Little Crystal Apple

My mom and I were at the Ohio Thrift store yesterday for their monthly half price event. I love going to that store. It relaxes me. I can browse through the shoes looking for new ones, or through the mugs and housing wares looking for special things. We found two pretty mugs with giraffes that were made in Japan and were very artistic and had comfortable handles and even though neither myself or my mom need any mugs at all, I had her buy them and someday I will take them home. :)

I love looking through the sweaters the most. This store makes sure that they are all facing the same way on the rack and are color coded, so I can begin at the beginning of one aisle and flip quickly through the sweaters, looking for my mom and myself. I throw things to her to try on and make my own pile. Usually sticking to brands I recognize and know would have been expensive new. My mom got 7 sweaters (one her first cashmere) yesterday and I got one. But earlier this vacation time I've gotten 5, so only 1 for me is good.

When I was in the small stuff section, I came across a small crystal apple. I usually don't collect apple things but I have one really pretty glass apple paperweight, also from the goodwill, with little bubbles in it. My students would come over to my desk and admire it. (Luckily no one threw it, as it would have been a weighty projectile.) Little apple trinkets always remind me of being a teacher and make me feel a little fuzzy inside. I picked it up and admired it. If it were 90 cents like the paperweight had been I don't think I would have hesitated, but it was 2.92 and not on sale. It also might be considered unnecessary clutter, which my dear husband has trained me not to accumulate. But I held it for a while and thought about it, and pictured it on a shelf in my classroom (currently nonexistent) looking shiny and meaning, a teacher is here. There must be parts of me that still want to teach.

Extreme Home Makeover

Fred and I watch Extreme Home Makeover on most Sundays. Usually it involves a family who has gone through or is going through something tragic, like incurable illness in a family member, or recent widowhood, or a serious injury in the line of duty that requires a member to be in a wheel chair but the house is not accessible. Also, the family is usually doing something exceptional. Like a member supporting others in a similar distressful situation, or caring for kids in the neighborhood. The Home Makeover team comes in and tears down the house and builds another, perfectly suited to the family's needs.

In the families where there is some sort of community outreach going on, the home makeover team will usually create the house with the service in mind. Such as a large kitchen for someone who cooks for others, or a big clubhouse for someone who has the neighborhood kids over for afternoon homework or play time.

For the families doing an outreach, when they come into the house that has been made especially for ease of continuing that outreach, the responses are different than the houses that are just for the family to enjoy. They come into the house so overjoyed, not for themselves, but for all of the people they will now be able to serve.

Last time I watched, a woman who has a muscular degenerative disease who is in a wheelchair and her son with extreme vision problems, both cook for and serve the kids of the community. She makes sure that they have enough to eat and cooks lots of dinners (One time she cooked Christmas dinner for 480 people from a tiny unaccessible kitchen without enough room for her to rotate her wheelchair.) and provides them a safe place to work on homework or hang out after school, most importantly she tells them that she loves them. I say most importantly because as a teacher, there were many times where I felt that that was the most important thing I was doing. Letting kids know that I love them. Lots of kids don't hear that very often. Parents are stressed, overworking, or just don't realize the importance of it, so I would do it as often as I could. The kids appreciated it so much.

As soon as she was let into her brand new house she was overwhelmed that she could have so much room and such a great kitchen and storeplaces for gifts and supplies, not so she could relax but so that she could serve the kids so much more efficiently.

I told Fred that this was her thing. It was what she lived for. I wonder what my thing is. What am I living for? Who am I serving? Who am I giving the position above my own concerns and cares and spending myself for?

I don't think anything or anybody right now, but I would like to seek the Lord to find out what that is for me. I'd rather not it be nothing.

When I was teaching I so enjoyed being there for the kids, letting them know I cared for them, loved them, and felt that it was my small something. (I didn't love the actual teaching part as much.) Now I have no something.

Tenor, Pregnancy, Teacher

I am a tenor in my barbershop women's chorus, and I have been listening to the two new songs that we will be doing this year. Unforgettable and the song for Cheers, (where everyone knows your name). If you don't know about barbershop music. There are four parts, but they have different names than in choral singing. There is the tenor (above the lead), the lead (the soprano in choral music, singing the melody), the baritone and the bass.

The tenor part can be quite high and when warmed up and singing with the chorus, others have told me that how high I can get is impressive :) But here in my own home, singing with the learning tapes is so high it always gives me a headache, and I can't do it for long. So, I just realized that I need to practice along with my part, but an octave down and then it is comfortable. That is what I have been doing for the last half hour. But it took a while to realize it, so I have a headache from the first 15 minutes.

I could be pregnant. My boobs feel different, a little fuller and bigger, and my poops have been strange - insistent and frequent. I have read online about the boobs thing, but not the poops. (Sometimes I hope that no one is actually reading this as I am honest to the point of embarrassment, so if you have read it, no need to comment.) But there is no need to buy a pregnancy test yet, as my ovulation time could have been as late as the 24th and you need to be 10-12 days past your ovulation time for any kind of accuracy in the tests. So I am hoping and waiting.

I'm not sure what to write about most days, my life is not that exciting right now. Nothing about funny things my toddler said or did, no anxiety about not getting enough sleep with a baby around, no job to stress over or to tell little stories about, no crazy maniacal principal who has it out for me, no angry parents to e-mail me, (not that there were many of those when I was a teacher).

I was thinking for the last week or so about the "exit interview" I forced on the assistant superintendent of the Mountain View Schools, when I was let go (not tenured). The unfair part of it was that there was no consideration given to the many people who thought I was a great asset to the school district. The previous principal (who had been there my first year), the parents who loved me, the other teachers who heard so many complimentary things about me from our fellow students, the opinions of the mentor teachers who had observed me over and over for both years, none of them were considered. The only person who mattered was the principal, who ran the school and staff with fear and unreasonable behaviors and lies. Even though the district heard from the teachers many times about her behavior, it didn't matter to them, they kept her for the second year and listened to her in the face of all of the positive things being said about me. It was so unreasonable.

So, I had been rehearsing and ruminating how I would have expressed all of that if I'd been able to think that clearly at the "exit interview". At breakfast on Saturday (Fred and I went to our favorite place, the Country Gourmet on El Camino. We go there every Saturday and split a breakfast.) I told Fred my thoughts (he has a way of injecting sense into my concerns and making me look at things differently.) He said that it could have been a few things. One, they were just lazy and did not want to look into things fully or Two, they were idiots or Three, they wanted to close their eyes to the truth and put their hats in with the principal (whom they seem to like, at least enough to keep her for an additional year.) I did feel better after he said that. It really had nothing to do with me.

I am able to get a lot of exercise this year having my days free and keep my stress down which could help with the getting pregnant thing.

Hymns

I really appreciate the hymns I have learned over the years in the Lord's Recovery. As I sing with the christian group that I am currently meeting with I get frustrated with the overall shallowness and lightness of the hymns we sing. I look at the kids standing with their families, some looking frequently at the clock and others singing with the same gusto as their parents. But most, showing the same lack of interest as most everyone around them. Church is more of a chore I think. It is what good Christians are supposed to do on Sunday. It makes them fulfill the spiritual duty to the family. It must add a little meaning. But I wonder what the kids will walk away with. How is a true relationship with God established?

As Fred and I look back on our being raised in the Recovery (I suppose I can go into all of that history at a later date.) we see how much stress was put on our inner life relationship with the Lord. Seeking Him daily on our own. Praying through Bible verses every day. Memorizing. Praying together, seeking the leading of the Lord as we pray and building on the prayers of others, and what I appreciate the most, Singing Hymns.

I would say the majority of the benefit came from being in the midwest and in the high school and college trainings with Tutus Chu. But not just Titus, there were many other brothers. Fred calls them our heroes. Brothers who have given their lives to serve the Lord, constantly seeking and trying to teach us how to seek as well. He can't see the heroes that the kids in our christian church have.

This morning we were singing a song about how things change and are never the same, which is true for the initial salvation experience, but for second generation kids, raised in Christianity, nothing ever changes, and this is the kind of song that makes it stick out to them how much things are really the same, whether or not they are interested in church, or attentive in their high school gatherings. The more you sing about things changing and never being the same, yet live out sameness, the less real God can be to you. They must grow up to think that they were just lied to and pursue christianity only to the level that will please their parents, or just leave.

I am concerned for my own kids, how Fred and I can give them what they need to have a relationship with Christ. One that is real and true and can last them through the happy as well as the frustrating times; without them being raised in the same unique Christian environment we were raised in. I can see that it won't come from what we are experiencing now. Can we be their heroes?

My dad was one of my heroes. I could tell that whenever he needed to say something to my sisters or me that he would pray about it first. His words came from God to us. I think that many times he was instructed not to speak at all, so he just kept praying.

Anyways, Fred and I are preparing to lead our OAG (One Another Group, basically small group meeting) this week and I am picking some hymns from my old hymnal that are on the topic of trusting God. No problem, since there is a whole section on comfort in trials and trusting in God. I hope that we can be the heroes to those in our group and that we can be proper heroes for our kids.

Movie Weekend

We've been seeing movies!

We saw New Moon. How many husbands are there who are ready to take their wives to see New Moon??? Not so many, I have the best one. He thought it was a little long and whiny, but I liked it, about as much as the book, which was the slowest of them all and more of a necessary lead in to books three and four. There were about 15 of my students there yelling each time Jacob removed his shirt.

We saw North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief at the Stanford Theater. Very fun. I haven't seen either of them and it was so great to see them on the big screen as my first time. North by Northwest was especially suspenseful and well done.

