Small Town Wren

This picture just makes me so happy. Every time I see it, I can’t help but feel a little giddy.

I’ve been gone awhile. It’s hard to write in your blog when you feel like nothing you have to say is important or of any consequence. I’ve probably just been psyching myself out.

I think it’s time to own up and say that I am incredibly, incredibly frustrated. And part of that frustration has to do with a lot of the resentment I feel towards life and this blog. It seems that I stop writing here every time it becomes very obvious that the purpose of this blog will not be fulfilled. I started this blog two and a half years ago to talk about moving back to Nowheresville, Illinois after graduating from New York University in May 2009. And for awhile I wrote here regularly and happily. And then it became rocky. And that rockiness has coincided with every turn that has made it clear that I would not be leaving this place when I earned my Masters Degree.

I am frustrated. I wasn’t supposed to be in my parents’ house for more than two years. I’m still here. I was supposed to be able to support myself with a Masters Degree in Education. I make $12.00 an hour and am supposed to feel “lucky” for it. I have found a field within education that I am absolutely in love with (Special Ed), would really like to pursuit that and bonus, there are positions open in it! However, getting my LBS1 to do that would make me ‘too expensive’ to ever hire.

I’ve worked my butt off my entire life to be successful. I worked hard to get into a world-renown boarding school, then to get into the best college in the world for my field. There was lots of opportunity  and money in that field until about 6 months before I graduated. I moved home to get into a Masters program which I paid for out of my pocket. I don’t have debt, not even on my credit cards. I did everything right.

I did everything right and yet everything is going wrong.

Even the little things aren’t going my way. All my knitting mojo has left the building. How many times have I had to restart the same gift for my sister? (Hint: The answer is 5.)  How many students do I miss because of a crazy merry-go-round job switch? (Answer: 46.)  Though let me clear, I am absolutely in love with the six students I see every day now and with my job. I just miss my 46 Kindergartners, too.  And how many sticks of butter did I put out to soften that were the wrong kind? (Srsly: 4.)

I’m completely head over heels for a man, but I cannot afford to start the life with him we both want. I refuse to be a kept woman. It’s just not something I can do. And let’s not get started on how much we’re be jerked around by the credit union when we are actually trying to see if we could afford to move in together.

I’m just so angry and there is no place to direct my anger. To be honest, it’s not really anyone’s fault unless we want to start glaring at bankers and mortage lenders. Well, I perhaps could be angry with the Illinois government for jerking around Education funding and not paying their bills. But the problem is, there’s no one I can walk up to and scream at them and get them to make this right.

There’s no customer service for when everything sucks.

I met up with a friend yesterday to help her construct a blanket. She wasn’t sure how to do the crochet bits. Silly me thinking I’d be the only one doing the teaching.  Monica’s mission in life, apparently, is to get as many people spinning on this planet as possible. We hadn’t even gotten started before she was thrusting a spindle into my hands and bag full of fiber. She gave me a choice of spindles, so I got to choose one with a very nice green resin whorl.

And a short while later, I was spinning. Spinning as in making yarn.  Oh dear. Textiles are very rapidly taking over my life.  I suppose there are worse fates to have, but I do think I may be hitting the point where it’d be embarrassing to show all the unused yarn I have to, well, anyone.  The only problem is I’m not sure how to ply and/or set the twist, so I can’t actually do anything with all my brand new yarn. Rats!

Well, the somewhat big news is that I have landed a full-time job with benefits! It’s only somewhat big because, um, it’s kind of actually my old job. I’m back to being a Special Education paraprofessional, though in yet another building within the district. I feel like I’m on a merry-go-round sometimes.

This will be the most interesting, perhaps, because I’m actually going to be working in the very same building where I went to elementary school. Though now I’ll get to be in the sooper sekrit teacher rooms, like the forbidden lounge. Zomg!!11!. But it will be neat to see what has happened to the building in the 13+ years since I was last there (beyond dropping things off at the main office).

I just know I’ll like it better than the last building I was in. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved all my coworkers and the kids, but the physical building was just…meh. Same reason why I was not too fond of the building where I student taught. I really, really, really don’t like buildings that don’t have lockers and/or cubbies in the hallways. They seem far too sterile. I guess I just like seeing students in the hallways getting things. Perhaps I’m weird like that.

