one thing

One thing that's always lacked from my teaching career has been a sense of consistency. I came into my first school in the middle of the year and struggled with my first class. Thirty-three weeks later, I said goodbye to them still asking questions about Mrs. Browning, the teacher I replaced at retirement. Normally, in teaching second grade, you get to see the students pass through the grades before going on to middle school. Not so in that school. Second grade was as high as they went, so off they went "up the hill" to the other elementary school that dealt with the third through fifth grades. It was kind of strange to see second graders get senioritis as they puffed up at the responsibility of being the oldest students in the school.

Four years later, change needed, though feeling some sense of consistency. I knew many of the students at the school, kindergarten on up. Many of the parents knew my face and vice versa. Working with siblings of former students makes things easier at the beginning of the year without a doubt.

Here, I won't get that chance. At a larger school grade-wise, it's even harder to feel that sense of consistency. You get to know the outspoken students in other grades, the ones your colleagues are always talking about, but you don't know them from Adam. In any case, I lost the chance to know two classes of students by looping this year. To top it off, I'm off to a new school next year.

I sure hope that I can get some roots at the next stop on my teaching journey. If I don't, I think I may have to get out of this teaching game. It's too hard to adjust to a new place this often.

cleaning house

It ain't that exciting, but it must be done. Now begins the arduous task of cleaning house and merging two into one. It is amazing how little I brought with me when I moved. Some of that little would be best suited for storing in the attic for no good reason and forgetting about. With my nomadic nature, I can't be toting things to new abodes without using them. Books and folders and notes from college are probably getting the permanent boot this time. I reckon what I want to keep is on my hard drive anyhow. The comments of long lost instructors and professors haven't really helped me since college, and I doubt that it'll change in the near future.

Currently, I have four bags of clothes and such that are going to wind up at Goodwill. I believe what's left of my mismatched dishes and plates and bowls will join that stack.

This will be the last stop in my itchy feet twenties. Lord willing and the creek don't rise, the following roof will be one with a proper mortgage that will allow me to resume my pack rat ways and acquire gobs of outdoor sports toys like a kayak and a mountain bike.

To top it all off, I need to pack up my classroom better than usual so that the county can move all my materials to my new school. Gathering boxes is hard enough; try doing it for two simultaneous moves. This month is going to be rough. At least I've got kickball and climbing and bicycling to keep me sane.

roller coasters

Life is a funny roller coaster. Unlike a roller coaster, the dips are less fun and more terrifying because we often can't see where the track levels out. The ride up isn't the exciting part, the opposite of life as well. That's the most excruciatingly boring part, until finally at the precipice, the car speeds up and gives you a shot of adrenaline.

I suppose an optimist would look at life's roller coaster as such, with a better outlook on the overall picture. A pessimist would view the ride more like an actual roller coaster for someone that doesn't like to ride them. On the way up, wondering when the bottom will fall out; back down again, heart racing, terrified of the outcome. The optimist will take it all in stride. Enjoy the ride up, not worried about the top. Look ahead on the way down, knowing it's going to level out eventually so you can catch your breath.

Where does this metaphor come from? Life lately has been a roller coaster ride. From the dizzying heights of my roller coaster ride, I thought life couldn't get much better. Friends at work, new friends to climb with, blissful relationship. Then the stresses piled on and on. Destaffed. Traumatic spondylithiosis. Migraines. Hunting for a new apartment.

Just like that, the cars leveled off at the bottom of the hill, took a barrel roll, and began their climb back up to normal. New job transfer accomplished, apartment settled for next year, climbing to destress, taking time to breathe and snap some photos. Give and take. It's a wonderful ride.

what i would've done

Were my life circumstances slightly altered, I may have handled the last two weeks entirely differently. Without my leaning post to keep me upright and sunny side up, I might've retreated back into my introverted cave. I might've reverted to old habits. I might've left it all behind again, packed up this time and headed to Colorado or some other point out west. Climbing and snowboarding and dirtbagging sounded pretty good. I'm sure I'd get sick of it pretty quickly. I need to feel grounded. Maybe my wanderlust is fading.

