Sewing What You Rip; or Sowing What You Reap

There is this noise I love. It's a ringtone of my kid calling me from Madrid to tell me "hi." 

Sometimes it's just for a few minutes; other times it's for an hour. I love that GTMO finally got decent internet and we can talk. I love that he wants to talk about seeing Guernica (best anti-war art ever) or telling me about a lecture in class or describing the friends he's met from all over the world. And last weekend, he called to proudly tell me that he was repairing a hole in his favorite pants. This from a child I could have handed a sewing kit a few months ago, and he would have promptly handed it back to me.

As he repaired his pants with a sewing kit he bought at a thrift store and we talked about the subtleties of sewing (using a needle threader, how to end your stitches, basically one of a million things I should have taught him before he left for college), I was so proud of him. 

And we are so, so serious during these conversations, as you can see.

I love that he got out of here and he is living in another country, learning another language and experiencing another culture. This is what I wanted for him when I accepted this job, and I am glad he is actually getting to do it, and as a bonus, getting to go where he wants to go.

Speaking of experiencing cultures and getting out of here---I'm also anxiously awaiting to hear some news. But I'm not going to talk about that at all.

What I am going to talk about is the fact that I am an addict. True confession time. I am addicted. . . to school.

In fact, I'm currently taking college classes (again). I know, WHY?

Well. . . I miss my kid (even with the fun phone calls) and I most days I am OVER dealing with little things that have become big things here. I'm tired of inefficiency and inconsistency and simple things like a lack of Coke products or sour cream. I'm tired of the same small stretch of road and the 2 hours it takes to get ready and then clean up from going to the beach for 45 minutes. I'm just tired, y'all. I've even started taking naps when I get home from school because. . . I am tired.

I have many factors causing horrific anxiety in my life. I'm working on ways to get better, but it's a process. Part of it is doing things that make me feel in control.

In the most stressful times in my class, I buckle down and sign up for a few classes because I LOVE SCHOOL. It seems counterintuitive and rather self-destructive, right?

Taking classes brings order in times of chaos and in times of uncertainty. There are deadlines. They are strict. It's college, dammit, so I can't turn things in any old time and get credit. It's the real world. And because it's online, it's totally anonymous and I don't have to make awkward small talk or ever wear real clothes. I'm in boxers shorts, eating yogurt and drinking coffee and learning about linguistics, because linguistics is sexy, y'all. Noam Chomsky rocks my socks.

And I'm not taking one but two grad classes. One is linguistics---seriously something I would love to have a degree in if I could just figure out what to do with it---and the other class is a methods of ESL in Math classes, because I haven't taken a math class in over 20 years and I need to use that part of my brain. And because I'm probably a little crazy.

And also because taking classes actually relaxes me. I get my highlighters and markers (god, I love school supplies) lined up, and I do all the little critical reading strategies I've taught my students for years. Marginalia makes me happy.

If all goes as planned, I will be a TESOL certified teacher by summer.

And why does this matter?

I love teaching English, but it's no longer my bliss---that boat sailed and sank YEARS ago.

Now I am forward thinking. I am working towards a reward somewhere. Maybe it will be teaching ESL with DoDDS, maybe it will be an ESL career somewhere else at some other time. Who knows. I loved the year I taught it at EF school on the Evergreen State College campus in Olympia, WA. That was one low-pressure, high reward job. My students thanked me at the end of every class. Yes, teacher friends, THEY THANKED ME. Seriously. If you aren't a teacher and people thank you for doing your job, you are lucky. It just doesn't happen much in teaching.

I'm hoping I can reap the rewards all of the classes I have taken and certifications I have added since moving here.

Missing Metaphors, Roller Rinks, and More Books; or, Perchance, to Dream

Random thoughts of the last few weeks below. Follow at your own peril. 

Conversation with a colleague a couple of weekends ago:

So every time I get out of the shower, I get bitten by a mosquito. In my own bathroom! A mosquito! And that pretty much represents life here. 

Friend, befuddled:
What is that, an analogy of something? What are you talking about??? 

Me:
More like a metaphor. What does it mean? I don't know. I'll let you know when I figure it out, because I'm sure it's deep. 

I can't even make a decent metaphor. It's somewhere in there, I'm sure. Just not sure where.

And then, there is also this:

Posted on one of our community online facebook groups is a plea for GTMO peeps to get together and skate.

Husband:
We're going. We have to support people who are trying to make this a better place and come up with things to do. We need to go out, even if it's just us. We're going. 

Ends up that another friend and her daughter were able to come out, too, so we had a great time at our own little skating rink. The next week, it was just the guy who put out the call, my husband, and me. But it was so much fun---I really do love having something different to do to break the monotony.

When I first got here in 2012, we had some kids from the school who would play roller hockey. In all the time I've played soccer and then used the track at night to run since those first few months here, I haven't seen anyone on the rink. I'm happy it's not just sitting there deteriorating in the sun without anyone using it.

Now, if we could just get more people to come out, it would be even more fun.

I spent a large chunk of my childhood in Monticello, MS, skating on quads around my subdivision (called, creatively, "the subdivision"---it is a really small town). Then I married and eventually moved to Colorado Springs and bought some rollerblades so I could take my greyhound and mutt out for exercise every sunny day. This was part of how I kept my sanity the year my husband was deployed---I would rush home from work, lace up my skates, grab the dogs, their leashes and poop scoop supplies (because I'm not a jerk), and skate until the sun went down.

view of the chapel and Bay from the rink, sunset

Skating helped me escape life's frustrations when I needed it most. Flash forward 22 years, and I'm finding myself enjoying it more every week. Thankfully I now have something else to focus on other than transfer season, yearbook deadlines, and the stack of ungraded essays on my desk.

Yes, it's that time of year again. I'm not going to talk about transfer season, because that just seems to jinx the entire process. Let's just say I hope to hear some good news in the next 2 weeks. If not, hopefully a few other options will come open before summer begins. 

In the meanwhile. . . I'm going to keep skating through like (see what I did there?) and waiting, because that seems to be the one thing I have gotten really good at doing here in GTMO. 

Book challenge conquest of the week: Australian Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies (a book you bought on a trip---yes, Jacksonville counts as a trip!)

"“Every day I think, ‘Gosh, you look a bit tired today,’ and it’s just recently occurred to me that it’s not that I’m tired, it’s that this is the way I look now.” I am going on about week 3 of a major bout with insomnia, and people are coming out of the woodwork to tell me how tired I look. (How are you supposed to respond to that? "Um, thanks so much!") That quote then had me more than relate to the speaker's feeling. If I could just sleep through an entire night and get more than a few minutes of uninterrupted sleep, I may vanquish the dark and now omnipresent circles under my eyes and may even start having dreams again. 

Great beach book, meaning it's a quick read and a page turner, with a lot of intrigue to keep you hanging on, but not too many allusions or word play or historical events to make you slow down---many times----to catch your thoughts (I'm talking about you, G. Cabrera Infante). I hear this is going to be a television series and it should be excellent. Moriarty does a good job of fleshing out a few of the characters so by the end, you are vested in what happens to whom and how. It's a mystery with many voices, and you aren't sure who did what to whom until the very end of the book. I was happy with the ending and read it in bed over the MLK 3 day weekend. It was a satisfying way to spend a relaxing weekend. 

I look over at my bedside table is see that also still working on Blackass and a collection of Haruki Murakami's short stories, The Elephant Vanishes, because I'm a book baller and that's how I roll. Do I feel guilty on cheating on one book with another? No. . . I don't see it as cheating as much as multi-tasking. I'm hoping to get a book a week read in 2017. Onwards to #s 4 and 5!