My dear friend, Beth, just blogged about things she loves, and I thought it was a great idea for me on this long, Education Minnesota (State Teachers’ Convention) weekend as I’m home recharging my batteries and trying to get caught up in grading and homework.

Things I Love

Early October days when one can walk down the city street on mountains of fallen yellow and red leaves; the curbs are covered, and the overarching trees are dancing like preschoolers in their first brightly-colored tutus.

Teenagers. Seriously.  I like the geekiness, the awkwardness, the enthusiasm, the hesitancy, the bravado, the thoughtfulness.  They crack me up and they challenge me, and every time I get to interact positively with one I get to revise a bit of my own truly awkward, truly horrible, truly painful youth.

Coffee. Dark, black, and preferably from a French press so it’s foamy on top and leaves a residue.  I like Turkish coffee, too, for this very reason…with its cardamom.  I like the smell of coffee, the color of coffee, the taste of coffee, and the effects of coffee.  I love the atmosphere of coffee; the intelligent conversation, the mismatched furniture of a coffee shop, the many types of non-mainstream music that goes with coffee. I’ve rid myself of every other addiction, I believe…but this one?  I drink far, far less than I used to–I usually try to limit myself to one cup per day, often two, rarely more than that–but oh, how I love it.

Fires. In fireplaces or in pits outside…not housefires (although still fascinating to watch if one could erase the trauma and emotional despair).  Wood fires.  Not just the aroma and warmth, which most people do, but the time-weaving effect of them.  Everything slows down, lives get dissected at a leisurely pace between passing around the poking stick, histories evolve on wisps of smoke. The moments between the crackling of the twigs hold everything possible, all soothing.  I’m a person who rarely, if ever, truly relaxes, but in front of a good wood fire, I usually get close.

Traveling.  Anywhere, usually, although I gravitate toward places with major history and/or natural beauty (which for me is topography, trees, and water). I love, LOVE how the air feels…changed…in different places.  Not the smell (although that’s there, too) but just the molecules themselves; the interaction between the air and my skin, my eyes.  The excitement of seeing new things, or seeing old things that I’ve been reading about my entire life.  Of touching places that thousands of others have touched over the centuries.  Of following a new road just to see where it goes.  Of looking at the homes of others far different from myself, and those quite similar to myself. Of hearing other languages spoken around me.  But again…that air.  Nothing like it.

Animals.  This is a hard one because this also means that anything that deals with pain of animals, cruelty or accident, is difficult (or impossible) for me to bear. I can handle the abuse of animals far, far less than I can that of most humans, for the simple fact that animals (and small children) will not understand that it’s not their fault.  I can’t get past that.  I’m crying now just thinking of it.  But I love watching different animals, I love eyes and gaits, and I love the wondrous variety.  And, of course, I love my kitties, especially a cute husband and a bunch of cute kitties, all finding room in our big bed with a pile of mismatched blankets and more pillows than creatures, every which way, spending a lazy afternoon in bad weather.

Flannel.  I like the blue-collar, working-man connotations of it.  I like the feel of it, especially old, worn flannel, against my skin.  I like the patterns of it, especially plaid.  I like the usefulness and the strength of it.  I like the associations of coziness and winter and love and comfort that come with every yard of it.  I even love old-fashioned, granny flannel nightgowns, and I don’t care who thinks that’s weird.

Snow Days.  Even more now that I’m a teacher than when I was a student, if that’s possible.  Especially when we get the call before I’ve showered, and I can curl up on the sofa in front of the picture window, coffee beside me and an afghan around me (in my flannel jammies), and a good mystery book in my hand, to watch the sun come up in the periwinkle blue world that is an early-morning snowstorm in Minnesota.  That periwinkle color is my favorite color in the world, and it’s hard to find anywhere but in the sky on a morning such as this.  I love the quiet of a snowfall (not blizzards, mind you, which aren’t quiet), and the whole feeling of stocking up at the store in case it’s going to be a few days, and of making neat edges with the snowblower down the sidewalk, and how everything looks better covered in fresh snow…even Marshall looks pretty, and that’s hard to do.

Teaching.  I came to it late in life–I started teaching at age 35–but it was worth the wait.  I love lesson-planning; the fact that anything I hear on the radio, anything I see as I go through my day, anything in print I stumble on, likely becomes possible lesson material and I tend to look at it in just that way.  I love the smell of floor wax.  I love the anticipation of a new year.  I love the performance aspect, the theatre of it.  I love the give-and-take aspect of class.  I love, LOVE when I can make a class laugh, or they make me totally lose it and laugh.  I love the kids, the books, the possibilities. I can’t imagine doing anything else, ever.

