i've got the herx

i'm sick.  again.  probably sicker than i was with all the other colds combined.  however, at least this time i'm sick for a reason, which makes feeling like crap only slightly more tolerable.  after a jaunt to the doctor on thursday,  i was diagnosed with a sinus infection, which has been causing both the intense pressure in my face and all the lovely colds.  i felt more or less fine when i went to see the doctor - i was just simply curious about the pressure pain in my cheeks.  hilariously enough, i started feeling completely shitty after taking the first dose of antibiotic yesterday and have spent the entire day today in bed, so fever-y and disgusting that i don't even want to eat (which means this is very serious business).  apparently, this reaction to antibiotics is call the "herxheimer reaction," and is the parting gift of all the bacteria i am killing with the drugs.  when the antibiotic destroys bacterial cells, they release all their toxins so fast that the body can't handle the deluge of ickiness (i've been doing a lot of internet investigating laid up in bed all day).  therefore, i'm smack in the middle of my body's gigantic inflammatory response to all the dead bacteria.  yummy.

i've never been a very good patient, because i'm a cry baby, so i'm hoping i get better soon or luke will probably totally lose his gourd.

unseasonable

it was blazingly hot here in los angeles today.  despite notoriously hating sickly hot weather, i thought i would really enjoy the heat, as i basked in the gentle warm breeze that blew through the kindergarten yard at 8 am this morning.  however, what i should have realized is that when it is 80* at 8 in the morning, there's trouble on the way.  i'm not sure exactly how hot it was, but it was gross enough that even the screaming monsters that are the kids in my class sat quietly under the jungle gym and inside of the play houses during breaks and actually celebrated when i told them that recess was over.  i've also just added on a second job to my schedule*, so i'm sure i would have appreciated the warmer weather more had i not been forced to work in it for about eleven hours today.

*the new job!  i'd been considering adding more paid work to my schedule for a while, because as much as i love the kindergarten class, i don't work enough hours and am essentially paid in Lucky Charms and cold germs for the hours i am there.  thus, the idea of babysitting for a few hours after school gets out was born.  literally the first craigslist post i investigated was from a family, living two miles from the school where i work, that needed after-school help with their kindergarten son.  it was, essentially, perfect.  i sent in an email, interviewed and started working all within a week, and it's been pretty awesome thus far.  it's a bit of an adjustment, going from the insane structure of the classroom, where every second is accounted for, to the relative freedom of working with a family in their own house, but once i figure it out, it will be totally fine.  also, this family is super friendly and has a house that sits on a cliff overlooking the pacific ocean and is gorgeous and the situation just generally is really positive.

over the weekend, luke and i journeyed to (the only) target (in west los angeles, which is craziness) in order to get some big bins in which to store all our assorted projects.  while there, we came across some really beautiful, darkly stained furniture and, before we knew it, we'd bought a ton of stuff, assembled it and gone back for another huge load of pre-packaged decor.  we are now the proud owners of four new bookcases, a coffee table, two end tables, a tv stand and a new shoe rack.  i'm actually truly very proud of it.  all the furniture has a classic, expensive look to it and was all very, very much budget friendly.  plus, it all cozied up the apartment and made feel a little more like a home and less like a transitional place (which is what apartments tend to feel like, at least to me).

all in all, the last week and a half has been unseasonably productive (and warm).

made of poo

today, a new sing-songy chant blazed its way through the playground, and even though it's mildly inappropriate to be singing at school, it's also way hilarious and therefore i haven't tried to stamp it out of the kindergarten culture just yet.

here it is:

(sung to the tune of the scooby doo theme song)

scooby scooby doo

made of poo

shaggy thought it was brownies

so he took a bite

and his face turned white

and that was the end of shaggy

i am very impressed with the kids for this, despite the fact that it was very obviously stolen from something else.

big, warm and glowy

i am sitting in a big fluffy chair near a warm, glowy fire in that house where i grew up, using my mom's new laptop computer and sniffling/sneezing uncontrollably (which i am almost positive is a punishment for mocking my brother earlier about the fact that he is allergic to just about every living thing in the universe). luke, my littlest brother and my mommy are playing a card game - i've opted out because i am too sleepy and buzzy from some beer and kosher wine from our make-shift saturday night passover seder. (i also think i love watching luke interact, by himself, with my family - it's equal parts cute and comforting.) there's a certain energy to the house right now, mostly because we're all here, with our significant others. sam, my disgustingly talented artist brother, currently in his second year in college, is home for the weekend with his adorable girlfriend and i've brought luke, fresh from a trip to his own hometown, home for an easter weekend at my jewish grandparents' house. we drove up tonight after spending all of friday and part of this morning in the desert with luke's family and i think that all that family togetherness, on both sides, has made me a little more emotional than usual. (it's that, or the wine).

it's just literally been months, and perhaps even a year, since we've all been together and happy and sleeping in the same house. i don't mind sitting out of the games for a little while and enjoying what it means to all be here. that's something to revel in.

idiot things

i realize now that my last post was perhaps a little too harsh, and also perhaps a little out of place on a blog that centers mostly on all the idiot things i do all day long. i don't like stumbling upon someone else's political rants when i'm simply looking for internet updates, and i'm assuming the three people (max) who read this blog feel the same way. thus, i will stick to stupid stories, and stupid stories only, from now on.

