Student: I was just dancing with my highlighter.
Me: That's my highlighter.
Student: Well we've become quite close.
***
I was looking at her photos on her binder of her hot boyfriend! You never said THAT was specifically against the rules.
***
I was demonstrating how odd it would be if people's torsos moved sideways when they laughed, instead of up and down.
***
NONONONONO We're not passing notes! We're rating the girls in the book on a hotness scale of 1-10. I swear to God we're rereading the most descriptive parts.
***
I forget to pull my shirt down over my bum. Frankly I've just gotten used to feeling the breeze on my lower back.
***
That's not true. If he wasn't looking when I stole it, it doesn't count. That's a rule.
***
So what if I oinked? You KNOW you're just going to go tell all your boring grown-up friends about it.
--LW
This blog is as random as I am.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
15 tasks Danielle should perform in a bikini and high heels
A friend of mine recently placed in a figure competition. I couldn't go, because I was in real estate training, but I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate her on her sheer awesomeness. You look UNBELIEVABLE. You are so hot I can barely stand it.
You look so hot that I've taken it upon myself to provide provide you with a list of day-to-day activities that I think you should perform... in a bikini and heels... from now on:
Love, Leah
You look so hot that I've taken it upon myself to provide provide you with a list of day-to-day activities that I think you should perform... in a bikini and heels... from now on:
- getting gas
- grocery shopping at Market Basket. The larger the store and the more public the location, the better.
- ride a motorcycle
- go to the motorcycle dealership to investigate, test-drive, bargain for, and eventually purchase the aforementioned motorcycle
- going to HR block to do taxes
- get a mani/pedi
- be a guest news anchor
- walk over the tobin bridge (through the EZ pass/fastlane )
- random, spur-of-the-moment public yoga
- be one of those people that asks for charitable donations on tremont st
- somehow wield a blow torch. the more random the reasoning behind it, the better
- go to a Bieber concert and, when people are confused, act like you have no idea why they're looking at you funny
- have professional photos taken
- get a roll of quarters INSIDE the bank
- COME TO BOXING CLASS AT MY GYM WITH ME!!!
Love, Leah
Saturday, April 23, 2011
I'M STARVING.
One of the benefits of this new plan is that yesterday, for instance, I consumed 793 calories and felt fantastic all day. Never hungry, never full.
One of the drawbacks is that life is unpredictable, and that unpredictability sometimes leads to insomnia. Which means I've been awake for more than 3 hours without food.
Ugh.
I think I'm going to eat something anyway. If the point is to NOT make my body go into "Oh snap I'm starving on an island, better conserve fat in case Hurley makes off with all the Dharma Initiative Peanut Butter" mode, then... FAIL.
One of the drawbacks is that life is unpredictable, and that unpredictability sometimes leads to insomnia. Which means I've been awake for more than 3 hours without food.
Ugh.
I think I'm going to eat something anyway. If the point is to NOT make my body go into "Oh snap I'm starving on an island, better conserve fat in case Hurley makes off with all the Dharma Initiative Peanut Butter" mode, then... FAIL.
REGULATOR: Not So Much
Here's the issue. I have trouble with self-regulation. I tend to either avoid completely, or dive in for extended periods of time. It doesn't matter what, specifically, I'm doing -- generally, this still applies.
This applies to:
At least I'm consistent.
Here's what a lack of self-regulation looks like, at least when it comes to me:
ONE
I have difficulty running under 5 miles. Sometimes, I even have difficulty running 5 miles, and I have to bump it up to 7 or more. I love running so much, and I love pushing my body as far as it can go. I love the numb feeling you get when your joints feel like jello and it hurts to change position in any way.
Sidenote: I wasn't always like this. I was never very fast, but I could build endurance, and I had a high pain tolerance. I also realized that, proportionally-speaking, I get faster the longer I run. My two-mile pace is similar to my 4 mile pace. With that said, I used to love our "forrest" 2-milers in high school. I used to love when practice got cancelled due to rain.
Sidenote that corresponds to previous sidenote: Though I wasn't as bad in high school, my lack of self-regulation showed itself in between seasons. I was either all-in, 5-6 days a week of practice, or lazy McNeverRuns, until the next season started.
TWO
I have difficulty transitioning out of a diet. I get the sense that for many people, losing weight is the problem, but once they lose it, they can pretty much keep it off. I am the opposite. Give me an absurdly restricted diet, and I can stick to it for months. I had no problem with Atkins, South Beach, Jenny Craig, GetInShape, or Weight Watchers. The problem arose when I lost the weight and went into the "Maintenance" part of these programs. I don't know how to eat just one french fry. I find it impossible to measure out half a cup of ice cream and eat only that. When I measure out peanut butter, I lie to myself. Not in that "Oh, well, it's okay if it's a tad more," kind of lying that you're conscious of, I 100% convince myself that I am measuring truthfully, healthily and accurately. Then my pants don't fit. The same thing happens with drinking. I can quit drinking entirely, never taking a sip, for months. I do this fairly frequently, in fact. However, when I do drink, I get drunk. I don't mean to. It just happens. I can't just have two beers, feel happy tipsy, then go home and go to bed. Just like I can't eat two french fries and stop there.
THREE
I have a stressful relationship with television shows. I can't watch just one CSI: Miami. I have to watch five. Or, I have to watch two every night for four days. The alternative, is that I don't watch it at all. That's the stage I'm currently in with CSI: Miami. However, I'm currently in obsessive mode with about 12 shows.
Plus, now that I don't have cable, it's actually worse. I don't think I realized how bad it was until I started watching Lost in Thanksgiving of 2009. The sixth season premiered a few months after I started watching it from the beginning, and I was caught up, WITH TIME TO SPARE. One weekend I had the flu and I literally watched Lost for 9 hours. 9 HOURS. Who does that? I don't care how sick you are, there's no excuse unless you're a 100% ridiculous human being. Which I am.
