more time, more posts

So I do not have a morning class this 4-week work session. Student numbers are down. So, instead, in the mornings I am doing something called "guaranteed substitute" or GS for short. What this means is I come in at 8:30 a.m. and if there is subbing to do, I do it. If not, I do administrative work for $15/hour for three hours. It's not always busy so there is time to do crossword puzzles and write in blogs. Glory be. I make 1/2 the money, but hey, it's not all about the money.

My boss needed to see me this morning "for a few minutes" in her office. I paled and shook nervously for the 10 minutes before 9 a.m. Nervous Nellie I am. Turned out not to be as catastrophic as I thought. I do work myself up to this crazy anxious state and then can't bring myself down from the mountain for quite awhile. Hmmm.

Coretta Scott King died. Sad.

I must now go back to the crossword. As you were.

thoughts etc. etc. and things i'm thinking

A great movie I saw last night on DVD - JuneBug - go rent it! Go rent it now! Rent, rent, rent, off you go renting it! It's about a son coming back with his new wife to visit his family in North Carolina. It's bizarre and dysfunctional and real. An indie film I believe. Go now, go go go! Even if you have a fear of movies and reality - go now - go go go!

Well, I can't force you to go nor would I want to.

I've been analyzing again or still guess you could say. I have this bizarre (sick?) need to control everything and everyone around me. And, when things inevitably turn out badly and people and things will not be controlled (odd that) I feel angry and disappointed. My new brainfixerupper planted the idea the other week that there might be a different way of looking at things. Such a simple idea really but for some reason it finally made sense at 2 a.m. this morning when I couldn't sleep. "Oh," thought I, it was like an epiphany moment. So I'm going to think about this epiphany and maybe slowly, inch toward a different, less painful, style of thinking.
Wowza.

Inch toward. Centimetre toward? Walk a kilometre in my shoes? In for a penny, in for a kilogram? Confusing. Apparently the U.S., Brunei and about two other places are the only places in the world that do not use the metric system. Mind you, Canadians generally use pounds instead of kilograms to weigh ourselves. Although kilograms, of course, sounds better. Stone - is that 14 pounds? Don't the Brits and Aussies use that?

I'm avoiding writing or continuing writing the short story for my writers group tomorrow night. Avoid avoid avoid.

I now worship the Mongolian Grill on Davie Street. I went there on Friday with the students - $4.95 for lunch. Last night I took my friend out there - $9.95 all you can eat. You can go back up and up and up and have them fry it all up for you. Healthy too. So if ever I am unemployed again, I can eat there five days a week for lunch. Well, $4.95 is only one time but you can pile your bowl up as high as you want.

I am centimetering toward 40. Two more months tomorrow. 40 years ago my mother was waddling around with her second child, hoping I'd turn out better than the first. Ha ha, joke. My sister and I look nothing alike though - she is fair with dirty blonde hair, I'm dark with dark hair. She has blue eyes, I have brown. We are nothing alike in personality either. I remember once years ago when my parents came out to visit us in Vancouver (my sister has since moved to Ottawa). We were eating at some restaurant and the waiter said, I kid you not, something about my father must have been the milkman. I suspect my father was making painful jokes to the waiter, resulting in him feeling the need to play along.

"No!" my mother said, righteously insulted, "of course it wasn't the milkman!" Sadly, probably not. I'm too much like my father in all our shared dysfunctional ways for that to be true. I still often hope I'm adopted and that they are just waiting until I'm an adult to tell me. Cher will be my birth mother. Chastity, who was awfully cute as a child, will be my half-sister. I'll be the more feminine daughter Cher has always pined for. No offense, Chastity.

Wow, I did blather on today.

colons, etc.