Then today we saw The Blind Side. Wow. That was really heart warming, and a true story. During the credits there were pictures of the real family with Michael Oher. I loved Sandra Bullock's character. I aspire to be like that someday, strong and fighting for what I think is right, in spite of any obstacles.

Thanksgiving

We kept little kitty out of the bedroom last night to see how my nose and face would do. The poor soul meowed almost all night long. (Fred said, my head was under the pillow, but I did dream about cats and there was a lot of meowing going on.) I did wake up well and was able to go back to sleep after getting up around 6:30, which I couldn't do the day before because of the sneezing and blowing of the nose.

We had a lovely thanksgiving dinner this evening, friends from our church, who are on weight watchers. I am going to visit a meeting on Saturday to see what I think, of course I wouldn't officially join until after the baby is born. Who knows how long it will take to get pregnant, but you shouldn't diet while trying to get pregnant or the body will think that there is not enough food to go around. So I am enjoying the periodic small bowl of Haagen Daz.

I also tried a Skinny Cow treat tonight, a yummy ice cream sandwich. Wow. So good.

The couple have a daughter who is 10, and she and I talked for a long time at the end of the evening. I do so love talking to kids and they love being listened to, so it was fun. I do miss kids. So much. I keep praying for direction in what I should be doing now, we'll see. I was looking online for a job and there is basically only one and it is about 2 hours a way at a private school, which would mean that I would get paid much less than public school. Hmmmm.

Allergies

Ack, have been experiencing allergies for about 2 months now and have no idea where they are coming from. The pattern is that from the minute I wake up in the morning, my nose is draining clear fluid, actually dripping from my nose, and I am sneezing, big body temperature raising, loud sneezes. My whole face itches as well, on the inside. After a few hours my stuffy nose clears out and I am okay for the rest of the day, decidedly better outside the apartment than in, with a little periodic sneezing. Other days the allergies seem to go on all day and I feel exhausted by the sneezing.

Was talking to my friend Amy this morning, on a lovely walk around the Stanford Dish, what a great view of the bay and lots of houses and trees and buildings, and she said that she had allergies going on 4 months and when she went to see a respiration specialist, his first question was whether or not she had cats and whether or not they slept in the room with her. Then his advice was to not allow them in the room anymore and to use the nasal rinse stuff for a month and see how things became.

She found herself dramatically better.

How I hate to admit allergies to my dear little kitty, whom I love, with all of her "I don't really like you that much" ways.

When we are about to fall asleep kitty walks up on the bed and looks for the crook of my left arm and then first puts each of her feet chilly on my arm, and then, Fred says, like a truck making the back up beeping sound, backs her butt up into my face. I usually try to adjust her body so that her side is in my face instead of her butt, but usually wake up with her butt in my face.

COULD THIS BE THE PROBLEM???

Will try to ban her for a while and see if there is an improvement. Will feel immensely guilty and sad as her plaintive mewing self sits outside of the door. Alas.

4 days!!

4 days since I last wrote. AAAAAAAAAAhhhck!

Have I turned into a person who will say, "I tried the blogging thing, but didn't keep it up, oh well".

It has become sort of complicated, I don't know who's reading it, and do they expect that it is a journal or something else. Did I start it to be a journal? How come I never have something to write and also keep conveniently forgetting to write anything? Am I worried that it will be boring? Am I worried that I might begin to write a book and then have the idea stolen?

Welp, these may all be excuses, I am going to recommit to writing daily .

Hilarious episode of the Simpsons on Sunday. Marge was offering Oreo's and milk to her mommy and baby playgroup and the moms freaked out at the fat and corn syrup and cow cancer that she was trying to feed their children. Marge is told that until she can make more healthy foods, she is banned from the snack rotation! (Gasp.) You can imagine her distress. So she takes the family to Wellness Foods (Whole Foods) and they get lots of very healthy stuff for 790 dollars, and then when they scan the forgotten blueberries, it goes up to 830 dollars. (I can fully relate.) So, she prepares muffins for the playgroup, but when she says that she did not need to grease the pan because she used nonstick, they freaked out about that, and promptly hijacked an ambulance in front of the house to take them all to the hospital. (Marge can't take it anymore and finds Homer's forbidden snack drawer and they engorge themselves together.)

It made me think, how crazy have we become???

I was also reading the Skinny Bitch diet book, basically they get you to become a vegan in a matter of 50 pages. If I think that every food is evil except for vegetables, how can I eat enough to be healthy. Then I was looking at some advice books about how to eat when you are pregnant, and there is lots of milk and meat protein, and carbs in that diet. Way more than I eat right now.

So, I am trying not to become a crazy person. (Stay tuned to see whether or not I succeed in this!!)

Hmmm

Not so sure what to write about today. But here I am at the library and for some reason our internet access is not available at home, and I need to get out of here before 3:00 ish (ack I have 15 minutes!) because that is when my little middle schoolers get here.
A lot of my previous students come into the library after school and they tell me that they miss me and give me a hug and I ask them about math class and realize that I miss them too, middle schoolers in general, and then I feel sort of bad. Not really really bad, just sort of, because I think things worked out the way they did for a reason and I don't want to be teaching really.
There were so many things that frustrated me about teaching that would still be there if I were. And, I am enjoying my sleep in time, and seeing Fred in the mornings, and reading lots of books, and pursuing my interests, and thinking about writing, and trying to get pregnant. I am appreciating the whole lack of stress that is existing right now. But I do miss those kids, and being needed, and appreciated, and important.
I went into Peet's Coffee this morning to get a latte after dropping Fred off at work and before going to my Women's Bible Study. As I was in line, I saw a mother who is on the Mountain View Board of Education, who I had spoken to a few times in the past two years. She had told me how many positive things she had heard about me from other parents and teachers, always very nice. I waved to her and then noticed that she was sitting with the Superintendent. Akward! He waved with a hint of recognition as well. What do I say? I said nothing, and that was best, but what would have been the right thing to say? "Hi, obviously unemployed, thanks so much!" "Did you get a chance to read the really long letter I wrote to the district about my joyous year dealing with the principal you hired and chose to keep on?" I hope he did read it. It all makes me a little nervous feeling, heart beating faster, even though all of my ties to the district have been severed, I've been banned. What a hard year it was last year. I still am feeling mishandled, mistreated, misunderstood.

The biannual clothes switcheroo

I finally decided to change out my closet. I took out all of the t-shirts and summery skirts and traded them out, into the big blue Wal-Mart bin, for the winter sweaters and long sleeve T's.
Ah, the amount of dust or whatever I am allergic to in clothes sitting in a bin for 6 months was making me sneeze about 100 times an hour. My overall body heat rose and I had to open a window and change into a short sleeve shirt. My nose became bright red and is now chapped. Let alone the amount of stress when I am deciding which clothes should stick around and which should go to the Goodwill. Did the clothes going to the Goodwill mostly originate there anyways? Should I shop there less??? Should I take the time to pick out the still valuable clothes and take them to a consignment store to try to make a little back? There was that one time that I painstakingly washed and placed on hangers a ton of what Fred calls "teacher clothes" to take to a consignment store and they were all rejected! Rejected! Maybe I am scarred deep down from the cold hearted treatment of that fateful day. Or maybe I'm a little lazy.
I wonder how the percentage compares of clothes that I buy at a real store going to the Goodwill and clothes I purchased at the Goodwill going back. I wonder why giving clothes away makes me feel guilty? If I haven't worn it in a few years, it must not be that interseting to me and it should go. This I have learned from multiple home organizational shows.
Maybe someday I will have enough closet space to put all of my winter clothes, and summer clothes, and old clothes I feel guilty getting rid of all together. Ahhhhhhh.

Plot

The more I read about becoming a writer, the more I feel that it is an unattainable goal.

I am currently reading a book called "How to tell a Story". I give myself a week to read the book I am on, to have a goal, and that means 40 pages a day of this 200 page book. I walk to the library so that I am in a different location and can make myself just concentrate on reading. When I am at home I can watch TV or read for enjoyment, or exercise, but it is hard to concentrate on non-fiction at home. This is how I got through the last book, "Reading like a Writer", which was also excellent and scary at the same time.

You need a lot of discipline to be a writer and I'm not sure how much of that I have. I also sometimes procrastinate when writing my blog, and put it off, sometimes until the next day, does this mean I don't enjoy writing???? Maybe. Or I might be lazy overall!

I was praying this morning for some sort of inspiration of what to do with this inbetween time, between working and being a mom, when I have time. I like the daily exercising a lot and the pleasant walks, but I feel that there should/could be something more. So I asked the Lord to let me know what that might be.

I wanted to quote something from my current library book into my blog, just so I don't forget it:

Once upon a time, something happened to someone, and he decided that he would pursue a goal. So he devised a plan of action, and even though there were forces trying to stop him, he moved forward because there was a lot at stake. And just as things seemed as bad as they could get, he learned an important lesson, and when offered the prize he sought so strenuously, he had to decide whether or not to take it, and in making that decision he satisfied a need that had been created by something in his past.

This is the plot for 90% of the stories ever told.

I think over the years of my reading tons of books, I never really figured this out (although I was suspicious that something must be going on, I would get to the middle of a romance and then wonder what would draw them apart before they got back together and how would they each grow as a result of that). Maybe I need a writing class or something.