Another thing that happens is that once I catch up, I get so impatient waiting for one hour of each show per week that I abandon shows until I have at least 3 or 4 episodes to watch in a row. Occasionally, this results in high numbers of unwatched episodes, which stresses me out further. For instance, I am probably 31 episodes behind in Gossip Girl, which I love. I keep meaning to catch up, but it's a daunting task, and even though I prefer to watch TV in large quantities, even I get overwhelmed sometimes. And I worry. What if I'm too far gone when I start watching it again? What if I forgot what happened, and have to start even further back? What if I think I remember what happened, and then it turns out I forgot a tiny piece of something funny Chuck said and I miss some super-witty-wonderful or super-awful-hideous connection? What if, when I start watching again, I am unable to suspend my disbelief that a group of 6 people can have sex with every person in that group in every combination possible, being in love at least 50% of the time? Wait... who am I kidding? That will never be a problem. I'll always buy into that.
FOUR
I'm getting better about this, but cleaning has always been an issue. My mother can attest to this: As early as age 12, I fell into the trap of spending 11 hours cleaning my room every three months rather than spending the corresponding number of minutes each day. This only got worse in college, with more stuff and less space. It was further complicated by the fact that, in my first post-college apartment, my roommates moved in "college-style" (leaving 70% of their belongings at their parents' homes) while my mother was forcibly emptying out my childhood bedroom and sending it with me in minivanloads. I also have this terrible habit of putting things in "random buckets" (which may be bags, bins, unused space behind the printer, or other illogical locations that seem perfectly sensical at the time (Stephanie: I found the duck tea thing. Inquire within): My underwear drawer is important. I'll definitely remember that I put my camera / nail polish / copy of Atlas Shrugged / car keys / latex gloves / tiny lightbulbs from Ikea that fit only the lamp I bought from Ikea / slinky / hairbrush 1, 2 and 3 in here). Then, I make this grand plan to empty out the random buckets either in one fell swoop (all or nothing mentality) or bit by bit. Neither works. I'm getting better, and I have improved so much, but that's not exactly saying much, if you know what I mean. I should set the bar a little higher. Like, only underwear goes in the underwear drawer.
Sidenote: Out of curiosity, I'm going to go check what's in my unerwear drawer now. My apt is mostly clean. This should be fun. It will prove that, no matter how on top of it I may appear to be, it is an illusion. Oh sweet God. Okay, here goes: What I found in my underwear drawer, despite the fact that my room is mostly clean:
forever 21 bag, cheap star of david bracelet I bought in Jerusalem, one of those bags you put bras in in the laundry, green bandana, picture of Robert Pattinson (a gift from a student), a Lexington Track & Field sportsbra that we ordered my freshman year of outdoor track, Spring 2000 (it hasn't fit in at least 2 cup sizes), a dust cloth (clean), 2 price tags, 7 bottles of chrome nail polish (remember that?) a murder mystery I got for free, and strange shiny pants that were reportedly Israeli.
Now I'm going to go put all that back in my underwear drawer. Well, maybe I'll put it in the Forever 21 bag, and then put it back in my underwear drawer. Or, I could put it in one of the three "random buckets" at the end of my bed.
Notice nowhere in there did I consider putting each individual item where it needs to go.
FIVE
Hobbies are an issue. I have over 20 skeins of yarn and dozens of knitting needles, but I knit every two months for several consecutive hours during a marathon CSI: Miami catch up session. Then, I store them and they collect dust.
Reading is probably the least problematic, because the most amount of good comes out of it. I love getting lost in a good story, and very often it helps me do one of the other 3.4 million things I have to do, because I can use it in a lesson plan, or discuss it with a student. At the very least, I use it as an escape from thinking about all the 3.4 million things on my to-do list (Yes, I do realize that I watch CSI: Miami for the same reason). But it has its downsides. For 2 weekends this winter, I didn't leave the house at night because I was reading all ten Sookie Stackhouse books in a row. I accidentally bailed on 3 New Year's Eve parties because I was so immersed in the books. I say accidentally because I finished book 4, looked at the clock, discovered it said 1:14 a.m., and said, "Oops." Then, I continued reading, not calling back any of the 14 people who had called wondering where I was.
Boxing works well because I don't have a heavy bag at home, so I really can only box twice a week when the class happens at my gym. Though I'm considering buying a bag. Hmm. Now that I'm writing this post, I'm wondering if that's a good idea. What if I box my damn hands off, due to my inability to regulate the amount of time I spend on the bag? Honestly though, that's not what I'm worried about. Boxing, running, all the physical hobbies have a built-in regulation mechanism: eventually, your body breaks down. Which is not to say that I learn how to regulate myself based on the negative reinforcement of bloody knuckles / blistered feet / inability to walk up stairs for 2 weeks. But at least it forces me to stop.
SIX
When I decided to write about my lack of self-regulation, the only area of that idea that I was really interested in was how it pertained to lesson planning and grading. Tonight, I graded and planned for 6 hours straight after doing very little all of spring break, and I started thinking, do I really plan better this way, or is this just the only way I know how?
YET LOOK AT THIS LONG-ASS BLOG.
I couldn't just write about the one piece I wanted to, I had to explore how this idea affected every area of my life. Well, no, not every area. There are some I left out. But I'm trying to regulate that right now by not going into the more minor rgulatory issues like buying 7 pairs of earrings, or 18 cans of tomato paste when it's on sale, even if I don't know what the hell I'd even make with it. See? I'm trying. But it's taking real, honest-to-God effort to not press the up arrow and elaborate on the earring thing, or turn the tomato paste thing into an entire subsection involving grocery shopping and shopping in general, because really, I could. I won't. Probably. Most likely. I'm sitting here, repeating "It's almost 4 a.m." in my head. Okay, I think I conquered that urge.
SEVEN
This brings me to the real reason I decided to write about this (aside from the fact that I find it very difficult to focus on a mere part of an idea if I can focus on the entire idea, the history of the idea, everything even distantly related to the idea, and random associations I have pertaining to said idea).