I apologize for my lack of blogging. No excuse really, just laziness and well, let's talk about the colon shall we. Now, I hope you are not eating because really, how pleasant is the colon to talk about.
My family has a colon history of sorts. My father abused his, my sister had hers taken out (back in 1997 - she's fine now and even has a nice internal pouch) and I have the occasional colon issue. Like this week. This will definitely be too much information. Well, suffice it to say that I've been trotting around a lot, ha ha. It kind of sucks because I need to stay at home most evenings because who knows when it will happen.
With me, it seems to be mostly related to stress. Although I did read on the skytrain the other day and that is a no-no for me. I have, wait for it, a sensitive colon.
Sigh. I'm STILL obsessing about those damn students who abhor me. Many in the class like me and are oblivious. Anyway, on the last Friday of the four-week session we take the students out for lunch (well, they pay for their own but you get the idea.) We went to the Mongolie Grill on Davie. Now, I ask you, do I want to spend eating time with some of these students who are filled with contempt for me but hide it with their little smiles? Not really. Because I can have the emotional maturity of a gnat when I got a nice card from one of my students - well, it was A Valentine's Card for a little girl but the sentiment was right - and it says "you are the best teacher in the world exclamation point on it) I proceed to go to the table with said unhappy students and say, all innocently, "hey, look at this card!" "It says I'm the best teacher in the world!" They smiled nervously. I also wanted to tell them that they are negatively affecting my colon but I held myself back. Phew.
I know, I know, I know, I am obsessing too damn much.
In other news . . .
hmmm, let's see, nothing much exciting to say. My life has been all about my colon, my students, eating, drinking, being merry. I'm in the downtown library and there is a child sobbing and sobbing and sobbing and sobbing. Could it be a colon issue?
Oh yeah, one of my students (um, one who likes me) had Tarot cards with her the other day (I don't know why either) and read my cards. Seems I'm destined to marry for money and not to have children.
"You don't like children," said she.
"Yes, I do!" said I.
She tells me I'm not having any children.
"Oh," say I, "Well, hand me a potato chip." We were eating chips in the afternoon class because it was the last class of the session. Tarot cards were read, chips were eaten.

bubble girl

So my new brainfixerupper has suggested a little bubble. This may make little sense to you, my loyal fan base of 6, but let me try to explain. Oddly, I am not embarrassed/ashamed/nauseous/anxious/scared/worried/obsessive/vomitorous about the fact that my fan base knows that I have a branfixerupper. What the hell. It will help to take me off of the pedestal that I'm sure you all have me on.
A bubble. I like this brainfixerupper. While expensive (have I mentioned that?) she seems to get me. She won't let me argue with her. That is apparently a good thing.
Bubble. Blue bubble - a bubble like a big, you know bubble. So when students and other people throw an arrow or two at me, I'm, well, in a bubble. This sound bizarre, I realize but it actually makes sense to me.
"I'm planting a seed," my brainfixerupper tells me.
"You are planting a seed in my bubble?" I inquire.
Ha ha. It seems to make sense though. Other people have this apparently, this bubble, and they are able to not be turned into a fetal-positioned wounded wound of wounding when people tell them bad things about themselves.
Really, it's a remarkable, remarkable idea.
"Sorry," I'll say to the student that sobbed, "I didn't have my bubble so I was defensive. Now, I am fully bubbled, so you know, you know. Well, hey, I'll say, "maybe you could have a bubble too. I think, sobbing student, that you may have a wee anxiety disorder. You need a bubble!"
Don't you worry, fan base, I will not say that to my student.
I'm off tonight to hear about the struggles of the indigenous people in Oaxaca. The Ecumenical Task Force is hosting and since I'm always leftwinging everywhere I probably should get involved. Plus, there will latin men there.
Carry on - from the bubble -
Karen

I need a little freedom

Well, sigh, I have nothing of even vague excitement to say today, but I'm trying to blog regularly.

Yoga was a bit difficult last night, I think that the instructor corrected me 18 times. Or something like that. It's getting a bit more complicated but I still love the relaxation poses.

I need a little brain freedom. Anxiety is high, I've had a few students complaining and even made on sob. Sob I tell you, oh the power that I have. I was kind of ticked off at said sobbing student and instead of using "poker" voice, I think I used "Joe Segal" voice. Yee haw. Joe Segal is my dad and he would always get this intense tone in his voice that scared and intimidated the heck out of me. It seemingly worked well though in his role as school principal. He didn't even realize that his voice sounded like this and wondered why I would, well, sob.

I'm too reactive I realize, too reactive and too defensive.

Sigh. Cry freedom.

Yikes, what a depressing blog entry.

Peace.

