Not a Wasted Word

All this winter, I’ve watched my students be out of school for a week or more and come back looking like death warmed over. Some years everyone’s coughing all winter, some years everyone’s blowing their noses for months, but this year seems to be all about the really, really, bad bout of something.

I have thanked the forces that be that my family was making it through the winter relatively unscathed. No one had even missed a day of school for being sick yet! (Only my husband had gotten anything that required he stay home.) Then, this weekend, it finally hit us.

My son was fine Sunday morning. In fact, I was planning a biking riding get together at the local park when he suddenly said he didn’t feel that great. An hour later he was in bed with a fever.

That fever hit 103.5 and stayed around there for THREE DAYS. He had a cough and stuffy nose right away. He didn’t start throwing up until 24 hours into it.

I already had a cough when he got sick, but it got so much worse on Sunday evening and by Monday I felt awful. I never had a fever or threw up, but I still have an awful cough. I haven’t been able to take time off of work yet, we’re short subs and I’m about to lose my 7th graders for a week (before a week off after President’s Day – so for two weeks), so I need to be at school right now. Luckily today I almost felt normal.

My husband took care of our son for Monday and Tuesday and he was amazing. I’m very lucky he can take time off so much more easily than I, and that he’s so good at comforting our kids when they are sick. My son has been calling out for his dad every night this week when he wakes up (though he doesn’t mind if I go in to help him).

So far no one else in the family has whatever horrible bug my son got. My husband isn’t feeling great today, and is very nervous he got it, but I’m hoping he just has my cough and not the awful that my son had. But even with only my son sick, and my husband able to stay home to take care of him, this week we’ve all been in survival mode. Every day I’m literally counting the hours until I can go to bed.

I hope by this weekend we’re all well again. In the meantime…

Wash your hands everyone. Wash. Your. Hands. Whatever is going around this year is ROUGH.

Thank you all for your thoughts and ideas about living abroad. The summer option is obviously a good one. We spend some time with my extended family in St. Louis every summer which is very important to me because it’s our kids only experience with extended family and I want their cousins to be important to them. But even if we still went to that we could probably manage four weeks every summer. While the cost of flying internationally on a yearly basis feels daunting it’s obviously less than the cost of losing my position and making much less somewhere else when I come back. It also negates the need for my husband to take a leave from his job, which he’s not super interested in doing. It’s definitely a start.

We can’t travel abroad this summer and probably not the next, but maybe then we could start. My daughter will only be 12 at that point so we’ll still have quite a few summers left. And while four weeks a year will never be as effective as one entire year for my fluency, it’s certainly better than nothing.

And yes, I recognize money isn’t everything and no one looks back and wishes they had made more. But I sometimes wonder if people don’t wish they had picked a job with more earning power. Living where I do, with the cost of living as high as it is, I definitely wish that most of the time. But maybe I’ll feel differently at the end of my life. Maybe by then what I earned will feel like enough, plenty even.

I was in a funk this week. I couldn’t manage to show up here, even though I tried. Yesterday was especially hard. I spent a ton of time putting together a set of stations for my block day and my second class shit all over it. I left school feeling like a failure and wondering why I keep trying to do this when it never seems to get better. It was demoralizing.

I was supposed to go to martial arts last night but I also had to take my son earlier so he’d be ready for his next belt test. By the time I got them both home and fed I really didn’t want to go back to the dojo for a 7pm class. Without my own test coming up it was easy to tell myself I could skip it. In the end, it was only because I can’t go to my two classes on Saturday that I pushed myself out the door.

And of course I was glad I went. We practiced all the new green belt techniques I am so excited to learn. And it was nice to focus on myself during class and talk to other adults afterward. I even had a conversation about my day where I recognized that I’ve had far fewer days that feel demoralizing this year, which was part of why it was hitting me so hard. I left feeling better about everything.

All that to say, I was reminded again that I’m almost aways glad when I go. And I supposed I’ve learned that lesson enough times that I rarely let the voices that urge me to stay home win over. Instead I’m more inclined to listen to the voices that tell me to just go.

Just go.

We’re having big talks about the house right now, trying to decide what our long term strategy will be. It’s making me think a lot about what our ultimate goals are. Do we really want a bigger house? Do we want the space to entertain? The only thing we’re sure of is that we want that unit to be functional on its own, for our kids, or our parents, (or maybe even us!) one day. Maintaining that functionality is what is making all of this so difficult.

