Who Says I Can't Put Up a Bunch of Random Things at Once?

Some photo highlights from my Christmas vacation :)

Nana-isms

Spending most of my Christmas vacation in what has kindly been dubbed "Wrinkle Village" by my extended family, I've come to realize a lot of things about getting older. First and foremost, it's nice to know that as you advance in age, it becomes justification for pretty much any luxury you can think of. This place is all about the comfort of those ages 70 and up. Drinking fountains are refrigerated to make you believe that the water has been shaken with ice and flakes of pure gold before being spouted directly into your mouth. There are no recycle bins to taunt these geezers- they don't even want them around to make them feel bad. Cans, newspapers, and plastic get thrown in with worn out reading glasses and exhausted tubes of denture cream. The fitness center treadmills are majestic and huge- like boats- with individual flat screen TVs equipped with extra loud volume control. Everything is louder here. My Nana's garbage disposal, her washer and dryer, her telephone- everything seems to be shouting, trying to reach the one remaining good ear that each person has. And why wouldn't it? It's all about the comfort of the residents.

Wise beyond their years, the elderly have the unique combination of endless worldly wisdom, irrational stubbornness, and rapidly approaching senility. The end result is usually quite hilarious. I think a lot of people make the mistake of treating the older generations like children, grimacing at their inappropriate sexual innuendos and frowning about their alcohol consumption. We forget that these are people who have been around the block, war veterans and Depression babies. They've seen it all. As a result, they should be able to do what they want. After all, they've lived a life full of insane experiences that we could hardly begin to fathom.

Take my Nana- her childhood occurred during the height of the Great Depression. Her mid-twenties were smack dab in WWII. She's seen the Buffalo Bills through their very best and their absolute worst. She should be allowed to have an occasional cocktail and off-color joke regardless of the political correctness of her actions.

So, whether she has decided to have my sister consolidate her multiple bottles of alcohol (combining five different kinds of vodka together because she can't taste the difference when it's mixed with her mixers... water and ice) or is on the prowl with one of her many social groups at Wrinkle Village, AWOL (Available Widows on the Loose, a group of over-60 women who get drunk and play cards), she can do so. If she needs to steady herself on her walk in from a 4 hour cocktail party, my boyfriends butt is not off-limits for her tipsy tottering to her throne of an easy chair.

My sister Kristin, who spent a week here before returning home to the icy tundra of upstate New York, really got the in-the-trenches experience. She had 79-year-old men calling her a beauty and 75-year-old women giving her CVS coupons for Revlon lipstick. She got to witness my Nana calling Shocktop "Sha-sha" and heard her saying "I hope the Giants don't blow their wad too early this year." She asked Kristin when the first time she "connected" with her current boyfriend. When we giggled, she snapped back at us, "Oh, I didn't mean it in THAT way!!" It was Kristin who set up her Facebook account, something for her to be addicted to besides spider solitaire. The cousins and I are convinced she'll have more friends than us in a matter of weeks... maybe even a new, hip boyfriend.

It's an ongoing parade of entertainment hanging out with my family, and adding my Nana in the mix just makes it that much better. Especially when she's drunk and her filter REALLY goes out the window. Like when she asked Jack about his religious background only to tell him (after his 15 minutes explanation as to why he never had a bat mitzvah) that she wouldn't remember anything he just told her. Nice, Nans.

There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays

I heard this song during a drive to work one morning. At first, it made me feel pretty depressed. I haven't been home since the end of July and don't plan on going home until... I'm not even sure.

We haven't been home for the holidays since 2006. The past couple Christmases we've braved the holiday travel traffic to drive 24 hours from our house upstate to my Nana's condo in Fort Pierce, FL. Originally it was because my grandfather had gotten too sick to travel, but even after he passed away in March of 2008, we continued to go, craving the warm sunshine and cold beers that Christmas Day has come to mean. Now, in the living room of my sparse Charlotte apartment, my brother cooking bacon on a too-small skillet and the Yule log flickering from the TV screen, I'm really beginning to think that the song is bullshit.

Not one to call Christmas songs out for being bullshit, I'm adjusting my position. The song is assuming that home means only a concrete place, something that is fixed in the foundation of a house that has been in a family for years and years and years. But when I think about what home actually means, I know it's less of a place and more of a feeling. So whether it's pouring rain in Charlotte and we're sitting on the floor for lack of adequate seating, or we're on the each cracking Coronas, "Home for the Holidays" really just means wherever we happen to bring our hand-knit personalized stockings and holiday special edition twelve packs.

Season of Giving

My class, right before the celebration :)

Cute little moment today during the non-denominational classroom celebration we had.

First of all, holiday parties are really just a mid-year teacher revenge against the parents, stuffing their children full of any and all sugary processed foods you can find and then piling on the bus just before the sugar rush hits. By the time they get home their eyes are practically out of their sockets. You don't admit it, but you let the kids that give you the most... challenges... take an extra sprinkly sugar cookie, or two, or three. Or let them lick all the frosting off the remaining 35 cupcakes. Or give them an IV of Hawaiian Punch, pumping it straight into their bloodstreams. Merry Christmas to your mom and dad... heh heh heh....

