Excuses my students gave this week

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

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:

1. getting gas
2. grocery shopping at Market Basket. The larger the store and the more public the location, the better. 
3. ride a motorcycle
4. go to the motorcycle dealership to investigate, test-drive, bargain for, and eventually purchase the aforementioned motorcycle
5. going to HR block to do taxes
6. get a mani/pedi
7. be a guest news anchor
8. walk over the tobin bridge (through the EZ pass/fastlane )
9. random, spur-of-the-moment public yoga
10. be one of those people that asks for charitable donations on tremont st
11. somehow wield a blow torch. the more random the reasoning behind it, the better
12. go to a Bieber concert and, when people are confused, act like you have no idea why they're looking at you funny
13. have professional photos taken 
14. get a roll of quarters INSIDE the bank
15. COME TO BOXING CLASS AT MY GYM WITH ME!!!

Love, Leah

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.

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:

• 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.

My psychiatrist has been telling me this for a while. Literally for as long as I can remember, I'm talking 14 years of "MODERATION, LEAH!" and then super-important psychological sounding things to back it up. It took me a while, but eventually I began to understand what he meant. It took me even longer to admit how detrimental this lack of self-regulation often was. And, remaining true to form, I didn't grasp how many areas of my life were affected by this until I stopped my 26-year avoidance of the issue and sat down (twenty minutes ago) to spend an extended amount of time contemplating all areas of it. 

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:

1. 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.
2. 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? 
3. 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? 
4. 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? 

 Something does have to change. Eventually, at least. It's fine now, when I'm completely alone and only responsible for myself, but eventually I'll have responsibilities beyond that, like marriage, family, children, etc. 

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.

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 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.

1. 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. 
2. 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. 
3. 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.
4. 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. 
5. 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
6. 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? 
7. 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. 
8. 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. 
9. I miss your music recommendations. You are the Perez of the non-celebrity world in your ability to find gems of artists. 
10. I miss your boobs, in a totally heterosexual, super-appreciative way. 

Love you.
--LW

Fitness Plan Day 1

So I made a mistake. I stopped going to weight watchers. I gained 3 pounds, and freaked out. I'm a lifetime member, so it's actually not that big of a deal, but I flipped. I was so ashamed. I kept rewinding, reliving all the summer diets I've succeeded at and then monumentally failed at months later. I kept thinking, NOT THIS TIME. This time I actually look different. This time my face is narrow, my stomach is toned, this time it's not the result of some three-month crash. I was so afraid to fail that that's exactly what I did.

It's ridiculous, actually, how easily we slip back into our bad habits. Suddenly I was looking for the Next Big Thing, the One Big Cure. I spent hours getting my hands on the Insanity workout, all 15 dvds worth, and I even started it, but I couldn't maintain it. I drank too much. I ate too much. I forgot to eat for 3 days at a time. One time I even ate a donut. I know. There aren't words for the horror of that choice.

Today I went back to boxing and I realized something: What the hell am I doing? The whole point of weight watchers, and boxing, and running, and yoga, and all that I've been doing is that it's NOT a "get your bikini body" specific plan with an end point. It's a lifestyle change, an effort to change your relationship with food and exercise. I got so caught up in worrying that I wasn't running enough miles, wasn't burning enough calories, wasn't building enough muscle, that I completely forgot that I F-ING LOVE RUNNING. I do. I love it. I love it with a fiery, creepy, obsessive passion. I'm sick, really. My running jacket is warmer and more expensive than any regular coat I own. My sneakers cost 140 dollars. My Franco Sarto boots cost 100. I'm that girl that listens to "going the distance" at least once a week and screams when Springsteen comes on the radio. Somehow, I forgot that.

Part of it was getting sick. Basically, I had a copycat of walking pneumonia. For weeks I had a fever. For weeks everything hurt. But I couldn't do anything about it so I went about my business, which made it worse. I'm still recovering. I can barely run for 2 hours without dying. Boston will definitely have to wait.

I'm so mad at myself. To think I actually paused in the diet pill aisle. I know how to eat well. I guess I just thought at some point it would get easy, at some point I wouldn't have to try as hard. I guess that will never happen. I wish it weren't true, but if I'm honest, I know that I'll always be someone who struggles with eating. I will never be able to NOT track what I eat.