Fall Days

I was walking over to the library today, listening to the crunch of red leaves under my shoes (so glad that in this ideal climate there is some autumn for me to enjoy) and remembering a great fall day from my past.
It was my first date with Fred. We had been talking on the telephone for hours a few times each week, he in Columbus and me in Chicago. We had just finished high school and met over the summer at some church functions. He had asked me if he could write to me and I said not unless the intention was that we were going to get married, otherwise it would be a waste of time. (Crazy, hey) He said that was fine and so we started our 5 year long distance courtship.
I got lots of advice that we were too young (I was 18 and he was 17 when we met) that we would grow away from each other and should not be making this kind of a commitment at this age. That we would be different people when we were 25 than we were at 18.
My first visit to him was a day late in October, when fall was in full swing in Columbus Ohio. Back then a round trip ticket from Chicago to Columbus was $44 on AmericaWest Airlines. I got into Columbus at 9 am and was scheduled to leave at 9 pm. Fred picked me up in his red Nissan Pulsar NXSE (which I was so enamored by) and we drove to the Ohio State campus. We walked and held hands and talked as our feet crunched through the leaves and the scent of fall wafted up around us. I'm not sure where we ate that day, or what else happened, but as we were waiting in the top level of the parking garage for me to go back to Chicago, we decided that we would get married as soon as we finished college. A perfect fall day.

Exercise #10 - Inside a waiting room

Write a piece that takes place in a waiting room.

I wonder if life is not really a waiting room. Some waiting to see what they will appear as in a next life, a cockroach or a rich man. Some waiting for their planet with 21 virgins. Others waiting for their planet with their blond wives and myriad of children. Others waiting to see if they were good enough or holy enough to get to heaven. Others waiting to see if they were actually waiting for anything, or if they were supposed to be doing something other than waiting. Some, deciding that there is nothing to wait for, but pushing the waiting away and doing other things while they are here. Some, righteously waiting to enter the pearly gates and to see who doesn't make it. Others sacrificing their lives to give one more person the option of choosing salvation. Some waiting to get to see their lost relatives or famous historical people. Others waiting to ask God some important questions. Some waiting for butterflies, others for golf games. Others waiting to see if whatever is coming was worth the wait.

Exercise #9 - A House and a Scent

Back to the No Experience Necessary Writer's Course exercises.

Write a piece that contains a house and a scent.

I was a Realtor for about 2 years back in 2003-2004. It was an interesting change from being a teacher. I would sit at my desk and listen to the silence, appreciative that the bathroom was only a few steps away and available whenever I wished. Things now went according to my own schedule, I could come into the office if I wanted to, or not. I could go to the Realtor's house tour on Tuesdays if I wanted, or not.
All of this "or not" business helped out a lot when I was recovering from chemo, but I actually did not like all of the freedom. I was used to having to be at the school at a certain time with a room full of kids fully dependent on my being present and prepared. I was also used to starting at a specific time and ending at a specific time.
Not so as a realtor. I could start each day whenever, but if I wanted to make any money, I had to be very available. If I had a buyer interested in looking at homes, I had to be able to meet him during lunch to show the house, or during a weekend day or evening to show newly listed homes. If I did not make myself available, the house could sell and my buyer could miss out on that particular opportunity. If I had a house listed and another realtor brought a prospective buyer through and wanted to present an offer, I had to be available at the fax machine to get the offer, take it to my sellers and get a response, maybe within a day. What if I was about to eat dinner with the family, or go to an evening movie? If I got a call, whatever it was might have to be dropped.
Older, more experienced realtors have assistants or partners to help them manage their time and requirements, but a new realtor does not. I hated being at others' beck and call. I would hear my cell phone ring and have no idea what would await. Would a buyer have a question for me about a problem during an inspection? Wonder what would happen if the house were to burn down before they were contractual owners? Would it be a seller wondering why it was taking so long to sell her house? What type of advertising I was doing to move things along? When I would be planning an open house?
Open Houses in Columbus Ohio usually happened on Sunday from 2-4. So that I would not be alone at the open house, I had heard stories of realtors being lured into basements or upstairs rooms and being assaulted, I would usually bring my husband or mother along to keep me company.
After church my dear husband and I would stop at Chipotle or Baja Fresh or Skyline Chili and get a quick bite to eat on the way to the house. I would feel bad because his favorite time of the week was to have family dinner at his parent's house on Sunday afternoons and this week it would have to be forgone again. Then we would stop at some strategic corners near the house and place up the Open House signs. His idea was to put up some balloons on the signs, purchased from the dollar store.
We would open the house and I would stick a pie tin with a cinnamon stick and a little water, in the oven, and turn it to warm. As the cinnamon began to overpower the scent of either the inhabitants of the home or its musty emptyness, we would wait.

Decision

So, with much thought and weighing and internet searching of the differences between mastectomy and lumpectomy with radiation (which I had) and research of the complications of reconstruction, and all my pros and cons, I think I have decided.

This article, which is an interview with Susan Love, of Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book was particularly convincing:

http://health.discovery.com/centers/cancer/breast-cancer/mastectomy-lumpectomy.html

Basically the research shows that over 20 years, with research on thousands of women, the death rate is the same, whichever choice was made, mastectomy or lumpectomy with radiation. In light of this, there seems to be confusion as to why many doctors are still recommending mastectomies.

Yes, the recurrence in a breast that still exists is possible, but with the attention paid to the breasts after breast cancer, that will be found and dealt with before it could spread.

I decided to keep the girls and move on with my life, try to have babies as soon as possible!

Very relieved.

Pros and Cons

Fred and I went to a coffee shop and began to write down the pros and cons of the prospective double mastectomy and reconstruction. We also are going to go to the Breast Cancer Connections location in Palo Alto to the question and answer sessions of another oncologist and then surgeon and then plastic surgeon to get more questions answered.

So far, here are the pros and cons.

Pros:

There will be less than a 1 percent chance of ever getting breast cancer again, if I keep them, it is a 25-30 percent chance of a recurrence.

If I don't get it again, it cannot metastasize to another location. (we don't think it did from the 2004 cancer as there was no lymph node involvement)

Less recurrent yearly worrying at the mammogram, ultra sound times, no more biopsies.

Since pregnancy spikes estrogen, getting pregnant won't increase my chances of a recurrence without breasts.

Cons:

I have a 70% chance of not getting cancer again.

The mastectomy and reconstruction will hurt, probably much more than the regular yearly checking for breast cancer.

Because I've already had breast cancer, the likelihood that I will find it if it reoccurs is high, because my follow ups are thorough.

I can start now trying to get pregnant instead of recently after a big surgery, my body is pretty healthy now.

I can breast feed with my healthy breast.

There will be multiple potential replacements of the implants, they need to be closely monitored (they could deflate or leak) and every 10-20 years there will need to be updates of the surgery.

The length of surgery and recovery duration is at least 6 months, if the expanders and implants have no infections, and that is really the only kind of reconstruction I could get, not having lots of extra stomach fat.

The complications of the skin on the radiated right side is that it might not be as elastic and might not take to the expanders or implants well, plastic surgeons do not like radiated skin.

Because my cancer was a very rare, slow growing, not often metastasizing type (Mucinous), my prognosis may be better than other breast cancer survivor's.

Exercise #8 - Details

I have waited so long to get back to the "No Experience Necessary Writer's Course Book" because I thought this assignment would take too long, but I must be over that.

The best way I can do it is to split it up to about 5 minutes on each sense.

First:

Sights, Sounds, Smells and Tastes that Move me (the beginning of the assignment is to come up with some of these and to list them for about 20 minutes)

Starting with smells:

Fallen leaves in the fall on the Ohio State Campus.

California on a walk.

Fresh cut grass.

Baking chocolate chip cookies.

A crackling fire.

Old library books.

Icy nose-hair freezing, chin numbing winter days.

Fred's face.

My parent's house.

An old friend's choice of bath and body liquid hand soap.

Moving on to Sights:

Bright yellow and red leaves on fall tress.

A sunset on the ocean.

Photos of the landscape of Greece.

A perfect rose inviting my nose.

Lights intertwining the eaves of a gazebo.

Smiles on little children.

My old teddy bear.

Perfectly sharpened new pencils.

My old bedroom.

Now tastes:

Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Thanksgiving dinner, perfect bites.

Apple pie.

Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake.

Mom's Meat Loaf and mashed potatoes.

Hot Apple Cider.

Watermelon or Red Raspberry Bubble Yum.

Hot Chocolate with melting marshmellows.

A perfect diner cup of coffee.

A warmed cake donut from the school cafeteria.

Finally Sounds:

The chattering clattering background in a busy restaurant.

Talking all around me at a large family dinner.

Cricket and frog night sounds.

Keys mistaken for jangling dog tags.

The hum of the wings of a hummingbird in an instant of silence.

The lull in conversation.

The complete silence of the sleep of a strange room.

The spin of a washing machine.

Snoring.

Myself talking when I stop to listen.

Second:

Next part of the assignment is to take about 15 minutes just to let the mind wander and to write anything that moves me, whatever it is.

The danger of the empty mind being the devil's playground.

Feeling my stomach whine and being inexplicably angry that I have to think about diets, even though I'm not hungry or really denying myself.

How nice it is to take a little while to relax all of my facial muscles and to think of nothing.

The thought that it would be nice to take a nap and a bath at the same time and wondering if that would cause me to drown.

The uncertainty of whether or not I could be a good writer and how much struggle and time that would take.

The dynamics of leadership in our christian small group meeting.

Wishing I could be my small cat, how simple her life is, her biggest decision where to nap and who to sit on.

How torturous it is to try to let my mind wander for 15 minutes.

Third:

To use one of the above in whatever way, in a piece of writing.

An old friend's choice of bath and body liquid hand soap.

Fred and I had some friends a while back with whom we coordinated for our Friday night small group college meetings. These included the two of our families creating some sort of dinner and then creating an atmosphere, at either our apartment or their house, where college students felt welcome and we could have some kind of spiritual discussion, singing, bible reading or whatever. It was at the same time relaxed, as we were dealing with college students, who many times were at most interested in some free home cooking and time away from campus, and focused, as we were interested in helping them along in their spiritual lives whatever that would mean.

