Two reams of paper. Many many candy canes. Some seriously high end chocolate. Home made white chocolate candies. Cookies. Skittles. A neat little book tree ornament. AND bitchin black/red/white argyle skull and crossbone knee socks.
Hell yeah. 🙂
My kids are working hard today. 2nd period was great and that rarely happens. 🙂 The juniors are writing an in class essay (I decided this late last night when I realized I didn’t want to teach today) and working very hard and taking it very seriously.
And 4th period I was called to sub for another teacher. Usually I turn this down, but I have little to do today, so what the heck. I had *fun*. It was a Spanish 1 class and the teacher has a backup copy of Pinocchio in Spanish for them. They watched the ending but then we had half an hour of nothing to do… uhm… Hey! How about if I tell you the real story of Pinocchio! Oh shit… that didn’t take that long… Want to hear about Beauty and the Beast? How about The Little Mermaid? Cinderella?
I had a blast telling them the original versions of the stories and they were really attentive and interested and great. yay!
And my babies are cheerfully signing up to bring me food tomorrow for eating as we watch cartoons. 🙂 Skating till vacation rocks.
Not to mention that my 2nd period aide got all teary-eyed because I gave her nice bath stuff (she’s exceptionally girly). And my 3rd period flamer aide is so happy about the feather boa. And 5th period bounced like a 4 year old when he saw his legos. He’s playing with them right now. 🙂
One of my most hyper and difficult to manage kids has been coming to 8th period social club for a bit and working really hard to get his grade up. He stayed after everyone else left to get in some one on one conference time. I asked him what is going on with his constant talking and disruption. He told me that by 7th period it is just impossible to stay still.
Me being me…
I told him that from now on if he is good for most of class I will give him Play Doh and let him play for the last 10 minutes of class. ANYTHING to lower the number of disruptions in my class is worth it.
He left vibrating with excitement and he said he is totally going to do it. 🙂
Today I am bored off of my ass. So I am looking at the grades of my students. It’s kind of funny how the parents of kids with low F’s are yelling at me about my failure to teach their kid yet they are failing either all or the vast majority of their classes. Yeah sure. It’s cause I am a crappy teacher.
I had a thought on the way home about why I might be feeling so raw about the Noah stuff.
For the vast majority of our relationship it has been very acknowledged that he was much more into me than I was into him. This doesn’t mean I wasn’t tremendously into him… but there was an imbalance. That imbalance gave me security and power. Not sure when, but sometime recently I realized that I was no longer in such a position cause yeah… I’m pretty freakin obsessed with him. I am crazy about my husband. I think I let myself fall far and hard when he and I actually got married. And we have spent a lot of time lately going over what we want our future plans to look like in terms of me staying home with kidlets for a good many years.
So, what this means is that fairly recently and fairly suddenly I have gone from being rather independent and in a position where I am establishing my own security to needing his cooperation to ensure continued stability in life and in the not too distant future I will be in fact, financially dependent on him.
Cue panic attacks.
Maybe this is why all of a sudden it means the End Of The World if I am not the Best and Prettiest and Most Wonderfulest EVER. I’m scared. If we keep moving forward with current plans, in about 19 or so months I will be more dependent on another human being than I have been since I was 15. I’m terrified. Maybe this is why the idea of poly is causing me to wake up with night sweats. I’m so afraid of not being independent and yet there are things I want that preclude being completely independent.
Luckily, Noah is the most open minded and wonderful of men and he is trying very hard to be supportive as I struggle with this mental shift. So grateful for him.
I’ve been thinking a lot. And getting other peoples’ opinions. And talking to Noah. So uhhh yeah, in other words I’ve been continuing to be me in the past 24 hours.
