On the Jazz

Spot On

2012-01-31T10:12:00.000-07:00

I've been a Surviving the World fan since September, when I stumbled across the site while looking for ways to teach my debaters about ad hominem fallacies. Now I read it almost daily. Today's update made me laugh, wince, and then hurry to share.

http://survivingtheworld.net/Lesson1309.html

I Dream in Vignettes

2012-01-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

This morning my alarm clock sounded at 4 a.m. I had meant to get up at 4 and exercise, but since my sore throat from last night was still there, I hit snooze. Then I hit snooze again. I hit snooze in 5 minute intervals from 4 to 5:45. That's 105 minutes, or 21 snoozes. Thank heaven I don't have roommates or they would have shot me. Because of the fragmented nature of my sleep this morning, I had a series of very random, very short dreams. Here is a sampling:

I dreamed I slept in until 11:27 and was panicking because I was late for school. I kept checking my phone, wondering why the school hadn't called me. Not only that, but my mom was there, and I couldn't understand why she hadn't woken me up so I wouldn't be so late.

I dreamed about towels.

I dreamed about dirty rugs.

I think I dreamed about tea.

I think I dreamed about a few different boys.

I probably dreamed about lots of other things, that didn't really make an impression. I was surprised by how deeply I was sleeping in between alarms. I felt like I was getting fantastic sleep. Sleep so fantastic I never could bring myself to turn my alarm off so I could sleep for more than 5 minutes at a time.

Failure and Excuses

2012-01-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

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I did not meet my budgeting goals this month. I did not meet my budgeting goals this month by several hundred dollars. This is the result of several factors. Some are my fault. Some are not. I'm going to tell you about it, partially because I'm sitting in a very boring session of the UAGC conference (most of which has been wonderful), and partially because I figure if I tell you, I'll be too embarrassed to overspend again next month. For your convenience, I have categorized and itemized my expenses and excuses.

What was my fault:
1. I spent too much money on going out to eat.
2. My power bill was too high.
3. I bought too much stuff.

My Excuses:
1. Going Out to Eat: I have been looking for friends since I moved up to Salt Lake. This month I finally made friends that want to hang out, climb hard, and laugh a lot. Unfortunately, they also like to go out too eat at very nice places. After the first time, I started just getting side orders or dessert while they got steaks. I now have the reputation as the girl "who never eats anything."
2. Power bill: I give up! I keep my apartment at 65 or 60 degrees all day, and I have things like my router, computer, tv, dvd player, etc. on plug strips that I only turn on when I need them. When I was gone for a week at Christmas, I even turned off my water heater. After all that paranoia, my power bill is still over $70 for a one bedroom apartment on the second floor. I give up.
3. Stuff: I was doing so well. I had shopped at thrift and discount stores and craft stores to get several things I'd been craving for the apartment forever. Halfway through the month, I had spent my "stuff budget," and resigned myself to not spending any more money on stuff. Then I found the deals. One was a fantastic area rug such as I have been drooling over for years, brand new, soft on the feet, matching everything in my living room, covering up my old carpet with cigarette burns in it, for only $50. The other was a Groupon deal on one of those things you tell yourself "I really want to try that someday, but don't want to spend the money. If I ever find a deal on that, I'm totally doing it." There went $40. Between those two, I overspent my stuff budget by nearly $100. Ouch.

But even with my going out to eat, my high power bill, and my splurges on stuff, I would have been ok. My budget had some wiggle room to accommodate unforeseen circumstances, deals, and splurges. I could overspend the budget somewhat without overspending my income. What blew my spending out of control were the following big-ticket items I maybe should have seen coming, but didn't. Even if I had, I would still have had to pay most of their expense out of my savings, even if I didn't spent a penny on stuff or going out to eat.

What wasn't my fault:
1. I had to renew my car insurance: $360
2. I had to change my oil, rotate my tires, etc. $60
3. I had an opportunity to pick up 2 cheap credits toward my Gifted and Talented endorsement by attending this conferencing I'm blogging through at the moment. My school was generous enough to pay for my registration fees (over $200), but the credit is mine to purchase. I absolutely don't mind paying for it, it's more than fair, and I'm still getting a very good deal on the credits. It is, however, another $75 I didn't see coming.

Those three items alone crashed into the roof of my monthly budget to the height of nearly $500. Ouch, ouch, ouch. One of my teachers will a flair for the dramatic once stood in front of us and demanded, "Do you know what the most sensitive part of the human body is?" Staring around the room defiantly he paused, then reached into his back pocket and help up his wallet. "This. There are more nerves connected to a person's wallet than to any other other part of the body. Threaten a man's wallet and he gets upset and hurt very quickly." It's true. Here I am, turning off lights and water heaters and ordering side dishes and saving receipts, only to have a $500 sock to the gut. It's disappointing, discouraging, and a bit embarrassing.

There are 11 more months until my car is paid off on my current budget plan. If I have unforeseen expenses like this every month, I'll never make it. But today is payday, so it's time to take a breath, fill up my gas tank with the last of my gas money for this month, and start a new excel page for February.

Here goes nothing.

How I feel about this session of the conference. Most of the sessions have been absolutely fantastic and useful and inspiring. But in every conference there's always at least one disappointing session. This time the disappointing session just happens to be the longest session at the conference: 4.5 hours.

Not a Waste of Makeup

2012-01-25T21:08:00.000-07:00

I went on a date with a grown-up. A live one, in his natural habitat. A polite, responsible, "solvent," interesting, and well-mannered grown-up. He asked me out days in advance, he remembered the restaurant I had casually mentioned liking days earlier, and he showed up on time. He held a balanced conversation, listening intently, commenting, and asking questions and told stories from his own life as well.

He's got a real job, productive hobbies he pursues with passion, and he loves his grandmother. Do you know how long it's been since I've been on a date with a boy that didn't live in somebody's basement? The better part of a year, that's how long. Some of them lived in their parents' basements; the one I dated for a few months at least lived in a non-relative's basement. It's been a long time since I've been on a date with a boy with a college degree and a job in his field. Don't get me wrong, those boys were great dates and there's nothing wrong with the lives they're living. But I'll admit that it was awfully nice to go on a date with a grown-up. It made me feel like I'm not crazy for having gotten my degree, started a career, and pursued goals in health, travel, and hobbies. It felt wonderful.

I went on a date with a grown-up. I hope I get to go on another one.

Blackout

2012-01-19T07:32:00.000-07:00

I got to participate in the internet blackout yesterday, but my participation was in "the rl." I got home from friend's place last night to find my entire apartment complex looking much more peaceful than usual. It had the feeling of rurality that comes when there aren't any lights on at night. I have no idea how long the power had been out--it'd still be on when I left my place a couple hours before, but by 10:00 p.m. it was blacked out completely. I shrugged it off and got ready for bed. Having a power outage in the city is hardly a crisis. When the power goes out in a city, you still have water! Despite upwards of seven years of city living, this still seems miraculous to me. When the power went out back home, we didn't flush toilets or run the tap because we only had whatever residual water pressure was in the line without the pump to bring more up from underground. Mom or Dad would build a fire in the fireplace in the basement if it was cold, and if the power outage lasted long enough, we'd be sent to pump water from the hand pump in the front yard, which had been installed during the Y2K scare. I learned nifty tricks like flushing a toilet by pouring a bucket of water in the bowl and how to do my makeup by candlelight. So last night I wrapped up in a blanket, thanked the universe for providing a warm night, and set my phone alarm. Power outages never last long, and I was confident that soon the power would flick on, bringing heat, the sound of the fridge, and the gurgle of my hot water heater. However, when my alarm woke me up this morning, the world was still dark, both outside and in. No electricity, no hot water, no cold milk. So I sighed, lit a candle, grabbed my headlamp, and changed into my work clothes. I packed up my make-up and brush for getting ready at school, and got here at about 6:45.

The adolescent inside of me is pretty darn sure that if my power was out all night I don't have to come to work today. I wish it was right.

Confession, Music Edition

2012-01-17T15:42:00.000-07:00

My family is a very understanding, supportive, and loving one. My relationship with them has remained steady and close despite all sorts of life-changing decisions I make that I don't write about on the internet. However, I'm about to make a public confession that may change all of that completely:

I've started to like some electronic music, sometimes, on occasion.

It's not my fault, Mom and Dad, I fell in the wrong friends, and they influenced me. They pressured me into listening to it at first, and I went along thinking, "What harm could it do?" Then soon they were playing it all the time, and then we were talking, laughing, and having a good time with this sound in the background. We rocked out to it and danced to it, and listened to it way too loud way too late at night. Before I knew, I had started to enjoy it. Now, sometimes, when no one else is around, I'll play it on my own. I know that musically it's not worth much more than a fart in a can, but I get cravings for it now. I'm sorry, Mom and Dad, I never meant to disappoint you.

Is there a rehab center for this I can check into and get my good taste back?

The Race

2012-01-12T08:07:00.001-07:00

I bought my car, Kami, in May of 2009. When I bought her I had the goal of paying her off within two years. Some travel, overspending, moving expenses, educational expenses, and miscellaneous expenses later, it's been two and a half years and I still owe several thousand dollars. Since my rent is now twice what it used to be, and my commute is longer, and I'm taking classes, I don't quite have the amount of disposable income I had a year ago. This means that if I pay a great deal extra on my car payment, I am no longer able to put any money in my savings account, which has also been depleted by the travel, the overspending, moving, classes, etc. If I were a shrewd financier, I would say that I should be throwing all my money into my savings account, because that earns interest, whereas my car loan is a no-interest loan (I know, I got a steal). I did the math once, however, and if I followed that oh-so-crafty plan, I'd come out of that five year loan about $100 richer in interest. $100 is not worth having a loan hanging over my head for extra years.

So I've decided to get rid of this loan. I'm going to throw all disposable income at it, neglecting my meager savings, and try and have it paid off by the end of the year. After that I should be able to build up my savings account much more quickly, without having to split my income between my loan and my future.

This is pretty much my car, except mine is "carmine red," which I've given up claiming is red. My car is purple. Sigh.
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The race has begun. Can I control my spending, budget my money, and minimize incidental extra expenses for months and months? Can I pay off my car loan before those incidental extras (renewing car insurance, registering my car, spring break, etc.) eat too far into my already reduced savings?

I mean to try. I'm saving receipts, I'm making careful grocery lists, I'm using Excell spreadsheets, and I'm ignoring the long mental list of "stuff I want."

So, bring on the next eleven months. When the world ends/doesn't end at the end of 2012, I plan not to owe the bank a cent.

Science Fiction Juxtaposition

2012-01-09T15:19:00.000-07:00

I just realized that these two have a lot in common:

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"When 900 years you reach, look as good, you will not."

I know, this quote was said by the Matt Smith Doctor, not the David Tennant Doctor, but I liked this picture better.

"...in nine hundred years of time and space and I've never met anybody who wasn't important..."

I thought I was really smart for figuring this out on my own, but then I discovered that other people have had the same idea long before me:

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But maybe I can get originality points for throwing in a juxtaposition to another famous character. Who else is 900 years old besides Doctor Who and Yoda? Methuselah.

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Actually, if you compare representations of the three 900+ year-old beings, they look eerily similar.

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Of course, were we just adding juxtapositions based on looks, there's another extremely old character whose age could well be 900, and who looks a great deal like our other old men:

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Pianos are Totally Steampunk

2012-01-04T17:47:00.000-07:00

Have you ever peered curiously into the interior of a piano? Lifted the lid into the strangely mechanical inside to this outwardly sleek and simplistic musical instrument? Inside is what looks like an imprisoned and tortured harp, screwed into place, locked into a frame, and hemmed in on every side with dampers and hammers and pins. Have you ever crawled underneath a grand or baby grand, played with the pedal rods, or stared into the rafters of the underside? A baby grand piano makes a first rate imaginary cave, ramshackle shack, or place to take a nap. How much time have you spent contemplating piano keys? If you get eye-level with them and peer down the row of keys, they resemble a polished and right-angled version of the Cliffs of Dover. Have you experimented to find the exact amount of weight and speed it takes to make the keys make noise? If you push the key down slowly and gently, the larger body of the piano remains silent and still, and the only reaction is a muted, intimate clunk, half-perceived through the ear, half through the finger pressing the key. If you push the key down a little harder and softer, the piano’s regular note sounds, as soft or loud as you like. But maybe you didn’t know, that if you play a key ever so softly, but ever so slightly more boldly than when you were trying to feel the gentle clunk, you will hear a note, soft and tinny, like a piano being played in a metal room three blocks down. It’s like the echo of a piano, a whisper, unamplified, from the harp inside the wooden case.

I can’t change a tire, and a glimpse into an engine is as bewildering and unfamiliar as a look into an alien’s abdominal cavity. I grew up scared to touch the TV for fear I would mess it up—it seemed a delicate creature. But not pianos. Pianos were solid, familiar, and friendly. I could touch them without being told not to leave fingerprints, and no one ever told me I was sitting “too close” to a piano. I could explore every inch of a piano, play with it, experiment, and use it as a prop for countless imaginary adventures. I could never have that kind of familiarity with my mother’s mixer, the television, or my dad’s record or CD players. But as long as I didn’t scratch it with my toys, bang on the keys, or drop things inside, there was no limit to how intimate I could get with my family’s pianos.

Pianos, plural. We had three: my great-grandmother’s baby grand in our living room, a hundred years old with cracked finish from years sitting in front of a sunny window in her house; a honey-colored upright that had the novel feature of a lever on the underside of the keyboard that would dampen the keys so they sounded soft, muffled, and felty; and a dark wood, scratched up, tinny sounding piano we had picked up so Mom could play alongside her students when she taught lessons. I could the play most roughly with the last piano since it was, in car terms, “a clunker.” Growing up, we had one television, and it was in a cabinet in the basement family room, but there was a piano in ever common room of the house except for the kitchen. The baby grand in the living room was a ready-made cave underneath, perfect for wild horses and fleeing princesses, and a natural cliff for my brother’s matchbox cars and GI Joes on top. When the Easter Bunny came, he hid eggs in cavities underneath the piano peddles and in the crevices in the frame underneath. When I went to Washington D.C. and later to Germany, and I saw gigantic, sculpted marble columns, they reminded me of the scalloped legs of the grand piano that I had spent so much time staring up at when I was small

Adding to its magic, our porcelain Christmas village is set up every year on top of the piano.

As I got older, and spent more time learning to play the keys of the piano than imagining it as a gigantic rock formation found my exploring dolls, I found a whole new level of enjoyment and friendship with the piano. I listened to what it had to say, and, around the same time, I started listening to my dad. My dad understands pianos on a level that I never will. I would be playing around on the keys, and Dad would come up and tell me some fascinating thing about how a piano worked, what it was made from, its history, or how a certain composer or company innovated its design or construction. You see, my dad is a piano doctor.

At least that’s how it seemed to me. When a key would stick, when one of the pianos stopped sounding right, or when my mom would start dropping hints, my dad would go down into the basement storage room and emerge with a battered tackle box that was 1970s yellow. When he set it on the ground next to the ailing piano, he would open it from the top and both sides would fold out and the shelves rose out of the inside into terraces. Inside were the tools of a piano tuner’s trade, and they all looked mysterious to me. They were smaller than the tools he used for other projects around the house, and they had the look of age. When the box was open and ready, Dad opened and readied the piano, revealing the inside, a maze of hammers, strings, levers, and bolts that looked both complicated and graceful, mechanical and artistic. Grease, dust, and dull metal pegs resided in close proximity to red plush and polished wood. The stiff strings of the captured harp were carefully adjusted in a process that took hours of intense, watchmaker-like concentration and precision. Each key needs to be listened to carefully, by itself and with its fellows. After each individual key has received its attention, dad would move on to chords, making final adjustments, then playing again, until he broke into a few measures of a song, satisfied that the piano was once again as it should be. Then he’d close the piano, pack up the tools, and return the yellow box to the basement for another six months or a year.

To this day, when we go to visit family, like we did over Christmas, Dad will pack his piano tools. Getting your piano tuned isn’t cheap, and Dad works for free for his children (or sometimes for pie). When we went to my oldest brother’s house for Christmas (home of his oldest son, who tends to play loud, and several children who have inherited the tendency), Dad spent an evening giving the piano its check-up. Not wanting to lose the opportunity, I grabbed my camera and took some pictures, which Dad probably didn’t think I’d post on the internet. Oops.

Things That Make Me Happy

2011-12-20T19:03:00.001-07:00

There are many things that make me happy, some of which I caught on camera the last few days. Here's a sample of what I got on film. It's not an exhaustive list of the good times I've had with friend and family the past few days, but I wanted to share just a few of the joys of the season for me this year. Enjoy!

My hair is getting longer, and, despite not having it cut since last April or May and four months of dreads, it still looks pretty good. It's been years since I had hair this long or my natural color. I like both.

Out both of my bedroom windows are huge pine trees. They may me incredibly happy.

I pretend I'm sleeping in a tree house sometimes.

The vanity in my apartment is big, well-lit, plentifully supplied with mirrors, and makes me very, very happy. It is especially nice because it has room for all my jewelry boxes. The jewelry rack was a Christmas present and a very necessary one.

Yesterday morning there was a cat climbing up the tree outside my window. It was fascinating and adorable.

My students wrote letters to Santa again this year. We give them to the Macy's Believe campaign, which donates $1 to the Make a Wish Foundation for every letter to Santa they get. My students last year knocked me down with an incredible 1746 letters. This year, my students recruited family, friends, their other teachers, and complete strangers to come up with a whopping 3761 letters. This is the finished stack.

Coming home for the holidays always makes me happy. As soon as I stepped out of the car tonight, I was hit with the crisp, cold Idaho air, a mix of pine smoke from the family's fireplace, and the smell of cold fall leaves. Add in an evening singing Christmas songs with my Dad at the assisted living center, a beautiful sunset over the fields and trees, and coming home to Christmas lights, and it's been a wonderful evening.

Sitting on the couch, uploading pictures to my computer, watching our overly affectionate dog try and distract my mom from reading a magazine while both of them compete for the spot in front of the fireplace is another one of those "essence" of home moments.

Weekend Glory

2011-12-11T07:50:00.000-07:00

It's not that I don't enjoy my job and my day-to-day life, because I do, but there is something truly glorious about a weekend. Two whole days off in a row. I can have a friend come over and not worry about what time they leave so I can go to bed so I can get up early. I can see the sunrise; I can see hours of wonderful sunlight. I can cook large amounts of food for the week and have time to clean up the mess. I can go climb at the gym during hours when they're aren't many other people. I can actually make a real breakfast.

Or, like this morning, I can wake up early (6 a.m., I went to bed at 8:30 because I have a cold), and lay warm in my bed for a while. Then, when I'm tired of that, I open the shutters in my room and snuggle back into bed. Outside each of my bedroom windows is a gigantic pine tree, and with the shutters open, I can almost pretend that I'm sleeping in a tree house. After a while I get up, make myself a cup of hot chocolate, turn on the Christmas tree lights and sit in the corner of the couch. From this position I can see the moon setting when I look over my left shoulder, the Christmas tree glowing merrily on my right, and a little bit of sunrise over the mountains dead ahead.

The view from my balcony.

In a while, I'll make some oatmeal, grade some papers, clean the apartment, and turn some music. Later I'll go climb with friends, then go to the Streetlight Manifesto show tonight. But for now, I'm just enjoying the silence of a sunrise, bathed in the glow of my Christmas tree.

I love weekends.

What is Santa Like?

2011-12-09T14:23:00.000-07:00

Children all over the world stay up late on Christmas Eve, trying to catch a glimpse of the elusive Santa. They write letters to him, they sing songs about him, they put out cookies and milk to bait him closer, and in one TV show (Doctor Who) a little girl even prays to him.

Every year, Macy's has a Letter to Santa campaign, and for every letter they collect they donate $1 to the Make a Wish Foundation. Therefore, every year my students and I band together to write hundreds of letters. They write them by the dozens themselves, they recruit little brothers and sisters to write letters, they take them to family Christmas parties, Mutual activities, and even have former teachers have their classes write letters. Last year my students wrote 1746 letters, donating $1,746 to charity. This year my students are determined to beat the record.

So, in order to have them practice their argument-writing skills and get more letters to Santa, I had them write to Santa again today, presenting arguments about why they should receive presents. They needed to include at least one emotional and one ethical appeal. As they were working, one student raised his hand for help. As i was giving him an example argument he could use to convince Santa, he listened carefully. When I was done, he said in all seriousness, "That doesn't sound much like Santa...Santa sounds more like...Al Gore."

Then he looked at me like I'd gone crazy while I walked away shaking my head and cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Comparison

2011-12-06T14:17:00.000-07:00

In the summer of 2008, I finished my last, regular classes for my degree. Although I did have a class and a project to complete for my internship and first year of teaching, it didn't have a textbook, it met once every other week, and we mostly talked about how teaching was going. When I turned in my final project in December of my first year of teaching, I slipped my 80 page packet of pain, tears, and teaching into my professor's box with feelings of elation and unreality. I was done. I wrote several blogs about the idea. The idea that I was no longer a student, having been one since I entered preschool at the age of four was liberating and paralyzing.

Months, years, school days, holidays, and summer vacations passed. I found out that many of the teachers around me were headed to classes in the evenings and during summers, accruing credits toward extra endorsements and advanced degrees. Frankly, I thought they were nuts. No way was I going to try and be a teacher--with lessons to prepare, exhausting days to teach, and endless papers to grade--and add into that the stress of assignments of my own to read, prepare, and submit. I couldn't fathom having to grade end of the term projects and also make time to take a final for my own education. So for years, every time someone came to a faculty meeting to recruit for an online university, or passed out fliers for classes offered through the district, I would quietly snort in derision. Besides, my life was never stable enough. Where I would be teaching next year, or if I would be teaching the next year, always seemed up in the air.

Then, things changed. I got to a school where I'm not the lowest teacher on the totem pole, a place I can anticipate staying at for a few years, even if I change subjects (I've yet to teach the same class line up two years in a row.). Then, I committed to teaching for at least four or five more years, at my current school, unless something unexpected and drastic happens in my life (a change in marital status, a quarter-life crisis, etc.). Therefore, I've been going back to school. I take a once a week class for my G/T Endorsement, and I take a once a month teaching American history class, and I'm partway through a independent study history course on ancient world history.

