Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Shake it Like a Salt Shaker
Shawty crunk, on the floe wide open
Skeet so much they call her Billy Ocean
Roll, like a eighteen wheela
That ho fine, but this ho a killa
She leakin, she soakin wet
She leakin, soakin wet
Shake it like a salt shaker!!
-The Ying Yang Twins - Salt Shaker
Hey y'all [insert oh-so-classy cowgirl accent here].
Tres tres tres sorry I haven't been writing lately. I will try to do better. I'm trying to plan my life so that I have a little bit of time for everything, but I'd challenge any of you to plan your life neatly around my two crazy jobs and the red haired, sexy little tornado who just waltzed into my life. The above lyrics are from her favourite song, by the way.
So....I am an English teacher. An English as a Second Language teacher, in fact. I spend my days teaching teenagers and adults how to spell and define words like 'voracious,' 'variability,' 'discernible,' and 'vociferous.' But I can't get through a Ying
Yang Twins album without the help of both Claire and Urbandictionary.com. That thing has practically become my Bible. Haha. If you want a translation of those lyrics, well, at this point I'm your girl. But it took me an age. This just goes to show that booksmarts aren't everything, and that's a lesson I could stand to learn a gazillion times over.
It's insane how fun and in some ways really complex all this gangsta rap stuff is. It's full of sophisticated and at times hilarious lingo, sometimes some puzzling metaphors, and often very incendiary political content. Those who say it's all just misogynistic, macho, male-centered, moronic posturing have obviously never met the likes of Claire. This tiny sweet little lesbian is so into this crazy, sexed-up, bass-thumping music that she's installed a giant sub-woofer in her car and every single room of her condo. Every surface vibrates when it's on, and it's always on loud. I've been to plenty of rock concerts in my time, but the sound makes even my eardrums vibrate with dangerous intensity. And you'd better believe she dances to the stuff in her little Honda Civic -- there's a line in a Ying Yang Twins' song called Slow Motion about a girl having measurements "36, 24 to the 36." I finally got it and asked "hey....are those your measurements?" She blushed and said "well yeah, but I yo-yo." Haha. Oh that girl has a body to die for.
Feminism, put that in your pipe and smoke it.
So....updates:
1) Things are going beautifully with Claire, in case you hadn't picked up on that already. There's never a dull moment with her. But more to the point, the more time I spend with her the more she makes me feel truly happy and lucky as all hell. She's sweet and funny and yes, she's a minx in bed. But shhhh....I can't possibly kiss and tell!
2) Work is going wonderfully as well. My Boss at the school downtown discovered I was doing ridiculous amounts of work at home and so he decided to give me a bonus -- in my first week of work. Score! More importantly, my students are a joy to teach. The adults I teach downtown are funny and sweet and dedicated people. I love hanging out with them in the lunch room just for the pure fun of it. They're always willing to chat, they tell me about their lives, and I find out more interesting things about them every day we work together.
3) My new class in Richmond is with four 14-17 year old boys, who are some of the kindest, brightest, and most motivated teenaged boys I have ever met in my life. We're reading Elie Wiesel's Night for our novel study, which is a Holocaust memoir and not a light read by any means, but they're all reading through it dilligently and studying the vocab like eager little bunny rabbits. I adore that class.
4) My other 13-year-old student, who I teach on Saturdays, apparently (according to my boss, anyway) went home after his first class and told his mom (who does not speak English) that he really liked me and wanted me to keep being his teacher. In fact, his mother has insisted that her son NOT be taught by anyone else. Aw. So now my boss is juggling the schedules around so that I don't have to teach on Saturdays anymore, since this boy's mother is enthusiastic enough about my teaching to bring him to the school twice during the week instead of on the weekends so it suits me better. I've been put in charge of selecting ALL the school's novel sets this week (gotta make sure they pay me for this!), so doubtlessly I will be down at the bookstore sifting through teen fiction galore for at least one evening. Somehow getting to buy books at the store but not have to work there EVER AGAIN feels like the best of both worlds to me.
5) My Thanksgiving (yes, my American compadres, CANADIAN Thanksgiving) was lovely, though busy. I spent two glorious days with Claire at my aunt's place where I was housesitting, then at my place, then at her place in the boonies. I successfully missed the ferry on Sunday morning (neither she nor I is very good at navigating on the highway) but I still made it to the island after a long and circuitous ferry ride through Victoria. I had a nice dinner with the family and then a short visit before heading back to the city for work. It was probably the first weekend in my life that I didn't dread the thought of going back to work. I truly enjoy my job, and that to me is a beautiful thing.
Claire took the photo above. It represents the first time in my life I have ever liked my cheeks in a photo. Haha. I KNEW there had to be an advantage to having ridiculously overcute baby cheeks at some point in my life, and now I've found it. It lies in the heart of a spunky little redhead who tells me I'm beautiful. It is sadly rare that people I really care about actually direct those words at me, so this is refreshing.
Oh, and there's Claire's little dog on her ultra-gay rainbow leash. She says her brother takes the dog for walks and is completely oblivious to the significance of the gay pride rainbow. Haha. Go figure. The other photo is of me cooking in Claire's kitchen, a rare and therefore photographable event. I think I look rather stunned, mainly by the idea of being photographed while cooking, a totally unremarkable event in my household.
I have so sooooo many lesson plans to do, so I must get going.
I'm grooving to The Beastie Boys' Ill Communication right now, which is one of my favourite albums of ALL time. It reminds me of chilling out in the forests of rural Quebec, aged 11, while hopelessly crushing on my brother's teacher, being eaten alive by black flies who took little chunks out of my still-babyish skin, and feeling hard-core singing along to lyrics involving the word 'fuck' in all its permutations.
So While You Sit Back and Wonder Why
I Got This Fucking Thorn In My Side
Oh My, It's A Mirage
I'm Tellin' Y'all It's Sabotage!!!
-from Sabotage
We used to scream "I'm telling y'all it's SABOTAGE!!" to the trees at the top of our little 11-year-old lungs, with dirt in our hair and guilty little smiles on our rebel rebel faces.
Those were the days.
But then again, THESE are the days too. Things are going well for me, and I am quite simply grateful for all of it.
I hope everything is well with you all. Thanks if you're still stopping by - keep it up because I will be updating more. Scout's honour!!
Love,
N
