My House On New Year's Eve At 6:40 P.M.

Not the most flattering pics, but none of them read my blog (it is not a Louis L'amour or book about a coach). I wish that I could add audio of the chorus of snoring.

La Fiesta de Baby Troy

All week my mother has been trying to get us to play games with her and every time she asks, everyone just stares into space and pretends like it isn't happening. Sometimes my sister-in-law misunderstands and accidentally answers her. After several days of frustration, she announced that tonight we are having a birthday party for Baby Troy. The party includes playing multiple games and eating an ice cream cake that has been in the freezer since his actual birthday on December 6. Baby Troy's response to the plan was, "You know that we have the best time as a family when we go on laptops and hang out in separate rooms."

2011 Recap/First and Last Emo Post of My Life

Sorry, we are going to the airport so I can't proofread this.

One of my great joys in life comes from scrolling down my Facebook newsfeed on December 31 and reading fifty times, "Fill in the blank year sucked! Welcome 20...This is my year!" I am going to go out on a limb and say that the worst thing that happened to some of those people is not dating.

Noteworthy Events of 2011

My Favorite Movies

Sorry to all of you who are disappointed in me for watching R-rated movies, but at least I am not singing the praises of The Hangover. All of my sinning is educational.

Of Gods and Men


Incendies

I wrote a blogpost about how traumatizing this movie was here. Yes, there is a typo on the word "soothe," but I am too lazy to go in there and fix it. I'm sure if you are a regular reader, you have seen your share of typos.


And the only movie that has ever had me leaning forward, on the edge of my seat:


Too bad I had to keep telling the man next to me to stop loudly translating the movie into Chinese for his girlfriend. I would love to know how he translated "Hufflepuff."

Moved To DC Against My Will

I am one of the most decisive people I have ever met, but that is because I usually get pretty clear divine guidance. The Holy Ghost has told me to do some pretty weird things, like move to Honduras or quit my job in a scathing e-mail, but it has worked out enough that I just do it. In August I got the feeling to apply to schools in DC and the feeling was confirmed when I got a job the same week.

To be honest, I was kind of horrified. I kept succumbing to these melodramatic moments in which I looked out the subway window onto South Brooklyn and sobbed. Ugh, writing this is making me nostalgic. I have liked my job since the first day (the earthquake), but I think that the move was more traumatic for me than I admitted to myself, since I am such a professional transient. Even though it can be a really hard place to live, I loved New York from the first day to the last. I don't think it would be productive to make a list of everything/everyone that I miss, but leaving kind of robbed me of my usual joie de vivre attitude for a while. I was so sad and lonely that I think that I was semi-catatonic until maybe mid-November. Maybe I was finally getting PTSD for everything that happened since I graduated from college. Then I decided that I had let the mourning period go on long enough and snapped out of it. It was actually a pretty cathartic experience and really it is a small price to pay to have more empathy for sadness.

Drivers Licenses

Illinois: January and February
New York: February to September
Virginia: September to December. My Virginia license is so bootleg that not only is my birthday incorrect, but the picture is super bad (they don't let you smile). Maybe the DMV worker should have focused a little more, instead of monologuing me about how her co-worker asks too many questions in staff meeting. The security woman at the airport told me, "This don't look like you," so I showed her my New York license. Sometimes my hair disappears in black and white photos.

Best Television Show



I don't have a tv, so the competition was not very stiff.

My Dad Had Chemo, a Stem-Cell Transplant and An Angioplasty

Hey, as long as I'm writing uncharacteristically depressing stuff... I think that the first time that I really understood the gravity of the situation was when my brother texted me a picture of my other brother sitting with his legs crossed and the caption, "Look who's gay, lol" (ok, some people in my family have meathead tendencies). My dad was sitting behind my brother and his hair was gone. I was so shocked that I started crying on the subway, which seems to be a theme of this post. When the subway is full of break dancers and drunks, no one is fazed by a little emotional breakdown. It was agonizing for me to realize that he wasn't invincible and that we had so little control over the outcome of the procedures. I think up to that point, I never imagined that my family would be affected by something so harrowing. Luckily my parents live by Northwestern and everything has gone as well as possible and many positive things have happened.

