Hello, dear readers! So, there’s been a dearth of words lately. I don’t know… there’s a lot going on in my life and in my head, but it appears I’m incapable of pressing a bunch of keys in an order which would make those things interesting and/or entertaining enough to inflict on you.
Every time this happens, I automatically go to “Well, this whole bloggy blog thing was a good ride… too bad it’s over” because I think I’ll never ever be able to compose a post again. And that’s possible, I guess. Good(?) thing I have three years of archives!
My gay husband Paul, who will soon be opening CrossFit Surmount, and I competed in the Valentine’s Day Smackdowntwo years ago. (If you live near Gaypex [Paul says the G is silent], you should join his gym! Read my testimonial, which Paul edited for profane content, here.)
This post from a year ago just reminded me what a fantastic life decision NOT getting back on OKCupid is.
Earn more sessions by sleeving! I mean, Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.
Today, my problems seem so small compared to those of the parents of 20 kindergarteners in Newtown, Connecticut. I thought about suspending Retrobruxist Friday for the day, but in case you need a distraction (it’s a coping skill — for real, I learned it in group therapy) from your grief/confusion/anger/what-have-you, I offer you a few of my silly blog posts.
Three years have passed, and I’m dealing with the same shallow and/or generic messages from online dating prospects. Look, here’s one from today:
I bet you ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS you didn’t enjoy reading my profile because, in order to enjoy reading it, you’d have had to read it.
I wrote a story in five episodestwo years ago. It spawned the Call Me Crazy category on the blog because, in it, I got kinda crazy about being crazy.
A year ago, I had writer’s block. History repeats itself — drought this week. Maybe the words will come rushing out with my menses. (Hark, the sound of people deleting Avid Bruxist from their RSS feeds!)
Hey, visually-oriented Bruxistists, what do you think about the link color? I tried purple, but it didn’t pop. My graphic designer suggested hot pink, but it looked a little too Miami Vice for me. Burnt orange? Does it go with the other colors? If not, what does?
The Mexican braised beef that I cooked(!) is delicioso. I’m eating it in lettuce wraps with radishes and cilantro. The only sad thing is there’s all this nom-nom sauce left over, and it’s begging for a big hunk of bread to sop it up. Drinking it would be frowned-upon, right?
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I missed 12% by six-thousandths of a pointthree years ago. Got it a year later, but what a crock. Getting my National Boards didn’t make me a better teacher. You know what has made me a better teacher? (1) Wanting to become a better teacher, and (2) working with good people who also want to become better teachers. That’s it.
Now I feel kind of trapped by the 12% (#FWP). I can’t move out of my Middle Child Generalist certification area (3rd-6th grades) and keep the salary bump. And I don’t know if I really want to teach Middle Children anymore. Middle Earth Children would be fun.
About three times a month, somebody tells me I’ve lost weight, like they did two years ago. And five, ten, and twenty years ago. Now I just say, “Huh. I wouldn’t know. I don’t weigh myself.” They usually try to reassure me that their assessment is correct. Then I just look at them and shrug and look baffled. Then they awkwardly walk away. It’s fun.
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A year ago, I participated in a CrossFit competition against my cousin. Except that the whole thing happened inside my skull because I’m very crazy. She posted on Facebook recently that she’d gotten her first muscle-up…
Yeah. I’m not ever, ever, ever, ever going to be able to do a muscle-up.
And I’m actually OK with that. I was telling a friend recently that I grew up feeling inferior because my elder siblings were smarter than I was. After therapy and transformational seminars and inspirational quote-of-the-day calendars, I decided that was untrue! I had made it up! Empowerment!!1!
But later, I realized, it is true, and that’s OK.
Because the fact is I’m smart enough AND — they’d tell you this too — neither of my siblings could/would get up and host the Monti StorySLAM, and I can/do. I’d love to be intellectually brilliant like my brother and sister, but I have other talents. So it is with my cousin. Nobody’s good at everything, but everybody’s good at something. Or as my buddy Phil said recently, everything something nobody.
