Oh, I guess I'm Crazy Then.

After all the exciting weight losses and gains over the last two years, I only have one pair of dress pants that fit at the moment.  Because of that, I've been wearing skirts a lot.  Out of all my skirts there is one that gets far more compliments than any other.  The English teacher next door asked me where I had gotten it a few weeks ago.  After thinking a moment I responded, "At a free store at an anarchist venue in Tucson."  It's true.  It was my first trip to Tucson with Cuny and we had stopped at Dry River, the local venue for bands and home to the local Anarchist collective and free store.  They had this skirt, it fit, and I loved it.  

Then, this morning, my teacher friend noticed the brightly skirt I wore today.  "Is that another anarchist skirt?" she asked.  I looked down at the skirt and said, "No.  It's just another hippie one.  I got this at the reggae festival in Tokyo."  

Then I realized that my life is pretty awesome.  Some day this spring I'll have dreads again, then I'll be the hippie teacher who wanders around barefoot and sits on the floor and teaches her students to chain themselves to trees.  I can't wait.  

Picture Source

Highlights of a Day

In the last 24 hours:

After not exercising more than once for weeks, I climbed for an hour and then went to a grueling yoga class. During the final meditation, as the trembling slowly ceased in my limbs and the blanket of sweat on my skin evaporated, my mind and body had a little chat.  We'd been feeling disconnected from each other lately, so it was a good chance to reconnect.  During our conversation, my body requested that I go vegetarian again.  Since my mind and body communication is usually a battle over who wants to eat the most cookies, I immediately made the goal.  Vegetarian again.  I will probably still eat meat on occasion--socially at least.  But no more buying it, fixing it, or eating it on my own.

This afternoon, after teaching four classes in a room in which the fans were not running, it was so warm that my projector was overheating.  During the journal discussion, one of my dear, sweet, 7th grade girls raised her hand when I asked, "What are places, people, and events that have influenced your personality?"  I called on a few students, and then when it was her turn, instead of contributing to the discussion, informed the whole class and me, "You have a shiny forehead!"  Oh really?  Thanks for mentioning it.

It's My Turn to Ramble about My Pet! Finally!

After almost four weeks with Zhivanna, I can wholeheartedly proclaim that I am completely in love with her. Currently she's basking on an impromptu log I rigged up out of a rolled up rug, a towel, and some shoes so that she could eat breakfast and bask in the living room while I checked my email.  Now she's venturing off, peering over at me frequently to see if I'm going to bother her.

Things I have learned about my tortoise:  She's curious and undaunted. Wandering is what she likes best.  I almost wish I had a bigger apartment so she had more room.  She is nearly always in motion.  Sometimes she does laps of a room, circling the perimeter, stopping to sniff anything interesting or squeeze herself under something too small for her. I've watched her investigate every corner of my apartment, constantly seeking out a challenge.  If there are three ways to get over, through, or around something, she will pick the smallest opening or the hardest climb.  Although she'll pause and pretend she's not there when you're looking at her, if you're just sitting there, she'll climb over your feet and inspect your toes closely to see if your red toenails smell like anything edible.  When I let her out to roam around, she doesn't hide in a corner and attempt to escape like many reptiles/hampsters/guinea pigs when you let them out.  So I can let her out to have free run of the apartment when I'm home, checking only occasionally to make sure I have a general idea of where she is.

She also thoroughly explores the apartment looking for things to climb.  And boy howdy, can an Agrionemys horsfieldii climb.  I saw this picture on the internet:

Picture Source

And I had noticed Zhivie's penchant for summitting whatever she could.  Anything she thinks there might be a slim possibility she could climb, and she'll spend fifteen minutes trying.  She purposely crawls over shoes, piles of clothes, pillows, and anything else in her path.  However, I didn't believe she could really climb as well as the picture above made it look, until a few days ago when she was in my bedroom and proceeded to climb a nearly vertical yoga mat.  I hadn't seen her in a while, so I went to check on her.  At first I couldn't find her, but that's because she was several feet higher than I'm used to looking.  I have evidence:

No wonder they chose turtles for ninja mutants.  

She hung out on top of that mat for ten minutes, climbing up a little, down a little, to the side, trying to find a way to get higher.  I finally took her down and put her back in her enclosure because I was leaving the apartment.