I always start vacations with these grand plans for productivity in mind. I'm going to plan for 3 hours each day! I tell myself. I'm going to plan ahead, so I can have a life for the next month or so! I'll actually be able to make photocopies in enough time, and I won't be on the phone with the copy center in a panic at 7 a.m., and I'll teach better, because I'll have thought it through more effectively, and I'll have more time to spend grading and giving thoughtful feedback, and I can communicate more regularly with parents, and I can even make time to call them with good news, not just "your child's cussing me out again" news, and... the list goes on.
Yet inevitably, I'm so residually exhausted from the 12-hour days I regularly pull that I need the vacation to do... nothing. I need to sit around and do... nothing. Except watch CSI: Miami.
Some of this is necessary, and has nothing to do with my lack of self-regulation. Inner-city middle school students are like very clumsy dinosaurs that stomp all over good faith effort and optimism, and leave panic, chaos, and exhaustion in their wake. They're stress tornadoes, and I know this. Even if I were a vampire (Twilight mythos) who didn't need to sleep / had more time on my hands, my students would still do this. Even if my units were all dynamite fantastic, their rein of chaos would prevail. I love my job, I do, and part of that love is accepting that a certain amount (read: 300 tons) of stress comes with the territory.
However, some of it I bring on myself. Here's what happens: I'm so stressed that I do no work at home on Monday and Tuesday night, so I end up doing 6 hours on Wednesday and Thursday night. After teaching an 8-hour day. Then, I'm exhausted, so I'm useless on vacation. Come summer, I'm so panicked about the sheer volume of work I have to do that I become unable to break it into small, manageable pieces and I put it off until August.
I did realize this past summer/year that my goal is not to have a pre-made curriculum that I stick to. Good teaching is about planning in advance, and then changing your plans to fit the needs of your students. That realization took a huge weight off my shoulders. But it isn't enough. My units are better when I plan them in advance, because then I have time to change them at least 3 times: once before I start, and twice after I start. Which is where the inability to self-regulate comes in.
Just like with food, drink, athletics, TV, cleaning, and other areas of my life, I cannot do a little bit of planning. It's either all or nothing, zero or sixty, and nothing in between. I have this image in my head of how it should be. It's filed away in the "HAHAHA good luck keep dreaming" section of my brain. I come home, spend 20 minutes grading, then half an hour planning a unit that will take place no less than 3 weeks in the future. I don't grade all the papers in one night, and I don't plan the unit in one night. Both things happen in bits and pieces, appropriately spaced out to allow me to watch one, or maybe two episodes of CSI: Miami a day and run under 5 miles a day.
The fact that it took me 30 seconds to convince myself to write "5" miles instead of a higher number is crystal clear evidence of the fact that this WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
My real question is this: IS THAT A BAD THING?
This week was the most productive vacation I've had since teaching. Again, that's not setting the bar high. Usually I do nothing for 7 days then spend 10 hours on each final weekend day. I've gotten accustomed to it. But this week was different. I spent an hour each day doing something productive, even if it wasn't directly related to my job. On Thursday, I even spent 3 hours revising my self-evaluation for work. Then I stopped, even though I wasn't done. It was like a miracle. Angels sang.
Then Friday (today) happened, and the mountain of work began to block out the sun. I couldn't enjoy the Vampire Diaries because I was so panicked about grading, so I finished watching it while half paying attention and denying the fact that I was only half paying attention, then sat down at 9 p.m. to begin chipping away at that mountain.
I started with grading my 7th grade's most recent drafts. I love doing it this way, because I keep a notebook opened beside me, and as I grade, I jot down ideas for what to teach next. It's truly the best way to do it, and whenever I can, I do. After about two hours of this, I started inadvertently sliding into planning mode. This, too, is a typical occurrence. (SIDENOTE: F words with two double consonants). I go from grading story after story and writing occasional notes to writing detailed notes and grading an occasional story.
Today it was awesome. I did the usual: Opened a document, titled it "What do do for the remaining two-ish weeks of fiction with my 7th graders" and started listing, brainstorming, rambling, and generally thinking on paper (well, onscreen).
AND IT WAS AWESOME.
Everything came together so well. I'm trying to think of an appropriate metaphor, and there's yarn in front of me, so I keep thinking I should compare it to the strands being wound together, but that would imply that I had all the pieces to begin with and just needed to twist them together, which is not at all true. A french braid would be more accurate. I started with three important pieces, wove them together, and gradually, as I thought of additional pieces, I added them too. Sometimes I had to backtrack and fix a bumpy part (read: scaffold skills more effectively). Some pieces fell out, but that was okay. By the end, I had a unit that resembled a stronger, more elaborate, connected version of the three pieces I started with.
AND I LOVED IT.
My back hurts. My eyes are dry, and I want to rip my contacts out. My feet are asleep. My sleep schedule is shot to hell. But I genuinely love watching the pieces come together.
But what happens next? After this metaphorical 12-mile run, do I require a recovery period until my knuckles stop bleeding, my blisters heal, and I can walk upstairs comfortably again?
So I wonder: Do other people do this in several small, pieces of time? I guess I wouldn't know, but I suspect I would have trouble making a unit in 12 half-hour blocks rather than one 6-hour block. I don't know if I've ever tried that. I think every time I have tried, I've done by accident what I did tonight on purpose: Planned for 6 hours nonstop. To answer your question, yes, that was the plan. At 9 p.m. I started working, and I was 95% sure that I would still be awake and working at 3 a.m. God, does that make me a freak? Do I care?
Here's what I really wonder:
For now, I will have to be content writing overly-detailed blog entries about it at four in the morning. Yes, now it's 411 a.m. I should go to bed.
Well, I apologize for the length of this blog. Though this blog primarily functions as a way for me to write, and having an audience is not the primary goal.
You know, I am actually quite glad that I wrote this. This is the first time in my life I've really thought about this in any depth, and God knows it's been there the whole time. I think writing this helped me process it. And processing it will help me deal with it for the years to come. So oh well if it's too long.
