until they graduate from elementary school

August 25: Nick keeps telling me that when he tells his coworkers about my job, they want him to relay to me how much they appreciate the work I do. Each time, I just really want to ask them exactly what they are doing to show that appreciation. Are they doing something active about it or just shooting off a vague secondhand compliment to someone they have never seen?

August 26: Today, I was surprised to discover that I am getting a new student. I was not informed until after he was already in my class. It’s hard to tell what to make of Raoul so far. He’s hasn’t talked much and he cried already, but he also got really into classroom agreements Jeopardy and told me his whole life story within the first few hours of knowing him.

August 27: I would have thought by now my kids would have learned to take the things I say with a grain of salt. But, for some reason, they always accept my remarks without any hesitation. Fernando told me earlier that they are all really convinced that what I said about how I became the fifth grade teacher was true. They all believe that we were fighting over who go to be with them. They truly think that Melissa put us through a series of tests to see who would win the opportunity to be their teacher and that I won the arm wrestling contest, the pop quiz, the karaoke contest, and the foot race, but that he won the dance contest.

August 28: Every day this week, the man who lives in the house on the other side of the back yard wall has been yelling at the children. He climbs up a ladder to tell them all to be quiet. A few parents have been fighting with him. Apparently, he has been living there for years and has on and off spells of being weird about it.

August 29: Luna, Milo, and Joanna borrowed my phone at recess. They took selfies and made themselves my lock screen and my background. They told me that I’m not allowed to change either of them until they graduate from elementary school.

August 30: We had our first Fun Friday already. When asked how many children we should prepare for, we were only told “quite a few”. We ended up with 60, twice as much as we were usually sent. It didn’t help that most of them had just come in from recess. They were all overheated and their warm little hands made the slime we handed them instantly melt back into glue.

August 31: I was hoping to get through the first meeting with the new therapist without crying. I think I lasted about ten minutes.




much love,
hedgie

love yourself

August 18:

If anyone every asks me for the favorite book with an explanation—

The Orchid Thief: 
I have always been drawn to peoples’ obsessions and hobbies, the things they choose to be a part of during their few moments of spare time. They often lead to an entire world I knew nothing about with rules and rulers that don’t apply anywhere else. People invest so much time, money, and effort into hobbies they love and it often comes out looking so strange to people who are not a part of it. I always find it fascinating that there are these epic, life-changing events happening right next to us. There are victories, defeats, scandals, and fame—half the time we never even notice that something wonderful or tragic is playing out. These obsessions showed me to never take things at face value. There are stories that seem ordinary and straight-forward but if you keep looking into it, you find facts that flip everything over. What makes a person spend thousands of dollars buying customized wet suits and surfboards so that they can surf with their dogs? Why do people use their free time to practice eating as many hot dogs as they can in ten minutes? Who would work two jobs so that they can open a Bigfoot museum in the middle of the woods that is only open on weekends? Who is willing to let people die to have a single orchid plant? The world is crazy, horrifying, and amazing.
Susan Orleans is the best at venturing into these worlds and exploring them with warmth and an open mind. She can find art, beauty, love, pain, suffering, and humanity in unexpected places most people never give a second thought to. This one in particular goes into the world orchid collecting, and to this day, I can never look at orchids the same. Even the ones they have in the front corner of grocery stores stop me dead in my tracks and I have to go over to look at them. Books like this make me notice things I wouldn’t have otherwise. It makes the world seem magical again. It’s the closet I have ever been able to getting the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, and Santa back. 

Where the Red Fern Grows:
This is the book I was reading when I moved from LA to Orange County, around the time I was ten. I had always liked reading before this, but this was the book that made me realize how powerful words can be. It effected me so physically in a way no book had before, or really has since. It made me ache and was the first book that made me cry. I think I cried on and off for about two weeks after finishing this book. It has played a huge role in what made me want to be a writer. 
This also changed the way that I viewed dogs. They went from being pets to being part of the family as I read this. The only friend I had that first summer after the move was Seana and her brother, Sky. Even though they were entirely different breeds, I pictured Seana as Little Anne—the smaller, prettier, and smarter one. And Sky as the broader and very particular one. When I started reading this book, dogs slept outside. By the time I finished, I was sneaking Seana inside to sleep in my bed with me when I thought my parents were asleep. Dogs soon became my babies, and we know that loving dogs is roughly 40% of my personality. Even at work, they know how to tell which work jacket is mine because it’s coated in dog hair.