Chad Allen, banana bread, arms

I've always had a wee crush on actor Chad Allen. He was on Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman for years and as a child (before my crush) he played an autistic boy on St. Elsewhere. And in between was on "Our House" with Shannen Doherty.

Yes, Chad. I love the angular face, the body, the whole Chad package. Now Chad is gay, but this does not reduce my crush on him (or my other unrequited crush on the actor Robert Gant). I love thee, Chad.

I was flipping channels in my braindead way after my long work day today (Tuesdays I do a workshop with some ESL students at my school for a bit of extra $$$$) and there was Larry King. Now Mr. King is only slightly to the left of Bill O'Reilly and most of his stuff is rather painful to watch. Lots of sensationalism, months of Laci Peterson for example.

Anyway, there was my Chad! He was on talking about gay marriage and other panelists included these two very right wing Christians. Yikes. They both looked so smug I wanted to punch them. It really, really only is in the United States of America where people like this exist. I read an interesting article the other day about the odd fundamentalism found only in the U.S.A. It is so true, so bizarrely true. It is comparable to the rabid fundamentalism found in parts of Islam that we hear about all too often. While true enough, Christian fundys aren't, by and large, suicide bombing (although they can be found, I'm sure, "peacekeeping" in Iraq and Afghanistan) they are proliferating this wacky and scary and dangerous obsession with the evils off homosexuality. And they are so convinced of it too.

Yes, yes, I should have tuned out Larry King. But Chad! I love Chad! He is hot, that Chad. I hear that he and Robert Gant (can I call him Bobby? I'm sort of less than 6 degrees of separation from him - I know someone who knows him well) have a production company together, Mythgarden I think it is called.

Blather. I keep buying this "organic" banana bread because in my mind that means I can have 2 huge pieces every evening and it will all be very healthy.

Finally, I am now almost obsessively lifting weights for my upper body. I see a remote and slight change in my arms and this amazes me. I think I need to do more to get the process going.

Off I go to look at my arms in the mirror and try to figure out how to remove my chin hair without my tweezers, which I seem to have lost (too much information?)

hypochondria, etc.

i haven't had much of an appetite lately. Just don't feel hungry. Vaguely nauseous. Hmmm. Must be meningitis or Hepatitis C I figure.

What else? A fairly boring weekend, to be honest. I did go swimming again, which I'm coming to really enjoy. My front crawl is not that good, I know that I don't do the breathing thing right and spend far too much time with my face out of the water.

"I can swim 45 easy without getting tired," I brag to my friend, Kristina.

"Yes, but that's because you don't keep your head in the water," she tells me, "it's easier that way."

"My head does too go in the water!" say I, "Well, just not as much as it should."

I find my heart rate really goes up when I do a couple of laps using the flipper board thing so that I only use my legs. Puff, puff.

Britannia pool is great, nice and warm. No brrr when you get in, only when you get out. The chlorine smel brings me back to my childhood, learning how to swim at Pan Am Pool in Winnipeg. I quit before I got to a certain level because I was terrified of diving, still am actually.

Further to my new brainfixerupper. Have i mentioned she is expensive? Oh well, she's great. And I make her laugh. "Sorry," says she, "you just should be in standup, it just keeps coming."

"I want to be your funniest client," I tell her. "And I want you to have absolutely no life whatsoever outside of our sessions." I will point out that she didn't agree to either of these things.

There is something very powerful and very hopeful about someone listening to all of your crap and darkness for an hour and even offering a few helpful tips. I've had a few "uh huh" phenomena already. I've never felt accepted really (yeah, yeah, I know, take out the tissues) and having someone really listen is great. It keeps me (a bit) from searching for friends and others to do this kind of listening. Phew.

No flooding in six days. A record. I want to move to a place with no flooding and actual natural light but I'm lazy and easily distressed.

I feel a general verklempt.

Carry on.

at work, yet blogging

It is 9:30 a.m. on Friday the 13th! Apparently a full moon too.

