Justin, eeeeeee!

Probably because of the stellar singing video below, I had a dream last night with Justin Timberlake, where he was being stalked by paparazzi outside a hotel and I was the only other person in the lobby, and he walked by me and I totally knew who he was but played it cool and offered to help him escape and we did through a totally smart disguise (the details are a little hazy) and in return he offered me anything I wanted and all I wanted to know was, "What was it like to be in a public park with a box on your groin?"

Can't. Stop. Watching.

I <3 Justin Timberlake.



I really like how they throw up their hands every time they get to the chorus.
Also: "Step One: Cut a hole in the box."

Roller coaster

I thought I was doing better today--I took some stuff back to Macy's and managed to find myself the BEST COAT EVAR and it only has to be tailored a wee bit in the sleeve length, but I think it can. It was 360, marked down to 130, and I had the returns that more than covered it and this coat is HAWT.

Oh, and I had a little IUI visit today too. It almost didn't happen, which scared the pants off me worried me greatly. My appointment was supposed to be for 11:45, but when I got home from the grocery store (planning to make Moroccan Chicken with Dried Apricots, yum!) at 10, I heard a message. "Um, hi, Kari? It's Heather, from the Doctor's office. He has an emergency surgery at 11:45, and so..." ACK! They wanted to reschedule my appointment for... 9:45. Uh. Shit.

Doubly shit because if it didn't get done TODAY, this month's clomid and crazy hormone rollercoaster would be for nuthin. Which--awesome.

I called them, though, and was able to get my appointment rescheduled for 10:45 which meant I was hurtling out the door, frantically calling A on his cell phone trying to get him to pick up pick up pick UP! I like having him at these appointments. It feels stronger, less clinical, to have him there. Plus, there's the end of each appointment where the doc tells you to just lie there for fifteen minutes and then we just get to talk, which is comforting and cozy and intimate and almost erases the weirdness that came occurred just before it. But the bastard didn't know the apointment was rescheduled and he chooses NOW to not be surgically attached to his phone? REALLY? I'm the only one who's allowed to be flaky with a cell phone in this family!!!

I managed to call the office, and after spending some time in Voice Response Unit Purgatory, where his extension didn't work and everyone else is out of town for Christmas, I finally got through to Emily, the temp front desk assistant. Here I was, barelling down I-84 (why do all my IUI stories involve me hurtling, barreling, and in general throwing myself at high speeds down major highways?) trying to get A on the line so that he can meet me, and I'm trying to describe him to a temp assistant so she can drag his ass to a phone. "He's tall? With... brown hair? and... uh... " I can't for the life of me remember what he was wearing this morning when I dropped him off at work. "... and he's tall?" Fortunately, Emily The Super Temp manages to find him and wrangle him to one of those new-fangled telly-phones. We agree that if he walks down to Burnside, I can pick him up mostly-sorta on my way to the clinic. Miracle of miracles, this bootstrap planning works out and the appointment goes off takes place painlessly.

Maybe this will be the one. Maybe.

So I manage to drop A back off at work, go to Macy's and find this kick-ass coat (and there's still money left on the giftcard! Shazam!), do a few other errands, make a tasty crockpot dinner, go to a hair appointment...

...and by the time it came to eat said tasty dinner, all the enthusiasm has dribbled out of me left me. Part of it was in response to an email that rubbed me the wrong way, like a lot of things are these past few weeks. Part of it was a discussion with A at dinner that just left me feeling a little sad and a little angry (not at him! it wasn't a fight, it was a discussion about a situation where there's no good solution. I hate those kind of situations. I prefer those situations that have solutions, frankly). And part of it is... maybe it's just that I'm tired.

But now, as I sit here and write the sum total of my day, I find that remembering the quick turnaround on my morning, how much I got done today, all of that, I feel a little better. In fact, I felt better until I got to the part where I tried to explain why I didn't feel enthusiastic anymore and then remembering why I didn't feel enthusiastic drained me again. Does that make sense?

So I guess the upshot point is that I can force myself to keep my spirits up if I focus on the successes and quietly put away the things that make me feel second-best. So maybe, after all, I am doing better. It is, after all, important to keep your sense of humor.

Roller coaster, anyone?

God rest ye merry whatevers.

Um. So, Christmas.

What a freaking total letdown. I know it's another family's customs, but it wasn't MY family customs, and so it felt really... deflated.

And then some family members managed to say and do some INSANELY AWFUL things that just made me glad to be home on Christmas Day. And then to have the trans-atlantic phone call with my family that wasn't awkward AT ALL kind of highlighted how very very much I was missing and how very very much this wasn't Christmas at all for me this year. So I just want it to be over so I can stop dwelling on it.

