i can't sleep (surprise, surprise, eh?)

been thinking about work. i just started teaching at the SF juvenile hall this week. i don't know what to do - i love it. i absolutely love it. this has been the most amazing week in a long time, work-wise. that isn't entirely true. working at my previous school site was pretty great, too. it's just that i feel so damn useful, so damn NEEDED here, at juvenile hall. bonds have formed quickly. i have one class of girls. i love my girls. they are incredible. the boys, or young men of 17 and 18, take your pick, are amusing and brilliant for the most part. a few are a bit sleazy, but i don't take it personally. hello!! i am old enough to be your mother in some circles.. anyway, i am perplexed by career indecision. should i continue teaching at a fairly prestigious middle school (a 9 out of a 9, to be precise) or make a permanent switch to the so-called dark side? i don't think i "got into" this work to teach at a 9/9. humph. but i needn't unnecessarily "martyr-ize" myself either. all this in my mind logged next to yesterday's cover of the NYT. babies and broken bones. goddamn zimbabwe. not sleeping, but i've entertained myself by eating pretezels in bed and watching dvds as alex is away and he normally get's hyper frazzled at the mere mentioning of eating in bed. not only have i mentioned it, princess, but i've actually done it! what else in this long-ass hiatus? yes, well, trying to help my sister kick the royal ass of cancer. there are both good and bad days. all I say is this: if you are a woman and you find yourself being denied a mammogram by some cost-saving merciless prick doctor because you are a few years short of the conventional mammogram-receiving age of 35, DEMAND SOMETHING IN WRITING.

A graphic which I stole from the site of one of my favorite bloggers, http://thegirlwho.squarespace.com/

i haven't posted anything in a long while. i plan to, shortly. in the meantime, since i am missing Christmas so much, since Christmas should be everyday, all day, and all the time, i will post photos of casa leygones during this fine, festive holiday.

morrissey is at the fillmore for four nights this week! if you are rolling your eyes, you just don't understand. it's morrissey! how many musical legends are alive and playing? not a lot, and my princess alex and I will be with morrissey tomorrow night. just us three together (ok and a crapload of other people crammed into the fillmore venue).

why do i feel like i have to state that I am not an all-black wearing misanthrope who carries a lunchbox to work? i shouldn't feel the need to offer such a disclaimer. i never understood why a master of british pop music was perceived with such misery and bleakness by american ears.

he's not that depressing, really! it's pop music married to notoriously original, bizarre, narrative, or soulful lyrics.

let me give you a lyrical sampling:

"If you're so clever, why are you on your owwwwwnnn tonight, if you're so very entertaining, then why are you on your oowwwnnn tooonight..."

"little lamb, on the hill, run as fast as you can, good Christians they want to kill you but your life has not even begun, you're just like me, you're just like me. . . ."

"i would go out tonight, but i haven't got a stich to weaaaaaarrr..."

OK, my lyrical sampling is not so great, but these songs are beautiful, fun, and i get to see morrissey tomorrow night!

so elated. i attended a concert of his before, at UCI. alex has never had the honor. this will be a special night for us, paying the ridiculous ticket cost to get in, lining up with other fans, and singing and dancing late into the night before a school day. morrissey is special for us because we don't know anyone else who digs his music. it's sort of "our thing." not the most romantic thing, but still.

we are looking to buy a new dining table for our humble little abode because the current bar-height table and chairs is useless and uninviting. we never sit there and eat a proper dinner. it's basically a purse rest. and wallet rest. and junk mail rest, mailbox key rest, box-of-dental-floss rest, essentially just a spot for anything other than a plate or a person eating.

naturally, i go to the craigslist furniture listings. i live and die by craigs. maybe not live and die, maybe more like purchase and snoop. "Casual Encounters"?

so anyway, there is a lot of handsome furniture out there. there is also a lot of shit! consider the horrendous chair above. who the hell owns something like that? more importantly, who would want to purchase that chair today, in 2007? two decades after asymmetrical tops with extra-large shoulder pads and black laquer furniture-filled homes in the Hollywood Hills with hallways full of Nagels?

