Category: Learnin’ ‘Em Kids

I teach. Most of these posts are password-protected.

Retrobruxist Friday 11/30/12, or Everything Something Nobody

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 point three 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.

Adorbz.

I’m certified to teach high school English, but 12%! Ducks, but water. Wah, wah, wah.

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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.

OK me, fine also you, both.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

Retrobruxist Friday 10/12/12

I was suffering through a pretty extended period of terminal insomnia three 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.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

Twofer: A Real Post PLUS Retrobruxist Friday 9/28/12

A few words before we Retro it up here. My point with yesterday’s post was not that I think I’m an ogre… an ogra… what’s the feminine of ogre? I don’t think I’m an ogress. I think I’m aight.

And this next part is weird, because from what they tell me, a lot of women experience the opposite, but many times, I’m reassured by what I see in the mirror. [Oh, god, am I going to go here? Shit, might as well.] I generally walk around in my life kind of thinking of myself as a slightly greasy, chubby, waddling Oompa-Loompa with temperamental skin, and when I catch my look in the mirror, I almost always go, “Hey, that’s not so bad!” I mean, I definitely have times when my reflection makes me cringe, but more often than not, it’s a relief. Photos too. I’m weirdly photogenic, which is nice.

I don’t actually look like this.

Thing is, I want to be the kind of person who sees the above photo and the one of the fat, ugly, stoned skeptic that Jeff took and says, “Psh, neither is reality.”

But the fact is—OH THIS IS SO PATHETIC—I don’t. I look at the above and think maybe someone could love that person, and I look at Jeff’s picture and say, good god,

it’s gonna be me and 15 dogs.

What I wanted to get across in yesterday’s post was not “Please, everybody, reassure me that I’m beautiful”; it was “I need to stop caring about this superficial bullshit which is not who I am”.

I want to care MORE that I can live through difficulty, write a meaningful story about it, have the courage to get onstage and tell it to 200 strangers, and do it well enough that the audience is moved and the judges think it’s the best story of the night, and LESS about the fact that Jeff took a picture of me from a weird angle, which made it look like I had some sort of growth on my neck, while I was probably crying and definitely squinting into the bright lights. I can’t control every image that makes it to the internet and every perception that every person has of me. I need to let that go.

Here was my big plan to pull off this caring-about-appropriate-things thing: I asked Jeff for the photo, and I was going to post it on this very blog on the World Wide Web. Alas, he felt so bad about contributing to my distress* that he not only deleted the photo from Facebook; he deleted it completely.

So. The best I can do is try to re-create it for you. It looked a little something like

this.
Or maybe like this.
Those of you who saw it, how’d I do?

*Two things: (1) I used those iMessage screenshots without his permission. I am an asshole, and I won’t do that again (sorry, Jeff!); (2) he was nothing but lovely during the whole situation and really believed that he was honoring me and my story with the photo; and—OK, three things—(3) just so we’re clear, as depressed as I’ve been in my life, I’ve never, ever contemplated suicide. The whole bit about offing myself was pure histrionics for comedy purposes, but suicide is not funny, and I won’t joke about it anymore.

On to the Retro!

Three years ago, I was trying to teach my students show-don’t-tell. It’s still the hardest thing in the world to teach.

Redford was already 18 months old two years ago, but he was my baby. Still is.

Sleepy high-five.

I hosted the Monti StorySLAM for the first time one year ago. Crazypants. I can’t believe that was a year ago.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

Retrobruxist Friday 9/21/12

It makes me super-sad that I could post this same post from three years ago and only change that 34 to a 37.

:(((((((((((((((

Two years ago, I did my best Principal Richard Vernon impression. But it was kinda justified.

A mere year ago, I had a giant temper tantrum at the gym because, amongst other things, I couldn’t string any double-unders together. Well, a few weeks ago, I did FIFTY in a row during a WOD. I am a temple of rad.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.