The rainbow

After the storm has cleared, the rainbow appears. Such is my life.

So the other teacher seemed evil. She wasn't evil, just blunt. Yesterday I followed exactly what she said and everything was better. I taught the lesson that she modeled. Her feedback? There were some things that I needed to work on (She gave me specifics and how to deal with them.) but overall I did a great job. Feel my Ninja power as I kick ass!

On Monday night I think that Natasha felt my pain. When I woke up in the middle of the night (as I am prone to do when I am stressed), I discovered that Natasha was sleeping next to me. Then again it could be the weather and her search for heat. Nah. I'm going to go with the first explanation -- her need to comfort me.

So I have a game plan for the weeks leading up to break. This would also be known as the weeks leading up to my trip to Mexico. And did I share? Apparently I will not have to spend the entire trip with my mother. Family friends have hooked me up with a hotel room. Gotta love having friends with money. Now to solidify plans for the cats while I am gone.

Back to the kids. I know. You thought that we had escaped those brats. Thursday the Opera is coming to the school for a performance. Some of the kids will be participating. Rehearsal on Tuesday? Fantastic!!! Seriously.

The next step in motivating the rugrats is a project. I had an idea in mind -- a classroom cookbook. My aunt, a retired educator, helped me to solidify this with a timeline. She is well worth the minutes I spend talking to her daily on the cell.

So now I'm smiling. I've never needed drugs for my bouts of depression. I've only needed a sounding board. Although I have also come up with a plan to improve my social life. First, I am going to become involved in the local knitting/spinning guild. Second, I will return to studying Portuguese in January. And I'll make sure there is some dancing in all of this.

All I know is that I am glad that I did not truly hit bottom. That's where I thought I was on Monday evening. Because I'm a Cancer. And I always think the worst. So yeah, things are shaky jobwise but after Tuesday, I believe that I can climb out of the hole. And see the rainbow that appears after the storm. This last line was for those of you who have difficuly making inferences. Which is our focus in reading in my class this week.

Opening up a vein

Just when I started thinking that life could not possibly suck anymore, it is. I returned to work on Monday and discovered that one of the other new teachers had not returned. Instead she had been replaced. Why? Something about classroom management.

One of the veteran teachers insisted that I meet with her after school on Monday. It seems that the perception is that I have similar problems. She is trying to ensure that I still have a job next year. And here it was, I thought that things were getting better. Just shows what happens when I try to think. I felt like someone had pulled the rug out from under my feet. So I spent nearly two hours with her mapping out the changes that I would make starting tomorrow.

Oh, and to top it all off, there was discussion about my wardrobe not being professional enough. I explained that when the temperature dropped, I suddenly had a lot fewer wardrobe options. I told her that I could have more options if I could actually afford to dryclean some stuff. She is going to show me the bulk place that she uses. I mean it's not like I purposefully go to school thinking, "Hmmm. I think I should have a little gap between the waistband of my pants and my shirt." I am sorry that I am thin and long-waisted. First time I've ever been smacked down on a job for my wardrobe. Makes me want to start to reconsider my neighbor's idea for a business. The B&B&B. That would be bed and breakfast and bordello. I tried to tell her the idea would only be legal in certain parts of Nevada.

So right now I feel like I've been kicked while I was already down. I'm not sure how I'm going to crawl out of this hole. I did spend most of Monday night crying. Because that's what I do when I'm feeling exceptionally hormonal and life keeps throwing out more crap. Reminds me of something that my friends in high school and I used to say. "Life's a shit sandwich and each day you have to take a bite. The only difference is how big a bite you have to take." I feel like I've eaten half the sandwich in one sitting. And then I called Queenie because she saw me walking to my car after the meeting and knew that something was amiss. Well, actually she knew that something was amiss when I kept shooing the kids away for opera practice. (Remind me to tell you about that one day.) She assured me that I am a great teacher. That doesn't mean that I still won't be canned at the end of the year though.

So where do I stand? No friends that I count on except Queenie, no love interest, and possibly no job come June. Do I feel calm, relaxed, and all that other stuff? Hell no. I am at my neurotic best, waiting for someone to pull me in from that tree limb.

