(The rest of the post title is “Nor Do You Care” to be tongue in cheek, but that was too long. If you don’t care, don’t read. If you don’t care but want to tell me that you don’t care, don’t bother.)

(Originally, I started writing about issues that parents of students have/want/need and then I took a left turn.)

(Then, I was going to write about food consumption in this country after having a conversation with my friend Jeannette. She has great ideas about eating healthy and organic and homegrown. She also has weird hair.)

(But then I picked up a magazine yesterday and became inspired to write some things you may not know about me. Because, oh hell, it’s my own space in which to write multiple parenthetical statements prior to starting a paragraph.)

(Oh, and a reader wrote to ask me to explore biracial children and growing up with two races, but that post will have to wait a bit.)

1. There is some weird desire in me to visit the Civic Opera House in Chicago after I took this picture last summer. I want to know if I like opera and it’s something I want to figure out.

2. Slowly, I’m figuring out what my “style” is for my home. When I walked out of my marriage three years ago I took nothing but my clothes. It’s been a long, slow process of buying everything all over again but with no arguments of “I don’t like that” or “Why did you pick this?” or “Do you really think I’ll put a naked statue in my bathroom?” because I only needed to be concerned about whether or not I could afford it. (The winners are: Edwardian, Tuscan, Georgian, and Art Nouveau. Victorian lighting and Frank Lloyd Wright style homes make me absolutely swoony).

3. In high school I was active in lots of things and had to quit them all once I got pregnant. (Basketball, volleyball, track, cross country, and show choir.) I miss volleyball the most because I had a wicked serve and I played for a while after I got pregnant and my coach, who was apparently infertile and pissy most of the time, treated me like crap. One day she demolished my esteem and then yelled at me to “just get the ball over the net if you can” so I waited for her to blow the whistle, turn her head, and then aimed for her. I knocked her off her feet and pretended like it was an accident and had to wait the rest of practice to break into a huge smile for giving her what she deserved.

4. There is a bit of a mean streak in me. That might be obvious by the statement above.

5. I’ve never taken a real vacation like normal people do but I was supposed to go on one after getting my master’s degree. Needing furniture and a place to live trumped that one. I long for it and create great trips online and in my head and then they never come to fruition.

6. Someday I want to visit the South. Outside the United States I want to go to Aruba, Spain, Tuscany, Greece, and Morocco. It’s weird to me that I’m drawn to Savannah and the Carolinas, but pictures of those places seem so tranquil and intoxicating that I long to summer there and be okay with using the word “summer” as a verb.

7. My noggin is enormous and yet I love to wear hats so I find them in the men’s department of stores or in my dad’s closet. Recently, he gave me a khaki, brimmed Kangol that he was wearing and insisted that I take it because he swore that he had another one.

8. I am woefully negligent in housekeeping duties so that when I clean it’s fast and furious and annoying to anyone who is near me while I’m scrubbing a tub or polishing furniture. The whole thing makes me peevish.

9. I am a cheap date but if you let me pick where to go it’ll include eating tapas, listening to jazz, and sitting on the patio of some fantastic, overpriced restaurant where I can watch people all night and meet interesting new ones. Yet, I’m happy sitting in a cafe/bookstore where I can peruse architecture and photography books until they kick us out.

10. Right now I am terrified of having this house sell (I currently rent) and then not having a place to live and it’s eating at me with fury because, like the Obamas, we live multigenerationally. My mom, three kids, myself and a dog are all subsisting on my one salary. This is encouraging me to finish this writing I’m doing to publish a book so hello, literary agents who want to give me an advance! I need a down payment! I’d love to write this book and buy the house of my dreams! Only 300 thousand should do it!

11. My heart is always on my sleeve, but it’s there for what I feel for others. What I feel for myself is kept locked away and my smile will fool you, but some days I’m just a volleyball-to-the-head away from cracking and breaking it all down.

12. Ugly things that have touched my life or loved ones in one way or another: divorce, attempted suicide, anxiety and depression, molestation, bankruptcy, racism, theft, people-that-have-turned-into-shitheads-once-I-got-to-know-them. That last one has been an epidemic of mountainous proportions in the last three years of my life but the beauty is that you drop people who don’t care about you and then you forge ahead and find new, beautiful, incredible friends.

