Saturday Curry with the Boys Club

As Groucho Marx said upon resigning from the Friar's Club (whatever the hell that is), "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member."

I've been great at avoiding any kind of membership since I was in Brownies (the foot soldiers of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America) because our troop leader once piled us into her van, drove to her trailer and told us to make play dough ornaments in her oven so she could chain smoke and watch TV with her boyfriend.

When our parents arrived at the church to pick us up, we were nowhere to be found, and my mom said I couldn't go back after that. I think she was actually very grateful to the lady when she finally did find me and learned I hadn't been sold. My mother is a strict non-joiner.

But some clubs are so exclusive that when you're invited to join, you carry that card for life.

We met Antonio (Ton or Tom for those who cannot pronounce the equally easy Ton) and his husband, Jamie (not Jaime, Jamie), during the time acquaintances were trying to introduce us to every Spaniard in the city.

Ton's the only Iberian who stuck because, turns out, not all españoles son compatibles.

Of the many benefits that come with Ton and Jamie's friendship, Saturday Curry with the Boys Club (SCBC) is my favorite, and I'm the only one who calls it that.

Every Saturday at noon, you can spot us at Taj Palace Indian buffet on 39th street. Jaime and I are usually the first to arrive because we've spent all morning talking about how excited we are about SCBC, warning each other not to eat because we've got SCBC and wondering who's going to be at SCBC.

I'm the only member without a penis, probably, and never once has it been an issue except for the time I asked them if the men's bathroom was just as terrible as the women's.

They all stared at me blankly until Jerry said, "Honestly, I wasn't even aware there was a women's restroom here."

The bathrooms are vital because, except for Lee whose plate is specially prepared in the kitchen before he arrives, we are eating bottomless curry. However, I can usually wait to use the one at Mud Pie, the vegan coffee shop we go to after lunch.

I don't typically order anything at the cafe. I'm just there for the company because I've had as many cups of complimentary chai tea and fried dough balls at Taj Palace as I can stand. The buffet's not expensive, but why leave anything untouched, you know?

Jaime, on the other hand, orders his usual: a large chai tea and donut. His total comes to more than the cost of his lunch.

Brian laughs at my deep sigh every time, and it's what saves our marriage.

I have learned so much from this precious, warm hug of a man group. They make me laugh, they bring me office supplies for school and most importantly, they are the reason why Jaime finally feels at home in Kansas City.

And for that, I will forever be grateful to them.

We've never taken a picture together, but this is EXACTLY what we'd look like in matching jackets.

Fuck You, No You're Not

My co-worker and I were putting out books for an after school event when I heard her shout, "Cuzco is a real place!?"

I told her it was and that I was going there next month. It was an impossible thing to do without sounding like an asshole.

"Fuck you, no you're not," was her reply. She is my favorite co-worker.

Last summer, Jaime and I had settled on China when discussing our spring break trip. He has a colleague who'd invited us to stay with her in Shanghai, and I really have a thing for the Terracotta Army and being the average height of the population.

But then his parents' friend in New Zealand reminded us that her door in Auckland is always open, and we switched gears to planning a trip there motivated mostly by the accents.

I don't remember what piqued Jaime's interest in Peru, but we decided it was a more affordable trip even if we didn't know anyone there, and we had to make the hike to Machu Picchu while he was still in good enough shape to carry me when I gave up prematurely.

When Whakaari erupted in December, we felt sort of like we'd dodged a bullet in New Zealand.

When the news coming out of China started, we felt VERY lucky we hadn't planned a trip there.

When the world started burning, we were upset that we might lose some deposits.

I also wondered how I was going to break the news to a bunch of 13 year-olds who don't give a shit that I am not going to a place that mildly captured their imaginations when we were studying the Inca. How, reader? How?

Peru's on hold for now. But if Machu Picchu and the Nazca Lines can survive the end of a civilization brought on by the cruelest forms of human greed and the rampant spread of a virus, I think they'll still be there at the end of all of this.

It took me a while to convince her, but she finally slid the book over and told me to read up for our trip. I promised to send her some video lessons I'd planned to record, so she could share them with her class.

But she was right. I am, in fact, "fucked", and no, I "am not".

I Owe Everyone an Apology

Guys, I am not a witch, but I did conjure up this quarantine.

And I do apologize for it.

If you had told me a month ago that I could stay in my home every day with everyone's blessing still collecting a paycheck whilst our mother, Earth, repaired herself for a long but indeterminate amount of time, I would have pricked my finger with a golden thorn, climbed to the top of the world's tallest volcano, mixed my blood with the spit of a mountain goat by the light of the Waxing Gibbous Moon and dropped a lock of my hair into its mouth (the volcano's, not the goat's) sealing the deal BEFORE you had gotten to the part where a bunch of people die from a virus.

I would not have done all that if I'd been told that last part first.

I have nothing of value to add to the conversation about what's going on other than to be real about the fact that my greatest wish, to get paid for staying home, is not something I deserve.

I will, of course, be working during the quarantine. Children still need me to spend a lot of time on thoughtfully differentiated but manically fun lessons that they will complain about and not do, but for as much time as I'll be spending on that, I'll be spending at least three times that amount doing complete and utter bullshit that has no direction, purpose or conclusion.

Yesterday, I was cooking when I noticed that part of the counter top was peeling away, so I went to get some super glue. I shook the super glue as directed, got bored while shaking it, set it on the counter and walked away to pluck my eyebrows.