Plus, no one made you read it, right?
UGH. I can't even regulate my rationalizations.
This applies to:
- things I love doing,
- things I hate doing,
- things I don't enjoy doing until I've been at it for an hour,
- and things I don't enjoy doing but enjoy having done.
At least I'm consistent.
Here's what a lack of self-regulation looks like, at least when it comes to me:
ONE
I have difficulty running under 5 miles. Sometimes, I even have difficulty running 5 miles, and I have to bump it up to 7 or more. I love running so much, and I love pushing my body as far as it can go. I love the numb feeling you get when your joints feel like jello and it hurts to change position in any way.
Sidenote: I wasn't always like this. I was never very fast, but I could build endurance, and I had a high pain tolerance. I also realized that, proportionally-speaking, I get faster the longer I run. My two-mile pace is similar to my 4 mile pace. With that said, I used to love our "forrest" 2-milers in high school. I used to love when practice got cancelled due to rain.
Sidenote that corresponds to previous sidenote: Though I wasn't as bad in high school, my lack of self-regulation showed itself in between seasons. I was either all-in, 5-6 days a week of practice, or lazy McNeverRuns, until the next season started.
TWO
I have difficulty transitioning out of a diet. I get the sense that for many people, losing weight is the problem, but once they lose it, they can pretty much keep it off. I am the opposite. Give me an absurdly restricted diet, and I can stick to it for months. I had no problem with Atkins, South Beach, Jenny Craig, GetInShape, or Weight Watchers. The problem arose when I lost the weight and went into the "Maintenance" part of these programs. I don't know how to eat just one french fry. I find it impossible to measure out half a cup of ice cream and eat only that. When I measure out peanut butter, I lie to myself. Not in that "Oh, well, it's okay if it's a tad more," kind of lying that you're conscious of, I 100% convince myself that I am measuring truthfully, healthily and accurately. Then my pants don't fit. The same thing happens with drinking. I can quit drinking entirely, never taking a sip, for months. I do this fairly frequently, in fact. However, when I do drink, I get drunk. I don't mean to. It just happens. I can't just have two beers, feel happy tipsy, then go home and go to bed. Just like I can't eat two french fries and stop there.
THREE
I have a stressful relationship with television shows. I can't watch just one CSI: Miami. I have to watch five. Or, I have to watch two every night for four days. The alternative, is that I don't watch it at all. That's the stage I'm currently in with CSI: Miami. However, I'm currently in obsessive mode with about 12 shows.
Plus, now that I don't have cable, it's actually worse. I don't think I realized how bad it was until I started watching Lost in Thanksgiving of 2009. The sixth season premiered a few months after I started watching it from the beginning, and I was caught up, WITH TIME TO SPARE. One weekend I had the flu and I literally watched Lost for 9 hours. 9 HOURS. Who does that? I don't care how sick you are, there's no excuse unless you're a 100% ridiculous human being. Which I am.
Another thing that happens is that once I catch up, I get so impatient waiting for one hour of each show per week that I abandon shows until I have at least 3 or 4 episodes to watch in a row. Occasionally, this results in high numbers of unwatched episodes, which stresses me out further. For instance, I am probably 31 episodes behind in Gossip Girl, which I love. I keep meaning to catch up, but it's a daunting task, and even though I prefer to watch TV in large quantities, even I get overwhelmed sometimes. And I worry. What if I'm too far gone when I start watching it again? What if I forgot what happened, and have to start even further back? What if I think I remember what happened, and then it turns out I forgot a tiny piece of something funny Chuck said and I miss some super-witty-wonderful or super-awful-hideous connection? What if, when I start watching again, I am unable to suspend my disbelief that a group of 6 people can have sex with every person in that group in every combination possible, being in love at least 50% of the time? Wait... who am I kidding? That will never be a problem. I'll always buy into that.
FOUR
I'm getting better about this, but cleaning has always been an issue. My mother can attest to this: As early as age 12, I fell into the trap of spending 11 hours cleaning my room every three months rather than spending the corresponding number of minutes each day. This only got worse in college, with more stuff and less space. It was further complicated by the fact that, in my first post-college apartment, my roommates moved in "college-style" (leaving 70% of their belongings at their parents' homes) while my mother was forcibly emptying out my childhood bedroom and sending it with me in minivanloads. I also have this terrible habit of putting things in "random buckets" (which may be bags, bins, unused space behind the printer, or other illogical locations that seem perfectly sensical at the time (Stephanie: I found the duck tea thing. Inquire within): My underwear drawer is important. I'll definitely remember that I put my camera / nail polish / copy of Atlas Shrugged / car keys / latex gloves / tiny lightbulbs from Ikea that fit only the lamp I bought from Ikea / slinky / hairbrush 1, 2 and 3 in here). Then, I make this grand plan to empty out the random buckets either in one fell swoop (all or nothing mentality) or bit by bit. Neither works. I'm getting better, and I have improved so much, but that's not exactly saying much, if you know what I mean. I should set the bar a little higher. Like, only underwear goes in the underwear drawer.
Sidenote: Out of curiosity, I'm going to go check what's in my unerwear drawer now. My apt is mostly clean. This should be fun. It will prove that, no matter how on top of it I may appear to be, it is an illusion. Oh sweet God. Okay, here goes: What I found in my underwear drawer, despite the fact that my room is mostly clean:
forever 21 bag, cheap star of david bracelet I bought in Jerusalem, one of those bags you put bras in in the laundry, green bandana, picture of Robert Pattinson (a gift from a student), a Lexington Track & Field sportsbra that we ordered my freshman year of outdoor track, Spring 2000 (it hasn't fit in at least 2 cup sizes), a dust cloth (clean), 2 price tags, 7 bottles of chrome nail polish (remember that?) a murder mystery I got for free, and strange shiny pants that were reportedly Israeli.
