Not a Wasted Word

Today is our last day of school before break. While I will admit that I like Christmas to be earlier in the two week break, working until the 21st is kinda rough. The kids are totally checked out and crazy, and it’s hard to get anything productive done. Today is a short day, and it’s basically glorified babysitting. I’m even leaving early to participate in my daughter’s holiday party.

Yes, she is back at school. Her weird stomach bug has passed and so far it doesn’t seem like anyone else got it. This is the second time she has gotten a stomach thing that lasted 48 hours and only struck at night. She pukes at night, then can eat all during the day, then feels bad again before bed, then pukes again a second night, then is fine by the afternoon of the second day. It’s weird. I hope she isn’t making herself sick with anxiety or anything. When her brother was born she threw up in the evenings like this for three nights, but no one else ever got sick and eventually she got better. At the time I thought she just got a bug and thanked god the newborn didn’t get it, but looking back I assumed it was psychosomatic – that the intense transition to having a sibling made her sick. I wonder if that is what’s happening now too.

The new year is coming and I’m trying to think about what serves me in my life. I notice I still read some blogs that definitely don’t make me feel good about myself or my life, or that simply annoy me, and I know I would never keep those people in my life, so why do I invite their words into my mind? It’s interesting how it can be hard to let go of things that don’t make us happy. I used to tell myself that I should expose myself to stuff that annoys me or gets me down so I could work through those triggers but I’m realizing that I just don’t mesh with some personalities and that is okay. It’s not making me a better person to read their words, it’s just bumming me out or aggravating me, so I’m going to let them go.

There are other habits I want to let go of that will be harder. I guess we shall see.

I’m definitely feeling better than I did when I wrote that last post. I think making it through the work week, as I pushed to get my kids ready for a test they took yesterday (I did not wait for today! I learned my lesson!) was wearing on me more than I realized.

My daughter is sick and we are scrambling to figure out coverage in these busy final work days before the holiday and break.

We’re also not sleeping much, because of the puking.

I’m feeling a little down these days. The holidays can do that to me. I miss friends who are no longer in my life. I miss family who has distanced themselves. I wonder what is wrong with me that I push so many people away. I know my loses are relatively small, but they still hurt. It’s just a dull ache in the background, but it’s there.

I’ve really struggled to stay focused at work this week, and then I can basically get nothing accomplished at home. I’ll have a lot of work to do over the break to get caught up. But today is basically my last real day of teaching as tomorrow is a short day with assemblies so I don’t have much of substance planned.

Not much else to say today, but at least I said something.

 My husband has developed a really horrible case of Adult Onset Eczema (Atopic Dermititis). His arms and legs are covered in large, red, extremely itchy patches. It looks horrible, and feels worse. He’s never had eczema before; while he would develop dry patches on his skin from time to time, they always went away with a few days worth of lotion.

He finally (after weeks of the rash spreading all over his body) sent pictures to his doctor, who offered to make him an appointment with a dermatologist, but also suggested it was probably eczema and ordered him an ointment that should be here later this week.

I feel bad for my husband. He is dealing with a fair amount of discomfort. And from what I know of eczema (both my kids had it so I’ve done some research and seen some dermatologists), its really hard to get rid of. The stuff I’ve read online about adult onset atopic dermititis is really disheartening. Its very possible he could be dealing with this for the rest of his life.

I wish I knew why it showed up so suddenly. I haven’t changed laundry detergents. He hasn’t changed his soap or shampoo. He hasn’t changed his diet or eating habits. He did travel overseas in November (to Bogotá), but we went to Colombia this summer too and he didn’t have a reaction then. I just can’t fathom what caused him to get such an intense case of eczema when nothing, really, has changed.

If you have any experience with adult onset eczema and have any suggestions for managing it, please let me know. If you don’t want to write about it in a comment, you can tell me you have more to say and I will email you. Thanks.