Here's to a new start and putting down roots. I hope the county'll let me stay wherever I land for longer than two years. I don't yet know why my purpose at this school was limited to two years' time. Maybe in several years, it will become more apparent. I hope I can maintain contact with some of these students. This year has been pretty spectacular, and I really feel connected to this class. They know me, and I feel like I know them. It hasn't happened for a few years, that's for sure.

I hope I find it again wherever this traveling teaching show lands next.

almost poetic

I just finished reading Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. I started reading it during my month-long traveling bender. It rekindled the same itchy feet syndrome first diagnosed by Jack Kerouac and nearly cured by an ill-fated attempt to live overseas. This time, however, in Pirsig's wandering tale of a cross country motorcycle trip intertwined with a past borne of insanity and ancient Greek philosophy, my life circumstances changed considerably. Oddly, so too did the book.

During the course of my reading, she and I made that whole "getting married" thing official, I logged about 10,000 miles of air travel, got attacked by a macaw, lost my job (technically, destaffed, but let's call it what it is), and started trying to get this bum back of mine fixed. I thought it rather fitting the way the book ended. So, if I may quote the last paragraph, "'Tis a far, far better thing...."

Wait, that's not right.

Ahem. Here it is:

Trials never end, of course. Unhappiness and misfortune are bound to occur as long as people live, but there is a feeling now, that was not here before, and is not just on the surface of things, but penetrates all the way through: We've won it. It's going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things.

For all the stresses of my life past, and those to come, I know this to be true. Words truer were never written, nor at a better time for me to read them in a 35 year old classic.

testing, testing....

One more marking period to go. One gauntlet of stste-mandated testing in the way. This is going to test my patience with test preparation and what I see as something more worthwhile: actually teaching my students something new, instead of spending what may amount to the rest of the year on review.

They aren't particularly excited about it. I guess I ought to try my best to make it exciting, but who among us really wants to listen to their boring teacher reteach stuff we already learned and learned well?! I could get up on my soapbox and rant and rave about it all, but I know it ain't going away. Only way I can reduce or eliminate testing is to invent a better mousetrap. To a bureaucrat, this testing assault proves everything. To an educator, the testing proves that the bureaucrats know nothing. Maybe I ought to become one someday and shake up their view of the world.

Is it Juneteenth yet?

hopeless to hopeful

postsecret really got to me this week. forgive me for being a romantic at heart on this post. used to be, back when i was (seemingly) blissfully single i'd get all choked up at romantic gobbledygook. engagement stories of friends. sappy, cheesy chick flicks. blockbuster hits with that love story thrown in to appeal to a broader range of moviegoers. i'd silently sit, with the knot in my throat or that half a tear welling up in my eyes, with the thought racing straight from my heart to my brain and back again, "why not me?"

more often than not, it hit me after a few pints. still amped up and not tired, but alone in my room after a long night. stories of exes hit me hardest. so-and-so's engaged. really? super! one thing i finally learned in my years of trial and failure in the dating regime was that until i was truly happy alone could i truly be happy together with anyone else. even in relationships, these feelings beleaguered me at times, taking my head and heart out of any new attempt before it even got started.

so, i set out to focus on that which enriched my happiness and avoid that which prevented it. live music. climbing. writing. reading. traveling. surrounding myself with good people and limiting negative influences. even prayer crept back into my life. all things began to line up, and i truly was a happier person. moving here didn't do much to change that, despite starting over with the stresses of searching for a job, a place to live, places to climb, fun things to do, a new cadre of friends to spend time with. at that point, happiness sought me out. i wasn't searching for happiness. i created it, and it grew within my life to the point where i currently am. no longer a hopeless romantic, i favor the hopeful side of things. where those old triggers used to drag me down, i'm more optimistic in my tone of thought. that knot still rises in my throat and the tears welling are out of happiness rather than regret.

"i can't wait until that's me."

two little words

"buenos dias."

a smile. for the first time since i've been shopping at the neighborhood market on glebe road, a cashier made eye contact with me. it wasn't terribly busy, and we were the only customers at any of the registers. she didn't say a whole lot else. she probably knew that i didn't speak a whole lot of spanish and saw my eyes scanning the register in the off-chance that she told me how much in spanish.