But it’s also making me think of other things, like if we’ll ever live abroad. It’s something I very much want to do, but the longer I stay at my job, the less certain I am that I’ll ever have the cojones to leave. In teaching when you leave a position you take a pay cut. There is really no way I can take a year off and not sacrifice hundreds of thousands of dollars over the remainder of my teaching career.

Is a dream worth hundreds of thousands of dollars?

The main reason I want to live abroad is to become truly fluent in Spanish. That is something I desperately want to do. I also very much want my kids to live away from the United States for a little bit, for a number of reasons. But I will readily admit that my main reason for wanting to get away is to become truly fluent. And one of the main reasons I want to become truly fluent is so I can use that fluency in my career.

I think a lot about just waiting until I’m retired to live abroad. But if I don’t achieve that goal until the effective end of my life, did I actually achieve it at all? If the reason I wanted to achieve that goal was to improve my professional capacity and I accomplished it after I am done working, did I really achieve that goal? I’m not asking these questions because I believe the answer is no; I’m honestly not sure what the answers are.

It’s frustrating to feel stuck in my current position. It’s frustrating to feel like I don’t have a lot of options. I know I feel these restrictions because of my own assumptions, and I’m ready to admit that my assumptions might not be based in actual fact. Generally when this quagmire pulls me into the muck, I set it down and walk away, believing that when it’s time to make these difficult decisions I’ll know what the right answers should be. (Or recognizing that I a future me will need to make these decisions, and I can let her handle this difficult shit.)

I also recognize that these are first world problems and the world is on fire and it’s stupid to get pulled into the muck when all around me planet is self-destructing. It’s just stuff I think about, questions I wish I knew how to answer.

The principal at my school sends out a weekly email to the staff every Monday morning with a list of everything that will be happening during the week. At the bottom of the list there is a shout-outs section where she thanks different staff members for going above and beyond the week before, with a sentence or two about what they did.

I never make it on the shout outs section. Never. Even when I did the professional development that everyone seemed to appreciate. I doubt I’ll ever get onto the shout outs section. I’m sure there are other teachers who don’t make it onto the shout out section either. I think it’s good to recognize people in those ways, but it’s also a way to make those who never make the cut very aware that they, well, never make the cut.

I was thinking the other day about how proud I am of the work I’m doing in my Spanish classrooms this year. I’m a pretty damn good teacher of middle school Spanish, and the way I teach requires a lot of patience, energy, enthusiasm and dedication. Most language teachers don’t teach this way because it requires the instructor to be more vulnerable, to trust the students more, to follow their lead and help them produce characters and stories in the language that engage them. I’m really proud of the way I teach, and I think what I’m doing in my classroom is pretty awesome.

I’m also aware that I will likely never be recognized for any of it.

No public school teacher goes into it for the glory. We don’t do it for the money or the respect. Society generally doesn’t regard us very highly – we make far less than other professionals with similar amounts of schooling. Many people believe that they can do our jobs as well as, if not better, than we can (we were all students once, right? We all know what teaching entails!) And of course the famous refrain: those who can’t do, teach. I mean that, right there, says it all.

So yeah, I didn’t become a public school teacher for the recognition. And yet? It’s hard to reconcile my efforts with the appreciation I’m given. Middle schoolers aren’t exactly the most empathetic, aware subset of humans. It’s hard to find a group that is less self-centered, actually, and that is saying something of the only species on Earth that can navel gaze.

I suppose most people go through life not feeling very appreciated by their colleagues, or in their profession. The world is full of people going above and beyond without anyone recognizing their efforts or accomplishments. And I will do the same. But I wonder if this age of social media has made that lack of recognition all the more glaring, because we get to see all the people that ARE recognized for what they do. Some are paid millions of dollars for doing the same thing as everyone else, but with filters and sponsors and paid-for posts. I mean, if someone can be famous just for playing Fortnite, surely I can expect a little recognition for my efforts in the classroom.

Or maybe everyone has always felt like this, and it’s just part are of the human condition.