Dear dumbass craigslist poster: no one wants to buy your ugly ass chair.

my skin is softer than a baby's ass.

i can't stop sniffing myself thanks to two particular Lush products. the top image is "Karma Soap" (orange, patchouli, and lemongrass). the item on the bottom is a body bar of black currant buttery goodness and cherry-scented macadamia nut oil called "You Snap the Whip".

scrub down with Karma Soap before exfoliating with You Snap the Whip. take your time, there ain't no hurry. try not to faint from the deliciousness!

why is it that americans have no problem eating meat all day long (um, hello? last time i checked, eating meat involves killing animals), and yet want to take this moral high ground with michael vick? i understand why so much of the world hates americans. we are masters of hypocrisy.

if this man is guilty of these crimes, then i would be one of the many dog-lovers who would feel compelled to kick him in the face, but somewhere in the process, mid-kick, i would glance down at my own leather shoes and recoil from shame.

don't even get me started on hunting. . .

he should be legally and criminally responsible for the crime, but he shouldn't have to bear the brunt of our collective moral and spiritual responsibility for the degredation of [animal] life.

this is the most horrific and fascinating video i have seen in a while. i've watched it stunned, amazed, at least 2.5 times. if you turn the sound off and watch it's particularly creepy! i dare you to turn the sound completely off and watch the whole thing.

dear courtney, i have said it before, but the "live through this" Hole album was genius. i love you for that album, but you are making it difficut. like a man who loves a sheep or dog or a cadaver, or something else inappropriate, you are making me feel like a woman who loves an animal. an unhealthy skeleton-esque animal at that. i want to fall in love with appropriate things, people, stuff. you make it so hard!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuENIvksarI

alex and i spent wednesday night with the faculty of my former school. it was so great to see everyone. i love them! it felt so comfortable to be back in their presence. they are a tight crew and much closer than my current school's faculty. there is so much i wanted to tell them - particularly about how incredibly underrated alum rock's role in education is here in the bay area. this relatively small district, or at least a hell of a lot smaller than SFUSD, is so much more advanced in both progressive instructional strategies and in educational technology. the technology part is predictable, i guess, being in the silicon valley and all, but i never imagined that this glorious, multicultural, leftist city of san francisco would have a school district, or at least a middle school culture, that is so regressive, so whole class instruction-based, so superficially "academic" and developmentally inappropriate.

so what i really wanted to write about tonight was the collective urging and encouragement that alex and i faced regarding returning to teach in east san jose. i can't blame them, my old colleagues. they must think we are crazy. to live in a tiny apartment and to take enormous pay cuts all just to live in san francisco. maybe it is crazy. alex and i are discussing the possibility of living in SF, but working in san jose after next year. we could live in soma, like maggie, and take CALTRANS. i don't trust myself to wake-up at 6am everyday. i need a partner, or rather a sufferer, in crime.

so life is not all about money. i know this. (crap, i perversely love having a smaller house because no matter how messy it gets, and it sure can get messy 'round these parts, it is all beautifyable in two hours or less.) it would be nice to get those alum rock wages. to live large. to smile and order dessert, even at Cafe Gratitude, because holy shit you can afford it without feeling guilty afterwards.

we were also discussing leaving san francisco all together and i couldn't help but be annoyed that alex is so unwilling. he talks about the culture and diversity of SF, then inevitably stumbles. see, his real joy is being able to walk home drunk from a bar in the mission district after a night out with friends.

"you're 35 years old for chrissakes!" which is, naturally or unnaturally, depending on your position, my reply.

alex didn't have a drink until he was 25 years old. i guess he has catching up to do. now, i've never been much of a drinker, but having an older sister enabled me to experience the thrilling world (smirk) of bars and clubs at a significantly earlier age. much earlier than voting age.

i consider myself a veteran of a world that i never really entered. two dozen or so nights spanning the ages of 16-19 spent among orange county's drunken and lascivious underclass were enough. i am, effectively, over it.

for my dearest princess alex, it is quite different. male bonding? watching sports on a big screen while being served a pitcher of Guinness by a well-endowed and tattooed blonde? what is it? is it enough to warrant living in a shoebox forever?

