Tag: life

Oopsie

Today, at the beginning of one of my classes, my students had an oral quiz.

For oral quizzes, they always have to call the same phone number, which is a Google Voice number I chose years ago for this express purpose.

These students had used the Google Voice number before, and most of them just have it saved in their phones, since we use it every time.

A few students, however, did not have it saved today, and so asked for me to write the number on the board.

Okay, sure.

I think about it for a minute, and then write out the number, somewhat confidently and totally surprised – I always have to look it up constantly at the beginning of the school year, and I hadn’t realized that I had re-memorized it again already…, but go, me!

Within thirty seconds, a few students are telling me something…

‘Is that number right?’

‘I think so,’ I reply, ‘but I can check.’

And so I pull out my own phone to go log in and check the number, which is what I usually do in the first place, so it’s no biggie to me.

‘I don’t think that’s the right number,’ others tell me, a sense of assuredness in their voices.

‘Oh, really…?’ I consider…

Suddenly, it hits me: “Oh!… That’s my best friend’s number!” I declare, quickly erasing the number from the board.

Laughing, I put up the correct number, and I marvel at how similar the two are – extremely similar, with just the middle numbers swapped with the end ones.

I shake my head, and I wonder if anyone had already been in the process of leaving a message….!oops

Guess it would be good to give her a heads up… or, perhaps, it would be more fun to leave her with a voicemail of someone praying in French… 😛

After all, that’s what friends are for, right? 😉

Post-a-day 2019

Nostalgia, an early onset

I finish this teaching assignment on Friday.

And I’m already super nostalgic… and I mean super…

I keep wanting to plan something amazing and sentimental to send myself off…

And I kind of feel silly for wanting to do that – it isn’t actually that big of a deal… so I keep telling myself.

I think what I’m aiming to figure out here is how truly it is or is not a big deal.

I’ve never been so myself as a teacher, and so, perhaps, I have never been so willing to be vulnerable as I have been with these guys… perhaps this is te closest I’ve ever been with students, and the best I’ve ever been as a teacher…, and so, perhaps, it actually is a big deal.

However, if I am off to be my best self the rest of my life, then this is merely the first of many fabulous situations in which I get to be my true self and allow the students to do the same, and we all love each other and get to be super sentimental all we want, any and all the time.

Nonetheless, I keep wanting to play guitar or ukulele and sing a song to and/or with them as a final goodbye.

I don’t have any French songs that come to mind yet, though… jut a bunch of honest and sentimental songs in English… and even a Spanish one, kind of.

Maybe a German song is actually the way to go… perhaps that would be best, simply because German is more my God-love language than any of the others… and that is good for them, even though it isn’t French, because 1) God and 2) still a foreign language…

Hmm…

Let me think on it…

Maybe I’ll just do the birthday song I always do… I love using it for birthdays especially, but it can apply to any day – the Lord gave you life today when you awakened, just as much as He did on the day of your birth… hmm…

I’ll reflect some more, and trust that God will give me exactly what to do. 🙂

But I seriously am already nostalgic, and it hasn’t even ended yet… I shake my head at how silly this is, yet that changes nothing – I am still nostalgic for it all.

Post-a-day 2019

Nasty creatures and decay

Well, they exploded all over again today – by the time I went up after lunch, there were about forty of the disgusting things up in my room, doing their odd version of mixing and mingling with one another.

I still didn’t cry, but I definitely felt the panic within me.

However, I acted as was necessary to move things forward with clearing them out of there, hanging several flypaper ribbons around the room, covering my clothes with blankets, and getting the **** out of there myself.

I prepared myself mentally for the possibility of not sleeping in there tonight, as they were kind of all over, and, though I wasn’t seeming to be freaking out at the time, I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle staying in the room without cleaning it… and I knew that they might not all be gone yet, too.

This was a fortunate mental preparation, as I am currently sitting on a pallet on the floor of the yoga room, getting ready to go to sleep, feeling oddly exposed out in the open, likely to be found by the first teacher tomorrow morning.

Nonetheless, I am rolling with it… this is what I can afford right now, and this is the neighborhood in which I want to be living right now, so this is where I live… sucks and all…

Anyway… sweet dreams and restful sleep unto us all tonight. 😉

Post-a-day 2019

Yikes

Twenty.

It sounds like an entirely reasonable number, right?

Even twenty to thirty of something sounds reasonable, low in number, even.

However, this idea seems to disappear, whenever we consider things that aren’t meant to be in groups more than just a few.

