Grey Lady Down

I haven't been writing, well I have been working on my book Momish, which is like wrestling a tattered mom in an apron with a Nutella covered crocodile, but mostly I've been trying to rest my lung, after the british accented Chinese ER doctor told me to restrict my daily activities? With a question mark? His accent? After every sentence?

So I've slowly delegated all my self-imposed pool and house chores to less inclined, child like people who reside here, and even though they are getting tall, they still don't want to do any of the junk I didn't really want to do with two good lungs either.

I did manage to walk slowly downtown (not ALL the way downtown, but once I parked my car I walked a block) because lung guy told me to walk slowly, slow DOWN, to the LAUSD headquarters, which sounds like I'm going to be a cop, but it's the school district. I had all my paperwork to turn in and an interview to be a substitute teacher, which if you knew me from inside me, is a highly unsuitable job for me. I have no patience, I like to sit at the back and make fun of the teacher, I don't like the idea of a schedule, or disclipline, or people looking at me to tell them what to do.

So of course I'm applying for this job. Mostly because I'm at the school all the time anyway, with my last little person still swimming her way through first grade, and all the teachers know me, and it's all their fault. They think it would be funny to have me on their sinking ship. A few laughs while we all go under, and hopefully I can improve some creative thought or at least spelling before my ineffectiveness comes to light.

Getting into the LAUSD offices, it's like they're expecting the French Revolution. There's a password, a badge, an id, a thing you have to wave over a light and then a thing you have to stick the right side up in the elevator to even get the elevator to go anywhere. If this was the test, I barely would have made it up to the 14th floor without the guy at the desk, the guard at the elevator and the asian REAL sub next to me in the elevator helping me figure it all out. (Maybe it proved I was a team player, since I proved to be good at using all these people just to get in and go up a few floors.)

In the waiting room, I signed in at what looked like a travel agency (what the heck, let's go to Florida), and then sat down with my bad lung and started reading through a 50's ladies magazine with Amy Poehler on the cover. I did furtively check out the competition. Two businessmen (obviously down on their luck to be teachers, but up on their luck because they were in suits), and some perky young chicks that had certifications and credentials, while I signed in with just a note from the principal and some really old college trannies, not those kind.)

In the middle of the article, I started feeling like I couldn't breathe, which is sort of the SIGN of a collapsed lung, and for a minute I thought oh great, maybe they can interview me in the ambulance, but then I just breathed, and remembered that I didn't die at the ER when this happened, in fact the ER did NOTHING TO ME for 12 hours and I still lived and breathed. Maybe I'm a panicker. Maybe Amy Poehler can help me. I was really liking the article when someone called me back to the interview and I had a moment where I considered stuffing the magazine in my bag and the alternate thought of not a good way to start an interview
so I will never finish the article about managing motherhood and comedy, which is only all I DO and extremely relevent, and probably my ACTUAL INTERVIEW, and instead went back with the lady who looked like a pool man, and puffed my lungs up with what can only be substitute courage.

During the interview, where I was wearing a dress, the pool man lady fielded a bunch of random What Would You Do classroom disaster questions at me, and the sad part is, I could answer every one of them in a well-formed and off-handedly accurate way. (What would you do if the teacher left you no instructions? Call the other 4th grade teacher and ask for her daily plans. What if you had 50 students instead of 30? Have them sit in groups and give them the regular morning activity), etc. As I batted back the questions, in my mind I was forming the book I was going to write while being a sub, called SubCulture, the seamy underworld of unlikely substitutes. When she was done, I had a few questions, like will I ever have to do Real Math? And is it ever okay to slap anyone?

I knew I was overqualified and yet undertrained for the job, because I knew all the answers from actual classroom experience, coupled with the ability to fake it and act cool when I have no idea what's going on or what to do. This has helped when living with hysterical and alcoholic people, and then later when raising hysterical children while not becoming alcoholic myself. I do think, however, that this has collapsed my lung. Even internalizing stuff, you can't get away with stuffed stress. The lungs pop. By the way.

After the interview, my first in 20 years and definitely my fattest, I left without even looking at the magazines (after interview, magazines are dead to me). I re-found my car, which still had its wheels, and I wheezed my way home.

It would be nice to know what direction to go in. There's breastfeeding consultant (fun hospital job, cute babies, lots of boobs, have to take science and math), subbing (can walk there, fake being a teacher, there's one sub who makes balloon animals, so built-in friend in my league), and of course marketing and selling my writing (dead of night cricket sound).