I went to the grocery store today, and it got me thinking.
game shows I would be good at
Wheel of Fortune
Password
Pyramid
Family Feud
game shows I would not be good at
Supermarket Sweep
Jeopardy!
I think The Price is Right has a balance of games at which I would and would not be skilled.
Since my mind is on Halloween costumes lately, here would be a good one: Get a friend. Wear matching sweatshirts and stonewashed jeans. Apply hairspray liberally. Carry around a giant inflatable can of Pepsi or a ham. Run around a lot. Supermarket Sweep contestants!
simple pleasure: having the kind of schedule where you see different people on consecutive days, so you can wear the same outfit 2 days in a row, and no one's the wiser!
I'm so thirsty right now. really thirsty. I know you can't give me water yet. it's not a plea; I'm just describing my symptoms.
I was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance the other day. That was a new experience.
I was watching a toddler, and I started getting dizzy. I wouldn't have called 911 otherwise, but I felt like I was going to pass out, and I didn't want that to happen before anyone could come watch the child for me.
So, the paramedics came and sat with me and kept asking me if I was stressed or had had some kind of bad day. Once someone showed up to take care of the toddler, they loaded me into the back of the ambulance and took me to Good Samaritan.
I kept trying to figure out what had caused this episode. I had drunk a latte that morning, and I don't usually consume much caffeine. But I was dizzy, and my hands were doing weird things, and my heart rate was way up, and I was having trouble breathing and thinking straight. Caffeine has never done that to me before. And there was that bite of brownie I had eaten. I mean, I didn't make the brownies, so who really knows what was in them? At every step of the process of being checked into the hospital, a different person asked me if I take any drugs. I replied no, all the while thinking about that bite of brownie...
Suddenly, in the ambulance, I was a little loopy. I just started grinning, sitting there on the stretcher, reacting to my own internal monologue. I realized that as I was describing my symptoms and trying to slow my breathing, I was also playing out how the story would go when I told it to people. I would describe this paramedic who sat beside me, and whose gender I had been trying to determine for the entirety of our interactions, as either a super feminine guy or a very boyish lady, whose face would be really pretty either way. He/She had no idea what I was smiling at, which struck me as all the more hilarious.
The ambiguously gendered paramedic asked for my address and then told me he/she lived on 27th. me: Ooh, you're in Charles Village too? him/her: Yeah. 27th at Maryland. me: So, I guess that's Remington? him/her: It's right between Charles Village and Remington. They call it Charles Village. me: Well, it sounds like Remington.
Man, I thought to myself, I am being feisty right now! It is kind of inappropriate to argue with someone you just met that they are confused about the name of their own neighborhood. Was I under the influence of an unknown substance??
Lying on the stretcher in the hallway, waiting for a room to open up, I found myself being (hopefully) pleasantly sarcastic with the staff. They were chuckling at me a bit, and I hoped they were having a good day. A million people asked me a million questions and filled out the same amount of forms. Some of the questions made me laugh out loud. One lady asked me my religion. I couldn't figure out why they would need that, but she assured me they did. I started arguing with her. I didn't see the purpose, and I also don't like putting labels on myself. I mean, spirituality is a complicated thing and a generic term doesn't really convey the full meaning of any one person's beliefs, values, and practices. In that moment, it somehow seemed really important that I not give in to this lady's attempts to box me in. I refused to answer her, and she wrote 'no religion specified.' Judgmental Hospital: 0. Anna: 1.
As I watched my heart monitor, I tried to lower it by being calm. As it got lower, I got excited that it was working. Then my heart rate went up. Up and down, up and down. In that moment, nothing could have been funnier to me. I was stifling laughter, because I knew it just didn't fit. For whatever reason, I still felt the need to describe all my symptoms to the paramedics.
me: Everything...(long pause while I tried to figure out how to not sound stoned)...is making me laugh right now. him/her: ...Maybe you accidentally ate a pot brownie. me: I did have a bite of brownie today! And I don't know what was in it!
Shocked by the serendipity of this accusation, I was also so relieved to finally get that piece of information of my chest. Probably mistaking my enthusiasm for sarcasm, he/she did not react to my brownie confession. Whatever. I had come clean, and the blood tests they were going to run would bring everything to light.
Eventually, I was wheeled into an observation room, given an EKG, a CAT scan, blood tests, urine tests, and an IV. They all came back normal. The ultimate diagnosis? 'Probably dehydration and too much caffeine.' Go figure. The brownie was a red herring.
