in the corner of my mind

My little Latin 1 students are taking their final exam right now, and I'm a bit more emotional than I thought I would be. This has been my first experience teaching a year-long course, and, I have to say, it pretty much totally rocked. I think the online setting smoothes over any possible issues with teaching high school students in a real classroom - I never have to see their bored faces, or shush them for whispering to their friends, hand out bathroom passes, or try to ignore the hand that is always raised. Why, I can even update my blog while they take an exam.

I think the best part, though, has been teaching a new crop of would-be Latinists all the same silly mnemonic devices I learned, and then watch them make all the same dumb jokes my friends and I made. Every time we learn a new Ablative, the 'another Ablative' jokes just come rolling out in TextChat ( 'idk: the ablative of ignorance?' 'the ablative of I hate Caesar'), and I get the same questions that I asked back in the day, which inevitably start with 'why did the Romans...', as though Cicero sat down one day and just created the Dative of Agent to piss everyone off.

Tomorrow we head off to Rome on the jet plane, and I feel like I'm just reliving my high school Latin club trip to Italy. I've finished Latin 2, I've learned the Subjunctive, so now I can go clap about Italians calling pools 'piscina'. I think I might even make the trek out to see Laocoon and experience again getting ditched by my tour group (shout out to the notoriousmle - that day at mcdonald's is still one of the best days ever).

So guess all I'm really trying to say is that teaching this class has let me reminisce about high school Latin, which was a pretty solid four years of good times and good people. Actually, up until graduate school, I've loved all my Latin classes, and my instructors, and the bond I made with the other students in the class. It's just very cool to be on the other side of that now and see my own students create their own nerdy inside jokes and send me goofy text messages like 'morituri te salutant' before quizzes.

If only they got my Brady Bunch 'caveat emptor' reference.

foiled again

This year I am in charge of organizing the department's weekly Coffee Hour. This basically means I make sure someone else buys some bagels and I set up the coffee and tea. I used to dread the Coffee Hours because I would spend an hour surrounded by my mortal enemy: breakfast pastries. I heart pastries. I could polish off an entire tray of croissants if no one was looking. Coffee cake? Yes, please. Bagels? Keep 'em coming. And don't even get me started on cinnamon rolls, buns, or sticks.

So every week I would try to mentally prepare myself. I would eat a balanced breakfast thinking that if I were full of oatmeal the first, second, or second-and-a-half muffin would no longer look appealing. Or I would cut the pastries into tiny pieces and really try to focus on each morsel. And, my personal favorite, I would avoid Coffee Hour altogether and then secretly eat all the pastry leftovers in the kitchen throughout the morning. Yes, Coffee Hour was my secret shame.

But then I went vegan. And Coffee Hour was no longer a problem. I had a couple glorious months where I only ate the rare fruit people brought in and sipped my tea and felt incredibly superior to everyone else. But then I made the mistake of telling people I was vegan. The next week someone brought in vegan muffins and soy milk. And then there were bagels. And, finally, my crushing defeat, one of our visiting faculty members, who is the epitome of a fuddy old oxbridge greek scholar, brought in two (TWO) containers of vegan oatmeal raisin cookies. And none of these are any healthier than the real stuff. I mean, it might have a bit less fat but that deficit is totally made up for with sugar. Lots of sugar.

Stupid health-conscious, dairy-allergic bay area and its wide selection of vegan alternative baked goods.

forgive me, casey affleck

I realized I haven't made a vegan post in quite some time. Which I think is a good thing. I never wanted the whole vegan business to be any kind of defining aspect of my life, and I think I'm doing pretty well with it. And I am still vegan. And it is still pretty easy. I have been a bit more flexible on some things than I probably should be. Last week, for example, when I was up in SF I got a veggieburger sans cheese for lunch and there was some kind of mustard-ish sauce on the bun. I did my best to scrape the ish off and continued on my merry munching way. And this weekend my department had a beach Olympiad blowout (see the flickr badge) and I'm pretty sure the 'vegan' hummus sandwiches had some weird secret sauce on the bread. But at least they thought to get vegan sandwiches, right? I would like to add that the Newman O's I contributed to the party were almost completely devoured. The vegan brownies I also brought, not so much.

