March 24: Two other couples on the river didn’t follow the directions of staying at least 50 feet away from all wildlife. They found two Canadian geese perched on a tiny rock island and paddled right up to them. As the two birds flew away, one let out a high-pitched squat while the second emitted a low, rhythmic hum, like someone had accidentally left it on vibrate.
March 25: When they fought, he said hurtful things to her that he never took back. He would tell her she was selfish and that she ruined the entire weekend because she refused to let things go. After they made up, he would tell her how fun she was and how much he loved her. He never understood why she didn’t feel better or believe him. He never said he was sorry for saying those things or that he didn’t really mean them, it was just stupid things that came out in the heat of the moment. He just hoped saying nice things would balance it out. But, to her, it was like he found a mound of shit inside and was spraying it with Febreeze, hoping no one would notice. It didn’t address the real problem they were facing.
March 26: Nick and I have been wanting to watch “Murder, She Wrote” while we are staying out here. The town must have gotten a lot of attention for being the filming place of Jessica Fletcher’s home town because this is the second night we have found a marathon of this show on cable access.
March 27: You didn’t wait for me to give you the key to my heart. You broke in through the back window and squatted there for five years.
March 28: They found this place by accident. The story goes that they were looking for Fort Bragg and made a wrong turn. They found a beautiful place they were never looking for and it became my childhood. It’s strange being here now because I remember days feeling so long then. We spent hours fishing, hiking, playing board games and whatever else we could think of to fill in the daylight hours. Now, a week has past and it feels like we just got here.
March 29: The Mendocino Coast Model Railroad and Historical Society put so much effort into their elaborate model train. They have one scene depicting how loggers would use a series of ropes and pulleys to get the trunks of Redwood trees onto the train cars. They made a tilting model of the Point Arena Lighthouse to represent its destruction during the 1906 earthquake. One of the trains transporting lumber had a little dog napping in the sun to represent Boomer Jack, a dog that rode the rails his entire life and even made a cross-country trip. There were also several train cars full of minion.
March 30: When Nick and I moved in together, we only had the one wineglass I owned. I kept offering to buy a second one, but Nick liked us sharing the one whenever we had wine with dinner. His coworker recently gave us two crystal red wine glasses. Nick broke my original wine glass and this weekend, Christiana broke the remaining two.
March 31: He compartmentalizes when things go badly. He can block it away and forget about it. But he doesn’t just block out the problem, he blocks her out too. She is forced to stand outside alone wondering why he won’t let her in and what she did wrong.
much love,
hedgie
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Saturday, March 23, 2019
bigger, stronger, and louder
March 16: Sometimes Nick will offer to do all the work around the house so that I can have time to write. But then he still asks for my help to cook, do the dishes, put away laundry, and walk the dogs. He takes on a little bit more than half the work in a way that is meant to thank me for all the extra work I have had to do since I got forced to live somewhere I don’t want to. Then when I say that he isn’t really doing all the work, he complains that I don’t thank him enough for something he is only doing to balance out our power struggle. He tells me I can’t reasonably expect him to actually do everything, but he makes me do it when he goes on work trips. He doesn’t understand how abandoned I am here.
March 17: It was strange watching people today. Walking the dogs, I walked past little old ladies who were very carefully dressed in outfits that displayed a green blouse or a green headband. Across the street were groups of drunk college students wearing onesies and screaming loud enough that I could hear every word.
March 18: I saw Mr. Josh returning to the school with one of the regular behavioral students. They both had smoothies from Charlie’s. Going off campus to get a treat is one of the prizes behavioral students can save up for. The kid kept kicking Mr. Josh as they went through the gate. Mr. Josh kept suggesting he stop, but laughed the entire time. The kid didn’t take him seriously and continued kicking him until I went into the bungalow and couldn’t see them anymore. The teachers keep wondering why the behavior has gotten so bad this year. They don’t get that the standards for students haven’t gotten harder to achieve. They are at the same minimum effort bar they were two years ago. Returning to the class alone awards them point. But now they are bigger, stronger, and louder with no reason to try harder.
