Oh hey! (Peeks head and waves)

Oh hey there! It’s been hella long, but here I am just slipping into your reader, like it hasn’t been almost THREE WEEKS weeks since I last posted. (A post that itself was two weeks after the one before it.)

A lot has been going on. I mean A LOT. First, I got the yearbook done. I officially released it on Sunday night (5/18) and the next morning I woke up and though of everything I needed to review for my red belt test that coming weekend. I was at the dojo every night, except for Wednesday when I was stuck in my classroom until 7pm for our Celebration of Learning (fka Open House). This required I clean up my classroom, which can get pretty messy. By 5pm I started throwing sheets over the worst messes, and focused on creating a slide show that would automatically advance after a video played, but it never worked (I think the videos had to be embedded from YouTube, and couldn’t be from drive). 

At some point during the week, I recognized the return of my overactive thyroid symptoms. I was about two weeks into a halved dose of my medication, and was really bummed out to understand that it clearly wasn’t able to manage my thyroid. I emailed my doctor at the start of the week, but I did so as a response to her original email instructing me to halve my dose., When she hadn’t gotten back to me a few days later I sent a separate email and she responded to that one quickly, telling me to go back to my original dose, but by then my symptoms had gotten worse. So now I’m supposed to take my meds like before for fours more weeks, then I’ll get blood work done again and I guess we’ll decide next steps then. I’m not sure what it means that our first attempt to reduce my dose went awry so quickly. I guess this is what the next two years will be like. I will say, having been granted a reprieve from the nightly hot flushes, poor sleep and consistently high heart rate, it really sucked to feel so badly again. Especially since my big belt test was that week.

My belt test on Saturday was nine hours long. I got to the dojo at 9am and was waiting at the bus stop to go home at 7pm. It was a long exhausting day. I did well. I’m proud of how I showed up. The sparring session was really rough and after one person did something scary (but ultimately fine) to my left knee, a female black belt punched me in the face multiple times. We don’t really punch each other in the face at our dojo, but they spar harder in Seattle. I will admit that I cried (more from emotional overwhelm than the pain) and it took me about an hour to pull myself together. Long, high belt tests are always as emotionally grueling as they are physically demanding and this one was no different. I was so, so SO glad when it was over. 

 

Sunday morning I woke up with a huge weight lifted. The yearbook was printing. Celebration of Learning was done. The belt test was over. My parents came to get kids around noon and the husband and I spent all day eating and drinking in various neighborhoods of the city. It was so nice to hang out and reconnect with him. We left home at 1pm and didn’t get back until 9 that evening. We watched the final episode of The Righteous Gemstones (that show is so good) and passed out. Except I didn’t. I couldn’t sleep for hours. It sucked. I really hope that my overactive thyroid symptoms resolve again soon.

 

Monday was book club. I almost finished the book (Just Mercy, a non-apologetic look at how this country – and especially the South – weaponizes the justice system (specifically the death sentence) to destroy the lives of black, brown and impoverished people, especially children and the mentally disabled. It was hard to read, but we can’t look away from the reality of this country..

I had to pick the next book and I went with Light from Uncommon Stars because it’s SFPL’s One City Same Page pick for May – June, and I’ve had it on my to-read lists for a long time (I have no idea why I originally put it there, to be honest). 

I am very thankful that this week has been a short one at work. Today (Wednesday), I threw my annual Tamales y Mole party for the students who went above and beyond requirements to complete everything offered on their free reading boards. 

 

It was, as everything seems to be in my life lately, a comedy of errors. Someone drank a bunch of the Jarritos I put in the staff room fridge, even though I used the “personal items – do not touch” fridge. My 6^th grade advisory was supposed to be outside with their 8^th grade leaders, but that was cancelled (and no one told me), so they were in my room while I was trying to set up (for a party they were not invited to).  Despite putting the tamales in the oven for an hour, some were still barely warm. The Jarritos were not twist open and while I was thankful the cooler I was borrowing had a bottle opener, it didn’t work great so I had to open all 35 students’ bottles and many of them sprayed all over me. (I really cannot overstate how much soda was on my hair, face and clothes after this). The party was stressful and short and then it was over and I had a ton of work to do to clean it up. 

That event was the final “big, difficult thing you need to get done” in a long line of big, difficult things I needed to get done (did I mention the pizza party for the yearbook clubs last Wednesday, that was almost ruined when I called three different pizza places that couldn’t deliver pizzas to us by 11am? I hadn’t even thought of that when I scheduled the party for our minimum day when we have a really early lunch). There are still a couple annoying things to get done at work, but overall it should down hill until the last day of the school year (June 12^th with students).

I still haven’t gotten my work computer back, and I haven’t taken my external hard drive somewhere to see if they can get my entire digital life off it (have I mentioned this? That my back up external hard drive, that has ALL THE PHOTOS AND VIDEOS I’ve ever taken of my kids, won’t show up on any computers?) I finally broke down and recreated a bunch of documents that I needed this past weekend so I could officially bring the free reading program to a close. I forgot to ask them to install Firefox on this loaner, which is part of why I haven’t posted in so long, because Firefox is generally my “personal” browser (where all my personal passwords are stored) and Chrome is my work browser, and I’ve been doing everything personal on my phone while I wait for my work computer to come back (the third-party vendor fixing it is waiting for parts). I’m actually writing this in a Word document (::face palm::) and then I guess I’ll email it to myself (from my work email to my regular email) and then I’ll paste it into WordPress. I suppose if you’re reading this sentence then it worked!

Sorry I’ve been away so long! And that I haven’t been commenting. I’m not always reading posts when they go up but I am catching up eventually. I hope my next post will be in the next few days and not the next few weeks. Fingers crossed.