Free To Be--You and Me. Well...Maybe Just You.

I'm not going to lie. I know exactly how much time has passed since I was here last and believe it or not I don't feel like a total scrub for my neglectful blogginess. Not like I used to when I felt as though I'd let people down because I wasn't writing. Nope. I seemed to have scissored my way through that particular veil of tears and now I'm feeling pretty good. Not exactly Tony Robbins good. More like Liza Minnelli after a couple of dirty martinis and a muscle relaxer. Just like mom. (Hers--not mine, naturally) I'll give you the Reader's Digest version of what I've been up to of late and in no particular order. You can decide if it was worthwhile to jot down:

1) Got myself on the transfer list for my school district.  Sent in my surprisingly impressive resume to the high school of my dreams. Went in for an interview with the principal and then got a call-back for a second interview. I must have done pretty well because one of the department heads had a particular slot in mind for me (Sophomore English) and then just I was confident enough to celebrate with some diabetes-flavored cupcakes and a box of Albertson's finest chardonnay, the would-be retiree whose place I would be taking changed her mind about leaving. I'm not exactly dead man walking just yet. There are still some possibilities in that department. I'm somewhat hopeful.

2) Went to see an acupuncturist about my metabolism which--without telling me--retired and went to live in Florida. The experience itself was a total kick in the pants. Part counseling session, part medical advice and part out-of-body experience. I even cried a little highly recommend it.

3) Spent part of my Spring Break in New York with my husband. Walked the Brooklyn Bridge. Saw some awesome art at the Frick. Spent part of a rainy afternoon at the Strand Bookstore. Sat and read in luxurious silence in the same New York Public Library reading room that Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard were in when they filmed "Breakfast at Tiffany's". Stayed and drank at the Algonquin. Had a liverwurst and onion sandwich and (full disclosure) four beers at McSorley's in the East Village and then accidentally walked into the men's bathroom. Fell back in love with my husband. Not in the bathroom, though.

4) Administered two four-hour major standardized tests on consecutive days last week where my job was to 'actively monitor' for test irregularities. Roughly translated, active monitoring means walking slowly for four hours around a room that has been stripped of any posters or anchor charts or words of any kind. The teacher is completely alone inside his/her head. Walk quickly enough not to freak anyone out but not so slowly that I fall over. In other words...I couldn't sit down. Watched to make sure a student was progressing in his/her answering process, but not actually SEE or mentally register what they are writing down. Notice shit...but not actually recognize what it is. Because that would mean I might have some idea what was on the test. All I can say is that, if presented with the chance, I would rather be kidnapped by Somali pirates than locked in another airless room full of testing 5th graders. Panic and failure stink when mixed. You'll just have to trust me on this.

5) Participated in one too many parent/teacher conferences where I feared one of us was going to leave the room in a body bag. I used to think a burnout was nothing more complicated than the glue-sniffing (but harmless) homeless alcoholic who occasionally enjoys directing traffic down by the zoo. I mean...I might need a judge's ruling on this, but I'm pretty sure I now see a burnout every time I look in the mirror. It's not teaching that weighs me down. It's teaching in the 'hood, which is less about education and more about filling in the cracks for the gaps left by children who had children and then dropped them off at the school's curb at 8:15, which is sad and frustrating because school starts at 8:00.

6) Had a tarot card reading today for the first time in my life. Something tells me that drawing both the devil card and the hangman card is not a good thing. I mean, you should have seen the terrified expression on the medium's face. I've always been a "glass half empty" kind of girl, but the guy looking at my cards made the probability of personal happiness for me seem as likely as obtaining Keyser Soze's cell phone number.

7) Discovered the joyful hilarity of The Honest Toddler blog. Seriously. Do yourself a favor and go there. Now.

8) Toyed with the idea of shutting down this blog. Still considering it. It's not about getting anyone to persuade me against the idea. It's just me. Nothing's definite yet.

