Welcome!

It's tough to be an introvert in an extrovert world, especially in an extrovert's profession, like teaching. Through this blog, I'd like to share my own and others' reflections on being an introvert in the classroom. This isn't a place for misanthropes or grumps, though; I hope to thoughtfully discuss the challenges that introverts face in schools and celebrate the gifts that introverted teachers and students bring to the educational environment. If you can relate, please join me!

Thursday, May 30, 2013

My cookie-cutter house

I love the suburbs. Yeah, I said it.

This is another thing I'm supposed to not like, as an academic, especially as an English professor. I'm supposed to say I want a charming old rambling farmhouse with character or some such crap.

But that only works if you have lots of spare cash for fixing things up, and, besides, I can't deny that I'm an engineer's daughter. When my dad looked down the street of a well planned subdivision and said in a pleased way, without any irony whatsoever, "You see, everything is so symmetrical," I totally knew what he meant.

I don't want an old house with character....because it's someone else's character. I like to think of my little detached condominium as my own beige and white blank slate. I decorate it how I want. I don't need to plan around, say, someone else's nineties-tastic green tile fireplace. Also, a hypersensitive person with OCD getting a new construction house is like a sticky toddler getting candy. I will go to town on that! It's so clean. I don't have to go around wondering, what exactly is that greasy stain on the wall? Why is there so much dirt crusted into the kitchen light switch plate? Did someone go play in the mud at night and then say, hey, I need to go grab my juicer? Exactly how much of the previous owner's dry toe skin has been shed into this carpet?

And when did cookie cutters get a pejorative connotation? Aren't they part of happy Christmas cookie-decorating memories? I'm missing the crafty gene, so there's no way I'm getting a Santa Clause face shape on my own. Besides, even if I get a bunch of identically shaped cookies, I can vary the icing and sprinkles and stuff.

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