the truth is that i love san francisco for different reasons. i love that you occasionally can't tell the difference between a homeless lunatic and a regular person just by looking. san francisco blurs lines that san jose spends millions (think santana row) to maintain. of course i love that.

but it's one thing to sacrifice creature or material comforts for culture, politics, the environment, but FOR EASY PROXIMITY TO STUMBLE HOME DRUNK FROM A BAR? sweet jesus, i didn't marry a frat boy! or did I? (just kidding, princess)

strangely enough, this brings me to bay to breakers. "this" being the discussion of drinking, not frat boys. the event didn't appeal to me this year. bay to breakers ain't that great if you are not

A) drunk
B) running

and i wasn't planning to do either. alex was so excited about it. i guess i'm not interested, at the present time, to engage in events that require me to change my state of consciousness, that is, to get drunk, to enjoy them. shouldn't the value of an event be assessed by your ability to swallow it, no pun intended, sober? have i effectively turned into a buzz kill? i just don't understand having to get drunk in order to enjoy something. should i just officially change my name now? buzz kill momeny?

we are approaching the last week. i always get somewhat emotional during this time. there is the emotion of unprecedented relief and excitement (yay - summer vacation) and inevitable sadness. my kids! i love them! next year they will not be in my class. i always have this incredible urge to give all of them an enormous bear hug. i want to say, "You are so great!" and not because it's a lie, but because most of them, if not all of them, really are great. i don't know how much of this is due to their objective and respective greatness and how much of it is due to the fact that there are aspects of my identity that fit rather perfectly into the seventh grade psyche. my crew! my crew and I are parting ways!

everyone makes fun of me for driving back to san jose every three or four weeks to have my eyebrows tweezed. it is probably one of the most economically damaging decisions a girl could make. one hour each way! plenty of gasoline used in the process. the alexandria salon in san jose, on the alameda, has the best eyebrow lady ever. she understands me. she understands what "i prefer thick brows" means. she is patient enough to tweeze my brows, and avoid waxing as i have sensitive skin and i am no fan of the pain involved in that damn wax.

i moved out of san jose in july of last year, but i kept traveling back to Sima, my persian eyebrow master, rather often. and was always rather generous tip-wise, too. i finally admitted that this long-distance and expensive vanity was stupid and i decided, on a whim, to make an appointment at Eyebrows to Die For, much hyped on Yelp, on Van Ness.

Lady! I said "thick, thick, thick." I know all things are a matter of taste. Maybe I am wrong to prefer thickness over thinness and cleanliness, but I can't help it. Persians are supposed to be hella hairy and I'm not terribly hairy on my arms, etc, so I must want to maintain a sense of cultural pride on my eyebrows? I don't know. I can't figure it out.

All I know is that now I feel like I have a baby's bare ass above my eyes. Such vastness. such space. What gives, lady?

She spent the whole time yapping, too. In her judgemental, annoying voice blabbing on and on about how her friends who wear fake eyelashes on a daily basis are morons, blabbing about how the Asian-owned nail salons in the city don't know jack about eyebrow sculpting, blabbing about the weather, the lower Haight, American Idol, etc etc.

I don't care! Just leave me be in silence. I love Sima. She's sweet and gracious and well-skilled, but she's not a talker. She seems to dislike small talk as much as I.

The reason I don't like it when estheticians blab the whole time is because I think they should concentrate on what they are doing. They get so carried away with their stupid salon gossip or random blab that you feel that they are rapidly plucking away with adandon.

And it cost 40 bucks, too! I tipped her seven dollars. Is that considered a good tip or a crappy tip? i don't even know the protocol when you're unsatisfied with the results. I felt it was an average tip. A "thanks, but no thanks" tip.

I can't wait for these suckers to grow! Then I will go back to the Alexandria, where Sima awaits. If Al Gore has to take chartered flights around the world, then dammit, i have to drive 100 miles (round trip) for vanity.

I'll just make sure that I have a whole lotta other errands or things to do in the South Bay. Like visiting Alex's family! Or going to an art show at MACLA in downtown. Or scavenging around for deals at the Great Mall, or running bureacratic red-tape nightmare errands at that waste of a teacher credentialing institution commonly referred to as San Jose State University.

Take that, Al Gore!