But--for what was my favorite holiday--to be glad it's over is disheartening.

So I'll just count my blessings, cuddle my dog, smooch my husband, and try to use this week of vacation wisely and get stuff done so that the next three months fly by and it's spring before I know it.

To do list

Remember to pack...

• Cell phone charger
  
• Camera charger
  
• Palm charger
  
• iPod charger
  
• gps
  
• batteries
  

Is anyone as disturbed by that list as I am?

Mt Hood

This is the view of Mount Hood I have on my way to work in the morning. I always think of Mount Hood as sort of the perfect mountain. It's pointy, craggy, snow-covered...there's the shadowed crevices... On mornings where the weather conditions are right, the mountain seems to break through the clouds, untouched and perfect above them. The view is even perfect. In front of me is a long and winding river that seems to go on forever, until I look up and there is Mount Hood. Some mornings--most mornings!--I drive past while the sun is still rising behind the mountain and Mount Hood stands in stark relief, a dark shadow precisely outlined against the early morning sky.

Mornings when I can see Mount Hood, when it's not raining too much or too cloudy or too hazy, seem just a little better, and a little lighter, and a little smoother. They remind me of how much around us is awe-inspiring if we just take the time to notice..

Note that it is also the mountain where rescuers are currently searching for two lost climbers. They would be searching for three, but the third had dislocated his shoulder in the ascent and his compadres left him in a snowcave and went to seek help--and then vanished. He was found dead on Monday.

This has not been a good month to be lost in snow in Oregon.

I wish I could say that this tempers my love for the mountain. It feels callous to the hikers that every time I see Mount Hood I still feel that chord in my center that vibrates out through my extremeties with an almost audible thrum. But there the mountain sits, above any tragic outcomes--not quite unconnected, but still, somehow, untouched.

For later.

I came to a really big realization today, which has really put me at peace about a lot of things.

Of course, this being Week of Crazy, I will probably change my mind about it in two days--while crying and snotting wildly--but for now, I'm at such a better place than I've been in a while.

But it's weird to tell anyone about it right now, so it may have to wait. This is an odd thing to say, just having given you such a lead up to it, but I'll have to tell you about the meat of the realization later. Just now that right now, for today, I don't have that knot in my stomach.

And that's good.

A read

A really good article:
http://altdotlife.com/archives/18

The shopping! Oh, the shopping!

Um. Today--I think--maybe--I might have--finished my Christmas shopping.

Shhh.

Now all I have to do is send them all off.

Ha. Just me and million other people at the post office, paying an arm and a leg because we waited until NOW to send everything.

Ah well. It's wrapped and going, whether we have to miss this month's mortgage payment to send it is another question.

The Trouble I Get Myself Into

So, it's the day before Winter Break and the kids are predictably short-fused, short-attentioned-spanned, and just short in general. Unfortunately, since this semester is a week shorter than usual, I didn't have a choice with my geometry classes--they had a test. Which sucks. I hate being That Teacher, giving a test the day before vacation.

The kids did predictably ass-y.

I had even, the day before? gone over one of the test questions, one of the big show-your-work story problem ones, in detail, in excruciating detail. ONe of the students had said, "Why don't you just tell us?" "I am," I replied. "Right now."

Average score on that problem? 2 out of 8 points. I started giving a point just for drawing a picture, I was that desperate.

(Side note: I don't normally teach to the test. This was--hand to God--an accident. I thought the problem I found in the text book was a really good example of a problem that synthesized everything we'd learned in the chapter. Imagine my surprise when that problem exactly was on the test.)

(So I can only imagine how poorly they would have done if we hadn'tgone over it.)

So, in stats, I decided to cut the over acheivers a break. Besides which, the lessons didn't break easily into a test before the break--I would have had to really shoehorn it in, and I was tired of pushing. I can only push one group of the student body at a time. So I decide to show an episode of Numb3rs, the CBS tv show where, with absolutely no awkwardness at all, and in entirely organic and natural ways, math is used to solve FBI cases!!! Heh.

Last year, I'd done the same with Mythbusters. Great show. Unfortunately, I hadn't carefully pre-screened the episode I was going to show. I figured: Discovery channel! Can't be bad! And then I showed them the episode where the two dudes get absolutely plowed and try to beat a breathalyzer. Since it showed they can't beat the breathalyzer, I suppose it was okay, but still: showing adults getting shwasty in a conservative school? Not the best career plan.

