Things I Learned By Being Off Facebook

    It's hard to stay off of Facebook. My daughters are doing The Things and I had to pop back in to at least promote their work. ( GENOA IS DOING ROCKY HORROR AT THE STRATER THEATRE IN DURANGO, HARP IS WORKING AT MASSAGE ENVY IN SWPLAZA AND HAS STARTED HER OWN PRACTICE IN LAKEWOOD)

   Birthdays without facebook are  kinda sad. Truly, I received 8 birthday texts, five from immediate family members. My dad and my inlaws didn't text. I have no idea if they facebooked, but I doubt it, as they aren't the people who would do that. I'm pretty sure my dad just forgot---he decided one year that my sister's birthday ---7 May---was weirdly 7 April, and sent her a card a month early. Perhaps I'll receive a card on 10 November.  What kept it from being sad sad, is that my work husband brought me flowers, my colleagues gave me a "bucket of love notes",  a student gave me candy,my real husband brought me flowers, and my daughter gave me candles and a scarf. Also my mom always remembers, every year, without fail, to mail or drop by a card. Without Fail. Because that's what moms do. Scene.

   I have no idea what everybody's mad about because I'm not on Facebook. I watch the news and make up my own mind. I read my 2018 State Ballot Information Booklet, read my emails from the teacher's union, and made my own decisions.

    I'm searching the house for books I haven't read, and I've started  texting my children about their days.

   I have been cobbling  together fake wood floor stickers with throw rugs to get ready for the appraisal, and I've started emailing the financial people to make sure they're paying attention. This consumes me. I researched fake wood stickers and wrote down which bin in which to find them at Home Depot. The various throw rug/fake sticker options rule my world, I have dreams about different configurations at the lowest cost.

    I went to Home Depot and it wasn't for a show.

   I walk the dogs. They aren't my dogs.

   I drink a lot more. Daily.

  I pick up my phone to get on Facebook and then stare at it, look for a recent text,and play Ballz instead.

   5 people total read my blogs if they are not posted on Facebook.

   My husband and I do not see eye to eye on recent social/political issues.

   Nobody seems to have my phone number.

   I finally made a much needed and long overdue dental appointment. Hoping we're not too late to save my gums, but we'll see.

   I took the first step toward mental health support. For myself.

   My floors are mopped every Sunday, without fail. Sunday  is now "Floor Day". I enjoy it.

   Instead of clicking on Facebook to waste my time, I started smoking. Sometimes, I go to the grocery store and buy ingredients to make a meal. If it's after 4, I open an Angry Orchard Hard Cider and sit on my deck. Sometimes I see what's on TV.

   I have become the Washing Machine Investigator as the machine does not smell right. Running a sanitize load with washing machine cleaner did not help. Running vinegar through was unsuccessful. Running bleach through the bin and the detergent delivery drawer did not work. Tomorrow I'm getting the drill...
 
  So I got that going for me.

  It's been 13 days.

....
 