So I made a plan: The plan is to cut the shit, and do what I already know works. Eat well most of the time, do exercise that I love, and not sweat the small stuff. I'm going to run more. I'm going to box more. But I'm doing it because I love it, not so I can look at the scale and marvel at how the numbers dropped (please... it's just water weight anyway after a 10-mile run).

Today, I suppose, started the plan.
HIGHLIGHTS:

1. boxed. love hitting things. 
2. ate 1.5 munchkins because I didn't want to dedicate 4 whole points. spit one out in the trashcan in my office. student saw. no big. 
3. going running tomorrow when it's WARM! 

Things that DON'T happen in real life.. but seem to happen all the time on TV and in the movies

Masquerade balls. 

It's such a cheap shot. Oh, hey, I have a bunch of characters. They have all types of feelings for each other. Some are unrequited, tragically. Some are seen as socially unacceptable, either by society as a whole, or by the set group of people. Brilliant! Let's put tiny masks on them, spike the punch, and watch them make bad decisions. In theory it works, but there are too many inconsistencies for me to sufficiently suspend my disbelief. 


Known, documented issues with masquerade balls: 

1. Masks that cover barely half the face don't fool anybody. Actually, masks in general don't fool anybody. I know it's creepy, but if you were shown photographs of all the people you knew and saw on a regular basis, you could figure them out by their bodies and clothes. No one wants to admit to being that aware of other people's body parts, but face it, we all are. 
2. Humans, as a species, tend to take their clothes off and/or lose things while drinking. [[[Case in point: myself. You. All your friends.]]] So, at an actual masquerade party, people would get drunk and take their masks off. Therefore making the entire charade pointless. 
3. Before you say that people wouldn't drink at a masquerade party, think about it: it's a masquerade party. 
4. Finally, in any population present at a party, there are always those people, THOSE AWFUL PEOPLE that don't wear costumes. You know them. They're the ones wearing the exact same thing they normally wear, those same horrifically uncreative ones who "go as themselves" for Halloween (NOTE: It is acceptable to do this if you show up at the party after 11 p.m., when people have already begun following rule 2, and cowboy hats and boas are draped over random people, furniture, and people passed out on furniture). Anyway, those people make everything weird because they don't show up in masks, and they ruin the whole concept. Which, as I've stated, is built on flimsy logic to begin with. 

People get injured, get back up, and are miraculously unscathed the next day. 

Several weeks ago I fell down a flight of stairs. It sucked. I had a few drinks in me, but I was sober enough to feel every iota of pain. It was awful. I had to plan my lessons with whole blocks of dialogue, in case my lip (which I bit through) was still too swollen for me to talk (and students would read it off). For two weeks, I looked like an abuse victim. Bruises, huge and yellow, covered me. I couldn't bend down or kneel for a month. Yet people in TV and movies seem to get the crap kicked out of them and bounce right back. It makes me have more respect for Buffy, because at least, on that show, they address it. They literally say, several times, that she has accelerated strength and healing powers. 

No one's roots grow out on TV. 

This does not really require much explanation, but it brings up something that's just generally unfair about life: When you don't dye your hair, it takes FOREVER to grow. When you dye it, even slightly, the roots show up almost immediately. On TV, this never happens. 

Women wear loads of makeup and somehow don't look like prostitutes. 

I was watching Pretty Little Liars the other day (because yes, I watch that show. Partially to have some common ground with my students, but also because I genuinely like it). All of the main characters are loaded with makeup. The thing that I don't get is, they look fine. You know how you can wear makeup to make yourself look like you're not wearing any? It's like that, multiplied by eleven. What kills me is that if I (or any woman) wore that kind of makeup during the day (or even at night), I'd look ridiculous. I'd look like a trying-too-hard-hooker. Yet these girls (21-year-olds playing 16-year-olds, obviously), look pretty. I'm sure it's some combination of lighting and camera work. In fact, I know it is. I remember vividly how much more makeup I had to put on when going onstage. But it's just another inconsistency that bothers me. 

How to be a grown-up: COOKING

Sometimes I think there's a class I missed in college.

I can do wonders with numbers. I can tell a hell of a good story. I can outline the differences between multiple versions of The Maltese Falcon. I can talk Piaget and Freud with authority. I'm legally certified to teach 12 grades. But sometimes things happen and I wonder, how did I not know that? How did that fact somehow slip through the cracks on the 17-year sidewalk of my education?

