REMEMBERING WHY I TEACH

One of my sixth-grade students, Maddie, handed me a folded up piece of paper yesterday at the beginning of class.
"Don't read it now, okay?" she asked.
"Okay," I agreed, "I'll read it when I get home today."

* * *

A Thank-you for Ms. D

Band, oh band! It's so much fun!
At period 9 or up with the sun!
We chitter and chatter, but have fun a lot,
And we play every song, whether we like it or not!
And the fact that we play it will just go to show
That, because we like you, how far we will go!
Jazz Band's a blast, I really must say,
And the fact that we have to wake early each day
Doesn't bother me at all, no it doesn't, not me!
If I needed to, I would wake up at three!
I don't know if everyone else shares my view,
They'd might like to sleep another hour or two.
Period 9 Band is awesome as well
And it's all thanks to you that the bands sound so swell
So thank you so much for helping us play,
The instruments we (hopefully) practice every day!
For where is the ship if the captain's not there?
And won't a pilot-less plane soon be in despair?
Where would soccer teams be if the coach had the flu?
Where would our band be, if we didn't have you?

* * *

Priceless.

IN A WAY BETTER PLACE

Okay so ever since the concert ended, I have felt about 1,000 lbs. lighter. My soul feels good again. I feel relaxed, and at the same time very much alive.

I wish I got stressed like normal people. I used to, but somewhere along the way, my defense mechanisms changed. I used to get anxious and crazy and zoom around like a nut trying to perfect every little detail until the last possible moment. I'd be a ball of adrenalin.

These days, however, when I am under pressure I just shut down. I stop feeling - I go numb. I escape into my head and into weird thoughts and rituals. I guess it's better for my blood pressure, but I'm not sure I like the way I feel. It's a calm, but it's kind of like an "unnatural" calm. I wonder if it has anything to do with running? Maybe I am redirecting the adrenalin?

Anyway, so I feel pretty damn good. The concert went off without a hitch, and I had a wonderful long weekend: first at HIS graduation ceremony in Philly with HIM and HIS family, and then just the two of us headed down the shore. Friday was kind of rainy and cold. We spent most of the day in Ocean City, but drove up to Atlantic City in the evening. We had an amazing dinner at Cuba Libre in the Tropicana, and then spent about 45 minutes trying to find HIS car in the parking garage (damn you, mojitos!)

Back in Ocean City, we woke up Saturday morning to sunshine and decided to rent bicycles for a couple hours. We rode on the boardwalk and through town. We spent the day eating pizza, Boardwalk fries and Kohr Bros. custard. It was the epitome of self-indulgence and it was fucking great!

And this week has just been really good. I'm getting the kids geared up for our annual Memorial Day performance and spending hours working on the "End Of The Year Movie" (being I'm the Media Club Advisor and all.)

Looking forward to tomorrow's Friday Happy Hour - the first with the girls in a long time. I can already taste the margarita.

Mmmm...

SEPARATED AT BIRTH

Jordin Sparks or America Ferrara? You decide.

BUTTERFLIES

Tonight may very well be my last Spring concert at the middle school level. It's kind of bittersweet. After today's 90-minute dress rehearsal with 80 kids in a 200-degree auditorium, I wanted to run screaming out the front doors and never look back. But now that I'm sitting here waiting for the actual event, I feel a little melancholy.

I went out for my pre-concert run. It's a ritual I have followed for a very long time. Today I ran in a torrential thunderstorm. Two people even pulled over to ask me if I wanted a ride home, but I declined, as running in the rain is an absolutely breathtaking experience. I'm not sure why, but it seems sort of primal... just me against the elements.

Tomorrow we're all going down to Philadelphia to HIS PhD hooding ceremony. HIS whole family is going and I'm so excited and proud of HIM and cannot wait to be there with all of them. Afterwards, HE and I are going to Ocean City for a couple days just to get away and spend some much needed time together.

I feel relaxed now. About to go upstairs and do my hair and whatnot. And about three hours from now, I guess I will kind of be a different person.