And while I'm confessing, tonight while I was standing on the sidewalk, holding the miso's cone (h-o-t-t) when he went into a store, I totally licked the dripping ice cream. At this point, dairy in my belly is better than dairy on my new pants.

a photo essay of determined laziness

It's been a busy week for all of us, Henry included. He was far too exhausted to figure out exactly how the physics of his cat bed worked.

new 'do

Has anyone you know transitioned from salon friends to real life friends? You know, actually hung out and gabbed with their stylist outside the haircut? I really think I want to make that leap with my Aveda stylist. She understands completely when I say, "I need this bob not to make me look like Velma." She goes to ugly sweater parties and plays the Wii and commiserates with me on all these tweens who have crushes on Johnny Depp, though they have no clue about this thing called 21 Jumpstreet.

I've been to her a few times already, but yesterday just sealed the deal because I finally got the haircut I always wanted. It's the haircut I resolve to get every time I make an appointment, and I try to explain but always fail to and then leave the salon with yet-another-borderline-soccer-mom bob. But this time I was ready. I had pictures. And a vivid description. She got it. I said asymmetrical. I said to sweep it across the back. And she did. She even offered to not use any product and basically airdry it so we could give the new 'do a real-life test drive. When it was all over, we hugged. It was that wonderful of an experience for all involved. I mean, I clapped. (Admittedly, I spent my formative years with halerino, so I pretty much clap at everything, but still. Clapping in the salon chair, even when you have that wretched black sheet tied around your neck so you look like some kind of tootsie pop ghost, is quite a statement.) And then, the icing on the cake, she gave me an obscene amount of free samples so I can figure out what fun new product to use with my fun new haircut.

So I want to be her friend. I want her to come over to play Mario Kart and we can drink Aveda herbal tea that she takes from work and bag on all the uptight palo altan moms who come in for their every-six-weeks haircut and highlight.

Oh, hairstylist, do you just like me for the tips?

my new shirt

Why did I make such a shirt? Because when I showed it to the 'miso his first response was, 'where's the arrow?' his second response was, 'what is that, Helvetica? Is that really what you want to go with?'

Crankypants. But I still adore him.

An open letter to the city of Palo Alto

Dear Sirs or Madams,

This weekend was the annual May Fete Parade, a parade which, as far as I can tell, is an opportunity for parents to show the world that they have children who can ride scooters and wear costumes. I am still trying to determine what exactly this has to do with May. While I appreciate that parents in Palo Alto need every excuse to flaunt their children in everyone's face, I do not appreciate, dear sirs and madams, the assumption that I would want to have such an event pass directly by my window. Or that I would happily move my car for such an event to occur. Or that my own children, who happen to be of the furry variety, would somehow enjoy this event.

Quite the opposite is, in fact, true. My little ones reacted to the marching bands as though suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. It was as if their little cat eyes were seeing the horrors of 'Nam all over again as they darted around my apartment, seeming both to look for the source of the noise and to hide from it. It broke my heart to see them in such a state of sheer terror at a brass band. Clearly in their previous life before I adopted them, they both endured some kind of horror at the hand of a snare drum and poorly played clarinet.

I will be suing the city for the following damages: my prized collection of Safeway bags that one cat sent into disarray as he tried to hide under the sink; my DSLR, which the other cat knocked to the ground as she found shelter in my closet; two cat carriers the first cat knocked off the top shelf of my closet while trying to find a new hiding place; and, finally, at least a full year of pet therapy.

For shame, Palo Alto. For shame.

Sincerely yours,
The Crazy Cat Lady on Webster (no, the other one)

I can't move

On Friday I went to my own personal slice of heaven: a shopping mall with an Old Navy, Nordstrom Rack, and Target. bring on the 5.99 t-shirts! The only downside, I was going through severe dehydration when I went. (I had woken up that morning at the unnatural hour of 6:30 to meet a friend for a hike. I thought the email said 2 1/2 miles; it said 2 1/2 hours. Uphill.)