"six seventy-five," she says. i pay; she give me my change.

"gracias."

"de nada."

all the more reason for me to sharpen my spanish. as has been the case for years, i understand far more than i can speak, so long as the speaker isn't a rapid-tongued cuban. i watched a primetime special earlier this week called "what would you do" on abc. it was a candid camera kind of show, though not for comedic effect. the first situation was a cashier at a lunch counter who refused to serve day laborers because they couldn't speak english. both sides were actors, but they wanted to see what the real customers would do. some did nothing; some agreed with the cashier; few helped the "laborers". when the host interviewed a local laborer, he tearfully told him that situations like that happen more often than not. it ain't right.

"we are all made of flesh and bone," he opined (through the translator), "treat me like a human being."

reflections on a year past

whew! had i not been so crazy busy working my students today, my mind might have wandered where it ought not. they're off to p.e. now, so i do what i usually do at the end of the day. leave the lights off and chill out until they leave.

a year past. last year, today was the second monday in october. columbus day. yesterday was the day i rolled back from hound ears, relaxed and stressed all at once. you see, i had this date with a girl i'd met very soon after i relocated. fate intervened, and our paths kept crossing. she and i had tentative plans for a lunch and museum date the following day (that'd be today, folks, stay with me.). stomach butterflies worsened due to traffic snarls delaying her arrival at our meeting spot. we were far past lunchtime, and had to hurry through the museum. the natural historians kicked us out, and we found our way to chinatown. a chill, brief afternoon date turned into seven hours or so, ending with the sunset on the mall.

it's been an epic journey since then. travels together. family. friends. weddings. a funeral. easy meals. banana pancakes. eighties movies. delicious cupcakes. snow. rain. sunshine. it amazes me how much has changed in a short year. with the five years beforehand to compare to, it's like i'm not even the same person.

early morning phone call to start the day. i can't wait for dinner tonight or our museum-hopping planned for monday.

a sense of belonging

for the longest time, i had trouble forging bonds with the new gym crowd. i knew few names, and far fewer knew mine. last night when i left the gym in my final pre-hound ears training session, the majority of the people i was climbing with knew who i was and conversely, i knew who they were. it felt a little more like the grg of old.

my plans of dragging a few dc folks along with me to boone were for naught. turns out it'll just be me and a nouveau grger on the road in my blue hatchback. she's good people. seems a lot like one grger that i often wind up climbing with because we have similar styles. i do enjoy the trips with people i hardly know. it ain't the first one, and i doubt it'll be the last...

fifty weeks

mind blown. i still can't quite wrap my head around this one. i'm not sure what to write or what to share. i've written several paragraphs below this one about this and that and deleted them all. as i've said before, i'm not sharing too many details about us. if you want to know, all you've got to do is talk to me. it's not like anyone reads this blog anyways!

speechlessly happy. dumbfoundedly lovestruck. i guess that's about all i can say. everything else is for she and i to discuss.

i can't

this pace of life the last few weeks is wearing me out. i need some r & r. after a weekend spent at home for barely more than to sleep, i've got another busy one coming up. lord help me make it to october 4th!

changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes

down south, bouldering is king. at least among my friends. sure, there's shiny bolts to clip and i've heard of splitters to plug gear in, but the number of boulderers i know far outnumber the ropers. practically no one climbs top rope outside, aside from sussing out moves on a tough sport route before attempting the redpoint.

the people are different too. yesterday, i was privy to the climber genre war that only presents itself in online forums. i went toproping. met up with some folks from a local climbers' listserv. missy was curious why i had to get up so early, and consequently go to bed somewhat early on saturday night. i surmised that it was because of the difference in age and life station between myself and my expected climbing partners. my guess, 5-10 years older, married, families, perhaps kids, unlikely to boulder much.

survey says...87 responses, our number one answer!

