candy

Shligityshlog almost tricks you into thinking a swear word is on the horizon, no?

Pig Candy is a favorite holiday delight.  For those of you who aren't familiar with this simple recipe, you're a mere twenty minutes from rapture--and a heart attack.  Take a pound of bacon and lay it in a cake pan.  Smash a bunch of brown sugar on it and bake at 350 for twenty minutes.  There are many variations of Pig Candy, I have discovered, but none appeals to me so much as the original recipe.  You can add pecans or use honey or maple syrup in place of brown sugar.  But come on.  Brown sugar.  How come you do taste so good???

Every year I try to think of a way to thank my boss for putting  up with me.  I can be pretty challenging.  So can he.  We struggle as former friends and equals who have changed over to a boss/employee relationship in which he is a football coach and I am an academic, and in which we don't always see eye-to-eye about the priorities of a given situation in the school.  We have a shared a lot of wonderful and heartbreaking moments, including the births of several of our children and personal tragedies such as the death of a parent and the development of autism in a child.  We've developed from relatively inexperienced young toughs into tried professionals and we've shared a lot of happiness and sorrow over the same kids in our building.  Because of the small size of the building, our entire staff shares in the victories and losses of our kids.  There have been some funny moments, such as being scared witless and unthinkling punching him in the gut (when we were equals of course) and watching him stand up and bang his head into a locker so hard that little birds and stars flew around his head in a circle so that I stifled a laugh and he said through gritted teeth, "No, go ahead."  (Never mind the funny moments involving my embarrassment.)  There have been scary moments when a kid was threatening suicide, when a staff member was suffering and when someone was hurt in the building.  The grossest moment of all was seeing him put on a plastic glove and peel the tip of a kid's finger from a door that had pinched it off and then drive away with it to match it up with the fingerless kid who was already at the emergency room.  There are so many stories, but where was I?  Oh yes, Pig Candy.  This year we cemented our relationship with the whopperest whopper of a yelling match we've every had.  Things were thrown and one of us, (though not until he left) actually crumpled to the floor.  Still, it is only the heartiest of boss/employee relationships that bears one of those and is willing to meet for a mending session three days later, where both parties feel sorry and are quick to move on. 

Let us depart from this homage to such a long and well-tested relationship here to speak of something much more shallow.  That would be the two new teachers in the building this year.  Both have taught officially less than a year and one has already been part of a rumor about my impending pregnancy (much exaggerated) and therefore not made a good impression with me.  The other is a perfect gentleman of 24.  If I were to guess, raised Catholic, with the manners any mother would be proud of (and these are pretty high standards right here) and meticulous work habits.  Furthermore, work ethic is beyond reproach and his wardrobe is certainly more savvy than any coach in the building.  I saw him walking out in a 3/4 length wool coat recently and was frankly, stunned, to witness such fashion sense in a gentleman this far north. It's been my role with this young man to think of him as rather a boy since he is so new to the profession and because he looks extraordinarily young, even for his age.  Yet over the past months, he has really grown on me as so few men in the building actually have...grooming habits...and read regularly...and so on.  It was just a couple of weeks ago that he showed up on a Friday with a bit of stubble and it occurred to me that if he took off his shirt and leaned into the shadow with his hand to his chin just so, he'd make a nice Abercrombie and Fitch model.

How can I ever appropriately thank my boss for placing such a nice man and coincidentally delicious piece of eye candy right across the hall from me?

Get out the bacon and brown sugar.