a child, but I moved. Moving makes you lose friends, I think. It’s just too hard to keep up, especially when the other party won’t work at it, too. I’ve been on both sides of that fence. My moving around so much cost me a great deal. My life would be so different. But then, who is to say that would mean it would be better?

I can remember having girlfriends. I can remember sleeping in Rebecca’s bed, so high off the floor that I had to climb into it. I can remember looking up into the eyes of James Dean on the wall behind her bed. Then she dropped me right before my wedding, and I had to scramble to find a bridesmaid at the last minute who could wear the dress my grandmother made to fit Rebecca.

Darcy and I were sisters. We stayed at each other’s houses. We shared things. I thought we’d always be best friends. I have not had another friendship like the one I shared with her. We loved each other. I moved, and she wrote me back only a handful of times over the 18 years that has passed since then.

Cheryl and I were friends my senior year in high school. We just decided we’d be best friends, and that was that. We rode around in cars with other friends, like Stephanie and Mary Jo, and we laughed.

Jenni has perhaps been the best correspondent of all of my friends. We have become closer in our absence from each other than we were when we lived in the same neighborhood and went to school together. Jenni is my anchor to my home.

But I don’t have friends like the Ya-Yas. And it makes me sad to realize, truthfully, that I never will. Maybe most people don’t, which is why this book resonates with people so strongly. It was one of the things that people liked about Friends, I think. There is this group of people, and they all love each other and would do anything for each other. They’re like family. But they’re not blood relations. They’re just friends. Reading this book and watching the Friends finale repeat last night (I didn’t catch it last week) made me realize I have friend-shaped holes in my heart. You can live with friend-shaped holes. You can even be happy. But the holes are still there, and you aren’t quite complete.

I will be releasing this book, but I am trying to see if anyone who has it on their BookCrossing Wish List wants my copy before I just cut it loose in the wild.

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I Guess I Can Talk About It Now

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Well, now that I’m over the utter shock of having a job offered to me only to have it snatched away with no explanation aside from “We have re-evaluated our needs and the position is no longer available,” I guess I can write about it.

Thanks to friends, Dana, Andrena, and Mysie for their well-wishes.

I e-mailed the lady who was to be my department head. She had not heard the news yet, and she said she was in shock and felt badly for me. She added that she knew I must be heartsick. I am. That job would have been the culmination of things I’ve dreamed of in a teaching job since I was in college. To be handed that dream and have it yanked away hurts.

I don’t know why it happened. Of course, I’m obsessing over it. I want desperately for it to be something that I had no control over, something that wasn’t my fault. But I have OCD, so I’ve been blaming myself. It must be something about me — what, I haven’t a clue — but something that wasn’t good enough.

I stayed home from work today. Not because of this news. Steve’s cousin died, and he drove up to Nashville for the funeral. I was going to go, but we decided it wasn’t practical to haul the children up there when we have only a little money to get by on until payday. So he took the car. I can only think it was a relief I didn’t have to go to work. To face the people who all think I have this great job lined up after I leave this year. I can’t bear to tell them and hear the inevitable questions, the expressions of sympathy. I just want to crawl in bed with my children, Steve, and the various books laying around and stay there.

Panic made me send out about 10 résumés last night. I have had some response from about three of them. I have an interview scheduled with a small, private Jewish school. That makes me feel odd. I know more about Judaism that your average recovering Southern Baptist, but do I know enough for something like that? It might be a very good experience for me, should I get the job. But after the loss of the one I really wanted, I can’t get very excited yet. I guess that will take some time.

The county where I worked my first year teaching is looking for a teacher. It’s a rural county in Middle Georgia. The school, when I left it, was rife with gangs, disrespect, lack of discipline, and no access to materials. It was a mess. I know things have changed since then. Well, somewhat. They have a new principal. It’s too far away for me to really consider it. But I do consider it. I hated that job, but I tell myself I’m tougher now. I could do it now. And things are somewhat different there. Sending them my résumé will have to be a last resort. But I’m sure once they see themselves on it and remember me, I’d have that job back. I can’t let myself go there. I can’t let myself get that desperate with worry.

Worry. My comfortable old friend that I can wrap myself in to keep from living. My old enemy that has stolen all the happiness I could have had in my life and made me weak. It makes my brain numb through the sheer workout it gives those poor neurotransmitters. I have a picture of a person’s brain on OCD posted on my OCD page. (Still moving those files over to the PlanetHuff site). It looks like the frontal lobe is on fire. Is that why I get so many headaches, I wonder? My brain is burning with worry.

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I Have the Worst News

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I suppose I should thank God I am still alive. Steve’s cousin died. They say where there is life there is hope.

I don’t know why, but the job I thought I had has fallen through. The principal called and told me so tonight. I was stunned. I expected to hear perhaps I needed to come in and sign a contract. I didn’t expect the whole thing to be pulled out from under my feet.

I wanted this so badly, and I don’t understand what happened.

I feel so much anger. At this point, the jobs are dwindling. I am very scared I won’t find one. What on earth am I going to do? I have three children and a husband to support. I am, after all, the main breadwinner. We need medical insurance.

I have dissolved into tears. Depression. I don’t know what I will do. All I want is for all of this new worry to disappear.

Why did this happen?

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