The powers that be blocked blogger long ago...

...so I've finally decided once and for all to move. Plus, I was feeling the need for a fresh, clean blog. So here it is. Update your links, and I'll update mine too (though I still won't be able to visit most of you during the school day).

My life as of late....and a belated meme response.....

1. I still can't blog at school, which is my primary internet access point. Dammit, dammit, dammit.
2. Lilly's still beautiful, but I've been sickly during all of March and haven't been able to visit her for fear of infecting her too. I'm glad my parents take lots of pictures!
3. I took my first-ever midterm exam in my sociological foundations of education course. For months, our professor had prepared us for identifications--she gives us a list of 20 terms, and we pick 10 and define them, with examples. So we all show up for the midterm exam period, and what does she give us? A five-page, in-class essay assignment instead. How rude! (But we'd all studied those terms so damn much that most of us, myself included, still managed to earn A's on the test.)
4. HSSH moved two hours away; we're still in touch, but hardly in (romantic) cahoots. But...
5. I've got a (da da dummm) boyfriend. Weird, huh?

And now for the meme, thanks to yelhsacrow....

The Rule of Four

Four jobs I've had:

1. Secretary's assistant at my hometown police department
2. Assistant karate instructor at the family business
3. Popcorn popper extraordinaire
4. Fledgling teacher to unruly ninth and tenth graders

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1. Moulin Rouge
2. Closer
3. Milo and Otis
4. Lost in Translation

Four places I have lived:

1. Santa Elena, Costa Rica
2. Avignon, France
3. Athens, GA
4. My car (well, not literally, but I commute to and from work and it's where I keep my stuff)

Four TV shows I love to watch:

1. Twin Peaks
2. Dead Like Me
3. Scrubs
4. Futurama

Four places I have been on vacation:

1. Buenos Aires, Argentina
2. Sicily (from the mountains to the sea)
3. Duluth, Minnesota
4. London, England

Four of my favorite dishes:

1. My mommy's pasta (she's 1/2 Italian, so she knows how to do it right)
2. Sushi
3. Masaman curry at the Thai Cafe in Athens
4. A big, juicy, medium-rare steak

Websites I visit daily:

1. My school's online gradebook/attendance system
2. Gmail (it finally got unblocked)
3. Reuters Oddly Enough
4. Wikipedia

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. At home, in bed, with my kitties snuggled up tight next to me
2. On vacation in a tropical location, preferably with a tasty tropical drink in my hand
3. Driving (or riding) on a winding road in the mountains
4. At an exciting, exotic restaurant, being served by an exciting, exotic waiter :)

And now, four people to pass this chain tag thing on to:

1. Texas Biscuit
2. Coolcat
3. Evidently
4. Winter of Discontent

(I wanted to pass it to rb, but yelhsacrow already did. Though rb says her answers would change daily, so she can consider this a tag if she likes....)

Lilly!

This is my brand new niece, born Sunday morning--isn't she beautiful?

Go back to your hometown, get your feet on the ground, and stop floating around...

The subject line for this post (I stole it from the Shins, like all my comment-link text) is, apparently, HSSH's thought process right now, because he and I have reverted, at least temporarily, to "just friends" status. He says he needs to deal with all of the changes in his life before he throws relationship #3 with me into the mix.

On the one hand, I am immensely disappointed at the lack of instant gratification that this provides. (Please don't interpret that sexually--I'm not that kind of girl! ;p)

On the other, I'd rather us be friends now (and possibly more than friends later) than damage our friendship with ill-advised romantic intentions.

So, we're on hold, and I guess I'm okay with that....

* * * * *

On the classroom front, I give you two conversations, overheard on the same day, within hours of each other.

The first, between two of my ninth grade literature students:

Normal girl: So, are you one of those...gothic people? I mean, you got black hair and black clothes and stuff...

Goth girl: (rolls her eyes) Um, I guess you could call me that if you want. Other people have.

Normal girl: (with a God-fearing and bewildered expression) So, that means you, like, worship the devil?

Goth girl: Nah, I'm an atheist.

Normal girl: (staring blankly, obviously unschooled in this terminology, and probably assuming atheism is some Christian denomination she's never heard of) Oh, okay. That's cool....

The second, between a fourth grader and a seventh grader at my family's karate school:

4th grader: Do you have goth kids at your school?

7th grader: Yeah, we have a couple of them. How 'bout you?

4th grader: Nah...I guess we have a couple of kids who think they're goth....

* * * * *

And, last but certainly not least, on the family front--my niece is due any day now!

There's something about what happens when we talk....

(The title for this post is a direct lyrical lift from Lucinda Williams, so, um...thanks to her)

Texas Biscuit left this comment on my last post:

"I hope you aren't blogging because you've been too busy smiling, laughing, reminiscing, and having a grand old time with HSSH!"

And she was right.