Sorry I was away. I’m not going to do a full re-cap right now because it wouldn’t be very interesting anyway. I think I’ll just back in with a short post.

It’s been five years since I had my second child and ended my journey through pregnancy loss and secondary infertility. I honestly don’t think about it that much any more. My experiences with both were not nearly as difficult and painful as they are for most people who deal with either, so it’s not surprising to me that I am mostly over it. And yet, I am still very weird around pregnant people.

Two women on my staff are currently pregnant – one with her first child and one with her second. They are both due in the same week, going out on maternity leave over the break, and staying out for the rest of the school year (with the new baby bonding time they can be out for the entire six months).

I will be the first to admit that I have not handled these pregnancies with grace. Not only do I not initiate the small talk surrounding how the expectant moms are feeling (both physically and emotionally), but when conversations veer toward those pleasantries I excuse myself from the conversation. Pretty much immediately. I just don’t want to talk about it, or hear about it, at all.

But why is that? I tell myself it’s because pregnancy terrifies me, that I grew up watching my mom lose three late-term pregnancies, after burying my sister who died after three months in the NICU (when I was two) and the whole pregnancy thing just makes me scared and uncomfortable. And maybe that is what is happening. I kind of hope that is what is happening, otherwise it feels like I’m just begrudging people their happiness during one of the most exciting times of their life.

I know for sure that it’s not some kind of wistfulness for those years, it’s not jealousy or envy at where they are in their lives. I am happy to be past the pregnancy, new born and toddler years. I am a happier parent now that I have ever been, so I really don’t know why I feel the need to totally disengage from people when they are pregnant. 

{To be clear, I was never very close with either of these two women, in fact I’ve had kind of awkward social stuff with them before: One was half of the two person planning committee that didn’t invite me (and I swear, only me) on a staff rafting trip. And I was one of very few people who were not invited to the other’s wedding (and all the other people who weren’t invited were relatively new to the staff, while I had been there longer than many people who were invited). So it’s not super weird that I find a reason to excuse myself when the conversation settles on pregnancy, but I’m guessing it’s been noticeable.}

I’ve just been pondering this again, as pregnancy has been unavoidable at work this fall. I hate to say it but I’m looking forward to the break, and not seeing either of them again until the next school year. Of course I wish them the best, but I’ll be relieved when we’re not all talking about pregnancy all the time.

I just lost an entire post and I’m feeling frustrated and don’t want to write again. The most frustrating part is that I swear I copied the text, but then I guess I didn’t because when I went to paste it, my clipboard just had a tracking number I’d copied long before.

There is something so dispiriting about a blinking cursor on a blank page, when just moments ago there had been so many words. Where did all the words go?

I can’t really bring myself to write another post right now, but I wanted to put it out there that I tried. Sometimes technology f*cks with you, and there’s nothing you can do about it but shut the f*ck up and move on.

Also WordPress automatically updated and now I don’t even recognize the publishing page. What is this?! I’m so confuzzled.

I think it’s time for me to sign off now. Until next time (if wordpress doesn’t eat my words)…

It finally got cold here, well San Francisco cold. In the mornings when I was getting up the inside house temp was hovering around 57* and man was it hard to get out of bed to turn on the heat. So I finally braved the complications of the thermostat and corrected the time and set the timer. Now the heat starts pumping at 5:30am so by the time I have to get out of bed at 6am it’s not so frigid. (It also comes on in the night if it dips below 58*.)

We keep our house pretty cool (at 63*) because our gas bill is always so high. It means we all have to wear multiple layers, as well as slippers, when it’s that cold (usually by the afternoon the sun has warmed the house to at least 64-65), but man do I appreciate having the heat to at least get us to that point. And oh boy am I loving how much easier it is to get out of bed now that the heat turns on by itself. Thank you central heating!

Well I didn’t post every day in November – I even missed the last day! – but I almost made it. Almost is better than nothing.

