This is going to sound kind of mean, but . . .

Okay, I had much loftier things to talk about, deeper things, discoveries, insights and stuff like that. But now I've been reduced to ranting.

I don't think I'm all that. I don't know what I can say to convince anyone reading this that I don't think I'm an untouchable princess or whatever. But I'm just going to be honest and say that sometimes it makes me . . . the only word I can use is 'angry' to describe the feeling that I get when someone that has absolutely no business trying to talk to me tries to talk to me.

I know, like I said, that sounds mean, but I'm serious. You are SO old, overweight, needing a haircut, looking like an extremely unattractive potato face, and you have the audacity to try to mack? Who are you? I don't even know who your nasty old self is. With your yellowing, inwardly turned bottom tooth looking like a fake wooden triangle painted yellow jammed into your mouth.

Just because you and some other lady sat near me at Starbucks and I moved my stuff out of the way doesn't mean you have a conversation opening. And just because you noticed my ringless hand doesn't give you permission to comment on my marital status, and ask if I have any children or a boyfriend when the lady gets up to go to the bathroom. And when I dumbly answer "no" to the last two questions, it doesn't give you license to inform me that you're single too and like younger women and wonder if I'm into older men. How dare you tempt my stomach acid to reflux in my Starbucksian sanctuary? How dare you impudently dare to think you even deserve wisp of a chance? And how dare you force me to revert into my uncomfortable nervous laughtering self, wanting to get leagues away from you, but somehow still trying to be nice?

With your sorry attempts to get faux intellectual with me just because I revealed to the lady that I'd traveled a bit after she asked if I were a college student and I told her I was a teacher and that no, I'm not from Montgomery originally. You Spaghetti-O and fried hot dog eating old man hat wearing over your needing a haircut head.

To talk to from time to time? No, mouth breathing jelly donut lover. Never. I don't think that's a good idea. And I actually said that last part out loud from behind my still trying to be nice nervous smile. Go back to your back room-dwelling, TV-watching life. Go back to lumbering around your flat, worn, all-too-familiar, cornbread crust world.

Let reality forge its way into your brain and focus your energies on finding a woman your own age and shoe size instead of licking your quadragenarian chops in wasting your easily spent energy in pursuit of "younger women." And you can bet your sweet potato face I'm not coming back to that Starbucks as you gullibly believed I would. Good day, sir.

Creative Nonfiction

I've decided that's what I'm going to do. Forsake all to become a creative nonfiction writer. ::insert huge chunk of I'm-just-kidding here:: It dawned on me while perusing my MFA published writer friend's library that that's the kind of writing I can do. My fiction attempts have been met with a teeny bit of success (I won a writing contest sponsored by 90&9 for this story 3 years ago), and I've written a bit of fiction for Word Aflame Press Sunday school literature for teens, but in all honesty, it's not great. My poetry attempts have been . . . dismal. But I think if I were ever going to pursue writing seriously, I would write creative nonfiction. It's a relatively new, open field, and I think I'd like to explore it a bit.

Here's a profound couple of lines from the end of a piece called "Mirrorings" by Lucy Grealy:

"I once thought that truth was eternal, that when you understood something it was with you forever. I know now that this isn't so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things."

Wow. I thought that was pretty profound. It's true. Just because you understand something doesn't mean it's with you. Believing the truth is not a permanent magic moment. It's hard, elusive work.

Another thing I realized this weekend really made me think: The reason we are able to romanticize disaster is because the worst didn't happen. It is such a sobering thought. Not original to me, though I will write it in my journal, and I hope I always remember it.

Friends and Family

So, I got back Tuesday from seeing my caramel, dark chocolate, butterscotch, burnt sienna family. We're such a lovely kaleidoscope of earth tones. Check us out here. My first day in Philly I wolfed down a whole cheesesteak. With extra cheese. Y'all don't know nothin bout that!

Yesterday, I headed to the plains to see some grad school buds. It was such a nice reunion. We even crafted a video destined to go viral:

Now, I'm heading to Birmingham (otherwise known as The Ham) to see my homegirl and her fam.

I have to get all my friend visiting out of the way before the onslaught. Gotta get Rotary PowerPoint lined up, and Monday starts a little "not mandatory, but highly recommended" new teacher orientation. It's creeping up on me and before I know it I'll be thrown back into the tumble dry cycle of roughneck real life.