My friend and I would talk on the phone sometime early in the week and coordinate dinner. She had some specialties that we loved, her monkey bread, sausage bowtie pasta, milky way cake, homemade chicken and noodles, and overall delicious stick of butter type of foods. I usually would cling to an easier spaghetti, bread and salad standard. As we coordinated we would also confide in each other how our lives were going and sympathize and generally were friends. Although sometimes I wondered whether or not it was just proximity that created a friendship. Would we be friends if we didn't coordinate dinner and have our Friday nights together? If not, was there something superficial about the whole thing? Caring for each other by assignment?

When we had the meeting times at her house, she always had Bath and Body Works Cucumber Melon handsoap in her guest half bath on the lower level. I would use it and then take a deep breath as I smelled my hands, appreciating her lack of frugality in her soap choices.

A few years passed, our church went through a split among the members and her family stopped meeting with us. I got breast cancer and she called to let me know that she was thinking about me and as I tried to go a little deeper in the conversation she quickly small talked her way to ending the call. A few more years passed and it turns out that she has left her husband and family and pursued some of her other dreams, and I have no details other than what I've been told.

Cat

I think we found out what heritage our cat is.

We were watching CATS 101 on the animal planet and we saw a cat called the Egyptian Mau (Mau is egyptian for cat). It has green eyes, spotted fur (kitty's fur is not spotted), large ears, and moon shaped eyes, and a tuft of fur near the lower stomach that helps them stretch further and run really fast (which kitty does not get the opportunity to do as she is always in a one bedroom apartment), their body is small and their back legs longer than the front, socially they are not very comfortable around other animals or loud humans and are very aware of noises or movement, which help them not get hurt outside, but indoors make them very skittish and quick to get up and leave when they hear anything, they also have a M shape on their forehead and what looks like eyeliner around the eyes.

Kitty has all of these things, so she must be at least part Egyptian Mau. She is more striped than spotted but everything else fits so well and it is comforting that her craziness is not all our fault and our choice not to get another kitty because she would completely freak out is just because her kind does not like other animals, and when she runs away from any loud noises it is just because that is what she does. Because of her crazy Egyptian Mau genes!

We feel special to have figured her out a little.

Crappy Cancer

So I had a lovely (if you call lots of heartfelt tears lovely) time at the Breast Cancer Connection's Conference today. Interesting speeches and talks with other survivors. I thought a lot about my decision and during a session called "writing your way through cancer", this is what I wrote:

The questioning and wondering and pit of my stomach feeling as I consider the pros and cons of my potential upcoming double mastectomy and reconstruction. Purely for proactive reasons. Technically I'm fine now, right?

Whatever fine really is anyway.

How much do the percentages really mean? 25% - 35% chance of a recurrence over the course of my lifetime. I think about the same fatality rate though, double mastectomy versus the lumpectomy and radiated breast I already have because of the high surveillance that is in place.

How to weigh the pain, recovery, length of time for healing, putting off even longer of pregnancy versus the never ending train of MRIs, Mammograms, Ultra Sounds, painful biopsies and the never ending waiting for calls with results.

Why is the decision all mine?

Can't someone help me weigh?

It feels like a lot of responsibility.

Love CA

So much for trying to write every day, well, I am trying, but not as hard as before and it is becoming more like every other day when it is convenient and I have the time and I'm not tired because it is bedtime.

No word yet on the results of my biopsy on Tuesday.

Basically there are a few options. If it is not cancer, whew, schedule mastectomies in January and be relieved. If it is cancer and the same kind I had before, just move mastectomy up to now, but no chemo or lymph node stuff since it was already done and that was not an aggressive cancer needing chemo anyways. If it is cancer and not the kind I had before, but a crazy angry fast growing kind, move the mastectomy up to now and have chemo. But I do already have a wig thank goodness, and know what to expect and to ask for lots of drugs. Not fun though. But on pins and needles waiting for the call back which may be this afternoon or not until Monday.

I have been loving my 30 minute practically daily walks.

The fall and spring in California are my most most favorite times. It is currently fall, a beautifully long lasting fall. About 1/3 of the trees here change color, so there are splashes of yellow, orange and red, but here the leaves don't fall off very quickly because the weather is so mild, no quick frosts in the beginning of the season, or gusty winds. I get to enjoy them for a long time. Also, there are roses in all stages of bloom that I get to smell on my circuitous route of my neighborhood.

The spring is amazing. It starts in February (when most of the rest of the country is in the throes of a dismal rough winter) and the trees become knobby and start to bud. Annuals are also already coming out and the scene is becoming flowery. In February! It only gets better through March, April, May and then a slow progression into a mild summer.

The summer here only has a few smattered weeks of really hot weather, and it is made up for with the cooler nights when you can keep your fan running all night and then close up the shades in the day to keep the cool in.

It is a little unpredictable here though, even though there may be two days in a row (or 5-10) that all have almost identical highs and lows the actual feeling outside is very different day to day. It can feel really cold one day and then much warmer the next even though technically the weather is the same.

You also have to layer here, what is right for the early morning and later evening is never the same as what is right for the middle of the day.

My favorite favorite place I've ever lived! Hope to stay here a long time, but even if I don't and kids come and plans change and we move back to a midwesterly place, I am enjoying it now.

Biopsy (Ouch)

So, yesterday I had the suspicious area that my cancer doctor found in June biopsied.

It was a core needle biopsy, which is more conclusive than a fine needle biopsy because it takes out more flesh for the pathology department to pathologize.

Fred and I went to the drugstore to get a Valium and I took it about 40 minutes before the biopsy was to take place, we also stopped at Marshalls to pick up a lavender eye pillow to wear so I would not have to look at the huge needle entering my boob.

I laid on the table and Fred waited in the waiting room (the surgeon said that a husband once, holding his wife's hand fainted while watching a procedure and Fred is not fond of needles). My eye pillow firmly over my eyes and my hand clasping that of a lovely nurse named Katie, I waited skittishly (not sure if the Valium was working) for the numbing needle. It came with a pinch and a growing burning sensation. The surgeon asked if I could feel a pin prick and I could, so she added more lidocaine to the area. Then she nipped a piece of skin off and pushed the large needle into the supposedly numbed area. I heard a staple gun sound and did not have too much pain. That is the noise it makes when they clamp out a bit of your flesh. The second time (I thought there would only be one time, alas) it hurt and I hunched my shoulders up and said "ouch" loudly and wondered aloud if this would be the last time.

(This seems to be the time that all of the niceness leaves the surgeons and they begin to hard talk to you about whether or not we want this all to happen again or if they can just finish. I know because it happened yesterday and the last time I got traumatically biopsied in 2004, when I wanted them to stop too, but even more did not want it to happen again.)

It was not the last time, the third time did not hurt but the fourth time did. A lot. Imagine an insect inside of your flesh taking a big bite out of the inside of your very sensitive nipple. That is what it felt like. I was crying by then and felt all sweaty. Fred came in and comforted me and then I got dressed and left.

The surgeon said that her patients said that they thought the biopsy was more painful than surgery. I think that is only because you are awake for the biopsy and know what is happening and can feel pain. The after part was fine. Of course I am not touching the area at all, but I am not feeling anything. I took a few advil yesterday just in anticipation, but don't think I needed it. I think the surgeon just wants me to get surgery and that is why she said that. I am suspicious of her motives.

I am looking for a good surgeon and plastic surgeon and getting names from people, I don't want to question the motives or the skills of the person who will actually do the double mastectomy in January as I do the one I saw yesterday.

I was reading on a breast cancer discussion site about what the expander situation is like. It sounds pretty painful for many, so am a little nervous.

I should know the results of the biopsy by Friday or Monday at the latest.

Brainsmush

I decided to challenge myself a little during these days when I am in full control of my time and sometimes don't make the best choices for myself.
I started a book called "Reading like a Writer" and decided to read the book in a week, that would come out to 55 pages a day, not too hard, I thought I read about a page a minute. After 40 pages and what turned out to be an hour I decided that it would have to be maybe a two week read and that my brain was so smushy that I could barely write anything in my blog, which I have to do at the library because our laptop is with Fred at work.
I was also trying to get all of this done before 3 so that I wouldn't inadvertently bump into any of my former students at the ever popular local library that they all frequent right after school. It must have been a half day at school though because there have been little ones and medium ones around since I got here and I did see one student. It went well, she said hi.
The book is really good, the author loved reading as a child and all of the way through schooling, masters and PhD and has written a lot, but I am a little intimidated by it.
How to master the wonderful sentence? I am not over wanting the process of writing to be quick and easy and to roll off of my fingers and out of my brain perfect and needing no work. It doesn't seem like that is how writing is at all. So much thought needs to go into every word and reading needs to be word by word to appreciate the author's thought process. Are my thoughts that deep, can they be? Do I want to spend so much time on each word, is writing tedious? Obviously this blog is not because I just write as fast as I can type and then barely re-read what I've written and just hit "publish post" with barely a glance at the "save now" option. Why would I save without publishing, do I need to think about what I am writing??
So, I don't yet. But I'd love to become great and have readers respond with awe as they read my work.
Having the biopsy tomorrow, chose the core needle biopsy, the more traumatizing of the ones offered but the most conclusive just short of an excisional biopsy. All of the doctors think that it is nothing and even look confused that I want to pursue anything since the MRI and the Mammogram and the UltraSound all have shown no cause for concern. We'll see.

Carmel

Fred and I would like to live in Carmel, at least as a vacation home, with our real home to be in Palo Alto, when we grow up.

We'd like a lovely cottage on the ocean with large windows facing the beach so we can watch the sun set. Those are about 2 million, so it might take a while. (The house in Palo Alto would be about 2 million as well, so it might take a great while! And of course you need a house to live in before you can buy a vacation home.)