After three or more years of not being a student, being back in class is both a familiar and a strange feeling. My reactions to being back in the seat instead of up in front have been mixed. I have noticed that

--I'm a worse student than I used to be. After getting used to the hectic pace of teaching, I have a hard time sitting still and devoting all my attention to one slow- or medium-paced thing at a time. I tend to make sarcastic comments to the other people at my table and do three things at once while listening (like blogging). I notice all the other teachers are just as bad.

--Being a student is not as exciting as teaching. As a teacher, you are continually in the spotlight, always the center of attention, and the constant star of the show. As a student, you are at the mercy of others' interests, schedules, and are nearly anonymous. As a teacher, things are constantly changing. The students change every few hours, the circumstances change, when I'm bored, I mix up the lesson and change how I teach. I am continually doing three things at once, and usually I'm mentally scanning ahead to the next five things I need to do. However, as a student, I sit. I take notes. I listen. I accept what's handed to me. It get's boring after about six hours.

--Being a student is a lot easier and more relaxing than being a teacher. Today I got to put my feet up on a chair in front of me, surf the internet while taking notes, and learn fascinating things about the constitution taught to me by skilled teachers. I got to do this while wearing jeans and a hoodie. Nobody asked me to solve their problems ranging from not having a pencil, having had a Red Bull for lunch and now their hyper, to the fact that their parents are divorced and they spent the weekend at their dad's and they left their bookbag there and so they don't have their project and won't be able to bring it to me for a week and a half. For once, I get to sit back, open up my mind, and take in information in a relaxed manner, instead of being a continuously playing one-man-band, eight hours a day, five days a week, with papers to grade and lessons to prepare in between. I remember when my biggest problems were getting my three papers in at the right time and completing cleaning checks on time. That was hard. But it was individual; it was my problem and my own neck on the line. As a teacher, I have over two hundred kids waiting to get their papers back, their parents are waiting to see their students' grades, administrators waiting for my compiled and analyzed data, and students waiting daily to be entertained and educated. Then there is of course the bills waiting to paid, nutritious food waiting to be prepared and eaten, a dirty apartment to be cleaned, friends to be kept in contact with, and perhaps exercise and recreation or relaxation to keep myself sane.

Becoming a part-time student in addition to my teaching has made me busier: classes and homework take time. However, except for giving me less time to complete everything else I need to do, it has not made me any more stressed. Compared to everything else I do, my work as a student is quite relaxing, though time consuming. It does make me almost wish for those good old days of student hood. Where you finished all of your assignments every four months and tossed a finished class neatly into the past. Now I'm never done with everything until summer vacation, and summer vacation is more than a month shorter than it was when I was in college. No one hands me a two-page syllabus that contains everything I'll need to do to make them happy clearly defined. My responsibilities are nebulous, often self-defined, and ongoing.

Honestly, I love teaching, and every year it seems to be easier for me, and every year I feel like I get better at it and do better by my students.

Honestly--and it may be the fault of the winter blues, the dating game, or the school year being in the murky middle of its run--I'm feeling a little burnt out.

Dark Days

2011-11-29T12:34:00.000-07:00

It's truly stunning how much of the day is dark this time of year. I never used to notice. Even if the sky didn't get light until seven thirty or eight, my first classes weren't until eight at the earliest. Then, between classes, I'd get to walk outside, probably resenting the cold air. If I had an extra hour, I would go study somewhere with window where I could watch the grey sky or the snow. Perhaps I would lament the dreary weather, but I would always know what the weather was.

Now, I am walled away much more securely from the outside world. This morning I got to school just as the eastern sky was lightening and the mountains were outlined with the pale colors that mark the early stage of a winter sunrise. I walked through the big glass doors and through the foyer drenched with morning light from the giant skylights, took a right, went up the stairs, took a left, a right, a left, and then another left to my classroom. All those stairs and turns serve to make sure that not one bit of daylight from those glass doors or skylights will ever reach my eyes unless I'm headed to the copy room. My students come in saying things like, "It's raining!" or "Miss E! Did you see the snow?" And all I can do is be jealous. Their feet trail wet leaves from an outside world I sometimes forget exists outside the contained box of my classroom. The temperature in my room has little connection to the larger world. If my room is cold or if it's warm have very little to do with if it's cold or hot outside. On cold days it's slightly warmer in my room because they turn off air conditioning and stop the fans pumping in outside air.

When school gets out, I don't leave before 3:30 or 4:00 (contract time). By then, the day's strongest rays are gone, and I only have a few precious hours of any daylight whatsoever. This makes my half an hour drive home one of my favorite part of the day. There I am, driving along and surrounded by windows which let me see outside in nearly all directions! It's fantastic. Then, when I get home, there's only an hour or so left before the long stretch of evening.

Now I'm not trying to complain, I do enough of that already. I do play outside when I can, and when I get home from school I make sure the shutters of my apartment are wide open to let in the fading light. When I'm feeling particularly the darkness of the world around me, I have one of those natural light lamps my mother got for me last year. It doesn't really get me down, this dimness, I just don't know how to express how very dark it is these days. The idea that it will continue to get darker, that in a few days the eastern sky will not even be visible when I get to school and head indoors and that there will be even less light when I emerge, seems dizzying. On weekends, when I'm in my apartment, or out and around in the wide world during daylight hours I normally spend in my classroom, I'm always surprised by how very bright it is outside. I never see sunlight that bright except on those precious weekend days.

Thank heaven there's only a few more weeks of school. The weeks before and just after the solstice, the darkest and dimmest of the year, are part of my Christmas break. That means I'll get to see sunlight those days, and by the time I get back to school, it will be no worse than it will be the next week or so. After that, the world will gradually lighten for me, growing brighter and brighter through the long months of winter and spring, until I arrive at school to a glorious full sunrise and leave in the merry afternoon light. Finally, when summer vacation comes, I will surrender completely to my newly found sun worship, soaking in the double freedom of no school and nearly endless day.

So bring on the next few weeks of increased darkness. I will grit my teeth, stare at the merry lights on my Christmas tree, and say to the blackness just outside my windows, "All hail The Sun!"

UT Senator Osmond Listens in Class

2011-11-21T15:23:00.000-07:00

Senator Osmond recently proposed a bill that would introduce sweeping changes in the way teachers in Utah can be terminated and in the security of their teaching contracts. Then, he set up a series of meetings with educators to hear what they had to say. This is his blog post on what he learned from the experience.

I haven't been teaching long--I'm in my 4th year, but I have already encountered many of these issues. Not only that, but I've kept my ears open. I've worked at two different schools in the same district since I started teaching, and the discussions I've heard around the lunch table and during collaboration about legislation and legislators in our state have nearly always been negative. I watched the drama unfold last year as a social studies teacher at my school got attacked for being "socialist," first by a parent and then by a Utah legislator, for teaching the pros and cons of different economic systems without bias. My mom's been a teacher (in Idaho) since I was five, and I've spent the last twenty-one years listening to what she said about the state and fate of public education.

In my personal, inexperienced opinion, I think Osmond expresses the situation well. The problems he outlines are things I've either seen in my own classroom, felt in my own experience, or heard substantial amounts of anecdotal evidence of around the lunch or collaboration table. I don't know much about Senator Osmond's politics; I hadn't heard much about him prior to this issue, but I do applaud his willingness to listen to the rank and file in public education and then honestly describe what they said.

It's worth a read. It's so worth reading I'll link to it twice.

Thoughts on a Wednesday

2011-11-16T14:57:00.000-07:00

Tonight I will take the final for my evening class, and I will hopefully be two credits down the road to a Gifted and Talented endorsement. Only 14 more to go. The next 2 credit class starts in two weeks. By the end of this school year I should have six post-bachelor's credit to my name.

I gave my first negative teacher evaluation the other day. As nice as my teacher is, and as much as I learned in the class, it had absolutely nothing to do with her. It was all from the chapters in the textbook. It still killed me to give such a nice lady such a bad evaluation. Teaching has hardened me in a lot of ways; I can now give a sweet kid and F and not feel more than a twinge, but grading teachers is still hard for me.

The week before last I got really, really sick. A nasty infection hit on that Wednesday, and I took my first sick leave from work and skipped class to go see a doctor (The first time I'd been to a non-dentist type doctor since high school). I was so sick that I fell asleep in the parking lot of the Smith's where I went to fill my prescription. I slept slumped in the front seat of my car in my work clothes for an hour before I managed to stagger in to the store to get my medicine. Luckily, antibiotics work fast. Within 24 hours of beginning my prescription, I felt much better. Which was good, because within 48 hours it became clear I had Strep throat, too. Back to the doctor, back the pharmacy for another set of antibiotics. Luckily, antibiotics work fast. Within 24 hours of beginning my prescription, I felt much better. Which was good, because I have to teach school and go to class and grade papers and clean my apartment and get back to rock climbing.

I took my last antibiotic yesterday morning, thank heaven. It's been years since I took an antibiotic, and the double round definitely proved to me that they're not generally a healthy thing. Like most medicine, it's skillfully applied poison. My digestive system is pretty messed up now, and I even got the dry skin and rash I'd heard of but never experienced myself with antibiotic use. Here's hoping that a lot of water, yogurt, and sleep rebuilds the bacteria farms in my gut.

I'm getting back to climbing. I haven't been able to put together a regular climbing schedule since July, and between teaching school, taking classes, moving, getting sick multiple times, etc., I hadn't made it climbing more than four times since school started. I've lost a lot of ground and muscle (and gained some weight). But I still love this sport, and even though I'm not as good as I was, I know how to get there again, and I know it shouldn't take me long if I make it a priority.

While cutting snowflakes for my Christmas tree last night I thought, "Dreams are like paper snowflakes. You craft them late at night in solitude, then tuck them between the pages of some book to press for some future time. They're beautiful, painstaking, and very, very fragile."

I was listening to a This American Life episode this morning, and heard this, "Her steps were brisk and determined, like a school teacher's." I don't know how many school teachers' walks you have studied, but this is almost universally true the teachers I know. We whisk down halls, and when we're in a hurry we barge or barrel down them, heaven help whoever or whatever gets in our way. I have to periodically remind myself that I'm not in hurry half of the time, I can take the time to walk like a normal person. I once barreled down the aisle between desks in my classroom so fast that when I got caught on the sharp edge of a broken desk it cut me through my pants. This intense, brisk, determined attitude spills over to nearly everything I do. I type briskly and determinedly, I grade papers briskly and determinedly, I give instructions that way, I read that way sometimes, I do my make-up that way, I blow dry my hair as quickly as I can. A friend of mine recently informed me that I chew like someone is timing me--all the time. And I clench my jaw while I sleep. That's right, I even sleep with determination.

I Dream of Shower Curtains and Doctor Brain

2011-11-14T11:21:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a lot of strange dreams. I dreamed that a whole bunch of girlfriends and I were discussing a movie, and a friend I found the perfect Christmas present for a friend I've been stumped about for ages. I had found all the old nostalgic computer games we used to play in junior high available for the game systems she and her husband have. The games were only $5 each. It was going to be glorious. The look on her face when she got a copy of the Lost Island of Doctor Brain and Quest for Glory would be fantastic. The absolutely perfect present, so much so that when I woke it took until I got to school this morning to realize that it wasn't real. But after that dream is when the real weird dream started.

I was getting married, and I was trying to decide what to wear. Back in the bedroom that was mine all growing up, I tried on several skirts and shirts that I had brought with me from my apartment for the occasion, only to realize I'd forgotten the shoes to match. Getting desperate (We needed to leave for the wedding soon!), I ran down the hall and asked Mom if I could wear her wedding dress. It's not my dream design, but I liked the idea of wearing my mother's dress down the isle--and I would be walking down the isle (It was going to be a Catholic wedding at this point in the dream, although later in the dream it was a church gym wedding, uck.) Then we could grab some flowers from the front garden and put them in my hair, just like Mom did for her wedding! Perfect. Problem resolved, I quickly put on Mom's wedding dress, which was conveniently hanging in her closet. Then I hurried off to the wedding, which we were apparently quite late for, so late we never had time to put on jewelry, carry a bouquet, put the flowers in my hair, or even have Dad snap a few pictures since we hadn't hired a photographer. At least my hair looked fantastic: it was much longer than the shoulder-length layers I have now, and it was elaborately curled and styled in a trailing up-do.

It was raining hard outside the church, and I had to dash inside. The ceremony itself is pretty hazy. Apparently I married some guy I knew in high school. That's pretty much all that can be said about him. He wasn't a guy I had a crush on, or one I was particularly good friends with, we did go on a date, once, but mostly he was just there. After the ceremony I changed out of the dress and sat on the porch back at home with my mom. I slowly began to realize that as far as "my dream wedding" went, it was a bit of a disappointment. No pictures, no perfect dress, rain dampened hair without the flowers that would have made my mother's dress the perfect choice, and a plain ceremony in a nearly undecorated gym, to a man whose last name I barely remembered. In fact, when I tried to say my new name in the dream, I had to think a minute, and now I realize I got it wrong. In the dream I realized that I would no longer be "Miss E." to my students, and that "Mrs. Logan" sounded awfully grown-up and boring (And it's the wrong name!). This is when I began to get the idea there was something strange about my wedding. Why hadn't it been planned properly? Why was it so rushed? Why did I have to think so hard to remember my husband's last name? But I was already married, and everyone around me acted as if it was completely normal, so I tried not to question too much.

However, my confusion grew when, we sat on the porch, Amber came walking up the driveway. To be clear, I have never met Amber. She just married one of my closest guy friends from high school a week or so ago, and I'm headed to their wedding reception on Friday. So to see her strolling up the driveway on my wedding day was a surprise. Apparently she had been talking to Tommie (a friend of my brother's wife's mother's), and had somehow learned from her that I had made a lot of big life decisions lately. She had come to discuss them with me and see if I was 100% sure about all of them. She didn't even know I had gotten married. (This confused me further. As I apologized for not telling her and her husband, one of my closest friends, about my wedding, I wondered, Why hadn't I told them? Why were none of my friends at the wedding? No Jeni, no Di, no Allie, no sisters or brothers or college roommates. In fact, where was my husband right now? The wedding was over, why was I sitting on the front porch of my parents house in a t-shirt talking to my mom and my friend's wife whom I'd never met?)

I continued to try and explain myself and my wedding to her, because she was clearly confused by my sudden marriage, and my brain began to reel. It should be noted that we were no longer talking on the porch at this point. We were in the backyard, and I was wearing a backpack with glider wings attached and was trying to catch air on the Idaho breeze while explaining my terribly confusing wedding, as well as my life decisions, to Amber. The more I tried to explain to her, the more confused I got, and not even the prospect of flying with my glider wings could distract me. It occurred to me that, now that I was married, I was going to have to stop seeing the boy I'd been sort of dating. Hmmm, I thought, that was poor planning on my part. I should have thought of that. The dream finally ended with me pausing in my muddled explanation to finally wonder, "Why in hell did I marry that boy?" and realizing that I had absolutely no idea and that I had probably just messed up the rest of my life.

If I had to guess at the origins and meaning of this dream, I would trace it to a few things: First, two boys I once had epic, long-term crushes on got married in the last two weeks. Not only that, but people have been talking to me about marriage an awful lot in the last week. There were a few people over the week, many of whom I did not expect to bring up marriage, of all conversation topics. Then I spent Saturday catching up with a girl friend who was having boy trouble, and she spent a lot of time on the subject. Then the next three people I talked to also brought it up. Sunday morning my climbing partner brought it up, my sister and I talked about it, I'm headed to one of my friend's receptions this week, and the other boy actually called me this week and we talked about his wedding for close to an hour. When I went to sleep last night, my brain must have had some things to work through on the subject.

If I were to hazard an interpretation, I would say that my brain was working through the fact that I'm not married, despite wanting to be married since the age of 12. Then I think my brain and emotions were working through all of that to the conclusion, which I often conclude and reconclude, that it's o.k. Marriage wouldn't necessarily be the best thing right now, and if I could tear off and marry a decent boy tomorrow for the sake of being married, I'd almost certainly regret it.

The next dream involved that boy I've sort of been dating knocking on the door of my old apartment, selling shower curtains.

'Tis the Season

2011-11-13T07:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to Walmart to grab potting soil. After half an hour in the store, I exited into November air that was beginning to swirl with snow. But that's ok, because I was pushing a huge cart on which sat the box for an enormous Christmas tree I'd talked myself into buying. Someday I will only use real trees, I am a real tree snob and look down on fake trees as paltry representations of Christmas. However, real trees are expensive every year, and this fake tree is only expensive one. Real trees require stands and hours spent stringing lights and watering and vacuuming. In my one bedroom, I-live-alone apartment, a fake tree makes much more sense. I can set it up in a matter of minutes, its pre-strung lights blazing merrily. When the season's over I can pack it up just as quickly into a box in the closet, where it will patiently wait another year. I can spend my time making homemade decorations instead. Besides, after many college years of no tree or Christmas decorations whatsoever, even a fake tree makes the apartment feel like it's swimming in Christmas.

In the meantime, bringing it home has put me into extreme holiday mode. Even the tree is currently in the closet, waiting the right snowy afternoon and maybe some company to set up and decorate, I'm whistling Christmas tunes, and my mind is on the holidays. For example, I happen to have nine large, tart apples on my table, and on a rainy or perhaps snowy Sunday morning I'm asking myself, apple pie or apple crisp?

Fall Break Mystery Adventure

2011-10-27T11:17:00.000-06:00

Way back mid September, two of my friends took a mid-week backpacking trip. I hiked in one afternoon after school to say hi and see the scenery. As we sat by their fire, we started scheming a trip when all three of us could go--which meant we needed to wait for my next long break from school, more than a month away. Knowing our opportunity for adventure would be in mid October, we tentatively planned to head south to warmer mountains.

After that, there was very little about this trip that I planned. I am usually a planner-type-person, I pack seven kinds of jackets and decide a week in advance what day I will pack. This trip got out of my hands, and I found myself in the uncomfortable position of being a week away from leaving and not knowing which day we were starting our trip, what day we were coming back, who was coming, or even where we were going. Trying not to imply that I didn't trust their planning and endeavoring not to be annoying, I would casually ask my friends, as if it didn't really matter to me at all, when we were leaving and where we would going. Every time I asked I got a different answer. Once they told me that one other friend was coming, then two, then four, maybe more. We were going to Zion, maybe the Grand Canyon, maybe some backwoods places not really close to anything I'd heard of. We were all driving together, then my two close friends were going to stay a few extra days, then they were going to stay for two weeks, then they were going to leave two days early, too.

When Monday came, I was becoming increasingly apprehensive. This trip was sounding awfully vague, which in my experience often meant badly prepared for and not as fun as it could be if it had actually been plan. Then, all of the plans changed again that day. My friends decided not to stay in the woods for weeks, so suddenly we could drive together again. Brian had our campsites, mileage, and water needs planned from personal experience gained while spending two entire months camping in the area he wanted to take us to. Then, all of the other people dropped out, and it ended up being just the three of us, just like we had originally planned. I must admit, I seriously underestimated the planning habits of my camping companions. We stayed up late getting things ready Tuesday night (about 2 a.m.), and when I headed to school Wednesday morning, I was not only exhausted but worried. Things were a mess. Our stuff was piled in random stacks and bags and grocery sacks and paper bags. Dishes were set out on random countertops between two different apartments, things still needed to be purchased, and I was feeling panicked. How was all that going to be resolved when I was away teaching all day? The guys were supposed to pick me up from school that day and we'd take off from there. I would have no time for last minute packing and reorganizing. I would just have to trust them to work all morning to magically organize and plan and pack everything. I was skeptical, I was doubtful, I was downright unhappy as I put the finishing touches on my sub plans for Monday and entered grades.

I have to hand it to them: the boys pulled through. They picked me up from school with a car packed full of meticulously organized bags of food and supplies, extra things packed for just in case, and all of it arranged with Tetris-esque precision in the car. We drove off into the sunset, and I relaxed and just let the guys handle the trip. Seriously, they handled everything. When we pulled up to a campsite in southern Utah that night at midnight, they had a fire built and dinner cooking without any help from me. I didn't even know where things were packed. So I set up the tent and got the bags ready, and just kicked back. That first night we stayed up late, really really late. We looked at the stars, we built a big fire, we ate cheesy pasta, we sang songs, we watched the moon rise. We saw dawn start to lighten the eastern sky.

This is only one of the about two dozen fire pictures I took.

Did I mention it was 5 a.m.?
Did I mention we'd stayed up until 2 a.m. the night before packing?

Then we finally went to bed. Since I get up at 5:30 everyday, I woke up long before Brian and Will, who both work evenings at a restaurant and hotel. So I explored around our camp. We were camping in a juniper forest, which opened up into the strangest woods I'd ever seen only a hundred yards from our camp. It was a deadwood forest. A fire had killed, but not burnt the trees years before. It was almost spooky, despite the cheerful daylight.

What my waking up before everyone else looks like.

When the boys got up and we finally ate breakfast/lunch, we started gathering wood, an easy task with the deadwood forest so close. We were headed into the real desert after this campsite, and there would be no gathering wood for the rest of the trip. So we compiled an impressive stock of the some of the best firewood I've ever seen and the guys lashed it to the top of the car.

"I'm gonna wrangle this wood and take it the market."

The ability to break down trees sort of went to his head.

Then we drove the rest of the day. We camped that night in northern Arizona, far away from cell phone service and paved roads. The next morning (Friday), we drove to the trailhead and hiked Mount Trumbull. The trail wound through rocks and juniper into a forest of beautiful pine, tall, straight, and draped in perpetual late afternoon light. The ground was carpeted with long needles, ranging in color from the orange of freshly fallen needles, to the gray-white of sun-bleached older layers. On top of the needles were plentiful dark pine cones, making a beautiful contrast to the pale needle ground cover.

We reached the top, ate lots of trail mix (this trip involved the consumption of gallons worth of trail mix), and enjoyed the view and the sunshine. Then, as we descended back into the forest, we stopped to play baseball.

Up to bat.

The pitcher.

After our hike we drove to a spot to see some rock art and got a bonus of a beautiful sunset on the hike out.

That night we drove to Tuweep/Toroweap, which is described like this,

If you’re a serious solitude seeker who doesn’t mind a little extra effort to achieve some peace and quite, then boy, do I have a spot for you! It is called Tuweep, and it lies on the north rim of the Grand Canyon on land known as the “Arizona Strip.” It is one of the most remote places in the United States, with one of the most spectacular views in the world. It takes an extra dose of adventurous spirit and the ability to put up with everything “primitive and rustic” to enjoy this adventure, but if you can make the effort the reward will be well worth the trip.