Yes, I did write almost every day in November, but the posts weren’t all that great. Nothing profound, or even all that long, was written. I did get my graphic novel post up and that was on my blogging to-do list FOREVER.

So maybe I celebrate that win instead of lamenting the rest of it. Yeah, I think I’ll do that.

When I saw my high school Spanish teacher a couple of months ago, one of the things he mentioned remembering about me was that I wore my emotions on my sleeve. He said he could tell when I walked into the door what kind of day I was going to have in his class because I was wearing my attitude all over my face.

This is a problem I still struggle with.

The resting bitch face doesn’t help. Clearly my default facial expression communicates anger or distress. I assume this because I get a lot of unsolicited remarks on my mood from random people on the street. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard something along the line of, “Hey, it can’t be that bad,” or even a concerned, “I hope things get better,” from total strangers.

I definitely have “big feelings” (as we say in parenting and education). Still, at 38, I feel things intensely. Sometimes this can be amazing, but a lot of the time it really sucks.

I do think I’ve gotten better, in the past five or so years, to be less obvious about my feelings, but I know I still wear a lot of my emotions on my sleeve. I really need to tone it down.

One thing I struggle with is letting go of anger, frustration, and disappointment. When something has upset me I dwell on it for way longer than is necessary. Even if I’m not thinking about it, the foul mood will linger. The negativity can taint my outlook on pretty much anything. This is such a bad habit and negatively affects every aspect of my life: parenting, my marriage, and teaching. I really need some effective techniques for letting go of frustration and disappointment, especially in situations that I can’t control.

I see my kids doing this too, clinging to a negative reaction long after the moment has passed and letting that anger or disappointment poison the rest of an experience. I want to give them some effective tools to combat the negative thought cycles, and I’ll need to learn them myself before I can pass them along.

Do you have any strategies for overcoming anger, frustration, or disappointment? How do you keep the negative self-talk from taking over your thoughts?

Did I mention I’m sick?

I’m so, so sick.

It’s not as bad as when I had strep (oh my god that was so, so, bad), but it’s still bad. I would have taken today off, but I just had too much to do.

The good news is that my cough seems to be breaking up a little, so maybe I can stop hacking up a lung soon. For the first time in my life I coughed so hard I almost booted ALL OVER MY NEW BOLT. I felt like I had morning sickness again – I even rolled down my window and stuck my head out a little.

Thankfully I did not boot all over my sweet still so, so, so new car. I would have been such a sad panda.

So yeah. Sick. Want to be at home but can’t. Also feeling like I might (maybe, please, please, please let it) be on the mend.

My students came back on Monday (most of them). We reviewed for the test with some games. They took the test. I graded the test. They did fine on the test. I entered the test grades online. I posted the final grades. (I didn’t write any posts for two days because: all of the above.) It was fine, NOTHING like the Armageddon I was bitching about almost two weeks ago. Yes it was a lot of work, and it sucked to do it when I just wanted to be sleeping because I was sick, but it wasn’t that bad. God, if I had known how sick I was going to be when this week hit I would have truly lost my shit.

But I got through it! I wish I could remember, REALLY remember, that I always get through it, instead of freaking out that which I can’t control.

The PTA event that had to be rescheduled is also working out fine. We are making $100 short of what we would have been making, which is great. Yes, I’m sad to lose that $100, but I was worried we’d lose 2-3x that, so I’ve very pleased.

As always, nothing is ever as bad as I fear. And the few times things have been that bad, or worse!, I’ve gotten through. This too, shall pass. It was one of my favorite phrases once. I think I’ve lost sight of it.

{I have been really stressed out about our See’s Candies sale — which doesn’t seem to be doing great but might have a really strong final week — and writing this post has made me feel a lot better about it. Because there really is nothing I can do at this point to affect the outcome, and the outcome probably won’t be as bad as I fear.

So thanks for that, everyone.

And I wish every stellar pulmonary health this cold and flu season because holy shit whatever I got is the pits.}