9) Went to hear writer Anne Lamott speak. Moved beyond words. So much so that I was inspired to put down a few of my own. Life, despite my whining, is good.

What's new with you?

If You're Happy And You Know It Keep It To Yourself: Christmas Break Is Over

Here's how my train of thought runs these days: I'm having lunch with two friends from yoga when my mind strays for just a second as I wonder how it is that the three of us---all public school teachers--have the time to eat lunch in a restaurant in the middle of the day. For a brief moment I think it's summer until I remember we are all wearing sweaters. It sounds crazy, but sometimes when I'm really tired my brain enjoys a little selective amnesia. Then I realize we're living in the last gasp days of the winter holiday. My eyes fall to my iPad and I remember that there's a Muriel Spark book on there I have to finish for a book group I've not been attending and then that makes me think about the stack of books next to my bed which makes me think of the movie Desk Set--one of my favorite movies where books and the information contained in them feature prominently.

Which then brings my thought process back to the books I haven't read, some of which were gifts that I asked for specifically with the intent to read when suddenly I was all "Crapdammit! I forgot to read!"

And --son of a nutcracker!-- if it isn't too late to have a single lazy day where I sit around my yoga pants happily surrounded by books, mugs of hot tea and back issues of the New York Times and the crossword puzzle. 

A day where it looks like this outside. Dig it, people. This was Christmas Day around these parts.

Christmas was lovely and I ate way more than I should have and suffered from a brief bout of Mashed Potato Cramps, but I'm better now. Tomorrow it's back to my alarm going off at 5:17 and driving in the semi-darkness past the bail bondsmen, Cisco's Taqueria and the Weave Palace to my school where the kids will get an extra day of vacation and the teachers will be asked (and I'm completely serious here) to attend a small seminar on suicide prevention (Student suicide, though they ought to be equally worried about their employees offing themselves.) and then a group activity with markers and paper where teachers must write and perform a rap song detailing the need for academic rigor in the classroom.

Your tax dollars at work, my friends. And then we will begin school on Tuesday having had absolutely no time to finish the lesson planning things that would make us even remotely ready for class. Coming back in after a holiday is a lot like re-entering the earth's atmosphere from space. No matter how prepared I am, I always lose a few heat tiles in the process. And it shows. We'll spend the next few weeks all ramped up on stress from the greatly anticipated yet somehow "surprise" classroom judgement visit from downtown administrators, none of whom have we actually seen, but the threat is potent and carries a kind of Keyser Soze weight to it.

Pardon me while I adjust my victim hat. Anyway. All this to say that the last two weeks have allowed me to think about other jobs I might pursue if things in public education fail to improve.

1) Container Store employee. There's an enormous one opening here and I've heard even part-time workers get benefits. Over the holiday I met a young man who used to be a railroad conductor and he says it's an incredibly happy place to work. Discounts on wrapping paper. Score!

2) Bartender. When life is good, everybody drinks. When life sucks...well...everybody drinks some more. Seems like a win-win prospect to me.

3) Technical writer. Sure, I'd be hammering out mouth watering prose for pamphlets where I direct consumers to "insert Tab A into Tab B", but I wouldn't have to walk any of my co-workers to the bathroom or stand by impassively while their parents curse me when I balk at taking work that is two weeks late. 

4) GED instructor at a prison. At last! People are finally ready and eager to learn. Armed guards standing nearby.

5) Crime scene clean-up. It's a growing market and I would never run out of stuff to blog about. 

What's sad is that teaching school used to top this list back before the inmates started running the psych ward. Unfortunately, there's nothing remotely funny about that. 

I Apologize For Not Apologizing:

One of my yoga teachers recently published a nice piece about body and self-image. In it she attempts to address the kinds of random questions and unhelpful statements one encounters during the average extended relations holiday get-together where food and eating habits typically become a conversation piece, as well as unintentional verbal kindling for all manner of family judgement bonfires. In it she declares that this year she will not apologize for being thin, even though it makes others in her family feel uncomfortable about themselves.

