Catching Up

So a new school year has begun and I thought I’d resume blogging to try to maintain my sanity.  A lot has changed since I last posted on my blog.  First of all: I am now 8 months without a cigarette.   I quit smoking!  Yay me.  There are days when I still want a cigarette – mostly because I’m driving alone in the car and it’s something to do.  I have not had even so much as a puff off a cigarette since I quit on Dec. 31, 2009.

Secondly: This will be my last year at the school where I work.  MDS and I have made the decision to move our family back home to Eugene at the end of this year.  Every day when I get up to go to work, I know that it’s the last time I’ll get up on that date in this hell-hole.

Finally: I’d say I’m not as depressed as I was when I first moved here.  Maybe it’s the news that we’re moving, but I think also I’ve just tried to enjoy the little things more.  Moving here was a huge transition, not only because of location, but mostly because I was giving up my “old life” to go back to teaching and it was heartbreaking to give up, even if temporarily, on  my dreams.  Time heals all wounds, as with anything, and I am feeling better every day about the choice I’ve made to prioritize my family’s needs.

I’m a little afraid of moving home.  Mostly because it’s a huge leap of faith that I can find a job before my salary runs out over the summer, but also because I have not seen family or friends for so long and I don’t know exactly how to resume those relationships.   I have a lot of time to plan and prepare and save money though, and I know in my heart that it’s the right time and the right choice.

Update

It’s been a couple of weeks – I was on Mardi Gras vacation and now I’m trying to get back into the groove at work.  I will resume writing very soon!  Until then, here’s a great link: http://succeedblog.org/

Where is the joy in life?

My life feels very much like a mechanical series of obligations.  I have to get up.  I have to go to work.  I have to work to provide benefits for my family.  I have to take a shower.  I have to get gas in the car.  I have to buy groceries.  I have to grade papers.  I have to go to a meeting.  I have to pick up the kids.  The mental list of “have to” goes on and on.  There is no “get to” in my life.  I don’t often get to do anything enjoyable.  When I have time, I have to sleep.

Every day is kind of the same.  Get up, take the kids, drop off Little, go to school, do duty and teach [did I mention I hate my job?], meetings, pick up Little, grocery store, home, take care of kids, go to bed.  There is no joy in life.  I have tried to convince myself that this is the way it is supposed to be at this stage of my life – that it’s not about my joy or happiness, but solely about the children.  I think I’m wrong though.  I think that there should be joy in all stages of our lives – there isn’t one stage of life that is supposed to be awful.

I think I’m depressed.  What else is new?

Señor Bigotes makes his debut for Friday Cat Blogging

Meet Mr. Whiskers.  The single most perfect kitty cat in the world!!

Disjointed rambling

Well, it’s lunchtime and I have a few moments of quiet before the upper schoolers come roaring in, carbed up and sugared out.  Today on top of the pep rally energy on campus there is the excitement of the Saints in the Super Bowl on Sunday to contend with.  The students are extra spazzy today.  So I am giving them something to DO rather than something to LEARN.  They are filming videos that they wrote all week using their new vocabulary.  They are often funny to watch and painful to hear, as they butcher my beloved Spanish language beyond recognition.

I talked to my friend, M, last night on text for a while.  He is interviewing with a Big Law firm in Los Angeles and will likely be moving before the summer to start his new life with his new wife.  Who me, bitter?  Nah.  Jealous a little, envious perhaps, but not bitter.  I do wish him the best though I want to claw out her eyes with my fingernails for no reason whatsoever.

I have to clean my room tonight.  It has gotten seriously out of control and I feel like A&E is going to be filming Hoarders in my room soon.  The whole house is a mess, but I’m a realist – I’m only going to get my room clean.  There is no sense in kidding myself.

I haven’t gone running for weeks.  I should.

I can’t seem to get enough sleep.   I am constantly sleepy and all I want to do is lie down, cover up, and snooze!  What’s up with that?  Is it related to the new thyroid medicine I started?  Does it have anything to do with quitting smoking? Am I just a big fat lazy ass?  If I hadn’t just missed about 6 days of work this month for illness/dentist, I would seriously schedule an appointment with my doctor to look into it.  It’s disturbing to be so sleepy all the time.

Papers to grade… so many papers to grade.  I should be doing it right now.

The common thread in my stream of consciousness is that there is so much that I should be doing, but I don’t do any of them.

