Snow Day # 8

Sandy went first, everyone begrudgingly saying they would give this a try. She knew the opening verses of The Illiad and The Odyssey by heart, something she said made her a natural to go first.

She sat cross legged on a pile of yoga mats she had unrolled onto the open floor of the tower office. "Please don't tell Meg I moved her mats without asking. I'll wipe them down and everything once we are done." Everyone knew what this meant. The gym teacher had an uncanny ability to know the inventory of every ball and roller scooter and jump rope in the school. Growing up she had worked at her parents video store in a small VT town and knew everyone's phone numbers by heart.

Sandy got some polite smiles and acknowledgements. John Johnson, on a brief break from keeping the boiler running, feigned zipping his lips and tossing the key.

Sandy looked at the group and the Yellow lights of the ceiling flickered against her glasses. "OK, so here is what I got...

I grew up in a town called Nelsonville, OH which was in between Logan and Athens, where Ohio University is. It's the part of the state where you are far away from any of the major cities and it's not defined by any river or lake or farm field but by hills. There is not much to do in Nelsonville from October to May. During the summer, it's great. Hocking Hills and hiking and outdoorsy stuff. There are rental cabins everywhere and even my parents dabbled in it until my younger brother was born and it was a lot to keep two households and two kids and full time jobs. My dad worked grounds at Hocking College and my mom worked at Peoples Community Credit union. Nothing high powered but it was a lot especially in high season.

These cabins are very popular on AirBNB and VRBO. All those vacation apps. So, it's easy to find them but you also can spot them since the cars change every couple of days. Some different car in the driveway every weekend. Things like that.

So, when we were bored in high school, which was often, we cruised the cabins and tried to see if we could sneak back to use their hot tubs. Not all of them had them but most did. They were usually well hidden from the road but you got the lay of the land pretty quick.


We would idle on the road and have someone sneak back. We would call sometimes and ask "Oh are you booked?" Or message on the apps using phony accounts. We did our due diligence to see if we were ok beacuse we did not want someone shooting us or anything like that.

Just the aching Nissan Sentra of my neighbor, Christy, and four of us jammed into it. We were all in swim suits and one guy, Jason, insisted on always being shirtless. We are driving down Sr691 to take a turn onto Blue Ash road or Opossum Hollow looking like it's Santa Monica. And it's March because it's spring break. My senior year.”


“When did you graduate high school again?” Alexis asked.

“2015. I did take a year between it and college to work for and save money to pay for tuition. Anyway, we find a place. The Arrowhead. It's this log cabin in all blonde wood and big floor to ceiling glass windows. It faces an actual triangle shaped and inside it has at least three mounted deer heads”

Sandy leaned forward clutching a bunched up hoodie in her hands and then sliding it through her fingers.

“The Arrowhead was the place to hot tub jump. It was off the main road down a dipping driveway that cuts through a mess of tangled trees. It's like driving into a mess of wires. We didn't even drive. We parked on the road and then ran down the driveway. If not we would be trapped.”

Zoey crossed her arms. The tower windows let all the cold in. They were single pane and striping long dry rotted away. She imagined Sandy freezing running down this driveway in beach get ups. whether it was the actual temp or something psychosomatic, she felt it at the center of her chest and creeping across her skin.

“This day, it's perfect. It's cold but not like today. No snow and plenty of sun. Arrowhead a dead give away. If it was Tuesday and there were no garbage cans on the main road then it was a good chance it was empty. Jason goes and check and he does this in just board shorts and sneakers. We wait in the car blasting heat and smoking cigarettes out the wide open windows. It feels like hours but we see his long arms wave us from bottom of the dip. The coast is clear." Sandy stops and flits her eyes almost as if she were digging for the memory.

Zoey still kept her arms against herself. Why was she so cold? "Wait, wouldn't the hot tub be freezing? Do people leave them running? My aunt had one growing up and it took forever to warm up." 

"Oh, they were often. Some folks left the idling and that was nice. It was more about saying you did it. Again, we were very bored and cell service, still today, is awful in that part of Athens County. We just wanted to say we did it and maybe snap some pics to share. Like, we got into the Arrowhead!"

Zoey nodded and also brought her legs against herself.

"Ok, so to the good part! Jason did jack the hot tub up. This one was in economy mode." She looked at Zoey and smiled "Lucky us." She then threw her eyes to the whole group. "So we jumped in. I dropped my head under the water, on a dare since it was still lukewarm, and when I came up, I could see someone in the cabin."

Alexis interrupted "Oh please don't tell me they shot at you."

"Yeah, serpentine bob and weave, Sandy" Carlos said trying to get a laugh

"No. My entire body froze. Imagine dropping a log into a pond and how it bobs up and down until it just floats? That was me. Except this person was more a figure. All black except for this tan and brown floral dress. It, she, did not seem to have hair or eyes. It just stood there."

No one said anything, the silence suggesting to keep going

"I grab Christy and say 'Someone is in the house!' Everyone loses their mind panicking until there is no one in the plate glass window on the upper deck. Instead, the figure, the woman, is now maybe 10 feet away from us, behind the sliding glass doors to the deck. She bangs on the glass and everyone is locked onto her. At this distance we can see her face. Its ancient and injured and her lips curled back to reveal a mouth full of nothing but canine teeth. She rocks back and forth, palming the glass with increasing aggression. When she hits the glass, scabs of skin fall off her arms. She starts to gnash her teeth and her mouth is black framed by the gleaming teeth. That all seems unhurt and powerful on her, against the broken burnt skin of her body.

Sandy pauses again and drinks from a tumbler holding a mango hard seltzer. Before all this Carlos had come back from the bodega in a walk that took an hour to go a few blocks. 

"We all pour over each other trying to get out of the tub. There is no decorum and consideration. We don't care about the cover. Don't care that we left towels there. It is just grab your phone and scream down the driveway. Like, I'm in a two piece and have one flip flop on. When we dive into Christy's car, I have mud all over my legs and gravel that flew up from the driveway and into my hair.

"Did she chase you?" John had been silent through all of this.

"No. Or, I didn't notice. Christy blasted down the road with the side doors still open and we never went back to the Arrowhead."

***Writer's Note: It likely does not seem like it, but, for this bit of  fiction, I did sketch out a rough set of ideas. This last bit is where it ends. The combination of being forty, everyday responsibilities (the adulting as the kids say), and easy distractions of short form content and video games also work against me in trying to do anymore. In addition these are the "shitty first draft" versions of everything and ones written in isolation. Don't count it out, but likely will be much more infrequent and likely less serialized. ***

Grief

Asked to describe grief, Ill use an analogy
A tennis ball in a Mason jar
Don't ask me how it got there.

Its tight against the sides and a statement yellow

The ball does not get smaller,  but, over time

The space around the jar gets bigger.

There is more time and air and distance between the now

And the past, the tennis ball. The grief

If given more time and attention

Ill still use an analogy. 

Palimpsests on the page that once were in high relief

And slowly sink back to the college ruled loose leaf

Its also the creases of the folds that are sharper and bite

This makes everything salient and spiraling

Tactile and physical, my grief is a note written years ago

In neat block letters with crystal bank ledger pens

It doesn't matter what it says. Instead, how it feels

Types on the phone and in one's feelings. a dangerous combination

While I often send someone an errant text or meme saying "This made me think of you!" it's something I've rarely experienced. 

When I'm deep in self pity it must be because why would anyone care to send something. Right? 

When I'm a bit grounded it's beacuse they are busy or, let's be sincerely practical and honest, have actual engaged conversations with others. We just went to high school together or worked together five years ago. Didn't go to war together or something like that.

It could also just be life and people ilare too paralyzed by being there for everyone but themselves. Why bother engaging? Sometimes at work I'll responded with a quip or meme in Teams chat and get no responses. No heart of LOL emojis. Why bother engaging? They know I saw it and likewise they also took a glance.

Writing fiction is exhausting. Even crummy ones like what has been on the blog. I can't help but feel like a memory thief putting situations on the page that I want to make my own but are just clippings of lived experiences. Other people's experiences. My greatest fear is not that someone will read it and say this sucks. Instead that they will read it and say "Oh this is like when we went on thay trip to Alaska" or "Is this character supposed to be so and so?"

In college I would do short story readings in public. Horrible open mic nights on random Wednesdays or sad brown Friday nights. I could read to groups of strangers but never a friend, significant other or family.  They would know and surgically extract. "You are less like an onion and more of an orange," said a coworker to me once as we discussed annual reviews. "It's a hard exterior but just being real sweet and honest inside. It's a good thing, really. I think you care more than what you want people to think." 