Three years ago, I wrote about the day I earned my freedom. I was just yesterday saying to somebody that, as much as I would like a partner and a family, I realize that going out to Geer Street Garden with my friends on a Wednesday evening — that’s what says freedom to me these days — is a function of being single and childless, and I do appreciate it.
I had one of my rare sex dreamstwo years ago. <shudder> <not in a good way>
A year ago, I told a parable. You should read it, for learning. But also for the comments afterward which were really funny.
ALSO, I started a tumblr because I know you were dying to know what things on the internet are good.
Depression tells you that that one’s too young — he can’t possibly want what you want out of a relationship, so don’t even ask — and that other one, he’s too straight-laced — he’d bolt at the first sign of the real you.
And do you really want him anyway?
Depression says you’re too tired to walk the dogs, it’s too cold to walk the dogs. Then you’re an asshole for not walking the dogs.
God, you’re so fucking lazy.
Depression tells you that that thing you posted on your friend’s Facebook wall? She didn’t realize you were joking and now she thinks you’re mean. And it won’t stop saying it.
You’re mean.
Everyone thinks you’re mean.
Depression whispers that it won’t work out. It’ll never work out.
Depression says there’s something wrong with you. Like, fundamentally wrong with you. That’s why shit is so messed up.
It’s your fault. You caused it.
And depression? Depression is an excellent liar.
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I’m fine. I’ll be fine. It’s just, for the last couple weeks, I’ve been lied to a lot.
Where were we? Ah yes, I was freezing my cheeks off. Moving on!
Scariest: About halfway through, we had to Walk the Plank. As a kid, I jumped off the high-dive at the pool once in a while, and I can swim just fine, but I don’t know, faced with a drop three times my height all of a sudden, my heart started throbbing in my limbs. It didn’t help that the lifeguards had to save a drowning guy while I was standing there at the edge looking down on the scene.
I couldn’t contemplate my fate for very long though because a bitch with a bullhorn was up there screaming at everybody to jump, so I did, and I plunged down, down, down—the fifteen feet seemed like a mile, and the water went all the way to the center of the earth—and I felt like I might never reach the surface again. But I did, and I swam out of there, and yeah. I did it. Go, me!
Hurtiest: They actually have two different electrocution obstacles, Electric Eel, where you belly-crawl under a bunch of dangling live wires, and then there’s the Electroshock Therapy at the end.
During the former, I got zapped three times, once on my left shoulder and twice on my right butt-cheek. (Looking at our team “before” photo, I’m kind of surprised that my ass didn’t get more of a jangling.) Running through the latter, I hit no fewer than five zappy strings.
And I don’t even know what to say about how it felt. It fucking hurt? It felt like I was getting electrocuted? I don’t know. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever felt. It hurt a lot.
Worst, Runner-up: By far, the worst physical part of the Mudder was the running. First and foremost, I hate running. I hate running. I hate running.
I don’t think I can say it enough times or with enough emphasis to get across my vitriolic hate for running. My body doesn’t like to move fast in a forwardly direction. (And “fast” should probably be in quotation marks. Let’s say “faster than an amble”.) The impact makes my hips, knees, and shoulders hurt. And even though I can walk a marathon and dance/hula hoop for HOURS, my cardiovascular system mistakes running for imminent death every time.
Also, it’s so BORING.
And, as I mentioned in my post about the thwarted Tough Mudder Mid-Atlantic, keeping up with my teammates was going to be a real challenge. I solved that problem by scrambling through the obstacles and taking off, so I’d get a little ahead of the group. They would inevitably catch up, pass me, and wait at the next obstacle, but I didn’t get too far behind that way.