So this year, I'm careful. I watch the Numb3rs episode last night to ensure no one is climbing into or out of bed, no teh gay, nothing bad.

Which was a good plan. If only I'd shown the episode I'd pre-screened.

Instead, I pick one where a witness works. In a nightclub. Called The Bareback. So guess where the next seven minutes of the episode take place? In a strip club.

I rock.

Coming Clean.

I'm trying to get my family's gifts packed up and sent off before they all go abroad for Christmas... why does it feel like they all make that decision, one I've been quietly trying to encourage since, oh, LEE MOVED THERE, the one year A and I finally acknowledge that doing dual family celebrations will give us aneurysms?

We--A and I--have been getting some tough-to-take news on upcoming expenses and health/fertility issues that are hard to deal with. I've been keeping it inside a long time but have starting "coming out of the closet" so to speak about it with most people. My way of dealing with it has become rather gallows humor. I speak about hemoraging money, blasting sperm, and hormonal fun with a sort of cynical expectation that we will not have luck. My mom, lord love her, is almost too sympathetic. "Oh, honey," she'll say, her voice wavering. "It's not funny..." Actually, in some ways, it is--the lengths we'll go to, that the odds and the industry are stacked against us so exhorbitantly, that we live this sort of dual reality where something that is slowly taking over our lives and absorbing 99.9% of our reality isn't something that can and/or should be discussed with everyone, so we end up not being completely honest with almost anyone. I am coming up with more and more creative ways to excuse my crazy-making doctor's appointments. I am appearing more and more demented as I shoot myself up with hormones. Things are becoming crazier and crazier.

I have to laugh. If I don't, I'll cry and never stop.

Of course, there are days when I do that too. There are days when I'm so angry and that's an emotion I've never dealt with well. I tend to lash out at whoever's nearest when I stub my toe or bite my cheek or turn my ankle. Imagine what it's like to be around me when I'm not just dealing with this, but dealing with it on mega-horse-doses of hormones! Fun for the whole family! It's worse because there's no one to be angry with. God, I suppose, but given the capriciousness of infertility, I really can't blame God. I'm not really a God-blaming kind of person in general anyway. I also don't thank him for touchdowns, though, so it evens out.

The worst part is, it's an incredibly isolating experience. I don't wish it--fertility treatments--on anyone (and apparently, going by the spate of "Ooops, we got pregnant the first time we tried!" pregnancies around me--fuckers--literally--I don't really have to) but it would also be nice to have a friend who's a friend for friend reasons also be someone who's had experience with this. As opposed to making friends with someone just because their plumbing is fucked up too. Just so I could talk about how taking the Clomid on the Clomid days makes me feel, or dreading the trigger shot even though I know it doesn't hurt, or feeling claustrophobic about everything some days.

I have great friends and they are super supportive, but this is an experience I didn't understand until we first met with Dr. Doogie, our baby-making doctor. It'd be comforting to have a friend who'd gone through the same ice-water-in-the-faceness of it all, the same 100% obsession.

So, this is me coming clean about it, internet-wise. I've been afraid of doing so for a while, mostly because it feels like saying "I want a baby so much I'll shoot myself full of synthetic hormones and make everyone around me listen for hours as I talk about LH, HCG, IUI, BBT and DPO until their ears bleed and they stop inviting me places" and that is so not who I want to be. It also feels like jinxing everything. Wishing for something is the surest way to never have it.

But not speaking or writing about all of it also means I can't vent about what's making me crazy (the non-hormonal crazy, more like the "I hate the dry cleaners!" kind of crazy, or "the dumbest shit in the world was my waiter!" kind of crazy, although I'm sure the hormones affect my interpretation of that kind of crazy) WHICH, of course, is the whole point of having the damn blog in the first place. So what I was doing was just not writing at all and that sucked too.

So, yeah. Here's where I am. I just want a baby, our baby, to grow inside me in a way most women take for granted. And I just can't make a sarcastic joke about that.

For your viewing pleasure

Still love this ad (was part of a Thanksgiving conversation)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=uyN9y0BEMqc

These still make me grin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-efY2ebXN8Y&NR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WcnBoGZ2G4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P6UU6m3cqk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx8e5Io63LY

A day of reckoning

Dear TiVo,

We love you, we really do. And we were there! In the early days! We were on the bleeding edge of your now-can't-live-without-it technology. Seriously, we are two of those people who just can't understand EVER that need for ads. We hate them. And we owe it all to you. Bless you.

