Load of Bollix

Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty  by John B. Boles It’s back to school time, and that means I have time and the mental headspace to actually read a book.* * Books, to me, are nonfiction. Fiction is lame, unless its Jane Austen, and even then, a good film adaptation can do the trick. Some of you may remember that my dear beloved Angus liked to review books. Since he is no longer with us, I have to carry on the torch without him, knowing I can never do as good a job as he would. I really learned a lot about Jefferson from this book. TJ never held the same cache for me as other Founders, even though we have much in common: We both lived in Williamsburg, we both didn’t really like William and Mary…ok, so that’s it. Anyway, here are some of the things I remarked on, in no particular order: This was a very sympathetic biography, and the author begins by saying that we cannot judge Jefferson by modern standards: “As much as we might wish, Jefferson was not a modern man.” Fine dude...

(Please read this title in the style of Usher singing, “ Confessions, Part II ” circa 2004). Time is a funny thing. It’s weird in the short term in that it can go so quickly yet drag on forever.  “What time is it? Have I combed my hair?”  “What time is it? Can I justify going to bed this early?”  (Answers: No, never, and Yes, always). Time is also funny in the long-term. Like, years have gone by and it doesn’t feel that way, but then you can’t sleep one night and scroll through all your profile pictures and realize, "Holy shit, it’s been like 20 years!" Or, "Holy shit, once upon a time, I went to a lot of really cool places...wearing the exact same outfit!"  And then, time gets messier, because people have been living and whining and trying for hundreds and THOUSANDS of years, so my forty years of mucking along is not even a drop in the humankind bucket. If geological time were “Stairway to Heaven”, all of human history would be contained in the last NOTE of the so...

Today we had a birthday party for my almost two-year old and he cried pretty much the entire time. It was just family but that didn’t seem to matter. I have this one sad picture from my mother-in-law, taken during a brief respite from the crying. My arm is sore from holding him. It’s 8 PM and it feels like 3 AM. The weird (or not weird? Because what is normal?) thing about my child is that he is totally fine with adults but freaks out around kids. He didn’t use to do this, but it’s obviously upsetting and makes me, at times, spiral into the parenting black hole of “OH MY GOD WHAT DID I DO WRONG?”.  We go to playgrounds. We go to stores. We went to a toddler art class for pete’s sake. He’s SMART. He speaks in complete sentences and his word du jour is “parallelogram.”  So what is going on? Is my child a super introvert? I’d say it’s likely. He’s got the genes of two introverted parents and doesn’t like loud kids. I’ve already began explaining to him that some kids are loud, and...

Dedicated to my Didgie. I love you to the moon and when the time comes, please put me in a good home. Chapter 1: Pregnancy Here is the breakdown: First few days: Happy excitement. After that through month four/five: Vomit zombie. One day in month five: “I feel like a person again. I can do this!” After that through month nine: WHALE. Chapter 2: Birth Horrifying. Chapter 3: Aftermath Also horrifying. My favorite was the nurse emptying my catheter while my entire family was crammed into my room. This is also when the Breastfeeding Army begins their onslaught. Hopefully you have a good partner who will tell them to **** off. Chapter 4: Coming home Post-partum sounds like post-mortem and it is not a coincidence. It’s a good thing I took a parenting class because it was helpful as bollocks. Also, I get my period back super-fast and thought I was bleeding to death. It’s funny now, but at the time I was straight-up hyperventilating and realized maybe I need some Zo...

Do you remember Instant Messenger? It was how we wasted time online before we REALLY started wasting time online like we’re doing RIGHT NOW. In college, it was a great way to post the Greek letters of your sorority and make people wonder (ENVY) how cool you were by being away and inactive for so long. I used to change my away messages on Instant Messenger ALL THE TIME because I was that good at wasting time. Though IM is long gone (I think?), I often think of things I WOULD post as an away message, if it were still around (it is gone, right?). Maybe these are the sort of things people tweet now, but if you think I’m going to start tweeting you can go jump off a bridge. So here are just a few from the last day or so: *** -Should I just buy a scrunchie already? Jill Biden wears them and she’s like 80. *** -Jim and I’s 13ish year relationship can be summed up in the following very short exchange that takes place most mornings: J: Did you hear the rain/wind/thunder/car alarm/fi...

Today is my own personal new year. Last weekend, my sister-in-law asked me if I feel old. I honestly don’t.   Since the age of five I have been an angry old man, so if anything I am one step closer to becoming my Most Authentic Self. But since I do now have the sagacity of 36 years on this earth, and since I am on the blog-twice-a-year plan, I offer the following 36 pieces of “wisdom” (sic). Some are certainly things I’ve learned, some I’ve just observed, and some are just statements I can say because it’s my birthday and my blog, damnit. Cheers and thanks for reading. *** 1. Real butter is worth it. If you have been denying yourself real butter because it’s fatty, bad for you, not as cool as ghee, etc. pull your head out of your ass and start eating it. A little goes a long way and there is no substitute. 2. All things in moderation. Especially moderation. 3. Anyone that denies themselves entire food groups by choice is a lunatic. We have one life...