I survived the dentist

Still smoke-free after one full month and I went to the dentist and survived to tell about it!

I was really hating the idea of going to the dentist to have my teeth worked on.  I knew that the best case scenario would be a root canal and I could possibly have to have a tooth pulled.  It ended up being both!  I had a tooth pulled, two root canals, and two cavities filled.  One of my previous root canals was never capped and the tooth around it had broken to the point where it couldn’t be repaired.  Apparently while pulling that tooth, they cracked the tooth next to it and had to root canal it, also?  I don’t know – I was so drugged I barely remember any of it!  My mouth is still hurting and it’s been 4 days.

I have to go back to the dentist soon and have more work done, but after spending almost a thousand dollars on out of pocket expenses, I can’t afford much more.  I’m a little pissed that I pay so much for dental insurance that covers so little!  I paid  more than half of the cost.

Next to go to the dentist is Little, who needs two baby root canals after falling on the playground and effectively killing the nerves in her two front teeth.  They aren’t causing her pain, but they are darkened and need to be dealt with before they abscess.  I think it takes a special kind of sadist to be a dentist.  I’m definitely not down for that job.  I’d rather teach Spanish to 100 kids than rip people’s teeth out!

I Quit Smoking!

It’s been 4 weeks and 1 day since I quit smoking!  I haven’t even as much as had a puff off a cigarette in 29 days.  My cravings are subsiding and I am enjoying my new life as a non-smoker.  In retrospect, it was really stupid to start a new diet and quit smoking at the same time.  I discussed it with my life advisors and came to the conclusion that smoking was a far more immediate danger than being overweight.

This means I have a significant amount of Nutrisystem food left over and I’d like to sell it for 1/2 price.  I will make a list of what’s left and post it here for anyone interested in it.

Another big accomplishment: I am going to the dentist today.  It probably doesn’t seem like a big deal to most people, but I have been without dental insurance for so long and I am as anxious about going to the dentist as I am afraid of snakes!  I haven’t gone for several years and I am terrified.  The smells, the sounds, that metal pokey thing – they all make my skin crawl.  Still, I am headed to the dentist in just over an hour.  I have several appointments in my near future to get my teeth fixed up.  I’m going to have to just suck it up and deal.

On growing up

I kind of miss my old blog.  It was huge.  I had a lot of readers and it became almost a full-time job just to keep up with.  I gave it up to return to teaching – it was highly inappropriate for a teacher to have a sex blog.  Gone from the interwebs, Google’s cache has been dumped, the Wayback Machine has stripped my files from the archive – it’s forever gone.  I miss it.  I miss writing about my escapades.  Mostly I miss having escapades.

Life has gotten very predictable.  In ways this is a good thing and in ways it is not.  A friend of mine recently told me that I spend entirely too much of my time being a grown-up and I need to let my hair down and play a little in life.  Maybe she is right, but I don’t know how to play anymore.

I’m hoping that Mardi Gras brings some opportunities my way to get out and enjoy New Orleans and the French Quarter.  …More on this later… For now I have to go back to being a grown-up with two classes still to teach today, carpool to supervise, a faculty meeting to attend, a kid to pick up from preschool and then it’s time to finally go home.

She graded many papers

On my tombstone it will read, “She graded many papers.”

Not only is it Friday, but it’s also payday.  I’m not sure why I got paid early, but I did!  I’m not complaining.

Wabbit Season

My rabbit food lunch:

The Nutrisystem Blueberry Muffin, a cherry nonfat yogurt, and berries (God, I love berries) made for a yummy breakfast this morning.  I survived my cinnamon roll craving.  It occurred to me this morning, out of the blue, that I could do what normal people do and have one cinnamon roll per week on a special day – like on Friday mornings or Monday mornings as a ritual rather than pigging out on them every day.  I know that probably seems obvious to many people, but it was an epiphany to me.

Tonight I am going to go to the gym.  I feel guilty for not going recently.  It’s so simple to go and just do 30 minutes on the treadmill or the elliptical and be done with it for the day, but I make it into this huge task in my mind.  I have a million excuses for not going: no time, I’m tired, papers to grade, tv shows to watch, play with the kids, no clothes to wear, and so on…  but today – NO EXCUSES.

You know, when I lost 140 lbs. it seems like it just melted off and I didn’t have to put in this much effort.  Is two years really that big a difference on the metabolism scale?!  God I hate getting old.