I decided to come to work today, it's only a half day after all. Also, from 9-10 a.m. all I am doing is supervising the students in the computer lab while they practice grammar. Life is tough. The occasional question pops up. For example, "When he had lunch, he answered his correspondence." I taught the students that this means at the same time he did these things. The grammar program takes it to mean first, he had lunch, then, he answered his correspondence. Technically, that is not correct. If it were, it would be, "When he had had lunch, he answered his correspondence." So it's confusing for the poor students. I simply mumbled something about computer program inaccuracies and went back to my desk. Mumbling solves lots of problems.

Yoga last night was good. It's an hour and forty-five minutes, beginner Iyengar yoga. We spend I'd say half the time doing "difficult" poses, i.e. I want to stop this now and the other half learning relaxation poses. I'm slowly learning the relaxation stuff. Have you ever noticed that you feel your heart beating more when you lie down on your back?

It is still raining hard in this damn city. 26 days in a row or something. I simply wait for further flooding. Oh the suffering.

Before I started teaching ESL I had no awareness at all or understanding about verb tenses. Now, I worship the past perfect and if conditionals. Go figure.

I need to remember

I need to continually remind myself to only take sick days at work when I am really, really, fluishly, feverishly, horribly sick. I only get 7 days a year. Last year, due to two rather horrible episodes of laryngitis, I went way over. But on January 1st, 2006, the clock ticked over and I got 7 again.

Well, now 6. I have taken today off because, well, I have a rather strong and awful that time of the month this month (embarrassed grin) and I'm not sleeping well and my stress level is over the moon due to this damn flooding thing. The landlord carpet cleaned again last night, then we had a fight about the garbage again. Sigh. I'm sure he thinks I'm bipolar - one minute I'm calm, cool and collected - saying things like "whenever you feel you can get around to perhaps maybe possibly finding out the key to the flooding problem, that would be great. Whenever it is convenient." to "I CAN THROW WHATEVER I GODDAMN WANT INTO THE GARBAGE!" Turns out Vancouver wants new garbage cans used, so he was transferring my garbage from one can to the other. Sigh. I hadn't done up the bags, they were upside down and some recycleable stuff got in there again and it was a mess, blah, blah and the world fell apart.

So after speaking to my substitute this morning, I slept in, went to buy a new computer mouse (the landlord moved my computer to carpet clean and the mouse somehow broke), and then went to the gym. If I sit around too long I actually get more stressed. And then I nap. And then I can't sleep. Vicious circle. Should have gone to work.

Oh well. Oh, and I get MORE self-absorbed than ever. What an icky blog this is.

The gym was nice today. A young woman was there with three of her clients, three young mentally challenged folks. Two of them - a man and a woman - were very nice to her. The third just seemed ticked off. At first, I didn't even realize the young woman was part of the group. She is an attractive young Asian woman (maybe 19 or 20) with big hoopy earrings and purple hair. I know it's bad but because she didn't "look" mentally challenged I didn't make the assumption. I suspect she was mad because she had to be "looked after" and she wouldn't take any of the "helper's" advice. Probably it was general adolescent angst as well. Then, because I have been stressed and alone today, I started overanalyzing the situation. I decided it must be tough for this young woman to look "normal" and probably have those kinds of expectations put on her. So I'm thinking all of this and feeling sad and wanting to burst into inappropriate tears right there at the gym. Now, now, please don't post comments stating that many disabilities are hidden and that really, aren't we all disabled in some way. Yes, yes, this I know. I mean I spill my disabilities all over these blog pages for my fan base of 6 (7 on a good day) to read.
Off to yoga tonight.
Angelina Jolie is pregnant. But is it hers?

oh my gosh more flooding

I said, "gosh," instead of "god" in order not to offend the religious amongst my fan base. However, I will say this: I got home tonight and my basement suite had FUCKING FLOODED AGAIN!

A different part this time. The entranceway and under the tv. Just where plugs and cords are.

I'm having 12 people over for my writers group tonight.
Sigh.

yoga, swimming and 12th night

Fan base - sorry for my absence. I had that week off and then went back to work and thus insomnia so I've just been too damn tired to write. Fear not, it is the weekend and I am back.

Yoga. My new brainfixerupper person has suggested this so I am now taking a 12-week beginner yoga course at Britannia. Thursday evenings. I just had the first session of it. I have never, ever been good at these types of things - I've tried tai chi (the instructor told me I needed a valium, I kid you not she said that) so I was nervous. Hey, I had to take gross motor up until Grade 1 when they said they had done all that they could. Aren't you feeling sorry for me?

