I had a few minutes of unplanned time that was not encompassed by some sort of freak-out. I knew exactly what I needed to do! REFLECT PUBLICLY ON MY YEAR! I love doing this, and am completely unashamed.
I always love lists and plans, but new year's eve is my favorite time to make them. The ultimate fresh start is new year's eve 2009, leading us into a new DECADE people! When I started this decade I was a green little 14-year-old, babysitting til midnight and wearing too much eye makeup. I am now a married teacher with a house. It's a little kooky. Lets talk goals:
I am a girl who always wants to be someone else. I want to be like the crafty ladies who can make lovely things with a handful of thrifted scraps. I want to be like the cool hipsters who shop at Whole Foods when they're not picking up boxes from co-ops and carry their babies in adorable slings with perfect poise. I want to be like the people who eat almost entirely from their back-yard gardens and only purchase things with origins they can identify within a hundred mile radius. But I'm not those people.
At the end of the day, I will mostly shop at Target, Market Basket, and Old Navy. I kill most house plants, so my gardening plans will need to go slowly. My handmade abilities extend to framing pictures and using pretty gift tags that I make from...blank tags. And that is okay.
I'm a gifted writer and I am very good at reading children's books aloud to captivated audiences. I am good with children in general. I am a fairly good homemaker. I am good with directions. I am one of those people who makes friends fairly easily. I am a good sister and daughter. I am a basic young suburban teacher.
I don't have to throw away my dreams of being crafty or follow local movements. But I can stop beating myself up for not being 1000 characters at once. How does this relate to my goal-making? I'm scrapping my list of goals like: "eat in season" and "make your own draft snakes" (you can buy them at Home Depot super cheap anyway) and replacing my goals with a simple mantra:
Be happy. Be healthy.
I stole it from my friend Kenny. He's very, very smart. Wish me luck.
I hope you have a great new year and great new decade. Be patient with yourself!
the entire end of april and the entire beginning of may was a very blissful time. i didn't get very much done at work, but ben and i spent almost every night laughing hysterically and going for long walks and watching our shows. we had a lot of fun and ate a lot of sweets and i baked a lot. for some reason, i haven't been able to carry that bliss over into the past few weeks. we were housesitting with the twins for awhile, and then this week the reality of the end of the school year hit hard. now i'm trying to grab some balance, and not disappoint ben too much with my rollarcoastering emotions. here is what is on my mind: home packing up our stuff selling old clothes at the consignment shop fixing up little things for the moving out inspection the rising grocery prices ant control work have the legal "cumulative" folders organized correctly for end of year having all the grades entered into the computer correctly (read: at least 3 different programs) returning all workbooks, retired materials, and old assessments to the kids goodbyes to our various reading buddies and school-wide collaborations (class swaps, etc) packing up my materials and getting them home social problems for my homeless students and students with bad homelives (they're out all summer!?!?) legal staffings and conferences to have the kids placed correctly for next year printing class pictures, mounting them on paper, and writing a personal message to each student on the back thank you gifts for the mentors and team leaders for at least 4 teams I have been on thank yous from the kids to the specials teachers and school support staff TURNING IN THE ENTIRE CHECKLIST AND EXIT INTERVIEW WITH THE NEW PRINCIPAL by Friday the 6th personal returning my library books trying to track food on mypyramid.com trying to get to my classes at shapes trying to be playful and fun and attractive and slim and hilarious and precious for my newlywed husband mailing applications to the jobs in massachusetts, with the added stress of not being able to personally follow up for a few weeks hunting boxes in grocery and liquor stores obsessively an etsy addiction guilt about my move and balancing my marriage and my nuclear family
oh my god i love lists. i feel so much better already. i should also note that a lot of these things will have subsided by a week from tomorrow. until then, it's iced coffees and long walks to get me through.
This weekend really put me through the wringer, but I can't pretend that I'm not glad to see the family, no matter how stressful it can get. Ben was amazing, driving here, there and everywhere, and standing by my side for the entire weekend. I spent the night with my sisters on Friday, and was at my mom's everyday. Grandma was pretty nice about the move (a few comments, but whatever). Everyone is exhausted. I'm so glad that everyone is safe and sound, and I love you all.
Last night I applied for a job with the Heifer Project at Overlook Farm in Rutland. They have a farming day camp that lasts the entire summer, where you're teaching local kids about farming, raising food, helping end poverty and hunger, and sustainability. The counselor job is really or high school students, or something like that, but I want to farm, I want to work, and I hope I get it. Even if I don't, I know that there is something nearby that fits my interests. I'm really excited.
I'm also saving for trips to Europe and Seattle. Once those things are done, I think it might be time for kids.
i've been bumming around so much. i haven't felt so happy or peaceful in ages. ben and i are totally clicking, i'm eating lots of yummy food and casually doing yoga. i'm not able to spend a lot of money right now, but i'm watching tons of old school HGTV househunter type shows that i love. i'm lazy and round and full of love. i could probably focus a little harder on work or packing, but i'm pouring my energy into care packages and mother's day presents.
i feel like need a little more drive, but i figure that i haven't gotten along with ben so well in a very long time, and there's going to be so much stress this summer, that i'm kind of enjoying with water-skeeter kind of freedom. i'm going to go watch house hunters and digest all these organic cookies i baked.