I'm writing this as an excuse to not finish my story. I want to sound wise but feels like there is not much more to say. I've peaked. I want to say it was 2009 and 2013 and 2018 that were the highlights. A roller coaster now building energy to help someone else go.

Snow Day #7

 Zoey saw the chat come to life on her phone. "World's Worst Sleepover". Her stomach sank to a the same weird spot reserved for expected bad news. Not a spot of pessimism but the same feeling she had her junior year of undergrad when she spent a summer taking her aging childhood dog, Brownie, to the vet. It was a series of dwindling returns that just announced his eventual passing, which happened after she had returned to school. That semester she took a Latin American Literature class and they read Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a story she can't remember but whose title stuck with her. Chronicle of a day wasted evening made furiously awkward. 

She hoped the snow would miraculously stop. Or, at least, relent. Enough for her to creep home after hanging in her room. She had changed, which maybe was her way of silently acknowledging the reality, but, in the moment, it felt natural. Like taking off your coat when sitting down at a desk. 

Outside it was the Arctic. Her classroom could see the tops of two red maple trees planted her first year on even dreary Cleveland days. Today, it was just blanks. Not sterile or calm. It was the snow that felt menacing. The snow that absorbs all the light around it until its more a slate gray. Snow that pours when you are already boarded for your flight. Snow that falls like powder but acts like concrete.

"You should stay. This storm will kill you!" Her mother texted her that when Zoey first mentioned "Waiting it out for a bit" at the school. Her mother then followed with snowflake, snowman and stop sign emoji. 

If she had to stay then Zoey wanted to hunker in her room. Treat it like the active shooter situations that the guys in black polos, tucked into their jeans, trained her every return to school year. She would lock the door and then pile chairs and furniture by the door. She would drag the vintage two drawer file cabinet to the door ("Sorry, not sorry about the marks on the floor, John Johnson!) and let its steel core heart keep everyone out. She would be ready to fight except without the ersatz weaponry the trainers asked her to master ("Hit them with a Chromebook. The old ones are heavier!" was a dark joke at March Meadow. A sort of cultural meme that no one could remember the origins of) but excuses.

Sandy would come knocking at her door asking to gather in the Tower and tell stories and Zoey would be ready with excuses. 

She had decided against being tired or not feeling well. If that were true then why would she want to be in her room. There were actual cots and couches in the building. if you turned a school upside down and shook it, you would get a lot from the miniature world within it but one thing for sure would be a pharmacies worth of varying medications. Beyond anything that needs to be injected, you could find it in a school. Plus, saying not feeling well reminder her of putting off advances of a horny boyfriend. It felt too much like "I'm not in the mood"

She could pretend to be busy. Zoey was a Pinterest teacher in her first years at March Meadow, when she had homerooms. Every year had a different theme. Under the sea. The universe. Local history. That was the biggest lift but luckily Lebron James was part of local history so that was a layup. However, in latter years, and when she moved to reading intervention, she became a "piles" teacher. Not messy but a "working" space with miscellaneous mugs filled with mismatched markers, pens, and pencils. She had hundreds of books spread across varying shelves, most inherited, but some newer, (Ikea pieces bought with her own money), holding them in a controlled chaos. She knew where everything was but maybe she could say she was organizing. Never waste a crisis. She would be too busy if deciding to organize alphabetically by author or title. Maybe by series. Whichever would take the longest.

What she couldn't do is ghost them. Just pretend like she is not home the same you do when a Jehovah's Witness knocks on the door. People would think she is dead on the floor of her room or dead within a half mile of the school, having tried to get home. Or, people would think she is mad at them, which would then make them mad at her and spiral the collective anxiety into its own superstorm. She imagined if it was Carlos at the door. He had a doomed crush on her that made her feel guilty she didn't reciprocate but then made her angry that she thought that way. He would be (he is actually) OK, but would not want to just ignore him. She would be more comfortable if it was Sandy herself. Or John. Alexis could get her to do it pulling the "rank" card even in this liminal time and space. 

The chat buzzed. She ignored it but saw another text from her mom "Please stay at the school! They told me not to come to the clinic for my shift. That has never happened in 15 years. Stay!"

Snow Day #6

 Carlos wished he had his own room. He never said this out loud because it sounded painfully adolescent. His official title was simply Teacher (Assistant) with the parentheses affirming his nomadic lifestyle. If there wasn't a class to cover he bumped around trying to keep busy offering to make copies or watch classes while people ran to the bathroom. It felt like a counselor at a Boys and Girls Club save he had to remember and pivot between varying topics. Pre-algebra and then pivoting to remembering when he read Island of Blue Dolphins in sixth grade. Something he could not believe until asked to explain what an abalone was. 

He had covered a class that day but it felt weird to linger in other's space. He grabbed his stuff and then went nomadic. Doing so had the same awkwardness of being the first to wake up during a sleepover. 

He had run into Sandy who pitched the ghost story idea seemingly joking but then outside it looked ominous with snow coming over the yew hedges and creeping on the bottom window sills. He saw this from every angle as he finally settled on a space to check on the status of the roads. March Meadow did not have a traditional teacher's lounge but instead a large empty classroom on the top floor. It was the only thing on the fourth floor save a dilapidated roof access. Everyone called it "The Tower" and it felt tacked on. It certainly felt cloistered but also the energy of a sad rental's attic storage. There was the large laminator, Ellison set, paper cutters, coffee machines and water coolers but also defunct window box ACs and boxes of donated books no one wanted. 

Carlos opened his laptop and cruised through the news and social media. Snowpocalypse was trending in addition to "itssnowing" and "snowday" and "whydoIlivehere" It seemed to envelope all of the Great Lakes and shocking not just for size but also it speed and suddenness. Regular apocalypse was also trending.

Carlos heard the Slack knock and opened a message from Zoey "Are we really stuck here. Its me, you, Alexis, Sandy, and Johnson? I think it would be better to walk home except I would die. lol"

"Are we even allowed to stay?" The school had an odd lease from the West Side Neighborhood Community Development Corporation, the entity that bought the building in a brief period of the 90s when the city district closed it. They then leased it to the charter network bringing in a technical March Meadow 2.0. The deal had it so the building had to empty by 7pm save for a limit of 3 cleaners who could be there anytime. Evening events like a board meeting where their own logistical animals

"Alexis told me the CDC said its ok for now. For safety. We may freeze. Don't know if Johnson will stay to keep the boiler going."

"Free overtime. He can stream Road House and Point Break. haha"

Carlos heard steps from the stairwell to the Tower. It was Alexis who waved and then took a few seconds to catch her breath. "I absolutely hate those stairs. This is why I have all the staff meetings in Molly's room on first floor." She collected herself. "Ok, so JJ is going to stay overnight and keep boiler running. If people want to stay overnight they can. I know that is about as exciting and getting kicked in the balls but want people to be safe."

"It is really that bad?"

Alexis shrugged. "It looks like the North Pole out there. I know they shut down a part of 71 so I am going to get home three days from now I leave now. My mom is with the kids at home. Avon Lake didn't go in today" She rolled her eyes "We are a crack team over here at reading the weather."

The Tower had a large arched window that looked out north. On a clear day you could see the Cleveland city skyline. Now it was all cloudy gray like TV static made physical. Alexis started typing on her phone. "I am going to make a chat just for us poor souls stuck here. Rose told me the bodega is still open so maybe we can make something of it. Should still be good to walk. I think"

Carlos closed his laptop and immediately thought of logistics. Would it even make sense to sleep. And where? Did he have anything in his car he could change into? He felt very exposed in khakis and the scuffed brown shoes he called his "dress pair."

"You should name the chat World's Worst Sleepover."

Alexis laughed and nodded her head. "Oh you got it. I know Sandy is going to propose this whole ghost story thing. God bless her"

A Long Yet Not Fully Comprehensive List of Places I've Slept

The universe left me free of the burdens any fine motor skills or any applicable skill to leave me with the gift, actually the superpower, of being able to sleep anywhere. Maybe not comfortable sleep but let me lay down and I got it from there. I can even sleep sitting up in cars and buses and planes.*

I could prove it to you if not for the separation of the screens and time. If you are reading this and I am not dead** then I could do it. Concrete floors? The after party of your friend's 30th birthday? In the bathroom of a Long John Slivers? No problem! SLEEP!

That all said, I do try to sleep on things meant for it. Not looking to challenge myself. Just content in my ability. 

