Mad sweet all day.

I finished the textbook writing project. This morning! At 8:37 AM! Now I can actually catch up on such things as e-mail, LJ, sleep, drinking coffee with Adam, and watching my Netflix movies. Excellent.

Another thing that came about this morning was the realization that my new job relies squarely on my being able to perform well in my two worst areas: 1.) hand-eye coordination, and 2.) answering e-mail in a prompt fashion. I am either doomed, or about to make two really, really big, grand changes in the way I operate. It's scary. But at least I have some sources of humor and amusement while I'm there. The owner went to the Georgia Tech bookstore and bought some new English slang flashcards for the teaching side of the office, but, even 30 years after she emigrated here from France, tongue-in-cheek American humor sometimes eludes her, as it did when she bought these cards. They show pleasant little 1950s-home-ec-textbook-style line drawings, coupled with such gems of American slang as:

"Lil' dawg, there's no one else mommy would rather roll with." (Showing a mom carrying her baby on her back.)

"Put a grip of sugar in my coffee. That's how I stay so mad sweet." (Showing a woman being served by a waiter or flight attendant or somebody like that.)

And on the back, there's the dictionary definitions of the slang words, complete with correct pronunciation, synonyms and antonyms, and more sample sentences. I don't know if the current teachers will have the nerve to try to incorporate those into their classes, but if I were teaching more students than my current roster of one (a Mexican-born housewife who mostly likes to learn vocabulary for shopping and taking her babies to the doctor), I know I'd find some way to incorporate them. Or, rather, incorporate that shit.

Back on my side of the office, my co-worker Danielle was going a little crazy. She left her sales and marketing job to teach ESL, and, after just four months of teaching, what position does she get promoted to? Sales and marketing, of course. She's two years older than I am, and yet she reminds me of how I was two years ago: newly engaged, and fighting the urge to nest and settle with the urge to loudly and ceremoniously ditch all the trappings of a secure life and wander around inside another country's borders for a while. I told her that if she didn't do it soon, she'd probably never do it. I also told her, from my pleasant, Ikea-accesorized desk across from her similarly Ikea-accessorized desk (the owner, it sometimes seems, has little to do but shop downtown), that every time I wind up in a full-time desk job, I start immediately trying to figure out how I'm going to leave it.

"I think I'm getting to be like that too," she said.

"But Danielle," I said, "you're the only dawg I'd roll with."

(I have a friend!)



Since I can wear jeans to work now, I occasionally do. Today I went in wearing jeans and a dark red shirt and brown clogs and my new tan corduroy jacket. And then I realized: I looked like the first day of school. You know, that whole I-just-pulled-this-together-this-morning-although-I-really-didn't look, which often results in getting blisters on your toes and heels. You've got on at least one good old reliable piece of clothing that's been softened with wear, coupled with something new and stiff, and all of it's just a little too warm to wear in August.


Here's some slightly blurry photographic evidence, taken in our bathroom here in the 570-sq-ft. Corporate-Owned Apartment Unit of Insanity.