I get it.

Except that now I'm on the other side of that argument. W-A-Y on the other side, to my way of thinking. Call me Ishmael Pudding Face.

I was extremely thin for all of my childhood, adolescence and most of my young adult life and I don't mean relatively thin when propped up next to Biggie Smalls or Snookie from Jersey Shore. I mean truly skinny. A stick figure youth who wore pantyhose under jeans in the hopes of filling them out and a college freshman with a bad Twinkie habit who never gained an ounce. That was then and this is now (Thank you, S.E. Hinton). I get where she's coming from and I sympathize why she feels the need to say what she's saying.

Somewhere along the way after three pregnancies, peri-menopause, a busted thyroid and a life-saving surgery to fix my palm-sized stomach ulcer, I lost my clavicle bones...or what my grandmother used to call "salt cellars", which are those triangular hollows between your neck and shoulder bones. Everything else followed. I can't decide if I have failed my body or my body has failed me. I take vitamins. I do some form of exercise almost every single day including at least three weekly installments of hot yoga and I try really hard to avoid my weekly nightly haj of wine and movie popcorn. However, my size in the last three years remains stubbornly unmoved. I have --according to many people whose sympathies I fail to earn--a normal sized body, but I'm unsure if that means normal in a "what's the big deal" kind of way or in the way that suggests I've gone the way of "Supersize Me" America. 

Either way, I hate me it and so do my pants.

True, I do not run long distances anymore. My hopes to complete a second marathon faded after I celebrated the 10th anniversary of having run the first one--and besides--it's too damn dark when I get home from work. The idea of Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred would only work if she drove her skinny ass to my house every day to scream at me. I have the LOSE IT app on my phone and it restricts me to 1100 calories a day which is only successful when I approach its use with religious zeal while bookending each day between two separate workout sessions and drinking several liters of water. Sure, I get results, but 1) I must be close to a bathroom at all times, 2) My day devolves into little more than working and then working out and 3) I miss chewing.

So how desperate am I these days? I called an acupuncturist yesterday in the hope that having a thousand tiny needles inserted directly into my face will somehow tease my metabolism out of its present coma and I can pass by a mirror without grimacing. Of course, there is probably no way to be this honest about my negative self-image without inviting the assumption that I feel this way about everyone else in my situation. I don't.  I am the supreme ruler of my own body image planet and the restrictions I make for myself should in no way be mistaken for how I think anyone else should live. It's all about me. 

My biggest issue here is with the kind of change--unlike getting older-- that I should be able to fix and can't. It's about wanting to regain the one another part of my past life that I always took for granted. And--okay, I'll admit it. It's about walking into a party or a staff meeting or even the grocery store and feeling like nothing worse than a gently used version of my old self rather than one french fry away from a being a cautionary tale. Is that too much to ask? Please say "no".

Up In the Air

There was a moment on our flight to Arizona when it was quiet and calm--both inside the cabin and in my head. The drink cart had made its way down the aisle and I decided against alcohol (too early) or peanuts ($6 for a package no larger than a tea bag. Sweet Fancy Moses! What's up with that?)

Flight terrifies me into a mild state of apoplexy, the type that even my jet pilot friend with two degrees in physics could never coax me out of. Yet here I was, seated next to my husband, peacefully and unmedicated-ly people watching. The man reading Kingsolver's "The Bean Trees. The grandmother in front of me perusing the Hammacher-Schlemmer catalogue for early Christmas gifts. The young snoring college student in headphones seated behind us--sandwiched between two female passengers who sat helpless as he assaulted rows 10 through 17 with his aggressively glottal explosions while he was blissfully protected from that annoying scraping sound a page sometimes makes when it's being turned. Because of the headphones. I felt sure both women wanted to punch him right in the throat.