Most notable was my childhood water bed. I had it from say the 5th grade all through senior year of high school. It was a hand me down*** from our next door neighbors. It came in pieces slipped over the concrete fence that separate our homes and then through the metal bars over my windows. Imagine smuggling furniture through the DMZ piece by piece. The mattress (I think the appropriate term is bladder) came empty and then took hours to fill from the garden hose slung around the hose from the outside slop sink. I don't recall ever filling it back up from the initial go but we had to at some point. I do recall every few months draining a bottle of neon green water conditioner that we got from the slim "water bed section" (Really a shelf) of the local Kmart. From there we got a bed sheet and duvet cover spread that had neon tropical fish in a water color motif. I kept that for years until my mother deemed it good enough for the dog and changed it to a simpler red sheet set to contrast with the aquamarine accent wall she painted. 

I loved that bed. It surprised people like some untamed stallion. My room was relatively small and had no place to sit save for the bed and people who didn't know would tumble into the center. My dogs growing up adapted but always looked like moon landers settling in. My mother made sure to keep their nails filed for fear they would pop the bladder albeit the bed was rarely ever naked. Even when stripped it had a pill covered white girdle looking thing that snapped into each corner.

Even through sheets it cooled in heat and warmed at night even when I ran my window AC. As I got older I found it rebellious to not sleep with the AC at night, even in the tropical heat, and I would stare at the ceiling fan and blinking idle settings of my CD-Stereo**** and drift on the water bed and imagine I am in some noir scenario. 

In college I brought home a girlfriend to show her around the island and meet the family. I was thrilled to be able to sleep with her on the water bed. 

"We are going to fuck on the water bed like something out of 70s crime thriller. My neo noir moment!"

However, my mother had gotten rid of it in the brief time between high graduation and this visit and my girlfriend, ever polite, was in no mood for anything in my childhood bedroom.*****

In college, I slept on the school issued extra long dorm mattress. That was fine except I fell for the rumor I heard that it was "impossible" to find sheets that fit it unless you ordered them through the college book store. So, I did, paying probably double what you did at any other store for hunter green sheets the bled color even when dry. They painted the beige painted brick a mossy green glow. 

The first ever mattress I had I did not buy. I stole it. In college, I worked for the Physical Plant and had access to the coveted MR37 key which could open ANY door on campus. ANY DOOR. People were lucky that I had honor and also crippling anxiety because this was any lab, classroom, or dorm room. I used it to break into the storage room basement of Clark Hall, where the college kept all things decrepit. If you ever had the gym teacher ask you to go get something from their supply closet in elementary school, that is what the room looked like. It was a space where moving anything had to come with "Oh fuck! WATCH OUT" as 40 year old campus phone books and stacked chairs tumbled over you. It also had dozens of full size mattresses from before the reign of the extra long dorm room mattresses. I took one with a friend of mine helping loading it into the U-Haul outside and to my first apartment. The thing had to be thirty years old and most of its weight had to be in dead skin cells and sweat. No bed bugs. They would have surely starved in the basement for that long.

I once slept outside. In Dewitt Park, Ithaca, NY. We saw the film Invisible Children which was tearing through well meaning liberal college towns and the film makers encouraged to spread awareness by sleeping outside. About 100 of us did albeit no one in my group actually slept, except for me, tucked next to the granite of the city's WW2 memorial.

The first ever mattress I owned I bought with my wife from the Macy's in University Heights, OH. This was next to a Target spread across two floors and which had a shopping cart trolley. I forced us to go after we paid for the mattress confused why it would take a week for it to ship to our place. They had a bunch right there on the department store floor!

Now, I sleep on a couch isolated by age and snoring. Fox Mulder, from The X-Files, slept on his couch to the point it became a joke on the show that he did not have a bed. I sleep like a goblin. My head is on the armrest and instead I clutch pillows against my chest. I will slip my feet into the well worn spaces between the cushions and try to curl as deep as the cushions will allow. I am often surrounded by cats that will nest between my legs and leave stinging bruises when the bolt from any noise or movement. 

I have a dream where the couch drifts into the maw of space and it is just me and anything still on it. It is like that book Life of Pi except it is a couch and the tiger is an overweight all black void cat. Ill have to live on the petrified snacks found in the cushions and idle away the time  stretching in and out hair bands. There is a highlighter and a click pen buried in the couch and I will work trying to make them dance across my knuckles while I float in the couch bubble. For sure, I could sleep the time away. 

*This was a skill that someone at a bar once told me indicated that I must have been in the service. I can imagine it being quite practical in the military where "hurry up and wait" rules the day. But, no, I developed it in the civilian world. 

**Death being the ultimate sleep I would think

***Used water bed sounds quite "un-right" However, rather have that then a second hand mattress, which, no surprise is something I have slept on. I mention it in the main body of this essay. Do you read these as they come up? Or all at once at the end? Mary Roach does that with her books and I tend to read at the end. It hurts my eyes to bounce around so much. 

****The big silver Aiwa one with the detachable side speakers that I swear was standard issue in the 90s even for families all the way down in Puerto Rico

*****This was also the catalyst of a very quick to start yet slow to end breakup. My girlfriend, earily prescient, told me bawling as we walked over the pedestrian bridge over Rio Piedras to go drink at a bar (Drinking age is 18 in PR) that she could never imagine ever seeing my family again, much less being part of it. I do not blame her. 

Snow Day # 5

 Outside it was the stark white of tables and chairs in a furniture catalog. It was like dipping a vanilla milkshake into a vat of bone white latex paint and then trying to drown lab mice in the mixture. By the time the remaining staff at March Meadow got the final student into the hands of their family (The same parent who wanted Alexis to make all of this into a teachable moment) the county sheriff flexed his muscles and declared a Level 3 Snow Emergency. The department even held a press conference pointing a single camera down a trio of microphones. The staff missed it but it had the sheriff standing at a podium at the Justice Center downtown saying that "no one should be on the roads unless it is an emergency. Exceptions can be made for work but you should call your employer and ask if you need to report in. People driving out there could be subject to arrest. This is very serious."

Alexis saw the news alert come on her phone and quickly cleared it. She felt police were mostly unhelpful, an opinion honed not just by her experience growing up but by years of life lost in tabletop active shooter exercises. "Just another thing about teaching in America. Just a tiny thing!" she said to allay teacher fears going into the mandatory seminar at the beginning of the year. "Don't worry. I worked out this summer so I got you if the shit gets real" She kept deeply buried for worry of antagonizing a specific March Meadow parent. Mr. Raymond, the only parent she called Mr/Ms/Mrs. in front of staff, students, and parents regardless of situation, who claimed to be former military and police but seemed to make his living being a meter reader. At least, he always wore his yellow safety jacket, when he came to get his boys and insist he needed to observer them in class "Oh, that is ok, Mr. Raymond. I think  Mrs. Baltic has a test today," Alexis often used that to defuse the situation. She did not need someone to tell her it was bad out.

Dismissal had been only a minor shit show. Mr. Joshua had bolted and the buses were not coming back. The guys were leaving them parked in their driveways.  Leo messaged her "Don't worry. My cousin owns the Vega Mia store and he said I can leave it there. Ill bring it back on Sunday once this clears. No worries" Eddie just said he was good. "Everyone is home. Took forever. You should stay at the school tbh." There were endless slips and tumbles but the snow caught everyone and saved her from the saber rattling of "I'm calling my lawyer!" from Ms. Schmidt who seemed magnetized towards black ice. 

She did a quick census in her head of who was still here. John Johnson was in the basement supposedly nursing the boiler but she assumed he was streaming movies or reading paperback novels. He would be here all night.  Zoey and Carlos who had helped dig the last idle students through the snow as their rides limped to the door. Jessica Rain, the receptionist, who had stayed there watching the screens on her camera monitors get whiter with each second. She was quick and savvy in spotting cars or parents from the footage. There was Sandy Calvert the 8th grade English teacher who suffered from a chronic case of "new teacher try hard" syndrome and was likely taking the time to arrange the each dystopian YA series in chronologically order. Alexis did not know the status of everyone else out in the wind. Her assistant principal, Rose Martino, had left her car in the lot saying she was just leaving it there. Her boyfriend lived about six blocks away and she said would just risk it

"The bodega is open!" said the last text she got from Rose followed by multiple wine glass emojis and a cheers one "In case you have to stay the night"

***

The car line made Zoey realize trying to drive out of March Meadow would end up with her on the side of the road. She would maybe pass the same cars she just shuffled out of her lot only to end up sidewindered into a dirty snowbank. The situation also made her anxiety reach weaponized so it felt like it was standing there in the room telling her how to survive when stuck in the snow in a car

1) Stay calm

2) Stay in the car

3) Keep engine running and blast the heat at full blast for ten minutes

4) Keep the tail pipe clear during all of this

5) Wait for help

Would she recall all the steps? Did the cars stuck on the side of the road know this? Should she check each window? Those cars likely had her students in them!