Huh.

YAY!! I GET TO TALK ABOUT ME!!

(Thanks Kate!)

A- Available or Single: Committed to HIM but always my own person.

B- Best Friend: TiVo.. hehe.

C- Cake or Pie: Cake... under a pile of ice cream.

D- Drink of Choice: Unsweetened iced tea with lemon.

E- Essential Items: Sneakers. Gum.

F- Favorite Color: Green.

G- Gummi Bears or Worms: Chocolate Twizzlers.

H- Hometown: SopranoLand.

I- Indulgence: Ice cream.

J- January or February: January - New beginnings. Also, my birthday :)

K- Kids: Should be banned.

L- Life is incomplete without: Coffee and the daily crossword.

M- Marriage Date: Um, I suppose it should be my fiance, right? Oh wait -- you mean the day?

N- Number of Siblings: 2 older brothers who made my childhood a living hell.

O- Oranges or Apples: Apples -- they're just easier.

P- Phobias/Fears: Disfiguring accidents of any sort.

Q- Favorite Quote: "The BRAVE may not live forever, but the CAUTIOUS do not live at all."

R- Reasons to smile: I am alive.

S- Season: Right now, SPRING!

T- Tag Three: Lisa, Mike & The Bard.

U- Unknown Fact About Me: I enjoy washing dishes.

V– Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animals: If God didn't want us to eat animals, he shouldn't have made them out of meat.

W- Worst Habits: Overanalyzing.

X– X-rays or Ultrasounds: Must I choose? They're both so much fun!

Y- Your Favorite Foods: Mesob. Oh, and maybe ice cream.

Z- Zodiac: Capricorn.

BA-DUM BUM.

I think it's safe to say that the guy who designed this chart had a pretty crappy job.

HORMONES = SUCK.

So I've had a crappy few days. I've been feeling lower than low and it really sucks. I seriously think it's because I went back on the pill two weeks ago. It was a last resort -- the whole "woman visits" have been absent for over a year and my doctor recommended I go back on it to get things rolling again, so to speak.

I wondered if there was a correlation between birth control pills and depression, so naturally I turned to the all-knowing source of all things: The Internet.

And sure enough, there were lots and lots of articles relating the two. Then again, you can find stuff relating to just about anything on The Internet.

*SIGH*

Anyway. Yesterday I took a mental health day. I got up and took a nice long run and then drove to this gigantic mall. I did some shopping and saw what turned out to be a terribly depressing movie. But the day did manage to get my mind off my work-related blues.

Today was better. I went with my principal and vice principal to observe a potential candidate for my job. I'd say she was in her late 20's, and we watched her teach a group of 6th grade clarinet players. About fifteen minutes into the lesson, my principal leans over and whispers,

"I don't know how the hell you do this every day. I think I would go insane."

Voila! So I felt a little justified and maybe not so crazy for getting antsy in my job. Eight years, it's been. And sitting there watching this chick teach made me realize that it's pretty much the same thing in any school I'd wind up in. And I am so ready for a change.

So I do feel better today. Probably because the week is almost over. And Saturday is Cinco de Mayo and I have a reunion to attend. So maybe my depression is 99% work-related after all.

AUTHENTICITY

Just stumbled across this article and wanted to share it.

It's a little heavy, but it sure did resonate with me.

CIRCLE OF LIFE

This afternoon I went back to my Alma Mater to hear a senior recital. The featured artist was Christian - the "little brother" of my high school friend, Sandra. I met Chris when he was a pain-in-the-ass, eight year-old brat. When I was in college and Chris was in high school, I used to give him trumpet lessons. Who would have ever thought he'd also go on to become a trumpet-playing, Music Ed. major?

Christian is somewhere in his twenties now. On top of going to school, he works 40 hours a week to support his wife, two year-old son, and second baby that looks as if its about to be born any day now. I can't even fathom that lifestyle, but I certainly hold him in the highest respect for working as hard as he does. He's a good man.

