Return of the Snake

I thought my misadventures with nature were over for the week. I had freed a dragonfly trapped between the screen and the glass sliding door. I had avoided running over a freaky bipedal lizard that had dashed in front of my car. (What in the heck was that, anyway?! I have never before seen such a mini T. rex in all the years I've lived in South Florida.) And then the epitome of reptilian excitement occurred when I was alone and saw a snake IN THE HOUSE.

My first reaction when seeing the 18-inch slithering black creature lying there incongruously on the beige tile of the front hall was to retrieve a shoebox. This is the go-to tool in the Weiss household whenever we see a critter in the house. Got a gecko? Get a shoebox. Frog? Shoebox. (Although years ago when we had a frog in the toilet, the rectangular shoebox was of no use. Thank goodness that was in the era of the Danish butter cookie tin, which worked perfectly.)

So, I ran and got a shoebox but then came back to see the snake wriggling and unwriggling into shapes that may or may not fit into a shoebox. What to do? We no longer eat Danish butter cookies, and that wouldn't work anyway!

Don't panic. Think.

I ran to get a towel. I found an old, icky beach towel and threw it over the snake! The snake seemed to like this and slithered further in, rather than trying to escape. I then used the shoebox, which I still had handy, to push/slide the towel containing the snake toward the front door and then outside. The snake slithered out of the towel and just sat there on our front stoop.

End of story, right? No! The next day, my daughter Leah yells: "Mom, there's a snake!" It was right inside the front door. It had come back!

I immediately retrieved the towel and threw it on the snake again. But this time I had much more trouble getting the whole towel/snake package over the threshold of the door. The snake kept slipping out and awkwardly rolling over, giving me a terrific view of its red underbelly which I hadn't seen the day before.

Throw towel. Push towel. Snake falls out! Repeat. At one point it fell out right on the threshold and started slithering back into the house.

"You're going the wrong way!" I yelled at the snake. "Go the other way!"

Finally, I got it outside and then watched as it went under the doormat. Oh, no!

I knew I needed to take more action than yesterday, because leaving it on the stoop had not worked out well. I needed to sweep it away from the house with a broom.

I ran into the garage, got a broom and then walked around to the front door. I gingerly tugged the doormat away, and the snake swiftly slithered out, straight into a gap between the concrete pavers at the base of our front door. The red underside of its tail flashed at me as it disappeared out of reach.

Will this story be continued? I hope not!

A Night at Cooking School

The chef is on the right. The mirror above him gives a clear view of the action.

"It's only going to be as good as you make it," said Chef Jean Pierre as he dumped more scoops of sugar from a large mixing bowl into the rice-and-white-chocolate-pudding brulee.

The granules of sugar continued to cavalierly swoosh their way into the mixture like the sands of an hourglass rushing through time as the chef emphasized how important it is to "measure carefully."

Ricky and I were invited by friends to attend an evening at Chef Jean Pierre's Cooking School in Fort Lauderdale. The schooling part consisted of watching and listening to the expert chef  explain his way through preparation of a fabulous meal while his assistant stirred risotto. And stirred risotto. And stirred risotto. We in the "class" then got to eat everything.

Some people asked questions and took notes on the handouts of the recipes. I was not one of those people. Under even the best of circumstances, I am a terrible cook, and this evening consisted of continuous wine drinking for us "students," causing me not to be in my best learning mode. Though I was extremely happy.

As I tried my hardest to concentrate between sips of wine and the distraction of the helper chef still stirring the risotto and stirring the risotto and stirring the risotto, here's what I learned:

• Apparently you're supposed to taste things as you're cooking! Taste, add sugar, taste, add sugar. (But why would I want to taste food before it's done? Fascinating!)

• The type of vanilla that people generally buy at the grocery store is a crime against humanity. We should all only use Tahitian vanilla.

• There is something called butcher twine that holds meat together when you cook it. (Because sometimes meat needs to be held together when you cook it! Fascinating!)

• Margarine is also a crime against humanity. ("You want to eat plastic? Eat margarine," quoth the chef.)

• And the most profound statement of the night: "You are only as good as the ingredients you're using." (I love the philosophical nature of this!)

Balsamic vinegar in the adjacent store.

The whole evening was a lesson in life: It's only going to be as good as you make it; and you're only as good as the ingredients you're using.

I want to carelessly dump pounds of sugar into the mixture of my life! I want to make my life fabulous -- just like the filet mignon in wild mushroom and port wine sauce and the double-baked potato I got to eat.

I may not know what to do with the Tahitian vanilla or how to use the butcher twine, but I learned a life lesson, and I ate a delicious meal.

And I know I'm never, ever going to make risotto.

The Exit Interview

Wherein I interview myself about why I am leaving teaching.

Q:  What are you going to do?

A:   I don’t know yet.