For example, toes… on one person.

Kind of weird to consider, right?

Even worse than that, however, is blood flies… in one’s bedroom…., to be discovered when one arrives home late at night after a long week, and just wants to go shower quickly and get to bed within the next half hour, before 11pm, even…

Two and a half hours later, I sit on my knees on the floor of my room, hunched on the ground, typing this.

I have myself killed approximately thirty flies at this point, and the hanging flypaper has handled around four.

I spent about ten minutes downstairs a little while ago, hoping things were finally handled, but giving some time for any loners to move to the overhead light.

Unfortunately, two more had appeared by the time I came back up here.

Now, I am almost paranoid about getting ready for bed – if I go shower, and then have to deal with more, that’s eew, but, also, if I go to bed, but they aren’t finished, will I be the warmest thing in the room, once the lights are off?

They are attracted to the light and heat…

I have lit a candle underneath clove, peppermint, and eucalyptus oils, and so am considering leaving my downstairs door open, so that any others would leave my room due to the smell, and head to the light and the warmer temperature of the room at the bottom of my stairs.

But I’m just not entirely convinced yet that it is safe to proceed.

In case you’ve forgotten, flies are one of my greatest fears in life – totally absurd a fear here, but that in no way changes the fact that the fear is there.

No, I did not cry tonight… however, I think a big part of that was the slowness of the things, so the situation was much less panicky than last time.

I certainly cursed a lot.

But that is to be expected – extreme stress brings it out of somewhere within me.

I was debating whether to go to the gym in the morning, and so perhaps this event was a means of forcing me not to go – I will not have had a reasonable amount of sleep by 7:45am, when I would need to awaken (given that it is currently just after 1:30am).

Dear God, please let me learn whatever lesson I need from this now, and give up having this happen, please – I would like very much to be finished with these things, and for them to leave my life permanently.

Amen.

Post-a-day 2019

Just chillin’ after work?

How do you spend your afternoons and evenings after work?

Napping in your chair at your desk, because you hear rain and thunder (despite a stated 10% chance of rain)?

Followed by finally leaving after you awaken, accomplish some more work, and hear that the rain has stopped?

Followed by stopping for gas just in time for a torrential downpour, with extremely strong winds blowing in varied directions, shooting sheets of water every which way, on three-minute increments?

Which leads to just sitting on the ground, already soaked in your jeans, semi hiding behind your bike as wind/rain protection?

Followed, finally, by a release in the rain that allows you to resume being soaked by it, but that is safe enough for driving again, and so you head home super cautiously, get super soaked, and arrive he to blue skies and no rain, because the clouds have pushed through so quickly, but flooded street sides and driveways bottoms?

Despite a 10% chance of rain?

Yeah, that’s about how I spent my afternoon and evening today, too.

😂

And this was after the initial explosion

Post-a-day 2019

Girls, girls, girls

A conversation via text message between two girlfriends around 10:30pm one weeknight:

H: I have this slight problem in that I can’t find my pants

N: Ya

N: Ha.

N: I—- [her daughter] scraped her knee and got blood all over mine

N: Which reminds me to move those to the dryer

H: 😂

[thirty minutes later]…

H: Ah! I’m almost certain that they are sitting on the shelf in my office 😂

You know, the usual place to keep one’s blue jeans. 😛

Post-a-day 2019

Some days, part something

Some days, you just end up staying late at school, working well and being sociable and comfortable with coworkers and friends….., and you arrive home well after 10pm, although your desired bedtime is 9pm…

… and you determine that it is okay not to do the gym in the morning, because you need to take at least one day off a week, and you are helping a friend do unpacking and home arranging right after work tomorrow, and so it would be good to be not exhausted from lack of sleep by 6pm…

… yet you are so tired right now, you can even seem to figure out how to get your teeth and body cleaned (or even how to get up off the floor of your room), and you wonder if you’ll make it to bed anytime soon to have the delayed morning alarm even worth it…

Some days… 😛

Post-a-day 2019

Two weeks

I have these two weeks remaining, and then my role will be different.

I actually cried today in class, due to how much I would be missing everyone – I just have come to love them so much, and it has been surprising how much that seems to be.

However, I am awaiting with gratitude and delight the new schedule I will have, as well as the opportunity I will have to pursue photography again, to work actively on my thesis, and to organize my room and visit with family out of town.

Also, today, somehow, I developed a semi-plan to take a few road trips on my lovely Vespa.

