Month: September 2014

9/24/14

/ Serena / Leave a comment

We with our needles gone blunt
We with garbage bag hearts and collective consciences 
We with negative reinforcement, with starvation techniques and Guantanamo.
We in prison, scratching at invisible walls with indivisible guards
For invisible help.

Handy(wo)man Adventures In Lorton

/ Serena / Leave a comment

My dad won’t be dropping in on us until next Saturday, and my toilet started running on Tuesday. Fucking annoying, and I didn’t want to call a plumber because I knew in my heart of hearts that it was either the plumber or MY homecoming dress!

So, what do I do? Last week, my Geosystems teacher had been talking to me about some elctrical work he was doing on his house, so I figured he knew, if anyone, how to fix this (and more beside the point, we’ve kind of burned our bridges with all my previous free labor).

In class yesterday I asked him what to do if the toilet won’t stop running and filling back up with water. And I love him and the TA now, because they wrote out a list for me during study hall of all the things to check for, and what I’d need myself to fix it. Better yet, I wouldn’t need to call a plumber for generally anything, they said.

On one sexist note, sometimes it’s just good to have a bunch of men in your life. ‘Cuz I knew nothing about nothing.

So when I got home, I didn’t even have to go through everything they pointed out. The float had been busted kinda and got waterlogged, so when Kathleen got home she took me to get it replaced, and now my toilet works again. I tested it.

I’m so cool. I can do anything.

9/9/14

/ Serena / Leave a comment

So, I have to tell everyboody about my adorable thing of the day. It seems like it’s always when your day’s the shittiest that people can just be the bomb.

So, the football coach, Coach R, tag-team teaches in our Geosystems class at school. That’s just a weird way of saying that two teachers (Coach R and my teacher) share a room and switch off teaching classes. So he’s taught one of my classes this year, the other has taught some, and so forth. It’s a bit of polygamy for you.

Anyway, today I had this really horrible migraine; it was so bad it brought tears to my eyes. I was hanging in the Social Services office with my trusty Excedrin (which I really do recommend, BTW, for migraines), but I was also out of Geosystems. The social worker had let my eacher know that I wasn’t in class because I was feeling bad, where I was, etc.

Ten minutes later, Coach comes into the office with my homework and offers to explain it. So we go over it personally, and I realized that he had excused himself from his entire class to come here, which he wasn’t supposed to do. Moreover, he found me a Coke in the teacher’s lounge I think he could get fired for.

Aren’t people the greatest? I just can’t get over that. I’ve been telling everybody about this all day. I’ve known him since 7th grade, I know him fairly well, but I still didn’t expect that. 

9/2/14

/ Serena / Leave a comment

Alright, how long’s it been?

Started 11th grade today, yahoo! Was late to my 7th period, stopped by the nurse and she ever so wonderfully wrote me a late pass because she da bomb (shout-out to Ms. B!)

I get the vague feeling I’m gonna get IEP probs with my Geosystems (astronom, earth, blah) teacher, because he got really terse with me when I confronted him about sitting up front, becaue I’m practically deaf on my right side, and he had placed me so that MY RIGHT SIDE was facing him. Wouldn’t work. Plus I have my eye thing so it just wouldn’t work. Anyway, I tried to explain to him really calmly that I couldn’t see/hear from my seat, even though I was up in front, and his answer was,

“WHY?”

Fuck.

Anyway, he has a tag-team teacher, which is like a babysitter in case you forget something (he’s a fairly new teacher), but if you ask me this guy was sent to keep an eye on my Geo teacher. He looks like the kind of guy to have a temper. Anyway, this guy, Coach R, coaches boys’ lacrosse, and he’s a super nice guy. Awesome guy. He subbed for my classes all through middle school, so he knew me right away. He came up and had another boy switch seats with me no questions asked, and I saw him pull the teacher aside and talk to him about it. Score for the coach.