 Lunch Break Musings |
|
In the county where I used to live, tens of thousands of people are without running water and may remain so for six to eight weeks. Hundreds of thousands of people are without power. Phone service is out, both cellular and land line. All schools are closed until further notice. Several people are still missing. At least seven people are dead. I have been glued to the news online, and the paper in Pensacola is doing an incredible job. The pictures are devastating. I've been reading the forums to see how my old high school fared and whether the church I attended is still standing. The condo where we stayed summer before last is not. I worry about my old students and their families and the teachers. The forums have just been a stunning thing to behold. So many people have had no idea if their homes have been blown or flooded to smithereens, no way to find out what the conditions are where they live or where their relatives are. Can you imagine? No way to email, no way to call, no way to drive to where you can find out how they're doing? So people are posting on the forums, desperately asking if anyone knows their sister or their grandparents, if anyone has seen an aerial shot of their house. It's heartbreaking. I feel sick inside about it. I sent emails to my old principal and the human resources director who recruited me, but they bounced. I guess their email is down. Duh. I bought a card for a friend in Navarre and for my student's family whose restaurant was destroyed. I planned to enclose a very cute picture of the boys in his class that I took in my classroom on the last day of school. They were my favorite class, the sweetest and funniest ninth graders on earth. Well, I noticed this morning that this student had his hands posed in front of his penis in the shape of a vagina. He has a feigned look of innocence on his face. I think it's funny and don't think his parents would really care considering he was in the ninth grade, he was a really good kid at the time, and is now 19 or 20 years old, but my co-worker insisted that now is not the time to be sending vulgar crotch photos. But I think it might be just the time. So I am conflicted about that. They are good people, those people there. They were very good to me. I want to help them somehow. I want to find a way. I lost 2.4 pounds last week, so that's my total loss for two weeks. I feel good about that. I feel like I've been transitioning to eating at meal times and a snack and stopping the late night grazing. It's becoming pretty habitual at this point. Of course, on Saturday I spent six hours in a bar watching the depressing game and drank four beers and ate french fries and spinach and artichoke dip and had a lovely Oreo McFlurry that night. After two weeks of steadfast dedication to health, I was apparently ready to put some junk in my trunk. I felt like 100% ass later that night and was filled with a rage that made me want to throw my cats across the room as they dared to wish to be fed while I wished to lie prostrate and moan, so I relearned that such nonhealthy foods make me feel monstrously ill when consumed so vigorously. On Sunday, I woke up in disgust to realize that this wretched amendment passed and took out my anger on my yards as I edged and mowed and blew and hopped back on the healthy wagon, making a delicious shrimp, vegetable, and pineapple stir-fry for dinner with a small sweet potato on the side flavored with a little spray butter and thyme. Yummers. If sweet potatoes aren't Core, I don't even want to know about it. For lunch, I just ate a turkey and spinach and cucumber sandwich on a one-point high fiber wheat roll with some baby carrots, and I'll make a fruit salad for an afternoon snack. I don't know. I'm not bored of it all yet, so that's a good sign. So, the Emmy Awards. I thought Shandling was terrible. I thought it was ridiculous that the winners got the shortest time for acceptance speeches I have ever seen, and yet none of them seemed to realize that going around and kissing everyone in the audience before making it to the stage was eating up most of their time. I thought the bits we saw that also ate up acceptance speech time were not even remotely funny. I wished for the eighty-seventh time that the lovely and articulate Meryl Streep would get a new stylist already. I was so glad that Cynthia Nixon won, although I would have been happy to see Kristen Davis take it, also. Kristen Davis might be the prettiest person I have ever seen. (This photo does not do her outfit justice; it was very nice.) I would have been bored by David Hyde Pierce's win, but his speech was so cute that I couldn't begrudge him the honor. Kelsey Grammar? Allison Janney? Come on! How boring. And I can't believe I'm saying this, but I enjoyed Star Jones on the red carpet. Sure, she was buttkissy, but she knew everything about those she was talking to. Their shows, their dates, everything. She didn't fumble through cards and call them the wrong name or ask some wildly inappropriate or inaccurate question like the mother and daughter Rivers would do. She seemed genuinely starstruck and excited to be there, and I think she did a good job. I loved Jennifer Aniston's dress, but her wild hair made me itch. And I guess the getting better looking every year Mary Louise Parker got such a good response from her last boob-baring dress that she did it again! I noted that she just called her baby by his middle name this time, Atticus, instead of William Atticus like last time, so maybe she's had it with seeing his sire, Mr. William Crudup, cavorting all over town with Claire Danes. Bonnie Hunt has never looked better. Mischa Barton's dress was pretty but hung on her like a potato sack and for the love of God, child, PUT ON A BRA. Overall, it was one of the most poorly produced awards shows I've ever seen. It just made me feel kind of yucky inside, all of the speech cutting offing and Garry Shandling's overall ickiness. Oh, well. I guess I shall have to seek a source other than awards shows for personal fulfillment. I'm going to a cocktail party in New Orleans this weekend, and I have no idea what to wear. I'm allegedly going as the date of my friend's neighbor, but I think if I really thought that I wouldn't go, so instead I am picturing it in my head as an occasion where a bunch of us will just have some drinks and rock out in a non-datelike manner. I think there might be limos involved. I have no idea. I am so, so glad that The Amazing Race won last night. Don't forget to watch the finale tomorrow night! About this time in ...
© Copyright 2004 elb |
|
