Monthly Archives: October 2007

Hard decision.

Given how brain dead and exhausted I am at all times I told my APs that I need to make the move to teaching part-time basically immediately. Luckily this was greeted with full support and multiple statements that can be boiled down to, “If you say you need this, then you need this. You are never one to shirk your duties.” My midwife is backing me up. My BTSA mentor is sad that she won’t get to work with me anymore and honestly I’m sad I won’t be working with her as well. She really is a neat person and collaborating with her would have taught me a great deal. I’m going to teach three classes till the end of the semester and then transfer all of my classes to this new person.

I sent an email to the credential program yesterday and received a response within a few hours giving me the contact information for an ideal candidate. I’m trying to get in touch with her today so we can work towards getting her started maybe by next week.

On one hand I feel like I am failing my kids. On the other hand, I *can’t* keep doing this. I physically hurt almost all the time from exhaustion. I’m going to try and keep this woman on my lesson plans through the end of this unit then let her work with me or on whatever she wants from then on. My kids will be upset because they will miss me, but I can’t let that influence deciding what is best for me physically right now.

God I can’t wait until I get to sleep more.

A busy day.

Sometimes I feel kind of idiotic because so many of my posts are trite and then I think, “but if I don’t post people will hit refresh dozens of times with nothing to see” then I try to convince myself that I am not lame; I am magnanimous! Anyway. πŸ™‚

Today we drove our yuppie ass hybrid car to yuppie ass Whole Foods and bought yuppie ass organic food and granola. Whatever happened to being rebellious and wild? I bought fucking organic lunch meat and cod liver oil. I can’t believe the shit I do sometimes. We had to come home after that to refrigerate food and eat again. See, I weighed myself this morning again and noticed that after breakfast (normally I weigh myself before) I am… down more weight. Alright then, time to start seriously trying to increase my calorie intake. This is gonna suck cause food tastes awful in the main. We then went to yuppie ass Stanford shopping center where we bought some extremely yuppie Christmas presents. But they are so neat!! πŸ™‚ We were joined by the always delightful for our wander through terminal yuppieville. I feel guilty that we were only able to stay out for about two hours before my body crashed and burned hard and we needed to stop walking around. (Did I mention that we stopped and bought more food twice during this period because I was hungry? wtf?) We then went to a birthday shindig where I walked in and said, “May I borrow a bed?” My wonderful Daddy tucked me in so I could lie there and be totally out of it for a while. I sucked it up after a bit and managed to be social for nearly two hours. πŸ™‚ My lovely Noah got to be social and talk to people other than me and I felt happy that I hadn’t let him just take me home after shopping. πŸ™‚

Then more food. Then the dance where we did registration for two hours, talked to one of my favorite kids (one of my awesome painters from last summer) for about 20 minutes then came home. I’m typing this in between bites of yogurt, granola, and fruit because if I don’t eat now I will wake up at 2 or 3 am with massive stomach pain. I’m jittery from having caffeine tonight to allow me to stay up for the dance. (That probably contributes to me babbling right now.) I found out that 1/2 of my classes did the lesson plan on Friday and 1/2 sat in the library doing nothing. Ah, shit. That’s gonna suck to fix.

Ideals

If my life were to be better right now what would it look like.

I would spend no more than 9 hours a day at work and I would not work weekends. (7:30-4:30 is fucking long enough.) Especially because I only get paid for 7 1/2 hours.
I would get to be social once or twice every week in a way that felt meaningful which means not going to an event where I don’t know anyone and sleeping on the couch. (Not complaining about that event honey, just saying that I want to feel like I have a real social life.)
My stomach feeling ok would be an automatic cue to go have sex because I miss it when I can’t have it and that is most of the time these days.
I would spend time every weekend working on the con instead of my job so that I felt like I was being productive towards an event I am helping with.

How do I get there?
I think that I need to give up on academic detention. It makes my life harder and right now that isn’t worth my time.
Write the grader and start having her do smaller assignments in addition to the big essays because it would make my life better.
Figure out how to let Noah help me with some stuff cause right now I am not taking advantage of my resources. πŸ™‚
Start actually going to bed at 8 so that I am getting a more consistent amount of sleep.

Suckerfish

My busy social weekend is evaporating. The Friday night party was cancelled due to illness. I realized that Saturday is Homecoming so I have to go supervise the dance. Oh well, so much for me getting to pretend I have friends or a life.

Have I mentioned that I want to throw up? Yeah, today the nausea is awful.

In other news–the midwife thinks I may be further along than I think due to the intensity and timing of my symptoms. We’ll have a better idea after the internal exam. She’s neat. She’s sassy and a smart ass. I can handle that. πŸ™‚

Irritating.