Using Theatre To Fool Appraisers

   So we have embarked on a refinance journey. We are not people who are going to use the money to travel, or live our dreams. We are the people who are using it to pay medical bills, actually fix the house, and if we're lucky pleasegodplease, buy a new functioning car.
    But to get the refi, we have to have the house appraised. And see..well...ummm...the whole thing is that we didn't intend to do a refi 'cause we started ripping up the last two rooms ourselves. We got part way through the wood floors in the spare room----there was a blog, I'm sure---when we threw up our arms and decided to pay someone else to finish. Which means get a refi.
    Which means an appraisal.
     As you are close readers, you caught the phrase "ripping up the last two rooms", so you see what is coming. There is no floor in the master bedroom. Well, there's a sub floor and some throw rugs. Turns out, that's a problem. The appraisal will cost $500.00, and if they can't "finish" it because there is not a floor, they charge you to come back again. We asked our friend and Financial Guru and he said as long as we cover it, they'll never know. Cover it with what?
     Throw rugs.
     OK, that's not obvious or anything. Really? Mismatched throw rugs all over the floor? I may not be any kind of design person, but I am enough of a theatre person to blanche at the idea. And so I began to think...
       Theatre. It has to look good from the audience, only. What they cannot see does not exist.
       I could paint the sub floor with a wood pattern, but I'm not great at arting, and it would take longer than I have, considering teaching all day and two additional gigs two nights a week. Plus Harper has decided we do yoga, so that cuts into my floor time.
       I could buy 3 matching throw rugs and paint the floor between them. Nobody would know. But then I still have to paint the floor. And there are five cats and three dogs...that's going to go well. I did paint the sub floor white when we ripped it up, mostly to kill the smell. The carpet was...disgusting. 30 years old and the former  owners had small dogs,and we have dogs and cats. I'm shocked I did not have to be hospitalized. I wore a hazmat suit to do the tear out, and I could still feel the ruined carpet in my pores. So ya, I painted the sub floor to lay down a barrier. I kept hearing ALIENS in my head "Lay down a suppressing  fire with the incinerators!"
      So painting the floor to look like wood, or tile, is a great idea, but not one for me, kryssi, who does not paint beyond laying down a suppressing fore with the incinerators.
      Our Financial Guru friend came over to let us know how bad it actually is, and give us advice beyond "throw down rugs". So he came over, we made him a drink and he said lovely things about the general state of our home. He said the lack of doors were not problematic---did I mention we have no closet doors and two rooms are missing doors? We were really into it when the wood floor debacle occurred.  Anyway, we were worried no floor, no doors would be a problem for the appraisal. And we really need this,so we want to do whatever we can to hide the fact that we started and failed. Actually the lack of doors aren't a problem, just the lack of trim around one of the door frames.
       Then the master bedroom.
       Sub floor, painted white, a few throw rugs, dog toys.
       He said "throw some rugs down".
       UGH!!!
      I have to pull up the carpet tack trim around the edges because "That's a clue that there is no floor, he'll see that." But he won't see that the mismatched rugs are covering a sub floor?
      Then I got an idea.
      There's this sticky stuff you can put down and it's a floor pattern. Like shelf paper but for floors. Fake Floor Stickers, I'm not kidding. Home Depot carries them. I know this because I'm a theatre kid. And I have no idea who would buy this stuff except theatre kids.
      I can get some fake wood stickers online for $10.97 for 20 square feet. It would cost $40 to do the room. The rugs would run us  over $200.
      But Jim can't find it at Home Depot, and we don't have time to order it.
      But....The Dollar Tree has shelf paper that is a wood pattern. If we borrow two more rugs and buy one that matches the one we have, I can sticker around the edges and in between.
      The appraiser will never know we don't have a floor.
      Now, tell me again how a theatre degree is a waste of time?

Why Am I Suddenly Telling Stories To My Students?

1 Oct 2018
           So, I'm tasked with teaching poetry this year. Not my passion, not my content, not my anything. I kinda suck at it, to be honest. I have my three poets I love and ...scene. However, since I am not allowed to teach my love theatre, and I wish to pay my bills, I am figuring it out. Sure, sure I could teach plays written in a meter if I wished to torture non theatre kids (many of whom who were assigned poetry by their counselors because it's "easy") with Tartuffe.  And I already did sonnets and that was pretty rough...so, I decided, after doing Shakespeare sonnets, to do children's  poetry via Shel Silvestein and Dr. Seuss. Sounded easier than sonnets.
          It sounded easier...
          Spoiler Alert: These Are Not Children's Poets.
          This is a fact I knew on some level, but did not fully understand until I had to teach them.
          Sons of bitches.
          So, since  I write alongside my students, so they can see poor examples and feel better about their own journey, I was doing the pre-writing verbal vomit process: use a social or political issue that has impacted you and then explain it to children using poetry.
           My verbal vomit and social issue was a memory from the Boulder Mall Crawl in 1980 Something. Dressed in  what I had cobbled together in my closet, based around the weird punk I had been and the "Funky Annie Hall" a professor had recently dubbed me, I was something of a low rent Mary Poppins. Or Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice. Same Thing. Anywhoo, my boyfriend and a few other friends were crawling along, as is the ritual, and some guy behind me grabbed a handful of something that did not belong to him. In case you're not a careful reader- he grabbed something that belonged to me. Something attached. As I was in college and the new, proud owner of a green belt in tae kown do, I promptly connected by elbow to his nose. The few fellow crawlers in the vicinity who saw the exchange--it's a "crawl" for a reason, the mall was packed--gave me dirty looks. I heard someone say "You don't even know if it was him".
            Well...here's the deal, Spanky. Based on your comment, I know that  you saw him, or whoever it was, do it. So if I was wrong, then shouldn't you have pointed out the perpetrator to me? You did not, leading me to believe I had the right guy, and he didn't complain or respond, he just shoved his body into the crowd. Based on this circumstantial evidence, I believe Sherlock himself would have supported my verdict.

             
           I am sharing this for several reasons. I think you are smart, and can sense my subtext.  But I also realized something completely unrelated: these kids know more about me than any of my theatre students did.  I  have a  few theatre kids in the class, and I looked at them and said "I never told stories about myself in theatre, did I?" There was an emphatic "Nope", and a student asked me why? He said he figured the theatre kids would know me well. I paused, because they did know me well, they just didn't know my personal stories. I wondered why. Then it hit me: it was the content. I love theatre, I worship theatre, theatre is not what I do but who I am. There is simply no time, when you are worshipping and inspiring others to do so, for your stupid personal stories.

           In conclusion, all in all, to sum up, that is why I will never be a great language arts teacher.