For most adventurers, Tuweep can only be accessed by one of three bone jarring, tooth rattling dirt roads, the shortest of which is 60 miles, and the longest a wearying 90 miles of dusty, rutted, sometimes impassable dirt. For this reason, Tuweep experiences far fewer visitors per year than any other site on the canyon.

(http://www.swaviator.com/html/issueMA02/Tuweep3402.html).

We didn't see the view that night, though Brian assured us it would spectacular when we woke up. By the time we got to Tuweep, it was well past dark, and the only part of the description we could testify to was the "primitive" road. Although the campground had few amenities (no running water, garbage, check-in, cell-phone service, etc.), it did have a very clean and comparatively sweet-smelling pit toilet. After two days of camping on BLM land, it seemed like like an incredible luxury. Although we got there after dark, Will had been planning our dinner since Tuesday, when he stayed up late spicing steaks and packing them into individual bags to let them soak up the spices for days. He had gathered special wood on Thursday to create better coals to cook over, and when we finally arrived at Tuweep on Friday night, he got down to business. While we waited for the coals to be perfect, Brian and Will got to work on the hors d'oeuvres: Triscuits, summer sausage, and cheese roasted over the fire with a double sided grill Will and Brian jerry-rigged with twisty ties. What did I do to help? I read out loud to them, told them stories from Norse mythology, and pitched the tent. I felt thoroughly spoiled on this trip. Will even let me have the first steak. It was fantastic.

The master chef crafts the perfect coals.

Appetizers

A serious stake over serious coals.

In the morning, we woke up to this:

We packed up everything we needed for breakfast and hiked an easy fifteen minutes to the rim itself: a 3000 foot drop down to the Colorado River. It was completely breathtaking. I'd never seen the Grand Canyon before, but I had high expectations. However, no expectation can really prepare you for the reality, complexity, enormity, and beauty of that canyon. After goofing around taking pictures on the edge for a while, we cooked our oatmeal, Then we spent hours just laying in the sun on a cliff edge, alternating staring out at the canyon and up at the impossibly blue, completely cloudless sky.

Then Brian taught us to make walking sticks from a Yucca cactus, which led to hours of crafting, and then days of horseplay and sword fighting. After hanging out at camp for a while, we packed up our pasta supplies and two different kinds of tea and headed back out to the rim to watch the starts come out over the canyon. The stars were some of the most awesome (in the old-fashioned booming voice and quick intake of breath kind of way) I have seen in my life. That led to more hours of laying on rocks watching the sky.

The next day, Sunday morning, we clambered around on the rocks at our campsite, and then moved on. We drove several more hours on the "bone-rattling" roads to Whitmore Point, where even Brian had never been.

A trace of civilization.

One of the side roads we stopped by for a bathroom break.

It ended up being one of the coolest places we went on our trip. At some point in the last few million years, a lava flow cut over and through the sandstone of the canyon and actually dammed the Colorado River. The dam lasted 20,000 years before breaking. This makes Whitmore point a confusing and delightful mix of lava rock both porous and smooth, river and lake rocks, and the characteristic sedimentary rock of the canyon. While exploring a side ravine we nick-named the Dragon's Nest, we saw a tarantula. It was blocking the only easy way out of the ravine, and I gathered up my courage and sprinted past it into a patch of cactus. Go figure.

Monday morning, in our few remaining hours before we needed to start the long drive back, we hiked down to the Colorado River. From Whitmore Point, the hike is fairly easy and safe, and takes an hour at most. We jumped into the cold water of the river and washed off days of dust. I'm not sure how effective that was, even with the biodegradable soap I had brought that we gleefully scrubbed off with. The water was nearly opaque. But it still felt fantastic to clear out five days of grease from my hair and layers of sunscreen from my skin.

While we dried off on the river bank in the warm Arizona sun, a flotilla of rafters drifted by. Two men in a duckie came up to chat, and we found out they were on DAY 16 of their float trip. They must have been on the river a long time, because they talked like they were from a renaissance fair, and seemed so happy to see us that they began throwing us Canadian Beer. In the end, we ended up with a free six pack worth of non-Utah beer (This is significant because beer is both more expensive and watered down in Utah). Too bad beer tastes gross.

We finally got back to the car and began to drive home. We arrived at St. George and our first paved road, water fill-up, gas station, and cell-phone service in four days. We got there with about ten minutes of gas left in the car and two gallons of water. I clutched my cell phone for half an hour before we got there, waiting to call my mom. Because I hadn't known where we were going, I couldn't prepare her for me being out of contact on a mystery camp trip with boys she'd never met. I was worried there'd be helicopters searching for us. The guys watched the gas gauge anxiously, I watched my phone.

We drove and drove and drove. The guys eventually fell asleep, and I took over driving for the first time all trip. I listened to This American Life, I sang Broadway songs, nonsense songs, jazz, hymns, anything I could think of. We got back to my school, and I climbed into my cold car, which had been sitting in the school parking lot for six days. Then I drove the weary half hour back to my apartment, and dragged my dusty pack up to my apartment at about 2 a.m. Three hours later I staggered up off my bed and out the door to teach. I hit the ground running this week. I've got 200 projects and papers to grade by Friday, I've got class and homework, and I've got a trip home planned this weekend.

Despite the stress it's placed on this week, and despite my apprehensions going into it, this mystery adventure turned out to be one of my favorite trips I've ever taken.

Restoring My Honor

2011-10-13T15:24:00.001-06:00

Every year during my high school days, my high school would host a novice debate tournament. From my sophomore year on, I attended it as a judge, but my own novice year I was a competitor. As usual, my mom handed me a couple of dollars to buy food at the tournament, since I'd be there for lunch and probably dinner. This time, however, I lost the money. When lunch came I couldn't find those precious dollars anywhere, and I was hungry. Science had proven that if you don't eat enough your brain slows down and your concentration suffers--consequences I couldn't afford at a debate tournament. Clearly, this was an emergency. Then it occurred to me that this tournament was at my own school, and that my very own locker was just around the corner, in that corner was a little colored cardboard box, and in that box was some money.

Enter moral dilemma: The money wasn't really mine. I was a member of Key Club, and we had been "trick or treating for UNICEF." The money in that little cardboard box was the donations I had collected from my friends and peers. The box was printed with facts about how it only took something like four cents to buy enough vitamin A to prevent a child from going blind. But I was hungry! If I didn't eat, I was sure I was going to lose my debate rounds, and for such a silly unforgivable reason as losing a few dollars! I couldn't let that happen! So I sneaked down to my locker, opened the little box, and stole $3.14 from charity. I'd bring money to replace what I was taking on Monday, I told myself.

Monday morning, I forgot. It's ok, I told myself, The fundraiser goes until Halloween. I technically have two weeks to bring the money.

I put it off, I forgot, I didn't have exact change, I forgot. Halloween came and went.

The next year, I wasn't part of the Key Club UNICEF drive, but I saw my friends wandering around with the same, bright orange boxes asking for donations to save children. A voice in the back of my head reminded me that I owed $3.14 to a good cause, and I resolved to bring the money to donate to the drive. I forgot, I put it off, I didn't have exact change, I forgot.

The same thing happened my junior year, and again my senior year. I graduated from high school having never paid my debt. No big deal, right? I just stole money I had collected from people in the name of charity and let kids go blind.

Every once in a while, at college, I'd see tables for UNICEF set up around campus and immediately would be struck by an attack of conscience. But I also never carried cash, and was just as forgetful as ever.

This morning, eleven years to the month of taking that money from my locker, I cleansed my honor. I went to the UNICEF website and made a donation that reflected the original debt plus a whole lot of guilty-conscience money. The satisfaction I feel is a bit like the feeling of actually getting ALL of the ring around the sink drain cleaned and scrubbed off, and the sink looks back at you pearly white like it hasn't been in years.

I challenge people to duels now, 'cause I've got honor again! My unstained honor will not be smirched again!

Crap. I owe that one kid from high school $25. Do you think he has a website and except credit cards?

The Great and Dreadless Day

2011-10-05T18:47:00.000-06:00

I did it. I took the dreads out. I took them out all by myself. It was a sort of penance. After so much build-up to getting them, mooching off of so many friends to get and maintain them, after telling everyone who would listen about my dreads, I felt like taking them out all alone, with my own two hands and draining only my own time, was almost a sort of penance for my arrogance and selfishness. And it was pretty dang effective penance. I don't have internet in my apartment yet, so I did the 18 HOURS of undreading without Netflix, Hulu, or Youtube. I had only the dozen or so movies I own and a lot of pre-downloaded podcasts. I don't have a TV, so any movies I did watch would be watched on my labtop.

18 hours. 8 hours on Sunday, 10 or so more Monday night. I took the last dread out at 4:15 Tuesday morning, collapsed on my futon, and then woke up at 5:30 to go teach a full day. A day without dreads.

The undreading began with a shower that included deep conditioner. Then I spread out a sheet. According to the internet, we all lose around 20-50 hairs a day, more if we're under stress, etc. Usually those hairs drop out and end up on the carpet or in the drain or on your roommate's shirt that you borrowed. When you have dreads, a hair will fall out, but stay in the dread it's woven into. So, for the past four months I have shed only about ten hairs. The rest were still in my dreads. That means that I had an awful lot of hair to be combed out. A disgusting amount. A repugnant, repulsive, vomitous amount that made me glad that no one was there to see it. So I spread out an old sheet on my living floor, crossed my legs, and armed myself with a wide-toothed comb.

My workstation

You see this pile? This terribly disgusting pile? It's the hair from about four dreads. I had between 80-100. I was going to keep it all in a pile to do one master awful shot in the end of all the hair, but it was just too gross to handle.

Each dread required between 5 and 15 minutes of intense personal attention. I would dip my fingers into olive oil, and work large quantities into the dread. Then I would begin at the tip, and slowly pull the knots out, bit by bit. If I took too much, the comb wouldn't slide through and pull out the knot. But I wanted to take as large of a bite as possible with the comb to get that dread done as quickly as possible. I pulled out handfuls of olive-oiled hair. I gave myself a headache. I watched Longitude, a fantastic film about the carpenter who invented the first clock that could keep time at sea. I watched the first half of Romeo and Juliet, I watched all of Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. I watched the first 50 Strong Bad emails. I listened to 3 episodes of This American Life and I listened to 2-3 episodes of Mormon Stories. And I took out my dreads. And then I washed my hair with dish soap to get the oil all the way out.

Sunday night, the front comes out in an 8 hour process.

If I could give you advice about dreads, it would be don't use wax. I don't know whether wax does or does not help your dreads dread faster. I know it made mine look better in the beginning. But I also know that although I stopped waxing my dreads in early July, there was still wax in the core of my dreads. Wax, and bits of rubber band glue from the bands. It was gross; I pulled out wads of hair glumped with old wax and bits of sticky black goo, knotted, and slimed with olive oil. Seriously, if I'd let myself think about it, it would have made my stomach turn.

Undreading in two days meant that I had to go teach school in between.

If there's one thing having dreads has taught me, it's to love headbands. I think I own about 20 now.

And now they are gone, and now I don't recognize myself in the mirror.

Don't let that smile fool you, I'm in a daze.
One hour of sleep and hours of teaching later, and I'm a hopeless wreck.

Didn't put a whole lot of effort into day one.
One hour of sleep doesn't motivate me to play with my hair very much.

But, as if rewarding me for finally letting it do what it wanted to do all along, my hair as been fantastic. It's happy, healthy, and, somehow, it's cute. I don't understand that. It wasn't a cute cut when I put it into the dreads, why would it be when I took them out? But although I miss my dreads like crazy, and I'm trying to adjust to not having people able to guess my personality in one glance or less, I'm very grateful that my hair is giving me this gift of being cute. I was worried it't be damaged, straggly, and in some awful shape that I'd need to panic and go fix.

Whoah! It doesn't look awful!

I had to go to the store, and buy a brush, and hairspray, and normal shampoo and conditioner.

I dug my curling iron out from under the sink. I hadn't used it in nearly three years.

But this gives me a few days to figure out what hairstyle I want. Which brings me to the next question...what hairstyle do I want? I'm thinking maybe a longer bob or something.

Update

2011-09-30T12:58:00.000-06:00

I called two salons yesterday about my dreads. One offered to "fix" them for $50. Then I asked what they meant by "fix." Turns out they would just cut off all the loose hair and roll the dreads really well with a lot of a product. While that would make them look better for a week or so, it isn't a permanent solution. Goodness only knows what they would do about the tips.

Salon number two sounded a bit more legit about their dreads, but, based on my over the phone description, say it would probably cost $150-$200. This is money i would be willing to pay if I thought it would be a permanent, or at least long-term, solution. I purchased a mini-crochet hook, the most highly recommended method of dread maintenance, yesterday morning. Last night, after hauling yet another load of my crap up to my new apartment, I settled in to see if I could even make headway against the dreads on my own, or at least figure out if they were repairable at all. I sat right on the counter in my pjs and got up close and personal with the mirror, that crochet hook, and my poor, ailing dreads. Friends, I couldn't fix even a hair, not one. The knots of my dreads, once so tight and compact, are migrating out the unraveling dreads, and the remaining dread is shrinking. As the knots weaken, hair is liberating itself from the dreads like crazy, and there is more loose hair every day. I am thinking that even with salon help, my dreads my be doomed. I think if I really want dreads, good dreads, these are already lost. I'd need to pick them out and start over, which is what some people have already started recommending.

First, I'd like to offer a sincere apology to all my friends who helped put the dreads in. I feel like I've failed you and let you down after all your hard work. I promise not to ask you for help taking them out, or to put them in again some day if I decide I want to try again. My hair and I will have to muddle through without bothering you for a while. Thank you for all your hard work and sacrifice so that I could try this, I wish I could give you the return in your investment you deserve.

What I would do differently if I ever do this again:

1. Have longer hair. Short dreads are possible, but harder. They take a lot more maintenance, and a little unraveling is a much bigger problem. Longer dreads lock up faster and stay better. There's also more you can do with them, instead of just put a headband on everyday. I couldn't wait for my hair to be long, and thought I could deal with the issues that come with short dreads. I was wrong.

2. Bigger sections. I love my tiny, tiny dreads, but I think that's probably part of the problem as well. Larger dreads lock up faster and stay better as well. I still don't want big, fatty dreads, but I think I would go larger than what I have now. I thought I could deal with the issues that come with tiny, short dreads in straight, stubborn hair; I was wrong.

3. Decide that if I really want dreads so desperately and so badly, then I'd better save up for them. Instead of trespassing on the goodness of my friends, I should save up the $500 or so to get salon dreads, which might include a road trip to a good salon. I should also budget for maintenance appointments for the first year or so probably. Basically, I should make sure I want dreads instead of a trip to Europe or a new computer or my own apartment. I thought I could deal with doing it the cheap, homemade way with short, skinny dreads. I was wrong.

I've started breaking the news to my students. The dreads are making their farewell tour. When I have time to pick them out in the next week or two, I will.

Two Weeks Later

2011-09-29T07:49:00.000-06:00

Two weeks ago, I wrote Fear and Dreads, timidly admitting that I may have to take out my dreadlocks. I read the comments, considered the feedback, and looked long and hard on my dreads. I decided to give my precious dreads another month. Maybe they were just going through a phase, maybe I was just being panicky about the ends unraveling. Two weeks later, it's official: the ends are really and truly unraveling again. Twenty days after taking the rubber bands of the tips, I would estimate that half of the redreading that Di, Nick, and I did in late July has unraveled. Six hours of work by myself and my self-sacrificing friends, a month of patience with rubber bands again, and it seems to have made no difference. With each washing my dreads get tighter, which is good, except my magic mom-hair rebels against being that tightly knotted and wound, so it pushes the knots out the ends. My dreads are shiveling and unraveling.

The snarling and loose hair is also getting worse. When I wrote two weeks ago, most of my dreads had at least one kink, the worst ones had two, and some had full-blown loops. In the short space of fifteen days, they have continued to mutate. Nearly all dreads now have two kinks, zig-zags, or loops. The best have only one. The worst ones now have three to five.

The larger loops have now started to cause hair to slip out of the end half of the dread, meaning I now have loose hair at the roots and more loose hair sticking out half way down. The kinking and looping is worst on the dreads that spend all day underneath my headbands, but the way the dreads look, I can't go to school without wearing one.

I don't know how much getting my dreads "repaired" at a salon would cost, but considering that getting them done initially costs $300-$500, I'm worried it will cost $100-$200 to get them repaired, which may just be another temporary fix. I think fixing them myself is getting to be out of the question. It would take more hours than I am willing to put in to fix them, and, once again, it would probably only be a temporary fix. My hair is winning. It's rejecting the dreads like a bad organ transplant.

However, my dreads still look pretty decent when they're pulled back, with the roots well hidden. I'm still getting compliments on them nearly every day. Many of the teachers at my school I considered conservative and "mommish," have come up to tell me how cute my hair is and how much it suits me. Honestly, the dreads do suit me. Even people who don't like the dreads admit that they fit who I am. I still look in the mirror sometimes and think to myself, I love these dreads. They look amazing and beautiful; I'll never change. Other days I look in the mirror and think to myself, Hell, those things have got to go. They look awful, gross, and nasty. Ew. They have to go NOW. Then I'll wake up the next day and have switched. Sometimes my perspective switches partway through a day.

My dreads look good enough that the thought of their doom makes me grieve. But I think it's time. I'm still exploring a few last ditch options: I bought a mini crochet hook, and I'll call a salon today to price out repair. But if those options don't pan out, my dreads will probably be gone within a month. Oh sorrow, sorrow.

Overheard in My Classroom:

2011-09-27T10:22:00.000-06:00

"Miss Eddington is almost a kid; she just understands us so well."
I'm not sure how I feel about this.

In another class, my students are studying Anne Frank, and one student referred to Mr. Kraler and Miep, the two employees/friends who hid them for those long two years, as the Franks' "secret-keepers." Oh Harry Potter, how you have influenced the world.

I'm still a kid at heart. And I still love 70s linoleum.
They new how to paint linoleum back in the day. Seriously.

2011-09-23T12:26:00.000-06:00

My 8th grade students are studying Anne Frank and the Holocaust, and one of the activities I do to help them understand what it felt like to be a Jew during WWII is to have them wear yellow stars of David. They have to wear the stars in public, for at least an hour, and have a witness sign that they did so. We talk about stereotypes and labeling and have a really good discussion. It's an assignment they typically like.

Well, today I was introducing the assignment and covering a few "don'ts" that you have to cover with 13-14 year olds. No, you may not color your star or write "I'm awesome!" in the center. No, you can't cover it with jacket. No you can't wear it on your leg, your forehead, your behind, or your belly ("You're not a sneetch," I told them.). After class, one student who had come in late and missed the discussion stayed behind to get the instructions. Even though he had missed the sneetch discussion, the first thing he did was hold his star over his belly-button and exclaim with delight,

"I'm a Jew-bellied Sneetch!!"

Then he got to see Miss E. laugh uncontrollably and roll her eyes at the same time.

http://www.amquix.info/humor/sneetches/sneetchlogo.gif

Goal Achieved

2011-09-22T19:32:00.000-06:00

This year I have mostly 7th graders. This means I spend a lot more time teaching them to write their names on papers than I would if I had mostly 8th grade, which is what I usually have. It also means that I get many, many more parents coming to see me during parent teacher conferences. 7th grade is the first year of junior high, and the students and their parents are nervous, and worried about making the jump from elementary school with one class, to junior high with eight.

For the fun of it, I decided to keep a tally of how many sets of parents/guardians/representatives (sometimes the students themselves if their parents were busy) have come to see Miss E. tonight. When I was informed that the line outside my door to talk to me was getting long and onerous, I realized just how many people I was going to be talking to. But that's ok, I like parent teacher conferences. I always a lot about a student by meeting their parents, hearing them talk, and watching their interactions with each other and their student. So I set a goal: 50 sets of parents/guardians/representatives. It looked like I'd achieve my goal easily, after all, I had 37 while there was still an hour and a half left. But then, the steady flood of people through my door carrying purses and progress reports dried up. I began to get worried. Soon there were only ten minutes left and I was sitting at 49. 49! One short!

But I'm happy to report that my tally now stands at 51. 51 sets of parents/guardians/representatives have come to ask about their students' grades. 51 smiles, 51 enthusiastic "Come on in! Have a seat!"s, 51 "Do you have any questions for me?"s. I'm all enthusiasmed out. You could probably call me and tell me you were pregnant, propose matrimony or world travel to me, and I'd just respond with a distant, "Yeah? That's cool."

It's time for me to go home now.

Good night.

On the Move

2011-09-21T13:15:00.000-06:00

That blog title can be taken multiple ways, and many of them are correct. I am on the move in the sense that I am literally moving. I'm leaving the apartment I've been in for the last year and a quarter and the roommates I love and admire and am hauling all of my stuff, car load by tiny car load, to a new, empty, and thus far blank apartment. There are a lot of reasons for this move, some serious, some silly, and all of them too long for a quick blog I'm posting during my prep period when I should be doing something else. But I will say that I very much like my new place so far, and that I'm enjoying moving in and nesting, even if I haven't moved any furniture yet, so am living among neatly stacked piles of clothes and books on the floor along every wall.

I'm on the move in that time is passing quickly. It's midterm of first term already. It's parent-teacher conferences already! Twenty days of school are over already, meaning the school year is 11% over. It's nearly Jeni's birthday, meaning that September is almost over and October is almost here, I'm almost 26, and fall is beginning. Things I think of as happening just the other day this summer are now three months ago.

I'm on the move in that life is changing quickly for myself and everyone else it seems. I sat on Jen's bed a few weeks ago talking about all the craziness in my life, and then last night as I attempted to maneuver my Costco cart with one hand while talking in the phone, she declared she was selling her house, her family was moving to Driggs, and wanted to know if I could take care of their cat for two months. My sister is changing careers, states, and schools again. One of my roommates dropped out of graduate school and is moving home to work out necessary details to go on some sweet, sweet travel adventures. Things change quickly.

