april 24, 2001. Right now I'm listening to the Alice in Chains album "Dirt" and sending a really large email to my father. I haven't listened to this album in years. I haven't spoken to my dad in 2 days (we were in touch daily while Nic was in Quebec). Mmmyep. I suppose I'd be feeling mellow if I didn't have so much Christing work to do before I sleep. The headache & stomachache have already started. It's going to be a good session, I can already tell. Today was much better. Yes, I am an emotional, emotional girl...if my students treat me nicely then all is well. Various teachers have told me how silly this is, but I have yet to develop a thick skin about the realities of the teacher's life. It also helped that today was a picture-perfect "first day of summer" day: you have to be cheerful when you can feel the hair on the top of your head getting hot in the sun and the wind pushing against your whole body like an over-enthusiastic greeting. I wore a very old dress today, a jean dress that I've had since the summer I graduated from highschool (in fact, I distinctly remember the day I bought it. I was with Alexi. Now let us never speak of this again. (Actually, I'm not bothered by my memories of Alexi. I am bothered by the memories of times I treated him badly and I'm bothered by the fact that I don't know anyone who'd like to hear me reminisce about Alexi - especially the Boy. I had a dream along the lines of this latter issue, which I wrote up & analysed for class. So I suppose the whole thing is on my mind in a very understated way.)) I've also been thinking about Poet a lot lately as we hurtle through the last days before his wedding day. We're doing Hamlet in class right now, which doesn't help. See, Poet had this big Hamlet fixation for awhile. I think I'm one of the few people in the world to have been told, seriously, to get me to a nunnery. And one of the few to have wanted to be Ophelia. All of which has nothing to do with the beautiful sunny day and my wonderful sweet students. Okay, they're not that great, but at least they're not pitching fits anymore. I plan to do an entire class of singers/poets tomorrow, which should be interesting. They take music so damn personally, which I suppose is merely indicative of their tender years. It's only when you begin to truly loathe modern music that you can look at it from a critical distance, thus destroying any innocent joy one might take in a song performed well. Yeah. That's why I'm listening to Alice in Chains; I can howl along with deep satisfaction and not worry about the images in the lyrics. Maybe that's because they're all about smack. This will be my last day of teaching this year. I think we're all going to be pleased about that. "I stumble into town just like a sacred cow. Visions of swastikas in my head and plans for everyone..." Good old Iggy Pop.