March 19: I spent two hours looking through old notes and documents to find out exactly when I came off Zoloft. I’m just so tired of Nick using it as an excuse to why we are arguing so much. He seems to think I cam off Zoloft before the wedding because that’s when things started to fall apart again. Turns out, I didn’t start weening off of it until months later when we returned from our honeymoon. I started lower dosages in January and was completely off of it in March.
March 20: Room 311 finally broke Teacher Patel. He was in the room a lot during my class yesterday and Miss Karina came in later and they had a weirdly long and quiet talk while I was still there. Before he left, he wrote a long note on the board explaining to his students that he would not be here tomorrow and that he was gone because he is sick, not because he is mad at them. I only found out today that he screamed at them yesterday. Miss Jen could hear him yelling when she was in a different classroom. He made a few kids cry. A few people wonder if he is actually sick or if he was asked to take the next day off.
March 21: The girls were excited for spa day that it wasn’t relaxing at all. They were too excited for every product I brought out that they all immediately fought over it—face masks, nail polish, tea, yoga mats. Even when they finally lay down quietly and I went around putting little slices of cucumbers on their eyes, Briana started screaming because they were slightly chilled.
March 22: Melissa printed out copies of the Girl Power quote booklet and left them in the teacher’s lounge so that everyone could see them. It was nice to have teachers who normally ignore me stop me in the hallway to say how much they liked them. The girls were very confused when the same thing kept happening to them
March 23: Our rental is half of a tiny house away from the main building and past the llamas on the property. The sign describes the llamas as rarely spitting on people and having a high-pitched scream. This has not set me at ease about staying there. The main thing comforting me now if the long line of muddy paw prints leading back and forth on the lone road that leads to this part of the property.
much love,
hedgie
March 17: It was strange watching people today. Walking the dogs, I walked past little old ladies who were very carefully dressed in outfits that displayed a green blouse or a green headband. Across the street were groups of drunk college students wearing onesies and screaming loud enough that I could hear every word.
March 18: I saw Mr. Josh returning to the school with one of the regular behavioral students. They both had smoothies from Charlie’s. Going off campus to get a treat is one of the prizes behavioral students can save up for. The kid kept kicking Mr. Josh as they went through the gate. Mr. Josh kept suggesting he stop, but laughed the entire time. The kid didn’t take him seriously and continued kicking him until I went into the bungalow and couldn’t see them anymore. The teachers keep wondering why the behavior has gotten so bad this year. They don’t get that the standards for students haven’t gotten harder to achieve. They are at the same minimum effort bar they were two years ago. Returning to the class alone awards them point. But now they are bigger, stronger, and louder with no reason to try harder.
March 19: I spent two hours looking through old notes and documents to find out exactly when I came off Zoloft. I’m just so tired of Nick using it as an excuse to why we are arguing so much. He seems to think I cam off Zoloft before the wedding because that’s when things started to fall apart again. Turns out, I didn’t start weening off of it until months later when we returned from our honeymoon. I started lower dosages in January and was completely off of it in March.
March 20: Room 311 finally broke Teacher Patel. He was in the room a lot during my class yesterday and Miss Karina came in later and they had a weirdly long and quiet talk while I was still there. Before he left, he wrote a long note on the board explaining to his students that he would not be here tomorrow and that he was gone because he is sick, not because he is mad at them. I only found out today that he screamed at them yesterday. Miss Jen could hear him yelling when she was in a different classroom. He made a few kids cry. A few people wonder if he is actually sick or if he was asked to take the next day off.
March 21: The girls were excited for spa day that it wasn’t relaxing at all. They were too excited for every product I brought out that they all immediately fought over it—face masks, nail polish, tea, yoga mats. Even when they finally lay down quietly and I went around putting little slices of cucumbers on their eyes, Briana started screaming because they were slightly chilled.