I'm on the move in that I am very, very busy. I spent most of Sunday packing stuff for the move, Monday I taught a full day and left straight from school for the leasing office to sign my paperwork and pay my rent, etc. The evening was spent hauling and unpacking boxes. Tuesday I taught a full day, modifying my lessons so that I could study for my G/T Endorsement class for part of each period. I had 100 pages of straight text, no pictures, boring textbook to read by tonight. I only have 25 pages left. Over the course of the day, four different people came to observe my classroom and teaching for various reasons, including one lady whom I've never seen before or since and have no idea why she was there. After school I had a meeting with a parent, then drove to my old apartment, grabbed a quick load of stuff, trying to leave before traffic got bad. When I got to my new apartment, more time was spent hauling and unpacking, then there was a run to Costco and Smiths for groceries and apartment essentials. Then a couple friends came over to see the new place and Tuesday was gone. Tonight I had a meeting with a parent before school, and I'm trying to prepare lessons and read the last 25 pages of this week's assigned reading in this awful textbook. After school there is a faculty meeting until 4:00; at 4:30 I need to be at my G/T Endorsement class in south Orem with the every last boring page of the reading completed. At 7:00 I'll stumble out of my class, decide whether to stop by my old apartment for another load of stuff or just go straight to the new one so I can wash my dreads, make some real food, unpack some stuff, and maybe get to bed on time. Exercise would be nice, too, but that's not very likely tonight. Tomorrow is more teaching and then parent-teacher conferences from right after school until 7:30. Friday and Saturday are fairly normal days, except that I need to cancel rock climbing with a friend to grade 200 essays I need to have finished by Monday, and probably start on the next reading assignment in the boring textbook.

And I'm on the move in that I've already spent too much time writing this as my reward for finishing the chapter in that textbook. I'd better go see if those speed reading lessons I took in college are going to pay off.

Moving on.

Fear and Dreads

2011-09-13T23:07:00.001-06:00

It's time to say something that has been steadily gnawing at my mind. It's something that first occurred to me months ago as a passing thought. It's something I've tried to hide from, ignore, bury deep, cover up, and deny. It's gone from passing thought to hidden doubt, to mild worry, and is now an all out raging fear that needs to be expressed. But I haven't said anything, I've soldiered on. But today, it's time to confess: I'm worried, concerned, and troubled about the future of my dreads. They may, in fact be doomed.

I'm frightened, Auntie Em.

This summer, in early July, after adventures in the ocean and chlorinated swimming pools with my nieces and nephews, the rubber bands on my dreads were dissolving into globs of goo seeping into the core of my dreads. So I stayed up late one night in the dorm room bathroom in Ithaca College while my nephews slept, and I took out the rubber bands, a painful process that involved extracting the now fragile and twisted rubber bands in pieces. In many places the goo stayed. I can still find bits of it now, months later.

Right after taking the bands out in early July. You can see the late night doubt all over my face.

After washing my hair a few times, I actually liked the way they looked band-free much better. My hair certainly felt much better without over a hundred rubber bands in it. Compliments continued to come in from unexpected quarters (people at airports, gas stations, old ladies, etc.), and I thought that all was well. But about a month after I had taken the bands out, it was pretty clear that the ends, far from dreading up naturally like I had hoped they would, were unraveling instead. Pretty soon I had about four inches of loose hair. It became clear that I would need to do something about it.

Just before redreading the tips in late July.

Of course, that meant that Di and I and Nick-in-her-basement once again spent hours working on my hair. At the end of another several TV shows and a couple mini-movies, my tips were redreaded and secured once again with bands. This time I was careful: no pools, which was hard during the month of August.

Tips all tightened up and incubating in their bands again.

Mid-late August, the tips look were looking secure. And the bands were starting to get fragile again, it was time to take them out.

But the front always looks best. That's because that's where my face is.

After giving the tips a month with bands, on the eve of my three month of dreadiversary, I took out the bands.

Soooo much softer.

Three months strong.

Now, a little over a week later, I am faced with an unpleasant reality: my dreads are beginning to unravel again. Not only that, but now, after three months, there is a veritable swamp of loose hair, some of it in very large chunks.

The loose hair can supposedly be fixed if I find a microscopic crochet hook and put in another 10-20 hours of labor. Also, now that the dreads are a few months old, the dread/not dread process is beginning to show. Some of my dreads have just grown out, with no dreading at the roots. Others have begun to dread on their own, which is good, but they’re not dreading up cleanly. My dreads are growing in zig-zags and loops.

This is probably the worst one, but most of them have at least one loop or zag or both.

Supposedly, if I control the dreading process of the roots by constant maintenance, I can help prevent some of that. This will involve working on every single dread individually, then rebanding the roots for another month, and hoping that fixes the problem. I would need to repeat this process with each dread as it needs redoing—probably every few months. So what I currently have are an inch to two inches of snarled roots forested with loose hair, then some loops and zags and more loose hair, followed by a few inches of solid dread (smooth but scratchy, the way it’s meant to be), and then topped by one to three inches of loose tips. Here’s a pictorial tour of the way it looks when I’m not trying to hide the problems. The way it looks is disheartening. I keep wearing thicker and thicker headbands to try and hide the problems at the roots. And I don’t know if it’s going to get better.

The harsh reality.

Do you know that problem with roots? They grow. They take over.

This is with a headband. And it still looks like that. :(

So now I am forced to acknowledge that my dreads may be doomed. That's hard to face. I went into this so committed, so ready to put up with any snags and problems, so mentally prepared to give any necessary time and maintenance my dreads could ask for. Now, I’m staring down the barrel of probably 20-30 hours of work to get them looking passable again, which may not even matter because the tips may continue to unravel. Maybe, if I put in another 20 hours blunting the tips, I can halt the unraveling, but that’s a maybe. I don’t know if I have enough solid dread in my dreads to actually work in all that loose hair and tip without tearing apart the dread I do have.

When I went into this, I thought that dreading was a drastic enough process to overcome my hair. You see my hair will always default to classy no matter what I’ve tried to do to it. I've curled it and permed it and punked it and now dreaded it. Every single time, my hair will win. I curl it and it goes back to straight. I perm it and it gradually loses its curl. I chop it off and feather it and dye it purple, and it always looked like a mid-30s mom-bob by the end of the day. Now, I have backcombed and rolled and banded and rebanded and begged it, and it is rebelling against these dreads with all the stubbornness it has. And it has a lot. It’s genetic. My sister has my hair, too, we got it from the matriarchs in our family. Looking at my mother and her mother I know certain things. My hair will never go gray, it will always be thick, Pantene Pro-V commercial thick and strong and smooth.

But that magic hair is destroying my dreads. If I want to keep my dreads, it will require an all-out war and siege against my hair that I may not be able to win despite my best efforts. Do I put in another 40-60 hours to champion what may be a losing cause? Do I enlist my friends’ help again to mount another offense? Do I acknowledge defeat, and gather friends to put in 20 hours to take out the dreads? It’s the middle of the school year, so I can’t just shave my head. Do I apologize to the friends who have given so much time and effort to helping me get this far and take out all their hard work, or do I enlist their help for more hours of painstaking labor in this possibly doomed venture?

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my dreads. I’ve enjoyed every day with them. I love having hair that looks the same whether I drive with the windows down on the freeway, spent the night on the couch, wore a bike helmet five miles, camped for days, or any other adventure. All I have to do is throw on a headband and I’m ready for a date or school. I love that my hair stopped producing grease to the point where I often forget when the last time I washed my hair, because, although I wash it more than once a week, I once let it go for almost two and noticed no real difference. I love the way they look on me, especially on the front. They give my usually flat hair a volume its never had. I love being the girl with dreads. I feel like they suit my personality well. I like the people who come talk to me because of them. I love how much my students love them. I have a few friends who hate them, but mostly the response has been positive. Even my parents and my conservative sister-in-law have told me they like my dreads.

But my dreads are transforming from the tame, groomed dreads, controlled by the bands I had in the beginning, to a war zone. I may have won the battle with the initial dreading, but I feel like I’m losing the war. So how much more time and effort do I put in before I abandon ship? How long to I hope this is just a dread-phase that will go away after they “mature” a bit more.

What do I do?

Musings on Growing up

2011-09-08T14:54:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I found myself at a coffee shop in an unfamiliar area, killing time before an appointment and meditating on life. Since becoming a teacher, there are two things I nearly always have on hand: scratch paper and a red pen. Put those two together, and this was the result:

You know what growing up means? It means making decisions, big ones, decisions that come trailing consequences both good and bad, both apparent and unforeseen. Being grown-up means being aware of just how much you don't know when you make these decisions. Gone are the days when you knew what you were doing, when an afternoon was sufficient to research an issue and feels sure. Now you can spend weeks, months, or years researching, thinking, and evaluating and still come up a little uncertain, because you've made enough decision now to know how many surprise conflicts, issues, hidden expenses, and aggravations yet unknown are waiting just around the bend in the road. And the prospect makes you afraid, and some of the shreds of adolescence in you will vote for ignoring the decisions altogether. Turn up the TV, reach for a cookie, concentrate on the other details of life, and let opportunities and decisions slide by while you close the blinds and order take-out.

But those shreds of adolescence are not your enemy, nor should you seek to smother them or stamp them out so you can proceed toward down the path of your choosing toward that bend in the road with grim, skeptical, fatalistic adult determination. Instead, use all your adulthood to decide which road you will take and to make the best preparations you can--pack an extra pair of underwear, $20 cash for an emergency, and the phone number of the towing company. Let your adulthood worry and over plan as much as it can for what's coming. Pack your six duffel bags of clothes and equipment for every weather and contingency. Then, decision made and unknown future chosen as best your adult self can manage, and with preparations made based on what you know or imagine will be ahead, then gather up those shreds of adolescence and wrap them around you like a cloak. Tell them that that the grown-up you has prepared for everything, nothing is going to go wrong you can't handle, and, most importantly, convince those remaining bits of idealistic, adolescent you that you are embarking on an adventure and it is going to fun. Lie if you have to. Because those fragments of youthful optimism are what's going to keep you from losing your smile and your soul as you go around that bend in the road and get blindsided by the stuff waiting in the shadows.

Those pieces of the youthful you are everything you've spent years training yourself not to be: idealistic, stubborn, willful, rebellious, naive, and blind. But all your adult knowledge educated guesses about what's coming up now that you've chosen a path are only going to make you afraid. Whisper to those shreds of naivete that when difficulties come up they should be as stubborn and pigheaded as they have ever been; give them a free reign to be rebellious. Tell them you're going to put them back in charge for a little while, and that you're going to keep forward as blindly ignorant of what's ahead as you did when you were 15. You've used all the adulthood you have to make the decision and prepare as best as you can, the adult open-eyed, grim determination will only lead you to despair along the way. It takes all the stupidity, blind optimism, and unreasonable, unbearable stubbornness and cheek of a teenager to travel the road ahead and enjoy it.

After all, this is going to be an adventure. It's going to be fun.

Grown-up Girls Solve Their Own Problems

2011-09-08T13:30:00.001-06:00

If you haven't been following my grown-up girl saga involving sewer pipe, doctors for your lady bits, and mysterious insurance companies, you can read about in part one and part two. If you don't care about my grown-up girl saga and you definitely don't want to hear about insurance or gynecologists, I'd recommend not reading those parts, or this post for that matter.

Like any grown-up will tell you to do, I mustered up my courage and confronted the problem: I called my grown-up insurance company. After a brief discussion, the problem was identified. The reason they didn't want to cover my grown-up girl doctor appointment and all his lab work was because they didn't believe I was actually a grown-up! Really, that's what the problem was this whole time. Those weren't the exact words they said, the exact words were more like, "We're not listed as your primary insurance." If you translate that it says, "We thought you were still on your parents' insurance, little girl." I informed them that they were my primary, indeed, my only insurance and that they had been for years (years, That's how long I've been a grown-up.). They told me I'd need to call my previous insurance company and have them fax over my letter of termination. Now, call me crazy, but when you get a letter of termination from your insurance company, doesn't that sound like you should be dead? But their doomsday terminology not withstanding, I immediately called DMBA and asked them to fax a letter over to Educators Mutal and let them know that I was dead, or a grown-up, whichever they took "terminated" to mean. They told me the letter would arrive within a half an hour.

Three days later, a day after a third grown-up lab bill arrived at my apartment to inform me that I owed another hundred grown-up dollars from my grown-up salary, I got another email from my insurance company informing me that there had been new claims filed to my account. With very un-grown-up haste I rushed to their website, typed in my password, and sat back with a downright childish cry of delight.

I don't owe the doctor or his labs a single penny. My insurance company was forced to acknowledge that I am, indeed, grown-up enough for them to pay for my bills. Now I am fighting the very un-grown-up desire to go blow the $400 I'm not paying my gynecologist on something awesome.

Grown-up Girl Gripe

2011-08-19T15:00:00.001-06:00

Sometimes being a grown-up girl isn't just about learning how old sewer maintenance works, sometimes it's about figuring out how your own maintenance works. For example, I did my best grown-up girl job to find a gynecologist for my first ever grown-up girl appointment. I picked the name off the "covered provider list" provided online by my grown-up insurance company (you know, the one that isn't your parents' insurance). Then I bravely called them all by myself, drove myself to my appointment, boldly went through all the joys and pains and awkwardness of that kind of doctor visit with a stoicism that made me proud of myself.

Then, a week or so later, I get a very grown-up sounding email from my grown-up insurance company informing me that there has been a new claim on my account and that I should check it out ("check it out" is what all the grown-ups are sayin' these days). So I checked it out. And I was informed that my grown-up insurance actually didn't cover my grown-up girl doctor appointment, and that, between the visit and the standard lab work, I now owed over 300 grown-up dollars to my grown-girl doctor and his lab. This money will have to come from my hard work at my grown-up job, money I was planning to spend on other grown-up girl purchases like new sheets (the ones my mother gave me before I left for college are finally wearing out), new towels (the ones the nice lady in the ward gave me when I left for college are now the same color--they were originally bright orange and bright green), and maybe some more new clothes that fit.

Now before you tell me I should have checked with my insurance before scheduling the appointment, like any sensible grown-up would, I TRIED. I hunted all over my grown-up insurance company's infantile web site without discovering anything remotely resembling a list of benefits. So I made inferences based on available information: I live and work and am insured in Utah, which is probably the baby-producing capital of the US. Surely my insurance, my educator (another high baby demographic) insurance, would cover a routine gynecologist visit. They cover a once a year eye examination, and it's not even vision insurance!

And now, because of my grown-up girl logic about my grown-up girl insurance company's interaction with my grown-up girl doctor, I am now pouting like a five-year-old. Well done world, well done.

Grown-up Girl

2011-08-04T12:41:00.001-06:00

I'm been doing my best to be a grown-up these past few years. I clean my own toilets without being asked, I wash my sheets regularly, I pay my bills on time, I have a car payment, I get regular dentist appointments, etc. One of these days I'll even manage to send birthday cards to my nieces and nephews. Then someone can give me a medal. A big medal for being a grown-up. They give those out right? There's a ceremony and streamers and a big sign that says "CONGRATULATIONS! You Made It!" And then someone presents me with a certificate redeemable for a husband, 2.5 kids, and a blue house with a .75 acre yard in some suburban neighborhood. And chocolate cake. There'd better be chocolate cake or I'm not doing it. Unless there's pie. I'd grow up for pie, I guess.

But anyway, as I was going through the mental list of "things that grown-up girls do," it occurred to me that grown-up girls sometimes go to the doctor. In fact, they go on a regular basis. Then I realized that I haven't had a physical check up of any kind since....high school? Seven years? I don't have a primary care physician. I've never picked up a prescription for myself. Then it occurred to me that grown-up girls go to girl doctors to talk to them about girly stuff. Was I supposed to be doing that, too? So I asked my roommate who is a nurse; I ask her all of my medical related questions, whether or not she should be able to answer them.

"Am I supposed to go to a gynecologist sometime?" I asked.
"Well, when was the last time you went?" she replied.
"I've never been," I said nonchalantly.
"Never?!" she said, her eyebrows climbing toward her hairline.

I inferred from this that this was, in fact, something I was supposed to be doing as a grown-up girl. So I dug through my wallet until I found my insurance card, dug through the internet until I found a covered provider, and then picked a name of the list and called to make an appointment. The receptionist told me to go to a website and fill out the registration and health forms before I came in.

So, this morning, I sat down to fill out the forms. Besides asking me my name, birthday, social security number, and what surgeries I've had (tonsils out when I was two, Lasik eye surgery when I was 21), they also asked for a family medical history. I stared at the screen trying to remember, did any of my uncles, aunts, grandparents, etc. have cancer, strokes, diabetes, etc.? As the youngest child of a youngest child, my grandparents are all long gone, and my aunts and uncles on my dad's side are all retired with grandchildren older than I am. Luckily, I'm at home for a few days, so I tripped my way upstairs to my dad's office to ask him how my grandparents died and if his siblings are healthy.

That's how I learned about sewer pipe. Old fashioned sewer pipes, the kind that had homemade gaskets made from hemp and molten lead. The plumbers would pour melted lead on the hemp they had pounded around the opening. They would boil the lead right there in the enclosed, underground space, inhaling the the vapors from the lead. Did you know that? I didn't know that. But that's what I learned form my dad this morning. How does this relate to my family medical history? When of the many professions my paternal grandfather had was a plumber. He got some sort of poisoning several times and eventually died of bone cancer when I was in second grade. Then Dad and I spent another ten minutes discussing cheerful topics such as nursing home neglect and old fashioned sewers. Then he went back to work, and I filled out my forms, musing on the nature of life, death, health, and the way you never know where a conversation is going to go.

Maybe my gynecologist doesn't know about old-fashioned sewer pipe, either.

Grown-up girls climb big rocks, too.

Neglect

2011-07-13T13:05:00.001-06:00

I know, I haven't written in weeks. I know, you probably didn't notice. But I felt guilty. I feel guilty after all my declarations of become an active blogger, etc. to suddenly abandon my blog for weeks and then only reappear long enough to post a few pictures and excuses. Here goes:

Excuse #1
I haven't blogged much because I've actually been keeping myself busy. The first month of summer was a blur of climbing, hiking, road trips, hanging out with friends, biking, climbing, skating, hanging out with friends, and sleeping at odd hours of the night.

Excuse #2
The daily whirlwind of activities hasn't seemed very worth blogging about ("I went climbing today at _________ with ______________, and I got a new bruise next to the old ones. In other news, I ate a sandwich before hurrying off to hang out with_______________.). The things that are worth blogging about, like my 40 days of vegan being up and what I thought about it, my dreads (and there's a ripening saga there), etc., I haven't had/made the time to sit down and craft the blogs they deserve.

Excuse #3
I'm in New York! I started out in Long Island last Wednesday and moved to Ithaca on Sunday. I'll be here till Saturday, and on Sunday I go to Idaho. During all of this I'm playing with nieces and nephews I usually don't see more than once a year. This week I'm helping them at violin camp: staying in a dorm room with them, going to classes with them, convincing the youngest one that she doesn't want her Mom who has to go to her older brother's lesson but instead she wants me and a day-old bagel smuggled out of the cafeteria, etc. Who has time to blog?

Excuse #4
I never blog in the summers. Really. Last summer, I think I posted a grand total of two. The summer before, I think I posted a grand total of two. Counting this post, I have already posted three! I've already increased my summer blog output by 50%! What have I got to feel guilty about?

Whew. I feel better now. Here are some pictures if what I've been doing:

Getting ready to ride my new bike to the climbing gym. Yes, I'm a hippie. Yes, bike helmets are dorky. Yes, that's a band-aid on my chin. That's why I'm wearing the dorky bicycle helmet.

The dreads get their first taste of saltwater on the Long Island beaches.

A seven hour car ride makes for sleepy children.

In between lessons at violin camp.

My nephew practicing on the quad of Ithaca College.

She was probably saying "I want my mom!"

Two-Wheeled Adventures

2011-06-29T12:30:00.000-06:00

Two years ago, when my old car broke down and I couldn't afford to fix it, I decided to buy a DI bike to tide me over until I nailed down a sure job for the next year and was financially stable enough to buy a car. I gloried in what I saw as my own adventurous spirit and dedication to the environment. Then, two months later, I bought a car and have ridden by bike, Maggie, about twice since. She had a place of honor in my room in my old apartment, but when I moved to my new one last April she got put out on the balcony as a "temporary" way to get more space in my room. Then she sat there, collecting dirt, rain, snow, ice, and sun for an entire year.

Maggie in her pre-balcony days, back when she was new (to me) and I had just spent hours cleaning her up.

I would often look out my living room window at Maggie, neglected and forgotten, and reflect on my dreams of riding my bike everywhere, also neglected and forgotten. Riding a bike--especially uphill--took a level of fitness I didn't have, and Maggie wasn't the nicest bike. She was plenty functional, but the little niceties, like a seat that still adjusted and gears that worked consistently or predictably, were missing. Her sturdy frame was steel, which was heavy. The idea of hauling her up and down the three flights of stairs from my apartment helped me put off riding her forever for another day. I began to think that what I might need was a new bike, a zippy, shiny, light, brand new bike. A hybrid bike, closer to a road bike than my heavy thrift store mountain bike. But the bikes I wanted all cost $500-$700, and I couldn't justify spending the money until I was sure I was really going to use the bike. After all, I wasn't using the one I had at all. On the other hand, I didn't want to ride my bike because it wasn't very nice, and I might ride more if I had a nicer bike, but shouldn't by a nicer bike until I was riding a lot. It was a circle of logic that resulted always in my neither riding nor buying a bike.

Until now. Last week, I had a few hours in the afternoon that were free. I'd spent the morning rolling my dreads and working on my history course, and I was dying to get outside. A friend of mine was coming over for dinner and then climbing in the evening, but what should I do for those few hours? Go for a hike? I'd already hiked the day before, and it was too warm outside to go skate. So I decided to bring Maggie out of exile and go for a ride. I decided to ride to my school--that way I could test how feasible it would be to commute by bike occasionally during the school year. I expected it to be grueling: the way there was mostly uphill, and my last memory of riding uphill was quite unpleasant.

To my surprise, the ride took me only half an hour, and was in no way painful at all. The fact that I am now much fitter than I was certainly helped, and the hills were not as bad as I thought they would be, and Maggies gears worked better than I expected them to. Filled with enthusiasm, I resolved to ride my bike to my work meetings this week on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Monday went great, although the addition of a bag with over 10 lbs. of stuff for my meetings made those hills a little harder. The gears did jam up just before the biggest hill, but I still made it. Tuesday the gears worked fine, but I was beginning to realize that the seat wasn't at the right height, and there was no way for me to adjust it. Also, after two days of riding, even on my thrift store mountain bike, I was enjoying it a lot. I could definitely see myself doing that ride frequently during the school year.

Such beautiful weather lately, how could I now want to ride my bike?

