sometimes even the right thing feels bad

this morning one of my third graders came in with a huge bruise on her cheek. when i asked what happened, she told me that she hit herself. i asked again, uncertain what that meant, and she told me that her father hit her because she didn't want to do her homework. i reported it and she was taken out of class with the guidance counselor for the rest of the day.

i know i did the right thing, (if there is a right thing) but i feel awful.

thats all i have to say.

schizophrenia

oh what can we say about our life these days except that we're starting to feel like a little bit of a superhero these days what with the alter-ego/double-life thing we have going. each day we spend hours teaching our third and fourth graders how to divide, count money and round numbers, followed by hours of sitting in our grad school classes...

but then the night falls and we wind up at one of the seven sisters during the week, followed by a healthy (or not so healthy) dose of rock and roll fridays, gbh, and some party named after some pulp song or something. and its getting a little out of control - we're getting distracted enough by cute hipster gay boys to leave a bar without closing a tab, in trouble enough with straight girls with boyfriends that a rule had to be created and enforced, busy enough with good friends that we can't even bother to speak anymore but have reduced our language down to a series of gutteral responses, and out and about enough that we're now receiving bottle service...

the good news? we wouldn't change a damned thing about my life right now. love what we do during those daylight hours so much that when our alarm goes off at 6:15 we practically hop out of bed (actually we did hop out of bed the other day with such enthusiasm that we have a huge bruise on our knee)...

and as for our nights? lets just put it this way, those babysteps are beginning to pay off...

wait.. what?

i would tell you about my friday night activities, but someone already reported on it.

besides, i'm sitting in someone else's office at somebody's desk pretending for a brief moment that i'm living the corporate life. well really im just stealing a whole ton of office supplies and using their fancy high speed connection so i can work on projects for my students. damn the man - save the empire!

so i will regale you with stories of summer school soon, but its 7:30 and im sitting in an office. there is something wrong with this picture. instead - enjoy the new muse. it was a tough call, a fight to the death between the lovely lady you see there and kristen bell... the Canadian won!

raised on a diet of broken biscuits

all right people. let's talk about responsibility. clearly these days we have none. yes, yes we spend my days pouring over textbooks and pedagogical theory and coming up with some way to integrate ideas of social justice into my curriculum for the fall oh and teaching summer school, but really, responsibility has gone out the window. our to-do list keeps growing longer but as soon as we leave campus everyday our nights have been filled with all kinds of trouble.

For example lets talk about Friday night (a now regular affair of Stevie B, Mrs. Robinson and your favorite VTB editor which has been so appropriately been dubbed rock and roll fridays), it began unsurprisingly enough with a bottle of wine at good ole 'inoteca (there's been rumor that we're going to get our own table there - mafia style with a little brass nameplate) and the always ensuing battle over whether we're going to be drinking red or white. after polisihing off the bottle, it was time to head over to 151 - 2 for 1 before 10 (yes it was barely 9 by the time we were on our second establishment of the evening) we walked into blaring stones and tall more vodka then tonics with the appropriate LEMON and the arrival of a fellow fellow and her mate. there were foreign girls who didn't know who johnny cash was, retelling the now infamous boricua from the streets story (way more interesting and funnier than jenny from the block) and more grey goose....

then of course it was off to orchard bar and stolen transmission. we got stevie b to dance, mrs robinson had to bow out - too drunk to continue on, Mr. A the 2nd bought us quite a few drinks, and the stalking continued (baby steps here people, we're coming ever closer to the goal at hand).

rock and roll friday slowly faded into totally useless saturday, where instead of writing papers we spent most of the day reading the paper, snoozing, and nursing a wicked hangover. thats ok, we said, we have all day sunday to work. HAH!

sunday was all about barbecuing in prospect park - scoping out the perfect spot for color war, playing volleyball and accidentally hitting a little kid on the head, drinking and playing whiffle ball. S and P didn't get as lucky as we did the other week and were slapped with summonses for having open containers - sucks since they live in DC and have to travel back here to go to court. as the sun went down, it seemed that there was no chance of us getting any work done, so it was off to meet D-Boy and JLip to continue the drinking. After a brief stop somewhere near union square (amazing that they got us above houston), we headed to lit, empty because everyone was either out of town or at motherf**ker we did shots and moved on to meet RJL at the porch - it was then that we realized it was 3am and we had to be up to cater a wedding on staten island at 6am...

and yes its tuesday and no we haven't crossed anything off of our to-do list, and yes instead of trying to knock some of it out now we're posting. clearly we have our priorities properly lined up...

this week brings jonny lives at lit, a neverstop party with topshelf open bar, sammy j's bachelorette party, our return to misshapes and who knows what else...

so how was your weekend?

its the 4th of july, do you know where your BBQ is?

contrary to rumors abound, i am not either dead or trapped under a heavy piece of furniture in my new apartment. i am however unbelievably swamped with schoolwork and trapped in the county of kings during most of the week, this added to the fact that i have no internet at home has led to a dearth of postings. for this i do apologize.

some things to note. i begin teaching summer school on tuesday. in canarsie. did you know it was the canarsie tribe that sold manhattan to the dutch? did you know i hate to capatalize? i finished my first grad course today. three credits under my belt already, easy breezy - well easy breezy if you don't mind being in class from 9-4:30 everyday and then having advisory sessions directly after until 6:30. i'm not going away this weekend, or having a barbecue. i am chefing and writing papers most of the time. no, i don't have a personal life anymore.

please don't forget to tape who wants to be a millionaire on wednesday. this way you can watch my brother and we can finally talk about how well he did.