I tried to Google how long do rechargeable batteries last. I used to think it was silly to Google in the form of a question, but I have since changed my ways.
Some of the most popular searches were: how long do relationships last how long do rebounds last how long do recessions last
People must have a lot of faith in the internet's ability to provide definitive answers.
I can just imagine the situation..."Jaden just broke up with McKenna, and now he's been stopping next to my locker every period. Hunter says I'm just a rebound. Homecoming is in three weeks, so I have to get the timing of this perfectly so he doesn't break up with me too soon. So tell me, Google...how long do rebounds last??"
also I dreamt I was substitute teaching and couldn't do anything but yell and chase students
I had a vivid dream this morning.
I was sledding down a path through the woods on an inflatable air mattress type thing. It wasn't snowy; it was just the air mattress on pavement.
Somehow, I got this bird in my hand. Its legs were tucked under, and it wasn't flying. It was just this beautiful, sparrow-sized bird with big purple-blue eyes that kept staring at me. Its eyes were almost human.
I started talking to the bird, and I told it how much I loved it and I hoped its legs were okay so it would be able to fly. We just kept sliding down the path with the bird staring back at me as if it understood everything I was saying. Slowly, the bird uncurled its legs and perched on my finger as it got ready to fly. It took off, and my feelings of worry for the bird turned kind of bittersweet as I realized it didn't need me anymore and it might not come back.
As soon as that thought crossed my mind, the bird flew back. It fluttered around me for a second, then it flew behind me and got caught under the air mattress and dragged along the pavement. I reached back to free it, but by the time I got it out, its whole back had been scraped up and it was bleeding quickly.
I kept careening down the path, hoping to end up in this little city where they might have an animal hospital. As I went down, the bird's body went limp, and its eyes lost their look of recognition. I was overcome with guilt and regret. By the time I got to someone who I thought was a vet, the bird was already dead. I asked her frantically if she could help.
"Sorry," she said, "it's just-" "Natural selection, I know." "I'm just not really a vet."
And that was the end. Okay, gotta go Google the symbolism of birds in dreams now.
From The Geography of Bliss, by Eric Weiner, regarding his trip to Bhutan:
We’re back in the Toyota, climbing and climbing to ever higher elevations. More than ten thousand feet. The road is only wide enough for one car at a time. Passing is negotiated through a series of elaborate, poetic hand gestures, and I’m reminded of what one Bhutanese told me back in Thimphu: ‘There is no room in Bhutan for cocky assholes.’
He’s right. Everything in this country requires cooperation. Harvesting the crops. Passing another car on the road. In the west and in the United States especially, we try to eliminate the need for compromise. Cars have ‘personal climate controls’ so that driver and passenger need not negotiate a mutually agreeable temperature. That same pair, let’s say they’re husband and wife, need not agree on the ideal firmness of their mattress, either. Each can set their own ‘personal comfort level.’ We embrace these technologies. Why shouldn’t everyone enjoy their own personal comfort level, be it in a car or in a bed? I wonder, though, what we lose through such conveniences. If we no longer must compromise on the easy stuff, like mattresses, then what about the truly important issues? Compromise is a skill, and like all skills it atrophies from lack of use.
I like this. I tend not to compromise if another option is available - you know, another option like trying to convince people that they should see things my way. Compromise has this connotation of 'last resort' to me, when maybe it could be a first choice.
And the part about skills, or I would even say attitudes, atrophying from lack of use makes sense. I often feel incapable of change in my life. And I wonder if it can actually come about through tiny, intentional habits.
Compromising with your roommates on what kind of peanut butter to buy in order to be able to make larger compromises in relationships later
Talking one minute longer or asking one more question of that person you're not really friends with in order to keep yourself from becoming distant from people you care about later
Taking the initiative to decide what time to meet someone so you can be decisive about larger things in the future
Living your life as a series of small changes now in order to become the person you want to be in the future. Maybe that works.
Every time one of my teacher friends starts to tell a story, or even discusses guided reading groups, I really start to miss teaching. Of course, there are all the usual things to miss, but there is also a ton of tiny things, too. For this reason, I will start a segment called Things I Miss About Teaching.
TIMAT #1: When young children eat pancakes or waffles for breakfast, they smell like syrup for the rest of the day.