Brimming with excitement, I began shopping for bikes again. I did all the research I could online, but I knew I needed a real person to help me make the decision and impart to me their wisdom. So I headed to the local bike shop. I wasn't going to buy anything yet, but it was time to start getting serious about shopping around. Then, to my surprise and delight, the first shop I went to had a beautiful bike, just my size, just what I wanted. I took it on a test run around the block and was amazed. The thin, smooth tires ate up pavement with an ease I didn't realize as possible, the light frame glided smoothly over the road, and the gears shifted almost eagerly. Because the bike was last year's model, the shop was able to give me $125 off of the sticker price. I walked out with my dream bike for only $525. It's a hybrid, which is a sort of cross between a mountain bike and a road bike. Since I was raised exclusively on mountain bikes, this bike seems so slim, delicate, and fast.

So it was with great pride and eagerness that I saddled up this morning and glided out of the parking lot on my brand new Specialized Vita Sport, which I named Maggie 2 (or M2 for short). My white bike gleamed in the sun rise, the wind whispered through my dreads, and I was fit, ready, and confident. I couldn't wait to try that hill, to pull up to my school and show off my bike and my awesomeness to my coworkers,The first few blocks of my ride is down hill and crosses two sets railroad tracks, one perpendicular, one at an angle. I had noticed even on my test ride of the bike at the shop that this bike with its thin, skinny tires reacted much more to the bumps in a broken sidewalk than the hefty mountain bikes I had always ridden, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. As I unthinkingly hit the second set of railroad tracks, the ones angled diagonally across the road, I was suddenly unthinkingly hitting the the road...with my face, and my knee, and a terrible clatter as my bike fell half on top of me. I staggered up and made sure I was out of the road, righted up bike and gave it a cursory appraisal; M2 appeared unharmed in any major way. Then, as stinging and throbbing began to erupt on several parts of my anatomy, I began a more thorough examination of myself. My left palm had a drop of blood forming, my right elbow was also beginning to burble out little bubbles of red. Wincing, I turned my attention to my left knee, which for the last week has been home to a terrific scab that formed when I had bailed on my skateboard. The initial wound hadn't bled at all, but the scab was proving more problematic. I had torn part of it off while climbing on Sunday and blood and gone everywhere. Sure enough, the thick, tenacious scab was completely gone, the initial wound had been enlarged, and blood was running freely down my leg.

Remember when you were little and you fell? You could sit and cry and someone would come pick you up, hold you, and then carry you and your bike home and give you ice cream and let you hold your teddy bear while they cleaned out your stinging wounds? Even if your parents weren't there, sitting there and crying would soon bring them, or your older brothers or sisters, or your neighbors, or even complete strangers would rush to aid a fallen child with band-aids and kind words. When you're all grown up, you have to pick yourself up. You have to walk your bike home while your head throbs, your knee drips, and you fight off the emotional reactions caused by the surprise, the fear of the fall, the disappointment, the humbled pride, and the actual pain of the wounds. In other words, I walked back to my apartment trying not to drip blood on my shoes and trying not to cry. Then I hauled my bike up the three flights of stairs and put it away and texted my department chair to tell her I'd be late to the meetings. Then I was able to sit myself on the edge of the bath tub, feel sorry for myself, and begin to scrub out my own wounds. I had discovered by this time that I really had hit the road with my face. I had dirt all over my left cheek, and the pavement had punched my chin while wearing its rings. I'd been daubing it with the back of my hand while I was walking back, and the hand was now covered with different shades of red as the blood dried and was replenished with fresh stuff from my oozing chin.

Since it had taken me a few minutes to walk home, in order to clean out my scrapes and cuts, I had to scrub off dried blood and half-formed scabs to get the dirt out. That hurt. And nobody gave me ice cream, and I didn't get my teddy bear. Instead I got out my first aid kit, patched myself up, changed my clothes, and drove to work. Instead of showing off my bike, I displayed my wounds and collected sympathy. Apparently, they all knew that you can't go over railroad tracks on a city bike. I guess I do too now. I'm still going to ride my bike, I'm still going to zip effortlessly over the pavement on my delicate, skittish new bike, but I think I'm going to do it a lot more carefully.

A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes

2011-06-26T23:01:00.000-06:00

Last week, as I drove home from Arizona, I was playing around with thoughts in my head, as one often does on long road trips, and I asked myself the following question: If I could eat dinner with any celebrity/person in the world, who would it be? It's the type of question, you ask at dinner parties, prom dates, or on long car trips. I'm usually fantastically bad at these questions. I can never decide, or I can never think of anyone who would be all that interesting in the setting of a restaurant. Celebrity crushes? I don't want to go to dinner with Gene Kelly; I want to see him dance! Many of the people I'd want to meet are long since dead anyway. Jane Austen, long gone. Einstein or Mark Twain or Winston Churchill? All gone. There are some fictional characters I'd like to meet (DOCTOR WHO), but that's stretching the rules of the question a bit, don't you think?

Julian McMahon, my first celebrity crush. I discovered him in high school,
and Di taped pictures of him all over the outside of her binder.
It's too bad he's nearer my mother's age than mine.
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lc8gawXEFU1qbqnd3.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mezmaVo3-iY/TcDfIqAxQHI/AAAAAAAAAiY/
RNkHL5KXw4U/s1600/05-05-11-iraglasspic.jpg

But, on that long drive, I finally came up with an answer. If I could pick anyone to have dinner with in real life, real time, not past, future, or fiction, I would pick Ira Glass. I've already mentioned my love for This American Life, and the radio show continues to delight, impress, and intrigue. Then, the other day, I missed a call from my long time best friend (y'know, since fifth grade or so), Di. I listened to her message, but it came out somewhat garbled. She said something about winning tickets to something on Saturday night, and she was inviting me to go with her, but I couldn't quite catch what it was she had won tickets to. However, a girls' night out with Di is always a good thing, so I called her back forthwith and left her a message assuring her that I'd love to go, and asking her what it was we were going to. Then I checked facebook, and found out that what she had one tickets to was Ira Glass's presentation at Kingsbury Hall! I wigged out something fierce. I've been speaking in exclamation points all week. I was going to get to see him in real life! Actually see him talk and move and express, not just hear his voice on the radio. Then, Friday, Di told me that because she'd won the tickets through KUER, we were invited to the pre-show reception (with cupcakes! I couldn't eat them, though: it's a safe bet they weren't vegan). At that pre-show reception there would probably be some KUER people, and a slight possibility of IRA GLASS being there HIMSELF.

So Saturday evening I cut my climbing with friends short and rushed up to Di's house. We drove from there to the U of U campus and soon found ourselves climbing the steps of Kinsbury Hall. Then we climbed up to the second floor, found our names on the exclusive list, and waltzed into the reception. At the door there was a basket of "Ira Glasses," for us to put on to be more like our hero.

Ira Glass glasses

As we went past the red curtain, we found ourselves only about five feet away from Ira Glass!!!! And sure enough, he was talking! And his voice was coming from his own mouth, clear and natural, not through a microphone or a speaker or a a television! He was being gracious and funny about the fact that before he walked in people were taking pictures with a cardboard cutout of him.

Holy moly it's Ira Freakin' Glass!!

It's cardboard Ira! And real Ira's in the background! He looks just like himself!

I was far too shy to ask for a picture with him, but luckily, Di was much more bold. She spoke up right away and asked if she could take a picture of us. He graciously agreed. Pardon me if I get a little overenthusiastic with my exclamation points. He shook my hand! He said it was nice to meet me! He stood still for a picture with me!

In my head I was thinking, "Don't be a dork: it's Ira Glass!
Don't be a dork! Don't be a dork! Holy cow it's Ira Glass!!"

There are so many things I want to say about the lecture/show/evening itself I want to say, but they don't really fit together into a comprehensive paragraph. I want to tell you about how funny Ira was on stage, how when he sneezed and the stage hands couldn't get him a tissue, a lady in the front row stood up and handed him one. So he said he'd pay her back and stopped the show as he whisked a red balloon from his jacket pocket and proceeded to tie a balloon animal and give it to her. I want to tell you the stories he told, the points about human nature he made. His overall message for the evening was about stories, their structure, and their role in our society and our psyche. I already knew stories were powerful, I use them daily as a teacher. I tell stories all day long. I tell stories about my life, about history, from literature, from mythology, when I can I even turn grammar into a story. I think my job would be impossible without stories. Often, I think our society and our lives would be impossible without stories. Stories are how we learn, what we remember, and what we build our lives out of.

If someday I die and there are no names of children to engrave on the back of my tombstone, or if there's not room for the poem I want there (John Donne, Holy Sonnet X), and if I'm not cremated and scattered from the top of Angel's Landing in Zion, if all that could be said of me and carved into stone at the end of my life was, "She was a great storyteller," I would rest as easy under that simple inscription as the pharaohs do in their gold encrusted tombs, engraved all about with their glorious deeds and accomplishments. If no one can think of anything better to say about me when I'm gone, I'd be perfectly happy with that. If you can't write the usual "loving wife, mother, and grandmother" on my tomb, please simply put "Storyteller" under my name instead.

Exciting Things

2011-06-20T08:24:00.001-06:00

Saturday I got things done. I washed my hair, cleaned the bathroom from top to bottom, then started in on my history course. While working on my history course I went through the long process of waxing and rolling my dreads. Like I mentioned in my last blog, this rewaxing and thorough rolling takes about 3-4 hours. So I studied and I rolled, and I watched Bones and I rolled. It took approximately forever. After I'd finally rolled them all, I looked in the mirror and realized that, for the first time ever, none of my dreads were sticking up. Not one was doing its impersonation of a tree. Finally. It took them two weeks, but they learned to stay down.

Also on Saturday, I looked down at my legs and giggled. I always seem to bash my knees when I climb. Since I climb multiple times a week, my legs look pretty beat up. I looked at my legs and thought, "Good heck! Somebody beats me!" But they don't. I get beaten by rocks and occasionally concrete when I go skate.

I should go on Jerry Springer

Exciting thing number three, the most exciting of all, was last night I drove up to Salt Lake to hang out with Jeni and Chris. There I got to meet little Nico for the first time. I've had lots of friends have babies over the years, and I've got well over a dozen nieces and nephews, but there's something different when it's your best friend since 3rd grading telling you the "birth story," and there in your arms is the little one that caused all the trouble. There's something different when it's the near sister you used to confide your grade school crushes on, plan high school dances with, giggle with on the marching band bus, live with in college, and whose wedding reception was in your backyard. (Not that I got to go. That killed me. I couldn't get work off for love nor money.) She let me hold him, and make faces at him, and feed him, and tease him. They're going to be great parents. I only hope I can do as well someday.

Confession down here in the fine print: I want one. I really really do. I'm not even going to bother lying to you. I want a husband, I want my kids, I want to start a family. Sigh.

The Last Hurrah--With lots of pictures

2011-06-19T12:26:00.001-06:00

Monday morning, at about a quarter to five, the adventure began. Like most adventures, it began with packing sandwiches. It continued with packing the stuff, and the packing the stuff into the car. Then I drove to Provo, and we packed Cuny's packed stuff into the car. Since he was moving, the car got pretty full. We were particularly creative about where to put his massive bike in my petite car. A 6'4" dude rides a pretty big bike. We eventually got everything in, picked up gas, and hit the road. For the next four hours, I made Cuny drive so I could work on my dreads. Normally, I only spend an hour or so on them, but since I had washed them the night before they needed to be rewaxed and rolled thoroughly. That took over three hours. Am I dismayed about how much time the dreads are taking. Certainly. I'm holding out hope that all this maintenance will make them much better down the road, and that when the summer is over I won't have to waste this much time every day on my hair. I'm not an hour-a-day-hairdo girl.

About the same time I was putting the finishing touches on my dreads, we got close to Zion National Park. Since this was to be Cuny's and my last trip together, we wanted to do more than just run down to Tucson and drop him off. So we had decided to spend a day or two in Zion. Neither of us had ever been, and I was looking forward to scratching another park off my list. Somehow, I have managed to live in Utah for seven years and not go to any of the national parks here. In fact, for being a camper, hiker, and back-packer, I have done very little of any of that here. I usually head up to Idaho or Wyoming or Montana with the family for that. I've hiked in Germany, I've camped in Japan, but not in Utah. So this Memorial Day, Cuny, Allie, and I headed to Arches National Park, and I was amazed. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. So it was with high expectations that I set out to both hike and camp in Zion.

It did not disappoint. Zion National Park is stunning. I was snapping pictures out the window long before we entered the park, and drove Cuny nuts by stopping to take pictures every hundred yards of trail. The first thing we did in Zion was snag ourselves a campsite at the South Campground. South is actually in Zion, and our campsite had a great view of Watchman and was just across the bridge from the visitor's center. Despite being so close to all the bustle of a busy national park, our campsite was replete with birds, squirrels, and lizards. This was my first time being in charge of a camping trip. Normally my older sister or my mother is there, and they plan the meals and pack the food and pick the location and fill out the paperwork and do all the little things they do. This was my turn. I was so proud of myself that I took a picture next to the post for our campsite. We pitched my tent (the first time it's ever been pitched outside!), ate the sandwiches and oreos I'd packed for lunch, and looked over our park map, planning the afternoon's hike.

Since it was both of our first times in Zion, we decided that we needed to hike to Angel's Landing. Angel's Landing got its name when one of the early explorers of the canyon looked up at it and said that in order get up there, you'd have to be an angel. It's not a terribly long hike, only 5.4 miles, but you climb a long ways up to get there. There is a section of switchbacks so short and tight they're called "Wally's Wiggles." Additionally, it was a hot afternoon in June in the rocky desert under a cloudless sky. The hike itself was beautiful, and I spent most of it staring up at the towering canyon walls around me, or back at the valley stretching out behind us.

After all the switchbacks and normal trail, we arrived at the most famous stretch of trail in Zion (maybe The Narrows beat it, but not by much). The last half mile up the landing is a scramble up a narrow trail consisting of sandstone rocks that drop off quickly to the canyon floor below. As long as you don't mind heights, it's the most fun part of the entire hike, but we passed a lot of hikers who turned back part way, terrified. The hike is made easier by the thick chains that have been strung alongside the trail, giving hikers a way to steady themselves as they climb.

That's the trail. Straight up that narrow ridge with drop offs on either side.

The view from the top was spectacular in all directions. If you looked down the canyon, the way we had come, you saw this:

If you looked the other direction, you'd see this,

If you looked to the side, you saw this:

No, Mom, I'm not on the edge of a cliff. Why do you ask?

Well worth the hike in our opinion. After enjoying the view and drinking the last of our water, we headed back down. Going down the chained part of the trail proved to much slower and trickier than going up it, but we managed. Then came the two mile hike back to the valley floor, where the Virgin River provides enough water for cottonwoods to grow to towering heights. On the way down, I managed to get some great pictures of a very obliging lizard. I have a thing for lizards, and every time we saw one on our trip I made Cuny stop so I could take half a dozen pictures of it from different angles.

Back at camp that evening we fired up our borrowed cook stove and boiled water for dinner. When I was planning the meals for our trip, I was a bit puzzled. I've been on lots of camping trips and back-packing trips with my family, and I've eaten lots of camp meals from simple to luxurious, but never as a vegan. I knew I wanted to keep things simple, things that could be cooked with boiling water. Nothing that would require us to borrow a propane burner and bring a fry pan and wash lots of dishes. But things like cup of noodles weren't an option because they all use some kind of animal product in their broths. Since space was limited in the car, I didn't want to bring a cooler, so anything that required refrigeration was out. Throw in the fact that Cuny is a picky eater, and I was a bit stuck. I had stocked up on lots of good trail mixes and oatmeal, and was contemplating just eating that for three meals a day and bringing other stuff for Cuny. I wandered down the aisles, reading ingredient list after ingredient list, squinting at the fine print and getting discouraged, when I found the answer. There, on the Macey's store shelves, were upscale dehydrated soups with promising sounding flavors that were clearly marked VEGAN. Bless their souls. No ingredient list hunting, no wondering if the fancy calcium blah blah blah on the ingredient list was ground up bones, if the food dye was crushed up beetles, if the riboflavin came from a cow. They were expensive, $5 for one, but the convenience of a decent, vegan meal that required only boiling water was well worth the price.

So, after a meal of udon, we watched the full moon rise up into the sky next to Watchman. It was an incredible sight. We played cards and ate oreos and did our best to stay awake, but we were fast asleep by about nine o'clock. The next day we had to drive the 8+ hours to Tucson, so we only did two short hikes. We saw the Emerald Pools, and from there went to Weeping Rock. This is when my lizard obsession began to get out of hand. On the trail from the Emerald Pools to the Grotto, the next shuttle stop, there were TONS of lizards! And they were all different kinds, which meant I had to stop and take pictures of ALL of them.

The water falling into Lower Emerald Pools

Getting dripped on by Weeping Rock.

Lizard!

Lizard!!

Lizard!!!!

More Lizaard! There were more, but Cuny stopped letting my take pictures of them. :(

After Weeping Rock we headed back to the car and prepared to say good bye to Zion. But first, we had to drive through the tunnels. These tunnels were built in the 1930s, blasted through the rock, and are unlit. The longest is over a mile and occasionally opens out into spectacular views of the red rock. It was a very fitting way to exit Zion.

So we drove, and we drove, and we drove, and we stopped sometimes for food (mostly Subway for me, their white bread is vegan), and we finally arrived at Cuny's dad's house. There we unloaded all of his stuff and crashed for the night. The next day we hung out in Tucson, went to the climbing gym, got Eegees, ate at a fantastic vegan Chinese restaurant, and took a walk in the Sonoran Desert. The next morning it was time for me to go. This was Cuny's and my fourth trip to Tucson, but this time he wouldn't be joining me on the return trip. I'd be driving the 12-13 hours by myself, and when I got back to Utah I would be skate buddyless, and my best friend and partner in crime for the last two years would be gone. We packed my stuff back in my car, much emptier now, made plans to skate when he comes to Utah to visit in a few months, shared a good long hug, and then I headed out on my own.

And I drove, and I drove, and I drove. And I ate leftover trailmix and cookies and stopped at Subway again. I drove through cities and multiple deserts, through cloudless skies and a violent thunderstorm. I drove through a beautiful sunset, and as the last bits of light were fading from the cloudy sky, I pulled wearily into my apartment parking lot. Unbent my aching legs, and staggered up the stairs with my stuff. The trip was over. The Last Hurrah had been Hurrahed.

Quick Update

2011-06-12T22:57:00.001-06:00

Since I last wrote I've been to Idaho, been climbing a few different places, took the Praxis test, and managed to have a weekend full of more social activity and small talk than I'm used to. This week holds a road trip. We'll hit up Zion National Park tomorrow and Tuesday morning, then continue on down to Tucson Tuesday night. In Tucson we will unload Cuny and all his stuff, hang out for a day or two skateboarding, climbing, and enjoying the desert, and then I will drive back on my own. I can't believe my skate coach is leaving, moving away forever. Who will motivate me to skate now? Who will push me to try potentially dangerous things? Who will know my skating abilities well enough to be able to tell I'm making progress when it looks like I'm just doing the same thing over and over again? Sigh. Skating by myself will not be as fun.

Here are some pictures from my one week dread anniversary. They're coming along nicely.

Look! They don't stick straight up anymore!

In another three weeks, I might be able to take out the rubber bands.

They actually look much better than I thought they wood. I expected to look hideous during this stage.
Instead I look only slightly strange. I'm down with that.

When I saw this picture I said to myself, "You're hair looks like chicken poop!" Seriously.
And I should know. I raised chickens as a child.

All dressed up for fun.

Loose Ends

2011-06-07T09:14:00.000-06:00

Like a million little doorways
All the choices we made
All the stages we passed through
All the roles we played

For so many different directions
Our separate paths might have turned
With every door that we opened
Every bridge that we burned.

There are choices I have made in my life that I wish had turned out differently. There are things I regret of course, stupid things I did that I wish I could take back, but those aren't the choices I'm thinking about this rainy morning. I'm thinking about the legitimate, honest choices that we make, perfectly reasonable or viable, but that do close doors and let other opportunities slip by. As I sit in my chair in the living room of the house I grew up in, watching the rain and wind play in the branches of the trees I used to climb up in to think when I was little, I'm pondering those opportunities I missed. I'm wondering if there was something I should have done differently, if one of those decisions that was a mistake.

But honestly, each of those decisions was the right one at the time. The right decision for who I was and what I needed. What else could I have done? As I search through my memory for which decision it was that I should regret, I come up blank. I either wasn't ready or didn't want those opportunities when I had the chance: I made those decisions for a reason. If you put me back in the same situation feeling the same way, I'd probably make the same decision all over again. In the book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Aslan tells Lucy that he never tells anyone what would have happened "if." What would have happened if...I had gone on a mission? I had gone to a different college? I had never dated that one boy four years ago? What if I'd never broken up with that one boy six years ago? What would have happened if I had quit teaching after my first year and gone to Japan? What if I hadn't hung up before the phone was answered that one time three years ago? What if I'd been a music teacher instead of English? What if I'd stayed in Blackfoot instead of leaving? What if? All pointless questions. The truth is I wouldn't take it back. The only real regrets I have are that I wish I had known myself better at some of those junctures so that I wouldn't have had to learn so many lessons the hard way. But I needed those experiences.

So there's nothing I'd change, no decision I'd reverse, but listening to the damp wind blow through the pines I still wonder, what if? What should I have changed? There was and is no way to get all the experiences I had, plus all the experiences and opportunities I missed. That's just not how life works. We make decisions, we gain some things, lose others. But this quiet morning, in a house in a town both filled with the accumulated memories of my life, I wish I could reach back across those years and take a few of those lost things with me. It's impossible. But it's a good morning for what if.

Like a million little crossroads
Through the backstreets of youth
Each time we turn a new corner
A tiny moment of truth

For so many different connections
Our separate paths might have made
With every door that we opened
Every game we played.

("Ghost of a Chance." Rush.)

Dread Heads are Made, Not Born

2011-06-05T11:15:00.001-06:00

Friday evening finally came. It ended up being a smaller party than expected. Di, Trent, and Cuny were the only ones who were there all evening. My friend Kirsten came for a bit, and one of my visiting teachers came by and helped for half an hour, which pretty much makes her the coolest VT ever. The first hour (5-6) was mostly spent giving people directions to my place, cooking and eating the pizza, and watching the how to video for the dreads multiple times. On a side note, I got to eat pizza! I ordered Papa Murphy's, and when I looked at their ingredient list, I realized I could totally do a cheeseless pizza from them. So I loaded it up with tomato sauce and veggies, and you know what? It was delicious. I'm definitely doing that again.

