I don’t have much time to fully explore how the very first day of school went except first to mention that the dress is F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S and that I’ll be taking a picture of myself wearing it soon and to say this and only this:

You know you’ve had a helluva day when one of your sophomores goes into labor first thing in the morning and you have to make plans to get her to the hospital.

That is all. Talk amongst yourselves.

One of these days I’m going to stop ordering dresses online.

Not today.

This one I found at a website called Shabby Apple (perfect name for a clothing place for a teacher!) and it’s everything I wanted in a dress. It’s comfortable, easy fitting, and the length is perfect on my body type. Plus, I knew it would look pretty decent on me since the model looks awfully similar to me.

This isn’t me. Those are not my feet, nor are they my legs, and those definitely are not my shiny lips. My mother has begun making her way across the United States all the way to Black Rock City and needed to take my precious Canon camera with her. If I had my camera and it wasn’t being defiled across the countryside (read: my camera is on a field trip and I am not and I WANT TO BE) then I would have taken a picture of this dress with me in it.

It’s what I’m going to wear tomorrow to the first day with the teachers on our staff as we ready for the first day of school on Monday.

It’s what I’m going to be wearing when I do the very hard work of educators.

It’s what I will have on when I anticipate a difficult meeting with a few teachers during this first year of restructuring.

Am I ready for this? Do I have everything in order to lead in a different capacity? What have I learned in the last year that gives me the experience necessary to do well?

These aren’t answers I feel that I know right now. As much as I wear confidence like a new dress and strut around in it, I am just as insecure about what it is that I will be able to do and affect. I’ve been trying to anticipate some of the questions and concerns and there is one in particular that I know will come up by not one but several teachers. Not to paint them with a negative brush, but the fact is: some people in general are contrary and oppositional by nature. If I quiet my mind I can even hear it in their voice as the words ring through my head:

What are we gonna do about the kids who come to school in baggy jeans and hoodies and won’t follow the dress code, huh? WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO?

For now, it is the only answer I have. The only thing I feel confident about. The only thing that, while wearing my new dress with a swishy skirt and feeling young and breezy and easy, the only answer that I know for sure in this otherwise uncertainty:

We are gonna teach them. Every one of them. Every day.

This probably isn’t a very good confession, but I’ll go ahead and admit it: for the last week and a half I have been late to work every single day. It’s because I stay up far too late and watch the Olympics and I tell myself, “Ok, go to bed after this event.” Forty minutes later I say it again, this time with much more force in my voice (these are all aloud): “What are you, crazy? Go to bed NOW.”

Since track and field is one of my favorite events I know that tonight will be a late night again. It’s the only sport where someone is waiting on the sidelines to hand you the flag of your country to wear as a shawl (a shawl? yes, a shawl) while you pose for the cameras. What about those people who don’t win? Are the shawl-bearers watching them come in 7th place and do they quietly tuck the flag into their bags hoping that no one will notice their embarrassment?

Just some thoughts going through my head.

Something just occurred to me while writing this: shoes. It’s like a sickness, I swear. But if you want to win a $500 shopping spree to Zappos, go confess your parenting secret here. One of my favorites:

“My son threw up on the carpet last night and I left it there hoping the dog would eat it.”

My confession to win shoes:

In order to get my son to give up his “blankie” I told him that we needed to lay it down in the backyard and let the Blanket Fairies come get it to take to the forest animals. Then, I snuck outside and retrieved it only to put it away in the closet. When he whined for it I told him to stop being selfish. Those forest animals get COLD in the winter and he had a sweater and a furnace so DEAL WITH IT.

Confess, my child. You’ve got parenting stories, too.

What can I say? I was bored.

What I’d look like circa 1952. I look like my mom a little bit here. If she had a butt-chin.

Then there’s 1956. The year I wanted nothing more than to wear pearls to vacuum my pre-fab home.

1966 is the scariest one because MY HAIR CAN ACTUALLY DO THIS.

This may as well be a picture of my mom in 1968 because this is her. She said she used those empty cardboard orange juice cans to get her hair to curl like this.

1976 was good to me. Was Sun-In invented yet? Because I sprayed that stuff on my hair like there was no tomorrow. I may look angelic and innocent, but I would have turned on Carrie and poured chicken blood on her if you bought me a cherry coke. What a follower I was then.

This may be the most accurate one from my own high school years if I were still in high school in 1994. Can you see the class ring on my finger that I’ll eventually lose in the middle of a party after Shannon tells me that she saw my boyfriend kissing that girl from PE class who just transferred from some country school? All signs point to me punching her when I got all worked up. Like, totally. I gotta stop hanging out with that creep Mike Damone. Ticket-scalping loser. He’s making me a bad, bad girl.

