Labor Day. It’s such a cruel day. For the average working slob, it is a celebrated, much needed day off. For kids and teachers, it means the end of summer. Back to work. Cruelty! Twenty-four hours from now, I will be in First Period addressing my new set of kids for the first time. Luckily for me, I will know most of the kids in my class (one of the positives of having cafeteria duty and being one of the coolest teachers ever), but still I have to go through the drill of rules, regulations, expectations, introductions, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah….I will hope to do this by setting the tone for the new year for my new students without boring them to death…I do love the first day though…I will admit.
The first day of school is always bittersweet though….last week I was literally depressed that it was back to work time…and felt that working summer school the whole month of July, yet again, crippled my summer and made it too short (four and a half weeks off fly by!). Not even the 4 days of workshops fired me up….not the voluntary ones, not the mandatory ones. Then something happened. I woke up Saturday ready to go. Maybe it was the 15 hour nap I had Friday afternoon. Maybe it was the thought of something new after a boring week. Who knows?
Maybe it was surviving Hurricane Irene. The 36 hours of nonstop storm that New Jersey got hit with were interesting for me. I don’t ever remember it raining so much. I couldn’t imagine living during Noah’s Ark days. Anyways, I do have to count my blessings. I was lucky. I had a little bit of window leakage, but that was it. I really feel for people who had floods and everything in their lives destroyed. I could never imagine losing everything to a flood or fire. I really feel for those people. In fact, I had an arguement with my grandfather about that. Here is a sensitive guy that I have seen cry during movies, say he can’t see how people cry over “things” like they were doing on the news. I had to explain to him, he is living with a wife that refuses to go on vacation or travel because she loves her house so much. I said imagine if their house flooded. Grandma would be devastated. He agreed, but said he wouldn’t. Hey, he will be 85 in two months…what can u do? Either way, my sympathies go out to those that lost their things to the floods.
For the Hurricane, I decided to stay home. I was hoping my girl would join me, on some romantic stuff, but she wanted to stay with her mom (yes, she was nervous). So, that plan was ruined, and I weathered the storm all myself. Anyways in the past I have had leaky windows/walls with bad storms, as have other people that live in my building, so, naturally that worried me. Living on the tenth floor, the only thing I ran out to buy during the rush of the pre-storm survival shopping, was tape for my windows. The news said people living on the 10th floors and higher should be concerned. I wasn’t scared, but I think subconsciously I was nervous. I lucked out and found a short line at Home Depot and bought the tape and taped snow flakes on my windows.
I was ready for the storm. I didn’t run to the grocery store. I had enough food to last me 3 or 4 days, which was good because the storm was only supposed to last one day. So, there was no panic there. But I did have an internal panic with the wind and the fear of leaks. I was excited for the storm though….Call me a storm watcher, but I couldn’t wait. I left the windows by my balcony open so I could hear the wind. It was amazing…almost as cool as the tornado I lived through when I was 13 on a cross-country trip with my dad. The only thing that sucked was that I was expecting thunder and lightning, which I love! I saw two flashes of lightning, but no thunder. Terrible.
I did eventually go stir-crazy though. The wind lost it’s affect after about ten hours and especially by 2 in the morning when I couldn’t fall asleep. And when I did fall asleep I had the weirdest dreams ever. Most of them were storm related. I eventually stayed up to six watching the news.
Now, I was definitely one of the lucky ones. I didn’t have any floods. I didn’t have any power or cable loss either. But I did feel trapped with everything that was going on around me. I actually resorted to watching something that has turned into a guilty pleasure of mine. And it’s all of my girlfriend’s fault!
I resorted to Reality TV. Before this year, I stayed away. Far Far Away. The only television I watched for years was sports, Sopranos, and Entourage. That was it. Oh and the news on Tuesdays when I am with my grandparents for Spaghetti Night. Then I got into a serious relationship and had to compromise my tv time. I couldn’t deal with it. And even still to this day, I lose it when certain shows are on my tv, but for 2 weeks now, I have caught myself watching these shows WITHOUT my girl being present. Jerseylicious, Jersey Shore, NJ Housewives, American Ninja Warrior (ok, my girl never saw this one, and would never watch it, but I still blame her for me even considering watching this, because it is reality tv), and I even enjoyed that one episode show of The Marinos, which if you saw after Housewives of NJ, would explain the difference to non-Jersey residents the differences between North Jersey and South Jersey…HUGE difference!
Now, maybe it’s a Jersey-Pride thing, but these are the only ones I could watch. Housewives of NJ, I have yet to watch on my own, because I really can’t stand most of the cast. I don’t like rich people that cry over spilled milk-especially when there are so many other problems in the world. I also, don’t care for the husbands on the show. They are cornballs to me, but, this is a show I could watch with my girl. And I tend to get into it. I hate the fact that my girl is into Basketball Wives. That show and it’s watchers are pathetic (sorry honey). But what is this world coming to that a bunch of ho’s are famous. Porn stars, fine. But money-hungry nasty ho’s. Horrible. I talk my girl out of watching Ochocinco, too, because he is a cornball….and I refuse to let T.O. be shown on my television. Terrell Owens is a bitchass mother$%^&#*. Any man that cries on television because his 7 year/49 million dollar contract isn’t enough is a pussy. Any man that gets famous for bashing his quarterbacks then cries on television sticking up for one after a loss, should not have his own show, he should have therapy.
Anyways, I don’t know what happened to me, but I am over the summer and now watching reality television on my own. Something shook up my insides. Maybe it was experiencing my first Earthquake, which definitely knocked my equilibrium around alittle bit, or maybe it was experiencing my first major Hurricane, but something inside got shook up enough, where i’m ready the new school year and ready to get back to work! Back to reality!
LOL), our next destination was Los Angeles….that is when I found my Savior…no not some Messiah that people pray to, but Los Angeles’s Old School Hip Hop radio station…I was fired up that LA had one….but when I found out freaking Arizona had one four days later, I became enraged…how in the world does Cali and AZ have one, but NYC, the birthplace of Hip-Hop doesn’t…I mean never agreed that NYC’s hip hop scene fell off, b/c I have been still buying NYC artists’ albums for years, but the city as a whole should be ashamed of themselves! They totally fell off…Anyways, there is nothing like being able to listen to the radio and hear good music non-stop (without Sirius/XM-which is something I totally recommend!)