This post is about cooking. I cooked plenty with my mother growing up, and I still call her constantly while I'm hovering over the stove wondering what I did wrong. But there are certain things that I don't know until she tells me, and from what I can gather, some of them are actually important.

There is no substitute for sugar. You can talk the benefits of splenda all day long, but if you try to make carmelized onions with it, it dissolves and leaves you with flavorless onions stuck to the pan. I used to make a wonderful asian-style lettuce wraps recipe (I have been too afraid to calculate the WW points), and I must have cooked it five times before my mother joined me and barked, "What are you doing? You have to use real sugar. The flavors won't bind. Real sugar brings out the flavor Leah!" How was I supposed to know that? Did I miss the day on how to yell with authority about sugar binding flavors?

Real cooks approximate. People on diets measure. Rachel Ray is the expert on not being exact. To avoid writing a long-winded rant about her, I'll focus on just this one unfavorable characteristic. Watch her cook and she'll say things like, "Oh, a pinch of this," and "A few shakes of this" and "A handful of that." Which is all fine and good if you're Rachel Ray, or Gordon Ramsay, or some famous sous chef in NYC, but for the rest of us who are actually concerned with the amount of muffin top hanging out of our jeans, it is necessary to measure. This lesson was especially confusing to learn. I have been on a diet of some form or another for most of my life. Even before I dieted, I knew that white bread was bad, and fat-free was good. I've also been a struggling, learn-as-I-go cook for most of my life, and it's mighty confusing when the people you observe cooking use this haphazard approximate measurement system. It makes me wonder if any famous cooks eat the food they make. But this lesson my mother taught me, in a very positive way. I interpreted it as, "If I'm logging 3 points for using extra virgin olive oil, I don't want to accidentally eat 4 points-worth and get fat. My mother, goddess of wisdom and kitchen-related wonder, responded with, "If you're logging three points for olive oil, you want to ensure that you enjoy every last drop." Truer words have ne'er been spoken.

Pre-ground thyme = mortal sin. My mother walked into my apartment a few weeks ago and was quite happy with what she saw. It's beginning to look more lived in and homey, as it should: We've been here almost 2 years. It's about damn time. But she did have one complaint, which she voiced quite vocally, as is my mother's custom: I had a tiny container of ground thyme in my spice box. Apparently, this is a moral sin, on the same level as involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide. Little did I know that a) thyme should NEVER be pre-ground, I should buy it and then grind it as I need it, and b) it goes bad REALLY quickly in ground form. This, of course, brings up an even more interesting question (and I like to picture Ice-T asking it in a super intimidating way, as if interrogating a possible witness to the aforementioned homicide): WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THYME GOES BAD? I mean, aside from the usual things that you'd expect: war, famine, sacrificing of the first-born, tulips wilting dramatically in a windowsill while Death Cab for Cutie plays in the background. The answer is that I don't know what happens when thyme goes bad. I don't know what warning signs to be on the lookout for. I just googled it, and no combinations of Thyme, Expires, Stale, Spices and a variety of other words lead me to the answer. I did, however, find several websites that believe time / thyme is a witty play on words. Sad. I guess I'll just have to be on the lookout. Still, I wish I'd known.

snow days

Usually, I dislike snow days. I mean, I like them at the time, because hell yes it’s wonderful to have a random day off in the middle of the week. The surprise is the fun part. But I hate getting out later than necessary in June, because Lord knows by then every day is five years long.

However, all that changed the other day. I don’t even remember who told me this… if per chance you end up reading this, brilliant one, please remind me. But anyway, the person reminded me that currently days are about thirty five seconds long. Then BOOM it’s night. Come June, the sun won’t go down until nine o’clock. Thus, we need the day more now than then.

WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?

Brilliant.

January 18, 

The ManBullyMooch

Let me begin this by saying that I am all for gender equality. I don’t believe that women should be given jobs solely because they’re women, but I do believe that the best candidate should get the job in all cases, regardless of gender. With that said, I’m not above flirting my way into and out of things. As a problem solver, you have to be prepared to use all the tools at your disposal, even if those tools involve long legs and nice boobs. Plus, men do the exact same thing when they can, and when they remember to.

This is a roundabout way of getting to my point, but I assure you, it will all make sense eventually.

