Thank goodness, the teeth are out. After 3 bad tries to get an IV in and waiting 2 hours for a late doctor who had a patient who ended up having unforeseen problems scheduled ahead of her, the ordeal is over. There were a couple of bad moments when I feared we'd have to do this all over again, but thankfully, those fears weren't realized.
I woke up feeling good, and actually had no aches or pains. By the time I got home, my neck and shoulders were aching with stress. Hopefully, a good night's rest will take care of that.
My daughter is going into the hospital tomorrow to get her wisdom teeth taken out. We've been through a bit of a mini-crisis over these teeth, having already tried to get them taken out in the surgeon's office. Things didn't go so well, which is why the hospital, but meanwhile, Vicodin has been her best friend. Needless to say, the pain of her teeth and the stress of going, not going, going has messed with her ability to be in class when she should be, but she's managing to hang in there at school. She's actually going through a good phase, relatively speaking. I hope she gets a chance to enjoy it for quite a bit longer once the pain from the wisdom teeth is gone.
Anyway, all good thoughts sent this way are appreciated. She goes under at 1:30 pm.
I accidentally typed Rekless and thought that would be a good band name.
How to describe today? If I were to simply list the things I did today, there is no way you would guess what it's been like.
1. Woke up after a solid 8 hours of sleep.
2. Decided which yoga sequence to do and what music to listen to while doing it.
4. Did 40 minutes of yoga and my floor exercises. Total time, just over an hour.
3. See how I typed 4 there? That's just a small indication of the undercurrents that were flowing.
5. Cleaned the kitchen
6. Figured out how to record youtube music so that I can create an mp3 of my yoga music that will last an entire session so that I don't have to keep hitting play on the computer screen when the music stops.
7. Tutored my 2nd grader
8. Went to the grocery store for hamburger meat
9. Cooked dinner (gasp! you cleaned the kitchen and cooked dinner all the same day! you productive superwoman you!)
10. Ate dinner
11. Crashed on the couch exhausted (exhausted? some superwoman you are) at 6pm and read blogs and blog comments
12. Am now writing this post
13. Will then finish grading papers while watching something or other on television and chilling
Sounds like a decent day, though, right? Nothing to cry over? So why did I spend so many minutes doing just that? Why, when I couldn't get the stupid BOSU pump to stay in the danged hole so I could pump up the BOSU did I break down in tears? Why, when it made a noise, the kind of noise that could set my daughter's brain on edge (no, not ears or teeth, brain), which it of course did, did I yell at her when she came out to complain only to freak out when it made the noise again, "Get out of here and just go back into your room, then!" while thinking why the hell would you come out to hear it when you know it'll only make you worse? I just wasn't in a mood to be compassionate of one of her freakouts when I was having a freakout of my own. The thing that gets me is, why? There was absolutely no reason for me to feel this way, not if the circumstances of one's life have an effect on how we feel. My life's good. Even with our financial situation in the crapper, I'm not worried about it, and we're managing. Even though I have some physical aches and pains, they, too, are manageable, especially lately. I've been good to myself the last couple of weeks. I love my life right now.
So I know it's not due to circumstance, which means it's a chemical imbalance, as in depression, or something going on as I continue down the road to menopause. As a result, I was feeling reckless and restless when I left the house to tutor my kid. When my daughter said, "Have fun," my response was a blue, "Yeah, right," and as I pulled out of the driveway and took off down the street I started looking for some music to suit my mood. I'd just been listening to yoga meditational type music, but I wasn't the least bit calm, nor was I in the mood to be calmed. I needed to rock.
I proceeded to skip through the radio channels, and then I found it. I've never heard this song before, nor the band. Some of you will probably go, "You must be kidding," but hey, I've just never really been into the music of my adulthood, and I only listen to the radio when a) my husband's in the car and has it on, or b) when I want to listen to "my" music, meaning music without words, preferably smooth jazz or music over 200 years old. That my musical listening horizons have broadened at all are due to what my children and husband have listened to over the years, so that I can recognize certain categories of music and have even been able to appreciate a song or two from what they like (more than a song or two actually because in spite of my lack of interest in developing my musical tastes on my own, I really do love music). And I went through a phase of searching out the music Zen shared, though much of that was beyond my understanding. I did garner a few gems from him, though.
I just don't go looking for music on purpose very often, and when I do, well, it's with purpose. There was my Native American phase. My guitar phase. My French phase. My classical phase. My harpsichord phase. I'll hear a song which will trigger something in me, and I'll want to find more music like that. I'll find one or three albums that move me, and then it's at least a year before my next phase. Right now I'm searching out just the right music to do yoga to. Needless to say my personal music collection is laughable.
