challenge to self:

eat my way through new york mag's "ten best new eats under $5."

that's my month of august in a nutshell. :) and no worries, i will bring back pictures! and hopefully a verrrrry happy stomach (though i'm not so sure about the goat...)

"bringing back" paddling sounds like a bad idea,

no?

but i guess a school district in georgia disagrees. little did i know, georgia school districts actually get to decide whether or not they want to use corporal punishment! also, only 28 states actually have a ban on corporal punishment in schools? really? wow...

this is problematic:

"The Twiggs County school board reinstated its corporal punishment policy this summer to allow students to be spanked to curb misbehavior...Twiggs parents will have to sign a permission slip for their child to be paddled by an administrator, and witnesses will have to be in the room. There also will be a meeting to inform parents of the changes."

hmm. it would seem to me that, as an administrator, i would be somewhat fearful for my life if i went around spanking people in the regular course of my days. what happens when not all parents sign the slip? what happens when a middle or high school student decides spanking isn't for him/her and decides to hook themselves up with a gun?

there are some things about this country that i just can't understand.

my brand of determination

tends to take me down long, winding, troublesome paths. sometimes, those paths lead me to destruction (and/or diarrhea).

more cat

today, i was determined to find a snack. something not too expensive and not too fattening, but sweet, to cap off an uninspiring lunch of leftover pasta and- wait for it- ragu sauce. yeah, like the mega bottle of sauce that your mom used to buy at costco if she was less-than-well-off, had four kids, and didn't particularly like to cook, like mine. :)

anyway. i walked into the duane reade on 34th street today looking for a satisfying treat. often, when i start on these treat escapades, i end up buying something random just because i get tired of looking. today was no exception to that rule. what was the last treat to cross my path before my determination became exasperation, you ask? tasty kake "sugarfree sensables." i picked up the chocolatiest ones i could find and headed for the register.


while i stood in line, i decided to read up more on my "tasty" treat so i could more effectively congratulate myself on the sensible purchase. some of the stats:

1) only 100 calories per snack! (this is good)
2) only (as snack cakes go) 12% of my recommended daily value of fat! (this is good)

good so far, yes? i thought so too! then i saw this, in bold, capital letters waaay down at the bottom above the "TastyKake Guarantee":

EXCESSIVE CONSUMPTION MAY HAVE A LAXATIVE EFFECT


(this is not good)

(why me?)

i wanted to post today

because i checked my sitemeter and feedburner and see that there are still people visiting, but i'm having a lot of trouble finding inspiration. maybe it's because i am, yet again, approaching between-two-jobs limbo, on my way back into the classroom, this time in a charter school setting, helping to found the kind of school (i hope) i'd like to start. maybe it's because my mother, while she's on the mend, is far from out of the woods, and it worries me more than i like to admit. maybe it's because i feel selfish as the child that insists on far-away-cross-country independence from her family, even during trying times like these. maybe it's because i can't figure out how to run the a/c in my room at night without getting sick, which means i am getting (almost) no sleep. maybe it's because i can't wait for the raise and expanded sense of security the new job will bring. maybe it's because i wouldn't mind a new boyfriend, as in someone i actually like beyond drinks-after-work, hookups-on-friday-nights, text-messages-when-we're-bored (as cute and funny as the current men in those slots might be).

i don't really know why it is. i'm still reading and writing and thinking and planning. it's just that none of it makes it to this text box.

oh well.

i think i'm going to cut my hair

off.

yeah, i just might.

summertime music

my summertime anthems muxtape! joyeux.muxtape.com

still a work in progress...

honey, i love

the shoes in the bottom right corner...

jazzy

i stumbled onto a jazz band rehearsing this evening in a cafe i support because it is independent and black owned and NOT the new starbucks on 118th and 8th ave. i walked in to buy a chai as i waited for some people who define the term colored people because the only time they know is cp.
i asked if i could sit because it looked like there was commotion and i was told there would be a rehearsal going on, if i didn't mind. so i sat and i pulled out my book, jazz by toni morrison (oh so appropriate, right?) and began to read while they hooked the mics and tuned the bass and adjusted the levels of sound. and then the singing began and the words on the page danced away and the book dropped to the table and my toes started tapping and my eyes closed and i started to smile and the vocalist said "cut" and tossed this line to me- "you are making my day right now you are so making my day."
for once my anal desire for punctuality from all people in my life was assuaged as i, in a new move, actually enjoyed waiting for a colored person. ;)

free jazz tomorrow night at 6 at tribal spears gallery and cafe, 117th and 8th avenue, harlem.
***

now, of course, i am reading and i am blogging and that means i am going to share an excerpt with you because this wouldn't really be me if i didn't.

I have stood in cane fields in the middle of the night when the sound of it rustling hid the slither of the snakes and I stood still waiting for him and not stirring a speck in case he was near and I would miss him, and damn the snakes my man was coming for me and who or what was going to keep me from him? Plenty times, plenty times I have carried the welts given me by a two-tone peckerwood because I was late in the field row the next morning. Plenty times, plenty, I chopped twice the wood that was needed into short logs and kindlin so as to make sure the crackers had enough and wouldn't go hollering for me when I was bound to meet my Joe Trace don't care what and do what you will or may he was my Joe Trace. Mine. I picked him out from all the others wasn't nobody like Joe he make anybody stand in cane in the middle of the night; make any woman dream about him in the daytime so hard she miss the rut and have to work hard to get the mules back on the track. Any woman, not just me. Maybe that is what she saw. Not the fifty-year-old man toting a sample case, but my Joe Trace, my Virginia Joe Trace who carried a light inside him, whose shoulders were razor sharp and who looked at me with two-color eyes and never saw anybody else...Is that why he let her scoop the melty part from around the edges of his pint of ice cream, stick her hand down in his salt-and-butter popcorn.
(p. 97, jazz)

kinda like the love song the jazz lady sang

i was insulted today

while having a difficult discussion at work.

boy oh boy. i am ready to leave.

celebrating independence

i'm back. for a minute.

i actually felt it this weekend. a true sense of independence for myself. i went up to vermont to visit my best friend from high school's family, and not only was it an awesome weekend (iwentsailingandhotairballooningandswamandatetonsandhungoutwiththecutest2and4year oldseverandlaughedandsanganddidyogaandohdidimentionthehotairballoon? COOL!), but i also felt this sense of being free from my usually constant needs. good stuff.

one cool picture for yas-