This past Saturday night, I went out to the Liquor Store with my friends Stephanie and Danielle. Despite 3 years at Emerson, I have never been to this bar. I guess after hearing so many times, “You’re from Texas? You’re probably amazing at the mechanical bull, you should take your top off while doing it!” I was turned off completely. It was snowing and freezing, but we needed to celebrate Danielle’s last weekend of freedom before starting her insane workout / diet regimen in preparation for a body-building competition. Yes, I know. There aren’t enough words in the English language to explain how f-ing cool that is, so I’m not going to try.

The bar was actually pretty fun. Multiple rooms, fun decorations, good dance floor… All was well until we were approached by them.

Two men, about our age, sauntered up. One was short and unattractive. The other was tall and moderately attractive in that “I spend too long trying to make it look like I didn’t spend too much time on my hair,” tight graphic t-shirt kind of way.

“So, I was nervous but my friend said I HAVE to come up and try to talk to you ladies,” the attractive one said.

I will never understand why men use this line. Really?

We talked to them for a while. They complimented us, we smiled, we all made small talk. It was altogether uninteresting, until I started to feel this pressure when we made eye contact. There’s a moment when one party expects something from the encounter, and you can feel it in their unwillingness to look away from you. It’s the moment when the conversation becomes slightly suffocating, when you can barely answer one question before they sling another in your direction, and it’s all moving too fast and yet still it’s not interesting, and it becomes harder and harder to find a polite way out. We were at this point. I decided to say, “Come on girls, let’s do a shot.”

The boys looked at us expectantly.

“What?” I asked.

“Can we join you?” they asked.

“Sure, but you’re buying your own shots. I’m not paying for you.”

I figured this was direct enough to convey that, despite their pitiful efforts, we were not going to go home with them. Instead, they accepted.

Here’s where I made a mistake. I should’ve asked the bartender for three shots, and let the boys order their own. Instead I ordered five and said, “The two guys are paying for theirs separately.” I know, I’m shitty. I just felt like, why should he have to mix up two batches of shots two minutes apart?

Two minutes later we figured out what their game was. They were the guys who hit on girls in hopes of being bought alcohol. First, they refused to pay. Then, they paid, left no tip, and THREW (yes, threw) the bill (which was in one of those black folding things) at the bartender. Who then yelled, “What the fuck is your problem, you don’t throw the bill then NOT TIP..” and some other stuff about how they shouldn’t expect ladies like us to buy them drinks when they were such manipulative shitheads.

That poor bartender. The assholes then started calling him a loser low-life bartender, and I busted out the serious teacher voice, and they went to prey on other innocent victims. We of course tipped the bartender obscenely for our next round of drinks, then ran off to the other end of the dance floor.

All I have to say is, leave it to men to screw up something as simple as that. Yes, it’s preferable to have someone else spend money on your drink. But it’s not like a race, where most times, if you push hard enough, you will accomplish your goal. You flirt for a few minutes, and if it doesn’t work, buy your own drink. It’s not a science, or an art. It’s just part of hanging out at a bar. And if someone tells you that you’re buying your own drink, you do NOT pretend you didn’t hear and then physically and verbally assault the bartender. Ugh.

I was so angry I almost wanted to ride that damn bull. Luckily, it was turned off for the night.

Tall boy approached me an hour later and said, “Wow, what the hell was wrong with that bartender?” I smiled and said, “You have ten seconds before I break your nose. Walk away.” No, I’m not proud of it. But damn it felt cool to make that threat and know full well that I could deliver it.

Back to my original point: I believe in equality. I don’t expect things, financially, from men. I go to bars to dance with the friends I came with and possibly meet new friends. If someone buys me a drink, great. If I decide to buy someone else a drink, great. But I have no expectations, and whatever happens is fine. I don’t believe that men should always get the check. I don’t go to bars expecting for men to buy me drinks. All I ask for is to not be bullied into buying drinks for men. Is that so much to ask?

ManMooches. That’s what I’ll call them.

Ugh.

Boston Marathon 2011- Training run #1

I've officially started training for Boston 2011. I write about all sorts of topics in this blog, but I must say it feels good to finally have it live up to its URL.. so I run marathons...

Technically, our first team training run is tomorrow morning, but I didn't want to chance running long distance the day before going back to school, so I did it yesterday, and it was fantastic.

