Templeton's New Writeups

classroom management (idea)

2006-11-19T16:13:00Z

Not much changes once you get to a certain point. I am still wearing a WAGE SLAVE T-shirt from un-American.com, and I got a new pair of pajama pants from CVS (cause that's where you go for PJ's, right?), lime green with little red ladybugs on them. Fuzzy slippers the color of a furry Kermit, and new blue plastic barbells in my ears that my students still love to see me take out and replace with a pencil, to show them how big the hole is. One kid asked me today if we have blood in our ears; he couldn't understand how I could have this big old holes in there with no blood, not understanding yet that skin stretches very, very far without so much as a drop of blood.

My husband always asks me, when I pick him up from the Metro station, if I've heard any news that day. He always knows the answer, because it's been months since I've checked cnn.com, months since I've had time to listen to NPR or read a paper. The news of my life is the daily news of being…

Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans (idea)

2006-11-19T15:39:22Z

I am trying to do this before the kids wake up. We really shouldn't spend any more money, so the longer they sleep, the longer I can hold up a front that I have plans for them today. Yesterday, we went to the camp they will go to for the month of July, then to a butterfly exhibit, where fat bright blue ones fluttered heavily under their own weight, like birds. We watched them thrust their proboscis into rotting fruit. It was lovely and somewhat sad that these beautiful and delicate things had to be housed to survive. Walking out with "hitchhikers" was a federal offense. We trudged around goose shit and found our way back to the car. They were winded, and it had only been an hour. The day before, we checked out books from the library. I re-read Girlfriend In A Coma in two days, just to rev up my mind for reading, although I am staring at a copy of the 7th grade Language Arts Curriculum that's been sitting on my desk for a week now, and I've only leafed…

July 19, 2006 (idea)

2006-07-19T02:00:40Z

I can define my own sense of poverty. It's not the right word, poverty, because poverty is the lack of the means of providing material needs or comforts. I have comforts. I still have electric and cable, still have this here machine a-whirrin'. There's still enough dinners for us until the kids get picked up for the weekend. There's no gas in the car, but, well, there's never any gas. I am waiting for the time when we can pour piss and shovel nail clippings to get to the mall.

But whatever it is, here it is: I am looking at a small pile of translucent ovals. They could almost be the inside linings of delicate shells, if they had a luminescence, a sheen. One side is shiny, whiter at the flat end than the rounded or jagged end, and the other side is rough, sandpaper, like the inside of a coconut after you've discarded the meat because it doesn't taste like the flaky…

jigsaw puzzle (thing)

2006-07-13T17:29:00Z

I wonder if animals categorize things, or even if they categorize food they store, food that can be stored in any way, or if there is any need for this. I am pretty sure that they don't ask for permission to move into another animal's home when they want to. I wiped my fingers under my arms and, moist with the slept-in sweat of a day absent of washing, I thought about pheromones and how they leak out of our sweat, and how, while we find the smell of stale sweat unappealing, it is still a signature for each person.

Everything in our world has categories. Forget the world outside; in our house they're everywhere (for most people): books go on bookshelves, usually with the spines facing outward and upright, bathroom accessories go in the bathroom, cleaning products under the kitchen sink, trash can usually in the crook of floorspace by the fridge or in a pantry closet. Things are not typically…

June 28, 2006 (idea)

2006-06-29T01:17:52Z

I am just looking back on the gathering node from the one gathering I was able to do, and it struck me that it was 5 years ago that all happened. Now that I am a teacher and now that it's summer, it is my only time to reflect because, well, it's my only time. The only MY time I have, and it's slipping away...

The saying goes that when you're happy, you have nothing to write about, or that life is what happens when you're making other plans, and I guess I'd agree with both. Talking with noders now, it's like communicating with beings from another plane of existence. I feel like a loser and a dunce for not keeping better contact, and I wonder how many, if any, true friends I have lost.

When I look back on that gathering, I do have to look at it in order to remember it. Having a node here proves it happened, like so many of my threadbare…

Being married to your best friend (person)

2005-07-31T20:27:32Z

There were a few different times when I haggled over which red and black dress to wear to the wedding. I would put one on and stand in front of the only thing in our apartment that passed for a full-length mirror, a large windowpane my father had fitted with a mirror where each of the six panes of glass would be. Standing in front of it, I would either cut off my head or my feet. I have never felt comfortable in a tight dress and, no matter what Jake told me, I would feel like a prostitute. When I ran into the gas station for cigarettes after the wedding was over, my thick-wedged strappy-black sandals exchanged for more comfortable flip-flops, to get smokes for the trip home, I felt like some jilted prom victim. It wasn't a tasteless dress, a tacky or inappropriate dress. It was me. Dresses just never seemed to be me.

What you don't understand, you can make mean anything.

For the two-hour trip to the wedding, I…