He played an excellent recital - lots of challenging pieces. I don't know when he finds the time to practice, but his tone and endurance were great. I remember back in college - and especially grad school - when I would spend four or five hours a day in a practice room. It seems like it was a different lifetime ago.

Christian studies trumpet with the same professor I did, and I saw him today for the first time in many years. I had an unbelievable crush on "Dr. C" and, in my senior year, learned the crush was mutual. We attempted an awkward relationship for a couple months but nothing significant transpired. It wasn't the real deal -- just two lonely hearts in two very different places in life.

The music building at my old college looked exactly as it had when I was a student ten years ago. Dr. C is still there helping to make music teachers. Christian will graduate and soon find himself standing in front of hundreds of kids, sharing the music... inspiring the future teachers.

And ten years from now, he might very well find himself drinking wine and blogging about the recital he'd just heard.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PUDGE!

Saturday we went to my brother's house for my nephew's first birthday party.

There were cute little kids milling about in the sunshine, eating cupcakes and playing with scooters, sandboxes and teeter-totters. If the maternal instincts were ever going to kick in, it would have been then.

Needless to say, they didn't. But as you can tell, there's not much I wouldn't do for this particular kid and his brother.

NEW APPROACH

There's a whole lot of turmoil going on in my school building because "The Administration" is moving everyone around to new teaching assignments. The changes wouldn't affect me even if I were staying because, let's face it, no one else would be stupid enough to want to teach the Band. But everyone else is up in arms and lots of tears are being shed. It really kind of blows.

Yesterday, I thought I might try a new approach to my last two months here. Rather than allowing it to continue sucking the life out of me, I decided to just let everything bounce off. I went up and spent time mingling with some of the disgruntled teachers and made it my job to say all the things that they were thinking but - as people concerned about their future employment - afraid to say. It was a good day. It added a bit of levity to a really negative situation.

Last night, HE and I were watching a couple travel programs that TiVo had recorded.

[Sidenote: I love TiVo so much more than I ever would have imagined... especially now that TiVo knows what I like to watch and goes out of his way to tape it for me. I love you, TiVo.]

The first one we watched was GlobeTrekker: California. God, I want to go to California. Not so much the southern part as the north. I wanna go to Big Sur and up to see the giant redwoods. I wanna hang out in Garberville and smoke some weed with the hippies. Most of all, I want NOT to be confined to a boring routine, paying out the ass to live in crappy New Jersey for the rest of my life.

I don't have the big dreams of a fancy wedding, white-picket fence or brood of children. I've never been a big fan of "stuff" -- as a matter of fact, I am probably one of the few women alive who detests shopping. I want to come up with a way to make a living while being able to travel around the world. I want to live simply and authentically. I want to live free.

Is that weird?

WHAT DO I HAVE TO LOSE?

Kate's right (thanks, Kate) - what DO I have to lose? I guess I feel bad about being so NOT into school. I really just have to get through the next nine weeks and then I'm home free. But patience is not a virtue that I possess.

You know those people who PUSH right up to the very end? The people who see the finish line and kick up their speed, balls to the wall? That's not me - I fizzle out. I don't know why it is. I'm just having a really hard time staying motivated to be here. When I wake up in the morning and think about the classes that I have to face each day, I get this sinking thud in my stomach. It's just a bad way to be.

In other news, our governor is on his deathbed. On his way to a Don Imus assembly, the SUV he was riding in was involved in an accident. Guvna was travelling 91 MPH and he was not wearing a seatbelt. I have nothing else to say about that.

Parts of our state are still underwater from the weekend's nor'easter. Driving to work the past few days, I see confused but happy ducks swimming in parking lots. "Global warming is a hoax!" -- Um no, not really.

I don't really want to talk about the Virginia Tech thing because I don't really know what to say.

And Sanjaya is gone.

With all that crappiness in the rest of the world, I suppose I should shut the f**k up and appreciate just how easy my simple little life actually is.

WHAT'S GOING ON...