But! In addition to my loathing for the sport of quickly covering distance by foot, I’ve been experiencing some Old Lady Problems lately. A couple months ago, my right heel started feeling bruised, particularly after double-unders, but it wasn’t actually bruised, and why pay $70 for a specialist copay when you can ask Facebook about these things? Dr. Facebook diagnosed me as having plantar fasciitis.
I’ve been doing stretches and rolling my foot on a lacrosse ball and whatnot, which has helped. However, the heel was tender at the very start of the Mudder, so I knew it would be an issue, and I worried about what problems might arise if I favored that foot for 11 miles.
Z told me to take tiny steps and lift with my quads, in essence to favor both feet, and to keep them relaxed, making sure my heel touched the ground with every step so it had a split second to rest. When I concentrated, I was able to do that, but you know, there were people to watch and call-and-response cheers (One of us: “Hercu-!” The rest: “‘Lisa!” [Repeat]) to do, so it’s possible I got distracted one or two times.
About mile 8, three Team ‘Lisa members were up ahead; Hammer was just behind me because her knee had gotten totally jacked up somewhere in there. And my right leg crumpled. Just crumpled underneath me. I stopped and looked at the back of my leg, and there in the middle of my calf was a crater about three inches in diameter and an inch deep. Hammer came up beside me.
“WHAT IS THAT?” I said, pointing at the alien that was backflipping inside my leg.
“Oh! You have a Charley horse! Quick, put your foot back and stretch the calf out,” she said. So I did, and whew!, it totally helped. Hammer to the rescue.
Thanks to her, when Charley came galloping by again at mile 10 and then again when I was reaching up for the monkey bars, I knew what to do, and later in the car, Z lent me his
The Stick
to roll out my calf, and it was magically hurty and helpy. (Shiv insists on calling it The Stick, even when there’s another article or possessive pronoun in front.)
[Note to everyone: you should buy a The Stick and use your The Stick every day because it will make your life betterer.]
Now those of you who know me will say, “What could possibly be a Worse Part for Amy than running?” And it’s true, there wasn’t anything else that was so physically taxing (and BORING).
But there was one part that was, spiritually and emotionally, the Super-Worstest of All the Parts, and that was what Shiv likes to call Shitter Village, i.e., the giant bank of port-a-potties at the start line.
Of course, nobody likes a port-a-potty (except maybe Flukie), especially ones that have been enthusiastically used for pre-event lightening of loads, as it were.
And I’m not going to say, after a sausage & egg breakfast and a soy latte, that I left Shitter Village better than I found it or anything, but the first port-a-potty I tried to use, but ran out of screaming—
Actually, let me address the previous occupant directly.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I understand your impulse to squat. I really do. Nobody wants to put his ass directly on the seat of any public toilet, much less a portable one that doesn’t flush. But since you, in your crouched position, managed to miss the hole entirely and shit directly on the back of the seat, I feel like it’s your duty to wrap your hands, wrists, and forearms—whatever you need to do—in toilet paper, and sweep that pile into the space where it’s meant to go.
Sincerely,
EVERYONE ELSE THAT HAD TO GO IN THERE AND WITNESS THAT, THUS LIVE WITH THAT IMAGE FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES
I guess you could say that the Most Worstest of All the Parts, Much Worserer Than Everything Else By Far was the shit show.
[Before we begin, a note for my mother and any other worried parties: A friend of mine suggested I solve my ragey eye infection problem by wearing goggles during the Tough Mudder, so I dug through some stuff in my shed and found a pair of ten-year-old swim goggles. They more or less did the trick. ‘Course, they were real squeezy on my head and always opaque with condensation and I looked real cute, you guys. But between them and the drops, which have been actually landing on my eyeballs, thanks to Shiv’s steady hand, it looks like we might be able to save the eye. Onward!]
There were so many Worst Parts of the Tough Mudder Carolinas, I don’t really know where to begin.
