November 17: Maria’s class are making little super hero versions of themselves. Some of their super powers include crying and hyper scream.
November 18: Nick made us start the drive to Mission Viejo at six this morning. I immediately fell asleep in the car for four hours, but I still don’t love Nick anymore.
November 19: We had Nick’s dream birthday party: board games and all food stuffs are covered in melted cheese.
November 20: Katie had a severe hangover after Nick’s birthday party. She, Dylan, and I went out to Irvine to get some ramen and watch surprisingly graceful sumo wrestling.
November 21: The server at Casa Franco’s shaved off his mohawk. I almost didn’t recognize him. Everything is now officially fixed from when that car drove in through their front wall.
November 22: Nick took dad and me to the Venice Beach Google office. Nick had a conference call, but dad and I found a quiet room in the rounded section of the building’s binoculars that was full of beanbags and one giant light bulb hanging from the ceiling to write in.
November 23: We started drinking by lunchtime and the only note I had in my phone for the entire day was: “Ghost haunting poop—unfinished business”.
much love,
hedgie
Thursday, November 23, 2017
Thursday, November 16, 2017
i feel like fire
November 10: Nick’s dad decided to call his brother that Nick and I did not invite to the wedding on speaker phone. He brought up the fact that we didn’t invite him to the wedding twice. I feel like he’s trying to start a feud between everyone. He knows that so many of his family members have refused to speak for decades over smaller things.
November 11: I never thought that I would ever write the phrase “a giant golden dick” on my wedding gift thank you cards, but here I am now.
November 12: Nick bought me a plain rose gold band so that I can have a full set of rings to wear at work that won’t scratch my kids. I love it. Now our rings also match a little now since Nick’s wedding ring is wood and rose gold.
November 13: For a team building exercise, Melissa lead up in a group MadLib. We ended up writing about expensive summer vacations where people hunt teachers and parents ate teachers for dinner.
November 14: When we got into our discussion groups, Eddie told us we had three minutes to go around and each share our biggest mistake. Miss Connie went first, saying that her biggest mistake was putting the wedding ring onto her husband’s finger.
November 15: Briana wrote a beautiful and heartbreaking poem in Scores Poetry today.
“I feel like fire because I don’t have my dad. He is in another country and my dad is sad. When I am eleven years old, I can go to the other country where he lives.”
November 16: Nancy Q. and Kaylee got had a huge falling out over something that one of them did in kindergarten. Melissa had to lead a peace talk for something that happened half of their lives ago.
much love,
hedgie
November 11: I never thought that I would ever write the phrase “a giant golden dick” on my wedding gift thank you cards, but here I am now.
November 12: Nick bought me a plain rose gold band so that I can have a full set of rings to wear at work that won’t scratch my kids. I love it. Now our rings also match a little now since Nick’s wedding ring is wood and rose gold.
November 13: For a team building exercise, Melissa lead up in a group MadLib. We ended up writing about expensive summer vacations where people hunt teachers and parents ate teachers for dinner.
November 14: When we got into our discussion groups, Eddie told us we had three minutes to go around and each share our biggest mistake. Miss Connie went first, saying that her biggest mistake was putting the wedding ring onto her husband’s finger.
November 15: Briana wrote a beautiful and heartbreaking poem in Scores Poetry today.
“I feel like fire because I don’t have my dad. He is in another country and my dad is sad. When I am eleven years old, I can go to the other country where he lives.”
November 16: Nancy Q. and Kaylee got had a huge falling out over something that one of them did in kindergarten. Melissa had to lead a peace talk for something that happened half of their lives ago.
much love,
hedgie
Thursday, November 9, 2017
hell has cell service
November 1: Everyone is still on edge today. Yesterday, a woman wandered to the school’s front gate, claiming that god had sent her here to rescue the children. She intercepted a woman who was picking up her niece early and tried to run off with the first grader.
November 2: María was sick today, so I taught her fall art elective class. Her first graders cry almost as much as my third graders do. Almost.
November 3: Nick and I drove through a car wash while playing “Car Wash” on Nick’s iPhone. We thought it was funny. Addie and George did not enjoy it as much.
November 4: We had breakfast with Nick’s paternal grandparents this morning. They kept going on about immigrants stealing jobs, so I excused myself to the bathroom. Their bathroom had personalized towels with matching bars of soap. Is that what rich people do? Monogram their soap?
November 5:
November 7: I hit my first NaNoWriMo word count today. 10,000 words, which means Nick and I went to the Silent Reading Party. We saw Daniel Handler again. We cannot shake that guy off.