Alright. So now that it's 99.9% official, I guess I can declare: I will not be a public school music teacher next year. My proposal for a leave of absence has been approved and, for the first time in eight years, I will have a new job.

A 12-month/year job. A job that doesn't require spending 6 daily 42-minute periods trying to corral a group of prepubescent middle schoolers. A job I don't have to be at by 6:45 AM every day - a ridiculous hour that my body has never been able to accept. A job where I can go to the bathroom when I want to, instead of waiting until the 10:17 bell rings.

I am taking a position as "Director of Education" at a retail music store. I'll be in charge of managing and increasing their lesson studio; organizing professional development workshops for public school teachers; and developing new community music programs for kids and adults of all ages. It's a position that has never before existed. But the owners of the store bought a new 16,000 sq. ft. facility last year and it is absolutely AMAZING.

And I am so ready for a change.

But at the same time, I am scared to death on so many levels.

I'm lucky that the Board of Ed. has approved my leave. That way if things don't work out, my current job will still be there in a year. But I so desperately want for things to work out. If they don't, I cannot imagine having to return to the same ol' rut and routine. I guess I am most scared of that. I want so badly for the new job to be all that I dream it will - and I just don't want to be disappointed.

So for the past few weeks I have been feeling as if I'm in limbo - counting down the days until my life changes. And I have felt numb and angry and tired and sad. I've been seeing a really cool therapist who is great to talk to. Every week as I'm driving there I think, "What will I say to him today?" And every week without fail, I develop verbal diarrhea as soon as I sit down in his office. And it feels so good to just unload.

That's where I am. And why I think I need to blog more. It feels good to vent - clears the mind a little when I have to actually write out all that I am feeling.

I feel better already.

NUMB.

I need to blog more.

Except that right now I feel like my world - as I know it - is about to collapse.

But not for another two months.

So in the meanwhile, my brain is spinning out of control with all the things I should be doing.

And at the same time, I am paralyzed into numbness and I end up doing nothing.

I really need to blog more.

CREEEEEPY....

My friend PMcQ visited Savannah, GA over spring break and went on a haunted pub crawl. She got lots of photos with orbs in them, the best being this one:



I zoomed in on one of the brightest and swear to God I see an image in it:



If there's anyone out there who's actually reading this, click on the image to enlarge it and tell me what, if anything, you see. I wanna know if I am indeed crazy.

HAPPY EASTER!

FREEDOM OF RELIGION

Last night I played at a Palm Sunday 'concert' as part of a pretty good-sized orchestra. It was at one of those mega-churches, with three large screens surrounding the alter. While the choir sang and the instruments played (complete with nauseating 8th-note rock beat on the drumset) the lyrics were projected on the three screens so the congregation could sing along.

The minister of the church was a young guy with blindingly white teeth, perfect hair and three perfect children. His perfect wife was one of the soloists in the choir. He got up in the beginning of the service to say a prayer and to introduce the music director.

The musical work itself was titled "Jesus: No Other King" and was an arrangement of about eight songs - all related to, as you may have guessed, Jesus. Mainly about how we as human beings just flat out suck. How we should all get down on our knees and PRAISE JESUS every single day, and know we're not worthy and Jesus is THE WAY. There was also a lot of stuff about Jesus' blood.

I don't know. Church. Dogma. It all just makes my fur bristle. It seems so paradoxical to what "spirituality" feels like to me. Okay, so Jesus is the Son of God... but aren't we ALL God's children? Is God really this big, pissed-off man in the clouds, sitting up there smiting the sinners? That doesn't make sense. It didn't make sense when I was a kid in Sunday School and then Confirmation class. And it doesn't make sense now.

I looked out into the congregation and watched the people sing along - wondering if they questioned what it was they were saying. I wondered if anyone was as confused as I was. Then I just decided to sit back and play my trumpet the best that I could, happy to be a part of a peaceful group of people. Happy that I'd be receiving a check at the end of the evening that I could put towards costs of living the life with which I have been blessed.

And I realized it doesn't matter what anyone else believes.

FUCK YEAH!