13. Church is a struggle for me. Religion is not for me. Groupthink in organizations is laughable. Belief in God, worshipping my own way, and finding my place in the universe is a journey. This is the first time I’ve been able to admit that.

14. The best late night snack is toast with pure Irish butter and some jam accompanied by a cold glass of goat’s milk.

15. Being lactose intolerant is making me healthier and more conscious of eating good-for-my-body-foods. Even though my sister Tracy tells me that I should only be drinking goat’s milk if I were a baby goat. I hope she’s not suggesting I drink breast milk.

16. I am a breast feeding advocate! (I was worried about what number 16 would be and number 15 just gave it to me.) Even though I had my first baby at 15 I nursed her and, man! That could have been very awkward and controversial but I had supportive parents and friends in La Leche League and we managed to keep it up for quite some time considering I had to return to school. Oh, and I don’t get involved in arguments about nursing in public because there’s no way I’m going to fix The Stupid and Ignorant about how my breasts were created for feeding a baby or about how women should do it “in a bathroom” to avoid the stares of those Stupid and Ignorant people. If you want to eat your lunch sitting on a toilet then fine, but I’m not about to subject my baby to that.

17. Marriage is not for me. I will never do it again. Never. Don’t you tell me not to say never because I hate it when you say that.

18. Oddly enough, I’m reading this book on how a woman who vowed never to get married again got married. It’s “Committed” by Elizabeth Gilbert.

19. The level of jealousy I can feel for something astounds and enrages me because I hate being that person so I keep it quiet and silently feel it and mask the whole thing with overconfidence.

20. Have you seen the new UbyKotex ads? They’re hilarious. Incidentally, I work for them now as a freelancer and so I can have another job (I really need to buy a house, have I mentioned that?) in the Real Answers section. I’m one of the Moms who will answer questions posted on the website. When you work for Kotex you can’t be afraid of the word “vagina” so I practice all the time in front of my children, especially my sons. It’s important to use the correct word for things!

21. If you clicked on that link you’ll see that I was shocked to find that entering womanhood was sort of shameful for some of my girlfriends. My dad cooked a special meal and my parents gave me a keepsake box as a gift that night. It wasn’t weird, it was just a celebration of newness and change. I mean, we didn’t kill a cow or sacrifice some sheep for crying out loud.

22. During my life so far (oooh, good book title) (oooh, crap, maybe it’s already a book title) I have lived in poverty and wealth. There were times when I didn’t want for anything and times when I was on welfare and used food stamps to support my daughter. There are stories there. Many, many stories. What I learned is that I’m a survivor and not a victim.

23. Once I recovered from being poor (ha! I’m laughing at that right now! I don’t even have a house!) I discovered a love for shoes that I share with both my sisters (along with a case of large feet so it’s a bonus that we can trade shoes). Right now I’m enjoying these pair from Faryl Robin. They are the Geneva Black and they were a gift (don’t go thinking I spent that on shoes, please!) from my Fairy Shoefather. Everyone has one of those, don’t they?

24. My brain and my legs have a conversation every day. It sounds like this:

Brain: Let’s run a marathon!

Legs: You’re an idiot. Why would we do that?

Brain: It’s good for you! You need the exercise anyway and it will be a milestone! It will be something on your bucket list you can cross off!

Legs: You’re still an idiot. We’re not doing that crap. Go do a puzzle or something.

Brain: Can we still buy some running shoes and clothes? There are some awesome pants I think you’ll look great in despite the fact you haven’t been running to make yourself look better.

25. Even though tomorrow I’m turning 39, I am not afraid of it. I haven’t ever been afraid to turn older. My thirties have been great so far and I am certain that I will kick 40 in the junk. Having been such a young mom has always made me long to finally LOOK like a mother and be the age the other mothers were when I took my kids to the playground or went to parent teacher conferences. Thirty nine? Piece of cake, baby.

