I taught my first class of the spring semester on Tuesday night.  It's my fourth semester teaching composition at a local community college, and the first semester I have gone into the first class really feeling confident about what I'm doing.  Not surprisingly, I was happier about doing it than I have ever been before.

I had 18 students on the roster and was excited about the prospect of a not-full class, but then of course two extras showed up.  However, there were about four no-shows, so my hope that I might end up with around 15 when it's all said and done may still be realized.  Twenty students at five essays (each with one revision), two tests and five in-class assignments each on top of my day job can be a wee bit tiring.

After I handed out the syllabus and geeky "ten tips for the successful college student" hand-outs, explained the grading rubric and tried to scare the shit out of them with my plagiarism speech, we played one of those "getting to know you" games.  I handed out one question to each of them, and they had to go around the room telling the class their name, their year in school (tricky with community college - can you be a fifth-year sophomore?), why they are in the class, a personal fact, and answer the question.  Every single one of them said they are in the class either a) because they have to be (community college as prison torture), b) because they had already used up all their electives and had to start taking core classes (if you ask me, same as "a") or c) one person said "because I want to be." When I pressed him on that, he did admit that he wanted to be different and everyone else had already said "a" or "b."  This is not as disappointing to me as you might think, because hell, it's Comp I, not Creative Writing or Advanced Bullshit For The Future Millionaire.  Who wants to take Comp I?  NO ONE. 

I do try to position the class as "win friends and influence people" as well as "don't look like a friggin' idiot when you type an e-mail" as opposed to "the glory of good grammar."  Sometimes they get the message, sometimes they don't.  I suppose those who are in college to go on to a career in police work or nursing may not, in fact, write a lot of memos in their professional lives.  I do so feel that the world is kinder to those who can string together a proper sentence.  Unless you're George Bush.  But I digress.

Two personal facts I enjoyed:  one guy said he was back in school after four years of "kickin' it."  I asked him if "kickin' it" had paid well, and he laughed and said no, that's why he was there.  The second guy said his hobbies included cage-fighting, which then launched a long class discussion of what the hell that was and why anyone in their right mind would want to do it. Apparently there is actually a cage involved. I'm not sure how much more I want to know about that, but he may very well turn in an essay on it, so I guess I should prepare myself.

After all that, I made them write for forty minutes about what they wanted to accomplish in the next ten years and why.  I decided to instill this weeder exercise this year because I do want them to understand what is involved with a writing class:  writing.  A lot of writing.  About half of them looked pained and spent a lot of time staring at blank paper, the clock, blank paper, their pencil, blank paper, then finally deteriorated into playing with their cell phones.  The other half, to my amazement, wrote for a solid forty minutes.  I did notice they tended to be the nontrads, the older students, those who had probably had a lot of time to think about what they did or didn't accomplish in the previous ten years of their lives.  One in particular thanked me afterward for the exercise.

It's a proven fact that if you write down your dreams, you're much more likely to accomplish them.  Have you written down yours?

My hair actually looks a little more full in my bathroom mirror than it does in the photos.  This could be a trick of the way I hold my head, or it could be that the camera doesn't luv my hair and it's fortunate I did not persue a career in modeling.

I'm still sorta getting used to it, but it's a LOT faster in the morning! 

My hair actually looks a little more full in my bathroom mirror than it does in the photos.  This could be a trick of the way I hold my head, or it could be that the camera doesn't luv my hair and it's fortunate I did not persue a career in modeling.

I'm still sorta getting used to it, but it's a LOT faster in the morning! 

Well, it is indeed Friday the 13th, and only one day away from a full moon.  I wonder what my pirate teenage neighbor has cooked up for the 'hood this year?

I'm not terribly superstitious, though I do believe if I utter the words "my daughter never has temper tantrums" or "I've never received a speeding ticket" that I am damning myself to that very thing happening within five minutes of the utterance.  But I don't really abide by the "not opening umbrellas indoors" or the "not walking under ladders" thing.  I mean, if you need to dry your umbrella or walk around during a remodel, there really aren't that many choices, are there?

So, even so...there was a little shiver that went down my spine when I looked at the calendar this morning and realized the date.  I looked at my cat, closest kin of the moon, and hoped for the best today.  I don't really know what is up with the number 13, though this person ventured a guess. 

I think we love or hate Friday the 13th because it's possible anything could happen, as though that weren't true of every day.

I'm reminded by my friend Jane and fun read (she'd probably be mad if I called her my friend, because, like, I totally stole her boyfriend in seventh grade) Amalah that it's DeLurking Week (I added my own capitalization just for fun).

This coincides nicely with my need to discuss my hair.  And see if anyone but my five friends really reads this blog and the rest of my ever-growing numbers are really, truly brought on by confused people using Yahoo and Google to try to find out about the new movie called Surrender, Dorothy. (It is doing wonders for my stats, which make my little writerly ego feel better, if nothing else.)  Unfortunately for posterity, this is not a movie about me or my life, though if it was, I'm sure I would be played by either the aging Jennie Garth or the suddenly-single-and-perhaps-soon-to-be-replaced-on-Broadway-by-ugh-Britney Christina Applegate.

This is what my  hair looks like now, although it is not always so windblown.  (Silly, that's only because we were riding behind a tractor).

I have this silly fantasy that I could chop about half of it off and my baby-fine, lifeless hair would suddenly do the Sienna without any addition of time or effort on my part in the morning. Not that I want to be attracting Jude Law or any of the other nanny-banging unattached. I just want something different. I'm not telling my beloved I'm thinking about it.  He's still mad about the time I dyed my hair three different colors in one year. 

So...if I want my hair to go all Sienna Miller on me, what do you want your hair to do for you?  Is there really anyone out there beyond the Lost On Yahoo crowd?   