It's Official

A little while ago, I went downtown and filled out all the paperwork for my newly acquired teaching position. Signed that dotted line, son! Official report to work day is August 4.

What slightly gets on my nerves is some people's reactions when they ask where I'll be working and what age I'll be working with. They wince or chuckle smugly saying, "Good luck with that." Let me passive-aggressively tell you something, since I probably won't say this to yo face. I know the public school system around these parts doesn't have the best reputation. But I DON'T CARE. I knew what I was getting myself into when I applied. I originally got my certification to teach high school . . . that's what most Spanish teachers do. My last elementary/middle school gig was kind of a rarity. Just be glad I have a job. Shoot. I am. And I have a Master's degree now, too? Aw, shucks. Y'all don't know nothin bout this!

Come to think of it, some of the same types of people made annoying comments when they found out I was going to teach at an elite private school. They'd affectedly raise their eyebrows and say, "Ohh, Miss Private School. Too good for us now?" Just go saddown somewhere, please.

Anyway, for the next few days we're taking a little family trip to Philly for a family reunion. Isn't it ridiculous that this will be the first time I've ever been to a family reunion? Ah, well. There's a first time for everything.

I finally finished

that wretched essay, which in retrospect, wasn't really that wretched. I always do that. Procrastinate till kingdom come and then when something finally ruffles up my spirit (click here and scroll down to 3.2.231) to get things done and I do them, I realize it wasn't that bad and should have done it eons ago. I faxed it along with other final report stuff to the Rotary Foundation, and washed my hands saying, "I find no fault in these papers." (Click here for the fun of it.) Now I have to put together a pretty little PowerPoint to share my French experience with my sponsor club.

I also stopped being lazy and standoffish and called people back to chit chat and set up coffee dates.

Before I plunge into reading one of the only Jane Austen novels I haven't read yet, Persuasion (I think the only other one after that is Mansfield Park), I started formulating a little multiple choice lifemap in my head. Here are the ideas that have been juggling around, in no order of importance after my high school Spanish gig is up. Which will be the road less traveled by? (Click here)

a. Go to France and teach English for 7-9 months

b. Teach in the DoDDS system (the schools on American military bases abroad, the kinds of schools I went to back in the day)

c. Join the Foreign Service

d. Go to the Urshan Graduate School of Theology

They're like little crystal balls being juggled around in the back of my mind a la the Goblin King:

Should I do a grand expedition of going for them all and seeing where the chips fall? Or should I just relax and take things one day at a time?

I vote for the latter.

A French Memory

June 21 was a yearly all-night music festival celebrated all over France called Fête de la Musique. There are music performances all day and music played in the streets all night. I was out, laughing at the antics of my friends to the oh-so-European techno music blasting from a cafe near the river. A man walked up to me out of nowhere, startling me. He leaned in and told me in French, "Just to tell you that you are pretty." And before I had time to react, to even say thank you, he walked away. He didn't look back.

Focus, focus.

There are 3 people I need to call back who have tried to get in touch with me since I've been back. Why haven't I opened up my beat up, ghetto phone (yes, I still have the same one) to return their calls?

Why am I being lazy and standoffish and not feeling like dealing with people? No, sir. I don't want to call you back so I can come over and translate during the course of what I'm sure is going to be an awkward, money and/or living arrangements related family matter. Make that 4 people I'm supposed to call back.

I guess part of me doesn't feel like getting together with folks because I don't want to have to pay for doing lunch during a time of current financial strain, and I just end up giving banal answers to "How was France?" anyway. Plus, people I haven't seen in a while inevitably ask me about boys. And since I'd been in France for 6 months, surely there was somebo—No, really? Must we? I'm back, so if I did "meet anyone," he must not've been convincing enough for me to stay.

I'm so mean. And I still need to write this wretched essay. Oh, and I need to get a PowerPoint together to share my French experience with my sponsor club. Focus, focus.

I confess that

I cry easily, and often despairingly. Like the world is broken and irremediable and that I must bear the burden of a generational shift. Like my life is doomed to an unstable series of unfulfilling endeavors and as if every decision I make will be forever etched in stone. I cry because I never want to say goodbye. Because things always come back to "this." Because I was suddenly overcome by a maddening mix of nostalgia and melancholia. Because I wish I had never. Because I wish I had. Because of recurring interconnectedness between beauty and sadness.