Yes, I was hermetically sealed in this metal tube breathing everyone else's old air. Yes, my seat--like all the others in coach--did not allow ample enough leg room for a large child, let alone an adult. Yes, from my chair I could see the people in First Class drinking from real glass and crossing their legs without help from a second individual--preferably one with extensive chiropractic training. I was okay with it.

Maybe it was because I had already decided that this would be my last year at the school where I am presently incarcerated teaching. I imagine the triumphant return of Migraine Formula Excedrin to grocery shelves everywhere (and the disappearance of all Hostess products) is probably more of a shock than my decision to leave the source of my recent bitterness. Being locked in a room with a television that played nothing but old Gunsmoke reruns would produce less stress than the kind that bubbles up in me every Sunday night as I set my alarm for "dark thirty".

There may be one or two of you out there who are saying: "Buckle up, Nancy and let me pour you a big old glass of Get Over It" because--yes--I do have a job and it comes with health insurance, but those can't be the only factors that make it worth getting up every morning at 5 and coming home at 6 (with added hours for paper grading and lesson planning at home). There has to be more to it.

What was the straw that broke the camel's back? Was it last year when a failing child lied to her mother  about remarks she fabricated and attributed to me? (And then only retracting them after her mother had reported me to downtown? And after an investigation proved the girl a liar, the mother never apologized) Was it last week when student threatened to stab one of my colleagues? Or was it two years ago when a student actually DID stab one of my colleagues? Is it the overwhelming number of sub-standard parents whose misplaced sense of priority allows them to feel justified to apply for "free breakfast and lunch" for their child and use the extra money to buy an iPhone 5? Or is it the mother who claims that her son's inability to behave in school is our fault because her taxes pay my salary. I know. That last one didn't even make any sense. The woman is an idiot.

Maybe it's all of the above that make Sundays such a miserable day--only because it's the day before Monday. A woman in my yoga class says that one of her co-workers from the low-income high school where they both teach went to the principal and said, "I'm having feelings of suicide. I have to get out of this building or I'm going to kill myself".

That's not me, you understand. But I can imagine the process that might lead someone to have thoughts like that. Her students are basically the kind I have now...just older.  Low income, some low-intellect/ life experience with low expectations and riding in the last car of the welfare train. Add some anger and age five years. The next time you hear about them? It's on the 10 o'clock news.

I make jokes about the parents who pick up their kids wearing pajamas or tube tops.  The jobless "homies" that make up a good 40% of the dads/brothers/uncles at our school. The mothers with the stupidity or sheer audacity to get pregnant AGAIN--holy Jesus--after it's been made patently clear that they don't or can't take care of the half dozen kids they have now. The notes from parents detailing their child's absence the day before--with "stomach ache" spelled stomag acker. Mothers who agree to meet with us and then stand us up without shame. Fathers who don't know what grade their own child is in. The demands for free tutoring or for school supplies that they assume I should pay for because they can't.  And--worst of all--the school district which operates on the fantasy that the people I've just described above are the exception and not--as they really are--the rule.

It's a hot mess and there's no use saying that it isn't. Pretending the one student I'm likely to save is worth wading through the crap storm of everything else isn't enough any more. That child is a figment of everyone's imagination and even if he really exists, you can't help the someone who doesn't want to be helped. If I don't get out of there soon, someone's going to find me wandering the freeway at night wearing soft pants, drinking out of a paper sack and singing the theme to "The Flintstones".  It would be funny if it weren't true.

I'm Sad Because Vodka Popscicles Don't Freeze

A trip to Arizona for a wedding, the election,  a weekend campus visit to see two of our sons in college, a heartbreaking level of work stress, one respiratory infection, a crying jag, the discovery of Trader Joe's salads and a partridge in a pear tree. That is where I've been for the last month and the five of you who still read this blog most likely already knew it and refrained from calling in a missing person's report. I appreciate your self-restraint.

Meanwhile the words have built up inside my head to dangerous levels and this is bad news since it is time for Thanksgiving and the emotional dodgeball game that is holiday dinner at my in-laws. Or...as I've come to know it: Dysfunctional-Palooza.

