Not a Wasted Word

In September, my kids and I started taking martial arts classes at a dojo in the Mission. I wasn’t sure at first if I would also participate, but after taking a few classes I decided that I wanted to do it too. I was going to be there 2-3 times a week anyway, and if I planned things right, I could take classes while my kids did.

It has been a really rewarding experience. The first half of the class consists of a lot of yoga moves, and while I haven’t been to yoga in years, there were epochs in my life when I went 3-4 times a week. It feels good to stretch my body in familiar ways.

The second half of the class is all kicking and punching and jabbing. I took kickboxing for a couple of years in college, but I forgot how much I enjoy kicking and punching and jabbing things. While I might have forgotten how much I liked it, my muscles have not forgotten how to do it. As they say, it’s like riding a bike – the muscle memory is surprisingly strong.

There is one set of moves though that were not a part of kickboxing – the blocks. There is a whole series of blocks, and punches and kicks that come off of blocks, and they are really hard for me. None of the movements come easily, and much of the time the teacher has to come stand by me and make me do the move four or five times, while the rest of the class waits and watches, before I manage it. It’s been a really long time since I tried to teach my body something new, and while I do get frustrated, mostly I’m exhilarated by the experience of trying something hard.

The next adult belt test is this coming Saturday. I’m going to give it a try. I feel confident enough in my one-steps, but I am only just learning the 20 forms I will be asked to perform, alone, from memory.

It’s strange to have a goal that is not related to working, or parenting, or the PTA, to be working toward something that is just for me, because I want to. It feels indulgent, and exhilarating. I know I’ll be proud of myself if I advance to a high white belt. And I know that if someday I earn my yellow belt, it will feel like a significant achievement.

There are a lot of areas of my life that feel stagnant, so it’s nice to have something new to work on, to have new goals to aim for. I’m glad I tried martial arts. I wonder where I will end up. Hopefully with a six pack and guns. 😉

…The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, I highly recommend it.

I’m not a horror fan, and I have never really understood how the Sabrina character was originally part of the Archie comics. I didn’t watch Sabrina the Teenage Witch when I was young, though I was exactly the right age at exactly the right time.

So I don’t really fall into the target audience, and yet I absolutely love it. It’s very well done, and surprisingly well acted; Kiernan Shipka is totally bad-ass as Sabrina (not surprising as she also rocked the character of Don Draper’s daughter Sally on MadMen), but everyone else is good as well.

If you’re looking for a new show, I would definitely try out Sabrina (it’s a Netflix Original). You’ll know after the first episode if you’re into it.

My 7th and 8th grade art teacher is finally retiring after this year from my “other school” (the one I travel to for one period a day). She clearly has a lot of anxiety about leaving her program and very much wants to find someone to fill her spot sooner rather than later so she has some time to show this person the ropes.

She somehow got it into her head that I would be the perfect person to replace her, even though I don’t have a credential in teaching art, and have only taught it once a long time ago (for a couple of years).

I don’t want to just turn her down, because she was my very favorite teacher in middle school and her class brought me the only joy those two years afforded me, so I’ve actually thought about it a bit. It would mean I’d get to stay at one school all the time…

But I’m pretty sure I am not an art teacher. I’ve taught Spanish for 15 years, and for all the angst I have about whether or not I should stay at my job, I’ve never really considered teaching anything else.

And yet… I have another one of those professional developments this Saturday and I find the thoughts fueled by imposter syndrome rearing their ugly heads again. My best friend at work will be looking for a high school job in the spring and I am reminded that I will most likely be stuck where I am forever. If I taught art, I wouldn’t have to take a pay cut, or lose any of the perks I’ve earned with my seniority, and I’d still get to start over.

I really don’t know. I’m realizing, as I consider (however tenuously) the possibility, how much of my identity is wrapped up in teaching Spanish. Not just professionally but personally. I have really enjoyed learning the language all these years, constantly striving to get better. And yet, there is a part of me that feels like I will never reach the level of fluency I hope to achieve – that it will forever be a goal out of my reach. How frustrating will that be?

When I saw my high school Spanish teacher at the professional development last month, he asked me if I spoke to my kids in Spanish. I said that I tried, but that I wasn’t very consistent. He agreed that it’s hard, and admitted that to him (he is not a native speaker either) it feels artificial, like he’s forcing something that will never come naturally.

That really rang true to me, and as I heard it I knew he was putting words to a feeling I have never been able to articulate.

How many times have I written hear about dissatisfaction and my job? So. Many. Times. Can I really just walk away from this without thinking it through? And how do I consider it seriously when I have no idea what it might even mean?

I do love Spanish in a way I love few things in life. I adore the language, and when I’m understanding it, or speaking it, I feel like it’s almost a super power. There is part of me that revels in the reality that I will always be a student of it, that there will always be something more to learn.