My friend Beth also wrote that she loves “containing multitudes” in the Whitman manner, and I have to agree with that.  I love that I can be a frumpy, middle-aged schoolteacher but also love some rather shocking music.  I love that I can dress in tie-dye but yet listen to hiphop.  I love that I can play Frank Sinatra back-to-back with Steely Dan and Green Day.  I love that I read Whitman and Gaiman, Chaucer and Anne Tyler.  I love that I can use some lingo of my parents from the 1920s as well as understand much of the current teenager slang. I love that I’m not easily pegged, and that those I gravitate toward are always full of surprises.  That we’re all jigsaw puzzles–the hard kind–and we take lifetimes to solve.

That, perhaps, we’ve not solvable, but that doesn’t keep any of us from attempting it.

It’s the time of year when I get excited about planning my upcoming year; reflecting on what worked last year and modifying, choosing news stories and texts in some cases, finding new ways to teach the material, revamping what I do and still like.  It’s not stressful because I have time, and since I love organizing–concept organizing, that is, and not, say, closet organizing–it’s fun.

This summer is no different, but I have another item on my agenda.  One that isn’t about teaching, or education, or even my profession at all (although it impacts that, as well as everything else).  It’s about re-integrating my mind and body.

No, I’m not on some new-agey kick (not that I have anything against that, it’s just not me).  I’m not trying to find myself, and it’s not even a midlife crisis (although, come to think of it…).  It’s simply that over the last four years of medical comedy in my life, diagnoses and treatments and surgeries and prescriptions, I’ve lost track of my body.

More than that, I’m realizing that I not only have separated my body from “me” in such a way that it’s a foreign object, but that I absolutely hate this foreign object.  It causes me pain, and frustration, and it won’t do what I tell it to, and it keeps failing, and it interferes with everything I want to do.

I’ve been finding myself, more and more, watching commercials or programs or people in real life doing things that I used to do–simple things–and more and more I find I resent them, and hate my body, because I can’t do that.  Running, walking, canoeing, bending, reading, doing handicrafts.

I’m finding myself using language that highlights this separation, that labels my body a traitor, and I use metaphor that is violent (”I want a chainsaw to cut off these arms right now”).

I’m resentful–angry–over my eyes failing me when I’m an English teacher.  My reading has decreased an immense amount over the last three years or so, and it’s because I literally cannot see well enough to read at times–and it’s becoming more and more common. So many doctors, so many different “solutions”, and none of them have worked.  Meanwhile, my eyes get worse (and I had better than 20-20 vision for all of my adult life until recently).

I’m saddened and betrayed by the miscarriages.

I’m loathing of the autoimmune diseases that are killing parts of my own body, but it’s my own body that’s doing it.  I hate the pain, and I really, truly, hate the fatigue that keeps me from living the way I used to, from working as hard and as much as I used to.

I don’t like looking at myself–these conditions have done their damage on my appearance (weight, skin, etc.)–and all this resentment has built up so that, as Esperanza says regarding her environment vis-a-vis her *potential* at the beginning of The House on Mango Street, I feel like I’m a red balloon tied to an anchor.

And the key point there is that the “I” has nothing whatsoever to do with the body.  Separate entities, working against each other.

So, from discussions with my husband and a good friend–one who’s editing a book by a woman with a very similar journey–I’m realizing that this summer, along with setting up my Moodle courses, and finding a new novel for LA 8, and planning my new classroom, I have to re-integrate myself into a whole.  A flawed whole, granted, a whole with many parts missing and many parts not working properly, but a whole individual.

I need to learn to love this body again, and then perhaps I can heal.  And it’s not going to be easy.

My first steps?

• I am trying to nourish it better.
• I am starting T’ai Chi; I want strength, and I want to trust my limbs.
• I am trying to visualize positivity.
• I am starting acupuncture for the pain and meditation and integration.

And, since I’ll be teaching on overload this upcoming year *plus* going to grad school, I’m thinking now what I can realistically say “yes” to and what I will have to give up; I’m only one person, and one person with limited physical resources.

Of course, at the same time this is happening, I’ve managed another incurable diagnosis (spinal arthritis) to add to the Hashimoto’s, the Fibromyalgia, the Asthma, the (continue long, boring list here).  Also, my incision from a minor surgery on my back a couple of weeks ago has become, as happens often with me (weird immune system I have), infected.

But I’m trying very hard to not resent; accept, find the lessons, and adapt.  The resentment and hatred I’ve been carrying is contributing to the fatigue, I can only imagine, so it’s a mighty fine place to start.

Tags: health

Because I live in a democratic Republic, where civil rights are not majority rule, and equality is something we promise to protect in our Constitution.

Because commitment should always be supported.

Because I’m in love with my best friend, and he and I enjoy benefits by legally marrying, and others should have the same.

For my stepdaughter, my friends, my family members who should have every right to happiness, joy, and family that I have.

This.  Video.

