He Doesn’t Know Who Jesus Was Or What Praying Is

Last night we went to see The Wicker Man at the Hollywood, which somehow neither of us had ever seen. I have always heard the scariness of this movie referred to in reverential terms usually reserved for things like the Exorcist. For some reason I associated this movie with being the scariest movie of all time. I don’t know how I got through so much of this old life without (a) ever seeing it and (b) ever learning one single thing about it. Conclusion: that movie rules!!!!! Is not scary though. Great tone, great concept, great look, great performances, great music. Play enjoyed by ALL

That’s just a little mini-movie-review from me to you, I hope it is helpful. I want to start a blog called Chad’s Movie Reviews where they are all one-word reviews and every movie either “sucks” or “rules.” On rare occasions a movie might be “gay.”

Years ago I temped for a company that compiled all the data from audience surveys taken after movie screenings. If you ever want a truly disturbing window into the mass consciousness of America that will give you nightmares forever, go ahead and spend a week doing this job. I couldn’t believe how many people reported that the movie they had just seen was “gay.” Some of them even specified, “it was for gay people, or maybe girls.” I’ll never forget some of those classic answers, like the person who said their favorite part of the movie Cheaper by the Dozen was “when the frog fell down into the eggs and made a mess.” Another person simply responded “frog in egg.” And of course, who could forget the person who, in response to that same question, wrote that their favorite part of the movie was “the beginning part. The middle part. The end,” and that their least favorite part of the movie was “the first part.”

And just think, public education has been free and mandatory in this country since 1910!

I wonder if I will always remember all the temp jobs I have had. I’m sure they will start blurring together with age. The job where for 8 hours a day we dialed numbers and read a scripted paragraph with no preamble to whoever answered, and we had to log how many people hung up on us. The job where we had to call people and ask them what kind of power company they wanted: coal, water, or nuclear (one man responded “none of the above–WOOD!”). The job where I typed the results of chemical animal testing into a computer in all-caps for 8 bucks an hour and I had to wear pantyhose and heels to do it. The job where everyone smoked inside the office and the temp agency got mad at me when I said I couldn’t work there. The job selling cell phones for Sprint inside the Best Buy. Good lord.

Not to mention the real jobs, like driving the ice cream truck and being the bike delivery dude, and being a receptionist, and nannying. Nannying!!! Now truly I would rather try my luck panning for gold in the mountains of colorado. Nannying. Nannying is one of those jobs where it’s like “what is your gender, girl or boy? If girl then the job is yours, no background check necessary, can you start right now” and you are like “woo hoo!”

I can’t believe our nation’s children are regularly entrusted to virtual strangers who are not even of drinking age, and who do things like just shrug when they can’t figure out how to put the car seat in the car. I remember carrying a screaming baby WHO WAS NAKED into a 7-11 to buy diapers and then putting a diaper on him on the hood of my car in the parking lot. That was somebody’s child! And real talk: that child is sixteen now

Today is Sunday, and it is finally daylight savings which means I will no longer be waiting for the bus in actual pitch-black darkness but rather almost-dawn darkness, which will be a major improvement. This also means it will get dark at like five o’clock, but I don’t care about that, nuts to the rest of you.

On Friday we had a good talk about bringing mindfulness into our leisure time. It is hard working full time, as most of you probably know. For me, I haven’t worked full time since the early 00s and even then my job was undemanding and stupid. So for me this is new, a full-time job that I care about and that actually takes up a massive amount of my brain power and energy each day. I arrive home basically wiped out, just intellectually I mean. I get up at 6 a.m. and then am on high-alert all day–it’s not like being a receptionist where tons of your time is spent deep in an imaginative fantasy landscape, or staring at the wall, or stealing office supplies. It’s like, from 8 to 4 you are required to be fully present as, for example, six students come into your office one after the other and you have to write a paper outline for them. Just writing six paper outlines in a row, about slightly different topics! My brain is completely fried by the end. It is hard to form words with my mouth. And that’s not to mention meetings, which go on and on, and then actual teaching, which is really an energy-sapper even though it’s great! What a blessing to have this job! But by the time I make my way across two buses and finally get home, it feels like there is not much left for the rest of my life. Like not only is it unimaginable that I would “go out” and socialize at that point, it is hard to even speak engagingly with my husband! I can only imagine taking a bath, eating, and watching a movie. My old man is in a similar boat, as he is teaching part-time but frantically writing his dissertation during all other moments. So we have gotten into this dire rut where we make dinner and then just sit there saying things about our students. “One of my students asked me what a syllabus was today.” “One of my students broke her knee.” “My students wouldn’t talk today.” “Mine did talk today.” It’s like, what is there to talk about when all you do is teach? I feel like I have nothing delightful or entertaining to report or discuss. Even my go-to conversation starter of describing New Yorker articles has fallen by the wayside, as I’m not even keeping up with my New Yorkers. So, we had this kind of Buddhist mindfulness retreat on Friday where we talked about living in the present and making firm distinctions between work and private life. For example, no more checking email once we get home. Also, no talking about students at the dinner table. And we have to take a walk every evening. And since evenings are going to be low-energy no matter what, we are now required to spend one morning a week drinking coffee and talking. We did this yesterday and it was very rejuvenating.

We are blessed by one thing, which is that neither of us minds routine and habit. I think the knee-jerk solution to this problem is to “break out of your routine,” which is impossible when
– you have no money
– you have no time
– you actually don’t really like to do anything but read, talk, and watch movies, which IS the routine already. It’s not like given my druthers I’d be out clubbing or something. I don’t care about camping or hiking, really, or at least not enough to actually make them happen, and besides, it’s wintertime. All the things I like to do–read, eat, talk, watch a movie–are what I already do, it’s just that I’m doing them in a kind of haze of moral exhaustion that makes them less pleasurable.

Down with moral exhaustion! I lead an invigorating life.

In other news, I had totally forgotten that contact lenses are an option for me. I wore them for ten years and then stopped, and then forgot they existed. Lately I’ve been complaining and complaining about how sick I am of wearing glasses but how the optometrist told me I’m too old for LASIK and anyway I can’t afford LASIK. Then Julia said “what about contacts” and I was like OH YEAH!!!!! So I’m gonna go get some fucking contacts and stick them in there and then maybe I’ll look less like George Burns and more like a genderless albino gnome

you won’t believe it, but when I google imaged “genderless albino gnome,” this was the first result, and indeed that is EXACTLY HOW I WOULD LOVE TO LOOK: