16 Jun

In Which Tember Learns to Hate Traffic Jams

Once, while I was talking with my mom on the phone, she informed me of a doggie IQ test. I don’t remember all of the tests — which might say something about my IQ — but each one consisted of a task (such as extracting a treat from underneath an overturned cup), which was then timed and assessed by the speed with thish the dog completed it.

Mom explained each test to me over the phone, and I proceeded to administer them to Tember. The first test was to put a towel over her head and shoulders and see how fast she freed herself. She did it in about three seconds. In fact, she did most of the remaining tests in three seconds or less, thereby qualifying as a “genius.” I don’t know how difficult the tests actually were (I found them pretty easy), but I believe she’s proven herself in some other ways.

She has learned, for example, to get worried any time someone starts to use a printer since it usually just makes people angry. She also learned just this past week to hate traffic jams. We were on our wa to Milwaukee when we hit some stop-and-go traffic. I was trying to keep the stops gradual so as not to throw Tember around, but at one point, the cars ahead of me stopped very suddenly. I realized how suddenly they were stopping only mid-way through my gradual stop, at which point I started chanting “shit” cuz, you know, sometimes that helps. The problem is, Tember is familiar with such chants (thanks to the printer, for one). She started pacing around the back of the car until the traffic cleared up, when she relaxed and lay down.

The next day, as we were leaving Milwaukee, we again hit some stop-and-go traffic. There were no close calls, and thus no “chanting,” but she still got agitated. Until we hit a smooth flow of traffic.

Later, as we were entering Madison, I put it to the test. I tried some quick slow-downs followed by some acceleration, and sure enough, I got a pacing animal in the back seat.

06 Jun

Why I haven’t posted in the past few days

It’s one of the oldest mom lessons there is: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.

The last two weeks of school are never good from a teacher standpoint. You’ve got failing students suddenly taking interest in your classes and scrambling to turn in late work; if you accept it, you need to grade it all; you’re dealing with the usual load of end-of-the-year essays and final exams and whatnot; you’ve probably got parents calling you or parents calling guidance counselors who are calling you; you’ve got all sorts of little paperwork to do (things like textbook return forms); and if you have any students who piss you off, they’re guaranteed to get under your skin in these last few weeks. If you haven’t started yet, you’ll begin having school-related panic dreams soon; they’ll last until a week or two into summer.

June 5th (also known as the final day of Timmas) was, foreseeably, a horrible day. It was the last day of classes, to be followed by three days of exams. I had fumed all weekend about the students who were pissing me off, and on Sunday night when I was trying to fall asleep, I just kept rehearsing angry speeches I was going to deliver to those students. I ended up getting out of bed around midnight — after unsuccessfully trying to fall asleep — and surfing the internet for the lyrics to a song by Vincentico called “Los Caminos de la Vida.” The song had been running through my head all day; it’s lyrics were oddly comforting. The translated chorus goes something like this:

Los caminos de la vida, (the paths of life)
no son los que yo esperaba, (aren’t the one I hoped for)
no son los que yo creia, (aren’t the ones I believed they’d be)
no son los que imaginaba (aren’t the ones I imagined)

Los caminos de la vida, (the paths of life)
son muy dificiles de andarlos, (are very difficult to walk)
dificiles de caminarlos, (are very difficult to travel)
y no encuentro la salida. (and there’s no way to avoid them — literally ‘and I can’t find the exit’)

After watching the music video a couple times, I headed back to bed around 1:00. I find it fascinating that a song whose thesis is pretty much “this difficult life is not what I had hoped it would be” could be so soothing to my troubled mind. I guess I don’t find it that strange, just fascinating. When life sucks, it’s somehow nice to know that it sucks for other people. That’s funny. “Los Caminos de la Vida” ended up being the first song I heard on my birthday and an appropriate anthem for the crappy day that followed. Given, it didn’t comfort me much later in the day when I was scolding the student who had missed 30 days of class, but years from now, which do you think I’ll remember? The student or the song?