Don\’t Divorce Us

Tags: family, HRC, marriage, personal, political, Prop8

As an addendum to yesterday’s blog, a communication I sent to Governor Pawlenty, R-MN, this afternoon, via his website:

Dear Mr. Governor:

I’m writing to let you know that your continued vetoing of statewide health insurance for Minnesota’s teachers, and your general non-support for Minnesota teachers and education, is forcing me to choose between continuing to teach or putting my life at risk without health coverage.

I live in outstate Minnesota (Marshall), and I teach in a small district.  My health insurance currently costs me over $500/month (after my district’s contribution) for individual coverage.

I’ve recently married, and my husband is without insurance.  To put him on my policy, I would be paying $1230/month–out of pocket.

Before we ever saw a doctor.

Worse, our rates are going to increase in July by at least 20%.  I will be paying just under $1500/month for insurance for the two of us–and I only make $28,000 (2008 W-2) to begin with (and my husband makes less than $15,000 a year at the same district, without any benefits, as a paraprofessional).

We cannot live like this.  And I blame you.  We Minnesota teachers have tried, repeatedly, to pool our insurance resources, only to be thwarted by you and/or the Legislature time and again.  This past year’s veto was absolutely a kick in the teeth for each one of us.

We are already pooling through our local service cooperative, and I had to laugh, bitterly, at your recent call for all districts to pool for resources—you only call for that until it comes to statewide insurance.  That, you will not LET us pool!

My income will not increase for next year, but my insurance will—dramatically.  I have two college degrees and seven years experience as a teacher who regularly works ten-, twelve-, and fourteen-hour days.

I deserve to be able to keep my job and get health care and I shouldn’t have to choose between them.

Shame on you.

–Karla Olson
Marshall, MN

Right now, I’m unsure what to do.  I have pre-existing conditions that would make it impossible to find alternative insurance for me.  This also means I cannot go without coverage.

Oy.

Tags: health, insurance, Pawlenty, salary

Bad News: Our district, like every other one in the country, is facing cuts.  Whence they’ll come is yet to be decided, but we fortunately have administration that is willing to keep us updated, is trying to discuss, and, honestly, is making me feel like we are all in this together on one team.

Our Superintendent addressed us at our faculty meeting today and gave us a timeline of when decisions will be made, priorities, and a summary of what we’re hearing from the Governor (blech–Pawlenty has messed with education every chance he’s gotten) and the State Legislature.

We’re not as bad off as some districts, yet–we’re starting with a healthy fund balance–but, well, the next couple of years are not going to be pleasant.  Things are scary all over, in every field (except, perhaps, for bars and foreclosure attorneys), and I’m still employed, so I shouldn’t complain too loudly.

I’m frightened of the upcoming economic realities–no pay increase but my insurance will increase dramatically even without adding my husband.  However, we do need to insure us both, and right now, the monthly premiums would take the vast majority of my paycheck.  Vast.  Majority.  You heard me correctly.

Don’t know what we’ll do.

Good News: Just when things seem their darkest, however, something always comes along down the hallway at work to brighten things up.  Just as I’m questioning my career choice (well, just a little) based solely on the financial aspects, kids do amazing things to make me realize how lucky I am to be a teacher, how happy this job makes me.

Today is my birthday, and at my age, it’s not something I really expect anyone aside from my parents and husband to notice all that much.  However, during my prep period this morning, the seniors all strode in led by a colleague and friend (thanks, Shuckhart!), and surprised me by serenading me with “Happy Birthday.”  It was awesome.

All day long, students–some of whom I don’t even currently teach–waved and said, “Happy Birthday, Ms Olson!” or ducked in my room to say so.

My sophomores–taking a cue I missed–also sang to me.  (And this after I lectured them about their cohort’s behavior yesterday, even!)

An eighth-grader left me a chocolate heart on my desk (thanks, Cinthia!), and last night at Mock Trial practice?  Matt casually walked past my desk, deposited a So-Be Liz Blizz (my favorite indulgence, and one I’d paid him to pick up for me on his daily trek to the convenience store weeks earlier), and said as I was surprised and digging for a couple of bucks, “Nope…it’s a freebie.  Happy Birthday!”

I love these kids.  I really, really do.  I love, love, LOVE my job.  Even on bad days, it’s still more fun, and more satisfying, and more challenging than anything I’ve ever done.

Today was a good day.  Tomorrow?  I guess I’ll deal with that…tomorrow.

Edit:  Editing–was interrupted earlier.  Fixed stuff, added links.

Tags: birthday, budget, cuts, kids, Pawlenty

For persons interested in linguistics, etymology, or religion–or, if you’re like me, all three–here’s a nifty tidbit from my Slate feed about Jesus’ name and its changes, its frequency, and, well, other cool things to know.  Astound your friends!  Impress your family!  I love stuff like this. 

“Was Jesus a Common Name?”

Tags: cool, etymology, linguistics, religion, words