But so help me god, if you keep recording Little House on the Prarie instead of Veronica Mars? And Ron Popeil's Juicer instead of CSI? We're about to upgrade your ass right outta the picture.

Yes, you're paid for, and so yes, the recording is free instead of paying a monthly fee, but some things are worth that $10 a month. This is one of them.

Cut it the fuck out, or get out.

Love, me.

Gobble gobble

There are so many things to be thankful for, you have no idea. Or maybe you do. I hope you do. I hope you counted them all. I hope they included your health, your loved ones, your family. I hope you are as blessed as I am, with a family you've created. I hope you laughed as much as we did yesterday, got maybe a little misty-eyed, felt as warm as we did. Because brother, there ain't nothing like it.

xoxo

Conversation

"I really want to call your dog Matilda."

"....okay."

"What's her name?"

"...Matilda."

Blessings counted.

I've had two days of high-powered mega-watt output. I must be due for a crash.

I've been crashing more this fall than I like to admit. I'm afraid of the introspection that might tell me why. I'm afraid to step on the scale. Everything is balanced more delicately than I like to look full in the face.

I'm cool with that on the good days. Today? Today is a good day.

Onramp

I've been tense and unsettled lately, and I have no idea why. My friend Emily calls it "fussy". Or my favorite, more elaborate description, "fussy in the head." I haven't gotten more than five hours of sleep in a night for the last three nights. Keep in mind, it's Sunday right now. That means that Thursday night, Friday night AND Saturday night, I've woken up somewhere between midnight and 3 a.m., with a body and/or brain that had apprently decided it was done sleeping. Which is, y'know, awesome. I've even been taking herbal supplements to try to even out my sleep cycle, and apparently my body is having. None. Of it.

So I'm a little foggy today.

And maybe that explains my overwhelming paranoia that I'm forgetting something important. Like there's imminent doom lurking over my shoulder. During one of my sleepless moments, I stumbled on a scenario that for whatever reason, seemed to capture this overwhelming tension that I'm right on the verge of fucking up.

You know those onramps onto the free way? There's an incredibly short one on my way to work. Overall, I feel like those moments where I'm trying to merge, but there's a car to the left of me, matching my speed. I try to slow down, just as she slows down to let me in. So I speed up, to pass her, but then she does too. And we're matching speeds and the onramp is getting shorter and shorter and shorter and...

...okay maybe that was a sort of sleep-deprived crazy dream/nightmare thing. But the imagery--I can't kick it. I don't know what's twisting me up in knots specifically. I don't know that anything is, really. I have a statistics test to give on Tuesday, and I was stressing out because I thought it was written and it wasn't and I don't know if I'll have enough time to get everything done on Monday so they can take the test on Tuesday and... what? This is not--should not be--as big a deal as it feels. Right? So why do I keep waking up with a buzzing brain that is just not going to be satisfied?

I think I just need to figure out if I'm supposed to be speeding up, or if there's any possible way I can just slow down.

A week in seven paragraphs

Last weekend: best. visit. evar. with my sister. It was like she lived down the street and was just coming over to hang out, which, when you think about it? We don't do enough these days. It's all destination visiting. When you come! We'll go out! And see Mt. Hood and Mt. Tabor and the Pearl District and Twenty Third and we'll eat! At all these cool restaurants! None of that. We got up, hung out in our PJs and did insane crosswordage (speaking of which--where's my crossword book?) and our only Destination Planning was a Farmer's Market that had a guy standing there in his North Face fleece vest and his pants that zip into short while his daughter in a crafty poncho dangled around his knees, and that guy was talking to another couple in his back-of-the-throat surfer Northwest way, "Yaaaa, we're just raaacing... through the farmer's market todaaaay..." while we debated whether we wanted apple cider or not. Lee also got to witness one of my best teaching days ever, so double bonus. Someday I'll write about it. So, yeah. Incredible gift to have Lee here. Plus? Crazy Matilda lurrrrved her.

Monday: drop Lee off at the airport on the way to school, day doesn't end until 9 when I leave the television studios. My geek squad? Was on TV. Heh. I was there to cheer.

Tuesday: Day didn't end until I got home at 9 AGAIN, after doing lines at the volleyball game. Which I love saying, because it totally sounds like I'm doing coke under the bleachers, instead of standing for almost two hours waiting to call in, out or touch with those flight-attendant-like hand motions.