The reason I stopped blogging about the Massachusetts vacation has to do with the conception of the Massachusetts move. Through out the course of our one-week trip, Ben and I looked at schools and apartments and decided to move back to Mass. We're looking at June 15th. We're pretty serious.
Our trip only ended a week and a half ago, but everything has changed. Obviously, the first person who needed to be clued in was Mama. She took it a little worse than I had planned. Ray was equally quiet. Emily and Julianna gave a begrudged blessing. Then it was time to start telling friends and colleagues. I'm a little bitter, because I think this was much harder on me than Ben. A plus side of making no connections means you have no one to tell, explain to, and possibly let down when it's time to move on. A down side of working your ass off to make it work before you choose to move is the fact that you have accumulated friends, plans, and projects to further your career. Still, there is no doubt in my mind that this was the best move for our family. It's a time of transition at work, and the perfect ease into the empty nest syndrome for Mama (Em and Ju have one more year before school.) Still, it's been stressful.
I'm frantically applying to schools in central mass, and Ben has been checking out his options, with a probable return to Cisco being ideal. We're probably going to be living in an apartment complex in Clinton that we looked at; it's close to friends and equidistant from Ben's family and Laurel at school. We can be comfortably into Boston in an hour. It's near our old haunts like the flea market and some of my favorite diners. It's an easy drive to FSC, where I plan on starting my master's as soon as possible. Once that's behind us, it's kids and carriages.
Now we're just kind of numbly packing. I try to bring home something superfluous from the classroom at least every day. We cleaned out our bureaus and closets tonight, and I'm searching out consignment shops so we can try to find some moving money. One small drawer a day is my goal. It's thrilling to think of cutting your worldly possessions in half. I have a sick desire to accumulate things, then purge them in one fell sweep, then start over. Moves are perfect purges. Plus, who can get over that high of a fresh start? I don't have to worry about the placement of the paintings in the living room, or finding the right kind of mop to handle the shitty tile in the kitchen. I can just move, and fantasize on my runs that I will never get new problems, and never grow tired of the new place.
I might sound a little defeated, but I'm honestly just overwhelmed. A few weeks ago I was throwing myself into a gym schedule and planning collaborations to make my next year at Moon Lake even more successful; now I'm scrambling for produce boxes at Publix and reading up on Martha Stewart's moving tips. Once the dust settles, and I'm tucked in the woods with a cozy little haven for entertaining my long-lost college friends, I'll be much more cheerful. For now, I'm subsiding on yoga mantras and daydreams, packing on autopilot. Be home soon!
If I blog about nothing else, I'm going to blog about the yummy food I've had so far on this trip.
We got into Manchester at 11:30 and happily hugged Ben's dad and his brother Andrew. The first night was so strange. We immediately felt like we had come home. We smiled like idiots and squeezed into Ben's childhood bed, just like old times.
Saturday we woke up and drove around Ipswich a little, under the guise of getting some Dunks. It was very overcast and drizzly, and perfect. I tried Toasted Almond coffee, and it's the only part of my journey so far that I haven't liked. We went to the Liberty Tree Mall with Ben's mom and Andrew. While the boys shopped for DVDs, Ben's mom and I had lunch in Panera and talked about family and boys and ma-in-law kinds of things. I had a simple chicken noodle soup with a whole grain baguette, but the chai tea latte was the best part of the meal.
Afterwards, we took off for Leominster to meet up with Tony. It was a quick drive and the GPS took us on some back roads. Even in Mass, there are places we haven't seen yet. We got to Tony's new place and saw him and Gina, and they happily accompanied us to Campus Pizza in Fitchburg. Most people leave and never look back, but I danced around while my roast beef sub with tomatoes and provolone was being made. It would have been better if Reuben made it, but even the sloppy ministrations of the grumpy lady with the leopard-print curves shirt was nostalgically delicious. And how, exactly, do you follow up a sub with a 20-ounce soda from the pizza place of your formative years? By heading to the dairy bar of your formative years, and dancing on John Fitch Highway, to the chagrin of your husband and slight amusement of you friends. I had my mint patty fro yo with rainbow sprinkles, a miracle that I have been searching for for an entire year in the ice-cream capital of the world, Florida. I could have turned around and gone back to Florida after those two magical foodie visits, but there were still people to see.
We got some drinks and headed to Somerville, where Mike Bird, Jeff Bartell, and Sam are now living. They have a really nice apartment, and I got to see so many people. We chatted and made plans for the future and realized how this should probably have been a part of our lives at least once and month for the past 8 months. Ben was in his element telling stories and downing drinks and making Mike Bird fall down on the floor, which is one of his favorite things to do. We stayed until around midnight, and headed back to Leominster. A cozy futon later, it was breakfast time. Mr. C's was just like old times, and I had two eggs, a corn muffin on the grill, and half a grapefruit. Delish. Hugs to Leominster friends, and we were back on the road.