November 8: Ms. Jay strummed her guitar and had the kids repeat after her as she sang. It was pretty straight forwards until she got to the free style part of the song and started complaining about how her birthday was yesterday and her grandson called her and talked to her for an hour without mentioning her birthday once. My 8-year-olds were not quite sure how to react to that.
November 9: The sun sets before 5:30 now. It is dark before program closes. It has been putting the kids in the mood to tell spooky stories. Jai’von tried to scare everyone by claiming he saw a little girl outside the window when he was going to the bathroom. It worked for awhile until I pointed out that we are in a school and seeing little girls is actually quite common
much love,
hedgie
November 2: María was sick today, so I taught her fall art elective class. Her first graders cry almost as much as my third graders do. Almost.
November 3: Nick and I drove through a car wash while playing “Car Wash” on Nick’s iPhone. We thought it was funny. Addie and George did not enjoy it as much.
November 4: We had breakfast with Nick’s paternal grandparents this morning. They kept going on about immigrants stealing jobs, so I excused myself to the bathroom. Their bathroom had personalized towels with matching bars of soap. Is that what rich people do? Monogram their soap?
November 5:
Me: I’m currently in a room full of people who watch Fox News. I’m in the Twilight Zone.
Dad: Still at the in-laws’?
Me: Where else could I be?
Dad: Hell?
Me: I really doubt hell has cell service.
November 6: Abel uses a strange mixture of letters and numbers when he writes. It’s like trying to read hieroglyphics when he writes his daily journal entry. It’s actually pretty amazing because he can actually read it and probably is the only one who can.November 7: I hit my first NaNoWriMo word count today. 10,000 words, which means Nick and I went to the Silent Reading Party. We saw Daniel Handler again. We cannot shake that guy off.
November 8: Ms. Jay strummed her guitar and had the kids repeat after her as she sang. It was pretty straight forwards until she got to the free style part of the song and started complaining about how her birthday was yesterday and her grandson called her and talked to her for an hour without mentioning her birthday once. My 8-year-olds were not quite sure how to react to that.
November 9: The sun sets before 5:30 now. It is dark before program closes. It has been putting the kids in the mood to tell spooky stories. Jai’von tried to scare everyone by claiming he saw a little girl outside the window when he was going to the bathroom. It worked for awhile until I pointed out that we are in a school and seeing little girls is actually quite common
much love,
hedgie
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
whose grandmother was i smelling?
October 24: My students have come up with a lot of nicknames to refer to people in my dad’s class without having to actually learn their names. They call my dad KFC because they think he looks like Colonel Sanders. They favorite students to pick on are Harry Potter and Snorlax.
October 25: Jai'von has little control over his own butt. When all the other students manage to sit in a circle for community time, most kids have issues with staying at the edge of the circle and not creeping towards the center. Given just slowly leans forward until his forehead rests on the carpet, his butt up in the air and slowly swaying in circles.
October 26: We did the whisper challenge today and 90% of the sentences my kids wrote were about poop.
October 27: Flipping through the stained and dog-eared pages of Carter Beats the Devil, I found remnants of my life from the last time I read it. One item was a photo of dad, mom, Ryan, Dylan, and me standing in front of Buchanan Castle in Scotland. It was back before I had glasses and Dylan grew his hair out. Ryan had no tattoos and mom and dad looked so much younger.
October 28: I got a pixie cut today. My hair is so used to being weighed down by longer locks that it is defying gravity and refusing to lie flat. It sticks straight out like I have been struck through with lightning.
October 29: I have been banned from playing certain board games because I play with an objective that is different from what the rules state. My family stopped playing Masterpiece because I would only buy paintings I liked and then refuse to sell. In Kingdomino, I kept buying all the tracts of land that had a cryptozoological creature in it.
October 30: The kids have given me mixed reviews of my hair. A few of them told me it was weird, while more of them starting calling me Mr. Heather. Mostly, they are horrified because I told them that my hair just fell out over the weekend.
October 31: The Color Factory opened with a room that had a wall of strips and scratch and sniff stickers that went along with olfactory memories for each color. The yellow stripe had theater popcorn, a picnic on a sunny day, and grandmother’s perfume. As I knelled down to sniff the last one, I couldn’t help but wonder whose grandmother I was smelling.
much love,
hedgie
October 25: Jai'von has little control over his own butt. When all the other students manage to sit in a circle for community time, most kids have issues with staying at the edge of the circle and not creeping towards the center. Given just slowly leans forward until his forehead rests on the carpet, his butt up in the air and slowly swaying in circles.