Most importantly, though: I’ll have health insurance. Right now I have a $740/mo COBRA payment. It’s pretty crappy, but thankfully I won’t have to pay it that much longer. Healthcare reform apparently didn’t apply to my parent’s retirement insurance plan, so I’m not covered anymore. And as an added bonus, I’m being charged as if I were 77. This is great. Just great.

So in the quiet hours of yesterday morning, I became 24 years old. Twenty-four. Officially in my mid-twenties now. That’s a pretty big deal, maybe?

Some friends and I went bowling on Tuesday. My highest score was a 114. I never claimed to be good at it.

Why yes that is the shirt I was making last month. It made its debut that night. And yes that is a birthday crown I made for myself. Birthdays shouldn’t happen without a crown.

As for being twenty-four and all…let me present you the bucket list to do before being twenty-five.

1. Finish book of poetry
2. Knit a (real) sweater
3. Redecorate the spare bedroom
4. Spend more time outside
5. Eat less bad ice-cream and more good ice-cream
6. Climb a 5.9 route consitently
7. Hell, let’s make that a 5.10
8. Guess I’d better learn how to belay, too
9. Practice more Random Acts of Kindness
10. Move out
11. Learn how to sew
12. Pull my hair out less
13. Cook more
14. Don’t mind the dirt
15. Find a real job
16. Take more pictures
17. This includes the polaroid
18. Figure out how to walk in heels real good
19. Ride 30 miles in a day on a bicycle
20. Lay in the grass.
21. Be more consistent about posting to the blog
22. Twitter, too
23. Finish reading War and Peace
24. Continue to not grow up

Boom!

I got my teaching certificate today. K-9, elementary and middle school certified. Also, they seem to think I’m qualified to teach Language Arts and Social Sciences. That’s pretty neat.

I nearly freaked out when I saw that I wasn’t endorsed for Drama.  I mean, if there’s anything I’m qualified to teach it’s Drama.  But then I realised my university wasn’t qualified to endorse me in that. Time to figure out who is qualified to do that endorsement.

But squee! I’m a real, certified teacher now. There’s no possibility of something going horrifically wrong and getting denied for some reason. I’ve got it!

In other news…anyone aware of open teaching positions?

One of the first and, to date, one of the most-bitter fights Daniil and I have ever gotten into had to do with something most people would probably raise an eyebrow or two at. It was a bitter, drawn out affair that resulted in somewhat of a compromise. To this day, though it only occasionally comes up, we struggle and butt heads about it.

You see, when I met him, he was not registered to vote. While some might not care, to me this was an issue of great and dire importance. It still is. He finally caved and registered right after last year’s elections (sigh). The compromise was he very adamantly insisted that though now he was registered and I should be happy, he would never, never, ever exercise his right to vote. And, as far as I know, he hasn’t.

And this still troubles me. Perhaps even more so than it did a year ago. Why?

I’ve noticed–and I’m not the only one–that politics is become a lot more like TMZ every day. And no one seems to care. We happily swallow up Trump’s birtherism, giggle about Jon Kyl’s ‘non-factual’ statements, and snicker about Rep. Weiner’s…well…weiner. And while we process what is happening with these news bits, we simply move on without, well, doing anything.

But then things like this happen:

They happen and we don’t notice because there’s nothing entertaining about it, and we want to be entertained. LZ Ganderson wrote on CNN:

It shouldn’t really matter which side of the fence you stand on regarding abortion: that tone, that rationale, has no place in the debate. That more people, more women, were not angered by DeGraaf’s statements only highlights just how little we are paying attention to lawmakers.

He’s right. We’re not paying attention, and crazy whackadoo lawmakers have figured that out. As long as political news coverage is actually entertainment in content, these politicians can do and say whatever they like. My 4th grade teacher always said that who you are is the person you are when no one is watching.

No one is watching what’s going on. No one is watching and the masks are coming off. And since no one is watching, no one notices when they change the law in ways we don’t like, to reflect values we don’t believe in.

I am shocked and horrified that it’s okay, politically and socially, to say things like that, to say that you should plan ahead for rape. I’m upset this isn’t more news worthy. I’m ashamed that we could stand for it in this country.