Not really but the thought did cross my mind. A couple times.

The cute part was before the celebration, when I had them sit in a circle and explained that there were some very nice people in Charlotte who had "extra" and decided to give that "extra" to our classroom. I pulled out this bag of wrapped books (donated to TFA) and we counted them together. After figuring out that there wasn't enough for everyone to get one, I told them that I had decided to use these books to give to our classroom as much as we could by making a lending library. Then they all got to open the books and show the book they got. A couple of the books were repeats, and we decided that since we had "extra", we should give it away too. So we picked the five repeat books and walked them to the five other first grade classrooms to give to them. They were so happy to be giving them... it was so cute. Although it didn't necessarily go as smoothly as I just described it, considering that when we were lining up to walk to the other rooms, the kids just ran down the hall without me because they were so excited. Oh well.Anyway, it was a cute day. Tomorrow will probably be awful, riding out the after-effects of today's sugar high. Maybe I can counteract it by giving them salty (in the form of the 14 extra bags of chips I have... so much extra food).

Gripes of the Week... and It's Only Wednesday

Funny things (by funny I mean I have to laugh or I'll cry) have happened so far this week. Here's a brief taste since it is already past 11...

1- My kids and I had to wear coats during math time Monday morning because CMS is saving money by turning off the heat on the weekends. So if you had to pick how warm it would be at 5:30 am on Monday morning... yeah. Little do they realize that my classroom has two outside walls, one of which holds my whiteboard. The dry erase ink was FROZEN to the whiteboard... could not erase it.

2- I have now almost lost two scarves to near death school experiences, one with a forgotten hot glue gun and one with the industrial paper cutter in the media center.

3- One of my kids brought his backpack to school.... that his cat had peed in. Awesome that he didn't hesitate to put the urine soaked homework folder on my teaching table bright and early in the morning. I think I sprayed it with Lysol for approximately ten minutes.

4- When talking about intense lesson plan formats, another teacher exclaimed, "I mean, come on! We've all gone to school for this."

...Yeah, not really me so much. The other first grade teachers in the room and I thought it was unbearably funny.

5- My word family flip chart left on "g"-"art". I'm really proud of my kids for being mature and NOT flipping it to the previous letter when I wasn't looking. I was really tempted to do so myself.

6- I fell asleep at 7:04 pm last night, all ready to go to yoga... sort of. Something about eating a huge bowl of chili does NOT seem conducive to an hour and a half class. But really, asleep in a spandex suit and my Uggs (I mentioned how cold it's been in Charlotte, right?).

7- My kids' failure to understand what I'm asking sometimes. The question? "What are some places in your neighborhood that people all share?" One student's answer? "The United States!" This is the same one that told me Barack Obama had a jetpack in his Secret Lair beneath the White House... at least he's patriotic.

Gripes, but funny ones nonetheless. Nothing too serious. My kids have all been good this week, cute and funny (still driving me a little crazy, like always), but very good. I'll end on a few happy notes:

1- One student WHO never stops talking finally focusing during small group reading and PROGRESSING!!!

2- A student who hates writing apparently just hates writing in his chair. I let him sit in my spinny chair and he wrote more than I've ever seen him do... just great.

On that note, goodnight!

Really, A Nice Little Saturday

Got a little social time Friday night, finally getting out of my apartment with two other TFA-ers. We went to this little neighborhood bar and had some drinks. Consequently, I felt terrible this morning and woke up at 1 pm. STILL got to have a nice little day. I was out with my roommate, going to Target for new yoga clothes (yay!), an hour and a half of yoga class, a nice lunch at a little cafe (complete with FREE gelato), and a browsing session at Books a Million. I love bookstores. Could spend hours in one. Then we came back, made some homemade chili (aka dumping a bunch of cans into a pot and heating it up), and just watched TV. Such a great little day :).

TWEET TWEET

I'm on Twitter now. I'm not quite sure what I'll be doing with it but... I'm on it! http://twitter.com/saraefi.

Laugh to Keep from Crying, Blog to Keep from Falling Asleep

My week has actually been a pretty good one, at least after my multiple meltdowns leading up to the first day back from Thanksgiving break. My kids have been really funny and cute this week, in spite of the overwhelming amount of time I've had to spend with them. Having my one 45 minute planning break CANCELED two days in a row was rough. All day, all in my room, just me and 20 six year olds. That is the definition of madness. At the end of the day, though, they all wanted to miss the bus so that they could stay and hang out with me. Even I don't want to hang out with me that much. Some of the highlights from the week:

-The holiday program. Both times I had to sit through it. Something about hearing six renditions of Jingle Bells on the recorder (yes, apparently you can capture the subtle differences between Traditional. Country Western, Native American, Waltz, Rap, and Cha Cha Jingle Bells on the most annoying flat-toned instrument in the world) really let me look past all the frustrations and stress of teaching... at least for a little while. Plus during the school performance, all of K-2 kids were shouting the words... it was adorable.