So, she stayed in her classroom, but not until after deciding to limp towards her car and search for a change of clothes. She saw the Level 3 Snow emergency alert and felt she would be here for a while. For sure until 7pm, when the lease said the building had to close, and then the legal force would meet the climatic immovable object and they would see what would happen. Opening her car door took everything she had to peel off the snow and the vacuum seal of ice and wind. She dug through the back for a gym bag through the powder snow the flew in and then slammed the door shut. That knocked more snow off the passenger side window and when she looked through, it was just a wall of white past the heather grey interior. The walk back to the door followed the same path of the car line dismissal but in the half hour everything had been reset to a neat plateau of unbroken snow. To get into the vestibule she kicked away more snow blocking the door just enough to squeeze in and feel the warped wood frame cut into her back. In the vestibule she felt the tropical levels of steam heat hit her face and make them water. This is why she wanted to change from her cable knit oversized sweater into something more practical

"I really don't have much control over the heat," is what John Johnson told her when she began working there and complained about her room being too cold and then other areas, like the vestibule and the second floor staff bathroom being too hot. He often said it during the one staff meeting he came to in October just as heating season began

"You literally do! You literally turn the heat on and off!" screamed Rose during the last meeting. It was with the cadence where, if written out, would be in all caps and separated by a period between each word. This made John shuffle his eyes down and shrug. 

"Oh, I mean the thermostats and calibration. Its all way too old. Just dress in layers."

So, the longer you worked at March Meadow, the more random clothes you had stashed in car trunks or closets. And you were pros at quick changes that rivaled a magic show or super hero comic. 

Zoey walked into the main hall and felt a brief dip in the heat. The stairs were at the end of the hall and she saw Sandy come out of the office with a stack of copies. Sandy saw the gym bag and contrast between snow on Zoey's boots and sweat on her face. "Oh, are you like changing? Are you staying here?"

"Its pretty bad outside. I am just going to chill in my room and hope it clears up."

"If we end up staying the night we can all tell each other ghost stories to pass the time." Sandy then threw a quick wink which seemed the less zany thing coming together during this storm. 

From the office, Zoey heard Carlos chime in "Ooo...like the Decameron. Or how they wrote Frankenstein!"

Sandy spun on her heels and just beamed. "Yes! Just like that. Were you and English major, Carlos!?" Sandy shuffled back into the office and Zoey let the conversation trail while the snow outside looped back onto itself. 

Snow Day #4

 Alexis alternated between her professional "all things can be solved" voice and her candid "break room" voice seamlessly, in a way that, if this was a stage show, people would call erudite. 

"Yes, Mrs. Allen. We will be here until you get the boys. And, can we make this a teachable moment? Like about the snow? You know, that is a good idea. Ill see if maybe I can get someone out there with a weather map or something, yes. Ok, stay safe. Thanks, bye!" And when she hung up the phone, the pitch changed to coalescing groaning.

"So extra. Just come get your kids!"

She popped out of her office buttoning up the top clasp of her oversized turquoise puffy winter jacket. March Meadow's main office used to be the nurse's clinic back way before anyone there was even born. Alexis's own office was the cot room and she sometimes joked, when days were particularly bad or zany, that it was the ghost of a student who died there. "The consumption or scarlet fever took them! Its the ghost fucking up our copiers," she mentioned last time she invoked the latent spirit. There was then a large 10' x 10' open area that must have been a lobby back then as it is now. This was just a square space marked by a behemoth faux cherry wood desk belonging to Ms. Rain, the receptionist, and then metal wire chairs. There was a single door in the far corner that lead to a restroom, one of three non-student/adult only bathroom in March Meadow. The other being off the gym next to defunct shower rooms now used for storage and the other in the basement by the custodian's office. That one, John Johnson, insisted was his and his alone and even pulled the door of its hinges to affirm it was only him using this space. Alexis got him to compromise and install a black curtain on a rod for some sense of decency. 

In the main office no one was sitting but instead standing. Ms. Rains had the phone hooked to her shoulder and the cook (Food Service Specialist as the budget said), Bruce Thomas, stood by the door to the hallway jotting down names of parents sneaking kids in the hallway

"Everyone had the same idea, Alexis," he said and the shrugged. "Just trying to help Ms. Izzy until my ride gets here."

Instead of parents barn storming the office they were in the hallway grabbing kids as they came down the steps or the turn to from the annex. 

"Is anyone actually in car line or getting kids at the door?" she asked no one in particular while she walked out and down the hallway to the front vestibule. She caught side hugs from some of the kids and awkward glances from others and dodged mumblings of "you should have closed today" from errant parents.

***

The front door and car line was controlled chaos. Keeping to March Meadow protocols the right kids were going to right places but it was in an organic process held by Carlos and Zoey. 

Zoey insisted on shoveling clean paths for the kids. "I sit most of the day. I appreciate the chance to do something with my arms," she said when Carlos said he was OK to keep doing it. So she scraped and pushed only for, by the next student, the path already dusted anew with fresh snow. The driveway was slowly turning into a clogged toboggan chute of fresh snow mixed with the brown caked street snow. 

"I think I am going to need a push!" screamed a maroon Ford Taurus through a barely cracked slit in the driver side window. Carlos had already heard it and was leaning into the oblong trunk while the driver gunned the engine. The futile spinning eventually bit into a helpful piece of pavement and had enough momentum to inch out and become anything else but their problem. 

At the far end of the line there were only two cars left. This should all be done soon. Zoey heard the kids in the vestibule chirp up and caught Alexis just as she stepped outside

"Be careful. I mean doing best I can but its non stop." Zoey pushed a bit of snow away and encourage Alexis to grab onto one of the still standing poles of the fence. 

"Ok, this is actually insane. This has to be like six inches since this morning!"

A student came from the vestibule and whipped out a measuring tape. "I think its actually eight!" He waddled over to the exposed hedgerow and dipped the end of the tape into the untouched snow. The neon yellow band stopped at 7 and 1/4ths. "Ok, pretty close. See Ms. Collins and Ms. Koldrich?"

'Hey that is a great, Brody. Real meteorologist type estimating," said Zoey leaning into the handle of her shovel

"Brody, why do you have a tape measure randomly on you?" said Alexis adding tape measure to list of wacky things she had seen kids carry. The craziest being a the single blade of Crayola safety scissors banded to a chopstick

"I always have one. My dad and grandpa always carry one too." Brody tucked the tape back into the reel and his coat pocket. "My dad works in construction and grandpa was a carpenter. Like Jesus"

The snow kept coming , angry and hot white. Alexis imagined they would need something divine to get out of here. On her phone she had unread Slack messages from Mr. Joshua who had ignored "pedestrian door" and snuck out right at 305pm. "My wife's job downtown told everyone to go home and they only care about money. So I am leaving. Amanda will be fine by herself at the door" 

Carlos came to get Brody affirming he was the last car. The second car was someone who guessed the buses wouldn't run and came to gather student. They spent five minutes screaming at Carlos about how she had taken off early from work and how "Y'all should have closed today!"

"Cmon, Brody. Last one lets go. I am going to have your mom drive back through the carline and come out the back entrance. She isn't leaving just getting ready." In the background the black SUV pivoted in a slow series of turns to zoom out through the back. That way, at least, there were some fashion of tire tracks to follow.

"Let me help you," said Zoey as she grabbed the shovel and walked with them. She held the shovel against her shoulder, its lime green blade bright against the winter, and followed in the foot paths cut by Carlos and only partially erased by the snow.

"You look really cool, Ms. Koldrich holding the shovel that way. Like out of an anime. You ever watch Hunter X Hunter or My Hero Academia or Attack on Titan?" Brody motioned with hands excitedly but also aimlessly.

"I liked Sailor Moon when I was young. That's about it," Zoey responded. When she first began teaching she tried to follow whatever was popular with the kids and it lead her to learn a lot about Minecraft only for it to be quickly rendered obsolete by the next update. Now, she just went with the flow

"I did too. She was pretty bad ass." said Carlos who brought his eyes up for a second to lock with Zoey's.

"That one is really old." said Brody "But, thats ok." He got into his car and the ended the car line dismissal for the day. 

Snow Day # 3

 March Meadow had bells, like any other school. They ran a neat and sharp nine times a day, like any other school. The difference is that, at last bell, March Meadow did not empty out. Instead, the last bell was trigger to begin and 30 to 45 minute coordinated dismissal where every child was sent to the right person and/or pathway.