not only was i the youngest in our crew, i'd also been climbing for the longest. it still strikes me as odd that i'm a good climber among certain groups. i've been humbled by the rock around here a time or two since moving, only to be confused by how easy the routes were yesterday. granted, none of them were sustained throughout, but i put most of them down in short order. one of the routes was a 5.8 called butterfingers. maybe 20 feet off the deck was the crux move, a mantle to a sloping ledge. from the ground, i knew exactly how to negotiate it. i cruised the route, and had to show those on the ground (including my belayer) several times how to make the move before i hit terra firma again. any boulderer friend of mine would do that move in flip flops without a problem. the biggest problem yesterday was the seeping rock; otherwise, i might've tried more than just the one 5.10 that was dry and full of sustained, crimpy, footwork-intensive, slabolicious climbing. perhaps when it cools off and the rain rain goes away for another day or week i'll head back to sugarloaf and be a climbing phenom again.

then again, maybe not. it sure is hard to crank when there's no one to chase...

norm!

last night was the first time that i felt somewhat at home when i went out in d.c. in case you missed it, the Gators played the hurricanes last night. if yesterday's weather was any indication of how the game would play out, hanna was all bluster and no substance. clear skies by gametime, there was actually a little fall feel by dusk. that calm after the storm that is my favorite thing about big ol' tropical rain makers.

anyhow, when i walked into the bar, i'd made two new gator friends from the metro. lo and behold, i run into an ex-delt. this guy i genuinely thought well of, until he kept doing dumb stuff and got himself kicked out. so, i'm standing there, drinking pitchers with him when jedd shows up. round about the second quarter, the boss and her entourage showed up. i run downstairs to the head, run into another dc delt, and a stranger approaches me. she knows a few of my friends, and we'd actually crashed on the same square of carpet down in chattanooga in december whilst on a climbing trip. lee's accommodations are so lush! by the time the game was over, i felt like i actually knew a few people in this town. granted, most of them were friends from elsewhere, but what else would i expect when i go to watch the game with gator alumni?!

school daze

oddly, i'm not too tired this week from getting up early. my overly bright bedroom helped me keep close to my school sleep schedule all summer. however, my energy level to actually work in my classroom this year is low low low. i'm struggling to get it all together, as usual, but this year seems slower than most. moving classrooms and begging borrowing stealing materials since i changed grade level is eating up a lot of time. then, of course, my attention level is decreasing my focus. a summer spent being lazy for the morning, checking email, watching the daily show, resulted in a lack of industriousness. no matter how many times i felt motivated to do a lot in a day this summer, i never managed to finish a manageable task list on any of them.

this does not bode well for the intensity that i've gotten myself into. i'm simultaneously excited and terrified at feeling like this is my first year teaching all over again...

my first car

what should be elation over driving something a little sportier, a little roomier, a little newer quickly turned to sadness last night, thanks to a chevy silverado commercial. you know the type. "i've had this truck since i was 16, and i'm 120 now. it has 2,000,000 miles on it, and it still starts right away." the thing that hit me hardest were the guys that had less than 180,000 miles on their trucks. less than my danger ranger. i remember going home for the chili cookoff, her first tailgate, nights spent asleep in the cab or in the bed, hauling ridiculous construction or landscaping materials, getting stuck in mud or sand, going coast to coast. now she's gone. abandoned to a new home. rolled off into the sunset with someone else behind the wheel and a fistful of c-notes in my pocket.



there's an alan jackson song about his first car called "first love." it tells about how excited he was to get her at 15 years old. he sold her to a pilot in north carolina and was a wreck. many years later, he still holds a special place in his heart for that old car. his wife and daughter find it many years later for a christmas gift. i used to think it was ridiculous. now, not so much.

comment me a story about your beloved (or not so beloved) first car and when you had to let go. small comfort maybe, but it might make me feel better...

odd conversations

life has a funny way of teaching you things. first and foremost, lessons learned present themselves in seemingly unexpected ways. last night, we walked back to c.p.'s from dinner. palmer and i got into a random conversation about relationships and the like. not the person that i'd normally have such conversations with, but a few revelations came up about my life of the last year.