We walked quickly down a side street as the sun quietly decided to dip into the ocean. The golden hour making the trees look a little more beautiful. "It wasn't supposed to set yet" I told Fred, even though he had predicted that it would set at exactly this second and I had wanted to stop at the small grocery store to buy some ginger ale to calm my stomach from my overdose of dark chocolate from the candy store. "It isn't set yet, you aren't supposed to look directly into the sun as it sets, you are supposed to wait until it goes down and the look at the colors of the sky it leaves behind" he said trying to console me. I wasn't in the mood to be consoled "Yes you are supposed to look directly at the sun until it sets, seeing it the whole time" I said.

We made it while there was a beautiful tall stretch of bright orange meeting the green blue of the ocean and a periwinkle blue sky overhead. As we watched the orange turn to yellow and the sky darken shade by shade, we sat on a halved wooden log and discussed lots of everything and nothing, important in its forgetableness.

Lovely weekend in Carmel, and back in time for the last day of the weekend (Sunday, we left on Thursday evening) so we can feel rested before the week begins.

I decided to have a biopsy of the suspicious area, either a fine needle biopsy (comfortable procedure) or a core needle biopsy (more painful and traumatizing, but at least I know what to expect and the lump is right next to the skin, so not a lot of really deep digging into the flesh of the breast) and will schedule in Monday, so that I can wait for the whole mastectomy crazy until the turn of the new year so I can save on the yearly minimum requirement of the insurance company. Otherwise the whole procedure will begin this year and end next year and I will have to pay a thousand or two for each year instead of just the one year.

Tears

I found out that the surgeon requested to me by a friend is "out of network".

Do you know what that means??

It means that, for example if the entire bill for all of the services (surgery, reconstruction) came to 10,000 dollars but the insurance company decided they would pay 5,000 for it (if you've ever looked at an insurance company's explanation of benefits that is not at all unlikely), I would have to pay the 20% of the covered part to the insurance company as well as the 5,000 dollar bill that would remain as unpaid by the insurance company and belong to me as the patient.

Can you believe that? And there is no way I would know how much that bill would be until the services were complete, so if something unexpected came up, my portion of the bill would rise and rise with no cap.

So, I guess surgeons like that are only for rich people, which I am not.

So, I continue my search for a surgeon and hope for things to move along quickly, as I am putting off the "starting to try to have kids time" until I now recover from the surgery.

Cancer Sucks

I got that embroidered in a nice script by a friend of my mom on a fitted pink v-neck t-shirt last week. It looks lovely and is probably surprising when it is read.
But it is so SO true!
I am not sure how much I've written about cancer in my blog. I do try not to think about it unless it is a current concern, which it has not been that much in the last 5 years. But it is becoming so now, so I am going to write.
I got cancer in 2004. I was about to turn 29, had a small lump, and an excisional biopsy (meaning they cut open and remove the lump as opposed to a core needle biopsy, where they put in a huge gigantic needle and extract an amount of tissue, or a fine needle biopsy, where they put in a smaller more comfortable needle and take a little amount of tissue) because the lump was hard to discern in an ultrasound, and the other two kinds of biopsies are performed with and guided by an ultrasound. After the removal of the lump, and the discovery that it was indeed cancer, the surgeon had to do another surgery to take a larger area and make sure it had negative margins (no cancer in it), and also to check the lymph nodes in my armpit area to see that the cancer had not spread. They thought there was no spread.
I had had a second opinion clinic of doctors before the surgery to determine whether I should get a lumpectomy (which just removes the lump and not the breast) or a mastectomy (which removes the whole breast). My take after that clinic was that a lumpectomy was good enough and with radiation, my likelyhood of getting cancer again was the same as any other woman.
Turns out that that is not true. The fatality rate might be the same but the recurrence rate is not the same at all.
I have 1% more likelyhood every year after I had breast cancer to get a recurrence. It caps off at about 25-35 percent. WOW. If I get a double mastectomy, my likelyhood of recurrence is less than 1%.
I watched "Why I wore Lipstick to my Mastectomy", wherein a 27 year old woman gets breast cancer and is advised by multiple doctors, some to get a lumpectomy and to keep what she can and others to have a mastectomy. One of the doctors in the movie said "Why hit it with a feather when you can hit it with a hammer." She decided to get the mastectomy, has two kids now and is doing fine.
I met a person in my bible study who got cancer at 28 and decided on a double mastectomy and reconstruction, she is happy with that decision and is doing well, about to have her second child.
I have been thinking about these things in the last few weeks and talking to people and doing a lot of reading on reconstruction techniques. After feeling like I was getting a punch in my stomach looking at online pictures of post mastectomy cancer survivors without reconstruction yet (two huge scars across a shrunken area which should have had breasts) and studying a lot of reconstructed breasts, I can say that I have thought a lot about it.
The last 5 years of my life have been yearly mammograms, (which show nothing because the breast tissue in young women is very dense), leading to an ultra-sound, (which always shows some things that are usually nothing and treated as such unless you have already had cancer and then they become maybe somethings ) and then MRI's (which show lots of stuff in everyone) which leads to a recommendation to have a nother MRI in 6 months to remind themselves of what they saw last time and whether anything has changed, and then to a biopsy to check out the suspicious area that they are just not sure about. All of which time I have lived in three different states and had to run my records to every new doctor I go to.
I was so hoping that when that "magic" 5 year mark happened, that my cancer doctor would do a quick check of me and say, all is well, move on and have kids and don't worry anymore.
Last June was that check up and none of that was said. My doctor felt something and requested that I get a mammogram and an ultra-sound. (Where had I heard that before????) After 2 1/2 weeks of agony and waiting I got the tests and the radiologist said that I am fine and should just come back in 6 months or 1 year (Where had I heard that before???) to make sure that nothing had changed.
This was when I realized that it is not just the 5 years after cancer. It is FOREVER. One test after another, one suspicious lump and feeling after another for the rest of my life. There is no "magic" time when worrying ends.
I also still feel that little lump, right in the same area as my previous lump, showing calcifications in the mammogram, that makes me worry.
I then decided to try another doctor, who gave me the statistics on recurrence mentioned above and to seriously think about double mastectomy with reconstruction. A little pain in the present, when I have no kids, or a job and can handle healing, versus a lifetime of suspicious crazyness in my breasts, who have already tried once to kill me.
I think I have thought about it! (It bugged me yesterday when the surgeon I consulted with talked very condescendingly about whether I had thought about it or not.)
I am going to try a consult with another surgeon, hopefully I can get to her this week, as well as see a plastic surgeon. I want it done and over!

Time Change

So, so tired, but if I am going to keep to my goal of writing every day, I can't skip today just because I'm tired.

Got home from Tennessee and Ohio just yesterday. Lovely, lovely trip. Saw my family, went to Target to take family pictures, (did you know Target did that, I didn't, very reasonable when I printed a coupon from online), enjoyed the international contest in Nashville, placed 12th, very respectable and 3 spots higher than last time, when we were 15th, went to the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Went to see a surgeon regarding my lump today. Very interesting. Everyone (the surgeon) is asking me whether or not I've thought enough about my decision about having a double mastectomy and reconstruction, because of course it can't be undone. duh.

What means thought enough about it? I've thought about it for about 3 weeks, how long do you need?

Thinking about getting the breast cancer gene test as well, I guess the insurance companies expect to pay for more, like ovary removal after pregnancy and more extensive surveillance if the gene is present, haven't decided though.

Must go to sleep!

Vegetables

I am beginning to enjoy vegetables.
One of the three things I am charting daily as an activity from the Mindless Reading book in an attempt to make a habit is whether or not I have eaten 5 fruits/vegetables a day.
It is a little more challenging than you might think.
If you eat cereal for breakfast, burger and fries for lunch and then pasta for dinner you maybe have 1 serving of fruits and vegetables in that whole meal.
Notice the amount of vegetables on a plate of food from a restaurant. If it is not a form of potato or an iceburg lettuce salad with one slice of tomato and cucumber there may be no other vegetables.
I have been making weekly journeys to a store here called The Milk Pail, which has very reasonably priced fruits and vegetables, so I don't feel bad buying them. Whenever I step into Whole Foods, I can't convince myself to purchase much because it is so expensive.
A few experiments have been:
Grilling vegetables on our grill pan and having them with a homemade yogurt sauce. I put some greek yogurt with some dried sage, basil, parsley, celery salt, grated garlic and either parmesan cheese or small chunks of whatever cheddar or gouda I have in the fridge. It makes a nice flavorful sauce that has very little fat. (Have you seen how much fat is in Ranch dressing, or how many hard to pronounce things are in Fat Free Ranch dressing?)
I grill red peppers, zucchini, mushroom caps, yellow squash and eggplant, whatever I have on hand. The zucchini and red peppers are the best.
Stir Frying vegetables either green beans or broccoli or green leafy stuff. With a little olive oil and salt and pepper.
Spaghetti Sauce, I always start with a jar of sauce to make sure there are the seasonings I am used to (my favorite right now is the Arribiata sauce from Trader Joes, it is a little spicy) but before putting the jar in, I chop really small, zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms, onions and stir fry them with a tiny bit of olive oil and italian seasoning. I use not too many noodles or whole wheat noodles.
Apples If I am bored of eating plain apples, I peel and chop an apple and put it in a bowl with a teaspoon of sugar and some cinnamon and nutmeg and then microwave it for a minute or two, it makes a quick tasty inside of an apple pie flavor.
Nectarines are really good cut up in a bowl of steel cut oatmeal. I use the 8 minute kind from Trader Joes, it has a nice nutty flavor and texture. They make it 8 minutes by grinding or chopping up the oats very small, which increases their surface area and makes them cook much faster, it is more the look of a cream of wheat cereal, but the taste of oatmeal.
Oven Baking Vegetables, sometimes I chop up lots of vegetables and then bake them in the oven mixing them first with a homemade dijon mustard vinegrette and salt and pepper. They are good cold with or without a little cooked pasta to make it seem like a pasta salad.
Salad is always good too of course!