I'm reminded by my friend Jane and fun read (she'd probably be mad if I called her my friend, because, like, I totally stole her boyfriend in seventh grade) Amalah that it's DeLurking Week (I added my own capitalization just for fun).

This coincides nicely with my need to discuss my hair.  And see if anyone but my five friends really reads this blog and the rest of my ever-growing numbers are really, truly brought on by confused people using Yahoo and Google to try to find out about the new movie called Surrender, Dorothy. (It is doing wonders for my stats, which make my little writerly ego feel better, if nothing else.)  Unfortunately for posterity, this is not a movie about me or my life, though if it was, I'm sure I would be played by either the aging Jennie Garth or the suddenly-single-and-perhaps-soon-to-be-replaced-on-Broadway-by-ugh-Britney Christina Applegate.

This is what my  hair looks like now, although it is not always so windblown.  (Silly, that's only because we were riding behind a tractor).

I have this silly fantasy that I could chop about half of it off and my baby-fine, lifeless hair would suddenly do the Sienna without any addition of time or effort on my part in the morning. Not that I want to be attracting Jude Law or any of the other nanny-banging unattached. I just want something different. I'm not telling my beloved I'm thinking about it.  He's still mad about the time I dyed my hair three different colors in one year. 

So...if I want my hair to go all Sienna Miller on me, what do you want your hair to do for you?  Is there really anyone out there beyond the Lost On Yahoo crowd?   

Well, the plumber came and ripped a hole the size of Montana in our bathroom wall this afternoon.  For my birthday when I was pregnant with the little angel, my beloved installed a tub surround in the bathroom. He laid it over the old, icky, black, mildewed, sixty-year-old tile that used to haunt my dreams like the boiler room in a Freddy Krueger film.  I was certain the tile might somehow find its way off the wall, scratch its way across the peeling lineoleum in the bathroom and scale the snags in the upstairs Berber to scrape my face while I slept. 

One, two, the tile is gonna get you...

Three, four, better lock your door...

Five, six, grab the strong Tilex...

Seven, eight, better scrub till late...

Nine, ten, oh, screw it - just slap a piece of tile-molded plastic over the whole thing and pretend like it never happened.

So anyway, the plumber had to jackhammer through not only ancient tile, but also this big sheet of plastic.  Oh, and a wooden wall.  He did a pretty complete job, which unfortunately happened while my beloved was on the phone with one of his brokerage prospects.

Prospect:  "What's that noise?"

Beloved:  "Oh, that?  That's nothing."

BLAM! POW! SPLAT!  RIIIIIIIIP!

Prospect:  "Really?  Nothing?"

Beloved:  "Well, there is a strange man in my bathroom with a blowtorch. Don't let it worry your pretty little head.  How's your money market doing this quarter?"

I haven't taken a shower in there yet.  We had to shut off the heat and open the bathroom window (this is accomplished by removing the entire lower window frame, since the pieces of rope that raise the window have been gone since we moved into the house - perhaps gone since the Reagan administration - I really don't know).  We left the window open during our outing to Costco after work. My beloved thought he'd solve the smell problem by lighting a leftover Thanksgiving Target pumpkin-scented candle.  Now it smells like burning rubber dog shit infused with cinnamon.

I think I'll go take a shower.  Yummy.

The plumber is coming again today to put our shower faucet out of its misery. It's an old-school faucet, with "hot,"  "cold" and "change function" knobs.  The change function knob doesn't work - if the water is on, it's always coming out of both the tub faucet and the shower head; it just favors one over the other, depending on how you twist it. About every two months, the whole thing breaks and we have to cut off the water to the entire house and beg the plumber to come.

I've described our plumbing adventures before. You can read about them here and here.  I believe at one point I told the story of how we had to call the firemen when I was seven months pregnant with the little angel and Sybil the cat somehow got into the crawl space below the tub, but boy, that was a long story and the post must have gone into Typepad Archive Heaven, because I sure as hell can't find it.

Anyway, he should be here in about fifteen minutes.  I'm a wee bit nervous. 

Ever since I lived in Chicago, I have preferred being where the action is.  However, this often comes with some, er, side effects.  When I first moved to Kansas City, I moved into a very cool ex-hotel on the Missouri historical registry.  Unfortunately, it was next to an abandoned building and a few streets down from some, well, crack houses.  I remember one night I got so weebed out by the gunshot sounds that I nailed my window shut.  (I've had brighter ideas in the past, looking back at the fire hazard that THAT was.)

From there, my beloved and I moved in together into an also very cool second floor walk-up in Midtown.  There I learned about a cultural event that involves taking out your handgun and shooting it in the air on the Fourth of July and on New Year's Eve at the stroke of midnight. 

After that place, when we decided to buy, we wanted to stay in town a while longer.  We moved about three miles south into one of those neighborhoods often referred to as "up and coming."  That's a nice way of saying "shitty now, but there's hope."  It was all we could afford at the time.  We did a ton of work to This Old House, and bless them, the neighbors have started doing some work to their old houses, too.  The neighborhood is really coming around.  That's why I was surprised last week when I left the little angel's bedroom at 8:30 to hear my beloved whispering, "Come here!!" in that excited, let's watch the house fire sort of voice.

We went outside on the porch to see five squad cars with their lights flashing.  A paddy wagon was double-parked two houses down. We sat down to watch.  A guy came out of one of the houses with the best Christmas lights in cuffs.

"Do you think I should be scared about this?" I asked.

My beloved laughed, a former small-town-Iowa-boy-turned-city-veteran at my insistence we live in "cool" neighborhoods.  "Not now - see, they got him!" he crowed.

Yeah.