random times in gainesville, a lot of which with palmer, shaped where i am today. how so? well, were it not for the holding on to my past and trying to relive the college times that i didn't really have, i might not be where i am today. all of my missteps in relationships over the last two years brought me to the point i am today. happy beyond words.

people often ask me, "why d.c.? why not colorado or chattanooga or some other seemingly awesome climbing destination?" the short answer i usually give has something to do with chance, throwing a dart at a map. the long answer, well, you know why i'm not in korea. i'm considering more and more that was a blessing in disguise. sure, my life may have been open to the possibility of true happiness regardless of where i landed in my leap of faith, but i'd also like to think that fate intervened in putting me in d.c., pretty much alone on my 28th birthday. it was such a random lineup of occurrences that i can't help but think that a higher power had a hand in it. i chose to be happy. in doing so, i think i forgot all the pain of my past, the wariness of relationships, and the terror at winding up alone.

escalumps

"welcome to metro. if this is your first time riding metro, you may notice some things. most people stand to the right on the escalators..."

or so goes the occasional announcement at metro stations. not often enough for most weary commuters who have to get along with the tourists in this town. they've got to get to work! it's a big issue in the summer, when the flood of tourists makes some stations impossible to navigate.

escalumps slow everyone down. i know which stations have displays of the next train, and when i see one or two minutes, i'm damn sure running down those escalators so i don't have to wait 10-15 minutes for the next one. for lack of escalumps last weekend, i was able to trim my trip back here from columbia heights by a half hour or more because i just barely caught two transfers, running down the escalators and weaving through the crowds. and i'm just a tourist in my own town now!

happiness

...happiness is a difficult thing--it is, as Aristotle posited in The Nicomachean Ethics, an activity, it is about good social behavior, about being a solid citizen. Happiness is about community, intimacy, relationships, rootedness, closeness, family, stability, a sense of place, a feeling of love...--in this America, happiness is hard.

i just finished reading Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel. if you've not heard of it, it's a memoir of one young woman's battle with depression. throughout the book, i felt my self vacillating between empathy and annoyance at her state of being. she struggled with knowing she needed help and running at the first signs of it. i identified with her, recognizing the same self-destructive behaviors that plague(d) some of my friends in my early 20s. the relationship woes. the substance abuse. the listlessness. clearly, she made it through the trial by fire; otherwise, her book would've never been written. it wasn't until her eventual release by pharmacy that i got something out of this book. we are a nation of drug addicts. remember from your health classes in middle and high school that a drug is anything that changes the way your body operates. caffeine is a drug. food is a drug. heroin is a drug. alcohol is a drug. medications, prescribed or otherwise, are drugs.

her clarity of mind after making it through her "black wave" belittled the drug culture that infects our health care today. her line of thinking is much like mine, in that i often refuse to go to the doctor with minor ailments, knowing that they'll often prescribe something to make the symptoms go away when my immune system will often take care of it in about the same time frame. i don't take aspirin unless i can't see straight; i'll only take ibuprofen to reduce swelling from injuries. prozac is so readily prescribed by doctors these days that it has become a bad joke, one that wounds people with true problems.

happiness is a choice. someone very dear to me says that often. you can choose to be happy, you can choose to be sad. when you make sadness your choice too often, depression is the result, and your brain won't let you make choices anymore. i had all of the components of aristotle's definition living in gainesville.

at times.

i chose happiness, and in spite of leaving all of those behind, i am managing to reconstruct them in my new environment. i'm delighted to be a part of such a new, vibrant experience that i can't help but smile more often than not.

independence day

as it creeps closer to a year out of florida, i'm continually bombarded with memories of where i was a year ago and the long path that has brought me here. a path that i never imagined.

last year, i spent the fourth in alachua, watching the fireworks at their community gathering. local country cover bands. funnel cakes. former students running about. my confusing and complex summer running through my mind and coursing through my veins. the what-ifs of my impending departure, with nothing definite for my upcoming year. one month later, i'd be couch surfing and still jobless.

one year later, on the fourth, i consider myself incredibly more blessed. less stress vexes me. new love elates me. a new city amazes me. watching the fireworks in the presence of so much history and so much beauty left me speechless yet again.