I used to think I wanted to create something that would outlast me – some piece of media that would carry my name and efforts farther than I could otherwise reach. I have jettisoned that desire – I know it will only cause me frustration and grief – but I suppose a small remnant of it remains. I will probably work in my district for my entire adult life and when I retire no one will care because all the people I originally worked with will be gone and my students will be grown up and it just won’t matter to anyone that I’m not there anymore. It’s hard to accept that, but it’s also important that I do.

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I went back and looked at the March Photo Challenge that I posted in 2012 on my old blog, and I decided to re-post those pictures here, because why not? So here is the prompt page and the first 11 shots…

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It occurred to me at some point this winter that August of 2019 marked ten years of me blogging.

Ten. Years.

I actually went back to my old space and poked around a bit, read a few posts, skimmed a few comments. It’s CRAZY how many people commented back then. It’s crazy how much I used to comment in other people’s spaces. Blogging was such a massive part of me life; to say it was important to me just doesn’t do it nearly the justice it deserves.

In many ways, blogging was my life.

All of my best friends back then were found through blogging. Some I had met in real life, and some were even (eventually) my real life best friends. Others existed only through a screen, be that on our blogs or texting. I was on Twitter for a while but that overwhelmed me fast, and I stayed primarily in the blogosphere. I never even made it onto Instagram.

Sometimes, when I’m trying to log into something with my google account it will default to my old blogging gmail. I’m always taken aback when I see the handle. It’s like glimpsing a ghost of my former self.

It used to make me really sad when I went back to my old blog and read it. Really, really sad. I was in that space for five years. Generally I wrote a post every weekday. Some months there are 31 posts! (One February there are 31 posts!) I had those designated days where I would write a certain kind of post, like Thoughtful Thursdays and Useful Tuesdays. (I thought there were WTF!? Wednesdays but I don’t see that tag on the list. 😉 I did all these photo challenges (I should look back through those months too…). I participated in other people’s themed posts. I put up the buttons and the badges. I was a part of PAIL. Holy shit, I could go on and on. (I just found them! They were called So What Wednesdays! Ha!)

It’s just crazy to see it all there, the hundreds and HUNDREDS of posts. I took down my first paid-for space (someone actually bought the url recently and I started getting traveling posts from it in my reader! 😉 I guess I’ve been here for four years? I remember hoping this space would be something amazing… instead I just let it kind of fade away.

I’m not sure what the emotions are here. Definitely not regret. Some massive doses of nostalgia to be sure. But honestly, most I’m just grateful – grateful that blogging, and the ALI blogosphere, was there for me when I needed it most, that writing in my own spaces and reading in other people’s spaces filled a hole that otherwise would have felt bottomless. And also grateful that I don’t need it as much anymore.

It’s weird for a huge piece of my life to exist somewhere like that. I don’t have Facebook anymore and I don’t participate in any other social media, so my blogs are all I’ve got. Like all online presences there is some cringe worthy shit in my spaces, but nothing that mortifies me. It’s been long enough that I can afford myself a little bit of grace.

I guess it was from all that stumbling gracefully…

(Ha! Sorry! I couldn’t help myself…)

These next couple of months are going to be hard for me. There will be a lot of uncertainty and I will writhe against it unwittingly, despite my best efforts. It’s going to be hard and I’m going to struggle and it’s going to suck. I know all of this. But I can also take steps to tone down all of that negativity, especially since it will exist completely in my head.

Not knowing what we are going to do with that space. Not knowing what decisions we are going to make. That kind of things drives me insane. But I need to learn how to ride these things out. I need to figure out how to be okay not knowing.

There are bigger decisions I’ve learned to let reside in constant uncertainty. I still want to live abroad with my kids, but I have no idea if I’ll ever prioritize that so it might come to pass. I’ve learned to be okay with not knowing about that – I figure when the time comes I’ll know which choice I should make and I can find peace in that place of not knowing. It’s hard for me, and makes me feel uncomfortable, but I’ve learned to ride out those long moments of grasping.

In the meantime, we will keep living our lives, watching and tracking our financial decisions, gathering data before we decide what comes next.

It’s going to be hard but it will be a good exercise for me. Somehow, at 39, I still need the practice.

On Tuesday we inspected our unit, found it in acceptable condition, and wrote our tenant three checks: one for the second half of the buyout amount we agreed to, one for the entirety of his security deposit and one for the remaining days of January. Then he handed us our keys, and left.