The rumor was that at some point a March Meadow student left at 3pm and was then found at 6:15pm murdered. The rumor varied from year to year and even morphed across the brief time a student spent there. Students began in the 6th grade saying it was when March Meadow was an elementary school and it was a kindergartener named Betty (or Johnny) who was taken by a hobo. By 8th grade it became that someone's angry cousin stole the child and sexually assaulted the child before dumping their body behind the RTA stop on 44th with the missing glass panels. Sometimes there was a dog in the story and how the kidnapper took the student behind the "scary house" and kicked the dog trapped in the backyard out and there murdered the child and drank their blood. In that version, the dog came across as just much a victim. It was exiled from its comfortable prison with the rainwater feed bowl and kiddie pool of kibble to wander the streets. None of this was helped when Christian Rorevy, then a 7th grader, but now someone in first year of law school at Cleveland State, tied a red helium balloon by the sewer grate on the road across from the gym door. He had smuggled the thing under his coat and then insisted he keep it on through all of homeroom. When they broke for first period, his class had gym, and he snuck out and tied it off then screaming "PENNYWISE!" while beating the gym door from the outside. It was the only time Alexis ever used the camera system herself insisting she find the culprit and how it happened. 'I am going to Columbo this until I nail both Christian and whoever let him sneak out!" she screamed when she realized she needed to updated her computer before viewing the footage. Zoey was there, in the office, making copies and was looped into to explain how to "clear a fucking browser cache!"

But, there were no murders. Just changing sensibilities and the fear of litigation. If you left March Meadow you either did pedestrian door  with Mr. Joshua and Ms. Amanda (Mr. Joshua insisted on calling it pedestrian door to the point he corrected anyone that called it the "walker door." He snarled that walkers sounded like zombies) where they knew each parent who came and gingerly hustled kids into the right hands. Or you left on the bus going through the shared exit and service doors where they kept all the salt to line up into the "Southie" or "Upper" bus. Here, the bus drivers made sure everyone got on right one, each of them having a fresh print out of attendance for the day. Or, you left with you parents via the pick up line. The pickup line pulled up to March Meadow's front door where teachers ran kinds in sets of three through the broken slats in a wrought iron fence and then directed the cars back onto traffic. "Its like an aircraft carrier," said the receptionist, whenever a parent came a bit too late to get their kid early and ended up needing to wait in office or in their parking spot while the flight deck cleared. 

Even during the snow, this whole process did not change. 

Carlos opened the door onto the pick up line and it was urban tundra. The air hurt your face and the surface had a mottled black and white pattern where the wind exposed pavement but then quickly blanketed it back with snow. There were cars, but instead of in a line up of a fifteen or so, it was jagged pattern of five. Attendance had been horrible that day and Carlos let in four sets of parents in the 20 minutes he spent before 3pm, volunteering to help shovel the pathway for car line. 

"Oh, I would help you, brother," said John Johnson, the custodian as he snuck past Carlos to get into the sidedoor in the welcome lobby that ran to the basement. "But, I want to save my back. I had this hernia, when I was in the Navy, years ago, but it still hurts. And, I think I am going to be here all night." Carlos politely waved him off "No problem. No worries." John worked hard at what he felt he should work hard on and key to getting any help was to leverage that. It was harder for Carlos as he floated between classes as building sub and general unofficial building "go-fer" so there was no space he could say was his. And, John also was a sucker for teachers young and pretty. "Only reason he hasn't quit to work for his brother at the glass panel factory is that I let people wear yoga pants," is what Alexis often chided when people came to complain he had not done something somewhere sometime. 

Carlos also appreciated that part of dress code policy. However, today, everyone looked like they were about to storm Echo Base on Hoth. The storm had been a disaster already announced in the news for a full day. Carlos covered for Mrs. Bacderd's homeroom that day ("It takes me 40 minutes to get to work on a good day and today it would take like 2 hours to get back if I can. I'm sorry. We should close anyway. Sorry!" said the text she sent announcing her absence) and the kids showed up in the stark dichotomy of winter. Some kids bundled up top to bottom and other coming in just hoodies and sneakers. Sometimes it was a choice and sometimes it was an obligation. 

The path he shoveled already started to fade under the snow. He could run down the hall and take two turns to get to the bus door and some salt but he already had students lined up behind him

"You look like an Eskimo, Mr. Carlos," said Jerriah Thomas, a sixth grader he had covered earlier in the day.

He did have two hoodies on, nested into one another, and then an orange windbreaker liner from an old Columbia jacket to which he had lost the inner fleece. Under his jeans he had a pair of red plaid pajama fasts and he felt immediately self conscious that somehow they had peeked out. Either during class or right now. He looked at his leg and it seemed normal and then at Jerriah. "The situation demands it." He gestured at the increasing white and grey outside. "I also think it is better to say Inuit instead of Eskimo."

"Why?"

"Its what they actually call themselves.  Eskimo is something people made up. When people from outside those parts of the world, Canada and Alaska and Siberia, came and saw people living there. Oh, Greenland too"

Jerriah steeped to the side on her left foot to peer down the ersatz car line and could see her aunt's car second in line. "So, its something white people made up?"

"Maybe not so blunt but, yes, people from outside. Colonizers, is what I would say. All kinds of people say Eskimo and now we just need to change it." Carlos also confirmed her car and picked up the beaten wooden door wedge made smooth by years of use. "I think we can sneak out. I see your ride."

They side shuffled the few feet to her ride in a rhythmless walk to her car. Carlos hovered a hand over he shoulder to catch her if she slipped "This is how the Inuit must walk," she said once her hand was on the car door and she slide into its overheated cabin. 

Espresso

I got one of these for Christmas and I will refuse to drink coffee any other way.

The little stovetop espresso reminds me of my first ever food service job. It was at a coffee shop right out of college and they had on their form a little set of six lines to say "What does coffee mean to you?"

I typed my response and printed the copy at the Ulysses Public Library and then stapled it to the application. Everything else on the application was in my horrible hieroglyphic handwriting but this I decided to type out. I mentioned how my parents had a stainless steel stovetop espresso pot that was only used on "special occasions" This being the early 90s (The time of the story, not when applied) my parents had lots of decorative "for guest" things like embroidered towels and even custom print shower curtains. 

I don't recall how my father took his coffee. I assume black and my mother drank only instant, save for the special occasions and the coffee pot. They would serve the coffee in slick 80s mod stainless steel cups the size or shot glasses. They had two thing sheets for the handle that curved from the top lip and did not come to a close. Like a tiny set of rings you wore around your finger and drank very hot and very syrupy sweet with cubed sugar. So the pot reminded me of my parents and the first ever idea of coffee as something salient. Still something only for adults but they would make me help with dishes while they entertained. And, I would sip the sweet oil barrel slick dregs at the bottom and think that maybe this was all it was meant to be.

That question came up in another job interview. Well, that type of question. 

"What is your favorite piece of technology?"

I could be clever and use the answer I used to give when I worked my own little ersatz helpdesk "Well, technology is just a tool to solve a problem. A sharp stick to poke at an anthill is technology!"

But, instead, I went for the practical and went with the USB-C charger. "I can use it on my phone, and my laptop, and my son's Nintendo Switch!"

Snow Day #2

There was always someone in looped jeans telling staring at a radiator. An aging principal, very likely now dead, told Alexis that her first year of teaching in Watertown, NY. The  know of the radiator hissed all winter and dripped Mars red water onto the floor. Being painfully new, Alexis asked the custodian who would come in during her lunch and stare. He had a powder blue drip pan he slid underneath the leak and said he would check. Alexis worried about slips or stains or the whole thing exploding so she told her principal who said the line. And that was that. 

25 years later, Alexis now looked at a sky with the color of a bruise and waddling snow flakes that did not stop. Her room had one of those hotel joint heaters/ACs and she saw all this just over the cusp of its beige enclosure. 

Her walkie squawked something raspy like the snow outside made audible and she nervously bit on the rubber tip of the antenna. "This is going to be a shit show," she said through clenched teeth. 

Through her door she heard a parent yell "Y'all should have closed today!"

Alexis unlocked her phone and brought up the Slack app and messaged the receptionist. "I AM not here. Please!"

There was an empty pause and then a soothing voice "I know right but important thing is you got them and can get home safe. We will see you tomorrow!"

It has been like this all day. In the morning kids compared the varying reports Snow Day Calculator vs Snow Day Predictor. That was for those that did show up. The school only had 97 students on site by first bell at 8am. 