It's weird how things change as you get older. Five years ago, the most I would run alone was 8 miles. I lived in Beacon Hill, so I'd run down Cambridge street, over the Longfellow, down to the Harvard Footbridge, and back up to the Longfellow. I loved it. A solid 8 miler. Now that I'm older, I've found I'm much more willing to run longer distances alone. Plus, I'm thinner. Last night at my parents' house I looked at the Saucony 26 billboard and for the first time, I noticed what you are all talking about: My face looks drastically different without the extra 25 pounds. I was pretty then, and lord I miss that long hair (soon, soon), but I was chub chubs. Major chubs. It's so much easier to run when you're thinner. Granted I still have ten pounds to go, but still.

It's weird how I used to run short distances. I have to get back to that. Lately I'm in this mindset of "if I run, I want to run at least 9 miles." This isn't such a bad thing, but I need to do speed, intervals, hills, and short runs. I looked at my training log, and I'll run 12 miles, then not run for 5 days, then run 11 miles. I need to stop that. There should be 3-milers and hill workouts in between That NEVER used to be the way. I used to love my fast-paced 3-milers, 4-milers, etc.

When I try, I can't remember when it happened. It must have been sometime after I moved to Brookline/Brighton, because I don't have such easy access to short runs that involve mostly esplanade. I love my new neighborhood, but I so miss being half a mile from the Charles. Back then I didn't even have to count the distance I ran to get to the Esplanade. I just did it as a 10-minute warmup and then measured my mileage by the bridges. Now I'm 1.88 miles from the nearest bridge over Storrow (bay state Rd, BU). Then I'm 1.98 miles from the Everett Street exit off Soldier's Field Road. So basically, even if I run to the first one, run down the esplanade, and leave at the Everett exit, that's 6.7 miles. I could shorten it by taking the Cambridge / Double Tree exit, but I hate running there. About half the time, I zone out, and then get confused when I run up to the tolls for the turnpike. Being yelled at by cops for almost running on an interstate = not fun.

So yeah, it must have started when I moved out of Beacon Hill. As much as I love Boston, it's difficult to make routes that don't involve stopping at a thousand intersections. Even yesterday's 12-miler involved 7 minutes of waiting. That is, the difference between my start and end time was 7 minutes slower if I didn't stop my watch at intersections.

It was glorious, however. Part of the reason I think I rarely do short runs is that for distance runners, often it takes 3 miles to get into the groove, and if the run's only 3 miles, then you never even get there before it's over. In this case... well, I'm not sure exactly where the mile markers are on this run, and I'm deliberately trying not to know. I'm compulsive. Very, very compulsive. Even knowing that when I cross onto the Esplanade it's exactly 1.88 miles is very difficult, because I psychoanalyze everything. But with that said, the first 40 minutes-ish were tough. I was not feeling it. I persevered, but it was long. The route I did involves most of the Esplanade--- BU, Storrow, all the way up to Route 28, past MOS, and back down Memorial. I honestly didn't feel good until I was almost on the other side of the river. Then there was this moment when I realized "I can push it harder. I can fucking fly, why am I going this slow?" and off I went.

Towards the end, it hurt, but not too badly. I ran sub-10 minute pace, but beyond that, I didn't calculate. I suppose I could if I didn't have an aversion to math. Next Saturday, I'm running with the Fitcorp team. That should be fun.

Not sore today, surprisingly. Maybe I'm in better shape than I thought I was. Although I do have one question for runners, if anyone reads this, and if you haven't been driven away by my rambling and repetitiveness by now. Do you ever get sick after runs? I don't mean "puke when you walk in the door." Lately, if I don't eat something major within 15 minutes of the end of my run, I get really, really sick. Vomiting violently sick. This never happened before this year. Does anyone else run into this problem? Haha. run into. Luckily I managed to stuff a few pieces of bread into my system just as I felt the nausea coming on, but it wasn't as foolproof as eating a Luna bar.

OH, ONE MORE THING.
I ran 3.2 miles on a treadmill in Cleveland and went into near-anaphalactic shock. No idea what cauesed it. Luckily my brother was on the treadmill next to me, and I was able to somewhat communicate to him that he needed to retrieve our father from the family suite (my face was swollen, talking was difficult). I'm also lucky that my brother is THAT GUY who takes his cell phone to the gym with him. Now I have a bunch of random food allergies, but I hadn't eaten any of those foods. What the hell?

Okay, over and out.

Sookie Stackhouse epiphany

SPOILER: I've watched seasons 1, 2, and 3 of True Blood and read the first 8 books. Be warned.

I had an epiphany.

