Appsolewdly

I won't tell you what year (or even what decade) my fascination with Steven Tyler first blossomed. Let's just say the roots run deep. I heard him screaming those climactic last bars of "Dream On", and something inside me shifted and whispered, "yes...."

His first appearance on Idol this year reacquainted me with my inner 14 year old girl. I screamed a lot, eliciting much head shaking and muttering from my husband, and texted my bff, Pam, thru the whole show. She gets it.

His big ten inch...record incites sweet emotion. Some folks say the dude looks like a lady but I'd walk his way anytime. It's a monkey on my back. I'd ask what it takes to let it go, but I don't want to miss a thing. So the train keeps a rollin' and I'm still crazy, crazy, crazy for ya baby.

And speaking of crazy...guess what I discovered today??? A Steven Tyler app for my iPhone!!! I kid you not. It's called "Appsolewdly." (Of course it is. What else would it possibly be called. It's Steven freakin' Tyler.) It costs $2.99 at the app store, and yes, I ponied up the cash.

What did I get for my 3 bucks?

• A trivia game...meh.
• Some pics...nice.
• Steven's home video which is updated daily...now we're talking!
• And the absolute best feature??? SOUND EFFECTS!!

OMG...I can press a button and get "Yakakakau!" Or a cackle. Or "Oh yeah." If I want more than a scream, though I can't imagine why I would, I can push a button to hear advice from Steven.

I've waited all my life for pearls of wisdom like, "Who knows where the nose goes when the do's closed" and "You know I'd rather be sittin' all by myself on a pumpkin than be crowded on a velvet pillow."

Tru dat, Steven. Tru dat.

I decided to end this post with a video of Dream On, the song that started it all for me. YouTube has a veritable buffet of Dream On video. I waffled between a version performed at Fenway Park where Steven begins on a white baby grand way up over the scoreboard and the version I posted. The video below features a performance in Rio in which Steven and Joe Perry are shirtless. A no-brainer in the end.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious...

Ok, I'm a long way from glorious, and discontent is still skulking about waiting to rear its ugly head, but winter is over.

Winter is over.

Take a deep breath. Fill your lungs with oxygen, and then let it out slowly. Now do it again. And again. Winter is over.

Spring is more than a date on the calendar. It is embedded in our consciousness as humans. Whether we acknowledge it consciously or not, we feel the movement from death to rebirth.

Our pagan ancestors couldn't run to Wal-Mart in January and buy fresh strawberries from Guatemala or wherever they come from in the dead of winter. Spring was a big deal. They ate what they could grow or kill. When the earth became fertile again, they could eat. So they celebrated big. They danced and feasted and re-enacted the most ancient and enduring fertility rite.

The pagan world gave way to religion, but Spring still loomed large. Easter, Passover, the birth of the Buddha...birth, rebirth, escape from death...all celebrated in Spring.

I've performed my own Rites of Spring this weekend. I took 95 kids to the University of Kentucky library, an annual event I love. I drove with my windows down. I got my first pedicure of the season and wore open-toed shoes. I feasted with my family and sang and danced with my friends.

I feel lighter. In spite of the chaos in the world at large and in my own world, I feel the rebirth of hope. After today, the scale measuring the darkness and the light shifts, tipping to the light. The problems aren't fixed, but I can face them.

Winter is over.

Welcome Spring! Damn glad to see you!

After we genuflect, do ya wanna exfoliate?

Tonight was scheduling orientation for next year's freshmen. Nothing freaks out eighth graders and their parents like the thought of making a scheduling misstep that will potentially screw up THE REST OF THEIR LIVES!

Seriously.

So I'm standing behind a table with my compadres in the the English department on one side and my Social Studies buddy, Linda, on the other. Linda and I team teach an Honors Social Studies/Honors English Block class. We get tons of questions about that class at orientation, so we hang together. (Side note: 95% of parents at scheduling orientation are parents of kids interested in honors classes.)

The only male member of the English department excuses himself from the parent he's speaking with and leans over to me.

"Excuse me, oh queen, but I have a question." (I'm the department head, and as such, insist on being referred to as "oh queen" or "your royal highness.")

Ok, not really. I generally respond to smartassery with more of the same.

"If you're gonna call me 'queen,' I expect you to genuflect."

My colleague's eyebrows raise, and he looks at me like he can't believe I've just said that out loud. People are waiting, so I answer his question, and we both get back to the business of reassuring parents.

After the crowd clears, another one of my fellow English teachers leans in and whispers, "He thinks you said something dirty."

"Huh?"

"He doesn't know what genuflect means. He thinks you made a suggestive comment."

Well, hell. I'm not sure whether to laugh or be horrified. Linda, who has overheard the whole exchange, solves my problem. She calls out to him by name.

"Hey!"

He joins us with obvious trepidation. Linda bats her eyelashes at him and adopts a breathy Marilyn Monroe voice.

"After we genuflect, do ya wanna exfoliate?"

My abused colleague rolls his eyes, realizing he is being mocked. To his credit, he dishes it right back.

"Should we exfoliate on the table or underneath it?"

We are all laughing riotously at this point, and it is good. Stress relief at the end of a long day. I left the orientation thinking A) We all spend too much time with 15 year olds. And B) It's surely difficult to be the only man in a group of smartass women.