-When the loudest girl in my class asked me how many children I had. She included a picture of me with my husband and baby in her writing piece. My husband had no arms and triangle hair, and my baby was a tiny stick figure that stood on my left shoulder.

-One of the more country (read: redneck) kids saying "Holy flapmother!" What does that even mean?

-Surviving what is called the worst week in teaching. High five... to myself.

A Lot of Random Stuff

1) In love with yoga. I went to my first yoga class ever on Monday night, after deciding Sunday that I was sick of whining about my lack of a life. "I'll do something for myself!" I exclaimed, and marched down (by marched I mean drove) to the studio by my apartment to sign up. The girl working the front desk was really friendly AND is starting an after-school tutoring program for Title I middle schools, so we got to talking about teaching stuff right off the bat. The class... was awesome. Yoga is a perfectionists paradise. I loved it because it was the first time in three months that I got to focus on the little things. And that I could be in control. I realized that I'm actually quite a competitive person (never really thought I was) and it doesn't really matter if I'm only in competition with myself... I still feed off of it. I got to obsess about moving my foot a half centimeter and breathing for two seconds longer, with no wise veterans looking over me tsk-ing at my inability to let the little things go. It was glorious. My instructor was a pregnant lady, who was hotter than any pregnant lady I've ever seen as well as hotter than some un-pregnant ladies I've seen. She was also not afraid to move your body- at one point she was straddling me to get my *insert yoga pose name here* correct. At the end, when you're just laying there thinking about how awesome you feel, she came around and put a cool wet washcloth on my forehead that was soaked in lavender. Again- AWESOME. The whole time I was thinking about how I couldn't wait to blog about it (kidding... sort of). How yogi-ish of me.

2) I had to use two board books to scrape the ice of my windows this morning (at 5:10 am). Just thought I'd share. I found it a little funny... and sad at the same time.

3) I've been thinking about posting on comfort a lot lately, because it seems to preoccupy my mind quite often. It's funny how it's something that can come really easily or not come at all. I think about friends I have and people I know and how some of them are just... easy. I can click instantly and feel like I'm snuggled up in sweatpants with my stinky and slightly challenged dog. Other people just make me feel out of place. It'd weird that things can change so much from person to person, and it's even weirder to wonder why we become friends with the people we become friends with and why we date the people we date.

Comfort is always in mind. "I'm too hot." "I'm too cold." "My feet hurt." "My head hurts." "I'm tired." "I'm lonely." When it comes down to it, life is all about being comfortable. You change how you're sitting, standing, chewing, breathing... LIVING, all in the name of comfort. Sometimes, it's as simple as shifting your body weight, or staying away from dairy. Other times, it's a little more complicated.

With people, I find it funny that some are just easier to get comfortable with than others. Especially when I think of the relationships I've spent months, even years finding a comfort level in comparison to the instant comfort I find with a special few. Some examples? My sister and I. Instant comfort. Granted, we came from the same womb, so generally anything you might want to hide goes out the window. There's no judgment, and if there is, it's right out there in the open. My new roommate, for another. We can laugh about anything from her crazy life coincidences to a cow with explosive diarrhea on the way to the outlets (FYI, that is a severe driving hazard. We almost got into a car accident we were laughing so hard). But beyond laughing, there's the ability to just sit in silence and not feel discomfort. That's hard to find. Of course I have the feeling of comfortable-ness (not a word, I know) with my boyfriend too. That silence factor is there, even on the phone. Silence on the phone is hard to write off as not awkward, but somehow, we manage to do it.

I just love finding that. Because usually it comes when you least expect it, when you're not looking for it. I remember the very early stages of my relationship thinking, "Oh my God I can actually talk to this person. Where did this come from?" And with my roommate... well, I asked her if she wanted to live together after three days, so I think the level of instant comfort is pretty obvious.

It's cool to me that even as we get older, we meet people that click with us instantly, that we can go to new places and be totally alone one minute and then BAM. Instant comfort the next. You think that relationships and friendships take all this work, but then you're reminded that they actually don't. Not when you find someone who understands your weirdness and occasional awkwardness (or someone who chooses to look beyond those things). Sure, you have to work a little to keep them up- staying in touch, remembering birthdays and anniversaries, but the really comfortable relationships come about effortlessly and without a whole lot of thought (most of the time anyway). I've been reminded lately that these comfortable relationships can be found all over the place- in family members, in new friends, in old friends, in boyfriends, in colleagues- and it's very... comforting... to me.


Alright enough random blogging. Time for bed. Gotta get ready for my next yoga class TOMORROW, maybe inspiring yet another blog. Or maybe it'll just be another episode of getting manhandled by a hot prego woman. Whatever.