October 26: We did the whisper challenge today and 90% of the sentences my kids wrote were about poop.
October 27: Flipping through the stained and dog-eared pages of Carter Beats the Devil, I found remnants of my life from the last time I read it. One item was a photo of dad, mom, Ryan, Dylan, and me standing in front of Buchanan Castle in Scotland. It was back before I had glasses and Dylan grew his hair out. Ryan had no tattoos and mom and dad looked so much younger.
October 28: I got a pixie cut today. My hair is so used to being weighed down by longer locks that it is defying gravity and refusing to lie flat. It sticks straight out like I have been struck through with lightning.
October 29: I have been banned from playing certain board games because I play with an objective that is different from what the rules state. My family stopped playing Masterpiece because I would only buy paintings I liked and then refuse to sell. In Kingdomino, I kept buying all the tracts of land that had a cryptozoological creature in it.
October 30: The kids have given me mixed reviews of my hair. A few of them told me it was weird, while more of them starting calling me Mr. Heather. Mostly, they are horrified because I told them that my hair just fell out over the weekend.
October 31: The Color Factory opened with a room that had a wall of strips and scratch and sniff stickers that went along with olfactory memories for each color. The yellow stripe had theater popcorn, a picnic on a sunny day, and grandmother’s perfume. As I knelled down to sniff the last one, I couldn’t help but wonder whose grandmother I was smelling.
much love,
hedgie
Monday, October 23, 2017
replicant
October 17: The smoke in the air had been so thick while we were away that all of our clean dishes drying near the open window were now coated in a layer of ash.
October 18: Ryan Gosling being a replicant actually makes a lot more sense than him being human
October 19: It’s strangely easy to forget the huge life event that took place a week ago. I will only suddenly remember that we are married when I reach over to hold Nick’s hand and feel his ring in between my fingertips.
October 20: My coworkers now suspect that I may be a murderer. Miss Connie brought in a few milk jugs to make ghosts with her students. I sighed loudly and told her that the correct way to make ghosts was to brutally murder someone. Melissa stopped writing on the whiteboard mid-sentence to turn about and say, “Jesus christ, Heather.”
October 21: I received my first ever jury summons. It told me to report to the Orange County City Hall on December 5th. I filled out an online form to disqualify myself since I do not live in that region anymore. It is my first time selecting ‘married’ on an official document.
October 22: Addie has scabs dotting her forehead from where is repeatedly jabbed her face into Joshua trees while looking for dead things to eat. When the dried up clumps fall come off, they take a fistful of fur with them.
October 23: Nick's sister was going at 6 for an hour or two to see some old friends and wanted to know if we would still be up when she got back. At 8. How old does she think we are?
much love,
hedgie
October 18: Ryan Gosling being a replicant actually makes a lot more sense than him being human
October 19: It’s strangely easy to forget the huge life event that took place a week ago. I will only suddenly remember that we are married when I reach over to hold Nick’s hand and feel his ring in between my fingertips.
October 20: My coworkers now suspect that I may be a murderer. Miss Connie brought in a few milk jugs to make ghosts with her students. I sighed loudly and told her that the correct way to make ghosts was to brutally murder someone. Melissa stopped writing on the whiteboard mid-sentence to turn about and say, “Jesus christ, Heather.”
October 21: I received my first ever jury summons. It told me to report to the Orange County City Hall on December 5th. I filled out an online form to disqualify myself since I do not live in that region anymore. It is my first time selecting ‘married’ on an official document.
October 22: Addie has scabs dotting her forehead from where is repeatedly jabbed her face into Joshua trees while looking for dead things to eat. When the dried up clumps fall come off, they take a fistful of fur with them.
October 23: Nick's sister was going at 6 for an hour or two to see some old friends and wanted to know if we would still be up when she got back. At 8. How old does she think we are?
much love,
hedgie
Monday, October 16, 2017
pretending to have a seizure
October 9: Nick’s dad has been insisting on taking a few minutes in the middle of the ceremony to bless our union. For months, he has refused to take no for an answer. Ryan and Dylan suggest we have a backup plan in case he manages to grab the mic and have his way. A plan that involves me popping a few aka seltzer tablets into my mouth and then pretending to have a seizure.
October 10: California has two seasons: perfect and on fire. It is currently on fire.
October 11: Heidi has a kiddie pool and two stunt kites in the trunk of her car, so she’s pretty much ready for anything.
