Make out like a rogue and disembogue

Mawkish [MAW-kish] Adjective. Exaggeratedly sentimental or emotional. The word of the day today is mawkish which means overly sentimental or emotional. I can only relate to the second part of that. I've been so emotional since I've been pregnant. I'm bawling as I type this. I'm just so sad and I feel so lonely. I've felt sort of empty this fall. I know if I was still teaching I wouldn't feel this sad but I'd definitely be stressed to the breaking point. Now that I don't teach and I spend so much time alone, I just feel empty. Godamnit though, I have it so good. I have the most flexible schedule anyone could ask for as a contractor. My team is great to me. The company may be a dumpster fire right now, but my team is amazing. Will I just always be unhappy with something? I don't want to be that person. Maybe mawkish isn't the most fitting word--it's probably closer to schmaltzy or something that makes you cringe like soap operas. Wh...

Ersatz [er-zahts] Noun. Describing an artificial substitute for something, usually of inferior quality; simulated or imitation. I just heard Father John Misty's "Real Love Baby" on the radio and that's where I'm starting because it was the first thing that popped into my head when I thought about writing from the word "ersatz." I don't know where the term "ersatz elevator" came from and I'm going to resist the urge to look it up right now, but I think it's from some YA fantasy book I probably read. Or maybe it's a short film by some art students I know? Either way, what a terrifying concept. To get into an elevator only to realize it's not really an elevator, and worse, you're trapped in there. There are so many ersatz things in our daily life: other people's emotions, the words people write on social media, social media itself (what are its more nefarious purposes besides connecting people?) I think people know it...

Anodyne an-ə-deyen Noun. Intended to avoid offense or disagreement. I've been at Burien Press for almost 2 hours doing some work remotely, and there is a teenager or young adult sitting a few seats down from me in the corner stomping his foot and occasionally growling. It looks like he's playing a video game on his phone. I wonder if he should be at school. Judging from his demeanor he doesn't look like he'd be too happy stuck in a classroom right now. He reminds me of some of the surly kids I've taught in the past, kids who refused to get off their phones, who saw school and my class as an intrusion into their lives, into their video game progress, and a pointless waste of time. I gotta sympathize, sometimes school is a pointless waste of time, but goddamnit, stop stomping your foot and growling! Have some civility, you're in a public place, young man. I feel so old! I remember skipping class in 8th grade to go smoke cigarettes at Hardee's wit...

Penumbra [peh-nəm-brə] Noun. The partially illuminated outer part of a shadow created by a solid object; The outlying, fringe area in which a condition exists to a lesser degree. The 60s housewife existed only in the penumbra of her husband. He was the breadwinner. He was the one people paid attention to. He was the one whose hand they shook. He was the one whose words had meaning. She was the one who made his bed, cooked his meals, folded his underwear, and eventually birthed his children. The children lived in a different type of penumbra, especially the female child. Their father's word was law, and every action he took eclipsed every story they had, everything they'd experienced that day. But the weirdest thing happened when the male child, at age 24, got a sex change. He became she, and his father, as much as he wanted to look away from this, had to look. The child was disowned, pushed into a different penumbra. But in the process, that child eclipsed his father an...

Syzygy [siz-i-jē] Noun. The arrangement of three celestial bodies in a straight line; The metaphorical alignment of two people, ideas, or events   You can't force three planets to align--you have to wait. You can't always force people to align. You can't get everyone to like eachother or work together or be at the same place together at the same time every time. You can't be at three different events at the same time, or sometimes even in the same day. Syzygy is tricky, frought with frustration, and sometimes impossible. And you just have to accept that. Scientists throw out hypotheses all the time. Sometimes their hypotheses smack of syzygy. People get harebrained schemes all the times, but scientists are careful with their harebrained schemes. The goal of scientific experiment is to possibly prove that your harebrained scheme isn't actually harebrained at all. Maybe someone who was really stressed out at worked and fed up with the way his or her company or...

Blatherskite bla-thər-skīt Nonsense; A person who is prone to speaking nonsense Genius word of the day examples: "I don't want to hear your blatherskite — I need you to speak clearly about things that really matter." "The teacher had great insights, but he was such a blatherskite that his students never understood them." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Looking at the Genius word of the day examples, I'm starting to fear some of my colleagues--perhaps the whip-smart editor with dry delivery--could've written this entry about me or more likely me and a bevy of other teachers and colleagues in their life. *GULP* Is it just my self-consciousness and paranoia? But it's true, I am full of balderdash and rubbish sometimes because I tend to joke and I go off on tangents! Speaking and writing clearly is the biggest challenge I have ...

Bombinate [bahm-buh-nāt] To buzz; To drone; To hum Your classroom is not the Grove of Athens or a comedy club (unless that's what your particular group of students agreed it should be) How could I not choose this word?! It's so good. Bombinate. So smooth and bouncy. I bombinate so much. I hum every song that comes into my head. I improvise songs about a lot of situations, no matter how meaningless. I buzz with excitement about so many things.  The flip side, the negative part: I drone sometimes in verbal language. I can't stop talking and I lose people or overwhelm them. I'm too much. I lost my students' attention so many times this way. I went on tangents. Sometimes kids encouraged me when I'd say "Let's get back to the topic at hand" and genuinely wanted to hear the stories. It was alway 3 or 4 nerds/artists/whatever in the room who wanted to hear stories related to the lesson, but other times the rest of the kids broke ...