I laugh easily, and often boisterously. With my head thrown back, clutching my gut. Doubled over, covering my wide-open mouth, wiping away tears. I laugh because of the simple, amusing things that parade across our lives every single day. I laugh due to old inside jokes remembered like a welcome friend. Because of absurdity that would otherwise be surreal. Because of clever puns, children's speech and conceptions of the world, spot-on impressions, the theatricality of politics, the confusion that results because of cultural and linguistic difference. I laugh when my friends label real life people and situations with literary and cinematic references. I laugh because of my brothers' exaggerated accounts of what happened when we were kids.

I'm naive. I trust easily. I'm taken in by things I consider exotic and different and foreign. I romanticize. Fetishize. I construct impossible ideals only to knowingly watch them fall apart.

I'm a critic, sometimes a cynic. I notice everything out of place. I question relentlessly. I analyze choices to the point of paralysis, oblivion.

I smile a lot and often really hard. Sometimes pictures of myself scare me because of the ability to literally count my teeth because they're that big and defined.

I'm a procrastinator. I let things build up into a time-crunched frenzy, and eventually complete the task in a tiring, unnecessary marathon, propelled by the adrenaline-rush of a looming deadline.

I always take the long way. No matter what it is, it seems like there was always a shorter, more efficient way to do what I just did or to get to where I just arrived.

Things are usually not as complicated as I make them out to be.

After all these years, I still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing.

Return to American Life: Day 11

What am I going to do with me?

Take my pick of lifecream flavors: Double fudge teacher with high school Spanish chunks? Strawberry traveler with a wanderlust ribbon? Rocky road(s)? Birthday cake to 30 and beyond? Truffles, splits, fill-in-the-blank chocolate chip.

There are so many. But I have to savor them one at a time.

I actually had a couple of interviews today. One downtown at the main big dog mcdoggy Board of Education, and one with an individual principal at an individual high school who was "interested." In truth, I applied for an English as a Second Language (ESL) position, but I was told that they were very limited and that they always have a general posting on the website. (Read: there weren't really any ESL positions open, but they like to keep it up on the website because it looks pretty.) What they had available was teaching high school Spanish. Like Mr. Schuster on Glee.

I wanted to try something different with ESL, but I do love Spanish. And the only age that I don't have professional experience with is high school. It'll be another notch on my belt. I will be able to say I've taught at every single level. For real. I taught elementary, middle school, and university, so high school's the missing link. I will be able to say I've been all things to all men.

The principal said he was very impressed with me and said he'd think I'd be a good fit. There are a few administrative wrinkles to iron out before he can formally offer me the job, but he basically let me know he wanted me and I basically let him know I would accept. So, we'll see.

I always have my little plan. My little checklist. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. But here it is anyway:

My Future Checklist

þTeach high school Spanish for a year

þSave up money

þPay off loans

þGo back to France and teach English

So, I found this little program with the French Embassy for candidates between the ages of 20-30 to teach English in France for either a 7 or 9 month period. I'll still be on the green side of 30, I've always wanted to work abroad, I want to improve my French even more, so why not? The application process starts in October, and if I were selected, I'd find out in April.

I have decided that I just have to go out and do stuff. If it works out, it works out, and if it doesn't, it doesn't. I'm tired of being both paralyzed and driven by fear. I really am. It's an exhausting and ultimately destructive way to live. I can't let that stuff control me any longer. I refuse to.

I could take a painting class. I could take up tae kwon do again. I could take guitar lessons. I could start learning another language. I could plant an herb garden or cultivate a patch of sunflowers. I could move to another city. I could fall in love.

There are so many things I could do.

I felt really American when . . .

I ordered Starbucks through the drive-thru.

I ate Burger King for lunch and had Papa John's pizza for dinner.

I threw away a Sprite can.

My mom and I drove in separate cars to the same place.

I ate a bagel for breakfast.

I listened to NPR.

I didn't have to pay for a plastic bag and the cashier bagged the stuff at Publix.

I took a long, hot shower.

I forgot to turn off a few lights around the house.

I talked on a cell phone with a cell phone plan.

I helped the youth sell fireworks for the 4th of July.