We’ll get to them in a minute, but I should start with this: it was SO RIDICULOUSLY FUN. After the Shit Show known as Tough Mudder Mid-Atlantic, TM management was clearly back on their game for this one, and Team ‘Lisa
(from left, me, Kate M. “The Ginger Menace”, Shiv, and Hammer)
had SUCH a good time, y’all. People kept asking, “Are you all really named Lisa?” and we would explain that we were all Herculisas! Ha!
The fifth member of our team, Z, is not pictured, as he was behind the camera. Also, this counts as the Embarrassing Photo of the Week, considering that my “booming system”, as Dan NJ calls it, makes everyone else’s systems look like subwoofers.
Anyway, there was laughter and camaraderie. There was psyching each other up, cheering each other on, and hoisting each other over walls. There were inspiring athletes: one dude carried a pumpkin the entire course (you know, for Halloween!); a guy with a prosthetic leg ran our heat.
Some Mudders dressed in costumes: a caveman, a couple bumblebees, a bunch of superheroes, folks in interview suits, some jailbirds, and two guys who wore nothing butsneakers and pink lamé thongs. With their race numbers written in Sharpie on their ass cheeks.
It was hilarious and awesome and inspiring.
But the Mudder is supposed to be hard. When it’s hard, it’s good, and the good is bad, and the bad is good, because you’re doing it; you’re really doing this ridiculous thing. And so I present to you:
The Worst Parts of the Tough Mudder Carolinas, Ranked from Least Worst to Most Worstest of All the Things Ever
Least Worst: I’m actually kind of impressed that I didn’t have a panic attack in any of the tubes and tunnels we had to crawl through. My knees and elbows got scrapey and bruised, but apparently my theoretical claustrophobia is worse than my practical claustrophobia.
Worse: The upper body obstacles. Not the walls or the haystacks—those were fun because people let me climb on them and/or they shoved me over by my legs, feet, and ass—but the Hangin’ Tough and the Funky Monkey.
To be honest, I didn’t even really try on those because I knew I would be dropping into the water at some point, so I figured I’d just go ahead and put myself there. I KNOW, NOT THE MUDDER SPIRIT. Next time.
Worser: Remember how I was worried about falling into the series of trenches full of water? Well, I didn’t fall in, but I did fuck up some other Mudders’ rhythm because, even though they say not to stop in between, I stopped. Sorry, people!
Kinda Bad: It wasn’t the carrying of logs that was bad. It was carrying the logs a long fucking way that was bad.
Definitely Bad: At one point, you had to fireman’s-carry a partner up a hill. I called dibs on Hammer, threw her over my shoulders, and started trudging. And even though she was the smallest person in our group, I still had to stop mid-way and take a break. She piggy-backed my ass from the switch-off point to the end. Beast!
Goddamn Terrible: The very first obstacle is called the Arctic Enema, a dumpster full of ice water with a board in the middle that you have to swim under. And when I say “ice water”, I don’t mean “really cold water”, I mean, water, but with a shit-ton of ice in it. As someone who grew up swimming summers in
Buzzards Bay,
I liked to consider myself a person who knew something about submersing oneself in cold water, but after experiencing the Arctic Enema, I imagine it’s more akin to winter-swimming in
Baffin Bay.
And even if I’d had the upper-body strength to hoist myself out, which I didn’t, being in that water for eight seconds made all my systems go beeeeeeeeeew brrrwwww booooo, and I was functionally dysfunctional. Fortunately, Z scooped me out by my arms.
I was suffering through a pretty extended period of terminal insomniathree years ago. I thought it was from grief, but turned out the Effexor I started taking right after Boonie died was the culprit. When I decided to go off it a little while later, the wake-ups stopped. Now the same thing is happening, but I’m not on meds so I don’t know what the hell. Sometimes it shows up when I start a new job or move to a new city or something, but there’s no major circumstantial upheaval right now. So I don’t know. But it sucks.
