Small Town Wren

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.

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?

Why yes that is a fancy Masters hood.

And in other news, more will be happening around here now that all of that is finished.

My boyfriend took this picture of me a few weeks ago in Indiana. I believe it is the perfect photo to sum me up as a human being.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I’m pretty late to the game on this one. But please forgive me; I didn’t have Logo until quite recently.

I’ve got to say it: this show is amaaaaaaazing! I spent my afternoon off watching the first two episodes of the current season. Oh the magic of DVRs. It really makes me miss Lucky Cheng’s in New York and more than one NYU anthropology professor. Though I have yet to see a drag queen who could best my friend Drue from high school. He looked better in a dress than most women. He just flat out looked better than most women.

I’m a sucker for camp.

I didn’t watch the Super Bowl. Is anyone surprised? And while the internet is all abuzz about how misogynistic the Super Bowl Ads were this year…I’m not going to discuss that either. Yes, shocking! How could I possibly resist the intersection of media and gender?

Because Riese over at Autostraddle wrote the most amazing takedown of Taylor Swift and the Grammys. That’s how. And oh boy, it touches on virgin/whore complexes, and copycat songwriting, and the perpetually perceived purity of childhood. And she’s got awesome charts and awesome comparison pictures between Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga, and has quotes like this:

Let’s bring it back around to the lady that obvs should’ve won: Lady Fucking Gaga. Lady Gaga is viscous hungry sex in hellfire. She’s more theatrical than Broadway and every night she sings in romantic open fists. Lady Gaga opens her dress, extracts her gut, assembles it in shapes splashed in sinister glitter and then shatters her dangerous violent diamonds onto the piano and screams FIRE and it sounds like bad romance. She wants your ugly, she wants your disease, and she’s everything Taylor Swift will never be. Punks don’t win awards, they eat awards.

Yeah. I don’t need to talk about the Super Bowl. Or anything else. Just go read it.