Anyway, it wasn't too bad. She goes nice and slowly but when she corrected me I bristled - like is she going to kick me out of the class? But no, she didn't. The toughest part - and I knew it would be - was the relaxation bit at the end. We were supposed to be one with the universe. I was mainly thinking about how I could feel my heart beating fast and then other thoughts raced through. That relaxation part will take awhile and I know that. I am one with that idea. I' m not going to quit even if I don't get the moves right. I really do believe that there is something to be said for being in touch with your body and how it moves and breathes. Hopefully that will help me learn to be good to myself.

I've started swimming more, also at Brittania. I've always loved how swimming is so peaceful and so easy on your joints (especially my knees) and how it exercises lots of muscles. I don't like the chlorine thing or the wetness and drying off and shared nudity at the end of the whole thing. I think I'll stick to it on the weekends when I can spend a lot of time with the drying off afterwards. I seem to have a cold now but I think that's a hazard of swimming. Two semi-peaceful things: swimming and yoga.

Tonight I tagged along with my friend to a "Twelfth Night" party. Who knew it was the twelfth day of Christmas? And on that day, people dress up and can do anything they want. At my friend's friend's party that meant men dressing up as women, lots of coal like makeup on faces, Celtic music on instruments such as the tuba, violin, accordion, etc. Lots of dancing in their tiny house. Great fun. At one point I was in a group dance and at the end you spin and spin with your partner. I've never been so dizzy and literally couldn't stand up I'd lost my equilibrium. Down to the floor I went. I've never been that dizzy! "Our first casualty!" they said. But I was fine after a few minutes. Note to self: don't spin and spin in the middle of the road. I thought It was in pretty good shape (swimming, yoga, et al) but the dancing, for only I think 10-minutes had me a huffing. I loved it though. I was smiling like a, like a person who was smiling. It's rare for me to be able to get outside of myself like that. Excellent.

Auld Lang Syne and such like that there

Happy New Year! Yee haw. I did manage to stay up until midnight but only because I was reading People Magazine's annual "Half their size" issue. I was at a friend's but she and I both got tired. I never could stay up late, even when I was a youngin.

2006. This is the year that I turn 40. I will not go on about that now, as you will be hearing about that ad nauseum in blog spots to come.

Jean Vanier, I love him I do. If you don't know him, he started L'Arche, those great worldwide houses where both the mentally challenged and non-mentally challenged live together. He was being interviewed on CBC Radio this afternoon (pre-recorded I'm sure). When he started L'Arche,he says, he never thought about being this guy called to this. It simply was, he said, if he was going to follow Christ it simply was what he was to do.

He gets the Christ-idea, me thinks. I don't mean that to sound arrogant or whatever, but that's what Christ is all about me thinks

Billy Bragg is a cool British folk singer. Along with Wilco, he's done a couple of CDs with lyrics by Woody Guthrie. Woody Guthrie was a good ole lefty folk singer guy. I have a few favourites on the CD, Mermaid Avenue, but since I'm sticking to the Christ theme this New Year's Day, I'll share a few lyrics from "Christ for President." It's got great music too, download it if you get a chance.

"Let's have Christ our president. Let us have him for our king. Cast your vote for the carpenter that you call the Nazarene.

"The only way we can ever beat those crooked politician men is to run the money changers out of the temple and put the Carpenter in.

"It's Jesus Christ our president. God above our king with a job and a pension for young and old . .


"Every year we waste enough to feed the ones who starve. We build our civilization up and we shoot it down with wars."

"But with the Carpenter on the seat away up in the capital town. The USA would be on the way prosperity bound."

I love that there song. It sounds better when you hear the music with it.

Oh no, says my fan base of 6, is she becoming all religious? No, no, no. I'm too cynical (realistic?) for all of that. But Christ seems to be like a cool lefty Jewish guy who could make some nice things out of wood.

I still don't like the pope, never fear. Perhaps after Benny kicks off they can put in a new pope - a Jewish, disabled black lesbian. That may increase membership in the Catholic Church but what do I know.

Happy happy. Find me a man, would ya?