What is enough? Is there any such thing as enough ever in life? Can I be enough? Can I have enough? Will I ever be satisfied? The conversation this morning was sticky and owie. Noah pointed out something that I am doing that is really hard for me to justify once I actually look at it. Honestly, that’s a hard thing. I feel like giving him a hearty smack and announcing, “No reality in this relationship!” But that just won’t fly for this one. I can only say that when it’s funny. Right now it would hurt. When people point at things about me and try to focus on them I generally pull them away. If Noah compliments me on some particular part of me then I try to hide it. For example, he really likes my hips/belly curvyness. My instant reaction is to want to put on a loose, billowy dress and hide that part of me. I got really upset with him that the part of my looks he is inclined to compliment most is all stuff below the neck, but why? Why do I get so mad at him? I would get just as mad if not more so if he *didn’t* compliment me in that way. It was suggested to me last night that there is a script I want to hear and if I want to actually get it I should tell him what it is. This… is something I am thinking about.
Do I really want him to just parrot back to me a script I write for him? I’m actually really proud of him for having the courage to say things to me he knows I don’t want to hear. That is very hard for him and he is taking me at my word that I want him to be honest and he is honoring me by giving me truth. I don’t think I want to take his truth away from him. I need to get better at hearing truth and understanding where it is coming from and not being hurt by it. It hurts less today than it did yesterday. This morning Noah read me a poem that he worries about me mimicking in terms of pulling away from the relationship. I would have appreciated the comparison more if he hadn’t told me that it is what Talia did, but hey–one can’t have everything. I pull away when I feel any threat to my security. I do it because I don’t feel safe enough to be giving of myself. I generally come back, I just need more security first. It has always been a hard thing for me that when I feel like I need to pull back people get upset with me. I don’t feel like it is fair that people expect me to continue to make myself vulnerable when I’m scared but at the same time I know that I am not the only one needing comfort at that point. It’s hard. I can sometimes be comforting but usually I can’t.
Yesterday I didn’t even want to go home I hurt so much. I stayed out later than I have in months without Noah. I didn’t even really tell him what I was doing even though we have agreed to do so. 🙁 I feel very immature. So scared. Still don’t know what to do. It’s hurting less today, but still hurts. Now I’m getting even more random and rambly.
I was told I have to do S now. Damnit.
1. Sex. Duh.
2. Stories. I love being told about other peoples’ lives. It makes me very happy.
3. Strawberries. I came to this love later in life. When I was little I wouldn’t eat them unless they were massively coated in sugar.
4. Singing. But not many people will ever get to hear me because I am horribly self-conscious. My brother telling me I sucked all through childhood left its mark.
5. Shapes of letters. All of my life I have had a weird habit of tracing the shapes of letters with my eyes. I do this obsessively.
6. Snuggling. Oh baby I loves me the snuggling.
7. Stability. More than anything I want stability. I feel like I am poised for having it at this point, but it isn’t real yet.
8. School. It’s weird, but I feel more comfortable in a learning environment than anywhere else.
9. Submission. If you don’t know why I love this then I shouldn’t tell you.
10. Soup. More than any other generic category of food, I love soup. Mmmmmm it’s so comforting
This is locked to a very small filter. I trust that the people who can read this will understand that no relationship is perfect and this is stuff going on for me and not any kind of indication that I should break up with Noah. This is a lot of vanity and arrogance and pretention wrapped up in a horrid little package.
Yesterday was the kinky flea. It happens 3 or 4 times a year. I’ve been going for a long time and I have some odd/mixed feelings about it. It is a primarily social event and one of the biggest that happens during the year in this area. I have long used it as a bolster for my fragile ego. When I go I specifically try to dress up and I get my ego strokes through the comments of people who are highly discriminating about who they are willing to call “pretty.” Highly discriminating in this case meaning “total assholes who are snobs about female beauty.” As much as I love and adore my friends, most of them are not really snotty about good looks. I don’t say that to be mean in any way. I desperately want that kind of validation for all sorts of fucked up emotional reasons. Anyway…
Noah and I got up and decided to go to the flea after having lunch at a fabulous Indian restaurant. It had been an uncomfortable night and uncomfortable morning as we talked about some hard stuff. We defaulted to waiting to eat at all until lunch. This was our first mistake of the day. See, when I don’t eat I become rather psycho. And I stop thinking clearly and I go through more and more rounds of self-loathing. The problem yesterday morning? Well… I couldn’t figure out what to wear. I needed wanted (let’s be realistic) something warm enough to keep me from freezing, something that I hadn’t worn a bazillion times, and something very figure flattering. The hardest piece there is “I haven’t worn it a bazillion times.” I haven’t done much fetish shopping in the past few years and my wardrobe is becoming increasingly limited if I don’t want to wear the same things over and over and over. After an hour of trying to figure out what to wear I was in tears and I slumped down against the door (my temper tantrums are rather pathetic and I try to do them behind closed doors so no one can see them) and cried thinking about how pathetic and stupid and ugly I am. I really hate that I do this to myself.