I'm on the ninth book of the Southern Vampire Mysteries series. Which is to say I am currently debating purchasing it, because although my lovely cousin sent me the first eight, I am having a panic attack that I do not have immediate access to all published Sookie material. However, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the difference between the books and the series, and I figured it out.

There are basically two types of POV- first person (I) and third person (she/he). Within third person, there are additional divisions based on which character(s) tell the story, and how much they know versus how much the reader knows. I won't get into it. But I do love the word omniscient. Anyway, I am an avid lover of story, be it in book, short story, movie, or television form. I love getting lost in flawed characters and complicated storylines. This is not the first time I've devoted a serious amount of thought to the difference between books and TV shows/movies. I even took "Novel into Film" at the castle, which had the potential to be a great class, except our crazy Belgian professor sucked. But he was beautiful to look at. I just didn't see much value in watching multiple versions of the Maltese Falcon. I also don't remember doing much actual comparison, concretely, of books versus movies. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. I was living in the Netherlands. It's possible that school was not my number 1 concern. Although actually, that's a lie. I adored my other classes. But the most useful thing I remember was our discussion of the Remains of the Day, and how although both versions were beautiful, the movie paled in comparison to the book.

In any event, I've been scanning True Blood versus Southern Vampire Mysteries forums and it hit me, almost embarrassing in its simplicity. All the changes made when the books were adapted into True Blood happened because the books are first person, and the show is in third person.

Think about it.

In a first person narrative, we're entirely in the narrator's head. We see, hear, think as she sees, hears and thinks. That provides us with a deep understanding of her and her world because the perspective acts almost as a running commentary. We only see other characters through the lens of her description. We only witness events as they happen to her. But in a TV show or movie, that's impossible. I'm sure it's been attempted, or somehow done in some way, but it's still not the same. The closest thing I can think of is Sex and the City. Carrie is in almost every scene. Grey's Anatomy is the  opposite: an ensemble cast.

I imagine that making the transition from first person book to third person TV show must leave a lot of empty space. Which is why they made all the changes. We can't very well have Anna Paquin narrate the entire show in a voiceover, so they had to beef up the other characters. And, in Jessica's case, create new ones.

Think about it. Every change (almost) can be explained by this theory.

1. In SVM, Eric kills Longshadow, but on TB Bill kills him. That way, he can be punished by the magistrate, and forced to create a new vamp, Jessica. More characters, more Bill. 
2. In SVM, Tara's alcoholic crazy mom was a thing of her childhood and she only occasionally appears. On TB, that's all current. More focus on an existing character. More drama. 
3. In SVM, Sam has a fairly simple backstory. On TB, his crazy pants shifter family takes up half of the third season. More Sam. Less Sookie. 
4. Lafayette is explained I think by how awesome he was, and how they wanted to keep him on the show. As for that random guy in his mother's nursing home that he hooks up with, the Wiccan, that all goes back to giving him a story if they wanted to keep him there. 
5. Eric is fantastic. Many people seem upset by his adaptation into the small screen, but I think he's brilliant. Although I did notice, the further along we get, the bigger they try to make him (physically, and storyline-wise). There is a moment in the second season when you realize, Holy Shit, Alexander Skarsgard is like 6'6. 

I won't go through every nuance, but you get the point. All of the changes, well, most of them, seem to be creating bigger, more complex characters to fill in the space left when you take away Sookie's first person narration. I'm happy. Satisfied. 

I also just found out who's playing the witch Hallow in the fourth season, from which I infer that Eric will be cursed and he will get together with Sookie. YES. 

Final notes: 

• The more I read of the books, the more amazing I think Anna Paquin is for portraying Sookie so amazingly. Think about it. The actress is a tiny, pale brunette. 
• I love Eric. Team Eric. 
• I hope the bookstore is still opened. 

XO

This is a post entirely about beautiful boots.

I found the perfect boots. It pays to be picky. Dozens of times over the past year I've been tempted to purchase "cute" boots from Target but I've stopped myself, intent on my belief that I would find THE boots, the boots that, like my black slouchy boots, I felt an instant connection with. It paid off. I had a dream about them on the airplane. Brown, knee-high, western boots. Worn brown leather. Stacked heel. One simple embellishment, nothing gaudy. The picture in my mind was so clear that I was sad when I woke up. 