March 22: Melissa printed out copies of the Girl Power quote booklet and left them in the teacher’s lounge so that everyone could see them. It was nice to have teachers who normally ignore me stop me in the hallway to say how much they liked them. The girls were very confused when the same thing kept happening to them
March 23: Our rental is half of a tiny house away from the main building and past the llamas on the property. The sign describes the llamas as rarely spitting on people and having a high-pitched scream. This has not set me at ease about staying there. The main thing comforting me now if the long line of muddy paw prints leading back and forth on the lone road that leads to this part of the property.
much love,
hedgie
Friday, March 15, 2019
birthday bereavement cards
March 8: Nick’s Grandpa Bob died this afternoon. We were planning on going out there tomorrow morning to see him one last time. Nick has never lost anyone before and I worry that he will feel guilty that he wasn’t there in his last moments. But the truth is that it wouldn’t really have been him. His real last goodbye is the way we both picture him in our minds when someone says his name. How he was before he lost all the weight, before the urine drainage bags poked out of the bottom of his robe, and when he still performed magic tricks for us while telling stories about watching women pretending to drown in front of Errol Flynn’s boat in hopes he would bring them on board. Tonight, we schnapps drank in his honor from the silver shot glasses he gave us as a wedding present, the ones he was given on his wedding where tradition dictated he had to drink a shot of schnapps with every guest. He tried to take precautions, but it didn’t amount to much. He drank olive oil beforehand to limit how much alcohol absorbed into his body. He bride tried to pour him tiny shots, but her hand often slipped. Before the end of the night, he was sloshed.
March 9: Mom texted me that Odell also died yesterday. Today is Grannie’s 84th birthday. Nick and I FaceTimed with her. She told us that he went peacefully, which she was grateful for because he had been in pain for so long. She handed the phone to my mom so that she could flip to the back camera and pan over the living room table full of flowers and cards. In a moment of dark humor that I realized my brothers, father, and I all must have inherited from her, she called them her birthday bereavement cards and gave a small chuckle. In Odell’s honor, we ate popcorn, one of the four different foods he would willingly eat.
March 10: The vet said Addie’s rash is most likely caused by her licking herself too much. She suggested that we put a cone on her for two weeks and see if that clears things up. At first, we tried the regular plastic cone of shame. Her ears couldn’t fit in it and she couldn’t walk through a doorway or jump on the couch without the lip catching on something. Then we got her an inflatable one, which looks like a life vest. She seems to enjoy this one more. It’s like she has a pillow everywhere she goes. She almost looks like an oil painting of someone wearing a ruff.
March 11: All day the kids have been obsessed with this banana song, which makes them all scream “I’m a banana” and “No, I’m a banana” at each other in the most annoying voice they can figure out how to do. It caused a fist fight.
March 12: I tasked the girls with making kindness fortune tellers. My example included sentences like “you are kind”, “you are strong”, and “you will succeed”. They had difficulty writing out nice fortunes. Nancy G. tried to write in “you are freaking ugly” when I wasn’t looking. When Rosa finished, she held it out to me. I picked, purple, 2, and 6. She opened the paper flap and announced that my house won’t explode.
March 13: The STEM challenge today was for them to make the tallest free-standing tower they could out of fifteen balloons and a few feet of tape. I had meant to use painter’s tape, but the roll Ana handed me that morning was stronger than expected. When the kids decided to change the structure of their towers, they popped them when trying to pry them apart. One group ended the challenge with only five surviving balloons. Luckily, they thought this was hilarious and very proudly showed off their 18 inch tall tower to the rest of the class.
March 14: Briana has absolutely no self-control. She is like a baby in a way, always grabbing whatever passes in front of her, and often tucking it into her mouth. She did that with a scoop of Vaseline when we made lip balm a few weeks ago. Today, we made stress balls out of balloons, cornstarch, and water. She got too excited and grabbed at the balloon when there was only cornstarch in it. A powdery spray erupted out of it, her face and hair instantly coated in white.
March 15: We made marshmallow constellations of the Big and Little Dipper so that my students could locate the North Star at night. I wanted to take pictures of their creations for the newsletter, but that idea got ruined when I gave them a sharpie to write their names on their papers and five out of six of them also wrote THERE ARE 14! DO NOT TOUCH! to keep their younger siblings from stealing their marshmallows.
much love,
hedgie
March 9: Mom texted me that Odell also died yesterday. Today is Grannie’s 84th birthday. Nick and I FaceTimed with her. She told us that he went peacefully, which she was grateful for because he had been in pain for so long. She handed the phone to my mom so that she could flip to the back camera and pan over the living room table full of flowers and cards. In a moment of dark humor that I realized my brothers, father, and I all must have inherited from her, she called them her birthday bereavement cards and gave a small chuckle. In Odell’s honor, we ate popcorn, one of the four different foods he would willingly eat.