October 12: The sound that emitted from the quartz bowls in The Integration was like a bee buzzing in the hollow of my head. I could follow the notes from ear to ear to forehead to nasal cavities. Despite the havoc the sound bath wreaked inside of my skull, I was asleep within fifteen minutes.
October 13: Ryan used to think that the little flap of fabric at the bottom of underwear was a secret compartment that he called his pee-pee pocket. He would often store little items in there to give as gifts. Dad still has a jar of stones on his shelf that were delivered to him this way.
October 14: Nick cried when he watched me walk down the aisle with my dad. Andrew had to hand him one of the tissues that Heidi stashed in her bra.
October 15: A betting pool went around for the wedding guests to predict when Nick and I would have our first child. The DJ put his granddaughter’s birthday as his guess, effectively accusing me of already being two months pregnant.
October 16: There are still protests about Nick and I not changing our last names to Lovechanan. I finally found a compromise. It will be my pen name: B.F. Lovechanan.
much love,
hedgie
October 10: California has two seasons: perfect and on fire. It is currently on fire.
October 11: Heidi has a kiddie pool and two stunt kites in the trunk of her car, so she’s pretty much ready for anything.
October 12: The sound that emitted from the quartz bowls in The Integration was like a bee buzzing in the hollow of my head. I could follow the notes from ear to ear to forehead to nasal cavities. Despite the havoc the sound bath wreaked inside of my skull, I was asleep within fifteen minutes.
October 13: Ryan used to think that the little flap of fabric at the bottom of underwear was a secret compartment that he called his pee-pee pocket. He would often store little items in there to give as gifts. Dad still has a jar of stones on his shelf that were delivered to him this way.
October 14: Nick cried when he watched me walk down the aisle with my dad. Andrew had to hand him one of the tissues that Heidi stashed in her bra.
October 15: A betting pool went around for the wedding guests to predict when Nick and I would have our first child. The DJ put his granddaughter’s birthday as his guess, effectively accusing me of already being two months pregnant.
October 16: There are still protests about Nick and I not changing our last names to Lovechanan. I finally found a compromise. It will be my pen name: B.F. Lovechanan.
much love,
hedgie
Sunday, October 8, 2017
HAVE A BABY
October 1: The woman behind us in line at the grocery store cash register was only buying one bag of frozen pasta, a large caramel chocolate bar, and two bottles of rosé.
October 2: I told my kids that I would be gone for a week for my wedding. I asked if they had any questions. Jaivon raised his hand and without waiting for me to call on him, yelled “HAVE A BABY!”
October 3: Scores poetry had our first FaceTime with dad’s creative writing class. The trash talk started immediately. One of the kid favorite insults was “you look like a waffle!”
October 4: David is obsessed with chickens lately. He claims every clothing pattern is of chickens and that he has to put on a helmet when his older brother picks him up because they ride a giant chicken home.
October 5: Melissa hired a new teacher today. We finally have a full staff!
October 6: It was my last day with my kids before I got married. They sang “happy wedding to you” to the tune of the happy birthday song.
October 7: The drag queens asked for all brides to be to go to the stage. There were three of us total. I am apparently too classy for drag queens to make fun of me because they spent only a few seconds examining my ring before moving on to the bachelorette wearing a fake mustache.
October 8: Angi leaned out of the porthole in our suite and wondered out loud if we thought she could spit on the people walking up the ramp and into the Queen Mary. Turns out, she could.
much love,
hedgie
October 2: I told my kids that I would be gone for a week for my wedding. I asked if they had any questions. Jaivon raised his hand and without waiting for me to call on him, yelled “HAVE A BABY!”
October 3: Scores poetry had our first FaceTime with dad’s creative writing class. The trash talk started immediately. One of the kid favorite insults was “you look like a waffle!”
October 4: David is obsessed with chickens lately. He claims every clothing pattern is of chickens and that he has to put on a helmet when his older brother picks him up because they ride a giant chicken home.
October 5: Melissa hired a new teacher today. We finally have a full staff!
October 6: It was my last day with my kids before I got married. They sang “happy wedding to you” to the tune of the happy birthday song.
October 7: The drag queens asked for all brides to be to go to the stage. There were three of us total. I am apparently too classy for drag queens to make fun of me because they spent only a few seconds examining my ring before moving on to the bachelorette wearing a fake mustache.
October 8: Angi leaned out of the porthole in our suite and wondered out loud if we thought she could spit on the people walking up the ramp and into the Queen Mary. Turns out, she could.
much love,
hedgie
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