Amherst was another quick drive with breath taking scenery. There is nothing like driving around and checking out houses on the back roads of Massachusetts. Once we made to the Umass campus (which is one of my favorite campuses ever) it was amazing to see Laurel and her room with a view. We ended up spending the entire afternoon shopping in North Hampton. Shops like Ten Thousand Villages, essentials, Faces, and the Cedar Chest Kids always make me envision homes and classrooms that belong in the pages of Dwell. With restraint, I picked up some fair trade toys for my classroom, a mother's day gift for mom, and some cards with quotes that I liked. More inspiration for the fridge. North Hampton was a bit of a foodie's disappointment, because by the time my shopping spree was over, convincing Ben to sit down in the Toasted Owl for lunch was out of the question. We made do with reheated slices from Pinocchio's, and then kissed Laurel and headed back to home base in Ipswich.
That was just 48 hours of time spent in Massachusetts, and already I feel more inspired, hopeful, and youthful than I've felt in months. There's a whole week ahead of me, so I'll keep you updated. :)
I'm writing to you from the Tampa International Airport. After an uneventful check in and only one overheard blatant racist comment (Pilot to stewardess: "How long can it take to make a salad? They lost the recipe for lettuce?!" Stewardess, shuddering: "I just hope they're not all on the work release program." Pilot, pointing at a black Quizno's employee: "Oh, I guarantee you they are!") we've been killing time watching old YouTube videos and laughing and loving. Going back to Massachusetts makes me feel young and hopeful. It lifts me out of my 22 exhausted years. ;)
I'm excited for the food and the friends. I want to eat at Al Dente's, The Cozy Corner, Mr. C's, Campus Pizza, and more. I've been so homesick for my favorite eateries. I also want to see all the old college film guys, and Jessie, and Kenny, and Adrienne, and TONY, and Vatche, and Gregg, and hopefully some of my old professors. I just want to be home, in my element, where Ben and I were the coziest and most comfortable. I want to be in the land of Celtics and Patriots and Red Sox. I want to complain about the cold and have wet jean hems be a major problem in my life again. I want to teach low-key kindergarten and take day trips to farms in Western Mass and be near the Eric Carle Museum in case he does another book signing. I want to be home.
I'm going to try and blog a lot on this trip. I want to remember the first time I was back since the first time I left.
March has been a month of whirlwind behaviors. Now, at the end, things are slowing down, and it's just proving the old phrase true.
This month I experienced my first bout of teaching during FCAT, some major confrontations with coworkers, some major situations with Laurel, a visit from Jen and Chris, my friend Kristal had her new baby, and Ben and I started making some big decisions. We're taking it slow, gathering information, and listening to ourselves as a couple for the first time in our lives. I'm growing and starting my own family (mentally. still no babies.) and it's important to plan for Ben and I first and foremost.
I am still going to Shapes, but I've been going back and forth with healthy eating. It all depends on where the priorities are. I could pay more attention to local and natural foods, or I could focus on the lowest possible calories and put lots of chemicals in my body. The first option is winning right now, for several reasons.
I feel like the obesity crisis has a direct correlation to the increase of low fat, low sugar, zero calorie food products on the market. Prior to the obesity crisis, Americans ate things from their community and then lived a lifestyle that allowed them to burn the necessary calories through out the course of the day. Yes, they may have had pancakes every morning and used a stick of butter per meal, but they also worked on farms, walked to school, played outside, scrubbed floors, hung laundry, and lived in a less convenient, more natural environment. Also, the natural foods, local celebrations route allows me to try even harder to "keep it simple." Eat sometimes, run sometimes, and try to get as much socialization out of my exercise as possible.
I'm getting back into my own skin, and I know why.
I humiliated myself in an aerobics class called Zumba today. It's like a salsa, cha cha, workout class. And I just don't hear the beat. I'm sticking with cardio kick-boxing, pilates, and yogalates for the foreseeable future. Still, I'm proud of myself. I have gone to the gym everyday but one since I've joined, and the one day I missed was a gorgeous day on which I took a run around the lake. So really, I'm sticking to the exercise thing, and even moving towards healthier eating. The most hilarious part is my mood. I have seriously not been so happy or upbeat for months and months.
Sarah was supposed to visit this weekend, but she came down sick. This was sad, but gives me a chance to tackle the messy house that I was just going to make excuses for. I also want to give Ben a little attention and see a movie with him, since our old weekly movie date is long gone. We tried a so/so breakfast place and discovered an awesome thrift store this morning. We're getting back into our old ways.
I'm going to clean and listen to music loud until Ben and I take off on route 19. Then I'm going to get all my plans squared away for the terrifying FCAT week that is fast approaching. I've got a list of goals for the day, I'm set.