But there are also parts of me that wonder what I’m really doing, wondering if I’ll regret chasing after a muse I may never catch.

And of course, even if I wanted the job, the administrators might not give it to me. I don’t have the right credential, and if I taught art they’d have to find someone else to teach Spanish…

When I think about teaching art it doesn’t make me all that excited. Mostly I am considering the possibility of a change, because I plan to reach for 20 more years and the thought of doing this for that much longer is stifling. Change can be really important, especially for me, and I feel like I have to at least think about it. These opportunities don’t come around every day.

I made the Mabel light-up sweater. I’m pretty stoked by how it came out.

I couldn’t find a purple sweater when I first started looking online, so when I found a soft (this is important because my daughter cares very much how her clothes feel) dark blue one at JCPenney’s for super cheap, I jumped on it. I got the sweater, AND pink skirt for $15!

I’ve had the felt for a little while but I finally made the cutouts this weekend. I printed bubble letters and stars from online so they’d be perfect, but I had to wing it for the rainbow and clouds. I think they turned out pretty good.

I first used a string of bigger lights, but half way through half the lights went out! I was so discouraged. But it was a blessing in disguise because some smaller strings I had worked out much better. I had opted for bigger lights because I thought the smaller ones I already had weren’t bright enough, but after I changed the batteries they were plenty bright.

I am SO RELIEVED the first string went out when it did. It was not working well but I wouldn’t have turned back without needing to. Also, what if half the strand had gone out after I put the whole thing in?!

There are four smaller light strands woven into the sweater at this point: one for the name, one for the rainbow and one for the starts on each each sleeve. I tied the battery packs into the sweater with yarn, but they are small and thin so they aren’t noticeable. The felt is glued on. I used a fabric glue and it doesn’t seem to be working great so I may go back over it with my glue gun.

The rest of her costume is just the pink skirt, a headband and a sparkly pair of mary janes she already had. Oh and her Waddles stuffie.

I don’t usually make Halloween costumes so I am pretty excited by how this one turned out. It’s going to be awesome when she is out trick-or-treating in the dark.

The voter suppression that is taking place right now is really getting me down. It’s one thing for one raging imbecile (who happens to be our president) to say and do horrible, unforgivable things, but it’s another for a political party to systematically chip away at the voting rights of this country’s citizens so they can remain in power even though the majority of the population does not believe in their causes or policies.

I will be quite honest here, and it’s embarrassing for me to say, but I did not pay much attention to politics before the 2016 election. I read some articles here and there during Obama’s two terms, especially when the Affordable Care Act was being passed, but before that I really did not know what the what was going on in Washington DC. I didn’t realize that the Republican Party had been passing laws to restrict voting rights for decades, or that the talking points they use now to explain away their president’s racist, misogynist behavior and comments, have been in their employ for just as long.

{And yes, I realize that in my ignorance, I was absolutely part of the problem. My only saving grace is that I have ALWAYS voted.}

On the way to Legoland, my husband and I listened to the first season of the podcast Slow Burn, an eight-part mini-series about Watergate. It was so well made, and there was so much about the whole ordeal that I didn’t know, which made it even more interesting.

There were two things that struck me about the whole scandal. The first was how familiar the news coverage felt, at times it was almost like deja vu, especially it commented on the tactics Nixon used to thwart the Justice Department’s investigation. The second was how far the majority of the Republican Party went to defend Nixon, even as it became increasingly apparent he was not only lying, but blatantly obstructing justice.

In the end, it was heartening to hear that so many Republicans on the special committee ultimately voted to impeach Nixon, many of them stating that if they failed to do so, they would be destroying the constitution as we know it. Still, that was the part that felt least familiar, and I realized that I have almost no faith that Republicans (or enough Republicans) in the House or Senate would go against their party to protect the constitution, or the office of the President, from the man currently occupying it.

Every day I read another horrifying article about states that are passing laws that so brazenly diminish the voting rights of minorities. It’s really hard for me to understand how anyone can call themselves a Republican with a clear conscious right now. I am really struggling to feel empathy, or be understanding. It will be hard to visit my relatives next year, knowing that they still identify with a party that has such a long history of stripping others of their most basic, and essential rights. It’s one thing to argue about taxes or debate about immigration policy, its quite another to approve, even passively, of citizens being systematically silenced in a country they are proud to call a democracy.

I don’t know. I’m embarrassed to only be learning of the true extent of this now, I mean in a real, substantive way. I know I need to do more than just write postcards to voters, but it’s hard to feel like my efforts will make a difference when one party has spent decades ensuring that it won’t.

So I guess that is my attempt at a political post. I don’t frequently broach these topics as I am not well versed in politics and recognize I have nothing of consequence to say. But today I felt like I had to say this.

Analogous