Exercise #7 - Emptying a bucket

Write a piece in which a man or a woman empties a bucket.

In our bible study this morning, the leader mentioned that God keeps our tears in a jar, remembering our sorrows. I think mine is more of a bucket. Not that my sorrows are so extreme, compared to many other people, but I've certainly cried a lot of tears.
In the prayer request time, I was crying like a baby because I am so uncertain about what is going on with the lump in my breast that my oncologist found, but looked like nothing in the mammogram and ultra sound. I am trying out a new doctor to see if I can get something more conclusive and that will be tomorrow. I also got a suggestion from another young cancer survivor for another doctor and surgeon to try.
There is a verse somewhere that says something like, our sorrows and frustrations are for the building up of other christians. That we suffer for them, so that they may be encouraged in the encouragement that we have received in the Lord.
As I was thinking about a bucket and what it was for and thinking that even though these writing exercises seem to be getting simpler, they are actually getting more thought provoking and challenging, I thought of the Lord.
He has my bucket of tears, from when I woke up with a bad dream as a child and prayed for him to end my fears, to when I broke up with a boyfriend in high school, to when I was diagnosed with Cancer, to now as I think of having children, and hope hope hope that my cancer has not come back, all of my tears are there in that bucket.
All of my experiences both when I have come to seek God for help and when I have choosen not to and tried to figure out things on my own, or even actively turned away from Him because I would not like his decisions, all of the tears from my experiences are stored by him in this bucket.
He can empty the bucket on whomever he wants, watering a dry and thirsty and suffering heart, and that is okay.

Exercise #6 - Hoopies

Write a piece about Hoopies or zazen, or one in which either hoopies or zazen appear. You must of course decide what you want hoopies or zazan to be.

I was teaching fourth grade in a small private Catholic school in Pittsburgh PA. Not the type of Catholic school you might picture in your mind, blond wealthy students in uniform plaid skirts or suit jackets, but a Catholic school in a poor neighborhood, at one time close to being shut down for lack of enrollment, that is now funded privately and allows parents to pay less than 1,000 a year for their children to attend, with siblings at a significant discount and additional scholarship funding available.
My students mostly bought their outfits at Wal-mart or Target, their navy or black pants or skirts and white, navy or black polo shirts and 95 percent of them were on the free/reduced lunch program.
I had a class of 23 wiggly, enthusiastic kids, who I had decided to give a 20 minute afternoon recess to at all costs. The result of my summer of research into behavior and classroom management and the advice of my kindergarten assistant from years before. My school did not give recess other than about 10 minutes attached onto the lunch period that my kids were mostly too full or too excited to take advantage of.
I sat outside on the picnic bench in the sun watching all of my efforts paying off. My kids loving their daily recess and my satisfaction with the sunshine and the few kids who liked to periodically sit next to me and have a chat.
Some of our daily equipment included hula hoops and some girls were flipping them over themselves and the jumping over them sort of like jump ropes. They called this doing hoopies. I was of course too tall to do a hoopie myself. They would count who could do the most the fastest and we had a reigning champion.

Exercise #5 - Something that goes too far

Write a piece in which someone or something goes too far.

We have gone through a lot of phases in our television viewing history. Our first phase was "Friends" every week with a fellow teacher after a spaghetti dinner. Then the "Crocodile Hunter" reruns, "CSI" every week, "Lost" with friends after a spaghetti dinner (I make good spaghetti and for some reason see it as a no work dinner and make it in great quantities for friends.), now reality shows, "So You Think you Can Dance", "Dancing with the Stars", "Project Runway", "America's Next Top Model". For a while we loved "Trading Spaces".
A friend and I would watch it together, or apart and with much phone discussion, every week. We liked most of the designers, but feared Hildy. She usually went a little too far. One episode she was making over a very large master bathroom and staple gunned fake flower heads to all of the walls, as a type of 3-d wall paper.
What we thought was the most crazy was a living room for a lesbian couple with two small children. Hildy painted the walls a maroon color and then slathered them with a gloppy glue and put pieces of hay all over the walls. When asked what would happen when the little toddlers would try to pull the hay off the wall and eat it, she said, "tell them not to", making me think that she had never had children, or spent any time with them at all.
We sat aghast as the room took on the look of a messy barn floor and repeated that, nope if we were ever on the show, we wouldn't want Hildy to be our designer.
She just went too far.

Exercise #4 - Painful Experience

I have been writing the exercises from a book "Writer's Course" as I become a more experienced writer. I am up to Exercise #4. It is:
Think of some of the incidents, events, and experiences in your past that were painful to you, either physically, emotionally or both. Pick one, write it up from beginning to end, be as truthful and accurate as you can not reporting how you felt. Just the incident, step by step, as it happened to you. Prose.

It was the beginning of 2004, the year in which I was to turn 29. My husband and I had moved from Orlando back to Columbus Ohio. He had just finished at a school there for animation and special effects as I had been teaching middle school math. It had been about a year since I had seen a doctor. Nothing was ever wrong with me so I went for long periods of time sometimes, not seeing a doctor. I decided I should have a physical as well as a woman's exam. I called to make an appointment with my husband's family doctor. Everything was routine. He did the pap smear and the breast exam. He said he felt a lump on my right breast and that he wanted me to come in a week after my period was to finish to see if it was still there as things change in the breast in relation to your period.
I drove back a few weeks later and he said he still felt it and gave me a script for a mammogram and an ultra-sound. At only 28 years old, mammograms usually don't show much except dense breast tissue, hence the ultra-sound.
I went to Riverside Hospital and during the ultra sound, a radiologist was called in because the person doing the ultra-sound was confused about something. He came in and had his fingers on the area with the lump and was pressing as his other hand held the paddle looking for the lump on the screen. Everything looked different shades of grey to me. He said "I am feeling it, but I can't see it" a couple times. That it all blended in together.
The surgeon said it was probably nothing, but it would be good to remove it so I wouldn't worry about whether or not it was growing or be anxious over it. I went in for an excisional biopsy. My husband told me that the surgeon had brought out a lump of tissues and showed it to him and my mother-in-law (a cancer nurse) in the waiting room and told them that this was it and it was most likely nothing, but they would have it checked out and that I was fine.
I went home that night with a huge ace bandage wrapped around my chest, but not much pain or discomfort. I slept that night sitting half way up. The next morning (Saturday) we got a call from the Surgeon who said that it was cancer and that I needed to come back in to the hospital.
Things began to move in fast forward for the next 3 weeks or so. I needed a CAT Scan, PET Scan, MRI, Ultra-Sound guided biopsies in three locations to make sure everything else suspicious looking was okay. I went to a second opinion clinic where an all new doctor, surgeon and radiologist looked at all of my charts and information and gave me their opinions.
It was an option for me to get either a mastectomy or a lumpectomy. I got the impression that they thought that the lumpectomy was good enough so I went with that.
I went in for real surgery this time. They inserted dye into the breast so that it would hopefully go to the sentinel lymph node (where they think cancer would go first if it decided to spread to another part of the body. They can remove only that node if they can find it and avoid removing the other ones.) and then put me under and removed the area around where the lump had been as well as took 11 lymph nodes under my right arm.
As soon as I recovered from the surgery, I was to begin chemotherapy. My mother-in-law talked to the doctor about getting me a port (thing they put inside you in the upper chest area that they can insert a needle into and put the chemotherapy as well as take your blood from so that they can avoid using the veins in the arm. After having the lymph nodes removed from the right side, that arm should not be stuck with needles anymore as the lymph fluid is now somewhat restrained.) which they put in, another small surgery. The chemo was to take place once a month for four months. It would happen near a Monday and then I would have 4 weeks to recover until the next injections. I got pretty sick and ended up coming in every day for the week following the injection to get fluids intraveinously. I could hold almost no food or drink down for the week after the chemo.
After the second or third round of chemo my hair began to fall out. I followed some advice and had my hair cut short, from shoulder length to what I call mom length. A short layered cut. A few weeks later I could pull a thatch of my hair right out with no effort and it was time for me to follow some more advice. I went to a friend and she buzzed my head.
A few weeks earlier I had gone to a wig store to get a color match for a wig. It was to be a bob with bangs, similar to my hair before cancer. It was 250 dollars, which was a little expensive for us. My husband's brother and sister-in-law bought the wig for me and I had a very realistic wig.
After the chemo ended, I began radiation. I needed to drive to the hospital every weekday for 6 weeks. It was a quick appointment, taking about 10 minutes start to finish and there was a small car parking area right next to the door, so I did not need to use the big parking lot at the hospital.
One day I left my keys in the unlocked car with the car still running as I went in for my appointment. Afterwards as I wondered where my keys were, I realized that they were still in the car. One time I had a long discussion with my husband about a trip I wanted to take with my chorus and the next day completely forgot and began to have the same conversation all over again until he reminded me that we had already talked about it. Someone told me it was called "Chemo brain" when you become absent minded that way.
From that time, I have had yearly or 6 monthly appointments with cancer doctors, a new one every time we move. I have had MRI's because the tissue is still dense and ultra-sounds are somewhat inconclusive as well as another biopsy.
It has been 5 years. I have finished taking tamoxifen (a drug for cancer patients who have had estrogen positive cancer that reduces your chances of getting it again, but causes birth defects) and have waited almost 3 months to try to begin getting pregnant.
The last time I visited my doctor, she felt a lump, not sure if it was scar tissue, since it is in the same place as the cancer was, and requested a mammogram and ultra-sound. These were done and they say, come back in 6 months and we'll check again. Since then I have also brought all of my films from my initial cancer diagnosis for them to compare the new films to and they say see us again in 1 year.
I am switching doctors to a new one, this Friday. Maybe he can tell me something slightly more conclusive than see me again in a year. If the first cancer couldn't be seen on the ultra-sound, why would this one have to show up? Should I have had a mastectomy?