There’s not much that stumps me in my job and I’ve embraced humility enough to know that I don’t always know the answers to the complicated messes that introduce themselves to me like a stranger at the grocery store. “Oh, hello. I’m the awkward beef cow tongue sitting in plastic wrap in the frozen meat section. What would you like to do to me?”

You know, that sounded way less disgustingly lurid and suggestive  in my head when I started writing this.

But there is something that comes up increasingly more often than I thought it would. Some students are comfortable enough with their homosexuality to talk to me about it. It’s usually in passing as we’re discussing other things or sometimes when they tell me who they’re bringing to the Prom or just about dating someone of the same sex as a general topic of conversation. But what I am never clear on is how much their parents know or what I am allowed to say to their families. Sometimes, I know about their sexuality before their parents and other times it’s as comfortable a subject matter as their algebra test scores or their AP History class.

When I’m unsure of is how to mention it to parents (if necessary). What do I say? How to I talk about it? What if they ask me about it?

What are your thoughts on this?

It was a whirlwind day and yet it was entirely typical of what happens at our high school. In most high schools, probably. I just thought it was worthwhile to put this day down as an official mark that this is what regularly happens.

First thing in the morning my secretary called me on the radio to tell me that I had a visitor. This could be anybody. Former students, current students, teachers in other buildings who are visiting and wanted to drop by to say hello. It was Janelle. Janelle graduated early this year so I never get to see her (or her growing belly) (which has completely shrunk, that little stinker). She brought her month old daughter and wanted to show me that she had all ten fingers and all ten toes. Of course, I said, “You know I’m going to hold her, right? And smell her? And kiss her? And then I’ll steal her.” She laughed and looked at me sideways. I’m always joking with her. She never takes me seriously but man, did I want to put that sweet baby in my purse and take her home.

While Janelle was there, Dakota walked in. He’s been gone from high school for almost two years now and when he left he was carrying around an extra 60 pounds, but he went into a military program, shaped up, got a job, and also has a new baby. When he left us he was a mess. He’s getting it all together now. He knows I’m proud of him so he keeps coming back for reinforcement. I’ll give it freely.

As I’m walking out of the office after visiting with them both I see Annie. She’s been my office assistant in the past and I never get to see her anymore. “What are you doing in here?” I ask. She tells me that she got kicked out of class for no reason. It’s always NO REASON to hear the students tell it. “There’s more to that story,” I say. “No, there’s not. She kicked me out for saying ‘crap’ so here I am.” This doesn’t sound like it’s going to end well and I can see that I will probably work for at least 20 minutes to get the full story out of her. “Come on, Annie. Just saying ‘crap’ doesn’t get you kicked out of class.”

I put my hands on my hips, look at my watch to indicate that I don’t have time for all this, and she caves.

“All I said was that this class was crap and she told me not to say that word and I’m like, what! It’s not a bad word! And she’s all, oh yeah it is, and I’m like fine, then crap crap crap crap crap.”

I turned on my heel and walked out of the office, sighing loudly to voice my displeasure at her silliness.

In the hallway, Drew stops me to ask if we can have a Jedi Day at school. “What for? What’s the purpose?” Drew tells me there’s no reason. He just likes Jedis. Drew is the best kind of student. He’s funny and always joking. I can’t imagine where he’s going with this. He says he wants to use Jedi moves on the teachers, too. “This is not the grade you’ll give me,” he joked. “See how awesome this could be? LET’S DO IT.”

I turn on my heels again and keep walking down the hallway, but I’m chuckling at him.

By lunchtime, I’ve written four letters of recommendations, visited six classrooms, dropped off an evaluation to a teacher, and loaned money to a student. I’ve also been roped into buying raffle tickets for some sporting events and one chicken dinner. This is why I’m always broke. While I’m in the lunchroom, I see a girl that I’d noticed earlier in the day and I wanted to tell her how much I liked her outfit. She has on green earrings. As I’m wandering around the cafeteria monitoring students I see her and saunter over to her lunch table. Her friends see me approach and get that nervous AN ADULT IS COMING THIS WAY look so I quicken my step and see that she’s texting on her cell phone (a no-no) so I smile wickedly and say, “Well, I was going to come over here and give you a compliment, but not now. Nu uhhh. Nooooo way.”