With that said, I think it may be in my best interest to not go out this week. Because I'm pretty sure they don't let you blog from the psych ward. And now I'm going to resume my pre-school crying. Because the asshats that control stuff have also decided that today is tree trimming day. And not in the festive way. Which means that all cars must be moved by 7 a.m. This would be the perfect time for one of those asshole men I have met over the last few months to call, just to say how wonderful I am. In the meantime, I think I'm going to email the Belgian. He did just send me wonderful vacation pix from Tunisia. There's one of him in a bathing suit. If you ask nicely, perhaps I'll send it along.

Making choices

For those of you who come here for the food, let me get some things out of the way.


Turkey hash with poached eggs

Yep. That's what I had on Saturday -- and Sunday -- after a quick trip to the grocery store. I had onions but what I really wanted was scallions. And I needed bell pepper. And eggs. I cannot believe that I only had one egg in the fridge. Something seems so wrong about that.

Oh, and I had a whole wheat English muffin with it as well. Toasted with butter. And with the Bartlett Pear Jam I bought in Pt. Reyes. The jam? Tasted like a pear spread on the muffin. I may have found a new addiction to replace the honey addiction that replaced the crack cheese addiction.

Now onto other stuff, non-food related. Saturday night I did head out. However, it ended up being just me and Queenie. Since it was just us, we headed to SF. We could have done the salsa place but then I remembered that the Peruvian guys we met a couple of weeks ago in SF wanted us to go there with them on this particular Saturday. Why tempt fate? So it was off to SF and my continuing introduction to Irish bars that have dance floors. Now I must admit that I have been to our usual spot many times before meeting Queenie. Saturday night's stop was Kell's. I like to think of it as being in that borderland between North Beach and the Financial District since it is around the corner from The Bubble Lounge.

So the choice was to go there. Instead of all the other places we could have gone. Like my home away from home in North Beach. Because I decided that dancing was more important than meeting guys. Queenie? She meets guys wherever we go. Because she's 25. I love her dearly but she is also a constant reminder of my age. My home away from home? We both meet guys. (That's where I met UG.) There's just not really any dancing there. So this was a hard choice to make before I told her it was OK to go to Kell's. Because I had just spent several days at home with the cats. My sex life? Vague memories. Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to tell the kids that I don't need their help in getting a date a week ago.

I know part of this is hormonal. The hormone swings always seem to magnify the fact that I am well on my way to becoming a crazy cat lady. Ah. Crap. Now I've actually written it. Excuse me while I take my depressed ass off to a corner and cry. By the way, this is a major improvement. In the old days, pre-therapy, I would have said "off to a corner to slit my wrists." At least I have not gone off and posted an ad on CL. I did read some though. I also thought of dialing a few numbers in my phone but then I decided that there were reasons why I have not dialed those numbers in months. I'm not sure how much longer the self-restraint will work though.

Maybe I should go out on Wednesday night. I need some worshipping in my life about now. Of course, I am going to a conference over the weekend. Maybe there will be some hot, single male teachers there. OK. I just made myself laugh hysterically with that one. Because in case you have not noticed, there aren't a lot of men in education. But the conference is for math and that happens to be one of the few areas in education that is heavily populated by men. At the very least it's somewhere scenic.

Eh. I'm going to Mexico for Christmas. That will be the ego boost. Sort of. If only men were taller. Although I've never met a short guy from New Zealand. Hmmmm.

*sigh* I hate it when the weather turns gloomy. Seems to do the same to my mood.

Another double

I once more did my annual Turkey Day cooking. The difference is that this year I did not have to work on Wednesday so I decided to get a headstart on the cooking since everything tastes better as leftovers anyway.


I'm starting to think the holidays are all about meat and carbs. And don't worry. This was the taste sampler from Wednesday. Thursday I did actually add vegetables to the plate.

Another tradition is that I save the wings for my aunt. She headed over Friday for leftovers and a doggy bag. Now I have been obsessed with this one dessert since I had it at Baraka in February. Didn't know what it was called but knew the ingredients. Thank you Google for answering my question.


Galaktoboureko. You'll have to scroll down a ways to find the actual recipe.