I've also learned that tortoises are smart.  If she knows I'm taking her outside on the grass, or to wander around my apartment, she hardly struggles at all when I carry her.  She knows me.  She reacts differently to me than to anyone else who comes over.  She doesn't draw back when I reach for her to pick her up or to scratch her head unless I startle her.  If I come over to her enclosure, as soon as she sees me she get as close to me as she can, climb as high as she can, and then reach her neck up expectantly, "asking" to come out and wander.

And as far as pets go, she's pretty dang convenient.  If I'm gone all day, all she needs is to have clean water and some veggies left out for her, and I can be gone from sunrise to sunset.  If I'm home, she'll spend hours wandering around the apartment, stopping every once and a while to check on me.  Her breed is from the semi-arid regions of Afghanistan, Pakistan, northeast Iran, Northern China, etc.  Because of this, Russian tortoises will wait to go to the bathroom until they know there's more water available.  This means she usually pees or poops or both when she's either eating or drinking.  So, instead of needing to change her entire substrate, all I have do is wash the dish.  And even when she does pee or poop on the carpet (It's happened.), it takes about 30 seconds to clean up.

All in all, I'm very glad she's mine.  I look forward to having her for decades to come.

Also, turtle yawns are adorable.

Zhivana

Meet Zhivana, the beautiful little Russian tortoise that I brought home yesterday.  After years of pet cravings, long debates with myself and other people over whether or not I had a kitten/puppy/furry creature appropriate lifestyle, and wandering through the pet store multiple times in the same day for at least half an hour each, I have finally taken the plunge.  Zhivana is mellow enough to not mind if she sits in her enclosure all day while I'm gone, but social enough to like exploring and having her head scratched.

A bigger and better enclosure is in the works in the next few months, but apparently Rubbermaid has an unwitting monopoly on temporary reptile housing.  Seriously.  Ask the most reputable tortoise forums on the internet, ask pet shop owners.  Rubbermaid is where your reptiles live until you build them elaborate homes.

So far she is still getting used to her new home, so I've tried not to stress her out much, but here are a few pictures.  So far her favorite foods are romaine lettuce and green peppers.  She'll eat carrots when the rest is gone.  The largest she'll grow is about 8-10" and she could live 25 years with proper care.

Her nickname is Zhivie.

I have a surprise

Today I fulfilled a long-time dream.  I can't tell you what it is yet, because I'm waiting for morning to take pictures, but I'm bursting with excitement, so I have to say something.

Seriously.  I was so happy today I nearly cried.

Stay tuned for pictures and explanation tomorrow.

Sigh...It's like waiting for Santa to come.

AAaand Here We Go

Summer is almost over, I have meetings beginning on the 9th.  Whenever I say that, people ask me when the first day of school is, and I tell them I don't know.  I figure someone will tell me on the 9th, and not looking it up makes the summer feel longer.  But...the back to school dreams have started. Last night I dreamed it was the first day of school, so when I woke up this morning I thought I'd check.  Apparently my subconscious knew.  This morning is exactly one month till the first day of school.  Well-played subconscious, well-played.

The dream is fairly uninteresting if you're not a teacher.  The first day of school must have come as a surprise, because I was totally unprepared.  The dream involved things like only having seating charts for the first class of the day, not having my disclosure docs printed, and not even being sure which classes I'm teaching that day.  Of course, there was also the grand constant of teacher dreams:  the students act up, then refuse to listen when you try and give them the stern speech, and soon you're yelling while they continue to giggle and ignore you.

I used to have teacher dreams my first few years of teaching, but they were much less specific.  Now the dreams reflect my experience in teaching:  something goes wrong and I come up with a clever adaptation to fix it, only to have something then go wrong with that.  See?  I'm much more experienced now.  I also for some reason this time went to school in a tank top, and so tried to scramble to my old classroom to grab my back up sweater (I'm changing classrooms this year), and in the process, mistook the second bell for the first, and came into class five minutes late.  Sigh.

Okay universe, I'll think about school more seriously.  I'll think about my disclosure documents, I'll actually start planning.  Besides, I moved my back up sweater to my new classroom months ago.

Bring it on.

Last fall, my old room, my old dreads, my new shoes.  

Grown-Up Girl's Cry More

The following is not a plea for sympathy, simply an observation of changes in my own behavior as I grow up:

I've been watching Cake Boss in my spare time the past few weeks of summer vacation.  This week I saw two baby episodes, and I bawled through both, tears of sympathetic joy, and then longing.

That didn't used to happen.