Wednesday. Three words. Parent. Teacher. Conferences. Yes, already. I don't know why, it's not like we've done enough work to actually have a real gradeor anything, but it's nice to meet most of the students' parents. No gnarly or angry ones. No real good stories, in fact. I just kept talking until 6:30. "Yes, hi! Oh, your son/daughter is xxxx. Here's a grade printout, this is their grade, here's where it's broken down into homework and tests..." and then it's choose your own adventure! Does your son or daughter do their homework? Yay! Advance to go, collect 200 dollars! Does your son or daughter not do their homework? Agonizing discussion on why they don't. (Secret--in almost all cases? I don't care. I can't make them do homework, I see them for an hour a day! Exceptions, of course, apply--living with grandma and grandpa because mom took off to Las Vegas etc etc etc? Let's figure something out. Can't put down the videogame controller and/or telephone? Not my problem, and in fact, anything I do will be undermined at home.)

Thursday: first day wherein I get home before 5. Sweet sweet relief. So to celebrate? Wake up at 3:30 a.m. and be unable to get back to sleep. Jackpot!

Friday: Nap from 4 to 7:30. Wake up to go out to dinner. Get home from dinner, go to bed at 10. Sleep until 7.

And this weekend: Mellow, with a side of slow. Did I leave the house yesterday? Yes, I must have, right? I think I did. Hmmm. Ah well, I will today, I have kickball, so in an hour or two I'll force myself to do something. Probably.

And that was my week in seven paragraphs. Yay. I'm going to try not to stay away for so long again, because if I do, so many stories get bottled up it becomes hard to share any of them.

Evaluate and re-evaluate

Three weeks into the school year--okay, two and a half--and I finally feel ready to evaluate my standing.

This is my second-plus year of teaching. I consider it my third even though my first year of teaching wasn't a full year, but it was two trimesters and it carried all the hell of first year teaching. Some people like to say I'm a second year teacher, and some people scoff at making this a big deal, but both groups really miss the point. Your first year of teaching is hell. Hell hell hell. Balancing everything sucks. You get too involved in your students--meth affected families, eating disorders and teenage pregnancy will pull anyone in but sweet jeebus!--and every test or quiz feels like an evaluation of you as a teacher. You don't know where to focus your energies and you're at school past dark way way waaaaaaay too much (my husband is singing "Amen!" at the top of his lungs). The mere act of surviving that first year, where students can make you cry and parents instill the fear of the apocalypse in you, is a victory of the first order.

Ahem. Slight tangent there. Anyway, here I am in my third year of teaching. It's radically different from my previous years. I have AP students balanced with my entry-level students. And dear gods and goddesses, does it make all the difference. And yet, at the same time, I find myself in the same balancing act of my first year.

So, first, Geometry. I find myself giving these poor kids the short shrift this year. I'm relying a lot on what I did last year in a sort of vague way, where I'm coasting. I have three classes of these kids who run the gamut, from ambitious freshmen to juniors and seniors who are close to lost, either through laziness or ineptitude. But I'm finding tweaking what I did last year truly rewarding. This afternoon I met with another teacher to rework how we were going to teach chapter 4. Note that this is two chapters ahead of where we are now. This kind of collaborative planning blows my mind eight ways from Sunday. This other teacher--Ms. G--and I sat for an hour working and debating how we talked about what we did last year and what needed to happen this year and how we could make it better. And we put that talk into action. How lucky is that?

But even more than that, this AP Statistics class jazzes me up and gets me running like nobody's business. I'm by turns panicked and delighted with this class. They ask me questions that I can't answer, and my response is, "I'll have a better answer for you tomorrow!" Why n-1, Ms. H? "I'll have a better answer for you tomorrow." I have no idea, really. A lot of stats is accepted practice, and that answer is not satisfying for a lot of students, and I feel inadequate, and that's like being a first year teacher again. But at the same time, I'm grading quizzes, like I am tonight, and the insight is blowing me away.

For the past two years, I've come home from school exhausted. Taking a nap from three to five has become my M.O. But since this school year has started, yeah, I'm staying a little later, leaving after 4:00 most days, but I'm not napping. I feel electric. Like I'm doing something cool, connecting. Is it cheesy to say it's a rebirth? Again? How many rebirths can one girl get? Staying after school and working through what I need to do has me alive.

It'll probably change when students start panicking. Our first Geometry quiz is tomorrow, and let's see who fails. And hard chapters are coming up, and last year I regularly had crowds of kids getting help before and after school. That hasn't started yet.

But right now? I feel ten feet tall. And vibrant. Can I bottle this? And take it out in February? Please?

How to Feel Old in One Small Step

Do you realize that every single person who isn't old enough to vote has never lived in a world without The Simpsons on TV?