And for those of you desperately waiting for it, here's this weekend's quiz. I'm off to look for turkey hash recipes. Of course that means I'll have to go grocery shopping because I have no eggs and what is hash without eggs?

You Were a Deer

Graceful and gentle, you appreciate beauty and balance. A giving soul, you are able to sacrifice for the greater good.

What Animal Were You In a Past Life?

Back by popular demand

Yes, I'm back. Of course, I wish I could say the same about my voice. It seems to come and go. Hopefully it will be back completely by Monday but I doubt it. I have improved from Wednesday. Now I can actually talk at a regular level. But yelling? So not happening.

My first year teaching something similar happened. I showed up to work on a Friday feeling kind of so-so. As the day went on, I started feeling worse. By the time my last class showed up (I was teaching middle school and had three groups of students.), I had almost no voice. Luckily I had won them over by that point in the school year. When they realized that I had almost no voice, the more boisterous members of the class turned and shouted, "Shut up. Can't you see that she has almost lost her voice?" I taught the rest of the day at a near whisper -- and no one missed a word.

That is when I realized the power of whispering. I stopped yelling at my class. Instead, when I really wanted their attention, I would drop my volume. I have tried it a few times this year. They're a little slower to catch on. I try to explain to them that my vocal cords cannot take yelling all day long, even when I am healthy. I have also explained to them that this is why I don't drink coffee, but instead drink tea with honey all day long.

You should have heard me in the grocery stores on Wednesday. It almost made me want to go out drinking. Because my voice had that perfect level of raspiness. What a bummer when I spoke to my dad latter that afternoon and had most of my voice back.

Then again, it gave me a perfect excuse for not going to Sack of tomatoes. It seems that T-day was at my dad's brother-in-law's house. Now, there is only one person in that family who actually likes me, my father's sister-in-law. Of course, she catches a lot of flak from her family as well. Her family's take on me? Spoiled brat. Ummmm. Stop hating the player, hate the game. I know some of you are wondering about the reference. Let's face it. I can play my dad like a fiddle most days. Not that I've played a fiddle but I did take cello. May be why my ex used to say that I should become an actress. (Of course, the only one who always sees through the act is my mother. Then again, some of this I learned from her.) I can't help it that they grew up wanting and all. I don't think they were poor, kind of like my mom's family, but they did not have the finer things in life. I mean shouldn't every 16 year old back in the 80s been well acquainted with Ernie's and Victor's? Well, my sixteenth birthday was not spent at either, but instead at this place, Alexis, which was almost my name. Not around anymore but it was at the peak of (S)Nob Hill across from the Mark Hopkins.

So my stepmother doesn't like me much because I've always had more than she has and I know more stuff than she does. My dad and I have always been huge trivia fans. My dad is also a huge fan of Scrabble thanks to his mom. When my dad puts down some mystery word, I never challenge him because I know that he has studied the Scrabble dictionary in depth. What truly irritates my stepmother is when we watch Jeopardy. Not my fault that I can come up with many answers before Alec has finished reading the clue. To be fair, I started pausing a second or so after Alec finished reading the clue. Same result.

So she belongs to all these organizations -- because she is married to my dad. That is about the only reason why these women welcome her. Me? Well, yes, I am my father's daughter but I am also far more charming and know how to work a room. I remember the venom that seethed under the surface for some of my mom's sorority sisters when I was accepted to a certain deb ball. "How did you get your daughter into that ball?" Easy. One of my mom's college friends knew the women on the committee and knew that I would be able to charm them. The one time my name actually hit the society page (Pat Stiger's column, for locals). Like that will ever happen again. And I read that column like a Bible when I was growing up. I know. Funny for a girl from Richmond but then many people underrate Richmond. I mean, how many of you shelled out dollars to see Coach Carter? (No, that was not my alma mater. Mine was the one that was supposedly the "Owls" in the movie.)

And I guess I should be saying that I will be resting the remainder of the weekend but that would be a lie. Instead, I will be doing a little salsa on Saturday. And if that's dead, then I'll be doing some tiki bar action. With fellow teachers. 'Cause we get down like that when the kids are away. And maybe I'll chainsmoke some cigs so I can hopefully recapture that raspiness again.