But this was timely. It suited my mood and it was anything but calm. I found myself going 65 in a 45 mph zone, zipping past cars and wanting to just keep on going, going, going, with just enough sense not to go any faster because I really didn't want to end up roadkill.
So. Does this change of life thing suck? Or does it make life more exciting? And if how I feel and act are the result of a chemistry experiment taking place in my head, if chemistry is all that makes us who we are, why are we held responsible for our actions? It's not as though we're the ones controlling the test tubes, is it? I need only look at my daughter to be reminded of this every day. Or have a day like today to prove that no matter how good I WANT to feel, I don't seem to have a say in the matter, not really. Yes, I can do things that can make my bad days perhaps not quite so bad. You know, stay away from sugar, be active and get some sun, nourish myself with healthy things and all that, but in the end, it's still just a matter of too much of this chemical, or not enough of that one.
So this cold started 2 weeks ago. Two weeks ago and I'm still hacking up crap. These last 2 weeks have been my lowest since the beginning of the year. I get sick, at the same time I experience a second period in one month, and I fight with a friend. So maybe the cold and the menopause stuff helped the fight along. I know I wouldn't have been so sensitive otherwise. Still, sometimes fights can clear the air, and with this new mindset of mine, it helped me to clarify some priorities.
See, if all of this had happened in December, I'd be a mess right now. Instead, I'm feeling pretty good about things. Still not quite in the energy flow I was experiencing before the cold started, but life's filled with ups and downs of energy, isn't it? Today has been a bit of a test of where I am. I stayed up late. My fault, I kept telling myself to go to bed, but I was writing, writing, writing, getting a lot of the crap in my head out in black and white so I could look at it and see how I really felt about it all. Do you ever do that? Once the stuff is out, and I read over it, I can deal with it. Build on it, throw it out, whatever. What's written is so rarely set in stone with me. I just need that vehicle to help me work through the jumble of thoughts I'm experiencing. So until I got the very last of everything that was in me down and out of my head once and for all, I wasn't going to sleep anyway.
The result was sleeping in, which I did not want to do. Fridays have become my day of productive activity. I do yoga in the morning, then get started on my grading and lesson plans for the next week. I don't stop until I'm at a place where I know I can enjoy my weekend without feeling the weight of things not yet done before class on Tuesday. It has become a very good routine. Well, yoga didn't go very well. I decided to try out a new thing that I found on the web, so it wasn't the usual relaxing flow that it can be. There were problems with the streaming and because I started late, my daughter was in and out of my space. Okay, but at least I did it. I didn't blow it off the way I wanted to, knowing that I was getting such a late start on things.
Then, my daughter wanted to go to the bookstore (which is where I am now) because she can get some good thinking done on her homework here. Well, okay, I can be productive there, too (and look at me, I'm online blogging). First we get a sandwich to share and some frappuccinos. How do I explain what happened? I can't, other than to say, somehow the blender container that held the remains of my frappuccino ended up crashing to the floor causing the contents to splash everywhere, as in, all over my face, my new top, my arms, everywhere. I laughed, of course. I couldn't do otherwise. The poor girl was so distraught and apologetic. But inside I wasn't laughing. I had to mentally take a deep breath to calm myself. This whole day just wasn't going according to plan. But the Balsamic Chicken Breast Sandwich and Cinnamon Dolce Frappuccino was delicious. I do think I should have been offered a discount considering, though, don't you? If I can't get the coffee stains out of my new top, that's $5 out the window (WalMart special). I got an extra bag of chips instead, since my daughter and I were sharing the sandwich.
I managed to clean up okay. I guess the milk and ice diluted the coffee enough that the stains aren't like normal coffee stains. They came out, and my dignity remains intact.
Well, I'm going to begin being productive now. I've blown off the steam, expelled the negative energy, and can now move on. Thanks for listening.
Hi, A. I ordered and received a copy of your text Essentials for Successful Tutoring a few weeks ago. I LOVE IT! You and your tutors have done such an excellent job of developing a very readable and useful handbook. My directors think very highly of it as well.
I would like to ask permission to reproduce, in part, your chapter about The Way We Communicate for inclusion in my tutor handbook. I could pair it down to a bulleted list of main topics and sub-topics, but I love the narrative so much that, with your permission, I'd like to keep it. Will you please let me know what you think at your earliest convenience?
Thank you so much for this wonderful contribution to tutor training literature.