“Nooooooooooo. Please? Give me the compliment. What were you going to say? Please?”

“I was GOING to say that you’re just the perfect student and you do everything right, but not now.”

“Come ON. Tell me tell me tell me.”

I determine that she needs a compliment. I give it to her. Then she tells me she won’t be on her phone ever again. I ask what grades she’s getting in class. She says, “Oh, you must already know about that C- I’m getting in Chemistry. I’m working on it. I promise. It’ll be a B before the end of this quarter.”

After lunch I watch the coordinator of a Teen Parenting group walking upstairs with three girls. One of them, Elyse, has come to my attention recently because she’s normally a hall wanderer but I have taken an interest in her now that I notice her growing belly. Her records state that she’s missed upwards of 50 days of school this year but she’s managed to pass 4 out of her 7 classes. How does that happen? I shake my head at trying to come up with an answer to it.

Elyse and I connected last week when I casually asked her why she’s still here in high school because she doesn’t appear to want to be in school. Most of the time the profile for students like her (not the pregnant ones, just the apathetic ones) end up in an alternative program. Defiantly, she tells me that she is NOT an alternative kid.

“I don’t need to be frisked every morning before school. I just can’t seem to want to get to class.”

It broke my heart when she said that, so I confided in her that I was really pulling for her and would do what I could to get her the help she needed. There’s no way she can trust me enough yet, but the interest is there. The seed is planted. I’ll water it when I can.

Elyse and two other girls (the other girls are already parents, but are no longer pregnant) need to get passes back to class and since I’m heading in the direction of my office I offer to take them, get their passes, and send them on their merry ways. As I’m writing passes for them I say, “Boy, I wish I had this kind of program in high school where I was encouraged and taught to be a mom. Know what my counselor said to me?”

“What?” they all ask in unison.

“She told me I should probably go to cosmetology school since I made a “mistake” and would need to get a job and wouldn’t amount to anything.”

They all gasp. One of them pouted and cocked her head to the side. “Awwww,” she says. “That wasn’t nice.”

“I know. It’s ok. Guess how old my Mistake is now?”

“How old?” they all ask loudly. By this time, they’re excited by this conversation. I’ve got them hooked. They want to know how it all turns out, like watching the beginning part of a movie and wondering what the end brought.

“23, almost 24. And guess what else? I went to college WITH my kid and then when she grew up she went to college. Don’t lose sight of what you want, ladies. You can have it, but you have to work for it.”

I’m finishing up the passes that I’m writing for them and they’re desperately searching all the photos on my desk and the degrees and certificates I have plastered on the walls. That’s purposeful because students think that we’re all just magically here at work in education as if we didn’t do anything to get here. Whenever I’ve mentioned teaching English in the past they exclaim, “You used to TEACH?”

All my time could be spent talking to students and checking in with them and being there for them on an intermittent basis. It’s not all I do, but these stories can’t really be told by anyone who isn’t here to connect with them. These things don’t exhaust me all the time and I was, in fact, energized by my interactions with students. They might come back someday and bring their babies to me and show me their degrees and tell me what kinds of things they’re doing. They might go off and I’ll never see them again. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the waiting and a lot of hope, too. I don’t know the answers to what they’re dealing with now nor will I be able to fix anything. It is what it is and in the meantime, we all work, never knowing the outcome.

Crap crap crap crap crap.

In celebration of the Chinese New Year Valentine’s Day I decided to stay completely OFFLINE for the weekend because I just about can’t even take the ridiculous amount of posts, pictures and updates that people write. I mean it, people. Some of you are downright jerks with all that noise. “Oh, I was spoiled rotten with a seven course meal” and “Jacob is the man of my dreams and he finally bought me that condo I’ve been wanting in the Carribean!” and “Woke up to crepes and espresso and then my hubby sent me to the spa for every imaginable service!” Quite frankly, I want to wring their necks for taking pictures of crap and posting it.

That’s probably why I’ve always loved Hilly’s idea of a Self Love Day.

Except I decided not to do one again this year due to time constraints and a full house over the weekend. Even though it wouldn’t be considered “traditional”, I had a pretty good day, too. Take that, filet mignon and lobster eaters!

