I will admit, I am one of those people that says “Feb-roo-ary” and flinches an eensy bit when people say “Feb-you-ary”. I know that makes me an asshole because EVERYBODY says “Feb-you-ary”, just like everybody says “laying down” when they mean “lying down”.
[“Lay” requires a direct object. You can lay your keys down on the counter or lay your baby in a crib or even lay your body down, but when you head to the couch to take a nap, you’re actually going to lie down. Even more confusing, the past tense of “lie” is “lay”. (The past tense of “lay” is “laid”.) So you can say, “I lay down for a nap”, but that would mean you did it before right now. I KNOW. I’M AN ASSHOLE.]
I further know it’s only a matter of time before we reach the tipping point and the Grammar Mavens say, “Well, language evolves, and now ‘Feb-you-ary’ and ‘laying down’ are considered correct.” But that day has not yet come, so if you notice that I have a tiny facial tic this month, there you go.
You can blame my parents for the above (see my dad’s comment on this post from three years ago, which also explains why I use quotation marks the way I do).
Two years ago, I shared with you my magical pit-stank cure. Still using it. Still giving myself Alzheimer’s. But the ‘heimer’s hasn’t hit yet! Still sharp as a marble! Now where in the world did I lie my keys? I’m confused—I need to go lay down.
I “competed” in an Olympic weightlifting meeta year ago. I hit 79.2 lbs on the snatch and 107.8 on the clean & jerk. I’m proud to say that my clean & jerk is now 128 pounds, and I snatch 103. That’s right: I have a 103-lb snatch.
My friend/coach ATD recently wrote a blog post called 10 Reasons Why 2012 Was Great. When I saw the title but before I read the post, I was like, “OH HELL NO 2012 SUCKED AND I’M SO GLAD IT’S ALMOST OVER PHFTHTHPT.” But I thought about my tendency toward the negative and my attempts to cultivate gratitude, and I figured I’d give it a try. I didn’t think I could come up with 10 things, but maybe five, you know? I jotted down 11 in a matter of minutes.
1. Working with people that I like. If you let me, I’ll bitch all day about my job, but truth is, I’ve never had a better teaching situation, so I’m gonna try to STFU with the complaints.
2. Time with the Scott clan. Particularly my nieces and nephews.
They are hilarious.
(The eldest/scribe was concerned that Santa might get his fingers snapped in one of various rodent traps that were… necessary at my dad’s house this year. The cheese in the fridge was fair game, but Mr. Claus seemed to be OK with the pretzel treats and whatnot.)
3. Tubing down the Dan River with my friends. I don’t have any photos because nobody has a waterproof camera. That’s probably a good thing.
4. Doing the Tough Mudder. So great. Also, really, really terrible.
5. The Monti. Hosting, putting my name in the hat, just sitting and listening. I enjoyed it all, and I learned so much each time.
6. Fostering Buffy and Tulip. Buffy’s mommies fostered a male dog after they adopted Buffy and ended up adopting him. Talk about paying it forward! And Tulip’s mommy is—well, I’ll put it this way: I can’t imagine a better situation for her. (Go to Tulip’s Facebook page, and scroll down to her status update for December 7. Tulip’s mommy and I wrote it together.)
7. Wire-Watching Zombie Squad. Four friends and I get together most Sundays and throw ourselves into a big pile on the couch and watch an unhealthy number of episodes of The Wire. And I love it. I just fucking love it.
Do it if you get the chance. It’s an experience like no other.
9. When Margo came to visit. I love Margo.
10. Being a CrossFit Durham athlete. I’m not “in shape” by any standard, but I’m definitely in the best shape of my life, and I’ve made so many new friends there.
Also the fact that Dave lets us go rogue and do ridiculous things. Exhibit A: the enTire Mile, an event conceived of by Shiv, during which six of us, taking turns in pairs, flipped a tractor tire an entire mile. Just for the hell of it.
taking two big risks that didn’t end the way I wanted them to; and as a result,
still being single.
And, with the exception of the Mudder (which we got to do later), those are Big Things. I’m not going to say they’re not, or that they didn’t suck real, real, real bad. But you know what? There are a lot worse problems than not having your career dreams fulfilled, and my depression is probably a lifetime affliction that I’ll just have to manage, and I learned a lot about myself in the face of failure/rejection.
Moreover, I’m not really single right now, am I? It seems I have a Dutch boyfriend.
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?
**********
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.
**********
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.
You may recall that, back in September, I vacated Durham for a week in Costa Rica with my super-friend Shiv (a.k.a. my sister-wife). You’re most likely saying to yourself, “Well, that must’ve been pretty dope,” and if so, YOU ARE A GENIUS AND TOTALLY CORRECT.
Evidence:
We stayed at the base of a volcano for a coupla/three nights.
¿See it over there? ¡That’s Arenal!
We went to a hot spring spa and sat in 100-degree waterfalls that came off that volcano.
There was a parrot named Estefanía who lived at/around our hotel, and
she would harass the workers until they gave her bananasor “bañañas” as Shiv and I took to calling them for no good reason.
All breakfasts included fried plantains. All breakfasts everywhere should include fried plantains.
We ziplined over the jungle.