I want to learn some skillage first, so I can handle anything that may arise with it, but I definitely am looking forward to these little road trips… man, I really am… 😀

Anyway, I’m off to sleep now – can you believe I actually did some extra work tonight on a really fun activity I’m excited about doing with the kids???… yeah, neither can I… – because I am exhausted, and I am getting up again around 4am to work on myself and to get going on everything for school for the day immediately afterward.

Yippee!! (Haha…, it is exhausting, but I am managing it appropriately, and am even honored that I have the opportunity to pursue everything as I currently am.)

Post-a-day 2019

Being myself

Yesterday, I listened to the German audiobook for “Bis(s) zum Morgengrauen”, which is somehow one of of my favorite audiobooks (the beginning and first third of it, anyway), while I made brunch and sunflower seed butters.

All turned out delicious.

I did not leave the house the entire day.

The entire day.

And I was totally okay about that.

At night, I hung fort my prayer flags, and then a bunch of paintings that I pulled out from a corner box.

My space is finally looking like I live here – I think this is the longest I’ve gone without making my space home-y.

Usually, I do it right away, hanging things and making my space feel like home…, but, for various reasons, I was concerned about doing it here, and so never did it, which meant I never fully unpacked and that I never fully felt at home here.

After last night’s decorating, I’m actually excited to come home and do some more throughout the week – and I already feel so welcomed whenever I enter my space, and it is lovely.

Today, for the second day in a row, I slept in past 9am (which is not necessarily all that late, but seems like it when compared to a 4:10am weekday alarm).

I again listened to my beloved audiobook while cooking and eating brunch and lunch, as well as cooking dinner for the week.

I then power washed the whole front walkway and house steps and front wall – and it looks amazing now!

I talked with a friend briefly while doing part of it.

I then rushed upstairs to clean off my legs, put on some socks, grab my white tennis shoes, and then head off to a gallery closing party I’d wanted to attend.

I even invited someone to go with me after I was already on the way, and didn’t really expect it to be a yes on the other person’s part.

It was a no, and I went anyway, and comfortably.

I had asked myself what the person I want to be would do…, and she very clearly would have gone to the opening alone, and so I went with confidence.

I even tried out those glasses the eye doctor gave me way back a few years ago, to see if they might work out (I had some trouble catching lacrosse balls the other week, and hit myself, causing me to be worried about my eyesight.).

At the closing party to this blacklight art show, I felt like I was walking into a college party – it was dark, blacklight lit, and smelled of pot and alcohol and a little bit of sweat.

And yet I walked in confidently and comfortably, and merely laughed at the idea altogether: college after college (again).

See here some choice selections from the show:

Cool, huh? 😛

Afterward, I went to Whole Foods to pick up my new helmet, and then stayed there a while to get my necessary steps for the day, as has been my practice on previous occasions, as well.

Eventually, I returned home, ate a final bit of food, enjoyed my homemade sunflower seed butter, had olives as a kind of dessert to my dinner, and then came up to get ready for bed.

I am going to bad far too late, but I have not yet perfected being exactly the person I want to be, so I accept it – I did loads that was true to myself this weekend, so I’m actually rather okay with having this one thing be off.

Here’s to amazingly restful and refreshing sleep tonight! 😉

Post-a-day 2019

Sharing is caring (world peace edition)

Is it wrong to be excited about sharing a negative experience with another?

I mean, to feel excited at discovering that a friend and I each have gone through similar bad experiences – is that so bad, feeling excited about it?

At first glance, it sounds off – being happy about not just myself but someone else having to go through a bad experience.

However, upon consideration, my opinion of it improves – in fact, it even seems a wonderful thing, this excitement.

You see, it is not that I am excited that we each suffered – not at all.

I am excited that we are able to share so fully and deeply and truly with one another, be so vulnerable and open with one another, and that we are both able to find someone who understands…, and, possibly most importantly, someone who loves us nonetheless for what we share openly.

And, in having that excitement happen, and in having that sharing and love happen, we are bringing positive out of two negative situations.

So, in a way, I guess it’s like multiplications: two negative stories, when shared across our two lives, make a positive.

(Yes, I enjoyed that dorky/nerdy moment.)

So, yeah…, share away your tough and deep and true stories, people – be open and vulnerable with one another.

I think it might just be one of the best ways for us to learn to love each other best.

Aka world peace. ❤ ❤ ❤

Post-a-day 2019