I'm not really sure what inspired me to write all that, except that is really some of what happened. I post the funny stuff all the time, so you are already up to speed. 2011 had a lot of great moments and the bad ones had good outcomes, so I have nothing to put in a Facebook status.

Happy New Year!

The Bizarro Miss Jill

This is going to be a weird post, since I just discussed my hatred of chick flicks. This video has been making the rounds lately:



First, I think that the parents probably coached this girl. Second, she would have been my arch-nemesis in the eighties. Anything associated with being a boy was right up there with The Black Cauldron on my list of childhood horrors.

1. I hated wearing pants.
2. I refused to wear my hair in a ponytail* because I thought that people might see me from the front and get confused.
3. My sister Jr. always had to be the boy when we played. She is not very masculine either, but I had seniority.
4. I liked when the Young Women's activity was makeovers. Women always complain about how the boys got to do these awesome wilderness adventures, but my sister and I even did makeovers during free time at Girl's Camp. Then we took it to a whole new level by constantly turning my little brother Ty into a girl (when my dad wasn't home)-I even lovingly curled his hair.
5. Not only did I play with dolls as a child, but I still buy dolls from foreign countries. They are widely reviled. In our house, the Barbies always starred in epic dramas like The Ten Commandments.
6. My dad futilely tried to make us jocks by signing us up for every sport possible, but we always pretended to be sick to get out of it.

Everyone is saying "you go girl" to this video, but I don't think that gender is foisted upon us through a conspiracy by Hasbro or the media. Nobody is going to stop a parent from buying a superhero for a girl or a doll for a boy. They advertise like that because it works.

* This began when my pediatrician said, "I know that your sister is a girl, we are going to have to check with you." I was in first grade and my hair was so long that I could sit on it. Thanks, Dr. Sheade, I still don't really wear ponytails.

Wasting Your Life Away Watching Boring People Fall in Love

One of my friends decided that the easiest way to get published was to write a chick lit book, so she read "Something Borrowed" as inspiration. Ladies, really? I feel the same way about romantic comedies. I watched 27 Dresses with my sister-in-law today and I found myself jealous of her limited English comprehension. I was going to make a New Year's resolution to stop watching movies in which you are faced to accept that life is an endless exercise in futility (as demonstrated by civil war, abandonment and the destruction of everything you hold dear), but the experience helped me to realize that I was actually on the right track all along.

Things I Hate About Chick Flicks

1. Girls Suddenly Get Hot By Putting in Contacts or Brushing Their Hair I would rather wear headgear than put in contacts, but I continue using them. I suspect that I watched too many questionable movies as a teen.

2. One night stands turn into true love- I'm not going to pretend that this never happens (and some success stories read this blog), but I think that it is rare. I think that there are a lot of men who will booty call girls that they would never have a relationship with and that causes all sorts of problems. The only girl I have ever met who didn't get emotionally involved after getting physical was a self-diagnosed nympho.

3. Comic Relief by the Annoying, Wisecracking Sidekick Who is Obese or Looks Like Kathy Griffin

4. They Make Women My Age or Older Get Crushes on Guys Born in 1992 (That's you, Team Jacob PTA Moms)

5. After a Night of Drunken Karaoke, You Realize That the Creepy Guy From Your Department is Your Soul Mate

6. Anything In Which the Heroine Runs Away From Her Problems to Exotic Lands Between us, as a nomad, I am going to have to tell you that your problems follow you, unless you figure out how to identify and to break your self-destructive patterns. Eat, Pray, Love is bad for society.

7. Declaring Love On a Megaphone, Microphone or With the School Band- I'm sorry, but if you decided to declare your love to someone you were not dating, would you really do it in a football stadium? My sister and I have both received declarations of love via text message, which is cowardly, but prudent. In my case, he was in the same room.

8. An Entry Level Administrative Assistant Can Afford a Two Bedroom on the Upper West Side


9. Running To the Airport and Stopping a Plane-I'm sure that most of you have been fondled in a post-9/11 airport, so I don't feel the need to elaborate.