Q:   So you’re retiring.

A:   No, I am not retiring.

Q:  Then why are you leaving?

A:  Partly because I am just ready to do something different, and partly because I think our nation’s current education policies are sucking the soul out of teachers, students and, well, civilized society in general.

Q:  Hmm. Interesting. Well, what would you like to do next?

A:  I’d like to be Tina Fey, but, unfortunately, Tina Fey is already doing that job. So instead I would like to find a position where I can use my two best skills: writing and compulsively organizing. Here, let me straighten your collar for you. It’s curled up a little on the end.

Q:  Thank you. So are you saying you’re a Type A personality?

A:  Yes, I would say that’s accurate.

Q:  That means doing nothing would not really work for you.

A:  Well, for a couple of months I can vacation and then reorganize my already compulsively organized home, but then I will definitely need new employment.

Q:  So if people hear of a job for a compulsively organized person with excellent writing skills, they should give you a call?

A:  Absolutely!

Zayn did not retire!

I am leaving teaching. Might this be a midlife crisis? Perhaps. If so, I could be like everyone else and get a sports car or a new husband, but I don't care about cars and I already have the best husband. So change of career it is. However, there has a been a reaction to my leaving teaching that I didn't expect: everyone keeps congratulating me on MY RETIREMENT.

Zayn Malik

I am not RETIRING. That would mean I'm an old person. The whole point of having a midlife crisis is avoiding having people think you are an old person. Zayn Malik just left One Direction. Is anyone congratulating Zayn on HIS RETIREMENT? No, I didn't think so.

In all fairness, when people ask me what I'm doing next, I say I don't know. But I will do something. I will have some other form of employment after I have my gap year (or maybe gap months). College students get to have a gap year and no one congratulates them on THEIR RETIREMENT. Also, I haven't heard what Zayn is planning to do next. Solo career? Producing? You know what? Leave Zayn alone. He's thinking about it, okay? Just like I am.

Lenny Kravitz

Yes, I realize Zayn is 22, and I'm...not 22. But I am not old enough to retire either! I am in the middle. Hence the term: midlife. I am the same age as Lenny Kravitz. He wears leather pants and sings rock music.

To those of you sending good wishes, Zayn and I thank you. And as soon as we each figure out what we're doing, we'll let you know.

The Surprise in the Attic

I absolutely LOVE throwing things out. It is one of my favorite hobbies. So you can only imagine my horror when we discovered that the house we had moved into eight months prior held a crapload of stuff in the attic space over the garage.

I was at work when my daughter texted me a video scanning a dark area piled with junk.

I don't even know what these are! They're heavy and there's a boxful.

"What is this?" I asked.

"Our attic," was her response.

"WTF?" was my response. I have never used this texting lingo before (nor have I ever uttered it aloud), but if ever there were an appropriate time for it, it was now. As a matter of fact, I think the expression was created for this very moment: when a Type A neatnik finds out her attic could be on an episode of "Hoarders." Oh, the humiliation! Oh, WTF?!

Yes, we had lived in the house eight months. No, we had not gone up in the attic. We do not like ladders. We do not like dark, claustrophobic, hot spaces. (I am not using the Royal We. I am referring to Ricky and me. If you think we are acting royal for not going in the attic, that's your business. Haters gonna hate.)

The man who inspected the house (which had been a foreclosure) never said a word about this. Since we moved in, others have been up there: the exterminator, a handyman, an A/C repairman. But it wasn't until a young man working with his electrician father made the climb that someone finally said something.

"You know, there's a couple of Christmas trees up there," the 20-year-old said to my daughter after he came down. He apparently was astute enough to guess that we are Jewish, and he realized the trees and assorted holiday baubles didn't match up with us.

But it wasn't just Christmas trees (one white and one green) and decorations. Oh, no. There were light fixtures and fax machines -- five fax machines! Curtain rods and suitcases. Dog crates and boxes of clothes. Creepy clown dolls with ceramic heads. Craft materials for bedazzling things. Decorative pillows, a metal lockbox, Halloween costumes. There was a whole carton of rectangular, heavy glass rods. Frankly, I'm hyperventilating just typing this list.

Once I knew the junk was up there, I could feel its oppressive presence pressing down on me as I slept. We (and this time I actually just mean me) have now had two days of spelunking, and there's still at least one more day of work left just to drag it all down and put it by the curb. With each chunk that gets removed, I can feel the house saying, "Ahhhh." (Or maybe that's me. The house, me, whatever.)

Soon it will be cleared out and the world will be orderly and right once again. But not soon enough.

Constructive Choices

There's something called face blindness, where people can't recognize or differentiate others' faces. I have something called bathroom faucet blindness. And cabinet handle blindness. And grout-color blindness. This is a big problem since we are re-doing a bathroom. There are many bathroom faucets in the bathroom faucet spectrum that I find pleasing. "I kinda like any of those," however, is not an acceptable answer to the contractor.