We were eating at Corky and Lenny's (Jew deli in Cleveland) when I realized that there was TJMaxx next door. I felt a pull, a cosmic, supernatural pull, not unlike the pull Sookie feels towards Eric after she's had his blood. Yes. I went there. I compared my love of boots to a fictional vampire show. Bite me. HAHA I DIDN'T EVEN PLAN THAT. Anyway, while my father was paying the bill (thanks Daddy!) I ran next door and there they were. I tried them on and realized, to my dismay, that the zippers were on the outside. To say I felt deflated would be an understatement. I sank to the floor, and then I saw them... hidden in an unmarked generic brown box marked "size five-and-a-half" with large, scawly sharpie. I knew instinctively that the boots inside were size 8.5 and would fulfill my every footwear desire. I was right. 

Backstreet Boys, Book Club, That One Tough Student (of the day)

Today we had a discussion about the images that surround us in my 8th grade class. One student asked, "Miss, don't you have 200 posters of the Backstreet Boys?" These students have had me for two years, so they clearly know about my former obsession. I explained that now I only have one poster. "Why do you still have one?" they asked. I was honest. I told them that I have an old poster hanging in my study for days when I feel frustrated with teaching, to remind myself of what it was like to be thirteen, to keep myself humble. "Being 13 is easy," one girl said. ... Am I missing something? No... she's just lying...


***


S: Miss you like Cee lo? YOU'RE SO COOL. 
L: YES! I also love the Glee version. 
S: I take that back. This conversation never happened. 




***


Last period I have a 7th grade book club. Truly, they are wonderful. They're a brilliant, rowdy, mostly-male group and although they have their moments for the most part it's wonderful. Often, I make things worse actually. They are expected to read silently (except while writing or discussing) but they have so many questions, so many wonderful questions, questions that other, more structured classes don't have time to address. So what ends up happening is that I answer their questions, and one, two, nine of them chime in, and then we're all talking about the consumerism allegory in The Star-Bellied Sneetches instead of reading. Here are some of the conversations we've gotten into: 

1. Whether going to a low-income public high school or an applications-only regional vocational high school will look better on a college application. 
2. The detailed reasoning behind why they all take MCAS. 
3. The travesty that is the writing of the first three Harry Potter books. 
4. How the length of flashbacks in a novel can make or destroy it. 
5. How aggravating it is when authors create inauthentic teen characters and how easily you can tell, because it sounds like your 70-year-old next door neighbor who goes out once a month wrote it. 
6. The religious undertones in The Chronicles of Narnia

I love it. It's difficult to control them sometimes, but it's for the best reason possible. They get in shouting fights about books. 

Another reason this class is so fun is because by the end of the day, I get silly. Today, one student left for the library with a pass. 

Student A: Where's he going? 

Me: Narnia. 

Student A: Oh, okay. 

ten minutes later... 

Student A: Wait, what? 

***

Weight Watchers changed how they calculate their points. I am struggling to hold onto the fledgling grip I have on NOT getting obese. 

***

One of my students is having real trouble. She's new to the class, having been switched out of her homeroom due to bullying and drama (sometimes perpetrated by her). Today, I asked her to help another student and she didn't. I know she doesn't HAVE to help someone else, but she'd wasted three class periods refusing to take a writing test, and hadn't handed in the major assignment due 5 days ago. Then I caught her on photobotth (her desk partner's accommodations include a laptop). I snapped and wrote her up. She saw, became very upset, and tried to talk her way out of it. I ended up tearing up the referral for a couple of reasons: 

1. She explained earnestly that she was only using photo booth to check her hair (she said it so seriously, like, how dare I even conjure up the thought that she'd be taking silly pictures). I smiled. 
2. When I said, "I know something's going on with you, and that's why you're struggling with the writing prompt, but you have to give me something, some small thing I can do to help you," and she burst into tears. "I CAN'T TALK ABOUT IT," she gulped out. 

Some tiny, cynical part of me wondered if she was turning on the waterworks to guilt me. But I don't know her that well, so I realized I'd never know. Plus, how many times have you turned on the waterworks and then realized that you're actually upset? I've done that plenty. I guess there are a few things I really know for sure about this girl. 

1. Despite good and bad things she's done, things she's been caught for and things she's gotten away with, she is someone adults rarely listen to. When she gets to tell her side of the story, often the person listening has already made up his/her mind. 
2. She is a creative thinker that doesn't know she's a creative thinker because she hasn't been given or doesn't know she's been given creative freedom. 