10. They Make You Stupider*- I'm not saying that all of your time should be devoted to watching Ted Talks on youtube, but at least find something to do that will not irreparably destroy your understanding of relationships and society.

* Yeah, I know. Not changing that.

In Which Miss Jill Would Survive an INS Crackdown

I have been hearing for years that the US citizenship test prohibitively difficult, so as the child of an immigrant, I wanted to try my hand:

US Citizenship Test

Ok, the only way that this test is difficult is if you don't know English. You only have to figure out 60% of the questions to pass-I think I could do that in any romance language. Maybe I'm being snobby, but "What ocean is on the east coast?" Come on.

Merry Christmas!

Whoever made this photo montage shares my taste in art and music.

In Which I Share More With Hobbits Than Body Type

This is unrelated, but once I made fun of someone on Facebook and my brothers did a print screen and put it in a place where my parents would see it.

On my friend's birthday, all of the party guests dressed up as her. She described the experience as a "wake-up call." I had a similar experience when I took this stress test. I got a 384 for this year with the prognosis: "You have a high or very high risk of becoming ill in the near future." I think that the result would be equal or higher for every year after I turned twenty-five and it doesn't even account for scenarios like working for Neo-Ottomans or finding out that your neighbor got stabbed outside of your building. I don't even write about most of the weird things that happen, unfortunately.

When I moved, a lot of people warned me that New York to DC was a really hard move, but I felt that I was supposed to, so I did it anyway. It is a million times less exciting and a lot of people are the same genre of boring mixed with delusions of grandeur. At church the other day I thought that it would be hard to pick any of the people out in a police lineup, because they were all kind of the same. But I'm starting to think that maybe the boringness is what I need right now.

This morning on the way to work, I randomly started thinking about how after the War of the Rings, Frodo is spent and done with adventures. Maybe I got all the weird stuff out of my system and it is better to be boring for a while. Maybe 2012 is the year of no jarring life experiences. Did anyone else feel like that when they hit 30?

Things I Would Never Buy Even If I Were a Billionaire

1. An expensive phone. Whenever I want a cheap laugh from my students, I pull out my $20 phone. I can leave that thing anywhere in the school and I know that no one would steal it. I could leave it in the rec room of juvie and no one would touch it. That is a priceless quality for a space cadet like me. Whenever I see someone middle class with a RAZR flip phone, I immediately think that they are cool. I would still have one if I hadn't given it to the Chinese laundry by mistake.

2. A performance from a famous musician at my child's sweet sixteen party. I would be really sad if my child wanted that, because then I would know that my value system had not been properly passed on. I hate groupies and I hate sycophants and I agree with Dante about their deserved fate:



I respect people's accomplishments, but I can't imagine acting servile or thinking that people were superior.

3. An expensive car. A Corolla will get you the same place as a BMW.

4. Clothes with expensive brand names displayed. VULGAR.

5. Implants. See above reason.

6. A star named for my cherished loved one.

7. First-class plane tickets. For various reasons, I have been seated in first-class lots of times and all it seems to do is get you in awkward convos with men your father's age in business casual attire.

What I Would Buy

1. Amtrak tickets. I only do this if I have time constraints, but it is SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE DC BUS.

2. Hair extensions. I would put so much fake hair up there that people would think that I were the blonde Kim Kardashian (if the only part of my body they could see were my head).

3. A school.

4. Cancer researchers, so that there would not be special interest involvement. There has to be a better way than the nightmare of chemo.

My Student Just Showed Me This

Especially For Mormons: How To Make Friends and Not Alienate People

Once in Honduras, someone randomly pointed to me and said, "Esa muchacha es muy directa (that girl is really blunt)." That is actually only partially true-I am really only frank with people I care about, otherwise it isn't really worth it to me. So rest assured that if I sent you a curt text about your lack of reliability, it could easily be interpreted as, "I'm glad that we are friends." That being said, I cannot be relied upon to tell you that you look ugly or that your cooking sucks.

As I also care deeply about Miss Jill, I have been known to tough love myself. For example, I recently gently told myself that if you want to have a cooking hobby, you also need to have an exercise hobby. This resulted in buying a mini-elliptical machine that I can't figure out how to put together.