love is all you need

i'm supposed to be at the tar pits today, as the kindergarteners are on spring break and i have extra free time, which almost never happens.  however, i'm sniffly and runny-nosed and while i'm more or less well, i a) don't want to infect anyone else and 2) want to be totally 100% for my planned newport beach trip tomorrow (i miss anya too much to cancel), passover on wednesday and the desert over the weekend.

anyway, so i'm not busy.  which is new.  which means i've been surfing the interwebs (i advise you to check out www.totallylookslike.com - hysterical) and have found, in my searches, that many people are planning to pull in iowa what they managed in california - specifically, to rob fellow human beings of basic rights by using religious funds to try to alter governmental policies.  disclaimer: while i am very easily annoyed and am a bit of a whiny baby, i am perhaps among the most tolerant people i know (and, apparently, among the most modest).  you could insist you were an alien and command i call you "clart" and i would still be your friend (if you weren't obnoxious, of course).  thus, i have close friends who fall on either side of the gay marriage debate.  i also have absolutely no inherent problem with anyone having strong religious beliefs.  that said, i am the daughter of lawyers who believe in the gospel of abraham lincoln and who hammered into me and my brothers since the day we were born the difference between right and wrong, and the importance of equality for everyone.  so, i begin to get worked up when people of one faith (or of a few) try to use said belief(s) as the cornerstone of morality or righteousness for huge groups of beautifully diverse and multi-cultural human beings.  in choosing one religion over another, you have decided that the one is better suited to you than the other, which is great.  we all make personal choices daily that define who we are for our entire lives (i, for instance, don't eat meat, eggs or cheese - and i've never been high).  however, attempting to force your chosen religion (or food rules, or puritanical fear of hallucinogenic substances) onto millions of others is just a touch pretentious.  it also, according to the constitution, which, religious texts aside, is the actual law of this country, is illegal.

i did not support prop 8 in california for much the same reason i wouldn't support a proposition that aimed to strip religious people of their own rights under the law - it's unfair.  and it's wrong.  trying to write into law the discrimination of any people would go against everything this country is built upon.  

this panic over gay marriage, over the simple allowance of people to have their own rights and their own lives, however different from ours, makes me, as a person, very sad.

queen bees

there is a girl in the kindergarten class who considers herself the queen bee, who spends her days ordering people around, snapping her fingers in her classmates' faces and referring to other girls in the class as "kittens" who must come when she calls them.  this girl, not surprisingly, makes other girls cry almost every day.  and, try as i might, i can't seem to punish or reason the teenage mean girl out of her.  lately, i've been trying a new approach - namely, that i'm trying to build up the confidence of the "kittens" so that they won't get so upset when queen bee calls them ugly or smelly or pokes them too hard.

today, a little girl, who i adore to pieces, had an altercation with queen bee and began to cry about how she'd just been laughed at.  i spent about ten minutes outside the classroom with her, telling her that although she can't always control what other people say, she can always control how she lets the words affect her, blah blah blah (i meant well, but i'm sure that after the second sentence of my motivational speech, i started to sound exactly like charlie brown's mom).  anyway, the take-away message of my lecture was that this girl should work on being so secure in her knowledge that she is awesome that she won't care about queen bee says about her.

she then left with half the class to do some reading with the third graders, and when she came back, she was beaming.  she came right up to me and said, "miss sarah, i'm feeling much better.  i don't care about myself!"

(i have some more work to do.)

things that annoy me (part 1, i'm sure)

call me a purist, but there are a few things about the modern world that make me very upset.  and, because i've had to experience each of these things almost constantly lately, i've decided to rant about them here, where no one can get hurt.  they are, in no certain order:

1) motion-censor bathroom appliances.  if there ever comes a day when i am not physically able to flush a toilet, turn on a faucet, operate a soap dispenser or procure myself some towels, i should not be allowed to be alone in a public restroom.  however, until that day comes, i would greatly appreciate being granted the (now infrequent) privilege of manually getting rid of my own waste and washing my own hands without having to manically wave my hands or jump around inside a bathroom stall in order to activate a motion detector that may or may not actually detect motion.  as a child of the "AIM" generation, i understand and really celebrate the use of technology to make life easier.  sadly, a robotic bathroom is pretty much only convenient in theory.  in practice, it means that crap doesn't get flushed and hands don't get washed, a disgusting fact that greatly outweighs the combined genius of all those censors.

2) hd-tv.  people like to applaud high definition as if the ability to see the pimple on a newscaster or the sweat on a red-faced real-life witness is a good thing - a triumph of engineering.  the way i see it, though, people are being tricked into spending a ton of money on televisions that provide images not unlike those my parents used to capture on their handheld video-cameras when they were young parents and way into home videos.  a high definition television (or t.v. station) is, it seems to me, a trussed-up home video machine, the success of which aggravates me.

3) and, finally, twitter (which, interestingly enough, was around for about four years before inexplicably exploding into the media like a brangelina baby).  i hate twitter, for reasons that may be surprising considering i have a blog - i think twitter is incredibly narcissistic.  why would anyone care what you're doing every fifteen minutes?  i understand that blogs and Facebook profiles and all of that are, essentially, just as narcissistic, but at least those things allow people opportunities to be clever and creative.  there's only so much someone can pack into the 140 characters per post allowed by twitter, and often, it's not too great.  also, to "twitter" is just vaguely sexual enough that, being a puritan, i cannot handle it.