Oktoberfest & San Francisco

We had a lovely day in San Francisco, Fred figured out that we walked a total of over 6 miles today! All in flip flops, which is not such a good idea, says the two blisters on my two feet.
We took the Caltrain to At&T park and then walked to Pier 48 for what I thought was going to be a fun and exciting Oktoberfest. Maybe because Oktoberfest in Milwaukee was supposed to be a big deal, even though I never went, but have heard about it in every state I have lived in since then, that it attracts big name singers and lots of fun stuff.
Not so fun here though, it was a large pier room with some vendors and lots of picnic tables full of people. There was also a largish band and a dance floor in front of it. We bought a sausage for 6 dollars, a side for 4 dollars and a large beer for 10 dollars. It was 30 dollars a ticket, but luckily we got them 2 for one for Sunday. That was about it, some people dressed up in German type clothes. We left after about 1 1/2 hours.
Then we walked up the Embarcadero, hoping to get some Salumi at Boccalone and alas, couldn't get the salumi cone as suggested on the Food Network episode we watched about a month ago because of a special fund raising dinner that was to be held in the hallways and had caused the stores to close early. So we bought a special kind of dry soda kumquat flavor for 3.25 which is a crazy price for some soda that didn't even taste any good at all.
Then we kept walking, stopped into Starbucks to try the Via test, which Fred and I both passed. If you have not been watching television commercials recently, it is Starbuck's new instant coffee. The taste test had two small paper cups of coffee, one instant and the other Starbuck's regular coffee. We could both tell the difference. Fred attributes it to all of the coffee samples he has at Trader Joes, since that is the only time he drinks coffee.
One interesting thing. Two people were walking in front of us and the lady gave a small Taco Bell bag to a man who was a little shaggy, but both Fred and I didn't think he was homeless. His socks were clean, and his backpack looked expensive. Anyways, she handed him the bag and I heard something behind me get thrown. He had thrown the bag next to the side of a building in rejection. Fred said that if he was given food from a stranger because she thought he was homeless he would throw it away too. But, I think I might have eaten it!

Zombieland & The Informant

Fred and I saw TWO movies in the last two days.
We saw Zombieland on Friday but Fred, knowing that it is not my type of movie, all of the blood and gore, promised that we could see The Informant the next day. They both had good ratings on SmashedTomatoes. That is the site we always go to to check out how a movie is rated. We were only once severely disappointed with it's rating system. It (as a drawing together of lots of ratings from both critics and regular movie goers) said Burn After Reading was so great and we hated it. I actually came as close to leaving mid movie as I ever have. I remember saying to Fred. "I'm bored, this is stupid, do you want to go now?" Right in the middle of the movie.
Zombieland was actually really good. Funny and touching, and appropriately gross, zombie people were eating each other of course. But, all in all, quite entertaining and a fun premise. What would you do if the only people left were zombies and everyone that was human now is not, except for a couple people. Hmmmmm.
The Informant on the other hand was not that entertaining at all. I asked Fred at the end "Wasn't this a comedy?" Because I think it was supposed to be, yet it was not. The music was the best part, bringing levity to a serious subject matter. It was mildly good, but on the long side and even the surprise ending was not all that interesting. I didn't really care anymore.
Tomorrow we plan on going to Oktoberfest in San Francisco, after church.
They were giving a special on Sunday, tickets were 2 for the price of one, which at 30 dollars, we couldn't resist. It was interesting though, how sneaky they were. When you went to purchase the tickets at the web site, they said, 30 dollars for one. So when we bought the one ticket for 30 dollars it printed out two tickets with values of 15 dollars each. So this is one time when two for one is not the same as 1/2 price. If you are the only person going, you are still stuck paying 30 dollars, for two 15 dollar tickets and either need to find a friend, or the deal is not for you.
It should be fun and anyways better than The Informant.

Exercise #3 - Haunted Toll Booth

Write a piece that takes place in one of the following locations:
A parked car
A phone booth
A closet
A walk-in refrigerator or freezer

It was Halloween night and I was 15 years old. A few friends from school wanted me to go with them to a haunted house. My family didn't really celebrate Halloween, but as practically an adult, I believed this was a decision I could make on my own.
"Going out with some friends" I yelled on my way out.
"Make sure you are home by your curfew" my mom called back from the kitchen. "And don't get into any trouble" she added, remembering what day it was.
My friend Molly at 16 had her parent's old light blue Civic and was already honking outside of our house. I jumped into the back seat and said hi to Barb and Molly's boyfriend Jack.
None of us were dressed in costumes. Barb's party had been the previous weekend and we had all worn costumes for that. We were just doing this for the thrill.
As we drove down the gravelly, grassy, twisted dirt drive towards the mansion I began to shiver already. Molly had done some online research and found that there was a haunted house near the river. She read that there was supposed to be a family of ghosts there who had died when a tree had gone through the roof in a storm and fallen onto the couch in the living room, where they were all sitting listening to the radio. Unfortunately, they were not found, not having many friend in the area, until a few weeks later. Their bodies were removed and buried and the house had remained empty for the next 70 years. People had thought about buying the land and the house, but when they visited to see it, they felt the air chill in the rooms, and heard unexplainable movements on the floor above them and in the basement. It had been empty for so many years now that it had fallen into much disrepair. Molly had read of kids visiting it during Halloween and refusing to talk of their experience afterwords, even to each other.
We stopped the car near the front door and all got out as Molly pocketed the keys.
The porch steps were damp and rotten but they held our weight. We pushed the door and it creaked open. The locks had been removed. The inside was about what you would expect, spider webby, dusty, damp, and falling apart. The furniture was between ornate and comfortable, black with mold. We heard some scampering as we entered and figured there were mice and saw evidence of mouse droppings on the floor. We tiptoed across the foyer and into the living room where the tree still lay near the crushed couch and a giant hole was ripped through the floor above, we could see outside,through the fallen boards of the roof, the full moon shining brightly and naked branches of autumn trees barely moving in the breeze.
None of us were talking, we were close together, looking at everything, a little spooked. We decided to split up, just like in scary movies, when the characters split up and the one cop is facing the bad guy in the dark of night and you wonder who will win and why the cop didn't wait for back up. It was really an unspoken decision, Molly and her boyfriend wandered towards the kitchen and Barb was looking closely at something in the dining room. I decided to go upstairs. I creaked up the stairs, barely touching the splintery banister. The first room I saw at the top looked like a child's room. There was a small bed in the corner and a dresser. The closet door was open a crack and had a little light coming out of it. I thought that was strange and decided to investigate. I opened the door and saw an old phone booth. Did they even have phone booths 90 years ago I wondered. It was an old booth, very dusty and the glass smudged and dirty. The phone was in the corner of the booth and dim light was shining from an old light bulb hanging from the small ceiling.
I saw a phone book (I don't think they had those 100 years ago either) and decided to look up my family's name. My parents and grand parents had all grown up in the area. It might help me to figure out what time this booth was from. I looked up my last name Morrison. My great grandfather's name, Morrison, Alvin, was there with a phone number. I felt compelled to try to call that number. I put a penny into the slot (It said 1 cent above the slot) and heard it clink down and dialed the number.
"Hello" a young man's voice said.
"Hi, I am Laura Morrison, who is this?" I asked.
"It's Alvin Morrison" he responded, "do I know you?"
I began to shake, my great grandfather had been dead for about 30 years at least. He spent his last years in a retirement community, my father had said.
"I think I am your great granddaughter" I said slowly.
"I don't even have children yet, is this a prank call?" He asked starting to sound angry.
"Sorry" I said, hanging up.
My palms were wet, my voice was quivering.
I turned to leave the phone booth in the closet, feeling very strange. I seemed to be shrinking, my chest felt very heavy, as if someone was sitting on it. The bedroom was now well lit, the furniture and floors clean, the bed made in fresh linens.
"Sarah" a woman called from downstairs.
I looked down and was now dressed in a gingham nightgown. I saw brown braids reaching over my shoulders. What was going on?
I opened my mouth to say, "Molly" but out came "Coming Ma" in a different voice, higher pitched and younger.
As the months passed me by and I waited for the tree to fall on our house and hopefully pop me back into the future, I had moments of almost forgetting. Was I really Sarah? Did I really live here? I looked back in the closet over and over for the phone booth, but it was gone. I had nothing to prove that I was not Sarah other than my memories. Sometimes I thought those were dreams and Sarah was the real one.
What would happen if I made sure that we were never all sitting on the couch during a storm, would I grow up here and live my life out in this past era? Would I just die with the family? Would I become the ghost of the little girl if we did die?
A year and a half later, I was listening to the radio after helping ma set the table for dinner. A storm was forecast for later that evening. I made sure we were all on that couch as I did not want to remain Sarah forever and thought even an unforseeable future would be better. We were listening to the radio and I heard a crack of thunder and heard a crashing sound.
Molly called from downstairs to see where I was. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, realizing that I had caught up with the future and become myself again. I looked into the empty child's closet and ran downstairs to catch up with my friends.
For years I have looked for that phone booth. Searches online, research and visits to multiple haunted houses, all have resulted in nothing, but this is the first time I've told my story.

