Boys Like Ravenous Dingoes

The things to say, they build and compound, they stack and they topple. They require plotting on an intricate thought map; they require planning and scheming and precise wording that I am not capable of composing at this late Friday night moment.

My family was on vacation this week. Escaping to a condo on the coast etc. They were having an excellent time together in Sarasota, but I was not there. I regret that. I was here working out a year of indentured servitude. A year wherein I do the work of people who are getting paid to do that work while they continue to get paid for that work that I am doing. While I instead pay, tidily, to do that work for them. Sweet deal, eh?

School is going well. My June morning have been spent in a kindergarten summer school reading program. I have five delightful students. I secretly adore them. They are Diego, Jose, Armida, Tylor, and Gabe. They say hilarious things like, "Can you please help me, Mrs. Bennett?" and "What did you say, old man?" Then I have my actual grad school classes in the afternoons. These are significantly less delightful. My fall experiences will be divided between a sixth grade all-subjects classroom and an eighth grade math assignment. About these things I am excited.

I am seeing this boy. Bam, there it is. He is basically nothing that I ever thought I would go for. For instance, he has brown eyes. And yet: it works. It is pretty weird, and I am continually amused by it all. (If you've kept up with the dirty intrigue, by the way, I should tell you that he is most certainly *not* my housemate David. He is, instead, one of David's childhood best friends. Yep, it is weird. Yep, we're working it out.)

We have a place that we go on Thursday nights, this boy that I'm seeing and I. It is our own private bar. We have our own hot bartender. We have our own go-go boy. We have our own DJ and our own dance floor. (I would like Mr. DJ to consult us a little more closely on the music selections, but I'm not sure yet how to kindly convey that message.) We were there for nearly two hours last night, and only two other patrons came in during that time. Oh wait, three. One guy with a huge potbelly came in and asked if it was a strip club. Our go-go boy was mid-martini and not dancing, so the answer was no. He looked like more of a boob man anyway, though.

Some days, if something difficult happens or I feel a bit low or out of sorts, I look up at the palm trees. The constant sunshine and the palm trees are miracle drugs; lithium for the eyes. I miss many people, places, feelings, things about Chicago, but fundamentally, I am so glad to not be there any more. I am glad to not be in Chicago.

There are dates, specific days of the calendar year, that I thought I would never forget. But you know what? I forgot them all this year. They came and they went, and I completely missed them. Don't take this too harshly, please, but I feel so very good about that.

Currently Listening to

Taylor Swift's "Today Was a Fairytale"