In that light, as many of us know, Mormons consistently suffer from PR problems. Although, it is fine to hope that people will not be offended, I think that the onus is on us to figure out what we can improve on our end to be less offensive. I myself was very annoying and sanctimonious after I graduated from college and moved to Honduras. I wish that I could time travel back to 2005 and b slap that girl. I would like to help others avoid falling into that trap.

In order to avoid alienating people....

Disclaimer-I don't think that most Mormons do most of this stuff, but the fact that anyone does is scary.

1. The day after your coworker's kid got busted for shoplifting at the mall, don't brag about little Ammon's Court of Honor (based on real life events).

2. Most people think that overly perky people are annoying. I am a morning person, so I sometimes have to fight this. Don't have a creepy permasmile and a glazed expression.

3. Stop getting haircuts that no one else in America has. People with slicked missionary 'dos or short, chunky layers with skunk highlights-I'm looking at you.

4. The Starbucks employee does not need to hear that drinking coffee is against your religion (based on real life events).

5. Unless you are their teacher, please avoid telling people not to swear unless they are dropping 25 f bombs a minute. Get over it. Once they get to know you, they will probably stop.

6. Don't try to be hip. There is a 99.5 percent chance that you are not. People like you more if you make fun of your own unhipness, trust me.

7. Don't sneak into the art classroom and put construction paper clothes on all of the nude prints (based on real life events).

8. Don't elongate the skirt on the stick figure on the women's restroom sign (based on real life events recounted by the person who did this).

9. Don't freak out about Coke products. I don't like soda very much, but I drank some Pepsi once just because a girl was loudly proclaiming to nonmembers that it was a sin.

10. Don't sever relations with friends and family members who leave the church and don't make people your projects.

11. Don't refuse to check someone out at the grocery store (as the cashier) just because they are buying a beer (based on real life events).

12. Don't yell at the other team's cheerleaders for being immodest (based on real life events).

13. Don't constantly spam Facebook with Conference talks and the caption "Love it!" or "So true!"

14. Don't view someone offering you a drink as a challenge to your moral code, when really they are just being polite.

I'm sure there are more, so maybe there will be part 2.

In Defense of Teaching

I already posted today, but I'm proctoring a makeup exam for my coworker, so here is another one. I have all the time in the world, because I don't leave until tomorrow night and my entire family is getting gift cards.

Does anyone ever wonder if they had the potential to be really good at something, but never had an opportunity to try it? I always wonder that about elementary school teaching. When I was at BYU, people always rolled their eyes at el ed majors, because it was seen by a lot of people as an M.R.S. degree for dumb girls (and I wonder if this is just a Mormon thing). It wasn't as bad as majoring in Marriage, Family, Human Development, but it was almost tantamount to giving the feminist movement a swirly. It never even occurred to me to major in it-then I ended up teaching sixth graders in Honduras and at the Turkish school and I LOVED it. They are so cute and you can do creative projects without having to worry about anyone thinking it is uncool and giving you attitude. I like teaching high school, but I wonder all the time if I missed my vocation.

One of my good friends did Teach for America in New York and moved here when I did. She is an elementary school teacher and she was talking about the condescending things that people say to her when they find out that she is a teacher. She is very smart and could have done anything that she wanted, so it irks her. In her honor...

Why I Like Being a Teacher

1. Constant stream of weird/funny stories, although I generally don't feel comfortable putting them online.

2. In stark contrast to when I worked for personal injury lawyers, I never have to wonder if I am making the world better or worse. Being nice to teens has to positively impact the world somehow.

3. My capacity to love has grown so much. If you can love an obnoxious kid who yells "Shut up, lady" while you are dutifully trying to teach Utah Studies, you can love anyone.

4. I have a gang sign associated with my name.

5. I have never met anyone who could find jobs as quickly as I can, regardless of the economy and location. Sometimes it happens a little too quickly, just as I am starting to enjoy the company of showbiz folk.

6. I am an expert on ineffective parenting, because I have seen so many examples of the result.

7. I have a collection of evil eye jewelry.

8. I have had some very intense intercultural experiences that I don't think would be possible any other way. Although I am interested in cultures, I was never very interested in Turkey and now I am an expert.