Now I'm going to go put all that back in my underwear drawer. Well, maybe I'll put it in the Forever 21 bag, and then put it back in my underwear drawer. Or, I could put it in one of the three "random buckets" at the end of my bed.
Notice nowhere in there did I consider putting each individual item where it needs to go.
FIVE
Hobbies are an issue. I have over 20 skeins of yarn and dozens of knitting needles, but I knit every two months for several consecutive hours during a marathon CSI: Miami catch up session. Then, I store them and they collect dust.
Reading is probably the least problematic, because the most amount of good comes out of it. I love getting lost in a good story, and very often it helps me do one of the other 3.4 million things I have to do, because I can use it in a lesson plan, or discuss it with a student. At the very least, I use it as an escape from thinking about all the 3.4 million things on my to-do list (Yes, I do realize that I watch CSI: Miami for the same reason). But it has its downsides. For 2 weekends this winter, I didn't leave the house at night because I was reading all ten Sookie Stackhouse books in a row. I accidentally bailed on 3 New Year's Eve parties because I was so immersed in the books. I say accidentally because I finished book 4, looked at the clock, discovered it said 1:14 a.m., and said, "Oops." Then, I continued reading, not calling back any of the 14 people who had called wondering where I was.
Boxing works well because I don't have a heavy bag at home, so I really can only box twice a week when the class happens at my gym. Though I'm considering buying a bag. Hmm. Now that I'm writing this post, I'm wondering if that's a good idea. What if I box my damn hands off, due to my inability to regulate the amount of time I spend on the bag? Honestly though, that's not what I'm worried about. Boxing, running, all the physical hobbies have a built-in regulation mechanism: eventually, your body breaks down. Which is not to say that I learn how to regulate myself based on the negative reinforcement of bloody knuckles / blistered feet / inability to walk up stairs for 2 weeks. But at least it forces me to stop.
SIX
When I decided to write about my lack of self-regulation, the only area of that idea that I was really interested in was how it pertained to lesson planning and grading. Tonight, I graded and planned for 6 hours straight after doing very little all of spring break, and I started thinking, do I really plan better this way, or is this just the only way I know how?
YET LOOK AT THIS LONG-ASS BLOG.
I couldn't just write about the one piece I wanted to, I had to explore how this idea affected every area of my life. Well, no, not every area. There are some I left out. But I'm trying to regulate that right now by not going into the more minor rgulatory issues like buying 7 pairs of earrings, or 18 cans of tomato paste when it's on sale, even if I don't know what the hell I'd even make with it. See? I'm trying. But it's taking real, honest-to-God effort to not press the up arrow and elaborate on the earring thing, or turn the tomato paste thing into an entire subsection involving grocery shopping and shopping in general, because really, I could. I won't. Probably. Most likely. I'm sitting here, repeating "It's almost 4 a.m." in my head. Okay, I think I conquered that urge.
SEVEN
This brings me to the real reason I decided to write about this (aside from the fact that I find it very difficult to focus on a mere part of an idea if I can focus on the entire idea, the history of the idea, everything even distantly related to the idea, and random associations I have pertaining to said idea).
I always start vacations with these grand plans for productivity in mind. I'm going to plan for 3 hours each day! I tell myself. I'm going to plan ahead, so I can have a life for the next month or so! I'll actually be able to make photocopies in enough time, and I won't be on the phone with the copy center in a panic at 7 a.m., and I'll teach better, because I'll have thought it through more effectively, and I'll have more time to spend grading and giving thoughtful feedback, and I can communicate more regularly with parents, and I can even make time to call them with good news, not just "your child's cussing me out again" news, and... the list goes on.
Yet inevitably, I'm so residually exhausted from the 12-hour days I regularly pull that I need the vacation to do... nothing. I need to sit around and do... nothing. Except watch CSI: Miami.
Some of this is necessary, and has nothing to do with my lack of self-regulation. Inner-city middle school students are like very clumsy dinosaurs that stomp all over good faith effort and optimism, and leave panic, chaos, and exhaustion in their wake. They're stress tornadoes, and I know this. Even if I were a vampire (Twilight mythos) who didn't need to sleep / had more time on my hands, my students would still do this. Even if my units were all dynamite fantastic, their rein of chaos would prevail. I love my job, I do, and part of that love is accepting that a certain amount (read: 300 tons) of stress comes with the territory.
However, some of it I bring on myself. Here's what happens: I'm so stressed that I do no work at home on Monday and Tuesday night, so I end up doing 6 hours on Wednesday and Thursday night. After teaching an 8-hour day. Then, I'm exhausted, so I'm useless on vacation. Come summer, I'm so panicked about the sheer volume of work I have to do that I become unable to break it into small, manageable pieces and I put it off until August.
I did realize this past summer/year that my goal is not to have a pre-made curriculum that I stick to. Good teaching is about planning in advance, and then changing your plans to fit the needs of your students. That realization took a huge weight off my shoulders. But it isn't enough. My units are better when I plan them in advance, because then I have time to change them at least 3 times: once before I start, and twice after I start. Which is where the inability to self-regulate comes in.
Just like with food, drink, athletics, TV, cleaning, and other areas of my life, I cannot do a little bit of planning. It's either all or nothing, zero or sixty, and nothing in between. I have this image in my head of how it should be. It's filed away in the "HAHAHA good luck keep dreaming" section of my brain. I come home, spend 20 minutes grading, then half an hour planning a unit that will take place no less than 3 weeks in the future. I don't grade all the papers in one night, and I don't plan the unit in one night. Both things happen in bits and pieces, appropriately spaced out to allow me to watch one, or maybe two episodes of CSI: Miami a day and run under 5 miles a day.
The fact that it took me 30 seconds to convince myself to write "5" miles instead of a higher number is crystal clear evidence of the fact that this WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
My real question is this: IS THAT A BAD THING?