Politics isn’t entertainment, people. It’s real life, and it has very real consequences. And sadly, punishing women and making the lives of women more difficult has been a common theme of late (or almost forever, really). But it’s not just women, it’s happening to the poor and to the brown, too. It’s only going to get worse if we continue to view politicians the same way we do celebrities.

As a side not, it was pretty ingenous of DeGraff to sugges his wife and daughter would “never need an abortion” if they were raped. Last time I checked, ‘never need’ was not synonymous with ‘I will forbid’.

There are some days that I think the weather is truly conspiring against me and my ideas of fun. I’m pretty certain that an act of malice can only be responsible for the horrid weather that has plagued me the past several weeks when I have wanted to have a picnic. Specifically, a bike-ride picnic with Daniil. For weeks now, we have been either rained out or colded out.

Yesterday was no exception. Beyond the fact that up until the day before we were told by a (mistaken) forecast that starting at noon, Sunday was to be sunny and warm.

Bullocks.  This is what we got:

I don’t even.

But rather than let ourselves be deterred, the picnic had to go on! Only, inside. And with less nature. Boo. But it was still lovely. And we had a lot more pillows, to say the least. Sandwiches were made, strawberries were washed, and pasta salad was packed. We even opened the windows to listen to the rolling thunder.

Yes, it was raining, despite how bright it looks out my windows. Blowout is blowout.

And look, I finally lit the candles Daniil got me for Christmas. We’ll just ignore that it’s almost 6 months later. They smell amazing. He was pretty insistent that lighting Cappuccino, Warm Sugar, and Wedding Cake all at once was a very terrible, not-so-good idea, but I showed him. Not overpowering in the least, and not too faint, either, for that matter.

And of course no picnic would be complete without me stuffing my face full of sammich. Absolutely not.

The kicker of all this being, of course, was that after our post-picnic nap, it was bright, sunny, and hot. The rain had blown through and humidity had set in. I know, right?  So the happy ending to this story is that we got the bike ride in after-all.

We’ll just pretend that the hard-shell bug flying into his eye never happened.

I hit the motherlode.  My friend Katie and I have an ongoing game that we’ve been playing for a year now. It’s the Tractor Game. Apparently they play it in New Zealand.  You spy a tractor, you get a point.  Spy a moving tractor and you get two. It started on a ride down from Devil’s Lake when her GPS took us through some very rural parts.

Well, during our camping trip to Pere Marquette, I hit the motherlode.  I present to you a moving tractor on a ferry.  A moving tractor on a ferry that promptly drove into the bar right next to the ferry.

We settled that this was worth at least a hundred points in the game.   And I got to ride the ferry!

So now that I have graduated and have subsequently found myself on the job-seeking beat, I’ve found I have more time to do what I really enjoy. Namely, knitting.

A friend was ever so kind enough to send me a lovely Twist Collective pattern (Mary Jane) to work on in my down time. And work on it I have, using some lovely Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy that I got on sale. It’s a hemp/cotton/modal blend. Which means it’s murder on the fingers. And yet, somehow worth it. I’ve only had to rip out my needles and frog back, oooh, eleventy-billion times. I’m not a very careful knitter. I hurry and make large, glaring mistakes that I don’t catch until much too long afterward. That’s okay though. Sometimes I just let the mistakes live on.

Now isn’t that lovely? The red of that deck chair really brings out the…uh…yellowish-tannish-muddle color in it. I’m a bit farther on now than I was a week ago when I took that picture. Shut up, it can take me a week to post on my blog if I want it to. Psssh.

Ah, and when I’m not knitting, I am, of course, doing naughty things like buying yarn. Lots and lots of yarn. Though in my defense, going to a seconds sale is a ridiculously cheap way to get a lot of fancy yarn. Here. Let me show you:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Dream in Color Smooshy. And not just any color either. It’s their April 2011 Exclusive Club Color Posy.  That yarn right there? Retails for $24.00-$26.00. I kid you not. I bought it at the company seconds sale for $5.00. It has about foot of “damaged” yarn in it (ie not spun to standards) but that little defect is hardly anything, especially when you consider that skein has 420 yards in it. The color is much prettier in person, too.

So no, I’m not ashamed I spent all the money in my wallet that day. Not the least. Especially since I am now done buying yarn for the next few years.  Yeah. A few years.  I mean that.   I think.