January

Spanish Meets The Real World

I begin teaching Spanish to a class of businessmen and engineers that includes my husband.

See also:

The Difference Between Teenagers And Adults

And Lo, The Truth, It Doth Hurt

Teaching Spanish To Engineers

February

You May Be Right-I May Be Crazy

I lose my mind and sign up for a class in stand-up comedy.

“Yesterday I attended my very first class in stand-up comedy, taught by a real live stand-up comic who has actually made a living by being funny in person, as opposed to just documenting their random mental snarkiness on the Internet for free.

This is very different from the “live” situations in which I normally place myself, such as teaching a Spanish class. In those situations everyone is more than happy to support the illusion that I am actually funny, since they know that if they don’t I could very well say that I’ve just taught them the proper way to ask, ‘Would you be interested in doing business with our company?’ when in truth they will have just proclaimed to their potential business partner that ‘You are a large monkey filled with giant, hairy balls of cheese’.”

March

Woo Hoo! I Did It!

I perform a stand-up routine on stage at the Punchline, in front of an audience, and I don’t die.

“Last night I successfully performed my very first stand-up comedy routine at the Punchline here in Atlanta. Even though I did start to lose all feeling in my hands and feet two people before I was supposed to go on, and even though after 6 weeks I still could not work the microphone correctly, I did remember all my lines, and people genuinely laughed.”

You can listen to the podcast of my routine here.

April

Yep, I’m Still Afraid Of The Telephone

“For most of my life I’ve thought that this was a problem that only I had, and that I’d just have to bear the stigma of being different and misunderstood alone, but then a couple of years ago I met someone else who felt the same way. And sure, we like each other as people, and we have some common interests, yada, yada, yada, but I truly feel that the strength of our friendship lies in the fact that we made a solemn pact to never call each other on the phone.”

May

Golf Is Flog Spelled Backwards

“I have always had an a stormy relationship with golf, beginning with my first golf lesson at age 9 and continuing up through last Sunday, when I was unable to lend my full attention to the actual tournament play due to the unfortunate propensity of my pants to unzip at random times as I walked the course. Because nothing says class and sophistication like the occasional flash of your hoo-ha. (Unless you are a drunk, twenty-something college guy who thinks it is COMPLETELY appropriate to appear in public wearing brown, patchwork, vertically-plaided Bermuda shorts with a light green and white, horizontally striped, polo shirt. Holy. Hell. If there was ever an argument for allowing us everyday citizens to be armed with tiny, semi-poisonous blow dart guns, This. Was. It.)”

June

The Adventures Of Dave And Our Home Repairs

” “Behold,’ said Dave, ‘your concrete is all black and dirty, like unto the dark heart of the blackest night. But I wilt come and wash it with my special ‘hot chemical’, and lo, it will shine like the clearest diamond and sparkle like the brightest sun.’

‘Hm,’ I replied.

‘And verily,’ continued Dave, ‘we also do decks.’

So we hired Dave to come and work on our house. And Dave pressure washed the house, the deck, the driveway, and all our walkways. And it was very good.

But it was also dangerous, because that was the moment that we all began Getting Ideas.”

July

We Practice Religious Tolerance And Understanding

“My sister-in-law and her fiance were among the first guests to leave, and as they were making their way to the door my dad caught up with them, huddled them together over in a corner of the kitchen, and with an absolutely straight face told them that he was giving all of the party guests an opportunity to contribute to his special “love offering”.

My sister-in-law’s fiance immediately jumped back about 3 feet, with a look of absolute horror on his face.”

August

Dark Night Of The Soul

“Thus you are required to undergo the dark side of your passage and bring it into the light.”

“Yup, that pretty much sums it up quite nicely. But as you know, if you’ve ever gone racketing around in your own unconscious for an extended period of time, there’s a b-i-g difference between reading these words on a page and actually undergoing the process. A difference which I think can best be expressed by the phrase HOLY. F&%@!!”

September

Vacation

“Last weekend my husband and I went to visit my brother and sister-in-law as part of the official start of our summer vacation. They both have their own laptops, but apparently my brother insists on keeping his in its virginal, pristine condition by refusing to allow anyone to download anything onto it from the Internet. So anytime this need appears, my sister-in-law’s computer is pressed into service.

It’s a good thing they’d told me about this on an earlier visit. Because otherwise, the conversation I overheard between them would’ve been even more disconcerting than it already was.”

October

Matching Wits With My Students

“We’ve been on the same chapter with the same vocabulary words for an entire month. We’ve had tests and quizzes and homework assignments on all the words related to clothing, and yesterday he still did not know the Spanish word for ‘clothes’ (did I mention that it’s been a month?!), a fact which did not at all make me feel like a failure as a Spanish tutor, or heavily tempt me to become A Person Who Drinks.

So of course, I told him to look it up in the dictionary, and of course he used his super-keen spidey senses to hone in on my super hero weakness by saying, ‘Why-don’t you know the answer?’ (accompanied by a disgusted head shake and heavy exhale) ‘Yeah, I bet you don’t even know the answer.’

Right.”

November

I Address The OCD

“As I believe I might’ve mentioned here once or twice, I have worked tirelessly through years of living with depression, only to emerge, hopeful and blinking into the sunlight, to discover that now I have to learn to manage an anxiety disorder. (As I am trying to make this a mostly-family-friendly blog, I’ll just go ahead and censor my reaction to this little discovery.)

You wouldn’t really know it unless you were my husband, and had to listen this every time you came to visit me in my office: ‘Oh my god, you did NOT just throw your dirty socks on my office floor, did you?! Oh, the pain! The burning! I’m m-e-l-t-i-n-g…’ ”

December

The Battle With The Hostile Alien Bacteria Reaches Its Climax

See also:

But Wait-There’s More

They Could Not Find Their Own Ass With Both Hands And A Map

Follow Up

And now, on to 2008!