I finally reached the point of throwing up my hands and just put on a pair of jeans. Noah brilliantly suggested that we go eat before thinking about the rest of the day. Bless him. So we went and ate and I become something vaguely resembling human and rational. Only vaguely though. Then we got to start talking about why I was so upset and what the flea means to me. I told him that I would rather not go at all if I am not going to look good and impress people in the process. I realized how selfish I was being and I asked him what he wanted for the day. He said he wanted to go and be social and have fun. So I put on a boring outfit I have worn 3000 times and tried to suck it up. I maintained some level of cheerful, even if only on the surface, for most of the day. Then we saw Tom and his date and she was wearing the Slut of the Day collar (so named by a friend of Tom’s like 10 years ago because he puts it on everyone when they go out the first few times) and metal cuffs that we bought together. We searched long and hard for cuffs that I could wear for a significant length of time without having problems before we found them. It really *hurt* to see her wearing them. We left fairly quickly after that because my mood was shot and I couldn’t fake cheerful anymore.
We then went and did some Christmas shopping at Good Vibes and sat down and looked at a coffee table type book about breasts for a while. Talking about the models and the pictures lead me down some lovely unhappy thought trails. On the way home we started a conversation that really sucked ass through a straw.
I have always had this hang up. I want to be the prettiest, the smartest, the Most Awesome partner for my partners that they can possibly imagine. Well… I was all kinds of self destructive and brought this up with Noah. Well… I’m not. And it hurts like crazy. The way things ended up the attitude is that I am the best possible partner he has ever met and he wouldn’t trade up on any of the individual points because the overall balance is the best he has found and would not be willing to compromise on some of the ways that I am really good. It’s very weird because I feel very confident that Noah isn’t likely to leave me for someone prettier, but it hurts like crazy that he thinks there are prettier women. It hurts so much.
This is all so stupid because when I think about Noah it isn’t as if I have a mental checklist of “Perfect” that he matches point for point. He is just so wonderful in general that any area where he isn’t the best ever doesn’t matter in terms of the big picture. I can know that about our relationship in terms of me looking at him and not feel like it is diminishing him, but him thinking that about me makes me feel like a failure. This is so hard because at this point it isn’t like I am going to leave him over this. It isn’t even an option at all. But god I hurt. And I don’t know how to fix it.
Today, I’m not pretty. Wish I felt smarter as compensation.
Comment and I’ll give you a letter. Then you have to list 10 things you love that begin with that letter. After, post this in your journal and give out some letters of your own.
satyrlovesong gave me M. Hmmmmm
Music. Country, techno, 80’s rock, rarely industrial, celtic rock… so much great music.
Men. Oh baby. Especially that Noah one. 🙂
Movies. I love watching movies despite my hatred of TV.
Mail. I love getting mail. It is such a ridiculously involved process: getting paper, writing, getting an envelope, looking up an address, finding a stamp… I feel special when I see something with my name hand written on an envelope. Or like the post card from i_am_dsh and terpsichoros when they were in Spain. I felt gooey special just to get it. 🙂
Melatonin because any sleeping help I can get just rocks.
Milk. I drink a lot of it and will happily gulp large glasses down cause it is just so tasty. I do drink non-fat, which is odd for milk lovers.
Masturbation.
Mikasa Stephanie I’m working on having the whole set. Perty. 🙂
Massage. Have I mentioned that I have a great husband? 🙂
Monkey! It’s been a beloved nickname for years and years. I was an avid tree climber as a child. Then I had a friend in college who could climb poles and hang out near the top for a while. There are my favored variations of Freak Monkey and Monkey Fucker of course. 🙂
Noah and I are going up to the Power Exchange tonight. It’s a fun and raunchy sort of experience. It isn’t everyone’s taste, but I think it can be very hot. Yay for raunchy!