"At what percentage do we have to legally close??! Asking for a...friend?" read one instant message from the clinic aide, a former EMT called Dawn, but who everyone called Hazelnut Kitchen due her having a coffee pot always on with the stuff. 

If Alexis had a principal mantra it would be "Do your fucking job." That is what she drafted in response to Hazelnut Kitchen and imagined the chasing ellipses of her message changing to that and just giving her a moment of satisfaction. Instead she left her on read. 

Her walkie squawked again. The custodian and bus team (Just two guys, Eddie and Leo. They drive rental car shuttles on weekends and in the summer at the airport) did not have the instant messaging apps so Alexis and the receptionist always carried radios along with "the guys." She stopped wearing dresses when she became principal because there was nowhere to clip the thing to.

"Alexis, Alexis, Leo. What was that?" The sing song walkie welcome is something a retired custodian told them all to use. He had served in the Navy and swore that is how they all talked. 

"I got the buses ready. I can take the southies. Just let me know. Ill be keeping her warm and clear. Over!"

Southies meant any kids south of I-90 which usually meant about 40 something kids but today would be even less. Kids north of I-90 had multiple short hands including "Uppers" (A name their executive director told Alexis reminded him of narcotics. Kids often jeered at the bus screaming "Upper deckers!) but also "Lakers" since it was a smaller group of kids hemmed between the highway and Lake Erie. 

Alexis put her ear to the metal door and listened for anything too out of place. That meant parents. If it was not arrival or dismissal then someone there felt alien. The school could get noisy and wild. "Transitions are hard" is something she still had to tell students going on 13 who just did not want to go to one a week yoga instead of gym. There were always announcements and the ding of Slack messages spreading info but mostly gossiping. And her radio. But, sometimes there was a quiet when everything hummed that she called the 1:45 feeling and that was wonderful. 

Outside, it was already out in the air. Early release. She learned about it with her ear pressed to the door and Jasmine Roberts coming to tell the receptionist "Ms. Rain! Did you hear!? Early release!"

"Where are you supposed to be?" responded Ms. Rain. "And why do you have your phone?"

Alexis could see this all in her mind's eye through the door and then heard the ding on her phone. An actual text from their Executive Director "No surprise but early release today. I'm working from home but let me know how I can help!"

Snow Day #1

 Zoey didn't feel the weight of years of teaching in her knees or back but instead in the layer of dust and cob webs on her classroom windows. This was true even though the building had four floors and no elevator. Built in 1925 and rehabbed last in 1961 the entire hulk of March Meadow Middle School was exempt from ADA and, in more modern times, has always been "just a swing site" until some rehab elsewhere finished. Or a levy passed. March Meadow was now on a full ten years of being a temporary solution. The school previously had a music teacher, Yanira DeLeon, who always said climbing to the top of the room was like climbing the hills of Yauco, a small town in Puerto Rico, that made it seem like it was cut into the side of a mountain. "It has amazing coffee and will make your thighs into pure steel!" she would say quite loudly in the teacher's lounge and the slap her knees. Zoe never learned if that was Yanira's hometown but she preferred that instead of thinking of it as schlepping or "mountain goating" it to the fourth floor. "I'm going to Yauco!" she said over the din of a class transition when she had to cover a homeroom for three months during someone's maternity leave. People only got this if they had spent more than five years at March Meadow and the pool of people who sincerely smiled about it kept getting smaller.  

Zoey was only 34 but, beyond student teaching out of state, she had never known anything but March Meadow. She felt old when  she looked out the windows and saw the spindle of cob webs and dust bunnies behind her framed photos and mementos. Her room was lucky enough to have a small window mounted AC and here is where she dropped a picture of her graduating from OU surrounded by friends which she really didn't talk to anymore but who she did know most left teaching. It also had a snow globe and hand molded clay coffee mug and a tangle of Chromebook chargers that still worked but were seemingly impossible to unwind. This is when she thought to herself "I really should clean that" which was something that came to mind anytime the weather turned bad. The thought they flittered away which is why she felt old whenever she peered into that liminal space avoided by both her and the cleaners.  

Outside it poured snow. In big gauzy flakes that lumped themselves together as soon as they hit anything. Earlier, the weather report said a lake effect clipper could materialize by end of day but by 12noon it spun into a chilling purple blue band on the radar that just engulfed all of Cuyahoga County from west to east. "This is a serious one," the voice on the radio said as she walked into the office to make some copies. The receptionist turned it down when she heard footfalls but then returned it to normal when she say it was just a teacher. 

She heard a knock on her door and looked up to see her neighbor motioning through the narrow built in window to come over. She could hear her mouthing "ZO! Come here!"

Zoey checked on the trio of student in front of her and asked "Is everyone ok? How are we doing with the chapter books?" Each student said they were OK and she doubted Aidan was actually taking in much of "I Survived the Titanic" but she would check later. "I am going to go check on something Mrs. Baltic wants. I will be right hear just in door way so lets keep the SSR going for another five and I will check after that."

At the door she creaked it open and saw Natalie Baltic flipping through her phone and then poking her eyes up and showing Zoey the weather app on her phone. "Zo, its going to be a snow day. Early release."

Zoey's eyes widen and she couldn't hold back the sort of goofy semi smug smile that happens when you hear something just out of pocket. "Like now?" She inched closer to Natalie and collared up the edge of her hoodie to cover her lips slightly. "That is going to be a shit show."

March Meadow was not a large school. It had 154 kids across 6th to 8th grades only about half of those took the bus. There were walkers and then the usual parents that zoomed through car line. Being a reading intervention teacher Zoey did not have a homeroom so she had all the crap jobs assigned to people who were "free" in the morning. This include car line which was sweet saying "Good morning!" to every come out their cars but also meant standing in all sorts of weather, including today's cold. 

"Are there even going to get buses here in time? There will be so many parents who just don't come." Zoey looked back at her students and then up and down the hall. "I don't want to get stuck here. Did Alexis say anything about this?"

Natalie shrugged and threw a glance at her class who were all bent over tables working on poster boards for class presentations on different kingdoms of life. "She is likely waiting on word from the district. Just as helpless as us. I think she should just go rogue and make the call. I've already had three parents text me and the kids will not stop about it."

Outside it kept pouring and already ankles would be swallowed by the drifts. 

Resolutions 2024

I'm going to give it a try. Here are my resolutions for 2024

1) Drink more water. Getting up to go pee is an excuse to be away from my desk for a minute or so!

2) Try to pay more paper MTG. Maybe it's drafting at a new store or Commander at my current store. Or encouraging my friends to draft (Note I give most of them rides to the hang out spot but it's ok. I didn't have a car until 25) but going to give it a shot.

3) Eat less sugar. Not like keto or anything but I absolutely love candy. And cookies and cakes and brownies and blondies and ice cream and give it to me now! I want the whole world! And it won't be cold turkey but I'll have maybe one Oreo cookie instead of four.

4) Commit to this blog writing idea where it's a series of interconnected stories. It's the Decameron set during a blizzard at a school. I'll tag them as Snow Day. Not promising it's good

5) I'm calling this one....mourning less. 2023 was a year that professionally was perfectly fine. In these early 2020s I have a job that pays as much as my last one, has less responsibility, a calmer and professional atmosphere, a good, responsive boss, and a supportive set of c- suite leaders. I got a holiday bonus just for working there and I'm allowed a flexibility to work from home quite liberally. All that said, I hate it. Not the people (All quite lovely) but I find myself filled with a negative space. Its an emptiness that had me tearing up in my car at end of shift. Now I just mumble fuck or blerg. I get through with memes and energy drinks. I don't have a work beastie whereas in other jobs I had multiple. There is nothing I love which is unfair to a people and place quite deserving of it.

That said, I left the "professional" hero business for a reason. Was it enriching? Were there people I would jump over a table and throw down for? Of course! But the jobs had me always on call and I attached my emotional validation to them. I don't haul boxes upstairs anymore. I don't work Saturdays or get messages on a Sunday evening that "I didn't expect you to read." 

Maybe it is less mourning and just finding validation in something else. However, I'm working at finding peace I may never have that again and find joy that I did have it for 15 plus years. No one is trying to hit me with their car in the office. I can't tell my kids what I do all day. And, note, not because I do anything salacious but beacuse it's a corporate busy ambiguous job with emails and spreadsheets. But I have my war stories of loading an ambulance into a shipping container and a day where everyone wore matching shirts in my honor.

Three Words

Here are three more random words and something I whipped up about them.

"You need to watch out for grown adult that wear animal print as part of their everyday outfits." Jefferson (Do not call him Jeff) said this while shuffling out another Maverick from his pack. I lit it for him using the Bic I stole from the gas station, a simple blue one. 