So I'm at Old Navy in bit of a daze looking for lightweight travel clothes for my trip to Roma. I picked up a black cotton dress that looked like it could be a good bathing suit cover-up type thing and added it to the mass of other clothes I took into the dressing room. Now, I have a bad habit of not checking dresses for side zips. I typically pull the thing over my head, smear deodorant down the side and then, when my arm gets stuck, I find the side zipper. So when I was in the dressing room with one arm stuck straight up and another pinned to my side in this black dress, I just thought I would go find the side zipper. What I found instead was the tag on the dress, which, contrary to the 'S' on the hanger, said the dress was for girls age 6-7.

How embarrassing. But not a problem. I got the thing over my shoulders, surely I can just pull it back off.

Insert panic attack right about now. The dress is stuck. My arms are stuck. My chest is bright red from trying to yank the thing up. Okay, fine. Up is not an option. Let's go for down.

So I have these things called 'hips' which 6 year old girls tend not to have. So now my entire midsection is bright red and I have this damn dress (covered in deodorant) trapped around my waist. (As a side note, if you ever want to blow any self esteem ou have about your body in an dressing room, get trapped in a too small dress. you will see your once lean and tone figure in whole new (and devastating) light).

The question I ask myself now is whether it would be better to rip the dress to shreds and just pay for it or waddle out of the dressing room to give the bored employee the highlight of her day. I opt for private mortification and begin tugging at the dress. I can actually hear seams ripping. Fortunately, it's ON and the dress is from the children's department so it costs all of 10 bucks. But then I start picturing myself at the check-out with a torn dress covered in deodorant trying to explain what exactly just happened. So I start to pull more slowly.

At this point I have decided that down is so not an option and return to the upward movement. I think all my pulling down (and loosening some seams) gave the dress just enough give to allow me to essentially dislocate one shoulder and pull it out from the dress. Once that was done I had enough space for the next arm.

And, voila, I am freed of the beast.

And now my secret confession: I put the dress back on its hanger (which I now notice is very small and plastic, quite unlike all my other hangers, almost as though it was designated for a CHILDREN'S section) and hand it back to the girl working the dressing room with all the other clothes I didn't want. The dress now looks like some kind of dead animal, limp and mangled, barely staying on the hanger. And I feel a little triumphant. My heart is beating and my adrenalin is rushing as though I had just encountered some black bear in the woods (and hidden up a tree until it sauntered away).

So the moral of my story: as women's fashion becomes 'younger' and children's fashion becomes 'older', always check your labels. Or learn how to pop your arm out of its socket. Either way.

i am ironman

I've become a little obsessed with my iron and protein absorption, especially since in the past I would blame any problem I had on deficiencies in either. 'I can't concentrate on my chapter draft - must be that damn iron deficiency.' 'I just don't have the energy to go for a run, clean the litter box, do the dishes. Clearly I need more protein.'

One of the tips to boost iron and protein levels for vegans is avoiding caffeine and alcohol when eating iron, since it hinders iron absorption (plant iron, not animal iron - you meat-eaters are just fine). You're also supposed to have vitamin C with iron to help absorption. For the most part, this has been pretty easy to do. I have some OJ with breakfast and save my tea for mid-morning. And I make sure to have tomatoes or red peppers with my lunch and dinner. Cutting out wine with dinner? Are you kidding?

So to offset my vino, I decided to incorporate another iron tip: cast-iron cookware. It supposedly helps to maintain the iron content of food while you cook, and lifting the damn thing also has muscle-building health benefits. I had been steering clear of that one since cast-iron tends to be pricey, but last night at Ikea I discovered their Le Creuset knock-off series. Swoon. I got the small-sized skillet but I have a feeling I might go back for the casserole dish. If I can pick it up.