Last night I went to a houseparty at one of my roomates fellow teachers house--let's call her Jackie, for the sake of anonymity. She is woman that I have met once before and I like her very much. She is a master story-teller and brings me to tears with her imitations of her kids- who are just about the age of mine. I think I have written of her before.

D and I drove up the prerequisite 25 miles through country roads to get to her house, only to be slammed by the smell of hogs when we got out of the car. Jackie lived in a really awesome, beautiful home...that happened to be situated right behind a hog farm. She said that you can hardly ever smell them, so we must have just gotten lucky. She also shared this fun fact with me:

"If you ever need to get rid of a dead body-- I mean, all of it, the fingernails, bones-- just feed it to hogs. They will eat the whole thing. They eat anything!"

We proceeded, with our new knowledge, to suck down more jello shots than any one person should. Anyway, all was fun and games until...

Jackie was telling a story about a woman when she said, "She is this ugly dyke-lookin' woman"

But wait- I didn't even mind that, so much. I expect it out here and I have been trying to seperate out the fact that I like people that say awful things. If I didn't, I would be friendless here in Rocky Mount. I was prepared to let it go. But as soon as the words came out of her mouth, she wheeled around to me in horror, grabbed my arm and said, "Oh, my god, M! I am so sorry! I didn't mean anything!"

The situation of this is, of course, the fact that I am closted here. I haven't told anyone that I am queer-- for safety reasons, for the knowledge that I could lose my job, etc. My roomate knows, though. Jackie's reaction made it clear that my roomate had outed me to this woman, whom I barely know. And, to make things worse, there was a guy there that I don't know at all, who saw the whole interaction, so I was outed to him, too. Suddenly, I was this weird queer girl at a party in the country.

My reaction to the whole things was a bit startling to me. I almost started to cry. D apologized when I confronted her, but it didn't feel like enough. I think one of the things that bothers me the most is that I haven't felt okay to tell people. It has been weighing on me so heavily and I haven't been able to talk to people about it. It feels like theft that D felt like she got to talk about it, when I can't.

I don't know really how to handle this. I live with this woman who I feel like I can't trust with knowledge that she already has. I keep trying to keep things in perspective, but I feel so vulnerable, all of a sudden. And I also feel a bit like a coward- and have all of this time- that I haven't come out, already. I have been considering doing it. My kids ask me if I am gay all of the time because I am always yelling at them for saying "faggot" and the other teachers don't. I don't fear losing my job all that much; most days, I would consider that a blessing. But I do fear walking down the hallway while everyone stares at me with a disgusted look on their face.

But today, I have the house to myself. I am sick, so I will sleep. The car drama continues...maybe I will do laundry....  ¶ 9:15 AM

  I am very disturbed that Baby Story on TLC has taken this awful turn where for the last few days they have been doing multiple births. The thing is, these births are not easy and the babies have to be whisked away and have tubes put in them and stuff.

The problem is, Baby Story used to be perfect. I could always watch it (and do every day) and know that there would be a mom and a dad and the baby would come out breathing and pink and it lulled me to sleep with pink and blue clouds behind my eyes.

But it isn't perfect anymore! It is really making me upset! Now, I am exhausted, because I can't nap without Baby Story! The cooking channel works, too, but when I get home only Emril is on and he yells! Why would you ever YELL on a cooking show?

I have never used so many exclamation marks on my blog, but I am tired!  ¶ 7:25 AM

  I have this crazy stress (I think) rash/hives thing happening that started on my neck, is now on my face, and seems to be moving onto my arms.

I am afraid that teaching and living in North Carolina is, literally, killing me.

(KNOCK-KNOCK)  ¶ 7:35 AM

  What freaks me out the most about this whole teaching gig is how different each day can be. Yesterday, I came home and just crawled into the hole of my couch to die. Today, I am totally energized.

The kids and I just totally grooved on each other today. I was joking with them, they were joking with me. Even when I had to discipline a couple of them, they took it good naturedly, as did I.

I try to think every day about what I did differently...and some of it I can control, for sure. But so much of it is personality. So much of my happiness depends on fifty different kids mornings, nights, and class right before me. When things are good, they are so good and fun. When they aren't good--well, you have all seen the effects.

The spaghetti dinner last night was a trip. I got to hear, first hand, racism in schools and how it effects education. Little Miss Bay Area in the South (me) tries to keep my mouth shut about most things that smack of liberalism...but I thought it wasn't extremely "liberal" of me to mention the fact that the high academic club (the beta club) was 95% white in a school where our students are at least 95% black. It seemed to me an obvious issue and something that would be obviously wrong. The teachers that I was talking to, however, disagreed. The two comments I got were, "Well, the white kids are the good kids" and "I just say screw the other kids; I'm going to take my good little white kids and focus on them". Yikes. I knew these attitudes existed, but I never thought people had the nerve to just outright say it. In the West, people are more politcally correct than that. I don't know which way is better; to just say racist things or to just create policies that are essentially racist but be too classy to verbalize.

But on a lighter note, two of my kids were in the choir and two in the band. They were so cute and proud of themselves. The band was terrible, in a very charming way, and I never thought I would be so please to sit through screaming saxophones and warbly flutes. I love to see my kids succeed at things.

Time for my Baby Story nap...yesterday, they did quadruplets, which was so exciting I couldn't sleep. I hope today is a calmer one-baby-at-a-time day.  ¶ 3:53 PM

  Suffice it to say, I had a crap day. My kids were so hyper. It sucked.

Now I have to go back there tonight for a Spaghetti Dinner to watch the band and chorus play. An obligation, more than anything else. But I did go to this scholar induction thing yesterday and watched one of my kids receive a reward and I got really choked up. He really seemed to appreciate the fact that I was there.

These kids are such mind-twisters. I have all of these kids acting like/saying that they hate me but then when it comes down to it, I know that they don't really. But it is so hard not to buy it when they act like it all the time.

I am in serious need of a nap. Nothing excited me more on the weekdays than the prospect of lying down in front of Baby Story on TLC and drifting off to the soft voices of expectant mothers...  ¶ 3:18 PM

  Wow. The fair was so much freakin' fun. I was so excited driving there that I was shaking. This either means that my life has become a little stagnant or that I was more stimulated by the prospect of watching pig races than I ever imagined possible.

In the end, we missed the pig races. I was really into that, but we couldn't find the gate in time. What we did get to do though is:

Sniff clouds of fried onion from the top of a ferris wheel
Listen to pedophilic carnies croon at young girls from the midway
Eat foot long sausages (some folks, not all)
Buy light-up flashing Mexican flags (viva la raza!)
Ride on a "Ghost Train" (ooooh, spooky...except not at all, but hilariously not)
Watch a fifteen minute firework display that started out in pure beauty and ended in eardrum-blowing madness
Hear hordes of missing children being called for and held in the "Lost Children's Colony"
Ride a hayride with no hay
Covet rainbow pride Care Bears
Spend time in "The Village of Yesteryear" while making fun of all the people of Yesteryear

It was really quite remarkable. It was good people and good fun.   ¶ 4:33 PM