Festoon [feh-sto͞on] To decorate, embellish, or ornament; To hang a decorative strip between two fixed points My friend Paige and I both like to festoon our homes and ourselves with baubles, trinkets, painted nails, wacky clothes, bright colors, psychedelic prints. Matiah and Paige in their psychedelic Sunday best It's a fairly new thing for me, at least as regularly as I do now, and it's certainly due to the influence of Paige. These adornments are fun, but taken another way, they're a way to set yourself apart from the world because you want to be seen, you want approval, and you want to be heard. As a person who had the caregivers I had, I've obviously sought approval and attention at so many points in my life, not least with Paige, who'd had a bipolar overbearing mother and just wasn't ready to take on the emotional labor of my insecurity. The things we festoon ourselves and our homes with sometimes mean things, but sometimes, as I'm w...

Logy [loh-ɡē] adjective: Lacking vitality; Sluggish or lethargic I'll take "torpor" for 300, Alex. What is torpor and how do I finish it? I truly do feel logy today. I don't want to but my mind feels like maple syrup. I want to move. This is what happens when you try to do too much, write too much, cook too much, exercise too much. If too much is forced, too little is required. After doing a lot, there comes a day when you just have to sit down and do nothing. It doesn't help that I'm pregnant!! I mean, I'm certainly feeling this way because there's a little seed baby inside me, sucking all my nutrients and energy. I throw up twice a day at least. That's enough to make anyone feel logy. What a weird word! I never wanted a baby until I met Matiah, until I saw a glimpse of competent, fun, compassionate parenting that I too could take part in. I mean, we've done a lot of work to get here, have had a lot of therapy ourselves...

Mendacious [men-dey-shəs] Adjective: Frequently dishonest or deceitful Don't listen to Trump or anyone like him. He's a mendacious little man-turd. We need to teach kids to recognize and call out mendacity, evil, and schadenfreude when they see it. There are clues--overly cloying behavior, approval-seeking, and words that don't match actions. God I shudder at how many people have seen me that way. I have been mendacious and approval-seeking. I hate that. I have to approve of myself to not be seen as mendacious I think. That's why students don't trust teachers and other authority figures sometimes, even when they're being authentic. This is why I didn't trust my mother for so many years and why I still struggle with it. She left us for eight years because she was an addict. She went all over the country, being controlled and brainwashed by some abusive psychopath. I have more compassion for her now but it's still hard to trust h...

Rubiginous  [ro͞o-bij-ə-nəs] adjective:  Of a reddish-brown color, as rust, Rusty or rusty-looking My hair is rubiginous and so is my blood. My ruby head reflects what's sometimes going on in there--which is sheer and utter rustiness. I do a sudoku puzzle every now and then so my brain doesn't get too rusty, but I've realized my brain is sharp always except when I don't eat or sleep well or get enough exercise. Doing too much can lead to this, and so can overthinking. I want to do all the things. I want to start the day with this blog, a sudoku puzzle, exercise, reading, writing comedy sketches, writing a sci-fi novel, writing blog posts about interesting topics I can comment on. Then after all this I expect to be able to go to work for 6-8 hours designing curriculum which is complex mental work, then come home and cook a meal and take care of the house, connect with my partner and let him vent about his day if he needs to, then cozy up and watch an episo...

Perspicacious adjective: highly perceptive, keen; discerning, shrewd Children are perspicacious and it's a lesson I was taught again and again as a teacher and am continually learning as an adult. Every frown, every furled eyebrow, every hint of sarcasm or irony was picked up by their child antennae. Being a natural child and as perspicacious as I am, being a teacher really aggravated my imposter syndrome. I'm so metacognitive and I know how keen and intuitive children are, and it drove me crazy. I felt like everything I did was being scrutinized and I went mad like a method actor who got waaaay too into the role. Like Joaquin Phoenix in "I'm Still Here", or more tragically, like Heath Ledger as the Joker :( Except I didn't play everyone's roles perfectly and act as they needed me to act. And I didn't take kindly to those who told me to stop taking myself so seriously and laugh more. I laugh enough! I'm a comedian! If you don't ...

Deracinate Verb: To uproot; to take something out of its native environment.      @ Annapurna Base Camp with too much stuff, July 2016 We all need to deracinate. Uproot our belief systems, egos, ideas, lenses, perspectives, whatever. Ideas about ourselves, things we've been told about others, about others' characters, other's bodies, our bodies, our characters, our actions, our paranoia, our imposter syndrome.... I think the best way I did this was to deracinate myself from my home and to travel. I think that's why people travel, so they can learn and feel something else, see something from outside of their own mind, which may be going mad with self-doubt, anxiety, ADD, addiction, trauma, whatever. I know that's why I traveled, chose to live in Mexico with Mercedes, Mariano's mom, live in Spain for two years, live at Maria's ranch, live at El Ixuxu in Soto Del Rey, go to India and Nepal with Matiah, travel to various places.... The...

Disembogue \ ˌdis-im-ˈbōg verb: to flow or come forth from or as if from a channel I recently saw the Genius word of the day in my inbox and decided to start this blog as a daily writing practice. Somewhere to get out all the freaky, scary, anxiety-filled thoughts onto a digital scratchpad. You just have to get it all out, let it all down like your hair. You have to flow. You have to do what Maya Angelou said because "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." Because it's really about your trauma, and writing through it, because that's really the only thing that will help me. Or any writer. And lose the ego. It doesn't matter if someone else is doing this. That's great. That's no reason not to. You're joining a conversation, a colony of traumatized writers who just want to disembogue. Sometimes you get choked up but it's in those moments you have to keep writing. This is better than talking. Don...