After growing my hair out my natural color for nine months,
it's finally time to see if I have enough.

At about six o'clock, the work began. Because the boys were scared of ruining my hair, the task of sectioning fell entirely on Di. She is, in fact, the hero of this whole story. One of the dreadlocks videos I watched online quipped that the idea that you only needed "one good friend" to do your dreads "sounds like a great way to lose one really good friend." Luckily, Di is a pretty resilient friend. The sectioning of my hair took and hour and a half, maybe two. During this time I took a lot of pictures because I was excited and bored and wanted to document the process. You can check out the facebook album for the complete photographic tour of the evening.

Sectioning? Isn't that a girl thing?

Early sectioning.

All that tugging on my hair may have had a detrimental effect on my sanity.

All that tugging on my hair my have had a detrimental effect on HER sanity, too.

After the sectioning, the actual dreading could begin. First I sprayed my head with the "locking accelerator," which is a mixture of sea salt and yucca extract. Then Trent and Di got to work. Cuny provided the music when we weren't watching TV, and he even ran to the grocery store to get a fresh supply of snacks when they were needed. Trent or Di would have to tell you what it's like to give someone dreads, I saw very little of the process. But I can tell you that it takes forever. I can tell you that the people doing it get bored, that their necks and backs start to hurt from hunching over your seemingly endless head. Trent apparently didn't know that he was going to be helping when he showed up, but he stayed until we finished for the night anyway, cracking jokes and making us laugh. Putting dreads in is definitely a bonding experience. We compared it to monkeys grooming each other and girls putting each other's hair in rag curlers at girls camp, only longer.

Being the one getting the dreads is probably the easiest role to play, but you want to have some pain killer handy. It's not that they're pulling on you head that hard, it's just that having two or three people tugging on small sections of your hair over and over and over in two different directions for hours, all over your head, from the small hairs on the back of your neck, to the ones at your temples, will begin to hurt. Your head will pretty dang sore afterwards. If the actual backcombing doesn't irritate your scalp enough, there's always the palm rolling, where you grab a dread and roll it back and forth between your hands to tighten and smooth it. This has to be done to every single one, and I've got about a hundred.

As the hours passed, we talked, Cuny played guitar, we watched Doctor Who, we watched Say Yes to the Dress, we watched several episodes of The IT Crowed, and I ate a lot of oreos. At around midnight, we decided that this was going to be a longer battle than we had thought, and that we were going to have to stop for the night. Trent and Di put bands on the top and bottom of each dread (more tugging and pulling), we took a few pictures, and the two saints of friends left. Di had to drive 45 minutes home, and Trent had come all the way from Park City to help out. They had been there for seven hours. My head was about half-done.

As for me, I looked at my head, half newly made, fuzzy and waxy dreads, half floppy sections of loose hair. It was definitely time for a bandanna. The bandanna also made it easier to sleep, because it kept the dreads from getting moving around and tugging on my sore head while I slept. The next morning I got up and carefully waxed and palm rolled all the dreads I had so far. The night before I'd been too tired to do more than a cursory waxing and rolling, so I spent an hour or so giving each dread some attention. Then I went rock climbing up the canyon with a few friends, hiding my crazy hair under a bandanna, that most useful of all accessories.

It actually doesn't look too bad. Praise Bandannas!

After rock climbing, I played some video games. That's how you know school is over: I have time to play video games. It'd been months since I so much as played a round of Mario Kart. After the veg time, I was ready to go for round two. I drove up to Di's house this time, and she and I settled in to work again. From about 6:30 to 11:00, she dreaded by herself. She'd do a few dreads, band them, and then she'd take a quick break while I waxed and rolled them. Then we'd repeat. It was actually really good to have hours to just sit and talk about whatever. Di's been one of my best friends since fifth grade, and it's been years since we got to hang out on a regular basis. Having her only 45 minutes away means that after 7 years of being hundreds of miles apart, she can come over for Pi Day, I can come over for America's Next Top Model, and we can spend hours putting dreads on my head. Her cats may actually stand a chance of remembering who I am now.

Around eleven or eleven thirty, when we were getting pretty tired and a little discouraged because there were still twenty dreads or more left to do, Di's housemate Nick came home. Nick also gets one million awesome points for his help. He jumped right in, learned fast, and the two of them got the rest done in only an hour. At 12:30, I started waxing and rolling the final few dreads. Then, after a grand total of about 13 hours of work by my friends, the dreads were finally done.

They stuck out in all directions, including straight up. This, plus the late hour, the elation of being finally done, contributed to some strange pictures. I love my dreads. They're bizarre, fuzzy, and demanding little dreads. I need to put in an hour or so of work on them this morning, and when I go to wash them in a day or two, I'll probably need to set aside more than that for maintenance. They're going to look incredibly dorky for at least a month, goofy for two, and hopefully they'll start to not be embarrassing by the end of the third. Not only that, but my head is really, really tender today, and palm rolling is going to be an hour long bummer. But you know something? I love them anyway. I'm already proud of them. I already think that they look awesome. I don't know if the wonderful friends who spent over a dozen hours on my hair think it's worth it, but I can tell you that at this point, tender head, fuzziness, waxiness, and 13 hours of sitting later, I'd do it all over again without hesitation. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I'm obsessed. But I'm happy.

And I've got dreads.

Finishing the Run

2011-06-02T15:02:00.001-06:00

I've been working hard lately. I didn't go on the climbing trip of my dreams over Memorial Day weekend for three reasons: First, neither Allie nor Cuny wanted to go and I didn't want to ditch them on our one shared vacation. Second, Allie and I both were recovering from colds, and three days of camping and hard climbing was probably not a good idea for my convalescent self. Third, I had grading to do. Lots of it. I literally had boxes and piles several feet high of papers and journals waiting for my attention like millstones hung around my subconscious.

Teaching does that. It gets into your subconscious and slowly fills it with obligations, responsibilities, and all important things to do. After the first few weeks of the year, you get into the rhythm of the days. Preparing lessons, teaching, grading, solving the millions of mini-crises brought to you each day, fitting all other parts of life around the mountain of teaching. Then, these last few weeks, as piles of paper accumulate and my curriculum runs dry and I have to create lessons for three different subjects out of thin air, the sprint began. You all know the feeling of the sprint at the end of the run. You're tired, your feet are complaining, your legs are turning to mud, and the only way you can convince yourself to sprint that last stretch is that it will mean you will be able to stop sooner. From somewhere inside your sweaty frame, you squeeze out a little bit more stamina, with all the grace of squeezing out the last bit of ketchup from the sputtering bottle. Your plodding feet plod a little louder and a little faster. After about a block your biggest fear is that you're going to trip, throw up, or that your heart is going to ooze out your nose. All your concentration is on getting to that self-imposed finish line, the random bit of sidewalk you picked as the point where you can begin to walk. You long to walk like a wilting plant for water. Then, when you get there, despite the fact that all you've been longing to stop with all your might, the action of stopping causes you to stumble. You have to force yourself to walk and your body panics, trying to slow down the pace, unable to accept the run is over.

That's what the end of the year is. You've been running for 179 days of school, nine months, 36 weeks, with only a few short water and bathroom breaks along the marathon break. Then comes the sprint at the end. The final projects, the clean out, the mountains and mountains of late work streaming in from every student's backpack. Wearily you jettison the parts of your life you enjoy (skating, climbing, cooking, and sleeping) and work a little faster. You grade through a weekend, you grade until nine p.m. on a week night.

Then suddenly, you pass that mark on the sidewalk. The students cheerily wave good bye and disappear in a cloud of paper bits and too much Axe body spray. The grading is done, the late work is done, and all that's left is loose ends: cleaning off your desk to find any last stray assignments, getting your checkout form signed by the financial secretary, going to the faculty lunch, and cleaning the snack food out of your desk before it goes bad for the summer. Your hamster wheel has abruptly, impossibly, run out of wheel. The to-do list has an end.

Tomorrow is the last day of school. The students only go to their first period classes, and I have prep that period, so I won't even see any students. I've trying to keep up so hard that the end of the year has completely snuck up on me mentally. My habit-conditioned brain isn't sure what comes next. My shoulders feel lighter as the invisible millstones I forgot I was carrying evaporate without warning. 24 hours from now, school will be over. I will set my own schedule, be responsible for only myself and my own time, and do whatever I want. It's exciting and disorienting. It's going to take me a while to adjust to a new pace of life, to find a new rhythm and habit.

Of course, I'm sure the dreads will help. 26 hours until the commencement of the Dread Party. To my surprise, school is all but out, I get dreads tomorrow, and summer is here. I'm surprised, disoriented, and thoroughly delighted.

One Week!

2011-05-27T17:03:00.001-06:00

Seven days until one of the best days of the year.

One day of listening to presentations and then grading papers.
A Saturday of grading papers.
A Sunday of not grading papers.
A Monday of maybe some adventure and grading some papers.
A Tuesday of not really teaching and grading papers.
A Wednesday of not really teaching and grading papers.
A Thursday of really, really, really not teaching and hopefully all the papers will be graded.

And then. and then... and then... THE DAY!! The double celebration of the last day of school and D-DAY will begin. The students are only going to be at the school for about an hour and a half, and they're only heading to their first period class. Normally this is sort of a pain, but, wouldn't you know it, I got lucky enough to have first period prep! That means I don't have ANY students the last day of school. I get to spend the time entering grades, cleaning my room, and mentally checking out (if it's possible to get any more checked out than I already am).

Then, I get out at about two. I rush home, I pick up donuts (requests?), I pick up soda (requests?), I pace around the apartment waiting for my friends who want to dread my hair to get off of work, I order pizza (requests?), I take a shower, I compulsively rearrange the furniture, I fret, I take a few last pictures of unknotted hair, I pace, I lay out every item of my dreadlocks kit, I watch the how to video, again...And then...the dreading begins!!!

For those of you interested in helping with, observing, or simply mocking, show up at my place next Friday. The festivities begin at five, and continue until we're done. Anyone's welcome, just send me a text, drop me a comment, facebook me, or send a flare. They'll be food, movies, and the proud knowledge that someday, when my dreads look awesome, you were responsible for their beginning.

Vegan Day Three: The Social Not-Eater

2011-05-26T15:44:00.001-06:00

I have now been vegan for over 50 hours, and I've already been offered several tasty things I can't eat. I think that's going to be the hardest part of this whole vegan "adventure." When someone brings cookies to work, I can't have any. When a student offers me homemade baklava, I had to turn it down. Today there were sugar cookies and donuts and chocolate cookies all available at work, and I munched on my carrot sticks, consoling myself by trying to muster up some feeling of superiority. My superiority's pretty thin, however, since I've only been vegan for two and a half days and I don't think your diet is a good reason to feel superior to anyone anyway. Vegans are better people in my mind, just more dedicated to an ideal most of us don't feel passionately about.

The only other hiccup in my vegan paradise has been the lack of chocolate and readily available dessert. I've found a way around part of this problem by resurrecting a favorite dessert from childhood: cinnamon toast. I can't use butter, so I slather my vegan bread (I had to go to two stores to find vegan bread! Stop putting honey in every single loaf people! You're starving me!) with a little olive oil, then generously pour on the sugar, and then add a few dashes of ground cinnamon. Pop it into the toaster oven for a few seconds and presto! Dessert!

The inability to eat 99% percent of what people bring to share makes me feel both sad and guilty, however. What do I do for the end of year faculty luncheon? Pack my own sandwich and drink the soda? What if I get asked on a date? Do I explain that I can't eat anything, and offer to make him dinner? Gandhi used to pack his own food or just go hungry if there was no food available that he didn't consider immoral/unwise to eat. Since my veganism has only a dash of morality behind it, I find the prospect of watching all my coworkers eat while going hungry, or making a first date suddenly very awkward and giving him the impression I'm a rabid hippie.

On the flip side, the inability to eat 99% of processed food means that I'm going to be eating a whole lot more homemade items. It's easy to make vegan bread, mustard, dessert, and meals. It's a pain to buy them. It surprised me to find out that there were a lot of animal products that weren't dairy or meat in most foods you pick up off the shelf. Riboflavin, for example, is in just about everything and is usually derived from animals. Carmine Red is made from crushed up beetles.

Other than hunting for vegan bread and refusing food others offer me, I've enjoyed my first three days of being vegan. I'm looking forward to the next 37 days of dietary adventure.

The Immoral Vegetarian Goes a Step Further

2011-05-24T11:30:00.001-06:00

Every year, my sister asks me what my New Year's resolutions are, and every year, I sort of mumble through an answer about all the improvements I'd like to make. You know, the ones I'm always muddling my way through in a vague sort of way. I'm not much of a New Year's resolution maker. I could make up all sorts of excuses for this. I could say that I don't like the idea of making a new start once a year instead of continually. I could say that, as a teacher, New Year's always feels like the middle of the year and not the beginning to me, and I'm far more likely to make goals over the summer for the next school year than I am for the calendar year. I could say that setting up a pass/fail goal is a silly idea, because once you fail (around February), you're done for the year with a goal that should have been the subject of continued progress. The actual truth about why I don't usually make New Year's resolutions probably lies somewhere along the lines of I forget, it takes too much effort, and the dilemma of what goals to set. If I set grand goals, I set myself up for failure, which is lame. If I make easy goals I know I'll reach, then I feel like I'm cheating. So every year I keep my vagaries, thank you very much.

But not this year. This year, when my sister asked the familiar question about my goals, I was armed and ready. This year I actually embarked on some measurable, definable, goals. These goals I have, for the most part, managed to keep going. One of these goals was to be a vegetarian. I've been a vegetarian before, but it's different this time. Before, I was a strict vegetarian for one month, mostly because a friend had dared me. Now I've been a non-strict vegetarian for five months all on my own. Notice the key word there, non-strict. Since I'm not going vegetarian for moral reasons about cruelty to animals, I don't feel the need to be strict about it. I'm an amoral vegetarian. An immoral one? Whatever, a vegetarian for non-moral reasons. I'm vegetarian out of a general concern for what the meat industry does to our planet, what eating that much meat does to our health, and a belief that when the Lord said to eat meat sparingly or in times of famine (D&C 89), he meant it. So my policy for the last five months has been pretty casual. If I make it or buy it for myself, I will make a genuine effort to make sure it's vegetarian. If someone else is cooking or buying, or if Allie and I are putting together a roommate dinner or something, then I let it go. I try not to even say anything. I figure that unless I'm allergic to something, no one needs to work around my food preferences. Sometimes I refer to myself as a "non-annoying" vegetarian.

http://www.topnews.in/people/mahatma-gandhi

I've liked this lifestyle. But I'm still eating too much meat. And while I'm eating too much meat, I'm also reading Gandhi's autobiography, during which he takes about a hundred pages to talk about food. He tried several different diets for various health or spiritual reasons, and for most of his life he ate only fruits and nuts. He placed so much faith in vegetarianism and veganism that he frequently went against doctors' orders to consume dairy or meat products for his or his family's health. He placed his life on the line for his dietary beliefs on more than on occasion. He also makes a lot of intriguing arguments for a diet of restraint and self-control.

I am ready to experiment. I'm not going rabidly vegan. I'm not joining PETA or protesting chicken farmers or lecturing other people on their evil, animal-killing ways. But, just for me personally, I'm going to give it a try. I'm going vegan. Gandhi at one point urges his readers to experiment to find what will best benefit them, and I'm going to take him up on it. This will be an experiment only for now. When it's over, I'll go back to my non-annoying vegetarianism, and will probably settle somewhere into non-annoying veganism. But for the next little while I'm going to be strictly vegan in the food I consume (I'm not going to through away my leather shoes or my dread wax, though).

I was going to go vegan for a month, but then I decided to be more biblical about it and go for 40 days. My 40 days begins today, and will last until July 2nd. I'm making this public, so that I have to be accountable to at least the five people who read my blog. I'll report back to you with the complaints, realizations, and any great spiritual transformations that happen along the way.

Day One. I go vegan. Geronimo!

Dirty Hippie Burn-out Bum

2011-05-22T11:31:00.001-06:00

Or

Why I Want Dreads Part 2

After my initial attraction to dreads, years passed, and I didn't give them much thought. And I have to admit, that when I first looked into them as an adult it was on one of those "Ugh! I swear I'm going to just shave my head so I never have to do my hair again!" days. Then it struck me that dreads were a good compromise. I'd never have to do anything with my hair, but I'd still have hair! It'd be like a living wig!

Then I did a whole bunch of real world research and realized they took effort, especially at first. I saw that some people had really gross-looking dreads. But then there were others who had beautiful dreads, and I just wasn't sure which category I'd be in if I tried it. It was like chopping off all of my hair, something I'd wanted to do for years, but that I'd never have the guts to do because I thought you either looked good like that or you didn't, and there was no way to know ahead of time which one you were going to be.

But then I DID cut my hair, and I did dye it crazy colors, and now I DO have the guts. And, despite knowing how much work they are, and despite there being the risk that they are going to look ghastly, I'm willing, eager, champing at the bit, to get dreads.

Because I love them. Plain and simple. Most people I know don't really like dreads, but I must be missing that gene or have an extra hole in my head because I think that they are wonderful. I think they can look cool, attractive, sexy, neato, classy, different, and awesome. There are gross dreads out there, but I'm willing to take a chance that mine won't be among them.

They're a commitment, I get that. They take guts, I understand. But you know what? I'm into doing things that force me to have guts and commit to stuff right now. The person I always wanted to be wouldn't be afraid to have dreads. She'd go right out and get them regardless of the fact that her mother pretty much said she wouldn't be attracting any men this year. I want to be that strong, fearless girl. I think I'm going to love the dreads. I think I have the personality to carry them off, and to ignore the fact that every one in conservative Utah is going to think I'm crazy, especially the parents of my students. As Johnny Clean, spokesman for DreadheadHQ, said "Dreads are different, and the people who wear them are different."

I stole this picture from a friend's blog. Maybe someday I'll have dreads like that.

That's the dream. That's the plan. Are you ready for The Insecurity? The Insecurity says that they're going to look awful. Mair hair is still above collar length, and the dreads are going to make it shorter. I'll barely have a couple inches of dreads, a sort of white-girl dread-fro. For the first month there will be elastics in my hair, I'll look ridiculous, and it will take years of looking goofy and weird before the dreads look good. Then, perhaps worse, The Insecurity whispers that I'm going to look like I'm trying too hard. Like I'm some wanna be hippie who thinks a hairstyle will make her be unique and interesting.

But however this adventure turns out. I am not getting dreads because I'm a "dirty hippie burned out bum." I'm getting because I love them. As much as my hair has been driving me nuts during this growing out process, I've celebrated every millimeter of length to add to my dreads.

The last question I get from people is, "What are you going to do when school starts in the fall?" I'm going to keep the dreads. I've already cleared it with my principal. I'm committed to them for at least a year. They may last for much longer than that, I don't know yet. But I'm going to "give it the old college try."

D-Day is in 12 days.

How I Got This Way

2011-05-21T07:34:00.002-06:00

Or

Why I Want Dreads Part 1

The story of why I want dreads begins in February 2001. It was the first time I saw someone wearing dreadlocks, and I think that first impression has colored the rest of my experience with them. (Which means, unfortunately, that if your first impression of them was awful, you will probably hate mine by default. Sigh. Nothing I can do there.) I was a freshman in high school, fourteen years old, and at a debate tournament. I was doing a duo interp of a scene from Jane Eyre with a friend of mine. At the age of 14, I nearly believed that I was Jane Eyre. The plain Quakeress, firm and quiet and resolute, was my hero. At the tournament, all of the contestants were dressed up: ties, skirts, suits, shined shoes, and best behavior. A decade later and as a teacher, I think we probably looked adorable, a lot like when little kids wear tuxedos for weddings, but at the time we all felt very grown up and professional.

Except for my hoodie (I had already changed out of my suit),
this is what we looked like at debate tournaments.

As Jack and I went to our second or third round of the day, one of the teams of actors we were up against (interp is primarily an acting event) caught my eye. Well, one of the contestants caught my eye, and not just because he was cute. He was neatly dressed in a suit and had the careful posture we all were sporting that day, but he also had dreads. They weren't long and dramatic; they were short, ear length or shorter. What drew me to them is the way they paired with the suit to form a unique balance of professional and personality. I got the same impression from those dreads that I got when watching one year's Miss America contest when I was probably seven. We were sort of watching it by accident, having found it while flipping through the four channels we had to see what was on. My sisters, mother, and I watched as all of the contestants strolled out on the stage like princesses in their evening gowns. There were lots of pastel colors (early 90s) and bare shoulders and low necklines and big blond hairdos. Then came one contestant who walked onto the stage with a big, genuine smile, brown hair in a sleek up-do, and a bright, neon green dress with sleeves. My mom and both of my older sisters took one look at her and said, with obvious respect, "That girl's got spunk." Looking from my older sisters and my mother to the screen, the little girl that I was, who had never read Jane Eyre, immediately wanted to have "spunk," too.

I got the same feeling when I visited Arizona last year and saw Saguaro cactus growing out of a rock in the desert. "Wow, that's spunk," and then, "I want to be that tough and determined." I looked at that kid's hair and instantly fell in love with it. At the time of that debate tournament I had no idea what dreads were. I just knew that the boy's unusual but somehow fitting hairstyle had that mysterious spunk that I was always on the watch for. Later, when I asked Jack what you called that hair style, he laughed at me and told me that I had just seen dreads for the first time.

It may surprise those who haven't known me since I was a preteen, but I didn't have much obvious spunk. I was extremely conservative in person and dress. The me I am now was in there, my friends can tell you I was just as random and weird then as I am now, but it was buried in there pretty deep. It took me until my junior or senior year to feel comfortable wearing a hoodie to school; I thought they were sloppy and too casual. When I was a freshman in college I saw a girl wearing tie for a belt. I thought that was awesome and bought a second hand tie to wear as a belt myself. It sat in my closet for months waiting for me to get up the guts to tie it on and walk out the door. It took me until I was 20 years old to have the chutzpah to get the perm I had wanted to try for years. Before the perm, the most daring thing I'd ever done with my hair was to get bangs and cut it to shoulder length with layers. There's a reason that, when I started wearing skulls and crossbones, the first bit of pirate-themed stuff I bought was underwear. It wasn't to be sexy; it was because no one would see it. I was way into pirates, but didn't have the guts to wear it on the outside.