The once and future bathroom.

There was a leak. There was rust. There was mold. Men came and turned the bathroom into a bathroom skeleton. (Talk about not wanting to see how the sausage is made! Have you ever seen the inside of your house's walls? I do not recommend it.) There were metal support frames and concrete, and it was a bit smelly for awhile until the giant, loudly-whirring fan did its job to dry everything out.

And then it was time for all the decisions. I spent one torturous afternoon at a plumbing fixture supply store. Shower heads and bathtub handles and toilets and toilet handles and sinks. Colors, shapes, methods of mounting things. Help! Please, help! Ricky has much better taste than I do, but he couldn't go.

Even when Ricky has been around for some of this picking-out process, the salespeople pretty much ignore him. The unspoken industry standard seems to be that the woman is the boss when it comes to the preferred way to mount a bathroom sink. Everyone we talk to makes eye contact only with me. This is the complete opposite of buying a car.

The tile guy left a chart of grout colors ranging from beige to beige. So I picked beige. One of the middle ones. (I use the same method when selecting a stall in a public bathroom -- one of the middle ones. I don't know why I do this, but there it is.) The next day, the tile guy tells me it took some time for them to find the grout I had picked because it was a "special order."

Argh! Why did they waste time looking for it? I would have just randomly picked one of the other beiges in the middle of the chart. Sigh.

Maybe I will understand the importance of all these choices some day. Maybe there will be a time years from now when I look at my toilet handle and say to myself: "Thank heavens I selected this exact toilet handle! What would my life have been like if I'd gone with stainless steel?" But I doubt it.

Great Moments in Snacking (Episode 1)

I wanted a snack but couldn't think of anything good in the house. So I did what anyone would do. I opened the refrigerator and stared into its chilly, well-lit innards hoping for a revelation. And there it was! The plastic container holding the leftover homemade guacamole!

But wait. We had finished the bag of tortilla chips the other night. Oh, no! How could I eat guacamole without tortilla chips? So I did what anyone would do. I opened the pantry and stared at the shelf holding our stockpile of assorted chip products. And there it was! A bag of baked Scoops tortilla chips!

But wait. There was a red chip-clip on the bag holding it shut. Oh, no! It was an open bag! How long had it been open? What if the chips were stale?!

I grabbed the bag, placed it on the counter and squeezed open the chip clip, casting it aside. Cautiously, I unrolled the plastic bag and put my hand inside. I pulled out one chip, brought it to my lips and took the smallest of bites. It crunched! It wasn't stale! So I did what anyone would do. I overate guacamole and chips. And now I feel barfy.

Do Not Follow Your Passion

"Never give up on a book until you've read at least the first 50 pages." One of my junior high school English teachers said this to our class, and it has stuck with me and become much more than just about reading.

I think of this phrase often these days because of the prevailing philosophies in education and life that we all keep hearing.

Prevailing Education Philosophy: Rote memorization is horrible. Students should always be taught material to which they can immediately and personally relate, and in which they innately have a high level of interest.

Prevailing Life Philosophy: Follow your passion. (With the implication being that your passion should be something big, bold, glamorous.) This is the only way to be happy.

Here's why these two philosophies are inadvertently setting up our young people for misery.

In education, sometimes students have to memorize some facts before they can move on to the more meaningful concepts. People need to memorize the times tables before they can do higher math. We need to know the map of the United States before we can understand the history of the country. Musicians need to learn the scales before they can be real guitar heroes.

In other words, we all need to read the first 50 pages of the book, where we meet the characters and get the setting before we can care about what happens later in the plot. The most satisfying learning comes from working toward gradual discovery.

Not getting the basics first is like saying every joke should only be the punchline, every song should only be the crescendo or hook, every story should only be the climax. But none of these things works without the buildup first. Being airlifted to the peak of a mountain is not a satisfying accomplishment; climbing there is.

And that brings us to the whole "follow your passion" slogan. People are not born having a passion, and happiness is not an ongoing passionate state. You don't follow passion; passion follows you and the time, effort, and work that you invest in something.

Even people who become passionate about a certain job or activity aren't passionate about every minute of it. A pilot may be passionate about flying, but not about the time he has to wait around in the airport or on the runway waiting for clearance. A teacher may be passionate about being in the classroom, but not about all the paperwork, planning, and conferences.

When I was in college, I had a job working in the cash office of a discount department store. I had to balance out all of the cash registers, find the reasons for any discrepancies, put together the deposit, and make sure the safe balanced out each night. I REALLY ENJOYED THIS JOB. It was satisfying accomplishing a task well. I found it interesting and the time went by fast. Was I passionate about it? Um, I guess not. Was I happy when I was working? Yes.

