who i am and what i need

I enjoy these. Especially this one:

…who I am, and what I need, these are things I have to find out myself.
—Chinua Achebe, writer

Also, yesterday I hula-hooped for longer than I had in probably 15 years. It was fun.

my cloud of thoughts

From time to time, I space out and look at the Facebook page of people from high school. Mostly people I know peripherally but those who have gotten married, had babies and/or bought houses.

I'm still really wary and a little judgmental of them, especially of their mass photo postings (but that's another issue with oversharing all together). I don't know; it's just such a foreign idea to me. But then at the same time, there are people much closer to me making the same decisions and yet I'm ok with that. Maybe it's because I know them well enough to approve of their choices. Or to know that even if it's not something I want now, it's something good for them.

I suppose it's no surprise that I fall into another Facebook baby photo-ing the day I make my first student loan payment. I had to dig through the pile of crap in my corner and move my Yale diploma to reach my shoebox of loan statements.

Seriously, my Yale diploma is literally sitting in the corner gathering dust.

In other worlds, I'm organizing a 5k run for the spring. I suppose I wouldn't be able to do that without my YDS experiences, so maybe that diploma isn't just gathering dust. Tomorrow I'm scheduling my interview with a well-known teaching program, a program I wouldn't be interested in and probably not a good candidate for without YDS and its influence.

I guess my point is that I would not have guessed this is where I'd be five years ago.

I still feel like I'm in a point of transition, but a very slooooooow transition, one fraught with stresses of making ends meet and making sure my kids are prepared for kindergarten. It's a carefully constructed transition. It's precise. It's stagnant yet always moving. Slow enough that I'm beginning to feel comfortable in the changing, yet antsy for rapid change. At the same time, it's already November and I don't know if my kids know anything more than they did at the beginning of the year.

Does any of this make sense?

Here's what I'm trying to say: From the briefest glimpse at lives long lost and removed from my own, it looks like people have their "stuff" together, whatever that "stuff" may be. And I still feel adrift at sea, trying to find my bearings while feeling the need to justify an experience that fundamentally changed me yet has produced little outside materialization of that.

I know pictures lie and life is endlessly complicated for everyone. And yet, it just looks so simple and wrapped up neatly with a bow in ways that my messy and in-need-of-explanation life cannot. And those closest to me making those same decisions also have explanation-worthy lives because I've heard and lived through the explanations. So it's ok.

Does any of this make sense?

feeling good

They played this last night at the one year anniversary of Dance Party.

Weekends are now when I get to wear clothes with holes in them. I also wear sweaters to work. I also have my first loan payment due in a few days. My, aren't we growing up fast.

my weekend in pictures and me yelling at a woman on the street

Some of the events of the weekend:

Saturday night I went to sleep at 9:30, woke up when the neighbors went to the bar, woke up when they came back from the bar, considered yelling at them and/or calling in a noise complaint, lay in bed angry and pissed off but doing nothing until they went inside and I eventually fell asleep. In other news, I turned 90.



5k! I kept up with the pace of the race I ran on October, which is good. It was a small race, which means that I came in last. I am a-ok with this because it wasn't like I was super slow... I was just the slowest of the runners. I'm comfortable enough with myself and my running that it doesn't matter to me.


Pumpkin pie! Homemade crust and filler. Yum.


I had leftover pumpkin mash from the pie, thus ... Pumpkin bread!


Homemade pumpkin pie and bread means ... Pumpkin seeds!


An angry and hesitant shared picture of tortilla soup!

Kari and I were walking back from the bus and a woman came riding up on her bike beside us, talking about how crappy men are and how unlucky in love she is. We mumbled in agreement, etc, and thought we left her behind us. Then she rode up again and started talking about how men are wusses and pansies and girls when they don't do their "job" (whatever that is). I told her I didn't appreciate her comparing weak men to women, saying that it put women in a hierarchy under men. Well, I said it less academically. Eventually we ended up shouting and she called us lesbians, and then somehow I ended up yelling across the SA gas area, "'Man up' is not an acceptable term!" At that point, I became the yelling lady and the circle was complete. The student became the teacher.

Honestly, I started talking back to her because I've had enough with people not living their beliefs. I believe in gender equality, even - especially - in language. How we speak and the words and idioms we use reveals our inner biases and beliefs. Inclusive language in church is another fine example of this exact thing. All in all, I just didn't want to think later, "Why didn't I say anything?" Casual sexism is sexism is sexism.

The End! Now off to take a pumpkin mush bath with my pumpkin shampoo...

the happy couple

In the morning when I choose to get dressed, sometimes I consider dressing nicer so I can go straight from one job to the other. The unfortunate side effect is that sometimes I go to work at the restaurant with bits of child drool and marker on my clothes. Otherwise it's worked out ok.

I've been fast-tracked for an in-person interview with Teach For America. More to come closer to December, but it's exciting news.


The happy couple and the happy couple.