Today I ran the More 1/2 Marathon through Central Park. I had kinda been on the fence about doing it for the past few weeks. As I'd mentioned, the chicken pox debacle put a real damper on my training which, in turn, smooshed my motivation and confidence. I've been running fairly regularly, though just between 3-5 miles a few days a week. My longest 'long run' has been about 6 miles... and that was like 3 weeks ago.

Yesterday I went out and ran 4. The sun was shining and I felt great, so last night I'd decided to give it a go. We all met up around 6:15 this morning. There were 7 of us going in - 5 who planned on walking, the other girl, Allison, had trained to run. It was a cold morning but I felt really good.

We got into the city & parked no problem. I headed up to the start with Allison and decided I'd just see how long I could run before I had to walk. And wouldn't you know it? I ran all 13.1 miles! And I felt fucking great! I think I attribute it to mindset: for the first time, I wasn't concerned about my time and didn't psyche myself out. I just rode my feet and took in the amazing energy all around me.

I high-fived kids on the curb and admired the tall buildings. I smiled for cameras and sang along - out loud - with my iPod. I had the best race of my life! And here's the kicker... I ended up doing it in 2:04:18*. Huh!



The people I went with were so much fun. Four of the walking ladies were 'race virgins' and they had a really great time. One got shit on by a pigeon, and one was bitch-slapped by a hostile stranger while on line at Starbucks. It was just a really great day and it reaffirmed my love for running. It's an incredible activity - like nothing in the world - and I consider myself very lucky to be healthy and able enough to do it. And I shall run until I can no longer do so.

* UPDATED CHIP TIME AND NEW P.R. -- WOO HOO!!!

TURTLE UPDATE

Lots of exciting things are transpiring in my life these days. I've been hesitant to talk about the career end for two reasons: A) I don't want to write anything that could get back to anyone in a position of authority and harm any potential prospects; and B) I am far more superstitious than I care to admit and do not want to jinx anything.

But before we discuss such petty things as my future well-being, let us touch on something vastly more important... tonight's American Idol results.

Okay, I understand the whole San-gina thing now. Apparently I was onto something with the stoner college kids, and it seems as though they have an organization. Not only that, but I hear Howard Stern has his army of listeners backing San-gina too.

Actually, there's something intriguing about watching this kid every week. It's like watching a car accident or something - hideous enough to make you squirm and yet -- you just HAVE TO watch.

So I like Jordin Sparks a lot because she's young and fresh. For a 17 year-old kid, she is absolutely amazing. LaKisha is an amazing singer too, but I don't really "like" her all that much. But my #1 vote for this season goes to Melinda Doolittle. I love her. That's all.

Alright so I've applied for a leave of absence from my job for next year. My Principal approved it, as did the Superintendent. Next, my proposal goes to the Board of Ed. and they make the final call. I hope it's approved. I really feel like I need a change after 8 years, but it would feel really good to know that I had that safety net. Keep your fingers (and toes) crossed for me - more when I know more.

I did my first 5K of the year last Sunday. Actually, it was my first "official" race since the marathon back in October. I did okay for the first one out - 26:55. Not great, but not too bad. I haven't been very rigid in my running these days.

I am planning to do the More 1/2 marathon in NYC on Sunday and had been training pretty good for it up until I got the chicken pox. I figured I wouldn't push my body as it tried to recover so I lost a lot of long runs, along with the desire. So I'll go in on Sunday and do the best I can - even if it means walking a bit. As it is, two of the three other people I'm going with are injured so we may be crawling along together. It's all good.

The thing of it is, I've proven that I can train for and complete 26.2 miles! I kind of feel like I have a different approach to running now. It's as if I used to be a little intimidated by it -- was never quite brave enough to call myself "a runner." Now I can say it and I do so with pride. These days when I run, I have a confidence - I felt it for the first time at the starting line on Sunday. It was Excitement instead of Anxiety.

So yeah, that's what's been going on. Like sand through the hourglass...

FUTURE HEART-BREAKER