This week was the most productive vacation I've had since teaching. Again, that's not setting the bar high. Usually I do nothing for 7 days then spend 10 hours on each final weekend day. I've gotten accustomed to it. But this week was different. I spent an hour each day doing something productive, even if it wasn't directly related to my job. On Thursday, I even spent 3 hours revising my self-evaluation for work. Then I stopped, even though I wasn't done. It was like a miracle. Angels sang.
Then Friday (today) happened, and the mountain of work began to block out the sun. I couldn't enjoy the Vampire Diaries because I was so panicked about grading, so I finished watching it while half paying attention and denying the fact that I was only half paying attention, then sat down at 9 p.m. to begin chipping away at that mountain.
I started with grading my 7th grade's most recent drafts. I love doing it this way, because I keep a notebook opened beside me, and as I grade, I jot down ideas for what to teach next. It's truly the best way to do it, and whenever I can, I do. After about two hours of this, I started inadvertently sliding into planning mode. This, too, is a typical occurrence. (SIDENOTE: F words with two double consonants). I go from grading story after story and writing occasional notes to writing detailed notes and grading an occasional story.
Today it was awesome. I did the usual: Opened a document, titled it "What do do for the remaining two-ish weeks of fiction with my 7th graders" and started listing, brainstorming, rambling, and generally thinking on paper (well, onscreen).
AND IT WAS AWESOME.
Everything came together so well. I'm trying to think of an appropriate metaphor, and there's yarn in front of me, so I keep thinking I should compare it to the strands being wound together, but that would imply that I had all the pieces to begin with and just needed to twist them together, which is not at all true. A french braid would be more accurate. I started with three important pieces, wove them together, and gradually, as I thought of additional pieces, I added them too. Sometimes I had to backtrack and fix a bumpy part (read: scaffold skills more effectively). Some pieces fell out, but that was okay. By the end, I had a unit that resembled a stronger, more elaborate, connected version of the three pieces I started with.
AND I LOVED IT.
My back hurts. My eyes are dry, and I want to rip my contacts out. My feet are asleep. My sleep schedule is shot to hell. But I genuinely love watching the pieces come together.
But what happens next? After this metaphorical 12-mile run, do I require a recovery period until my knuckles stop bleeding, my blisters heal, and I can walk upstairs comfortably again?
So I wonder: Do other people do this in several small, pieces of time? I guess I wouldn't know, but I suspect I would have trouble making a unit in 12 half-hour blocks rather than one 6-hour block. I don't know if I've ever tried that. I think every time I have tried, I've done by accident what I did tonight on purpose: Planned for 6 hours nonstop. To answer your question, yes, that was the plan. At 9 p.m. I started working, and I was 95% sure that I would still be awake and working at 3 a.m. God, does that make me a freak? Do I care?
Here's what I really wonder:
- Am I capable of stopping? Typically, I can't stop after 30 minutes because I'm worried I'll miss an idea that I otherwise would have thought of. Or, I can't stop because I'm worried that I'll miss the next 30 minute chunk, so why put off until tomorrow what you can do in one inhuman 6-hour chunk in the middle of the night right now..? It's like preemptive procrastination. OH GOD. I don't know whether to be horrified or impressed by the phrase I just created.
- What if it's not a bad thing? What if I really plan better this way? Can I keep going like this in a more organized fashion? Is there a way to regularly plan in 6-hour chunks so that I don't go insane / get unhealthy / get metaphorical blisters? Should I try?
- Is it because I'm wired to have difficulty regulating, or the nature of my job, or both? Let's ignore the nature-versus-nurture debate, and look at the facts: For 26 years, I have functioned in this way, in most areas of my life. I have failed many times and succeeded many times. Should I change? If so, in how many areas should I focus on this change? Is it possible?
- Would things be different if I hadn't chosen such an all-encompassing, 24/7/365 job? Would things be different if I left my job at work?
For now, I will have to be content writing overly-detailed blog entries about it at four in the morning. Yes, now it's 411 a.m. I should go to bed.
Well, I apologize for the length of this blog. Though this blog primarily functions as a way for me to write, and having an audience is not the primary goal.
You know, I am actually quite glad that I wrote this. This is the first time in my life I've really thought about this in any depth, and God knows it's been there the whole time. I think writing this helped me process it. And processing it will help me deal with it for the years to come. So oh well if it's too long.
Plus, no one made you read it, right?
UGH. I can't even regulate my rationalizations.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Day Three
I'm doing Medifast.
I'll get the basic information out of the way first, before I reflect on my first three days.
Yes, weight watchers worked, but I was having trouble maintaining, which was disconcerting given that I still had ten pounds to lose. I started to realize that the bad behaviors hadn't gone anywhere, they'd just been subdued by all my hard work calculating points. Don't get me wrong. I love being thin(ner). But I can't calculate points for the rest of my life.
Here's what I realized. When I took a really hard, honest, brutal look at my health, I realized that I know how to eat well. I know what to eat, when, and how much. I know how to control portions, and make good choices. I have in many ways changed my life. However, there's still one thing getting in the way of my success: TIME. Or, rather, a lack thereof.
I love my job, I do, but it's a 12-hour day minimum, with another 10 hours split up on weekend days. When it comes down to it, good decisions take time, and that's time I don't have.
I started researching meal replacements online. It's tough, because most of them suck. Jenny Craig is too expensive, and not effective enough. Even FiberOne bars are actually garbage for you, packed with sugar and very little fiber. I wanted portable meal options that I didn't have to cook and package myself. Which led me to Medifast.
The program I'm doing is called Take Shape for Life, and without writing a novel about it, suffice it to say that it's a health program. My favorite part of it is that the super-strict mostly-Medifast part takes up less than 25% of the accompanying book. The majority of the chapters focus on what happens after you take the weight off, how to change your life and maintain health.
It's actually quite similar to Weight Watchers, I'm realizing as I flip through the book. The only difference is that, instead of learning it all in meetings, it's all on the page. And the end goal involves changing your thinking about food, rather than calculating points. I have a friend who did Weight Watchers, and can maintain her weight without tracking all her food and points, and honestly, that's wonderful, but I can't do that.