"Unless it's supposed to be funny or they are planning to get lucky, any one that wears tiger print or zebra stripes or faux fur as their everyday is bad news"

"Peg Bundy wore animal print." I said. Jefferson was about two years older than me and I remember him saying he liked Modern Family so I think he'll get the reference. 

"Yeah, that is a TV character. You know anyone who wears animal print everyday?"

I could not. I did seem a a choice that was quite intentional. You can throw one a pair of jeans and maybe look nice but animal print, that says something. 

"I once dated a girl, " I said. "That the first time we...you know...she had tiger print underwear on. That was something."

Jefferson let the smoke from his cigarette linger in the cab of the truck and fiddled with the vent knows on the air conditioner. "You think she did that on purpose?"

I looked away beacuse I could feel myself get red. Do 37 year olds blush? Should they. I wanted to say that yes it was possible she took one look at me and decided that yes, these were the ones. But, I had to be honest. "No, I think it was random."

"Was she a hard body?"

"It was in college. I liked her. I guess, yes"

Jefferson finished his smoke and smashed the butt into his gloved hand. He then jumbled the butt and ashes into his pocket and fiddled more with the blowers. 

"Good for you. What are other adults we should avoid? Children are exempt as they know no better."

I look out the trucky cab and it's an empty Menards parking lot. We are waiting for it to open. "People whose whole personality is sports betting!"

Jefferson chuckles. "Sportsball"

"People really into World War 2 battles!"

He nods. "I've always been leery of guys that tuck their t-shirts in."

That was a sing of old heads at work. Why they tuckers their t-shirts in was lost on me. The custodian in my high school did that. I remember his grey t-shirt tucked into stiff blue Wrangler jeans and black Doc Marten boots. He was very odd and, once, in a rare bit of sincerity our senior year homeroom teacher, Mrs Alvarez, mumbled that "The sports page doesn't read itself" when asked where wad Mr. Masato.

"Guys will say it's to show respect," I say hald heartedly. "Watch out and they'll tuck in zebra strip t shirts pretty soon."

This got a decent laugh and became part of repertoire as we waited every morning for the stores to open.

Music Wrapped

At the the end of the year we seem split between people sharing their Spotify wrapped and those screaming to "Please Stop." Those people are also equivalent to "No one cares."

I did not have a Spotify wrapped as I use free You Tube music. You Tube was the place for me to get music for early adulthood because my preferred music was original scores from dubbed anime or the intro bumper for a TV show or scene from a movie. This was the era of the animated music video (AMV) and often that was the way to hear a song. I watched a mash up of the Halo 2 trailer because it was overlayed with audio from Serenity and the specific cinematic scene where the fly through the enemy fleet to drop on the forbidden planet. At one point, if I wanted to listen to Limp Bizkit's "My Generation," then I would need to bring up an AMV of Naruto clips.* So, I stayed loyal to YouTube which then spun off YouTube music which is just Spotify save it is red. It also has a wrapped function and all the API geegaws to share to the world. Unlike social media, where everything is thrust unto you, my guess is you come to the blog by choice. I scanned through the "Favorites" tiles on the music app and thought to put a narrative to some it.

Note: YouTube has an embed feature in its Share functionality that is just a string of HTML code. Blogger seems to hate this now as pasting it just renders the code verbatim. I need to tinker more but, for this post, I used the "link video" feature from Blogger.**

Across the Spider-Verse (Start a Band) by Daniel Pemberton

This is my most played/listened too song in 2023. If you have read this blog then you know I am sucker for things that feel "cinematic" and often set my everyday mundane everyday to these beats. My current job has me in a cube all day so how I get through the day is 1) The cinematic music 2)Energy drinks***and 3) Anxiety. I peel into and out of the garage playing these.

No surprise that this is my most played song considering I gushed about the original movie and also all the aforementioned. This jam, which starts ominous and then crescendos into the drums and synth rips, makes me both want to save the day and also be saved. Its my new Disintegration in terms of day dreaming about sword wielding cyber heroines. 

The whole album is full of bangers. "My Name is...Miles Morales" and "All Stations Stop Spider-Man" and "Spiderwoman" are amazing. FWIW, I think this movie is BETTER than the first albeit the first feels much more personal. Second one is also a bit too long.

Salam 1996 by Groove Dealers

This song reminds me of a friend who sends me esoteric jams (oddly via Spotify links) then I then copy and paste into the old big red You Tube. Between him and satellite radio**** is how I learn about any "new" music, which really is just older songs first heard. This is a hard pivot from the other jams here as its beat box gangsta rap.

False God by Taylor Swift

My new job has me leading client calls. Sometimes on a weekly basis as I keep them abreast on what we are, hopefully, doing for them. This is anathema for someone who has weaponized introversion and also struggles to express themselves orally. Mariah Carey was in town recently and my client mentioned how she was going. I mentioned how that must be fun and, fun story, I worked previously with someone who went to two separate Eras tours concerts and how this was both an amazing flex and also object of envy. This was all over a Teams call but the energy in that digital room brightened and all tension left the meeting "I did not know you are a Swiftie," us what the client said and I mentioned how yes I unironically enjoy her work.  False God is where I go to for both something I truly like (its the sax!) and also a somewhat non single deep cut. 

La Jumpa by Arcangel and Bad Bunny

As a Puerto Rican living in the 2020s I am contractually obligated to like Bad Bunny. I also am contractually obligate to be loud when I do talk. And, yeah I do like the guy. I could not imagine liking both reggaeton and mumble core rape as a younger man. I was firmly into my bleep bloop music. But, these cats do it and it really feels like magic. Saying "Luka, step back, la jumpa" feels like it should summon something infinetly powerful. 

Lights (BassNectar Remix)-Ellie Goulding and Bassnectar

My wife once listened to this song and said "This is a very you song." If you do listen to it then its a audible mashup of everything on the blog. Enjoy!

*I have never seen Naruto save for this video. And yes, I unironically enjoyed Limp Bizkit even walking about 2 miles to the local record store to buy Chocolate Starfish and Hot Dog Flavored Water.

** I have few actual regrets that haunt me. They are 1)Not going into computer science 2)Similarly, not getting into education sooner (maybe even teaching!) and 3) Letting my kids watch YouTube. I know, ironic. Not a screen free parent (have you read this blog? I was raised by TV) but can't stand the always on Gen Alpha screeching. 

***The best is Ghost. I can't stand Bang. Monster is the baseline (The tap water of energy drinks). I drink Celsius when I want to impress someone. 

****It came with my car and I thought it was amazing and now I don't know how to cancel! Every time I call they just make it cheaper.

Letters of Recommendation

Serena from three jobs ago emailed and asked for a job recommendation. My wife commented on how odd this was "That was ten years ago. She doesn't have anyone else she can ask?"

My ego deflated I said how I felt it was nice but when I did last see Serena she was too young to rent a car and I was just a few years out from being able to.

But, I had to complete this mission, out of not just professionalism, but also lingering attachment to work friends seperat3d by decades.

The recommendation form came via email link and the blinking cursor asked me to use this space to "say anything else you would like to share about 'candidate'". This wad after a series of radial questions gaming on a 1 to 7 (yes, seven) scale where 1 was "call the police" and 7 was "exemplary" It was all sevens with a few sixes to add some acceptable variance.

Here is what I wrote, unbound by any character limits

"You need to hire Serena! If you don't then I assume you must be interviewing an honest to God superhero in the other room. I could ask her to do anything and not only would she crush it but she would find ways to do it better. Remember, we worked a hybrid job split between a warehouse and office. She could be on the phone chatting with a client and then, five minutes later, be helping unload a truck beacuse it showed up when all the dock guys are at lunch. Serena had an amazing, almost uncanny, ability to learn discovering product nuances just from vibes. Clients loved her and our interns found her an ersatz young professional guru/mom. We are lucky she has dedicated her mind, body, and soul to helping humanity beacuse she could conquer the world. If that were to happen, I hope she would spare me since I hired her in first place and wrote this letter so yall can hire her to! Best regards!"

I never learned if she got the job

Return to Form

 It was always via text. Sometimes just a regular SMS. Sometimes over varying messenger apps (Facebook, Slack, Teams, Instagram chats, etc.) but it was always "I am writing something. Give me three things."