The good news is that in light of recent events, I’ve decided to postpone Timmas until June 10th, so there are four more days of Timmas! Woot!

01 Jun

Weltschmerz

I just saw this word on the national spelling bee. It was the word that tripped up the 2nd place speller. It means “mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state.” Author J.D. MacDonald defines it as “homesickness for a place you have never seen.” Ha! I love that.

In google, it returns 390,000 hits, way more than hukilau, an earlier word that means “A Hawaiian fishing party usually involving many people and much revelry” and which only returns 146,000 hits. Still, I find both those numbers staggering. There are actually almost 400,000 websites that mention “weltschmerz.” Crazy.

The final three spellers were girls. It’s not unusual for a girl to win; in fact the contestants are almost 50-50 boys and girls, and previous years’ winners are just as often girls as boys. But it does make the third-to-last word, “kundalini,” poetically appropriate. It means, “The latent (female) energy said to lie coiled at the base of the spine.”

But the winning word is even more poetic. When the second place finisher erred on “weltschmerz,” the announcers commented that the final girl would have known that word since it was German and since her dad speaks German. (Turns out that spelling bee commentators make just as many hasty conclusions as most sports commentators; how would they know for sure she knew it?) The final word, “Ursprache,” which won said girl the competition, was also German in origin, and (here’s the poetry) it means, “parent language.”

It’s humbling what these middle schoolers know. I mean, for them, words like ennui and paroxysm are child’s play. Most days, I can’t remember how to spell alligator. So I have no Schadenfreude for the losers. I was pained for each of them. Ah the weltschmerz; in an ideal world, we would all be winners.

Actually, strike that. If everyone wins, then victory is meaningless. I bet there’s a German word for that. Auschkugel: victory rendered meaningless by its being shared with everyone.

29 May

The rule of Brat

A couple years ago, I went to the Memorial weekend brat fest at Hilldale and ate three brats. It was there that I discovered that such a thing should not be attempted. Two brats would have been acceptable. But three brats was excessive. It made me a bit nauseous — and by “it,” I mean the third brat.

With this in mind, I’m proposing a new slang phrase: “the third brat.” Its definition would be “taken to unnecessary excess.” See if you can start incorporating it into your everyday, casual speech. Here are some sample sentences:

Now I admit, we were telling poop jokes, but that last one you told was the third brat!

Man! John and Kelly had their hands full with just two kids. Jason is really a third brat. (watch your pronunciation on this one.)

Look, I know you need to prove you’re a man and all, but the Ironman is just the third brat.

Just relax, Megan; the party will be great. You’ve got an incredible spread here: smoked cheddar waffles, spinach coconut soup, vietnamese root vegetable slaw, curried quinoa, and roasted carmelized balsamic onions. This swiss chard strudel is the third brat.

27 May

Merry Tim-mas

On the first day of Tim-mas, my true love gave to me a memory foam pillow! She had ordered it online and it came yesterday. She couldn’t save her excitement for the next 11 days, so she revealed it yesterday, allowing me my first night of sleep on the glorious creation last night.

On the second day of Tim-mas, my true love gave to me a wetsuit! She poured lots of energy into a very effective search for an ebay wetsuit. She researched different brands, sizes, price ranges, etc. It just so happened that one of the best deals came through a few days ago, so we bought it, and it arrived today. I even got to christen it this afternoon in Lake Wingra. Open-water swimming is freaky. I kept thinking about how scary it would be to see a dead body or a huge shark-like fish in the murky green water underneath me, and then those thoughts would throw off my breathing and I’d take in a mouthful of water and I’d start to panic a little, so I’d stop and just float there (cuz you can do that in a wetsuit), and then I’d realize that I was 90 degrees off my original trajectory, so I finally gave up. But the wet suit is great, and hell, I’ve got to figure out how to swim 2.4 miles in open water come September.

But there are still 9 more days of Tim-mas (which culminates on June 5th), so I’m excited to see what the next week and a half brings.