Seven and a half years, three tenants, bedbugs and a buyout agreement later, we are no longer landlords.

I have to admit, I felt lighter than I expected after he left. I really did not like him, and I did not like sharing part of my house with him. I’m glad he’s gone.

I don’t like how much lighter our bank accounts are. We’ve decimated our emergency fund, and we’ll be on a VERY tight budget until August when we’ll have our car paid off (we took out a three year loan but have been making extra payments on it so we only have seven months left). Once the car payments are done we’ll be in a pretty good spot, as far as our monthly finances go, but obviously we’ll need to keep a better handle on our money for a while to rebuild our emergency fund.

And of course, there is the question of what to do with the space. At this point we just don’t feel comfortable with anyone we don’t know being down there, so we’re not even going to AirBnB it. That would require buying furniture anyway, and we need to do a lot of work to ensure there aren’t still bedbugs – I would never let anyone sleep down there until I am as sure as I can be (with bedbugs, it feels like you never can be entirely sure).

So yeah. We have this space, but… it’s not currently connected to the rest of the house. We used to dream of incorporating it into our house by making it a “master suite,” but honestly I’m struggling to get excited about the idea. I used to want those extra square feet so badly, but now, after seven years of reading about minimalism, it just feels like more that we don’t really need. Mostly it just feels like more to clean.

Except it’s not just more to clean. The second bathroom would be amazing (and that one is SO MUCH BIGGER than ours, which is so tight that you can’t open or close the door if you’re using the toilet). And having an actual wall between us and our living room?! That would be incredible (our current bedroom is supposed to be the living room and the only thing separating it from our actual living room is a Japanese shade). So yes, it’s still exciting to think about that space being ours, but I’m guessing building stairs to connect the two living spaces will cost WAY more than we’ll have any time soon, so if we’re not willing to take out a HELOC, well then… I guess that space will just sit there.

It’s frustrating because space is at such a premium in this city, I hate to see it go to waste. But when the city refuses to protect homeowners who aren’t really interested in being landlords but have space to share, well then I guess we have to just sit on it.

Or live above it. Empty. For quite a while.

So yeah. It’s nice not to have a tenant anymore. It’s nice not to have to worry about when he’ll email with some cryptic request that is barely comprehensible. It’s nice not to have to wonder when he’ll be demanding we spend thousands of dollars on another bedbug treatment when he clearly takes no steps to manage the problem in the ways he can. All of that is very nice. But it’s not nice to have this source of income pulled out from under us. And it’s not nice that now are financially strapped because we had to pay someone else a considerable sum to leave our own home. None of that is nice.

I don’t know. We bought a house with an inlaw 7.5 years ago because the ones with asking prices in our budget were going for $150K more, in cash, and they didn’t have inlaw units. So when we found this one at $100K over our budget (which was only still on the market because the kids of the original owners tried to sell it without buying out the previous tenants in the inlaw unit, which left it on the market for over a month – a death knell in a city like San Francisco), we went for it because it felt like “buy this house or buy no house.” I guess in the end we should be happy because renting the unit allowed us to pay our mortgage when we made less and were spending crazy amounts on childcare (and health care!) and now we totally can afford our mortgage without a tenant, we’re only strapped because of the buyout. And I al happy, and I recognize how fortunate we are. It’s still a bummer though, and I’m working through those feelings.

{It also doesn’t hurt that our home is worth considerably more than we paid for it – Bay Area prices are always going up.}

I don’t know if I even mentioned here that our tenant accepted our buyout agreement in October. We gave him six months to leave (because he had 45 days to reneg on the agreement after he signed and we worried that if he started looking too quickly he’d decide not to leave without a protracted legal battle) and expected him to use all of those six months, but then he left in three, which still surprises me. And I didn’t want to talk about it until it was all said and done, so here we are, now, with maybe a surprise announcement…

I am trying to focus on the positives, because there are plenty. Who knows, maybe we’ll make it work incorporating the unit without stairs. My husband seems content walking through our garage and down the long hallway to get to the unit, maybe some day I’ll get there too. Who knows, maybe this summer we’ll be making the big move.

But right now, we’re just going to sit on it.