Two years ago, I was soliciting career suggestions. Still am! (If you guys had actually come through with my request for a bajillion dollars, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.)
Thing is, I love teaching: I love my content area; I really like my school and the people I work with; I dig the vacation schedule; my administration is supportive; and the kids, the kids are hilarious. But the parts I hate about my job, I hate so bad, namely (1) frequent, long, useless, pointless meetings, (2) 7:20am start time, and (3) stupid, stupid hoops to jump through, passed down from people who have never been in the classroom or were there so long ago they haven’t the foggiest recollection what it’s like.
And those things, minus maybe #2, would be true for any teaching job. So maybe teaching’s not it for me?
But what is?
(Send one bajillion dollars now.)
A year ago, I wrote one of my most commented-on posts. You think it’s about dating? Guess again.
I totally forgot on Retrobruxist Friday that I was going to implement a new feature to help me get over the idea that I might look repulsive on the internet: Embarrassing Photo of the Week.
Well, I’m here to remedy that situation right now. I was going to take another jacked-up pic of myself with Photo Booth, but! I jogged up to Boone this weekend to visit The Land of Oz with my dad and brother/fam, an annual debacle of a trip about which I will have to write one of these days, and I ended up in the family room, sifting through old photo albums and taking pictures of pictures.
Let me preface this photo by saying that my mom is an excellent seamstress. Growing up, whatever I asked for, she made, including the 7th grade prom dress you’re about to see. She would take me to the fabric store, and we would flop through giant McCall’s and Simplicity pattern books together. I’d point to The Dress, whereupon we would wind through the stacks of bolts until I zeroed in on the exact right fabric.
Some notes about this magnum opus:
Yes, that is a double bubble-skirt. Shut up. It was very much the fashion at the time.
If you click the photo and see it bigger, you might think that the white fabric has tiny black polka dots on it, but you’d be wrong — those are tiny hearts.
No, it’s not the lighting; my legs are indeed seven shades darker than my arms. That’s because I’m wearing dancers’ tights. I didn’t own panty hose, and these were in the days before one went bare-legged to such occasions.
Yes, that pony-tail holder is made of the same fabric as the giant bow on my ass. (I told you my mom would do whatever I asked of her.)
But most importantly, really, seriously,
look at my hand.
Hahahaha. I can’t believe I didn’t take up modeling.
On a sober note, I’ve always said/thought that I’ve been a fatty since forever. It’s clear from this picture that I was not fat in 7th grade. I really did start putting on weight in 8th grade and gained 50 pounds by the end of my year in Italy, but what’s interesting is, I truly thought of myself at the time as a fat girl.
I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it was the thing to do for middle school girls. Maybe it’s because I had been binge-eating for so long that I just assumed.
Anyway, back to important things:
(a) This dress is still in the closet upstairs in case anybody wants to borrow it.
I love, love, love teaching in a year-round school. Nine weeks on, three weeks off (two and a half weeks for teachers); five weeks in the summer (four for teachers). It’s good for kids. It’s good for their bodies; it’s good for their retention of material and, therefore, academic achievement. It’s good for teachers, or at least this one. Strict nine-week timelines help focus instruction and light a fire under my ass, and frequent breaks from the kids are good for my sanity/affection for them. This calendar also allows me to go to Costa Rica for a week, and then still have ten days off in which to sleep, do house projects, visit family, and whatnot.
That being said, unstructured time is Bad for Amy Scott’s Psyche. Next intersession, I need to make sure I create a schedule for myself so as not to swirl into existential despair and this weird version of agoraphobia I seem to have conjured this time.
So the alarm went off this morning. I hate the alarm. I have it set to that marimba tone on my iPhone, and it makes me dry-heave a little when it goes off. Or when someone else has it set as their ringtone. (If you ever see me out and I’m retching for no apparent reason — probably somebody just got a call, and I’m having flashbacks. To that morning.)
But I have to be at work, and that’s probably a good thing.