7:30 a.m. woke up with a migraine headache. Fingers were swollen. Made the assumption that I needed to drink more water today.

8:00 a.m. did my normal Sunday routine of watching CBS Sunday Morning, reading Post Secret, and entering to win the HGTV house. I enter every day, actually. Because that house? With all it’s amenities and the green living lifestyle and being out in the desert where I can actually breathe easily? It should be mine. I want it to be mine. I love that house and have already named it but I won’t tell you the name unless I win the house.

9:00 a.m. pushed on my temples and wished for the Pancake Fairy to visit so I could feed my sons and my sister and her son and his friend from college. Lucked out and got an awesome sister who took everyone out for breakfast.

10:00 a.m. heard from my sweet Valentine that he wanted to come over and cook for me in the new deep fryer he bought. I won’t tell you his name either. Not unless I win that house. Decided to take the migraine medicine after all because what I was doing was NOT working.

The rest of the day was spent at a cheerleading competition my niece was in and let me say, there’s nothing like getting rid of a migraine and going to a convention center where thousands of girls are screaming and stomping their feet and clapping and squealing and MY GOD, THEY ARE LOUD. They are also weepy. Lots and lots of crying. Oh, and fake hair pieces. Those curly snap on pieces that look incredibly silly bouncing on top of their heads. Somewhere around 4:15 p.m. I wished for the Pancake Fairy to wrap me up in a giant pancake so the sound would be muffled. When it was all said and done we came home where my sweet Valentine and my son decided to deep fry a Twinkie. I’m not even kidding. They got Twinkies and Snickers and Mounds candy bars and deep fried the hell out of that stuff. Then we settled in to watch that graphic masterpiece Inglourious Basterds because hey! I’d already spent the day with screaming teens and artery clogging goodness and why not?

Who needs the Pancake Fairy on Valentine’s Day anyway? I had migraines and deep fried Twinkies and a sweet Valentine who spent the day with my family.

You’ve gotta be a little bit crazy to do all that.

How can anyone who hasn’t seen the sun in days stop themselves from feeling blue? Or gray? Or from hurting the nearest kitten that comes close to their yard?

I do not know. But it has made me Super Cranky which is like Super Superior but angrier and with clenched fists.

It’s making me engage in passive aggressive behavior.

It’s becoming nearly impossible to get through a day without sprinkling around some bad words.

No one is funny right now.

Oh, and another thing that’s just really irritating? Stop taking a gazillion pictures of yourself while you’re on vacation and posting them. I don’t care that you ate that shrimp cocktail on that tropical island with a drink that had 15 kinds of liquor in it. No, I just don’t. You’re just being mean now.

And pizza? I MISS YOU TERRIBLY. Because whatever, I know there are a ton of new ways to eat a pizza without any cheese on it but damnit, I miss cheese pizza. Look there. You made me cuss and say ‘damnit’ which, by the way, is the real way to spell it and not ‘dammit’ because that’s just stupid. Damnit.

Now that I’m combining foul language and junk food into one paragraph it’s time to get to the bidness.

January, you’re a hard month. You make everything seem dreary and you’re unmotivating. It’s hard to exercise and work out but when I do go to the gym the gross, sweaty, beefy guys make eye contact with me every 40 seconds while I’m on the elliptical and I don’t like that. The only reason I’m making eye contact back is because I’m questioning if they’re really looking at me and THEY ARE BUT I WANT THE M TO STOP IT. You’re just no fun anymore, January. It’s not me, it’s you. You have weak ass weather and the I don’t even like award shows anymore and the one holiday you have to offer is still, God help me, controversial in 2010. Sorry, MLK, that we’ve reduced you do initials. I come bearing gifts, though, January. I come in the name of all the depressed, weathered, wanna-be-startin’-somethin’-but-too-lazy-to-start-somethin’ people who want to do something fun like trick or treat during the month of January.

We’ll start this weekend, ok? Saturday night. We’ll go from house to house with a pillowcase in hand and ring doorbells to see if our neighbors are still alive have heat and some candy coated goodness to offer.

If they have a keg instead then ok. That’ll do.