Real happiness comes from self-satisfaction in a task. Real learning comes from making your way through the tougher parts to get to the aha! In life, we all need to get through the first 50 pages, because it pays off in a really good read.

So, don't follow your passion. And while you're at it, do something boring for awhile.

Visit the Scenic Florida Turnpike!

A view of the Florida Turnpike at mile marker ALL OF THEM.

There are many scenic roadways across the United States. The Florida Turnpike isn't one of them. It's flat. It's straight. It is lined by shrubbery that would make the perfect setting for a dinosaur movie, as long as you can edit out the electrical wires and billboards.

Here's what it's like as you roll hundreds of miles along the turnpike: Nothing nothing nothing cows nothing orange grove nothing nothing. This causes travelers to find ways to entertain themselves. You can spend time trying to pronounce the names of places you are passing: Osceola, Okeechobee, Okahumpka. Or you can ponder some fun facts...

Fun Fact! The Florida Turnpike was officially named the Ronald Reagan Turnpike in 1998.
Fun Fact, Part 2! No one knows why since Ronald Reagan never had anything to do with Florida.

An orange grove with electrical wires strung across it.

Another form of entertainment is the billboards. Here is a list of real billboards you will see along the turnpike: Gator Bait Air Boat Rides, RV World, 1-800-411-PAIN, Lion's Den Adult Superstore, Golf Shoe Store, Cafe Risqué, Garlits Drag Racing Museum, Antique Mall of Ocala, and anti-abortion signs with pictures of babies.

Fun Fact: There is an actual place in Florida called Yeehaw Junction.

So why do people travel on the turnpike? Well, there's this one little tourist destination called Orlando. And then there are our state universities: Florida State University in Tallahassee, University of Central Florida in Orlando, and University of Florida in Gainesville to name just three that have about 50,000 students each. College students and their parents from South Florida go up and back and up and back. Disney lovers go up and back and up and back.

We all know the turnpike so well that we can rattle off rest stop names like Fort Drum and Turkey Lake. The Waffle House signs looming over the road as we pass certain exits call to us. And we know that nowhere else in the world will you ever hear someone in a car utter, "I'm going to stop and pee in Okahumpka."

Yes, we just have to take our driving entertainment where we can get it. Yeehaw!

Book Ends

When I finish a good book, I get separation anxiety. It's that disorienting feeling you get when you move to a new town. Only this feels more like the town moved and you stayed behind.

Where'd all the people go? I can still hear their voices in my head. I get them. I know how they feel, what they think, whom they love, what they hope for. But now they're gone! All of them! I clutch the physical book, stare at the cover art, look for any hidden extras in the back like book club discussion questions or bonus biographical information about the author. I want anything that will help me linger a bit longer in the world that just ended when I flipped the last page.

In the real world, we don't get to see into other people's minds. But when we read, we get an invitation into the narrator's head. And if the book switches around to multiple narrators, as in the last two books I read (Bel Canto and The Luminaries) then the reader gets to travel into so many minds, seeing all the flaws and struggles that most real people cover up in the course of their real lives: the honest devastation, the elation, the fears. We become closer to these imaginary people than people in real life, because there is no way to see real people this intimately. Even memoirs that attempt to be fully open and honest are blocked in some way by the writer's own delusions of self. But there's no one more fully self-aware than a well-written character in a novel by a gifted writer.

So what is there to do? I mope around for a couple of days in order to recover from the book's end, and then I look at the unread pile on my nightstand, pick one up, and meet some new people.

Bildungsroman and Doppelgänger

The New York Times Sunday crossword, 1/4/15

The first time I encountered the word bildungsroman, I said, "What the heck is that?" and looked it up. The second time I saw it, I said, "Wait, I looked that up before, but what is it again?" So I looked it up again. The third time, I thought for a moment and then remembered what it meant. And then finally I got to the point where I can be doing the crossword puzzle and pull bildungsroman out of my butt. Woo hoo! (Since some of my students read this blog, I figured I shouldn't use the word ass.)

Bildungsroman, which is the term for a coming-of-age story that follows the main character from childhood to young adulthood, builds into my taste in vocabulary very nicely since I'm already attached to the word doppelgänger. I was very excited when a couple of years ago I saw a T-shirt at Uniqlo that had the word doppelgänger (which is a look-alike or double); I didn't care that the overall picture said "Art of the Shadow: Doppelganger" and that it had some anime figures doing what looks like martial arts. When was I ever again going to find a shirt that said doppelgänger? Does this mean there may be a bildungsroman shirt out there somewhere?

I've worn my doppelgänger to near ruin.

Bildungsroman and doppelgänger. They make a perfect duo, don't they? This couple should join elite pairs like Sturm und Drang, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Bang & Olufsen. I'll let you look up these last sets yourself. One never knows what clues the next crossword puzzle may hold.