August 19: For the first day of school, our main activity was to create the classroom agreements we would focus on this year. They usually went for rules like “don’t bully” and “don’t exclude”. But this year, they focused on positive things they could do. They listed “have fun” and “love yourself”. I was really warmed by this until we had a group chat about why we chose these agreements. Allisson thought that loving yourself was really important because a lot of people are made to hate their bodies, the shape of it and the color of their skin. Milo agreed and added that suicide rates have been going up and they continue to spike every time a celebrity commits suicide.

August 20: Edwin fell asleep about two minutes into meditation. He slept for an hour, right through our chapter book reading, Camp Read-A-Lot, homework, and cleanup. He is much easier to deal with when he is unconscious.

August 21: The instructions said it would take 15 minutes to build the new equipment shed. Our last one broke halfway through the last school year when the part lock latch fell off. Kids spent their recesses shoving each other inside and then leaning against the door so no one could escape. The new one all pops into place with no hinges or nails. It’s so flimsy that the smart kids will be able to bypass the lock, find a seam, and pop it apart with their bare hands.

August 22: At the start of the week, I warned the entire class that I would not be buying replacements for any of the toys that they break. They already popped one of the squish toys. They kept feeding all the liquid through on tiny hole in the fishnet and the net dug into it until it started leaking green goo everywhere. It didn’t even last one full week with them.

August 23: Now that Vivi has Jai’von in her class, she has been the subject of his mom’s resentment. When closing time came and went, Vivi called her to see if she was on her way and how long it would take for her to get here. As soon as she arrived, she started yelling at Vivi for harassing her. Vivi managed to hold it together in from of Jai’von, but as soon as they were out the door, she was the angriest I have ever seen her in the three years we have worked together. She threw he things into her purse shouting that she was wasn’t going to be taking that kind of shit from her.

August 24: I always felt like I stuck out in Orange County. I was too Filipino to be seen as American by most of the people in town. When I went to Chapman, I went to a meeting of the Asian and Pacific Islander Club. I was excited to finally find a place where I felt like I belonged. But when I got there, the Asian side told me that I wasn’t one of them, I was Pacific Islander. The Pacific Islander side told me I didn’t fit in with them either, that I was actually considered Asian. 
I didn’t go to a second meeting.




much love,
hedgie 

for 16 months

August 10: Everything about the Space Needle seemed to be designed to make me uncomfortable. The outer ledges and seats are made out of a thick, clear plastic meant for people to lean back on over 600 feet up in the air. There is also a revolving glass floor that immediately made me feel nauseated and unbalanced. Every foot of the clear sections of floor were covered in people laying on their backs and taking selfies. Every few minutes, people with a vacuum-like contraption clean off all smudges and fingerprints.

August 11: I think I reached peak Seattle Tourist. I worked on my novel in a Starbucks while it was raining.

August 12: Every year, we go through the same online trainings at work. They go over how to handle conflict in the workplace, how to keep an office safe, and how to avoid sexual harassment. This year, they added a new one: how to survive an active shooting.

August 13: There is going to be one less 5th grade teacher than usual this year. Now there will be 30 kids in each of these classes.

August 14: We all have our own individual desks in the bungalow this year. Melissa and Ana decided to do this in hopes it will prevent us from taking over too much space and going into what is meant for others. I don’t think that will stop Connie. They also did it to separate Fernando and Jen from talking too much. They are setting me between them.

August 15: I finished the first draft of Panning For Pyrite today. I keep going back and forth between being excited and terrified. I don’t know how I am supposed to feel after finishing such a huge step after working on it for 16 months.