I believed her. Plus, if she's just making it up to get out of work, the time and energy I'm spending trying to help her will make her feel so guilty that she'll turn it around anyway. I'm really good at that. 

I'm about to go make her what she called "A List of Nonthreatening Writing Ideas." Here's hoping that works. 

*** 

How awesome was Glee this week? 

*** 

xo

Why I will stop watching Grey's.

I'll do it. I'll stop watching Grey's. But first of all, I need to bitch about something annoying.

PART 1: ASS

One storyline in this episode is about a girl getting ass implants. Lexie Grey is worried that she's doing it for the wrong reasons, and the girl proceeds to convince her that she's doing it for the right reasons, for herself. However, this included a) a long speech from the girl telling Lexie she had a nice ass and b) a scene at the end of  Mark checking out Lexie's ass, which, surprise, is awesome.

NOW I"M PISSED.

Dad, if you're reading this, I don't blame you, even though it is technically 100% your fault that I have no ass. I'm happy that I am essentially a female replica of you. I love having nice legs, boxer shoulders, and curly brown hair, all of which I got from you. But sometimes, like now, I just really wish I had an ass.

PART 2: WHY I WILL STOP WATCHING GREY'S


I have been there for the long haul, Grey's Anatomy. But so help me God Shonda, I will stop watching if you keep this shit up. Allow me to explain:

1. I watched the first episode. I was 19, in my first apartment. It was Sunday night. I had just finished watching Desperate Housewives, which was an OK show back in the day, and then a new show came on. Usually, I turn off the TV. But in this case, I couldn't. The show began with a girl having a one-night stand. He asked her name, and she refused. The next day, it turned out he was her attending. She was an intern. At a hospital. SO GOOD. I was hooked. 
2. When Isaiah Washington revealed that he was a vicious homophobe, I still watched, even though Meredith had to cut Christina's wedding dress off of her, even though you waited WAY TOO LONG to get him off the show. If I ran a show, and one of my actors slung homophobic slurs at a fellow costar, I'd kill him off in the next episode. Fuck narrative arc. 
3. I watched when you killed off Denny the first time, and Izzy spent half a season crying on the floor of the bathroom. 
4. I watched during Izzygate, when you somehow thought it was a good idea to get George and Izzy together. 
5. I watched after Meredith "drowned," died, hung out with dead Denny, then came back to life, all to the tune of Snow Patrol ("Make This Go On Forever" was the one redeeming part of the episode). 
6. I watched when you, having realized your grave error in killing off Denny, brought him back as a symptom of Izzy's tumor. 
7. I watched when you had the worst episode ever and the hospital got shot up in the most slow, predictable, uninteresting way. The final ten minutes were good, though. 

If you let Christina Yang quit, for real, I will stop watching. I will always love the times we've had, and the music you've introduced me to via the show. I will not regret the time I've spent discussing it with everyone I know. But you will lose me as a fan. For real. Permanently. 

I am listening to "Make This Go On Forever" right now, for dramatic purposes. 

The weight of water, the way you taught me to look past everything I had ever learned... 

I'll close with something I tell my students when they are doing something stupid. 

MAKE A GOOD CHOICE, SHONDA. 

Love, Leah

worrying

I miss being young.

I was zoned out, wandering through my mental rolodex of memories when I realized that our worries define us. What we worry about says more about who we are than almost anything else.

THEN, I worried about the bottoms of my jeans being bleached from the salt on the ice in the winter.

I miss worrying about things like that. I miss high school, when my biggest worry was that my mother would find out. I don't like all the worrying I do now, and I don't like that it's all my own. I don't make sense. I give up.

Death and Buttons

Well, now I know. I don't handle death well.

uh...

I'm so overwhelmed.

I love my job but there aren't enough hours in the day. I spent the entire weekend doing nothing because the prospect of starting was too scary.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: I now love Maroon 5.

I may be the last person in the world to do this, but I'm doing it: Jumping on the Maroon 5 bandwagon. Why didn't I notice their awesomeness before? His voice is so smooth. It's unreal. It has this relaxed quality. The only way I can think of to explain "relaxed voice" is to provide an example of the opposite: Katy Perry. She can sing, but you can always tell that she's working hard at it. You can sense effort, and good God, the melody just casually flows out of Adam  Levine's mouth. I wouldn't be surprised if he sings that way all the time, whether he's in concert, or hanging upsidedown on a jungle gym.