March 10: The vet said Addie’s rash is most likely caused by her licking herself too much. She suggested that we put a cone on her for two weeks and see if that clears things up. At first, we tried the regular plastic cone of shame. Her ears couldn’t fit in it and she couldn’t walk through a doorway or jump on the couch without the lip catching on something. Then we got her an inflatable one, which looks like a life vest. She seems to enjoy this one more. It’s like she has a pillow everywhere she goes. She almost looks like an oil painting of someone wearing a ruff.
March 11: All day the kids have been obsessed with this banana song, which makes them all scream “I’m a banana” and “No, I’m a banana” at each other in the most annoying voice they can figure out how to do. It caused a fist fight.
March 12: I tasked the girls with making kindness fortune tellers. My example included sentences like “you are kind”, “you are strong”, and “you will succeed”. They had difficulty writing out nice fortunes. Nancy G. tried to write in “you are freaking ugly” when I wasn’t looking. When Rosa finished, she held it out to me. I picked, purple, 2, and 6. She opened the paper flap and announced that my house won’t explode.
March 13: The STEM challenge today was for them to make the tallest free-standing tower they could out of fifteen balloons and a few feet of tape. I had meant to use painter’s tape, but the roll Ana handed me that morning was stronger than expected. When the kids decided to change the structure of their towers, they popped them when trying to pry them apart. One group ended the challenge with only five surviving balloons. Luckily, they thought this was hilarious and very proudly showed off their 18 inch tall tower to the rest of the class.
March 14: Briana has absolutely no self-control. She is like a baby in a way, always grabbing whatever passes in front of her, and often tucking it into her mouth. She did that with a scoop of Vaseline when we made lip balm a few weeks ago. Today, we made stress balls out of balloons, cornstarch, and water. She got too excited and grabbed at the balloon when there was only cornstarch in it. A powdery spray erupted out of it, her face and hair instantly coated in white.
March 15: We made marshmallow constellations of the Big and Little Dipper so that my students could locate the North Star at night. I wanted to take pictures of their creations for the newsletter, but that idea got ruined when I gave them a sharpie to write their names on their papers and five out of six of them also wrote THERE ARE 14! DO NOT TOUCH! to keep their younger siblings from stealing their marshmallows.
much love,
hedgie
Thursday, March 7, 2019
rigging the dr. seuss day raffle
March 1: Miss Connie rigged the Dr. Seuss day raffle for the tall, red and white striped hats. While all the other teacher’s folded their kids’ names, Miss Connie rolled hers and then insisted on being the one to do the drawing. All six of her leftover kids one. She posed them in a line and took their photos afterwards.
March 2: And the times that she drank too much, it felt almost exactly like riding The Gravitron. Gravity would feel heavier to the point where she had trouble holding her head up. She would feel dizzy and stumble into bed, where it felt like she was somehow strapped in tightly under belts when there was nothing on top of her
March 3: The first thing she did when she got home was wash her hands. The bathroom had a white porcelain corner sink with two taps, one for hot water and one for cold water. It never ceased to amaze her how disgusting her hands were at the end of the day. They would look perfectly fine when she glanced at them, but when she lathered her hands with soap and rinsed them, the water carried with it everything she had done that day. It was stained dark brown from dirt and asphalt. It would be colored a little by the blue dry erase markers or red paint she had used that day, always dark and murky on the perfect gleam of the sink basin.
March 4: We closed twenty minutes ago, but I still had three kids. When Luna’s mom finally arrived, she started off by apologizing, but then told Ana that she really should have texted all the parents this morning if she wanted them to remember. Ana told her that she used to do this, but it just made parents angry that she sent to many texts, like they couldn’t be trusted with the well-being of their children. Luna’s mom completely overlooked the flier we sent home two weeks ago, the notice she signed last to week to say that she understood we closed early this week, the verbal reminding from me on Friday, and Ana’s text over the weekend. She thinks it is our duty to remind her five times that her daughter needs to go home by five. We think it is her duty to write down her own reminder of something that has been happening for twice a year since her child started school.