August 16: I got sick just in time for the start of the school year. I caught what Nick spent a week claiming was just his “allergies”. Now my throat feels like it’s been worked on by a cheese grater and I can’t breathe out of my nose.

August 17: I already have enough people who don’t love me in my life. I don’t see why I have to invite more of them in and why I have to just accept it. Why do I have to be the adult and forgive the 60-year old man who still acts like a child and hasn’t even apologized to me?
Recently, he has been asking me to show him the first draft of my book. I already told him no in person and now he has written on my facebook wall and called himself my family too. After Nick talked to him about him making me feel uncared for and like he wishes I wasn’t there, his apparent way of fixing this isn’t him saying sorry, but for me to give him something extremely personal and vulnerable. And then they way he did it on Facebook, there’s no real way I can reject him without me looking like the asshole. Plus, I’ve seen the way he reacts to books written by family members. I want no part in it. I spent five minutes listening to the entire family talk about Lisa’s books. They said that they read random parts out loud to each other to make fun of it. They said they never finished reading the entire thing. They said they gave them away and would never have them on their bookshelves. I never heard a single nice comment from any of them.




much love,
hedgie

let’s talk about whoooooores!

August 1: Heidi was worried about eating her fried pickles too soon. She held one cupped in two hands, gently blowing and looking like she was playing the harmonica. They were still hot and she had a habit of not being able to wait long enough for the oil to cool and end up blistering the roof of her mouth. She would spend the next few days dealing with the chandelier of dead gums that hung just behind her incisors.

August 2: Wiggins has been following behind me so closely that his little nose bumps against the back of my calves when I come to a sudden stop.

August 3: We drove back to San Francisco through the part of California that where the heat was in the triple digits and larges stretches of land alternate between prisons and cow farms. I’m not sure which was the more out of place things we saw today, a car pulled over onto the freeway that was completely on fire or the car that had so many pine tree air fresheners that the owner ran out of room on the review mirror and dangled more from a command utility hook installed in the windshield.

August 4: I have been missing my kids so much these last few weeks. I’m so excited to see them again, but I also have a feeling that within the first half hour I will wonder why I missed them so much.

August 5: On the first day back, they had us do a scavenger hunt. We had to take a selfie in front of the church that started our program, get Eddie’s signature from his second desk at Muddy Waters, and awkwardly ask people on the street for a money donation to Mission Graduates.

August 6: The minimum wage rate in Mission Graduates has gone up to $18 an hour. Which sounds great, but it’s been making returning staff anxious. It’s all anyone talked about during the lunch breaks of training. A lot of us spent years here and aren’t even at that much. They worry we will be making the same amount as people coming in this year.

August 7: Mission Graduates is opening a new school at Cleveland. A new site plus a lot of staff leaving means we have been meeting a lot of new people this week. Melissa hired someone named Diego to replace Maria. We have not met him yet and they say he won’t be here until two weeks into the school year. We are starting to suspect that he is not real.

August 8: We were sat outside along the water’s edge where the seagulls could watch us with anticipation while we ate our mound of crab legs, sausage slices, potatoes, and shrimp. We both wore bibs and were armed with wooden mallets to break apart the shells before dumping them into the metal bowl in the middle of the table. Despite how cold it got after the sun set, our butter managed to stay liquid for half an hour before it congealed over and we had to ask for more.

August 9: After a fire destroyed 31 blocks of Seattle, the city decided to rebuild on top of what was destroyed. The streets were elevated that what used to be the ground floor of buildings were now underground. We took a tour of the deserted underground levels of these buildings. The tour guide was named Serene because her mother wanted a calm, quiet child. This guide belted out every sentence she said like if was the chorus of the title song in a Broadway musical. “Let’s talk about whoooooores!” sang, her voice echoing in the empty cambers around us. Then she told us about all the not very successful ways that prostitutes tried to avoid pregnancy, including shoving metal coins and half a lemon up what she referred to as their “squish mitten”.




much love,
hedgie