That is just one moment of a day that followed the pattern of all my other days if you believe that randomness is a pattern.

If you took a time-lapse video of our home today, you would see Jaime seated at the table working for a solid 10 hours. It's 8:15 pm, and he's still there. A lay person watching would have assumed I wasn't home at all because any trace of me would look like a streak of orange on top of a streak of white on top of a streak of black. I have been going in and out of every room for a split second for no reason all day.

And I loved it, and it was wonderful. Except that my house is still a mess, the clothes are still in the dryer, and Jaime finally just microwaved two squares of processed cheese substitute over 5 meatless hot dogs because he realized I wasn't making dinner.

I also did not do any school work.

Anyway, I'm sorry for willing this to happen. I take it back, and I just want everyone to be safe and healthy while realizing we need to take better care of one another and our planet.

I did fix this part of the counter, though.

Junior High School Is Burning

I teach junior high school. It's everyone's worst age to be and to be around.

I thought I'd learned everything I needed to know about that age when I was in 8th grade and decided to cut my extremely curly red hair into the shape of a globe, but it can always get worse. I know that now.

However, this post isn't an expose on the current state of affairs in American middle schools because despite what I say on the daily, I DO NOT want to get fired.

This is about fashion, and I am here to tell you that if you're not dressing like a 14 year-old, you're cancelled.

At my school, even teachers wear uniforms. The communist in me says, "YAS." But the 14 year-old in me says, "Fuck you." I take strong offense at making girls in their peak Mesopotamian child bearing years wear khaki pants, but all I can do is stock up on the world's thickest maxi pads because they will lose their goddamn minds if you hand them a tampon.

Anyway, so when we have a dress down day, WE WERK.

I don't know if you know what a VSCO girl is, but I don't either. What I do know is that to be a VSCO girl, it's required you have crushed velvet scrunchies in every color (preferably pastels) on your wrists, backpack and even in your hair.

Mine is bottle green, and it is very important for me to wear it on dress down day because I once told a student to put her scrunchie up because it was a distraction, and I kid you not, at least six girls whipped around and screamed, "You know what a scrunchie is!?"

Never in my life have I been so offended.

I get a lot of compliments on dress down day because I am very cool, but if they could see what I wore when I was their age, they'd never look me in the eye again.

Your jeans could not possibly be low enough when I was in middle school. Turns out, denim cutting just below your uterus and just above your butt crack looks good only on a very small number of people who don't exist.

When you bent over, of course, your butt crack fully revealed itself culminating with burst of highly flammable thong fabric. Our Hollister shirts were also very tight cutting off at the thickest parts of our arms and stomachs. Good thing our shoes were oversize to balance out the proportions.

In a radical move that makes me believe that they might actually be capable of reversing the effects of global warming, Gen Z is shunning our moronic, bullshit clothes and embracing the loose, high-waisted jeans, baggy tops and thick panty lines of the early 90s.

Important note: if any of these aren't purchased second hand, you must lie and say they are.

I am so proud of them and fully embrace this gift they've given us.

Last dress down day, I wore some very broken in denim and a flannel button down in a men's large. I thought I looked amazing until Luis said, "Ms. Green, you look like you came straight from a farm."

I started to explain that I actually had been raised in a rural community in Northwest Missouri but realized it wasn't worth it and turned my head, so he could see my scrunchie.

I think he was impressed, but I have no idea what boys wear.

Snapchat me if you want to borrow it.

Covidpendency

"Stop doing that face. It bothers me."

Apparently, the face I make when eating a bad orange has bothered Jaime since the dawn of time, but he's just now getting around to telling me.

Other than that, we're handing social distancing pretty well.

I've never met anyone as suited to working from home as Jaime. He can stay in bed for hours focused on the task at hand while declaring every 90 minutes or so that he probably gets more done naked at home than clothed in the office.

If I had a snow day, and Jaime arrived home to see me smeared with chocolate and peanut butter watching Schitt's Creek for the 9th time in a fart cloud, he would have the exact same reaction as if I'd cleaned the house top to bottom, meal planned for two weeks and completely fixed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

"Fuck it. It's your time. Do what you want with it."

I really appreciate this about him, so I try not to micromanage his time either, but the pressure of the virus got to me while stuck late at parent-teacher conferences, and even we had to make sacrifices.

After I ended the call asking Jaime to go to the grocery store, the science teacher assured me that he could do this.

He couldn't, but that's none of science nerd's business, so instead I answered the question he'd asked me before: What would you use if we ran out of toilet paper?

At first I said Jaime's old underwear, but then I changed it to bidet. I'm pricing bidets now.

The groceries were on the table when I got home. I explained it's customary to put sundries away after purchase, but he assured me he'd refrigerated all the perishables. I went to bed so freaking excited to put them away in the morning.

Jaime was still sleeping, so I had to laugh-cry silently while unpacking from what appeared to be his maiden journey to any grocery store anywhere.

He bought two jars of rhubarb jam but no bread, two boxes of cereal but no milk, oats that we already have and don't eat and the most gigantic can of baked beans made with bacon. We're vegetarians.

He explained that bread, oat milk and fresh vegetables are all perishable, so he didn't buy them. I asked him if the 23 bananas (actual number) he bought were perishable, but he just shrugged.

So now, we're just chilling at home for the unforeseeable future, snacking on some banana bread with jam reminding each other why we promised to hang out in sickness and in health until one of us dies.

Does anyone want these? Pinto beans not included.