9. It is hard to micromanage teachers and no one cares if a staple is in the correct place.

10. Twenty years from now, some kid in Honduras or DC or Turkey or Uzbekistan or New York will say, "Remember when that crazy blonde lady....."

So let's have a truce. If you don't automatically think that I was a mediocre student because I'm a teacher, I won't snap judge you as boring because you are a bureaucrat or a finance person.

CNN Tribute to My Former Home

It is hard to read, but it says:

Q: Which country has the worlds [sic] highest murder rate, at 82 per 100,000 people a year?
You answered correctly: Honduras

If I ever have a child who turns out like Jill: July 2005-August 2011, I think that I will develop an anxiety disorder.

Banned South African Commercial

Exploring The Seedy Underbelly of DC Nightlife

A few years ago for my birthday, my friend bought me a ticket to the musical Fela. Per Wikipedia: "Fela Anikulapo Kuti (15 October 1938 — 2 August 1997), or simply Fela, was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, pioneer of Afrobeat music, human rights activist, and political maverick."

In New York, most amateur cultural events take place in the basement or some kind of annex to a bar. Seriously everything-from poetry readings about the Iranian Green movement to improv shows to an accordion band performance to New Age Shakespeare adaptations- takes place in some sort of bar, because people can afford to rent the space. For a teetotaler, I have been to lots of bars. Sorry Mom, but there is alcohol served at TGIFriday's, so I don't see how this is any worse.

Most of the people I know here are pretty conservative, so I didn't realize until this weekend that the same thing happens here. My friend has a coworker who plays the drums in an Afrobeat group, so we went to his performance on Saturday. It was in the basement of a vegan friendly bar.

Some highlights

* For an Afrobeat band, I was surprised that its membership skewed very white and very middle aged. They were good, although I might not be the most knowledgeable critic of that genre.

* I was happy to still get carded, but sad the next day when it was Sunday and I was still wearing a wristband that said "Tequila!" and the scissors were in the kitchen with the mouse.

* The featured co-worker was sporting a ZZ top beard and pirate jacket (which I wasn't into due to the PTSD I have developed from my GPS being stuck in pirate mode)

* A group of fourth graders head banged with a white Rasta guy in the front row. I will file that for my list of "Things My Ten-Year-Old Will Never Do, Because She Will Not Have A Cool Mom."

* They were also joined by a man in his sixties wearing a wig and a cheerleading uniform, complete with pom pons.

* About a fourth of the patrons belonged to some sort of middle-aged lesbian social group, so I felt like I was surrounded by Bieber and Velma from Scooby Doo, dancing giddily under the influence.



It is funny, because when I was in my twenties, I had panic attacks whenever I thought about a life in which the ward Halloween party would be the most exciting part of my week. Now, I'm scared of becoming a forty-year-old at a bar show on a Saturday night. What is happening to me?

Fast Sunday, Within the Parameters of Satan's Plan

I'm generally pretty good at fasting and I actually feel very strongly that it works, from a religious perspective. However, this morning I woke up feeling really nauseated, in a feminine kind of way. I decided to go the Muslim route and to fast another day. I went to the kitchen to get some crackers and in the middle of the floor, a small mouse lay in state with his eyes open. After moving from New York, I honestly thought that those days were over.

As I fled the scene without taking any measures to deal with the issue, my first thought was that my roommate had bought a fake mouse to scare me. There really wasn't a valid reason for a mouse to 1. Be in our kitchen 2. Drop dead. Once Baby Troy left a lizard toy in the front lawn of my parent's house and through some strange twists of fate, I ended up believing that it was real and extremely dangerous. The incident damaged my reputation, so I wasn't about to get duped twice.

My roommate disposed of it while I watched Everybody Hates Chris on a bootleg website. The good thing about going like ten years without having a t.v. is that there are constantly new treasures to be discovered. I would like to publicly thank her for that, although I deem my gratitude null and void if she planted the mouse.

So if you heard my stomach pharisaically rumbling during church, know that it was only doing so under extreme duress.