The perm that made me feel like a rebel.

As the years passed, I started to get the hang of who I was and who I wanted to be and how to let all the parts of my personality show, the Quakeress and the hippie and the punk and the 5-year-old-little girl. It helped to have friends just as quirky and unique who never seemed to be afraid to wear or say whatever their whims prompted to them. Friends like Di, Anna, Lina, Amanda, and many others gave me examples of people who could wear whatever they wanted and have nobody care, because their personalities were more charismatic and eye-catching than the pixie cut, the crazy clothes, the shaved head, or the pink Mohawk could ever hope to be. Gradually, I experimented on my own. I wore huge skulls plastered on my back, I wore gypsy skirts to church, I wore feather necklaces, I wore knee high argyle socks under my dress pants. I cut my hair into the pixie cut I'd been coveting since I was 12, and then I dyed it red, black, blonde, copper red, purple, and back to brown in a year's time. When my puzzled mother asked if I was going through an identity crisis, I honestly said that it felt more like I finally gotten so comfortable with who I was that I could wear whatever the heck I dreamed up and it wouldn't change who I was.

So. That brings us up to the present day. All of that long back story is to tell you that after a journey that long, I am triumphantly making things happen now. I am systematically going through the the wishes and whims and crazy ideas I've always harbored but lacked the guts to implement. If a wish isn't harmful or wrong in some way, I'm making it happen. I'm actively going after the things I want, and having dreads is on the list. After taking that many years to get to this point of confidence, I am very attached to doing these things I always believed myself to be incapable of doing.

"So why dreads?" you may be asking. What is it about them that captured your imagination so permanently? Well, the answers to that are many and they range from the shallow and superficial to the personal and unpost-on-my-bloggable. Which means you'll probably end up with an overdose of the shallow reasons and conclude that I, and my dreads, are rather pathetic and shallow. Who knows, maybe you're right. But, looking at the length of this post, you'll have to be right another day. I'll talk about dreads specifically in an up and coming post within the week, promise no crossies.

I Got Googled

2011-05-19T15:42:00.000-06:00

Since I started posting on my blog more, I have begun almost compulsively checking my blog stats. How many people read which blogs? What times of day do my friends read blogs? What search terms draw someone to my blog? etc. How on earth do those random hits pop up? Most of my readers by far are in the US, but then they're the outliers. Then there's the speculation about the outliers, is someone from Malaysia really that attached to my blog, or am I being spammed? I usually figure it's spam.

Well, this week I got googled. It was Dread Info #3 that did it. Suddenly that sucker has 50 views. That's twice as many as any post I've ever written. That's about five or six times the number of views my usual post gets. Look at my traffic sources, most of them are from different versions of google from around the world. People in Canada, the United Kingdom, India, Australia are all getting google results that include my blog. Goodness knows what search terms their using that lead them to that blog. Samson? Dread information? Six of them found my blog by searching for "Egyptian art." It makes me laugh.

Hello, lost cyber-searchers. These probably aren't the posts you were looking for. But welcome anyway.

On a side note, here's a link to the-burning-house.com, a website that asked people to post a picture of what they would take with them if the house was burning down. It's actually really intriguing, and the photography's good, too.

Another First for Miss E.

2011-05-18T11:54:00.001-06:00

I gave two of my students the link to my blog today. I dont' know how I feel about that. I've never intended this blog to be really private, but I've also never intended it to be a public, award-winning blog either. This is still mostly a forum in which I use blogging to keep friends involved in my life, practice my writing, and write out and define my own thoughts. Having students here means I might question what I say when I talk about students or student work, blog during class (guilty secret), or be all honest and vulnerable about my ideas or my life.

I wavered back and forth for five minutes or so before giving them the link. They're starting a blog of their own, after the style of the ones we've been reading in The Gospel According to Larry, and I want to welcome them into the blogging world and community. They trusted me with the link to their blog, shouldn't I return the gesture of good faith? Besides, haven't I been working to turn this blog into a slightly bigger deal? Posting more and more often? Linking to it on my facebook? Becoming an active blogger? I read the blogs of other teachers who have students read their blogs, and the world hasn't ended. And I've only heard about one lawsuit regarding what teachers say on their blogs...That's not a happy thought.

But really, I don't insult or rant about students on here, right? I share the occasional, humorous story with the names changed, and I think I've shared a few haiku and funny quotes from papers. Besides, what are they going to find out me they haven't learned from spending hours a week listening to me ramble on? By the end of the year, my students and I have spent more time together and seen each other on a more consistent basis than a lot of friends I made in college. They're going to find out that I'm getting dreads, that I'm taking classes for history and GT, and that I have had boyfriends and sometimes still do. Big deal, right? So, whether they every read my blog or not, I've opened up the possibility.

My students could be here. Any moment. Watching you. Watching me. Watching...

Dread Info #3

2011-05-16T13:59:00.001-06:00

The ancient Egyptians wore dreads.
And, if their art is to believed, they looked pretty good.
http://mihomeschool.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Egyptian%20Princess.jpg

I decided to stop calling this series of posts Dread Myths, since I'll probably end up confirming some of what you've heard. I'm also going to start posting info as I think of it instead of very systematically. Since we've covered the basics, how they're made and why they don't make you smell bad, I figure I can do this. (If you missed them, check out Dread Myth #1 and Dread Myth #2 for the basic info on dreadlocks.)

So let's start with the questions I've been asked. The first was about the name "dreadlocks." According to wikipedia and some other websites I checked out (who probably got their info from wikipedia anyway), referring to the knotted cords of hair as "locks" has been pretty universal for a couple hundred years. (Dreads are pretty old, thousands of years. There's speculation that Sampson had them. There are even a few brave souls that claim that Christ had them. But I'll just say they've been around forever and have been worn by people of just about every major religion and culture at one time or another.) The "dread" part, as near as I can discover, comes from the Rastafarian religion. The locks were a symbol of a promise to live in awe and dread of the Lord. Eventually they became known as "dreadlocks," or simply "dreads," or, if you're the internet, "dreds," "dredz," or even "mah dreddies," which is about enough to make someone sick.

Numbers 6:5 "All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no ^arazor come upon his head: until the days be fulfilled, in the which he separateth himself unto the Lord, he shall be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow."
http://www.i-heart-god.com/images/Samson_Jawbone.jpg

The second question was about removing dreads from one's hair. The easiest method is to cut them off. But, contrary to popular belief, the internet assures me that cutting my hair off isn't my only option for when I decide to let go of my dreads. Several companies make some very intense conditioners and claim that if you let them sit in your hair for a long time, your locks can be untangled with a lot of patience. I assume you're hair doesn't exactly go back to silky smooth and straight afterwards, but it is, at least, still on your head. This also means that you could cut off all but the last few inches of your dreads and then untangle the remaining, leaving you with a manageable bob, instead of bald.

But, when it comes to my own hair, I think I'm far more likely to to lose my dreads than loose them. First of all, the inch or so of hair, closest to your skull usually isn't knotted anyway, so cutting your locks off would still leave you with at least an inch of hair. I've had an inch of hair before, and I liked it. Besides, back when I was trying to decide whether or not get dreads this summer, my other favorite option was to shave my head (all the way, BIC it completely). So if I end up cutting my hair off, I don't mind. If when the time comes I do mind, I'll detangle my dreads instead.

So there you have the answers. If anybody has more questions, post 'em in the comments and I'll get to them. otherwise you'll be subjected to more of my ramblings. I am working on a lengthy, probably philosophical post about why I personally want dreads, and I'll publish that as soon as it's ready.

Dread Myth #2

2011-05-13T11:14:00.001-06:00

For any of these Dread Myths, feel free to ask questions in the comments if there's information about dreads you want to know. I'll take responsibility for looking up the answer and reporting back to you. I'd hate to bore you with a whole lot of information you don't want to read, so your questions can help direct the next few blogs.

Dread Myth #2
How You Make Dreads

After I tell people I'm not going to get dreads by just not washing or brushing my hair (see Dread Myth #1), most people then ask if I'm going to braid it, put honey/glue/dirt/wax/etc. in it, tie it in knots, or twist it.

All of these methods can work, although some of them are more gross than others. Different methods of creating dreads work differently for different types of hair. The two strand twist method that looks so fantastic works best on African American hair, so that’s not an option for my super straight Pantene ProV style hair. What I will be doing (and what my friends who are coming to my dread party will be helping with) is backcombing. I’ll wash my hair, let it dry, and then begin the adventure. Because I want all the help and support I can get in making my own dreads, I purchased a kit from Dreadheadhq.com. This kit includes a few things like “lock peppa” and “lock accelerator” that I’ll put in my hair before I get started, I think they are supposed to make my hair have a bit more texture and not be so slippery.

dreadheadhq.com

Then my wonderful helpers and I will divide my hair into about 100 rubber-banded sections. Then we take these metal combs that came in my kit (you can use a regular rat tail comb, but they tend to break after a few dreads I guess) and gradually comb the hair towards the roots, forming a sort of cord/knot thing. That will take about an eternity. Then I’ll rub a small amount of wax onto each dread and work it in until it’s invisible. The wax is supposed to help hold the loose hair in place until it starts to knot on its own. After I’ve done that to all 100 dreads, I’ll palm roll all of them individually, and then maybe I can go to sleep.

Contrary to what I initially expected, dreads are not always a low maintenance hair style. Maintenance on dreads is actually really high the first few months. Every time I wash it I’ll have to rewax it, and I’ll probably spend a fair amount of time every day working in loose hairs, palm rolling, etc. Eventually the hair in the dreads will form much more secure knots and “lock up,” as it’s usually referred to. After two or three months the amount of maintenance drops off sharply as the dreads “mature.” It often takes about a year for dreads to fully mature, but when they do, you only have to spend about 10 minutes a week on them.

So there you have it. How I'm going to get dreads. No dirt, honey, or tying knots involved. Only three weeks and counting. Wanna Come Help?

That's Holy Miss E. to You, Puny Mortal!

2011-05-11T14:55:00.001-06:00

"Miss E., would you like to be a GOD in my World?" Poor soul, he said it so formally, and in such a loud voice, that the whole class stopped talking and started giggling. Then he started blushing.

"A goddess?" I corrected.

"Yeah," he said, clearly embarrassed by the eyes and amusement of the entire class.

"Goddess of what?" I always double check. I don't want to end up as the goddess of awful teachers, stupidity, or something unflattering. I don't mind being the goddess of torture or homework or teachers or English--I don't mind playing the villain, but I don't want to be insulted.

He stood there stammering for a moment under the double scrutiny of the class and his teacher, then his eyes fell on the boxes of crayons behind me. "Crayons!" he said, relieved.

"I'd love to be the goddess of crayons."

The class laughed and returned to their talking and working on their projects. They're making up their own mythologies (which explains how this conversation came about in the first place). As they returned to drawing their maps, I heard one remark, "That is the best pick up line ever!"

Recovering his confidence as he reached his desk, he began to enumerate on my powers as the goddess of crayons. I will have a magical crayon that can draw anything. If I want to draw "a magical pony horse," I could draw it and then ride away on it.

I have been many things over the years, including the Cabbage Avenger at one point (but that was in high school), but I think this is my first time as Evana, the Goddess of Crayons, wielder of the Crayon of Power.

Dread Myth #1

2011-05-10T07:59:00.001-06:00

I think I forget how much research I've done on dreadlocks. I started researching them years ago, and so I forget how common some of the common misconceptions about dreadlocks are. It always surprises me when I get a question from a friend that I thought everyone knew the answer to. Then I have to remind myself that I am the only one of my friends who's ever wanted dreads, so I'm the only one I should expect to know that stuff.

As this happens more an more often, I'm beginning to realize that, given the information all my friends and family have about dreads, they are going to be much more alarmed about what I'm doing. So, in order to foster the dissemination of correct information and an end to misconceptions about what I'm doing with my hair in a few weeks, I am going dispel a few of the most common myths about dreadlocks. I'll spare you all the minute details I've picked up through my obsession, but I'll try and communicate the gist of my research so you don't think I've gone crazy. Well, any crazier than I actually have.

Myth #1
You Get Dreads By Not Washing Your Hair...Ever...

Wrong. Well, you can get dreads that way, and some people still do, but they are becoming the minority. Dreads do not have to be dirty. They do not have to smell bad. I'll be dreading my hair clean--I'll shower right before we put them in. Then I'll continue to wash my hair multiple times a week (although probably not every day) for the duration of my time with dreads. My dreads will probably smell like shampoo, just like everybody else's hair.

"Neglect" dreads, formed by never coming your hair and washing it really really infrequently take a loooong time to fully form. Like a year. When they do form, they are irregular (and probably smelly), forming in all different sizes and at all different speeds. Let's be honest, I respect those dreads. Those are gonna have some serious personality, but it's not gonna be my personality. I can't stand to be that insanitary, and since I intend to continue to be a responsible professional and adult, I will be washing my hair. The "hands off" approach to dreads can also leads to your dreads eventually beginning to "congo," or to combine into mega dreads. Some people think this is awesome. I think it's gross.

This is an extreme example, but it's still gross.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/217/nappyhairna5.jpg/sr=1

So I will be actively dreading my hair (hence the dread party), and I'll be maintaining it afterwards. Purists, and there are a few out there, may feel like this is the sell-out way to get dreads, but I think the majority of dreadheads are beginning to move away from the smelly, hippie, all-natural stereotype. And thank heaven.

Disappearing Act

2011-05-06T15:33:00.000-06:00

Exactly four weeks until I get dreadlocks!! That's not what this post is about, but I couldn't resist. 28 days!

This post is going to sound a lot like bragging. It might be bragging, actually, but dang it I'm proud of myself! I'll keep it short so that you will only be mildly disgusted by my pride.

ahem.

I have disappeared.

Well, to be more specific, 15 pounds of me have disappeared since December. I'm lighter, I'm leaner, and by golly I am healthier than I was. I can bound up flights of stairs, touch my forehead to my knees with my legs straight, climb a V2, do 10 man-style push ups, keep my balance in some crazy yoga positions, and jump rope better than I have since I was 10.

My roommates and friends are sick of the following phrase:

My pants don't fit.

They don't! I shrunk out of the pants I bought this year, so I pulled out my old pants that were a trifle smaller. I wore those until they hung on me like sack cloth. Then I bought new pants. Now they don't fit either. I wore a pair of shorts yesterday that I never wore at all last summer. They were too small. Now I can slide them off with unbuttoning them.

Honestly, what I'm proud of isn't so much the actual weight loss, although I'm thrilled about that, but the fact that I did it. I said I could do it, and then I made it happen in short order. It took some work, some money, some dedication, and some doing of things I didn't always feel like doing, but I kept at it. Keeping at things is not something I'm usually good at. So I feel like this is not so much a victory over my waistline as it is a victory over my own character flaws. That's what I'm proud of, not that I conquered my body, but that I conquered my mind.

I should mention that my new size does have it's disadvantages. For example, my pants don't fit. Do you have any idea how much money I have spent on clothes in the last five months? I've kept my wardrobe light, not wanting to replace everything at once, and now the things I have replaced don't fit, either. Large amounts of my clothes are now rather sacky on me. Another disadvantage is that when I belay someone I can't keep my feet on the ground anymore. If they fall I go up six inches. Those extra 15 pounds were useful ballast that way.

For those of you who haven't already left this post in disgust, here is my 5 step recipe for success:

1. Find things you like to do that are physical exercise. It shouldn't be a punishment. I don't like to run, so I didn't. I went skateboarding, I went climbing, I joined a yoga studio. It helped a lot that exercise was fun for me. At the end of the day I didn't dread another of a strict and punishing regimen. Instead I thought, "I get to go rock climbing again tomorrow? Score!!"

2. Eat when you're hungry, not when you're bored. Don't eat after 8 p.m. You'll feel a lot like more like getting out of bed to go running or do yoga if you don't feel like an elephant crawled into your stomach and died. Give up dessert. If you can't give up dessert completely (and I usually can't), tell yourself you'll only take half of what you would usually take. If you eat it slowly, it still takes as long and you get the same amount of that yummy taste in your mouth.

3. Healthy snacks. Since you're exercising all the time, you're going to be hungry all the time. If you don't prepare ahead you'll head straight for the easy-to-access food that isn't so good for you. I have developed a pretty severe hummus addiction. I consume whole bags of celery, carrots, and peppers. I eat sprouts now.

4. Prioritize your exercise. Don't be afraid to put it before your work, your friends, and your chores. This will only make you a slight jerk hopefully. Most days I do it before I grade papers, often before I hang out with friends. "I'm sorry, I can't hang out because I'm off to go skateboarding by myself" feels weird the first few times you say it, and not getting your work done because you were rock climbing may feel like slacking, but hey, that's how you get healthy! You're just achieving a different goal than work at that moment. Your health is important. Indulge in it.

5. Speaking of indulging, you may need to spend some money. In my case, a lot of money. I can do that because I don't have a family to support. Besides, it's my health and happiness I'm investing in, right? Not to mention I'm picking up coordination, balance, and skills. So the yoga membership, the climbing membership, the membership at the local rec center, the new workout clothes (turns out you can't make it on one sports bra and one pair of sweats when you exercise twice a day), the new clothes when your old ones don't fit, and the gallons of hummus are all worth it. In my case I sold my iPod touch, and bought a shuffle and a classic. It's probably extravagant to have two iPods, but I use both of them every single day. I don't regret it at all.

And that's it. If you happen to have a lot of spare alone time (I did) and some spare money (sorry savings account), anybody can do it! What I mean is that I am lucky to be at stage in my life when I can do crazy things like this.

And I'm proud of myself.

Oops

2011-05-05T15:16:00.001-06:00

When I was in high school, I spent a lot of time with debaters. I was one, and I hung out with the other debaters at lunch, before and after school, and at the long weekend tournaments. Anytime I wasn't actively required to be somewhere else, I was in the debate room. In the debate room, one heard vocabularies that few high schoolers possessed, but there was one word that was used more often than any other by the debaters on my squad: Hooch. We called EVERYONE hooches. It could be a playful or a bitter thing. If you hadn't seen someone in a while it was appropriate to say something like, "I haven't seen you in forever, hooch! Where have you been?" If someone stole your chair at lunch, they were a chair hooch. If someone ate a fry when you weren't looking, they were a fry hooch. If you were really annoyed the tone of the word would change. When someone lied to you they were a hooch, when someone did something squirlly in a debate round they were a hooch. We called each other, friends and enemies, hooches at least a 100 times a day.

Years have passed, and I don't say hooch nearly as often as I used to, but today it came out. Unfortunately, it came out in the middle of class as I was describing the 9th labor of Hercules: "...basically, all of this happened because Hera's a HOOCH!" The two girls I was talking to nearly wet their pants they were laughing so hard. One's fake eyelashes were in serious danger of being cried off. Some of the other students asked me what it meant. Then some other students thought I had sworn. After much giggling, class got back underway.

Oops.

Student work:

2011-05-03T12:29:00.001-06:00

The task was to come up with a word that uses the suffix -ship and use the word in a sentence.

Although this student did successfully use a word that uses -ship, the resulting sentence was pretty funny:

"The craftsmanship of the statue was gastronomical."

I don't think that's what he meant, do you? :)

D-Day

2011-05-03T07:08:00.001-06:00

Two years ago, after school got out on the last day of school of my first year of teaching, I went and cut off my hair. My nearly elbow length, curly (permed) hair turned into the super short hair I'd been coveting since 6th grade. Now, the last day of school of my 3rd year of teaching is approaching, and it's time for drastic hair action once again. One month, only 31 days until D-Day. Not the original D-Day of course, that's technically 34 days away (June 6th). My D-Day is Dreadlocking Day. The day I get dreads. The day I've been talking about, researching, waiting for, and obsessing about for months now. I've talked about it (well, babbled actually. Saturday a friend of mine actually fell asleep on my couch while I gabbered on about it), dreamed about it, and blogged about it (three times, actually, for two years. One, Two, Three).

My plan/hope is to get dreads the evening of the last day of school, June 3rd. I've been telling myself I needed to tone down the obsession until my dreads were closer to reality--say, a month or so. Now that they are only a month away, I'm going to be unleashing it with full fury. I'm probably going to make the already annoying me look like a reasonable person. I ordered my dread kit on Saturday. I did spend $100, but getting dreads in a salon would cost at least four times that much, and the kit comes with enough supplies to help me finish and maintain my dreads for the next six months or so. (Dreads actually take three months to get mature, and about a year to really fully be finished). It should arrive this week or next so that I can begin to paw through it eagerly once a day until June 3rd. It's also time to begin to reread and review all the dreading tips, instructions, and videos I've already seen twice. It's time to begin mentally and physically prepping for my yet "unborn" dreadlocks. Is all of that really necessary? Probably not, but it gives me something to do while waiting impatiently for D-Day to come. It's time to actually begin over preparing and planning for my Dread Party.

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_T08ujz0D0Z0/SNbMawY8ONI/AAAAAAAABj0/EjqfeGXk6Uw/100_1814.jpg

The Dread Party is the recommended method getting dreads. Basically, you invite lots of friends over, provide instructions, all the supplies, plentiful food and entertainment (movies, etc., dreading can get boring), and get them to help you lock up your hair. Since dreading your hair can take hours, the more hands you have to help, the faster it goes. Luckily my hair is fairly short, so it shouldn't take more than several hours. (I've heard horror stories of 20 hours, but those from people who did by themselves, alone, and had very long hair.) With my very short hair, and a few friends, it shouldn't take more than four or so hours. Possibly less. Which brings me to the matter at hand, I need some friends to help. Anyone, male or female, bond or free. I'll happily provide pizza, soda, movies, and long-lasting gratitude to anyone who wants to come and help. The more people we have, the faster it will go, and the more fun it will be. Heck, if you want to show up that day just to hang out, eat food, take pictures, and heckle, you'd still be welcome to come. You do not need any prior experience with making dreadlocks. I don't have any, and no one there will have any either, I'm pretty sure. If my dreads look fantastic, you'll get the credit, if they look awful, I'll blame the fact that getting dreads was risky business in the first place. Besides, I can use all the moral support I can get.

If you're interested, or if you know anyone who might be interested, let me know sometime this month. Comment here, text me, facebook me, email me, call me, send a carrier pigeon. This is one hair adventure I can't do alone.

gettyimages.com

Days 7-10: The Rest of the Trip

2011-05-01T12:10:00.001-06:00

Let's face it, it's time to sum up. It's been two weeks since we got back from our trip, and there's still four days to go. Kudos to those of you who have been actually reading these insanely long blogs.