Mallory wasn’t immune from my madness and since we know high school was all about copying everyone else, here’s one for comparison purposes.

Nor was she here in 1982 with that ridiculous flip. How did you people get your hair to DO that? And why? Also, is she tickling her own chin here? Rubbing a tiny flower under it?

1962 was not good to her. It was downright obnoxious.

1996 crept up on her and made her symmetrical goodness just shine. Shine, I tell you. Denim vest and all.

It’s just too serious around here lately. This was more for my entertainment than yours. But if you want to do it, go to Yearbook Yourself and have a blast, kids.

Reading the news: there is a lost baby whale that is following a yacht because it appears that it thinks the yacht is its mother. This is why I’m following this fifth of vodka around. I’m pretty sure we’re related. Tomorrow I’m going to hit it up for a loan.

Earlier today I talked to my dad on the phone and for some reason he brought up my cousin who lived with us when I was two. It’s a vague memory for me so he felt the need to elaborate: “She was a blip, that one. Spelled with a B-I-T-C-H.” These are the things that make my me think my father’s memory will come to haunt me someday.

Every four years I take up running seriously. By “seriously” I mean enough to buy a new pair of running shoes, a couple of sports bras, and start jogging at stupid times during the day like when it’s super hot or decidedly humid. I know I’ve gone too far when I start looking for mini-marathons to sign up for.

The current cupcake obsession of mine is starting to worry me. I blame Isabel for ordering the most divine iced creations that I kept shoving in my mouth which can be seen here and here (oh, right here I was eating french fries which, wait! I was doing that here, too!). Now, I dream of cupcakes. Frosty, mini, sweet.

Gwendomama gave me a special award. It’s probably because I’m always referring to myself as an ass kicker, but I don’t care. She wrote lovely things about me and now I remember why I completely accosted her and her stolen lighters in San Francisco (story for another 5 minutes in my head series). So, here it is:

For 47.3 seconds this is what went on in my head: Crap! I have to create another list of great writers? Oh, crap oh crap oh crap what was that one I was reading the other day and how can I find it again? Was I looking at books online? Did I get there from a link here in my own comments and hop around? Was it that day when we had chicken salad with the cranberries and walnuts and THAT SOUNDS GOOD RIGHT NOW. I wonder if I have any chicken…?

My hair color is back to what I am hoping it would be if I actually knew what it was. It’s chocolatey brown with leftover caramel highlights (oh, what a GREAT cupcake, am I right? I know I am.) and my hair goddess, Regina, didn’t want to do it but after 15 minutes I convinced her. This is the best picture I can muster, but we’re talking about the things that span my head in five minutes:

I threw a yellow highlighter at a co-worker today. He walked in yakking at me and didn’t see the phone underneath all my hair which was pressed against my ear and I was making an appointment with a parent so I tried being professional. Only on the phone, though. It was a random, wild throw but I’m pretty sure I hit him square in the crotch. Tomorrow I will apologize because today I said something like, “Take that, you snotface!” and it was kind of rewarding to talk like that after this ridiculously long week. Shit. Is it only Monday?

My mom leaves for Burning Man soon and she’s making all these plans about how to get in touch with her and what to do if my granny needs something while at the nursing home. The first emergency number on the list she gave me was for the closest sheriff’s department. “I was happier when you just went to your Weeklong Orgy Of Debauchery and just called me when you got back safely.”

During my run (no, seriously, those next Olympics are a mere FOUR YEARS AWAY. I can do this.) there was a woman who got scared by a dog that started following her and then ten feet later there was a swarm of bugs. She started to scream obscenities at the top of her lungs, “All this goddam nature! I just want to run without this shit!” Shouldn’t she get a treadmill, then? Actually, now I want to follow her on all her routes and listen to her bemoan Mother Nature.

Should I get another tattoo? It should be so inappropriate that I am afraid I’ll be invited to pool parties with important people and then I will have to make up a lame excuse why I’m wearing a turtleneck. Unless I get it written in an obscure language that no one will understand.

When I mentioned that I was tired of wearing pants for the day, Violet responded with “I find your lack of pants disturbing” and then I found this site that replaces words with “pants” in Star Wars movies. I’m probably late to even finding this, but I got an enormous kick in the pants in these three:

#7 “These pants may not look like much, kid, but they’ve got it where it counts”

and

#11 “TK-421…why aren’t you in your pants?”

and

#21 “Jabba doesn’t have time for smugglers who drop their pants at the first sign of an Imperial Cruiser.”