About once every three to four years, I like to do something that normal human beings do all the time, yet makes me feel like an alien observer that just landed on Earth. Today, that meant going to a salon to color my hair. This was Essential because I hate summer. I’ve always hated summer as an adult, even when I had the summers off. Because I hate summer, I start hating everything (I can hear your thoughts so let me qualify---I start hating everything more than I normally do), s o I decided I hate my hair and my glasses the most. Since I already own three pairs of glasses, I should therefore change my hair. I make an appointment at a salon and actually go (which is big for me). I arrive at the salon and am immediately uncomfortable. It’s summer, so I’m not wearing make-up. I’m wearing a dress I bought at Gap about 10 years ago, and I haven’t *technically* combed my hair, a fact all the more shocking since I drove to the salon with my windows down. This is both My Normal an...

I can’t say that I typically become reflective before a birthday, but I am this year. Maybe it is because I’m entering a new age demographic (the “you have no good eggs left” bracket). Maybe it’s because I have the time to be reflective--I’ve also been thinking about my future, and I’ve decided that when I’m 65 I will teach chair yoga to other old people on the beach in Florida. Or maybe it’s just that Frank Sinatra and I share a birthday, so I’m always humming Frank Sinatra at this time of year. You'd smile too if you shared a birthday with MBP. As any Frank fan will tell you, when you hum Frank, you hum “My Way.” And if you’re reflective and Frank croons: “Regrets, I’ve had a few. But then again, too few to mention,” you turn this into a mental exercise: what are my regrets on the cusp of 35? I thought of things that were kind-of regrets, but then I dismissed them. Should I regret that I trashed my HS boyfriend’s locker after he dumped me? No. It’s a funny story now...

The Dalai Lama says that change in the world always begins with an individual who shares what he or she has learned and passes it on to others. Thus, I offer you what I have learned thanks to my ongoing Ken Burns’ documentary binge. 1)       I have roughly the same glasses as all the men in the Lyndon Johnson administration. 2)       People in the 1960s look like they smell bad. 3)       People in the 1860s look like they smell bad, but they had the excuse of living over 100 years ago when germ theory was just in its infancy. 4)       Excessive facial hair is GROSS and can’t possibly help with the smell (see 2, 3). 5)       I should have read my US history textbook more carefully, especially since my high school history teacher referred to the Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression”. 6)       I taught history fo...

In this post, I do my best impression of Lewis Black, because I’m angry and say f@%* a lot. I f@%*ing hate summer. I hate stepping out of my house and sweating immediately. I’m tired of watering a tomato plant steps from my front door and confronting Jurassic Park in my yard.   For the record, natural mosquito repellants don’t f@%*ing work. Your options are to either slather yourself in DEET and go Silent Spring or wear a f@%*ing burqa to water the garden. Even my beloved Huntley Meadows is crawling with large bugs and snakes and loud kids dumped off at summer camp because their parents don’t want to deal with them all day. I can’t blame them. If I had a kid that loud and obnoxious, I’d dump them off at camp, too. I exercise at dawn because that’s the only time it’s not miserably hot and humid, and I still wilt in the sun and have a shorts/socks tan that you could see from space. I get a rash from sweat, sunblock, sun, general hatred of the season, or all of the above. An...

Mary Patterson was a high school history teacher for the last seven years. Today is her last day of school for reals and here is what she had to say about it. Dear scholars, Next year, in US history (also known as propaganda), you’ll learn about one of my historical crushes, George Washington, the reluctant leader to whom we largely owe our country’s existence. You will learn that when he left office, he published a “farewell address” as his parting words of wisdom to the new country.    Since I am leaving you at the end of this year, I too shall give you some words of “wisdom”, although unlike George Washington’s wisdom, mine is not ghost-written by Alexander Hamilton.   Or is it? Look up ghost-writer if you don’t know what that means. Advice 1: Watch the company you keep and the crowd you bring. This gem comes from Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, aka Nas. Surround yourself with good people. This is important. If you hang with turkeys, then chances are ...

Today, someone peed on the book bag of one of my favorite students. When he came to my room and told me, I almost burst into tears. This young man is so artistic and clever. He’s always drawing. Always. He’s incredibly talented. He left his bag in the bathroom when he changed for an English presentation (into an Oscar Wilde costume, no less). The saddest part is that all of his sketchbooks were in his bag. After months of hard work, the last few weeks of public school are pure anarchy. Truly. You can pee on someone’s stuff and there are no consequences for you. It is like ripping a giant Band-Aid off the world’s hairiest man in slow motion (or woman. Gender is fluid). It’s excruciating and drawn-out. It’s what happens when you train young people to take a crappy test, then stay in school for another month and a half. No one tries anymore and literally anything goes. If you are like me, than this makes you angry and sad. I resigned my position as a teacher largely because I f...

I’m tired. I am sitting in a mountain of papers that I can’t possibly keep up with and can’t meaningfully grade. Even if it was graded meaningfully with prolonged comments on their writing or their ideas they’d just look at the grade and demand to rewrite it or throw it away on their way out the door (my favorite). There is another mountain waiting to be copied. Technology is the solution. Make a game. Let them use their phone. Go paperless without computers to go paperless. What would that fix? Would they magically start reading on a screen instead of reading a book? I’m racing to a finish line for a state test that measures minimum competency..   When the test is done, babysit. Babysit 160 kids who have been programmed to believe that school ends in mid-May. They’ve been raised on this, so why should they think differently? My students are apathetic and sometimes rude. There’s always random kids running or yelling in the hall. They aren’t ever yelling nice things. Th...