Exercise #2 - Photos of Family

Imagine that you are browsing through an old family album, looking at photographs, clippings, and other memorabilia. Suddenly you spot something that surprises you.

I was staying at my parent's house for a while as an adult and noticed that there were no pictures on the wall. They had many framed pictures of the family, but they had not gotten around to hanging them since they had moved into the new townhouse a year or so back. I remembered seeing, usually on television shows, how people hang a bunch of framed pictures on the wall leading up the stairs and thought it might be fun to surprise them with that. I found a hammer and nails and sporadically began to arrange the pictures onto the wall. It looked really nice. There were pictures taken at Sears with coupons, and my sister's senior picture, and a picture of me from high school and my baby sister before her prom. But one picture caught my eye.
My dad and mom and younger sister and I were all sitting on a piano bench in front of a small piano at my grandmother's house. My grandmother lived in Grangeville Idaho and we lived in Milwaukee Wisconsin. We never had money to fly so we drove out to see her and my great grandmother a time or two (I honestly don't remember if it was one time or two) during my childhood years. This was when I was about 9 and my sister around 4. My youngest sister had yet to be born.
I stopped and looked at that picture for a while. My parents must have been about 30 years old at the time and I was now 32 years old. A young cancer survivor with no children yet and no prospects for one for a few more years as I finished taking Tamoxifen for the prescribed 5 years. How strange the passing of years, the changing of society's expectations. Myself, feeling so old, yet really so young. How must my parents' life have been, so young with two small children. I feel barely old enough now (34) to think of being a mature parent, with so many years of living and teaching under my belt.
They looked so young and pretty and happy. How old will I be when I have a 9 year old? I am thinking about 44 at the youngest. I know this is normal, but will I be full enough of energy to participate in my kid's life as much as I want. Will the child keep me young?

Fred thought that I needed more of an interesting ending to Exercise #1. Hmmmmm. Maybe I just peter out as I get to the end and then have no idea what to write. It happens when I write e-mails as well.

Exercise #1 - Mystery Bag

I am reading a book called "The No Experience Necessary Writer's Course". It has some nice short chapters and includes 24 exercises to help me become a writer.

The first is as follows:
Imagine that you are downtown in a major city during rush hour. Suddenly a woman walks toward you, holding a bag. She meets your eyes, smiles, hands you the bag, and says, "Here you go." Before you can say or do anything, she turns and walks off.

My husband and I were visiting Manhattan for the first time. We were staying at a small hotel very close to times square and taking long walks every day. I was impressed by so much, the deli's all over the place, the lights, the sheer volume of people on the sidewalks, the street vendors, artists, mimes, taxis. It was a little overwhelming and exciting. I thought about all of the movies and television shows I had seen that had been filmed in this very city, or in Central Park.
We had just visited a little deli and shared a pastrami sandwich and were walking on the sidewalk when I saw a woman coming towards us. On sidewalks so filled with people, I wouldn't have noticed her especially except that she was making eye contact with me and smiling. Of course, not normal for the big city. I had lived in Chicago, I knew not to make eye contact with strangers.
She transferred her purse from her shoulder to her hand and held it out towards me as she smiled. I wondered what she was thinking. It was a pink patent leather slouchy purse, quite big and bulky, not bad looking actually. She stopped and I made a confused face, and she handed me the bag, saying "Here you go." Before I could ask her what was going on, she disappeared into the crowd.
The situation, being in the middle of the day, did not seem to be dangerous and the lady did not look suspicious, but I had no idea what to do with the bag. Should I open it? Should I toss it into the garbage can as I passed by? Was it meant to be for me personally? She could have given it to anyone, so why me?
My husband thought I should immediately drop it to the ground and leave it there. Why would a stranger give me a bag? Definitely a strange situation.
I thought I should look inside. What if it had treasures inside? Diamonds and gold, or unmarked bills to be spent on whatever I wanted?
The bag was not as heavy as you might think for its size. I put the purse to my ear to make sure it was not ticking (I do watch the news.) and it was not. It was also not moving or making any noise, nothing living inside, no cat or small dog. I shook it a little, not a puzzle either.
I saw a small piece of an envelope sticking out of one of the side pockets. I pulled it out. It was addressed "To whomever is now carrying this purse". I opened it and pulled out a plain sheet of lined paper. It read: "You are the lucky receiver of this pink purse. You are being filmed for a television show from hidden cameras. The contents of this purse are yours to keep as long as you tell us what you plan on doing with them." I looked around and the lady reappeared. She walked up to us with outstretched hand and said "Hi, I am Julie from the Style Network's, What's in the Purse. Because you did not drop the purse or throw it away but seemed to wonder what was inside it, you now get to keep the contents."
"Okay" I said smiling. I had given a meaningful look at my husband when she mentioned throwing the purse away. I slowly opened the purse and saw cash surrounded with a little band with 10,000 dollars written on it, some jewelry boxes, a gift card to Nobu restaurant (I love Sushi), an invitation to spend 3 complementary nights at the Ritz Carlton at Central Park, a gift card to some clothing stores and a beautiful digital camera. Julie told me that the only stipulation was that I must use everything in the bag before returning home.
We called our friends who were watching our cat and asked them to watch her for a few more days. My husband e-mailed work to let them know that he needed a few extra days off. It was a wonderful vacation. It is also surprisingly easier than you would think to spend 10,000 dollars.

What I've Learned (1) - Don't give up

Fred and I have both recently read a book called Outliers. We liked it a lot. It is full of chapters on different topics all related to how people become successful. That it is not just luck but some underlying factor that has helped make them successful. A great book. Fred thought that I should write something similar on what I have learned from teaching.
There are a few things I've learned, so I will write them periodically in my blog in short segments.

Don't Give Up

My first teaching assignment was kindergarten in a public school in Columbus, Ohio. I had my bachelor's degree in elementary education from the University of Illinois at Chicago, which is supposed to prepare you to teach kindergarten through 8th grade. (I now understand why most colleges split it up into early childhood education from K-3rd grade and then intermediate from 4th through 8th. But that was not the case where I went to school.) Needless to say, I felt wholly unprepared for kindergarten. Unfortunately in Columbus at that time, many teachers had to sub for years before they could find a position, there were lots of new teachers coming out of Ohio State and it was very difficult to find a job in the flooded market. I had applied all over, to everything I could find and then thought I might as well sub in the Columbus Public Schools until I could find something full time. I thought it might give me an in. During my interview, I was offered a teaching position, but I wouldn't know what or where it was until a week before school was to start. I was so excited I accepted, but was worried later when I realized that it could mean anything from kindergarten through 8th grade, anywhere in the city.
I received a kindergarten position.
Wow. Teaching kindergarten was the hardest job I have ever had. I was expected to introduce basically everything that was on the 4th grade proficiency test to the little kindergarteners. They were to know by the 6th week of school all of the number combinations that added up to 12, yet many of my little ones, barely turned 5 could not tell the difference between a number and a letter. I tried to teach them the required fractions and variables and to read, but it was a struggle the whole year.
On top of the required academics I was to teach, there was the issue of management. Something sorely lacking in most education programs. I had no idea how to control a class.
Luckily I had an assistant in the room who had either volunteered or assisted in kindergarten classes for 15 years and I depended on her for a lot. I remember many afternoons as I would ask her about all of the things I had done wrong that day and she would continuously reassure me that I was a good teacher. I needed it. I was going home every day fully drained. I had no energy even to pick up a book to read, but had to unwind to the Simpsons for an hour after school. My poor husband who was working from home as a contractor wanted a hug and stimulating conversation when I got home from school and all I could say was "no touching, no hugging, must sit down."
I tried everything I had learned and read to try to learn more about management throughout that year. The parents of my students would get phone calls, or receive behavior logs that had to be signed every night, or hear about withheld recess. I tried about 10 different management plans that year. There was the red, yellow, green light on the board, with different consequences for movement from one color to another and rewards for staying on green. I experimented with daily behavior logs that I kept, a piece of paper for each student that I carried with me on a clipboard all day, with every transgression that a kid could think of doing, next to which I would put check marks and require a parent signature at the end of every day. I used time outs and a separate area of the room for calm down time. There was one student who would get to the end of my discipline plan, already missing recess and getting a call home, by 9am. What could I do that would work?
My mentor teacher (Ohio provided mentor teachers to come in and observe and meet with me 20 times that first year of teaching.) had never taught kindergarten and would give me an exhaustive list of everything I had done wrong and the misbehaviors of all my students and how I should get things together every other week or so. Luckily she came right before gym and I could have 20 minutes to cry before I had to retrieve the students.
Things turned around somewhat when I had a psychologist come to sit in on class for a while to observe a student who may have needed extra help. She told me that I was doing a great job and listed things she had observed that proved to her that I was a wonderful teacher. I almost wept with relief. She also mentioned a book I should read called "Teacher and Child" by Haim Ginnot. It changed the way I talked to the kids and was so full of wisdom. I have read it a couple of more times as I have taught other grades and used the advice daily.
I have observed many other teachers at the 4 schools where I've taught and have noticed that some give up. They think that kids are just the way they are. They are disrespected daily, laughed at, not listened to, and they think that is normal. They just learn to ignore it.
I never got that way. I think it started my kindergarten year, when I tried one discipline plan after another until I finally figured out how to manage lovingly and wisely. It is maybe harder to push back and expect more from kids, but it is worthwhile for their learning and my own self-respect.
After 7 years of teaching, I have never fully figured it out. How to have a caring classroom, with everyone feeling respected. I believe that teaching is one of the most difficult professions. But, still don't give up, and keep the expectations high.