Cut cause of nature of post.
This is from the woman who made me cry yelling at me a few weeks ago…
“Hi
First I am sorry if I made you cry but I’m sure you can understand my situation. I cry too, because it’s just me doing it all, and it is frustrating.
I wanted to thank you for helping B and for being so understanding. Too many teacher are apathetic and are unwilling to put out the effort ( then why teach? ). I don’t think they see that the effort they make can change a life. Thank you! because you did make the effort and it has eased Bri’s life immeasureably. She tells me about the fun she has in your room and about being the “8th period class”… honestly she is eating it up.
You know my back ground, I believe any time spent on a kid is never wasted time. You have made an impact that will have a lasting effect. Thank you. Now if you could just give lessons to some of the other teachers, and administrators at that school. Oh well ( heavy sigh…) Know that you are changing the world one person at a time but that person will go on and change the lives of others. Pretty amazin’
Thank you so very much- N
P.S. Coffee some time?
PPS keep this letter for those days when you forget why you teach…so you will rememeber the remarkable thing you are doing.”
I’ll keep the letter.
This student is chronically ill and has had a miserable time trying to keep up with school work in between hospital trips. She is also a very depressed cutter from a poor family and she has to work to help pay the rent. In between her job and trying to catch up on school work she has been starting to make herself sick again. I told her to just not worry about it till after Christmas when things slow down at work cause I have faith she can catch up then. I think that’s why her mom sent the letter.
I like having my mouth back.
I would like to make this in-depth. We’ll see how much I manage in the next few minutes.
I’m such a roller coaster. My life is great and wonderful and incredibly frustrating so I’m up and down more than I like. For example: this Saturday I started out in a terrible mood for no specific reason. I was just feeling horrible and awful. I was assured that I wasn’t actually taking it out on Noah, but I was sure being pissy near him. *sigh* Then I got a call from my beloved stand in mom, ditenebre (did that code work?) saying she had comp tickets for Dickens Fair that we could have for this weekend. Originally I didn’t think we would be able to go on Saturday given the list of things we wanted to get done in the day, but she wouldn’t be there on Sunday so we decided to make it on Saturday despite the inconvenience and my general pissiness. I decided to wear my corset cause… well, I could. And it was an attempt to feel dressy cause I don’t get to do that much these days.
We were both so happy we went. The day there was wonderful. I got to be reminded that there are actual real live groups of people who like me! Dude!! I feel very isolated most of the time lately and it is hard to remember that people like me. At Dickens we couldn’t walk 3 minutes without someone being ecstatic to see me and often jumping up and down before hugging me hard. My self esteem drastically needed that. I felt happier than I have been in a while, and I haven’t exactly been miserable lately. A hot girl at Dark Garden played dress up with me and I ended up leaving with a sheer gorgeous black shirt that sorta barely covers me, but is entirely flattering in the process. And hey–said hot girl dressed and undressed me several times. I so win. Many hot and lovely boys flirted with me like crazy. I very sadly had to turn down the many kisses offered because my cold sore isn’t completely healed yet, but I was quite flattered that I was having to turn them down constantly. 🙂 Oh baby the flirting rocked. 🙂 When I finally got to Fezziwig’s I was passed from boy to boy to boy and that rocked. I did have it reaffirmed to myself that it isn’t that I miss dancing that much, I miss dancing with terpsichoros. He taught me how to dance and I can follow his lead better than any one else’s. I like dancing with other people, quite a bit even. But with him I feel light and graceful and beautiful. Thank you honey for introducing me to dancing. I will never be able to repay the debt I owe you.
So many other lovely and wonderful people. Miss barelyproper did my hair and I left it in all weekend and was thrilled. And and and… too many people to name. I love you all. I was so happy to see you. I was asked if we would be returning and told that as a bribe people could arrange comp tickets to get me there. 🙂 I am strongly considering it. One day may not have been enough. I am so grateful that ditenebre gave me the opportunity to go. Thank you. I really needed that.