The last two weeks have been a warm, swarming blur of fervent, trembling confessions....hours upon hours of late night conversation over tightly clasped hands....lilting melodic snatches from Nick Cave's Lyre of Orpheus....stolen kisses pilfered behind the freezer door with our hands still in the icebox....HSSH's husky, sexy karaoke rendition of "It Had to Be You"....our subsequent tipsy duet of "All I Ask of You" from Phantom of the Opera....dizzy moments of sustained eye contact straight from the cheesiest chick flick you've ever seen....more smiles and laughs and pleasant dreams than all the hairs on both our heads....

I'm punch-drunk, breathless, giddy, scared to death, and loving every minute!

Old flame

I ventured to write my first sestina the summer I was seventeen, months after my high school sweetheart broke my heart.

I always dreamed HSSH would come back to me--that our love was somehow boundless and eternal--and last fall, he almost proved me right.

But just when I'd decided to make permanent my two-week breakup with ex-boy, and just when HSSH had started falling love with me all over again, ex-boy came crawling back from the seventeen-year-old he'd been wooing.

In a regrettable moment of unintended tit-for-tat, I broke HSSH's heart, though not as severely as he'd broken mine years before, and I flew back to ex-boy on passionate wings.

I never fully trusted ex-boy after that, and I never really stopped thinking about HSSH either, though he finally stopped making friendly conversation with me and fled to New York last spring.

After ex-boy broke up with me last summer for teenager #2, I realized just how much I'd messed up when I'd taken him back nine months earlier. If I'd stayed with HSSH, I thought, I would be happy right now.

I emailed HSSH to tell him all about the breakup and how he'd been right about ex-boy all along; I'm sure I wrote with a subconscious, blind, and desperate hope that my sudden need of him would suffice as evidence that his return to Georgia was absolutely necessary as soon as possible.

HSSH wrote back that he loved his new life in New York, he knew he was where he needed to be, and he'd been dating a girl up there who was more amazing than he ever could have hoped for.

I never considered HSSH a romantic possibility after that, or at least I never meant to--at least until one of our mutual best friends from high school told me HSSH was moving back to Georgia for a large number of personal reasons that I won't detail in this post.

I tried to conceal my excitement, but it was hard. Especially when my family invited him to eat dinner with us over the holidays. There we sat--my mom and stepdad on one side of the table, and HSSH beside me on the other--just like we'd sat on countless earlier occasions.

Since then, my emotional state has been a blurry mess of resurfacing fervor and anxious what-ifs--an uncomfortable condition that finally drove me on Sunday to tell HSSH I'd been preoccupied by thoughts of him lately.

Silence greeted this confession, and I was sure I'd made a misstep; I imagined with dismay how terribly awkward our next chance meeting would be now that he was aware of my renewed feelings for him.

And then he said it: "To be honest, I've been thinking about you too."

Of course there's always a catch--as of Sunday, HSSH was still in New York for another week and still attached to his amazing New York girlfriend, though he doubted their chances of surviving his move to Georgia.

I decided to bide my time and continue my random, alternating spurts of dating and aloneness; either HSSH would give up on ANYGF and dance back into my waiting arms, or they would work things out and I'd still be left to fend for myself, to which I've grown quite accustomed in the last six months.

And yesterday afternoon, this is what gmail held in store for me:

Yo,

I am guessing you are big on the busy with school and school. I'm getting prepped for the big drive on Saturday... Woo!! As anticipated, my questions as to my relationship status upon my return home have been answered. ANYGF has no interest in doing the long distance thing, and I don't believe I would have had interest in it myself anyway, so I will be free to hook up with random girls in bars at my discretion. *cough*

I am looking forward to my return to GA, though I am not exactly sure what all it might hold or how things are going to shake down overall. At any rate, we should get together sometime, if you can fit me into your schedule :)

- HSSH

How convenient - I'll be out of school on Monday, the observed day Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth, and my social calendar just happens to be free. :)

New York, New York!

Okay, y'all. It's taken me a solid week and some change, but I'm finally ready to post photos from my trip. So here goes:


The Richmond, VA holiday skyline, made blurry by rapid van speed and a deliberately slow shutter:
















A foggy morning drive on the Delaware Memorial Bridge:
















M's apartment--outide:





















The cutest studio apartment interior I've ever seen:
















Obligatory photo of the tree at Rockefeller Center, complete with miniature ice skaters:





















CLRH, kissing a pseudo-tree of poinsettias at the aforementioned Rockefeller:




















Just beyond these glimmery banners are those ice skaters I just told you about:
















The underside of the Macy's tree of lights:




















Reflections in a NY subway window, literally:
















Of course I had to post at least one skyline photo:

sad day

I returned to school today to discover that the school server's content-filtering software now blocks gmail, hotmail (yes, I do still have one of those, though I reserve it mostly for bills and junk...), myspace and livejournal (where many of my flesh-and-blood friends blog), and--this is so sad--blogger and blogspot!

I never spent that much at-school time blogging, but now it'll be absolutely none.

So....I won't be able to visit or post nearly as often...not that it was particularly often anyway....

I'll miss you guys...:(

Very soon...

I'll be posting photos of my whirlwind trip to New York City....:)

Merry Christmas!!