I love my in-laws and they've always been good to me, but it's always been difficult for me to allow my life to be influenced or my holidays negatively affected by the off-kilter way others conduct their relationships. This year I seem to be unable to keep that from happening. The plan was to have the dinner at our house--you know--like the big kids do and have everyone plus their wheelbarrow of crazy here. One son is only here briefly and it was going to work better for him to leave from our house, rather than 45 minutes west of here after a dinner that will NOT start on time, no matter how many promises are made.

However, my MIL chose to allow my FIL to play his "heart attack" card and keep dinner out at their house. Now before you gasp at the sheer, unbridled heartlessness of that last statement, Aunt Bea, let me just tell you that this is the way my FIL operates ALL of the time. Even when his heart hasn't been stitched together with catgut and hot glue. He works hard all week long being the infante terrible of the legal world and then wants to sit out in his workshop and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist.

Now he would like to do this again on Thanksgiving day and just pretend it's because it's due to a weak heart, rather than the fact that he's uncomfortable in other people's houses all of the time. Not to mention that I believe he's no longer on the pre-op medication that kept his moods of late...um...relatively non-confrontational. This is no small feat given that the scotch and cigar industries took a major hit while he was under doctor's watch before his bi-pass and now those pills that made him okay with pretending that sparkling grape juice was just as satisfying as a snootful of chardonnay have probably worn off and it's every man, woman and child for himself.

Bring on the turkey coma, people. I'm hoping to lose consciousness before the BIL with the low self esteem and loose-cannon mouth says something stupid. I'm in no frame of mind to trifle with fools. My yoga instructor says that every time we encounter that family member who brings on the road rage, we should go outside and do a handstand.

At this rate I'll just have to eat my entire dinner while upside down. What about you? Who makes you crazy?

Turning the Page

There's an enormous dry erase board that my husband framed up and hung in the little "mud room" entrance to our kitchen and since our family mostly enters our home this way via a garden door--rather than the more formal front entrance--the board has stood as a constant reminder of what needs doing around here.

In the beginning it was divided into five sections with each person in our house writing his or her name at the top in dry erase marker. This left five vertical columns for each person's daily stuff. Occasionally the boys would leave funny or cryptic messages for one another with the most constant data being grocery lists with scribbled in requests for ice cream, reminders for dry cleaning or to fix something broken in the house. Eventually, memos for tux rentals and graduation invitations fought for space with college application deadlines and dorm move-in dates, summer work interviews and appeals for a new pair of running shoes. There were times when the board was exploding with muti-colored announcements all crammed in a happy chaotic jumble.

The old board is looking a little barer these days. It's no secret that I dislike change if it's not something I wanted in the first place. However, I will go on record as saying that I hung on to some very old memos --perhaps longer than was necessary. As each boy left in more permanent ways the need for them to use this as a tap on the shoulder decreased imperceptibly.... almost as if word by word.

And then this week? Something changed  and I found myself standing in front of the middle son's written reminder to file his college graduation plan.   He's done that and the ceremony is in December. There was the oldest son's memo for rental agreement on his house, which happened months ago, as well as a sketch of a wooden construct to be used at a summer camp where he is the climbing instructor. Done. Finally, there was my hugely scrawled admonition to the youngest son to PACK for college as well as the distinctively pink signature of his girlfriend that had been there since the previous winter.

By not erasing those last two bits of information I realized I was trying to keep certain things alive that were no longer relevant to us or to our sons--and in that same way--avoid the inevitably gaping space that would result. But in fact the youngest had already left --successfully packed-- almost two months before, plus he and the girlfriend were no longer together. In the time that had elapsed those written words had been drained of their meaning and now were nothing more than symbols of fear that the space they had previously filled might never be replaced by anything else. 