And then on Sunday we got a Christmas tree!!! That rocked. It was a serious pain to put up and it still seriously leans. *grin* It’s as non-straight as I am! Then Noah’s dad called. … Intimidating much? It was a very interesting conversation. He went a long way towards repairing the anger I was feeling in his direction and expressed a great deal of support for my position with regards to Noah’s mom. I’m grateful for that. He is right that I don’t really understand his position, but I’m glad he is willing to understand how hard I have worked to get away from people like his wife. That made me feel much better, which in turn relieves some of the stress between Noah and I right now. Yay all the way around.
I have been forgetful like crazy lately and seriously beating myself up about it. But I’m trying really hard to get that under control. Cause despite my negative self talk, I am smart. I am capable. I am good at most of the things that matter in my life. I’m just also very overwhelmed. It’s ok that I make mistakes when i’m massively overwhelmed. 10 days till Christmas break.
Oh! And my AP (assistant principal) observed me yesterday. She had only positive things to say so far. We haven’t had the official sit down meeting, but when we walked past each other she stopped to note that I have really great classroom control and excellent relations with the kids. She specifically said, “You are great at noticing when someone gets off task and getting them back on track without it being a disruption of the overall class and the kids take it well which shows that you have a very positive relationship with them in general.” Still grinning about that. Yay!
And despite feeling like I was showing up with no plan or ability to be on task today I have managed to get everything together and organized and absolutely set for the next two days in time to finally update my lj. 🙂 Go me. And I found time to go get lunch with my buddy and I went over the entries for the MLK Jr contest and submitted my official judging ballot. Damn I’m on task today
Have I mentioned lately that I love my friends? And that I love my husband even more than all of my friends combined? We’ve been talking a lot about my insecurities (you know–all those things that live in my head and really aren’t about him despite the fact that they inadvertently affect our relationship?) and he is just so amazing. He is supportive and tolerant and he is getting WAY better at standing up for his own boundaries as he supports me. I couldn’t be prouder of him. 🙂 Yay. Ok, still feeling overwhelmed and that is scary. But my life is really good.
I’m about to be late for work, so consider this a placeholder invitiation.
If you are seeing this you are on my invite list for being welcome in our home on Christmas Day. This isn’t going to be a huge party, but I’m really into Christmas and I plan to sit around watching Christmas movies and eating yummy food and generally basking in having my first non-sucky Christmas in years and years. 🙂
You are welcome to join me. I am going to request that if you want to come over you HAVE to let me know. Maybe only the morning of, but please don’t just show up and expect us to feed you/entertain you. That would be pressure I am not ok with having on Christmas. Thank you for your consideration. (Maybe details to follow…)
I am soooo tired all the time that we have been going to bed earlier and earlier. This means we are waking up at 4 am more often. I’m really not thrilled with this process. Although we both love the time to sit and talk and cuddle it is getting ridiculous that I am falling asleep at 7pm. If I continue the trend I will be going to bed as soon as I get home from work at 4 and getting up at midnight. Hey! Maybe I can have a nightlife again! *shake head*
We had dinner with Tom last night. He wants to borrow a helmet and we certainly have extras sitting around. It was an interesting experience. I had sseveral uncharitable thoughts, which I won’t share because many of his friends read this, but overall my impression was relief that I ended that relationship. We really weren’t right for each other. I still think he is a good person and I like him, but we are such an incredibly bad match. In the course of the conversation the only question he asked about my life in any way was, “So, what subject do you teach?” which is about as impersonal as it gets. I have barely spoken to him in the past two years. All he asked was what subject I teach? Granted, I didn’t exactly get into nitty gritty details about all of his personal life, but I asked about his family and mutual friends, and his business, and experiences we used to share in order to get a sense of what he has been doing with his life. He really doesn’t care what has happened in my life. I don’t hate him for it and I don’t think he is even a bad person, but his lack of empathy is really something I don’t handle well in a personal relationship. When we got home I looked at Noah and hugged him fiercely. He was the first person to really want to see me. He still wants to know more about me than anyone else does.
God I’m grateful. For once, maybe I made the right call.
I need an icon of Noah. Hmmmmm.