So, I'm in the first phase, which involves eating 5 Medifast meals a day and cooking one meal that's referred to as "Lean and Green." Here's my update so far:
The strangest thing is probably that I don't feel hungry. I'm eating under a thousand calories a day, yet I feel fine. I'm never hungry, and never full. Today I will eat 793 calories. Yesterday was 913. Years of anorexia taught me to survive on very little fuel, but this isn't "surviving." This is "thriving." I feel good. Sweet God that's cheesy. Please forgive me.
All the foods are interchangeable, which is fantastically creepy. It doesn't matter what you eat, as long as it's every 3-ish hours. I keep being tempted to order all brownies and see if it works. I won't, though.
The food's actually okay. No, it doesn't taste like I'm eating Doritos, but honestly, compared to all the shitty diet food I've consumed in the past 26 years, this is better. If given a choice between Baked Tostitos and Nacho Puff things (I don't remember the exact names yet), I'd choose the Nacho Puff things every time. And the soft serve is great. On a scale of ONE to Angora Cafe sugar free vanilla with peanut butter mixed in, the Medifast peanut butter soft serve is probably a 9. 8.5 at the lowest. And that's compared to the best, the cream of the crop, the mother of all low fat low sugar ice cream.
I should probably mention that the author of the book is Dr. A., and he is featured on the cover in an extremely creepy photo. However, after extensive discussion of this fact, my roommate (who's starting the program in two weeks after ordering her food today) and I have decided that we won't judge him, because he clearly knows what he's talking about. If you join this program, and feel a similarly powerful urge to mock the cover art, let me know. We'll set up a conference call.
Sucks: Tomato soup
Why: Does not dissolve. I'm sure the bullet would do it, but I have enough food that requires the bullet, so I'm returning it.
Sucks: Chocolate mint maintenance bar
Why: too hard to chew, as in "Oh shit ouch I knew there was a reason I stored that chocolate bar in the freezer" but it's not frozen. Returning.
According to the scale, I've lost 4 pounds in three days. I'm going to ignore that statistic, because when I started this, I was a full two pounds heavier as a result of Passover on Monday. Passover, by the way, was epic. I made matzah balls, while my brother made inappropriate comments for five straight minutes, asking how my balls were, and so on. Mom's spicy matzah was epic. All the cooking was, as usual. It was truly one of the best seders, if not the best seder ever. My ten plagues table decorations surpassed all expectations, including my own. I remain the Jew Champion.
--L
PS: When I was walking down Harvard St. in Brookline, an old Jewish man commented loudly that, "She does NOT look like a nice Jewish girl with her star of David necklace hanging in her cleavage." I took it as a compliment. I looked hot.
I'll get the basic information out of the way first, before I reflect on my first three days.
Yes, weight watchers worked, but I was having trouble maintaining, which was disconcerting given that I still had ten pounds to lose. I started to realize that the bad behaviors hadn't gone anywhere, they'd just been subdued by all my hard work calculating points. Don't get me wrong. I love being thin(ner). But I can't calculate points for the rest of my life.
Here's what I realized. When I took a really hard, honest, brutal look at my health, I realized that I know how to eat well. I know what to eat, when, and how much. I know how to control portions, and make good choices. I have in many ways changed my life. However, there's still one thing getting in the way of my success: TIME. Or, rather, a lack thereof.
I love my job, I do, but it's a 12-hour day minimum, with another 10 hours split up on weekend days. When it comes down to it, good decisions take time, and that's time I don't have.
I started researching meal replacements online. It's tough, because most of them suck. Jenny Craig is too expensive, and not effective enough. Even FiberOne bars are actually garbage for you, packed with sugar and very little fiber. I wanted portable meal options that I didn't have to cook and package myself. Which led me to Medifast.
The program I'm doing is called Take Shape for Life, and without writing a novel about it, suffice it to say that it's a health program. My favorite part of it is that the super-strict mostly-Medifast part takes up less than 25% of the accompanying book. The majority of the chapters focus on what happens after you take the weight off, how to change your life and maintain health.
It's actually quite similar to Weight Watchers, I'm realizing as I flip through the book. The only difference is that, instead of learning it all in meetings, it's all on the page. And the end goal involves changing your thinking about food, rather than calculating points. I have a friend who did Weight Watchers, and can maintain her weight without tracking all her food and points, and honestly, that's wonderful, but I can't do that.
So, I'm in the first phase, which involves eating 5 Medifast meals a day and cooking one meal that's referred to as "Lean and Green." Here's my update so far:
The strangest thing is probably that I don't feel hungry. I'm eating under a thousand calories a day, yet I feel fine. I'm never hungry, and never full. Today I will eat 793 calories. Yesterday was 913. Years of anorexia taught me to survive on very little fuel, but this isn't "surviving." This is "thriving." I feel good. Sweet God that's cheesy. Please forgive me.
All the foods are interchangeable, which is fantastically creepy. It doesn't matter what you eat, as long as it's every 3-ish hours. I keep being tempted to order all brownies and see if it works. I won't, though.
The food's actually okay. No, it doesn't taste like I'm eating Doritos, but honestly, compared to all the shitty diet food I've consumed in the past 26 years, this is better. If given a choice between Baked Tostitos and Nacho Puff things (I don't remember the exact names yet), I'd choose the Nacho Puff things every time. And the soft serve is great. On a scale of ONE to Angora Cafe sugar free vanilla with peanut butter mixed in, the Medifast peanut butter soft serve is probably a 9. 8.5 at the lowest. And that's compared to the best, the cream of the crop, the mother of all low fat low sugar ice cream.
I should probably mention that the author of the book is Dr. A., and he is featured on the cover in an extremely creepy photo. However, after extensive discussion of this fact, my roommate (who's starting the program in two weeks after ordering her food today) and I have decided that we won't judge him, because he clearly knows what he's talking about. If you join this program, and feel a similarly powerful urge to mock the cover art, let me know. We'll set up a conference call.
