The ban on MySpace cleared out the crowd.

Ah, Election Day.

The leaves have peaked around here, and the weather's nice. It took me three seconds to vote. Now, I'm at the public library where there is a book sale, and I wonder what it must be like to be the author whose books have been pulled from the shelves, branded with a bold "WITHDRAWN" stamp, and shoved onto the "Reduced! Unmarked books only 10 cents!" table. I bought one Newbery Award winner. How'd that make it on the table? And a ton of audio cassette recordings. Famous speeches, Charles Kuralt essays, a Garrison Keillor broadcast, and a Studs Turkel series because I know that he just died and I don't have a clue who he was. I'm a sucker. I know.

Anyway, I'm getting ready to multitask -- enter grades and catch up on Nerdfighteria while I sit here with the public library computer lab crew: the match.com dude, the solitaire guy, the YouTube lady. We're pretty cool, all of us.

Tomorrow, I'm going to see John and Hank Green. And that's all that matters.

Decision-making and the art of lawncare.

Last weekend, after a week at school that made me actually love my job, I decided that it was time to start looking for a place closer to school. After all, if I'm going to be keeping my teaching post for at least two years, I should be looking for a more reasonable dwelling with a commute time of fewer than 45 minutes each way. Thusly began the hunt.

It was frustrating -- not because I wasn't coming up with any information. I was. My word-of-mouth and school-wide email inquiries were turning up results faster than I could sort through them. But I was frustrated because this week had me chained to my desk until well after dark, long after the hour it is advisable to track down uncharted rental property. Plus, I was just too tired to do the sifting.

Thank goodness for this week. No, it didn't make me love my job quite as well as last week did, but it did give me some time to think. I still haven't followed up on any of those leads. Freeish-time is only now peeking around the corner. Who knows? Maybe I'll go apartment hunting. Maybe I won't. Yes, being closer to school would be nice, but maybe I'm just conning myself with all those glittering pros on my pro-con list. With gas prices going down and with home getting more homey by the minute, I'm not sure if sleeping with a shotgun beside my bed is really what I want right now.

Here's what I've decided:

The grass is no greener anywhere else than it is where I stand at any given moment. I should tend it and cultivate it. I should water it and be grateful for it. I should choose to see the tender shoots of green beside my feet, instead of tromping them down. And if anyone else's lawn looks more lush and velvety green than my own, it is because that person chose to make it that way, and if that same lawn doesn't stay that way after the previous owner leaves and I set up camp, it is because that person took his or her attitude with him or her, I've brought mine along, and it's the same attitude that kept my little patch of grass brown and brittle before. And I can't forget that every place goes through seasons. Nowhere -- short of Narnia -- is grass really perpetually green. But it is almost always certain to come back if I wait long enough.

If I live here or if I live there, life is life. Good or bad. I can choose to run, or I can choose to change myself. Running seems easier, but it's only temporary.

don't get me wrong

I know. I've disappeared. What can I say?

I sometimes get the feeling I spend way too much time on school, but I haven't figured out yet how to manage. I've never really understood the saying not enough hours in the day until now. I'm not saying it can't happen, but I don't currently understand how someone can be a teacher and a person. You know, a person who has a family, has friends, has hobbies, reads, listens to music, watches movies, gets on Facebook... And to be a real person while being a good teacher? I don't know. Maybe my definition of person is skewed.

One teacher told me that someone once gave her this advice: "I think you would be a better teacher if you didn't work so hard."

I could understand that. "I think I'm in danger of being that teacher," I said.

Another teacher who was standing with us then asked me, "Are you married?" I shook my head no, and she laughed knowingly and confirmed, "Oh, yeah. You are in danger."

I guess you compensate and displace. You can only fill up the time you have available and then the excess gets pushed out. Maybe I've made the mistake of making all of myself available.

I know, I know. It's my first year. It's supposed to be this way. I'll find the rhythm. I'll catch my breath. I just wonder when.

On Friday, Holly treated Elizabeth, Rachel, and me to McDonald's lunch. It was the one semi-calm moment in the wedding-day whirlwind, even if Holly rushed to paint her own fingernails as soon as she finished her southern chicken sandwich. While Holly did that, Elizabeth and I decided to brave the newly-formed lunch crowd at the counter to get desserts. While we stood there in line and debated whether or not we should ask the lady at the cash register for "vanilla thrillas" instead of "ice cream cones" (Elizabeth ultimately did, though the cashier was not amused.), I felt became aware of a feeling in my stomach.

It was one of those feelings that is neither fully physiological nor fully psychological. I vaguely recognized it, but I couldn't quite place it. It was sort of an emptiness despite having had eaten. Then I had a flashback, similar to the mental connection between an aroma and a place or between a song and a season. For a split second, I wasn't twenty four years old or standing in line with Elizabeth at the McDonald's on Washington and Green: I was seven, and I was alone, lying in the bed that my sister and I shared until the day that she got married. And I had that feeling in my stomach -- or in my heart.

Who knew that I'd have the same reaction to my best friend getting married that I had to my sister getting married? It struck me as sort of odd, mostly because I'm seventeen years older than I was when Sissy married. You'd think my emotions would have matured a bit.

But really, it makes sense. Why wouldn't I feel the same way? I mean, I'm still not sure what the feeling means. I believe that it is one of those amoral things that is -- at the risk of being redundant -- neither good nor bad. But whatever it is, I'm glad that my heart knows what's going on even if, in the whirlwind, I don't.

I'm happy for you, C. B.

It occurred to me the other day that a person can drive down any road he or she wants. No one is stopping me from driving down those roads that don't really make up the most direct route between home and my final destination. There is no law enforcing the straight line between points A and B. There's no one keeping me from going anywhere except me. Huh.