And it was random...1) Waterparks 2) Cheese wheels 3) Purple

1) Bocce 2) Celery Stalks 3) Macaroni and Cheese

1) Chocolate cake 2) Legs  3) Sunny days

So I fired up the random word generator and got these

No job seems immune to the constrained digital windows of the work all staff (or hands if your place is fancy) meeting. Regardless of how large the group there always seem to be a mix of people

• Muted and with cameras off
• Inversely, people firmly heard and seen with everything (every pin prick it seems) captured
• Deflated workers staring into the screen but always darting eyes to the all other work they are actually doing
• Overly eager people way too into it. These people are either new or the very rare overly sincere unicorn that actually get something from these.

The proportion varies depending on company morale but, something seemingly uniform across industries, is some sort of kickoff ice breaker or question.

"What is one word that people would use to describe your personality. Please keep it positive!"

In these situations, I really do try my best albeit my word is likely "Self loathing." Or "high functioning depression"

Sorry, those are two words. Can I go again? 

But, I try to put on an engaged face. Mostly out of respect for the presenters (Extra support if it is someone asked to be a moderator. Not some consultant or professional development pro but the team lead three cubes across from you. Or the department manager a few seats below VP levels) but sometimes ill get queued up for a joke and everyone will politely chuckle and that hit of dopamine is all worth it. 

What really sucks the air out of the phony digital room is the slithering personality that wants to use the whole forum to sling mud. This is a sign of a toxic workplace but someone will take the chance to tell everyone off in a passive aggressive matter.

Precursors to this (Seriously, if you hear these then just sink in your seat or throw your computer out the window) are

• "I am just saying...."
• "I don't see color...."
• "All lives matter..."
• "I am going to say what everyone else is thinking..."
• "Fuck!"

Actually, the last can be good "Fuck! Guys, I did not think you would remember my birthday! I don't want to take too much time from AJ's presentation, but thanks everyone!"

But, I do not have the personality to thrive in these meetings. I'm just quiet trying to get to the end of the meeting so that I can go home. 

Boat Story

Help! I've been sucked into Below Deck (all the versions and umpteen seasons) and cannot escape.*

Through the power of my imagination I am now in the show tapped into the crew of the motor super yacht Synergy!

The produc...err...I mean guests have asked us to put on a talent show for them on the second night of charter. 

What will I do? Not blessed by any musical acumen or particularly good looks I would tell them an amusing anecdote...

I briefly lived in a small central New York town in the mid 00s. It was the biggest town for about 15 miles in any direction but even then it just had one gas station and yet two video rental stores. Also one of those towns that basically stopped on Sundays. Not out of any sense of piety but just due to sheer ennui. There wasn't anything else to talk about or do by Saturday night. So, the whole village of 1500 people or so just need a reset. Only things open were the coffee shop, the laundromat, and the dollar store. 

At the time I wad dating my then girlfriend, now wife, and our  dating anniversary rolled around late February. 

I am horrible gift giver. I had something but it took everything I had not just to give it to her the moment I bought it.

"HERE! LOVE ME!"

I then was filled with doubt as the piece of sterling silver jewelry from the local 10000 Villages store was likely not enough for an anniversary. I'll make her something! A cake! White cake with white frosting, her favorite.

It being Sunday meant only store open was the dollar store. It had cake mix but only yellow and frosting but only chocolate. That's fine. It's still cake! When I got back to my apartment I realized I had no eggs, which Duncan Hines told me was key to said cake. There was no options for eggs beyond ask a neighbor  (truly terrifying as a millenial) or walk a mile in the winter chill to the gas station over the village line, which, maybe had eggs.

So, fuck it, I just used extra vegetable oil. Same difference, right? It's yellow and full of fat. 

The cake baked up in a quivering yet still solid mass. It was likely a fire hazard, ready to blaze with even an errant spark. It was heavy, just full of oil and suffocated flour. "Like biting into a pimple," is what my girlfriend described it as. As a child, my mother would give baby oil to drip over our backyard aluminum slide and then wax paper to sit on while we slide. 

We were human torpedoes. I imagine this cake could drip out a good run if pressed to top of the key

Oil cake then became a short hand for horrible food in our relationship.

Rascal House Pizza? Oil cake!

The white bread, lettuce and mustard sandwiches our son makes? Oil cake!

Let them eat oil cake and either die (I'm addition to being horrible to eat it was even more horrible for you than cake!) or slip away free off friction

*Fwiw my dream crew

Captain: Glenn! (Such a nice guy!)

Bosun/First Mate: Eddie! (A bit basic but solid)

Head Stew: Daisy! (My wild Irish rose!)

Chef: Marcos! (Everything is a banger!)

Stew 1: Ross (I have him here as a stew but i know he was chief for a season. Mr. Olander!)

Stew 2: Scarlett! (Real shame we only got her for like three episodes)

Deck hand 1: Tony! (He can fire dance and loves getting up early)

Deck hand 2: Lara! (I love the way she says her name "Laaaaa---RAH!" and she fills the obligatory having someone from South Africa on the boat

Location: Caribbean 

Interlude

My father passed away when I was very young. It was the worst kept secret. My mother did home hospice so by end it was a frozen person surrounded by the hurly burly of well wishers. The window AC in my parents room, where he died, did not stop for two years until that night. The room had ivory inlay tiles that must have crackled when the chill ended and everything returned to to the tropical stifle. 

I wasn't there but I knew the moment. My mother came into my room and hugged me, rubbing down my back and arms with her hands. All of this was silent, a very intimate pantomime. We have never talked about it.

Since then I have always imagines this is what death must feel like. You are alone and ethereal bony arms pull you down deeper and deeper into and endless maw.  Your body shrinks to a naked pinprick and the arms swirl unto each other and end their labor. None of this is terrifying but instead quite mellow and matter of fact. It's the feeling of being stuck in traffic and realizing you are not going anywhere so might as well lay back. 

I write all this beacuse I have felt myself recently trying to fill a void, that naked pinprick, with something, anything. I'll watch endless reels and online memes sharing them to friends of varying tiers. Even three warehouse intern from two jobs ago. "Isn't this funny...err...Sean? Fuck, I only know your screename." I have so many people I miss and dwell on the opportunities missed to say I appreciate you, I love you, thank you.

I'll have two Xmas beers and I'm spinning on the couch after kids are in bed. My 40 year old metabolism does not play well with self medicating with alcohol. It's hell on my A1C but three drinks and I'll call all those aforementioned people I missed. "Yo, what the fuck up?!"

A friend in Colorado sent a box full of gummies so I'll cut rhe edge with THC and CDB and other alphabet soup solutions. 

I feel incredible, for only ten minutes however, after an energy drink. A white Monster or Oramge Creamsicle Ghost is instant win in a can. I'll sometimes be classy and sip the "healthier" ones like Celsius in the slim cans made to look like something more appropriate on a beach than the office.

It sucks to, get ready for a euphemism here, fantasize anymore. Purely for the brief dopamine that takes the edge off.

Four Ibuprofen, black coffee and a can of fizzy water is the "Do you ever think about dying?" potion. Medicated caffeinated sparkling waters? I am a man limited by means and not my ideas.

Heat Check

There is no heat like the heat of a crappy A-frame house. Bonus sweat if it is a rental where the landlord's son crashes in between tenants. He has left behind an assortment of thrift shop plates and cutlery. All in varying sizes and designs like a college apartment where everything is purloined from dining halls and SWAG give aways.

Up there it's an unnatural temperature. This specific set of air was never meant to sit under pine jousts and knob and tube wiring. There is always a single lonely light bulb for illumination and when it goes out, you are in the teeth of a dragon.

It's suffocating. Imagine dunking your head into a basket of towels pulled too early from rhe dryer. It doesn't just hit the skin and make you roll your sleeves but makes you want to simply abandon the idea of clothes. It's the waft of heat when opening an oven save that it sits like a thermal fog over the box of Christmas decorations.

I've lived in too many place like this. One where it boiled away my guppies in the fish tank. To save the others I had to regularly drip ice cubes into the tank. One that I owned where the house was wonderful but the attic and basement were both metaphorical warts. In this house is where we saw the husk of a rat (maybe squirrel) merged into the pine and ancient insulation. One place didn't have stairs into the A frame space. Instead you pulled a wooden panel off a closet wall and climbed up an angled ladder (like Discovery Zone. If anyone does read this I know they are 90s kids) to the area. We sparingly used this so we made this room my daughter's nursery. During holidays she would watch from her crib and chatter to us as we dragged boxes from the attic and made the temperature go up by five degrees.

"It would be awful to die here," said my mother once when we toured the home we owned and showed her the strangled sirroco air of the attic. I guess she is right save what would be great places to die? Surrounded by family with no pain? In a blaze of glory after kissing your lover and saying to never forget me? That is more a time than place. A cool place for sure.