Waking up at 3am to a massive stomachache as my body demands food is really annoying. It did allow me to notice how OHMYGOD booked this weekend is. I think I am invited to six events. I told some people no-way-in-hell and others maybe-depending-on-ugg. It’s a bit galling that I can’t give a single “Yes”. *sigh* I hit 11 weeks on Friday. I have an appointment with a midwife today at 3:30. So far she seems like a smart ass–yay! Maybe I’ll find out how many weeks gestated I actually am so I can judge when the first trimester might actually end. Stupid irregular cycle.

Have I mentioned that I find it very bizarre that my most concrete symptom of pregnancy is that I am developing ‘mom’ nipples? Cause I often have weird stomach pain/eating issues–that’s just part of the joy of me. My boobs have hurt like this in the past when they grew on birth control. Going 11 weeks without a period is unusual but I’ve certainly gone longer than this. Being exhausted happened last year at the beginning of the school year (ok, nothing like this… but still). Yeah, for symptoms it is the ‘mom’ nipples for the win on convincing. I miss my nipples and I will never get them back. πŸ™

Noah is talking to my stomach more. It’s massively cute.

Ok, 1/2 a sandwich, a glass of oj, and a banana later it’s time to go back to bed. zzzzzzzzz

Letter my principal wrote to recommend me as an excellent teacher

To whom it may concern:
Kristine has demonstrated teaching strategies that motive all students by her ability to develop a classroom environment that’s pleasant and where students are cooperative with each other. She gives verbal instructions at the beginning of the period and informs students to check the white board for daily work assignments and agenda items. Her students listen when she gives oral instructions and participate as they work together in daily assignment.

She maintains high standards for student behavior when she lectures, students work individually, in groups and when they work on worksheets. Students are informed to listen as she gives instructions and she expects them to respond cooperatively. She commands respect and give them respect. Students are given time to complete the work assigned and once their done she moves around and checks their work. Students that do not complete assignments are issued it as homework. Students are allowed to wander out of their seats when informed to do so as a part of the assignment.

Kristine, knowledge the English language is extensive and she is also involved in extra curricular activities and a club sponsor. I observed her lesson working on the standard addressing writing a research essay and reading comprehension using the book β€œFor Water Like Chocolate.” Her presentation established a controlling impression that conveyed a clear and distinctive perspective on the subject and a focus throughout the classroom discussion related to food. She checked students for their understanding of English usage and comprehension. Students demonstrated their understanding by their ability to use thoughtful concepts of food to explain their moods and ideas. She presents lessons by using power point presentation, questioning, discussions, checks student understanding orally and written work or through the use of a work sheet.

Her instructional methods to assess student work include the use of giving students allotted time to work in class. A variety of instructional strategies focused on objectives. She uses individual work, direct instruction, probing questioning, and classroom control techniques. She incorporates subject, curriculum frameworks, and content standards in organizing subject matter. She moves about the room to monitor student progress, communicates respect for student opinions and interest and at the same time gets them to focus on their work.

Kristine presents her lessons or ideas clearly and meaningfully to all students. Her demeanor toward students is to get them engaged in the lesson both their attention, and interest. She establishes a warm and friendly tone in the classroom. She moves about the room, directly engaging all students throughout the period with a look, or a gesture.

I have observed Kristine experience success with her English III students. She is organized and her students demonstrate that by following her example.

It is pleasure to write this letter in support of Kristine Gibbs for an early completion of the BTSA program.

Isolated

I go to work. I come home and sit on the couch. I try to putter around the house but even that isn’t a sure thing. I haven’t been talking to people much and I rarely get to be social. I’ve been trying consciously to at least talk to people online a little bit more but my arms are hurting enough (go swelling) that I have reduced my typing time almost to half what it normally is. This is impacting my ability to talk to people. All of my friends spend a lot of time complaining they hate the phone and I don’t have the physical or mental energy to go hang out at parties. So I only see Noah. This is feeling pretty lonely. I’m not really sure what to do about it though. I am not physically capable of seeing my friends after they get off work at 7 or so at night because I’m already at home getting into jammies at that point. Weekends I spend trying to get a little bit of housework and a bunch of work done. But I’m lonely.

These thoughts brought to you by the fact that Dad found out through the grapevine that I am pregnant and he felt upset that he didn’t hear it from me. Well, I rarely talk to him because in the past two years every conversation we have had has been initiated by me and the only times we have seen one another was when I went up to Portland and I’m feeling kind of bitter. He has been in the Bay Area and still not bothered to see me. I sort of feel like most of my friends work that way. I initiate conversations. I go see people. I know that this isn’t true of absolutely all of my friends (thank you Sarah and Marcie and Chris and Crystal and Lee has been trying to talk to me lately) but it is true of the vast majority of people. So I’m feeling like me staying home is where I ought to be because no one seems to care about seeing me or talking to me anyway.