Seriously. Will you look at that.
Shiv=badass (She kept wanting to go upside-down and stuff, and the guides were like, “OK, crazy lady.”)
We went on a gorgeous hike.
What.
Also,
We met a baby sloth named Cheu, and
he did ET-phone-home finger with Shiv.He also slothfully scratched his armpit for a long time. It was adorable.
We had two fantastic beach days.
Here I’m doing the Handstand Everywhere You Go requisite for people who do CrossFit. (I’m both proud of and embarrassed by this photo because, hey, that’s a pretty good handstand but, Jesús, you could land planes on my thighs.)
My favorite picture of the trip: Shiv en la bahía.
The only obstacles we had to overcome, other than the torrential rains for the first few days, were the incorrigible scavenger animals. To wit, the raccoons and coatis:
But also one morning, a band of capuchin monkeys terrorized/delighted (tomato/tomahto) the restaurant where we had our breakfast. I had wondered why the waitstaff didn’t put boxes of sugar packets on the tables — you had to ask for them — but it’s because the capuchins are junkie-monkeys. They will run through the restaurant, snatch the sugar packets right off your table (sometimes the whole box), and
scamper up the trees to get their fix.
The funniest part was that if they happened in their caper to grab any packets of artificial sweetener, they would throw them on the ground. (“Pump that garbage in another monkey’s face,” said the capuchins.)
[Side note: I told my 10-year-old niece this story, and she wrote the following poem.
Monkeys Don’t Like Splenda
I was sitting in the restaurant, (I was on vacation,) I was taking lots of pictures I would send to my relations. I got a big white envelope; it didn’t say the sender, All it said upon its face was; MONKEYS DON’T LIKE SPLENDA.
I sat eating bananas, pondering those words, I was in Costa Rica, but it did seem quite absurd. Maybe they were picky eaters, or didn’t like the food, Either way, this or that, I thought it was just rude.
I asked the waitress, bout the note, the manager’s the sender, Each table gets one, and it’s true, that MONKEYS DON’T LIKE SPLENDA.
Then a monkey raced down and grabbed the sugar packets, Dumped the Splenda, dumped the box, and just made quite a racket. I learned a quite good lesson; that healthy isn’t ALWAYS good, Cause if monkeys don’t like Splenda, I don’t think that I should!
I’m not biased or anything, but I’m pretty sure my niece is a genius?
End side note.]
Shiv and I sat on the beach late in the afternoon of our last day. Pieces of the navy blue mountains across the bay, which itself turned slowly from aqua to slate, chipped off and floated skyward. A lone trawler chugged its way toward the open Pacific. The branches of the guayaba tree stirred above us, and every time we stood up to leave, the yaw-kish of the waves hitting the beach lulled us back to our chairs,
while the sun became an ever-tinier pink sliver and disappeared.
The common Costa Rican expression pura vida means a lot of things, including hello and goodbye. If you say it about a person, it means s/he’s good people. But it also translates loosely as “Life is good”.
Three years ago, I responded to the negging incident. Awwwww, I was such an online-dating newbie, with my adorable disappointment in dudes’ profiles and emails. Now I’m all jaded and cranky and resigned to spinsterhood.
Progress.
My battle with acne started decades back. I wrote about it two years ago. I do eat way less sugar nowadays, but I also use
OXY face wash.
My sister looked at the bottle recently and was like, “That bottle…”
And I said, “Looks like it’ll punch your zits in the face?”
“Yes, that’s it,” she said.
It does punch my zits in the face, for the most part. The dermatologist prescribed Retin-A too, and so far, when I apply only a pea-sized amount, rather than the circus peanut-sized amount I used to apply as a teen, it doesn’t seem to make my face
do this
in the sun.
I was just thinking about the genesis a year ago of the great martial art abdo-shindo because I seem to have given myself some abdo this week. There’s something sexy about sore abs. Makes you feel like they’re all hard and tight and ripply.
Sore abs are liars.
Speaking of which, I already gave you the Embarrassing Photo of the Week, but I’m nothing if not generous, so here you go:
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.
Hey, guess what! I have some kind of ragey infection in my EYEBALL! The opthalmalogist took fancy pictures of my splotchy cornea yesterday. As an aside, amongst the things you never want to hear at a doctor’s office: “I think it’s really good you came in today.” Also: “I don’t think it’ll affect your vision.”
Anyway, I get to put steroid/antiobiotic drops in my eyes four times a day for ten days. As an aside, I’m pathologically incapable of landing a drop in my eye. My flinch response is like a thunderbolt. So, essentially, I spent $25 at CVS on cheek/eyebrow/mouth drops.
I didn’t ask my eye-guy if I should forego tomorrow’s Tough Mudder, Redux, because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have liked his answer. As an aside, almost-certain death tomorrow, you guys!
Three years ago, a guy tried his hand at negging me. Suck it, guy.
Two years ago — miracle of miracles — I found a dude on eGoddamnHarmony that I actually liked. (Never blogged about it, but I did email him. He didn’t respond. <sniff>)
And a year ago, with just a few simple guidelines, I was riling up the segment of the CrossFit community that either (a) couldn’t read; (b) didn’t get my sense of humor; or (c) both.
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.