Sometimes it takes naming a fear to make you see how stupid it really is. This was the case on Thursday afternoon. After considering one last time the commands, suggestions and reminders from the last six months I picked up a dry erase marker.  Impulsively, I turned it over to its felt eraser end and slowly scrubbed away at all of the messages that no longer applied. And... the world did not end.  Even though the board is still pretty empty. It is said that nature abhors a vacuum. If that's true then I can't wait to see what she does with this message board...and the life we live as reflected on its surface.

Weekend

I would have posted before now, but I appear to have a decision making disorder that makes it hard for me to commit words to paper (or computer screen) until I know where I'm going with the point I'm trying to make, but I've put off cleaning the house--or as it is currently known: Brokedown Palace--as well as grading the half kilo of papers I brought home with me yesterday so I have a moment to express a thought or two. I know I won't be the first person to say this, but two days for a weekend is really not long enough. Especially if I'm expected to be completely ready for work on Monday. I'm going to need at least three days, mainly because I require an entire 24 hours just for all the crying. I wish I was kidding.

How bad is the behavior at our school? So bad that during morning announcements over the PA system-- (Wherein the entire school collectively recites THREE pledges--national, state and the school pledge to be a better citizen and not stab anyone until we get home--so who are all the jagweeds out there on Facebook claiming school kids don't say the pledge anymore and the country is going to hell? No really! Find them for me so I can kick their asses right now, because it takes my school eleventy-five minutes of pledging instead of receiving instruction every day and as a result I've got students who think the name of our continent is Antarctica and one who just this week spelled the word the word shovel thusly: sufol. Time is of the essence, friends. OF. THE. ESSENCE!! This cannot be overstated. And no--I'm not suggesting that our kids can't read or spell because of the Pledge of Allegiance, so simmer down all you flag wavers out there.)  --our sweet principal has us clap in unison for the number of days our little dumplings go without a disciplinary referral to the office.

I'll wait while you digest what I just said.

Yes. It has come down to clapping for the self-restraint shown when young children make it through the day without setting fire to the bathroom, though rhythmically speaking what we do really resembles that slow "clap out" that all the prisoners did for Robert Redford when he played a warden in the movie "Brubaker".  By the way, that smell you've probably just noticed? It's the smell of failure. Thanks for noticing.

It was a good idea, in theory, to assess our progress with regard to in-house violence. Sadly, we got as far as 10 days of relative calm during that first week and a half, which had our teachers in a kind of mouths-wide-open-yet-cautious state of mild shock and disbelief and then things went south as they are wont to do here at Lord of the Flies Elementary when a bi-polar/schizophrenic third grader-- who is built like a small tractor and whose mother neglected to administer purchase his insanity pills-- roundhouse punched another classmate right in the face while in the cafeteria. Current total of claps as of yesterday? Three. Hope springs eternals, folks.

And then it is stomped until lifeless by someone wearing dirty Air Jordans.

In other news I saw something on Pinterest about a Chocolate Ding Dong Cake with caramel and sea salt and when you add that bit of happy information that to the fact that I also just this day stumbled onto the existence of Candy Corn M&Ms? Let's just say I may have discovered my reason to go on living. It's either that or risk censure when someone discovers me "drinking" my lunch out in the teacher's parking lot, though I don't think there's a jury in the land who would convict me if they had spent even a day with me. The invitation is open, but you'll have to bring your own kevlar vest. Don't say you weren't warned.

I'm headed out tonight to my husband's class reunion. I'm actually looking forward to it since I purchased this miracle cucumber eye cream that somewhat diminishes the suggestion that I'm storing small dark coin purses beneath my eyes. I'm not saying it's like a facelift or anything, but it shaves a whole three years off my appearance. When you consider that I was coming out of ICU three years ago and--even then--looked more rested than I do after leaving work every day? Well....I'll take what I can get and going backwards in the time machine known as "GETTING OLDER" is better than forwards. If you don't know that yet you are probably still in college, in which case you probably should be studying instead of pondering your mortality. There's plenty of time for that.