This entry brought to you by a broken heart and Matt Wertz

"And I don't think that I can even remember/Why it was that i came to this town"

Every guy I've ever dated has hated my taste in music. There's just something about sensitive (read: whiny) emotional lyrical acoustic music that just never did it for any of them. Funny though when the time comes for the relationship to end and I am left with my thoughts I turn to this emotional lyrical acoustic music and listen to songs on a loop. I pick a theme and run with it.

Well here I am, left with my thoughts... I have a broken heart. It's so cliche, but so true.

"This is me on the eve of an ending/To what I've known's been constant for a year/And I'm so scared of this pain that I'll be sending/Sometimes I just want to run away in fear"

It's not just this break-up that has me torn up. I don't deal well with change. City Year was my life for two years, and now I am about to embark upon a career as a teacher. Seriously? What the fuck do I know about teaching? I am terrified. And... as uneloquent as this sounds... this whole relationship ending thing... isn't helping!

"No, I haven't heard your voice in two weeks now/And anticipation's been wearing me thin/And I just can't help but wonderin' baby if somehow/We could tear these pages out and begin again"

I would like to clarify something, with 2000 miles between us, I wasn't expecting any great romance to endure. It's the loss of my friend that hurts the most. It's the lack of contact... not a phone call, an email, a fucking text message. It's the loss of one of my best friends.

Whatever, all I know anymore is...

"I don't want to be lonely tonight."

Editor's note: The song in purple is "Lonely Tonight" by Matt Wertz

"Monica, remember that it's food... not love" or the first pseudo-personal entry with no intellectual value.

**Editor's Note: In an effort to not embarrass or incriminate anyone else in my life with this journal, anytime that I write about anyone else I will only be using the first initial. If you know who I'm talking about, mazel tov you win, but they don't need to be "put out on front street" if you know what I mean.**

I think I seek out people in my life who turn to food when life takes a turn to the worse. Maybe I do it to make myself feel less weird, when I crave a cup of coffee, ice cream, or cookies when I'm feeling crappy. Maybe people just like the fact that I'll cook for them when they're feeling down. Either way, it is the reason why when E was sounding sad on the phone yesterday night that I suggested we make dinner tonight and watch bad (but oh-so-great) movies. It was also the reason why she invited C to join when she learned that C had just been dumped by her significant other.

So there we were, three "classy" ladies eating chips and drinking Pabst, when the following conversation occured:

C: I can't even go on myspace, I just keep thinking that I'll have to change my relationship status.
Me {throwing my hands up in agreement}: It's the last remaining piece of my relationship! He hasn't changed his profile yet, and I refuse to do it first, because I know how upset I'll be if he notices and changes his.
E {chuckling}: I don't think I'll ever be able to change that status box. It's like a big step in a relationship, I'll just be thinking, like, 'I like you, but I don't know if I'm ready for all that.'
Me: Seriously, I remember that I didn't change my status until he changed his, and then I decided to do it.
E: I remember that!
C: Yeah well made me change mine to "in a relationship"...

Looking back on this conversation has brought me to two important conclusions-
First: Wow my friends and I are so fucking lame. I mean people are getting bombed, living without food or water, getting sub-par educations, etc and I'm sitting around eating chicken and scalloped potatoes talking about fucking myspace. I'm such a loser.

Second: When the hell did myspace start dictating our lives?? We check it religiously, put scandelous pictures of ourself on it, we use it to send messages to each other, and apparently to define our relationship status. It's the modern equivelent to getting "pinned." You'd think the three small words that would declare to the world that you're in a relationship would be "I love you," instead we get "In a relationship". How sad has this culture gotten? And why can't I pretend to be immune to it like so many of my friends are? Even my older campers are talking about it. Today the girls talked about how when they're older they're going to get a myspace page. They traded possible songs they could download and what pictures they'd put on it. THEY'RE 10! They should be decorating binders and lockers, not parts of the web where scary men can come find them! Sheesh.

I need to get off this computer... myspace is calling.

Stop snitching and other lessons we reluctantly teach children

This summer I have taken on the daunting task of being an assistant counselor for a group of kids at a daycare in the Olney/Northeast section of Philadelphia. My group has 20 rostered kids, 14 that show up daily, and the age range is 5 to 11. So for 9 hours a day, I am breaking up fights, leading countless games of an altered "Captain's Coming", singing every camp song I know, and dealing with countless choruses of "Miss Aaaaaalliiiiiii..." Point being, my kids love to tattletale. I'm constantly bombarded with "Miss Ali, he's chewing with his mouth open;" "Miss, she stuck her tongue out at me;" "Miss, she starin' at me!"

There's this slogan: "Stop Snitchin'" that has been popping up everywhere recently. I'm not a fan of this slogan, in my mind it's associated with the witnesses to the murder of an innocent 7 year old boy that were intimidated into changing their testimony to allow the man on trial to go free. I associate it with the articles I read about shootings in broad daylight on a busy street where people are too scared to come forward and help catch the people that did it. Part of me completely understands the self-preservation aspect. The "why should I put myself out there when I didn't know the one who got killed" aspect. Typically, I side with the Mothers-in-charge "Step up! Speak up!" campagin which is trying to give people in philadelphia the courage to take a stand against violence and help stop it.

I say typically because after working at this daycare for a week now... I want to shake a few of my kids and scream "STOP SNITCHIN'!" I'm trying very hard to teach "good tattling" and "bad tattling." At the age of 7 though, most of them don't quite understand that cutting in line, or flicking ears is not a matter of life and death, and my patience only runs so deep.

It's a hard thing to teach, the line between not being a tattletale but to know when speaking up is okay. I've watched mothers smack their children in the back of the head and yell "snitches get stiches," which probably reinforces the idea that they shouldn't tattle, but probably also teaches them that they should never speak up. I can sit (sit... ha! who am I kidding, run around) at work day after day and repeat that "there are serious things that we should tell Miss Ali and Miss Tina, but there are somethings that you need to use your words and fix yourself" but does that help?

Something to ponder...

So blogging is supposed to be this hip trendy way for people to speak their minds about the state of the modern world. I'm not hip, nor am I trendy, nor do I feel I can say anything intelligent about the state of our country today (that hasn't already been more eloquently put by a real blogger). I tried to stay below the blogging radar and write on a LiveJournal, but alas I am no longer 16 and angsty, and it was time for me to grow up. So here I am, writing on a real live blog. I might write about the state of the world. Spout eloquent prose about the state of education and politics, but most likely I will simply write about my day or what is pissing me off currently about the state of my life.

PS: Don't ask me about the title, I don't know why I called it that.