Working… of course

As I sit here lesson planning on my couch on this beautiful Sunday afternoon I have to stop and think about how very different my life will be soon. I feel like I am killing myself for a job that is counting down until it isn’t mine any more. I am trying my best to cram the most important work of the year into a smaller period of time. I’m trying to figure out how I can give these kids a more full year of English than they have gotten in other years despite the fact that I won’t be there for the last 1/6 or more of it. I care about this work, but it drains my energy and saps my will to live. Many people keep telling me that I will be dying to come back to work after staying home for the summer with a baby… I can’t say yet that they are wrong, but I really doubt that I am going to be eager to get back to this. Why would I want to come back to a job that barely allows me to have a relationship with Noah, let alone cleaning my house (no one is welcome in my bathroom right now), let alone going to the grocery store and making food sometimes instead of eating out, let alone have enough time to properly enjoy my growing child? I’m sure I will miss things about teaching but I don’t think I will miss it enough to want to teach. As I sit here designing lessons for the next nine weeks that will keep me up late at night making tests and quizzes and figuring out how to hook kids into giving me a decent introduction… No. I can’t believe that I would rather do this than be with my child.

Window Shopping

Cause I know you like specifics.

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http://www.bellablumaternity.com/prima-ballerina-vintage-maternity-chemise-p-3152.html

More to come…

Mommy

I’ve been having a really hard time emotionally lately for a variety of oh-my-fucking-god hormone reasons. After the comment from my ‘friend’ I really haven’t felt safe talking to anyone about what is going on with me. I’m not real big on being judged. There have also been some points of friction with Noah that are totally exacerbated by the fact that I am seriously hormonal. I’ve been feeling more and more isolated and lonely and scared as I am shutting down any “real” conversation with people. So I did something crazy. I called my mommy.

The conversation went really well. We talked about a number of things that are going poorly for me (Oh wait–her easy pregnancys involved HUGE amounts of nausea so maybe I’m not breaking the pattern yet.) and ways I’m having a hard time emotionally. We talked about a few of the more hot buttony things from the past and nothing blew up. It was really good. I needed that. She’s nervous about some of the choices I am making (home birth, home schooling) but she is actually listening to my reasons for wanting them and has said that she has a lot of reservations but she can understand why I am making the choices I am making. That is literally the best I could hope for from her. That was supportive and friendly and everything. Especially because a lot of her reservations are from ignorance and her fear that I will get stuck at home with my children and give up my identity the way she did. That’s really not a horrible thing for her to want to spare me from. She did make the suggestion that given how tired and how sick I am that I should probably try to take days off more often. Her comment that my students are better off having subs occasionally than having me just leave work mid-pregnancy because I can’t work anymore is actually a pretty reasonable one. Even if I run out of sick days I can afford it.

Calling her was good. I’m pretty sure that it should continue to be a rare occurance but the calls have picked up in freqency (twice in a month? Holy shit) and it’s still ok.

We talked a little bit about her mother and how a week didn’t go by without her talking to her mother. We very briefly talked about how hard my grandmother’s death was on my mom but she had a hard time talking about it. Then we talked about why she has such a hard time talking about it–if she showed weakness in front of my father he would be nasty and hurtful. He would use it against her for years to come. I’m doing better at seeing how when I am reacting to my baggage she is reacting to hers. My father has been dead for nine years and twelve days (but who’s counting?) and he is still influencing so much of her life. He influenced her from the time she was 19 years old until she was 49. 30 years of hurting her. No wonder she is so fucked up. I’ve never stopped and thought about that before. I’ve always thought about it in terms of “well, she was an adult…” but now that I’ve been an adult for a few years I’m seeing how little that mitigates trauma. For all the things my mother didn’t shield me from she actually kept my father basically out of my life. That was the biggest kindness she could give me. The fact that when he did pop up he hurt me is just a sign that she did a great job of keeping me from even more and worse hurt by keeping him away most of the time.

Maybe I am ready to forgive.

Wussing out

I’m going home at lunch today. I feel like shit that got hit by a car. (Flattened) I need to rest so badly. My plan is to not come in tomorrow either. But, this way I am only missing three periods. I’m going to try hard not to feel too guilty.

Finished

I finally got around to reading Harry Potter. All seven books in eight days. That was way better than reading earlier and having to wait around for sequels. πŸ™‚

I have read more new-to-me books and more rereads for fun in the past six months than I have in the previous five years total. I’m not really sure what is up with needing to escape from my life more. But I have read some nifty books. (I think I’m up to 15 books in the last six months?)

The Riot Act.

That’s what I am reading the kids today. Their grades suck. πŸ™ I want to be more patient. Maybe I could be if I ever had a damn break. (I took one day off this weekend. I worked the whole other day.)

I want a whole weekend off. It needs to happen soon.