March 5: The school has two librarians, one of which I want to fight in the parking lot. The other one is very kind. She has spent the entire book fair helping students pay for the books they wanted when they couldn’t afford it. She was telling me how Abel had come in everyday to look at the gem book and how she was going to get it for him on Friday if his mother wasn’t able to. It made us all the more angry with him when during snack, I found him playing with the amethyst stone that came from the floor copy of the gem book.
March 6: At the Book Fair, Jai’von bought the pocket book of pranks, which no one should have let happen. A plastic pocket on the cover equipped the book with a fake cockroach, two flies, and three maggots. He spent his recess thumbing through the pages, looking for the perfect prank. Unfortunately, he did not spend the same amount of time looking for his perfect audience. He presented Gavin with a stick of gum that turned out to be the crumbs of an old cookie wrapped in foil. Gavin immediately punched him in the face.
March 7: Kiara’s mom seems to be convinced that the main aspect of my job is to be a valet service for children. At first, she would call me to send Kiara down and spending a long time talking about how she recently had a knee problem and couldn’t walk up all the stairs to sign her out. Now, she just texts me and lies, saying that the grandmother is the one there so I won’t judge her for refusing to come up.
much love,
hedgie
March 2: And the times that she drank too much, it felt almost exactly like riding The Gravitron. Gravity would feel heavier to the point where she had trouble holding her head up. She would feel dizzy and stumble into bed, where it felt like she was somehow strapped in tightly under belts when there was nothing on top of her
March 3: The first thing she did when she got home was wash her hands. The bathroom had a white porcelain corner sink with two taps, one for hot water and one for cold water. It never ceased to amaze her how disgusting her hands were at the end of the day. They would look perfectly fine when she glanced at them, but when she lathered her hands with soap and rinsed them, the water carried with it everything she had done that day. It was stained dark brown from dirt and asphalt. It would be colored a little by the blue dry erase markers or red paint she had used that day, always dark and murky on the perfect gleam of the sink basin.
March 4: We closed twenty minutes ago, but I still had three kids. When Luna’s mom finally arrived, she started off by apologizing, but then told Ana that she really should have texted all the parents this morning if she wanted them to remember. Ana told her that she used to do this, but it just made parents angry that she sent to many texts, like they couldn’t be trusted with the well-being of their children. Luna’s mom completely overlooked the flier we sent home two weeks ago, the notice she signed last to week to say that she understood we closed early this week, the verbal reminding from me on Friday, and Ana’s text over the weekend. She thinks it is our duty to remind her five times that her daughter needs to go home by five. We think it is her duty to write down her own reminder of something that has been happening for twice a year since her child started school.
March 5: The school has two librarians, one of which I want to fight in the parking lot. The other one is very kind. She has spent the entire book fair helping students pay for the books they wanted when they couldn’t afford it. She was telling me how Abel had come in everyday to look at the gem book and how she was going to get it for him on Friday if his mother wasn’t able to. It made us all the more angry with him when during snack, I found him playing with the amethyst stone that came from the floor copy of the gem book.
March 6: At the Book Fair, Jai’von bought the pocket book of pranks, which no one should have let happen. A plastic pocket on the cover equipped the book with a fake cockroach, two flies, and three maggots. He spent his recess thumbing through the pages, looking for the perfect prank. Unfortunately, he did not spend the same amount of time looking for his perfect audience. He presented Gavin with a stick of gum that turned out to be the crumbs of an old cookie wrapped in foil. Gavin immediately punched him in the face.
March 7: Kiara’s mom seems to be convinced that the main aspect of my job is to be a valet service for children. At first, she would call me to send Kiara down and spending a long time talking about how she recently had a knee problem and couldn’t walk up all the stairs to sign her out. Now, she just texts me and lies, saying that the grandmother is the one there so I won’t judge her for refusing to come up.
much love,
hedgie
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