In case you missed them, here are links to Day Zero, Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four, Day Five, and Day Six.

The last few days of our trip were spent in Olympia with Allie's family. After being friends and living together for nearly seven years, I'd still never been to her house or hung out with her parents. It was time to fix that, time to get to know the people I'd been hearing about for all these years. And I have to say, Allie's family are good people. I thoroughly enjoyed staying at their house, hearing their stories firsthand, and getting know them for myself. We even managed to get Sar her driver's permit while we were there. I'm really only going to cover the tourist stuff we did in this blog, but in between everything I mention there are evenings and home cooked meals and mornings spent just hanging out around the family that were some of my favorite parts of the trip.

Thursday morning Allie and I set off for some time in Seattle. Our first stop was the Space Needle. The Space Needle, along with the Golden Gate Bridge, is going into my list of landmarks and monuments that I never thought would live up to the hype about them, but turned out to be pretty dang cool in real life.

Allie and I decided to live in style and eat at the revolving restaurant at the top of the needle. It turned out to be a fantastic idea because it was cold and rainy and windy, and we got to watch the city swing by slowly from the warmth and comfort of an indoor table while eating roast vegetable gateau. Someone even came by to take our free picture that we could download and email to ourselves.

It's not the world's greatest photo, but it does prove we were there.

After lunch we did head up to the observation deck, where I learned a lot more about the history of the space needle that made it even cooler. By the time we left, I was even considering buying some sort of souvenir from the place. Almost. Of course we did take one picture outside on the walkway, but it was cold and wet and we booked it back inside pretty dang fast.

From there walked a cold and rainy half mile through Seattle to Pike's Place Market. We'd both been to Pike's multiple times in the past, so we didn't spend time at every single booth, but we did see some cool things. My favorite was this guy.

Good ragtime music in the rain? Count me in. We also found the Chinese ring salesman who sold me the ring I bought on my last trip to Seattle almost two years ago. When I'd bought that ring, I'd been a bit skeptical of it. Sam, the energetic salesman ("Buy one for you; one for your boyfriend!") assured me that it wouldn't turn my finger green, go grey instead of silver, and would only be shinier with time. All of that for only $5. The man was right. I love that ring. I only take it off to rock climb, knead dough, and wash the toilet. So of course I bought another one.

Friday we picked up Allie's little sister from school and dropped her and her dad off at the DMV for while. This left Allie time to show me Olympia in all it's glory. She kept calling it "small" and "dinky." I kept reminding here that I'm from Idaho, and that Olympia was, in comparison, New York City. The coolest part was the library, which was located in a freakin' forest, had bear statues out front, and looked like a cabin mansion on the inside.

Have I ever mentioned that I love bears? I do. A lot. They scare me, but I love them.

Since we had some time to kill while Sar picked up her driver's permit, we started playing with the legos. I was about to suggest building the tallest whatever we could, when Allie suggests something real and something hard. She wants to build San Francisco. So she worked on the bridge, and I worked on the skyline. In the end, it looked pretty darn cool, and we were very proud of ourselves.

After the library, we headed to Tumwater Falls, which has some of the coolest playground toys ever. And pretty falls (3 of them). Apparently we didn't take any pictures of the falls, just the playground equipment.

We'll be joining the circus soon

The fearless crew.

I'm all strong and stuff!

On Saturday Allie's Dad, Allie, Allie's sister Sar, and I headed to Priest Point Park and walked through some pretty toxic mud to look at the Puget Sound. There were dozens of signs warning us to shower after touching the ground. But it was beautiful. There were so many sea shells that I couldn't avoid stepping on them, and the crunch crunch made my skin crawl a bit.

After so many hundreds of pictures on the trip, we were running out of creative picture ideas.

Percival Landing was our next stop, and we walked along the docks for a long time, looking for loons and talking. On the way back we stopped at a store called Archibald Sisters, where you can buy anything random (absinthe flavored gum, bandaids that look like bacon, etc.). There I bought some Star Trek fridge magnets, some pins to put on the pirate flag in my classroom, and some candles that looked like joints for my Pot-free 420 Party.

Later that day we went on a long drive with Allie's mom, which took us to Boston Harbor, where we looked at sailboats, seagulls, and beautiful water.
The next stop was Burfoot Park, where we hiked down to the beach through incredibly green forests and I geeked out on the green, and then on the water. This trip involved a lot of me just wandering around with big eyes and sighing at the beauty and wonder of the things I saw. It also involved a lot of me climbing on top of things and taking pictures of me dangling over things, balancing on things, and generally making my traveling companions nervous. Except for Allie. Allie never worried. Angie wouldn't look when I dangled over the waterfall, Allie's dad tried to talk me out of a few mossy logs on hillsides, but Allie never batted an eye. Either she has great faith in my balance or doesn't care very much if I fall.

Sunday morning Allie and I took one last stop at Wonderwood Park, where I walked around and sighed some more. And then I climbed on things. Again.

I got this idea from The Jungle Book. I get a lot of good ideas from that book.

After that came church, then dinner, then it was time to go. Allie's dad and her sister drove us to the airport, and we took a short flight home. Cuny picked us up and we drove back to our apartment, dumped our junk, put on clean pajamas (packing that lightly meant that we had very few changes of clothes...very, very few), and collapsed gratefully into our own beds. Monday morning came much too early, with a return to school, only a week until state testing, and hugely long blogs to write about our trip.

So there you have it. The last insanely long blog post about the trip. There are more pictures on facebook, and I have about 800 on my computer, so I really did edit this waaay down for the blog. Overall, the trip was fantastic, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Allie and I are already brainstorming about Memorial Day weekend.

Stickin' Around

2011-04-28T15:13:00.000-06:00

Monday morning as I drove to school I was thinking about my future, and when I got here, I wrote this blog. When I wrote it, the question was still speculative and slightly academic. I thought I had months and months, maybe a year, to decide my future.

I didn't.

I had about 24 hours.

Monday afternoon, during collaboration, I found out that they had already hired someone with an eye toward giving them the GT position in another year (when the current teacher retires), and unless I spoke up fast, it would be assumed that I didn't want it. I don't think I knew how much I've been looking forward to teaching GT until I realized I might not have the opportunity after all.

It was suddenly time to make the decision I'd been putting off for a year and that I'd meant to keep on putting off. In the end it wasn't that hard. Thoughts fell into place, and I acted on my gut instinct reinforced by some logic and prayer.

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I'll be staying in Utah for the next four or five years. I'm going to start classes for my GT endorsement this fall, and I'm going to try and pound down two independent study history courses this summer to work on my history endorsement. I've talked to my department chair, my principal, and the current GT teacher and told them that I'm very interested in the position and not to rule me out, that I'm staying, that I'm serious, and that I'm willing to work hard and commit.

I had some struggle looking at my Bucket List and seeing items like "Live in foreign country for at least a year." That's much less likely to happen any time soon now. But here is my reasoning:

I didn't have a specific dream picked out for after next year, just some vague ideas of things I could do if I decided that I wanted to, which I wasn't sure I did. Most of the opportunities to live overseas that long would involve teaching TEFL, and many of the programs I've looked into are pretty lame. I don't mind a cut in my living standards and salary, but I would mind stepping back into the role of assistant teacher who doesn't do any real teaching and who has no real influence. I've been there; it's nowhere near as fulfilling as what I'm doing now, even if it was infinitely easier.

As I covered in Monday's blog, I can get a lot of the best things from both options as a teacher. I can adventure during the summers, live in ecovillages, foreign countries, and travel to strange and new places. Then I can come home to a career, a future, etc.

Now, for the first time in years, I've got a five year plan. I've got long term, specific, achievable goals again. It's a thrilling feeling. I'm going to start learning and studying again, I've got things to prepare for, and I'm excited to start. My immediate future is no longer the fuzzy question mark it's been for the past three years. I've got things to plan and to make happen besides new dishes to cook, new hobbies to take up, and vague ideas of what may happen someday. I'm going to live in the area, teach at this same junior high, work hard to get both my GT and history endorsements, and adventure the heck out of my free time. Of course, I should mention here that if The Man I'm Supposed To Marry shows up with a bouquet of flowers and whisks me away, I will totally drop all of this planning. But, since TMISTM has been a little slow on making his entrance, I'm going to go ahead and plan a life I like and am excited about to live until he eventually shows up.

So I'll be here. You can count on me. Save my phone number and address because they're going to stay the same. Stability here I come.

Day Six--Japan and The Drunk and the Bartender/Poet

2011-04-26T21:13:00.001-06:00

Day Six was Wednesday April13. It's beens so long since spring break I'd better start labeling dates. Our train from Portland to Olympia left at about 6:30 p.m., so we were running out of time to see Portland.

It was a rainy day, which didn't surprise me at all. Every time I told anyone that I was going to be travelling in the Northwest, they'd warn me that it was going to rain. My own memories of the Northwest involve lots of rain. Rain was what I expected. What I hadn't expected was my accidentally leaving my raincoat at Gee's house in San Francisco. So much for being prepared. But I borrowed a scarf from Angie, wore my one pair of close-toed shoes, and made the best of it.

For lunch, we walked to the Grilled Cheese Grill. There we ordered gourmet grilled cheese made in a trailer, and then ate it on the top level of an old British double-decker bus.

The ceiling on the upper level was very low, and you reached that upper level by climbing a steep, narrow staircase that made the ones on the Amtrak trains look modern and spacious.

The tables were handmade and covered with old yearbook photos from different years. The sandwiches themselves were delicious. The Grilled Cheese Grill has another location in Portland, and I guess that one is a school bus.

It was at the Grilled Cheese Grill that I saw the best vegan April Fool's Day joke ever. I'll just let you read it and guffaw on your own.

Portland has a Japanese garden. Portland has a beautiful Japanese garden. Portland has a fantastic, gorgeous, very authentic, breathtaking Japanese garden.

Angie, Allie, and I spent hours in the garden, looking at and photographing everything. Growing up in the desert as I did, that much green in one place tends to send my heart into overload. The amount of green in Japan used to make me cry, seriously, my traveling companions could confirm this. And as we wandered through this beautiful, green, rainy garden overshadowed by Oregon's towering pines, I choked up again. Beyond the level of green, the other thing that always impresses me about well-tended Japanese gardens, is the thorough attention to detail. There isn't one patch of earth that hasn't been carefully tended to, thought about, and planned. However, all that planning looks different than it would in a traditional western garden. there are very few right angles and boxes and hedges in an oriental garden. Instead, things are put together to flow, to be beautiful from every angle, and not just to put up an impressive front view. You can look in every corner and see how it has been carefully touched just enough to enhance, but not erase or overpower, the potential that corner began with. I always leave a garden like that feeling both deep peace and powerful motivation. That is the kind of life I want to lead, one where every corner of my life has been touched and deliberately shaped, instead of being filled with the junk that get's tossed from the main of my life. I want to to have meaning from every angle, and not just be impressive from someone standing in the right place. I want to have created my character as carefully as the skilled Japanese gardener plans and tends his garden, working with what was already there, but transforming it thoroughly into a place of quiet, peaceful, living, energetic, thorough beauty.

Leaving philosophy out of it, the garden was beautiful and I loved it. After the garden we wandered about the city and saw Portlandia. Normally I'm not one for modern statues, but the longer I looked at Portlandia, the more I liked her. To quote Angie, "She's pretty bad-ass."

Then Angie and Shane took us to our last stop in Portland, a huuuuge hospital up on a hill that had the best view of Portland available. And it was impressive. I had to take two different panorama shots to get the whole thing.

Then Angie and Shane drove us to the impressive Portland train station where our Portland adventure had begun merely 48 hours ago, and, with some last hugs and farewells, it was time to move on.

The train ride to Olympia, WA, where Allie's parents live, is only about an hour and a half long. After all the train riding we'd done, Allie and I were a bit puzzled: What do you do with a train ride that's only an hour and a half? That's hardly worth pulling out your book for! As we sat there, smug veterans of Amtrak's system, we took note of the differences between this train, designed for short distances, and the ones we'd been traveling on. It was only one level, had no sleeper cars, fewer bathrooms, and a cafe car that even included a bar facing the window. There was also less foot room, smaller overhead compartments, and no option of checking luggage. However, this train ride had internet access.

Our train ride went smoothly until we came to Kelso, Washington. There's nothing much in Kelso, and the train's stop there was going to be very brief. The train was slowing down as we approached the station, when we stopped with a small jerk, just a few blocks away from our destination. There seemed to be something wrong, and we saw several conductors get off the train looking worried. After sitting there for five or ten minutes, a conductor came on and made the announcement. He apologized for the delay, and informed us that there had been an "individual" who appeared to be "inebriated" walking "alongside the tracks." "We may have nicked him as we passed," he told us. "The individual appears to be all right, but we are waiting for the paramedics." Then he asked for any medical professionals on board to come help out. Our initial irritation at the delay gave way to horror, then to relief, and then to incredulity. Someone in our car said what we were all thinking, "Wait, how do you get NICKED by a TRAIN?" So we sat on the tracks, watching police cars and paramedics drive by and wondering what was going on. Then came another announcement: The individual was being loaded on a stretcher (*gasp* from the passengers), but he was being .. a bit..."combative" and they are having some difficulty. At this point the whole train is laughing in disbelief. We heard a conductor passing through the isle at one point mutter to the man with him, "I'm not even sure he knows he was hit by a train." We started speculating about whether we really did hit him, or whether he was just startled when a train passed right next to him and fell over. We sat on the tracks for half an hour waiting for the police to give us the go ahead to proceed to the station.

When we finally moved the last few blocks to the Kelso station, we sat there for another half an hour. Apparently when anything like this happens, someone from Amtrak has to come download the information and video (who knew?) from the train's equivalent to an airplane's black box. Then we waited some more to get the go ahead phone call from an Amtrak official in some other city.

During all this sitting in Kelso, Allie and I decided that it was time to patronize the cafe car. I brought my book and she brought her computer, and we sat at the bar eating our ice cream and sharing a cookie, facing the windows through which nothing but black could be seen now. Eventually we struck up a conversation with the guy next to us at the bar. The opening line was, of course, "Do you think he even knew he got hit?" and "Our train got nicked by a bum!" And that is how I ended up deep in conversation for an hour with a part time poet/part time bartender from Portland. As an English teacher, I couldn't resist the opportunity to talk to someone who was in the current poetry scene, hear their perspective, and judge for myself their level of sanity. Not only that, but to be honest, striking up a meaningful conversation about poetry and philosophy with a mysterious stranger at the bar of a train made me feel like something straight out of a movie, and I milked it for all it was worth. I drank my water, he drank his beer, and I got some free poetry of his out of it. Not to mention I can tell my students about the poet I met on the train.

Olympia at last! Allie condescended to declare this a decent train station.

When we finally got to Olympia, two hours after our scheduled arrival time, Allie's dad picked us up and took us to her home. There he made us late night spaghetti, told me funny stories about my uncle, and then Allie I sacked out, grateful to have our own room and bed after sleeping on floors and couches and trains.

One last shot from the Japanese Garden. Happy Cherry Blossom Festival everyone.

Subject to Change

2011-04-25T07:35:00.000-06:00

Decision time on my future is coming up in the next year or so. Do I stay where I am, put down roots, work towards bettering my career and my situation in life and contribute to my retirement? Or do I pay off my car loan, and take my act on the road somewhere, live in a foreign country, work college student jobs, join an eco village or the peace corps, go back to school for cooking or hair styling or hop trains or something?

Here are my thoughts, very subject to change, this morning:

Stay. I like my job, and I like my school. If I go adventure I could always come back to teaching, but not here, not at this school, and there's no guarantee I'd get a job at all with the current economy.

Stay. If I stay I will most likely get to teach debate and GT at this school. That would be pretty freakin' awesome. I will pick up an extra endorsement, get tenure, maybe eventually get a classroom with a window.

Stay. If I am a teacher, I can always go live in a foreign country for two months during the summer, not work a college job because I'll have benefits and salary, and come back to a job.

Stay. Utah may not be where I picture myself "ending up," but it's a pretty good place. It's easy traveling distance of both home and adventure of many kinds. It's fairly central positioning in the west means I can get several awesome places in 10-15 hours or less. The people here are generally pretty good and nice and stuff. The weather's not so bad, and there's lots of places to climb, skate, listen to good music, etc.

But. What if I stay and it's the boring, easy way out that I took because I was scared to take a chance? Wouldn't I be awesomer if I took off to Zambia with the Peace Corps for two years, or taught English in who knows where or something? Shouldn't I go live in the desert and eat crickets with the hippies because I can? I've got no husband or family to require me to settle down and be responsible, so shouldn't I go be crazy? I've got the back up plan, the degree, the teaching certificate, the teaching experience, why should I miss out on this opportunity to be whatever crazy person I feel like being month to month?

On the other hand. Staying would enable me to have some of the best of both worlds. I could adventure like an adolescent in the summers, and still work toward my life and degree, etc. In fact, because having a salary means that I don't have to work during the summers, that frees me up for two and a half months of pure adventure if I want. That's a pretty good deal, right?

But. If I stay, I may never get away like that during the summer. If I start classes for another endorsement I'll have to stay in the summers and go to class. I'd miss family reunions, etc., and I worry that one way or another, I'd never take off like I meant to. I'm not this summer, and I originally had big plans to go work with women in India, etc.

Anyway, all of these thoughts may change tomorrow, and I'm definitely staying to teach at least one more year, so I have a long to time to keep thinking, but those are my thoughts this morning.

Day Five--Crazy Cats and Green Green Green!

2011-04-24T11:15:00.001-06:00

I hate to say this, but I'm beginning to lose steam on this whole really detailed posts of my trip things. It takes forever. I have been back from a week, and my narrative is only up to day five of a ten day trip. I think I'm going to change formats to more pictures and fewer words. There are other things I want to blog about, like my Marijuana Free 420 Party, the ward talent show, and other stuff I've been meaning to say forever. But if I follow my current pattern, I'll be blogging about my spring break from now to two weeks from now. And to that I say, "Booger!"

So we're going to start going faster. Some of you may miss the detail; some of you may be thanking your lucky stars. So here go, the somewhat shortened version of Day Five.

The morning of Day Five (Monday) was dominated by two things: Allie's and my quest for veggies and hummus, and the cats. Let me just say that I like cats. I grew up with cats and although the amount they shed has begun to alarm me more as I care more about my clothes and hair in my food, I still find them desirable cats. Allie just doesn't like animals. Really. She and our roommate were talking about pets this week, and Al sees dogs as "dirty and dumb." Cats are less dumb, she admits, but she doesn't like them any better. That being said, she handled the situation at Angie's remarkably well. Angie has two cats, Zowie (sp?) and Dr. McGillikitty. Zowie is all black and very skittish. Dr McGillikity is a gorgeous cat, and at first I thought we were going to be great friends, until that morning. Angie had to go to work at five, and Shane had class at seven, leaving us alone in their apartment with their cats. Apparently having visitors turns the doctor into one grumpy cat. Every time I came within five feet of him he would set up the low, whining growl that cats usually use as a prelude to more forceful measures to keep their personal space. He would blockade the hallway, bathroom, or couch. He would bully Zowie. He was not a happy kitty. So our getting ready that morning was accompanied by the nearly constant yowling of the cat. Meanwhile, Zowie would hide under a table, chair or couch, and we'd have no idea she was there until we accidentally startled her by breathing. Suddenly a black, furry shape would detach itself from a shadow by our feet and streak away across the room. As soon as Angie or Shane came home, Dr. McGillikitty would come out and ask to be pet, all loves and smiles. Zowie would jump up on Angie's lap and preen. It took me the entire stay in Portland to get Zowie decently comfortable around me, to get McGillikitty to ask to be pet, and to figure out their crazy relationship in the slightest. How Allie handled it with as good a grace as she did I don't know, especially after McGillikitty chewed the cord on her new duffel bag in two.

Dr. McGillikitty, looking peaceful and content. I never saw this face again after this picture.

Besides our time spent marveling at the feline residents, our morning also included a quest for fresh veggies and hummus. After eating rich, heavy food for days, we were craving something light and fresh and healthy. But when we typed Angie's address into google maps and asked it for grocery stores near us, it became apparent that Angie and Shane live in a grocery wasteland. With no exaggeration, they were at the center of a dead zone. The map showed a ring of grocery stores that were all equally far away from where we were sitting comfortably on the couch. But, our cravings were severe, so we set off in the direction of what we judged to be the closest one. Besides vegetables, I was craving something whole wheat. Four days of rich food, white bread, and white rice were starting to get to me. Luckily, the closest grocery store was Whole Foods, which had ample vegetables, about 20 different kinds of hummus, and, best of all, bread samples. Allie and I sat there "sampling" different types of bread for almost ten minutes. Thick, fresh, dark break, full of seeds and wheat and all sorts of yummy things.

When Angie got home from work, we ladies headed out to Oregon's Old Historic Highway. This offered us great views of the Columbia River Gorge, short hikes to multiple impressive waterfalls, a beautiful drive through Oregon's beautiful forests, and lots of time to giggle in the car. Even the time Angie took the wrong road for half an hour proved a delightfully scenic side trip. What always caught my eye was the green. So much green. I'd never seen green like that before I went to Japan, and I haven't seen it often since. I spent all day geeking out about the size of the trees, the moss, and the green. Here are some of the highlights:

The view.

I OWN waterfall one.

Waterfall Two

Did you know we're awesome? We're pretty awesome.

Waterfall Two gets its portrait taken.

Multnomah Falls--the famous one!

On the edge.

Look Mom! I'm dangling over a waterfall!

That evening the three of us decided on pizza and a movie. A movie theater within walking distance of Angie's place was not only a $3 theater, but also had tables inside where you ate the pizza and drank the soda you purchased by the slice and pitcher. After about 5 p.m. they don't allow minors in anymore, and that's when they start serving alcohol as well. Angie, Allie, and I contented ourselves with orange soda. I got jalapeños on my pizza for the first time ever. It was pretty good. Especially with plenty orange soda to wash it down. The movie itself wasn't what I was expecting. I walked in knowing nothing except the title, The Illusionist. I didn't know I was walking into an animated French film that was a beautifully drawn silent movie that would make me cry. I loved it, but I wish I'd had some time to prepare my expectations for that kind of depression.

I couldn't get any good pictures of the green on Day Five, but I got some good ones on Day Six--Japan and the Drunk, which should be up soon.