Sucks: Tomato soup
Why: Does not dissolve. I'm sure the bullet would do it, but I have enough food that requires the bullet, so I'm returning it.
Sucks: Chocolate mint maintenance bar
Why: too hard to chew, as in "Oh shit ouch I knew there was a reason I stored that chocolate bar in the freezer" but it's not frozen. Returning.
According to the scale, I've lost 4 pounds in three days. I'm going to ignore that statistic, because when I started this, I was a full two pounds heavier as a result of Passover on Monday. Passover, by the way, was epic. I made matzah balls, while my brother made inappropriate comments for five straight minutes, asking how my balls were, and so on. Mom's spicy matzah was epic. All the cooking was, as usual. It was truly one of the best seders, if not the best seder ever. My ten plagues table decorations surpassed all expectations, including my own. I remain the Jew Champion.
--L
PS: When I was walking down Harvard St. in Brookline, an old Jewish man commented loudly that, "She does NOT look like a nice Jewish girl with her star of David necklace hanging in her cleavage." I took it as a compliment. I looked hot.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
I MISS YOU
So I have this friend. Because we're all grown-ups and we have real-life jobs, I'm not going to mention names, but hopefully, you know who you are.
This person is one of my best friends. She will be a bridesmaid at my wedding. She will french-braid my daughter's hair. She will always be an important part of my life. But as of the last few months, we haven't been in as close of contact. I've been sucked into the vacuum of 100/hour teaching weeks, and she's been sucked into the vacuum of 100/hour Ph.D./work weeks. These numbers are approximate. They are probably higher in real life.
Regardless, I wanted to take this opportunity to publicly announce how much I miss said friend, and give extremely detailed reasons why. That way, when we both surface from the ocean of work we're swimming in, there will be a funny memory of that one time Leah wrote an inappropriately detailed hopefully funny blog about it.
I present: a detailed numbered list of the things I miss about you.
Love you.
--LW
This person is one of my best friends. She will be a bridesmaid at my wedding. She will french-braid my daughter's hair. She will always be an important part of my life. But as of the last few months, we haven't been in as close of contact. I've been sucked into the vacuum of 100/hour teaching weeks, and she's been sucked into the vacuum of 100/hour Ph.D./work weeks. These numbers are approximate. They are probably higher in real life.
Regardless, I wanted to take this opportunity to publicly announce how much I miss said friend, and give extremely detailed reasons why. That way, when we both surface from the ocean of work we're swimming in, there will be a funny memory of that one time Leah wrote an inappropriately detailed hopefully funny blog about it.
I present: a detailed numbered list of the things I miss about you.
- I miss your laugh. You know how there are those turns of phrase you read in books, and you know them/what they mean, but are hard-pressed to find an actual example in real-life? In case you're still unclear, I'll give you some examples. Let's say I read a book about a character with a "wicked grin." I love the book, I completely understand what Eric Northman looks like with a "wicked grin," but the first time I see a friend of mine with a grin like that I think, "Wow, thati's the kind of wicked grin I read about in books!" There are many of them. For instance, "A smile slowly spread across her face." Well, you are one of the few people I know that remains true to to the phrase, "Dissolves into laughter." I miss that dissolution. I miss our hysterical moments that ended up with us rolling on the floor holding our stomachs. I miss doing this across the ocean via Skype video chat.
- I miss talking to you about anything. Now, because I am who I am, and I grew up with the mother I grew up with, I'm comfortable telling a great many people about a great many personal things that most people would be mortified to share, but the level of our epic sharing is beyond even the high standards of "TMI" that I set for myself.
- I miss complaining to you. I know this is a selfish one, but somehow you always understand, even though you're not me, and you aren't underpaid and worked into the ground teaching inner-city middle schoolers. You have this amazing ability to channel yourself into any situation I find myself in, and, unlike me, know how to deal with it. You always have the right thing to say. You always know when to be sympathetic, when to be blunt, and when to jump on the "he/she/they said that to you? WTF I hate them" bandwagon. I suppose the correct sentence to start this with would be, "I miss your empathy" but "I miss complaining" sounds funnier, so I'll leave it.
- I miss our marathon conversations. You're the only person I can talk to where, over the course of a conversation, we'll both make complicated, multi-course meals, watch 2 episodes of a show, put on makeup, clean, and/or do 112 other things.
- This one connects to number 4. I miss our journey conversations. I miss hearing a running commentary on the people you're walking by as we're talking. I do very much care about the shady guy that stares at you, the displays in the store windows, the sun/wind/rain/honking horns, the girl in the slutty skirt, and the fact that if you're commenting to ME (read: queen of slutty skirts) about another girl's skirt being slutty, she's probably not even wearing one. a
- This connects to numbers 4 and 5. I miss you having a phone! Did you get a phone yet? Get a damn phone. I even have a smart phone now. We can do things that people with smartphones do, like play 5 different apps-worth of ghetto knockoff Scrabble, and use another messaging app for only smart phones. I'm dying to do that! Can we do that? There's so many of them. Kakao tak. Tikitalk. Whatsappmessenger. Please?
- I don't think we actually did this ever, but can we start sending each other random photos throughout the course of our days? I'm not exactly sure what this would look like. Sometimes it could be funny captions, sometimes it could be one of those "Guess what this is?" and it's something super-zoomed in. Let's start that.
- This relates to number 7. Notice how I completely digressed from the original purpose of this list, which was to list things that I missed about you? Number 7 is something we've never even done. Hence, it's totally random and unrelated. I MISS OUR DIGRESSIONS. I miss our randomness. I miss not knowing how we started talking about porcupines when we started off talking about True Blood. Though that's not really such a far reach, because I can think of 5 ways immediately that porcupines could be related to True Blood. Two of these ways are painful.
- I miss your music recommendations. You are the Perez of the non-celebrity world in your ability to find gems of artists.
- I miss your boobs, in a totally heterosexual, super-appreciative way.
Love you.
--LW
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