Thoughts on having kids

I talked to someone I have known for a long time last night about me having kids. Ironically, said person is not on this filter by her own request. I’m not really trying to talk about her behind her back but including her seems somehow disrespectful when she stated that she doesn’t want to hear it. First she doesn’t think me having kids is ok because the planet is overpopulated. Fair enough. But she said she also thinks that someone with my history of mental health issues shouldn’t be having children. To say the least this was hard to hear. I managed to keep myself from bursting into tears with effort.

My mental health stuff is something that I have agonized about for years. I have also felt paranoid that people felt this way and weren’t telling me. I guess now it no longer counts as paranoia. I feel somewhat hurt that she said it, but it isn’t as if we have ever been particularly close friends anyway. Given how little she is in my life I doubt this will affect our relationship much at all. But that’s not the point.

I have a pretty serious history of mental health issues. I have been diagnosed with a wide array of disorders (sometimes contradictory) throughout my life. I don’t try to hide this or down play it. I just deal with it. I deal with feeling depressed. I deal with the excessive responses (mania). I deal with my compulsions. I deal with my mood swings. I’m not the easiest person to live with but I believe I am far from the hardest. I feel like telling me that I shouldn’t have children because of my mental health issues is tantamount to telling someone who has a physical disability that they shouldn’t have children. And if you are going to go down that path, where does the line get drawn? Should someone with diabetes have children? Should remarkably ugly people have children? (Ok, that part is being sarcastic.) Where is the line drawn? Who gets to decide who is appropriate for breeding. Because as soon as you start talking about how people with defects shouldn’t have children you are talking about breeding.

Yes, my children are potentially at risk of being severely depressed during their lifetimes. My children are also very likely to be incredibly intelligent (such traits are strongly genetically linked). My children are also very likely to be creative and interesting. If you go through history many of the most brilliant and influential people have had various mental health issues. Does depression make life harder? Yes. I think it is worth dealing with anyway. If I didn’t I would have off-ed myself years ago. I also believe that my kids are going to have the fairly unusual situation of living with someone who actively deals with their shit rather than blaming or denying or hiding from life. I have survived some pretty intense things and I believe that I can help my kids be strong and independent people as well or I wouldn’t have them.

I know I know… I don’t need to justify my decision. But I do need to think about it.

Dying.

My job is always extremely demanding. Teaching an honors class has made that worse.
I’m also the technology “mentor” at this point because my coworkers are fucking morons and can’t figure out how to work basic websites. This means a bunch of people pestering me constantly.
Academic detention is driving me batty. I’m feeling quite tempted to just ignore the Fs for the rest of the year. If you come in and want to make up your grade, fine. But I can’t keep pushing people to do the work. It makes my life suck.
I can’t be the repository of all the problems of all the kids right now. I’m too tired and worn out. I have nothing left to give them.
I’m dropping all involvement with clubs. I need to spend my lunches staring off into space, not going to meetings.
I am going to drop some of the essays I had planned to give the honors class. I simply cannot spend 10 hours grading essays every three weeks. I can’t do it. Not on top of all the rest of the grading and prep.
I am not helping much with the TNG con. I feel horrible for dumping it on Jon, but I can’t do more than I am doing. πŸ™
I’m supposed to be doing research on getting the house remodeled. Right now I am kicking myself for not getting this done last summer.
I’m not seeing my friends much. I’m doing a little bit of it because I feel like I *should* but I find myself feeling resentful of the energy output even as I am glad to see people. I am tired of having to leave by 8:30 because I feel like shit. It’s not like I can say, “Hey–let’s hang out during the weekend day” either because I’m always fucking working.
Hormones are kicking in and I want to cry a lot of the time. I feel so overwhelmed that I want to just give up. Why am I doing all this shit again?
I can’t have sex like I want to because I feel shitty all the time and I know that must be having a negative effect on my overall attitude and emotional state.

I don’t know what is going to give, but something has to.

Further proof that my life does not suck.

Today, one of my kids went off campus during lunch and bought me a Jamba Juice. (The kid finishes school at 5th period–that’s the only reason he is allowed to leave.) This was after I bitched him out during 2nd period because he still hasn’t got his book and he was generally being a bit whiney. I think that apologizing after yelling at him probably helped. I told him I had no right to be such a bitch to him and he laughed. πŸ™‚

Last night I jumped my hot honey. It was quite good. Sex is much less frequent these days, but oh so awesome when it happens.

My darling husband came to work with me this weekend and kept me company while I suffered through craptastic work. Have I mentioned that I am incredibly lucky?

We got to be social in three different venues this weekend–none of them for even 2 hours, but that is all the energy we have. It was good to see people. (This is the way to see me these days. Book a slot early in the day for 1-2 hours. That’s all the energy I have.)

And I finally got around to starting Harry Potter. Books 1 and 2 down. πŸ™‚