addiction

i have come to admit that i am powerless over tortilla chips. and i pray to a god of my own understanding to teach me the lesons of why i love this simple food so much. with processed cheese in a can, red salsa, green salsa, shredded cheese, black beans, this is the perfect food. and a perfect temporary sole source of calories. i'm sorry tortilla chips, but we may have to cut this off in 2008.

make a plan to love me

Feeling good. Back in love. Watched The Sea Inside together. A surprisingly romantic film about wanting to commit suicide. Glad to be loved, safe, and well cuddled. Sounds corny but very important.

staying home, making plans

it's been a day to stay home and regroup. i've booked two nights at the palmer house hilton in chicago for clint and i to go to jenny's wedding. it looks really nice and is near the art institute. had some help today from leonard cohen, coldplay, jill scott, and now the once soundtrack.

i'm excited to be about to make some plane reservations. i've registered for a graduate poetry class on form and hope i can afford it. if not, i'll take an undergraduate class for almost free thanks to clint's benefits.

i'm hoping we still get to go to the west coast in june. i'm thinking clint's ticket to portland will be free with northwest. i'm waiting for southwest to be on june's bookings, and then i'll see what june holds. i hope san diego on up. i've got some important people to see in san diego, la, santa cruz, and the bay. and some exploring to do in portland. we'll see what finances permit. glad to be back in the game of making plans. need to transfer those skills to my community college syllabus planning, but wanted to explore vacation first. first things first.

lighten up

i'm going to try to lighten up the dark nature of my recent posts. i've had a better day today. yesterday my friend cindy got me out of my funk by coming to get me in her dad's truck and taking me to hot yoga. i read an article today on oprah's website about how yoga has been shown to relieve depression. it always does for me. cindy and i sort of fell asleep in shavasanah (or the relaxation state at the end). then we showered and had indian food with zulaika and some wine and then a martini at marz martini bar. that was good fun. so great to be with like-minded and souled friends.

they came to the rescue again today. cindy got me out of the house by telling me i left my gym bag in the truck so i ventured out to waverly to get it. i met her parents again and got to know them in their own space. last time we were moving cindy, and they were stressed, so i saw the critical, controlling parts of them she talks about. today i saw some others. her mom shared a chocolate chip muffin with me, cindy made coffee, and naomi gave me some slivers of really good gouda. her mom got me wanting to experiment with grilled cheese and bacon and turkey -- some combo thereof with sourdough. then i exchanged sheets at target. i was feeling really snobby about unwashed masses and wished i wasn't. then i went to the library and again felt snobby and then impatient with the guy helping me . . . zulaika said she was returning her library book that i started getting into at her place: dark nights of the soul by thomas moore. she said she'd put in on hold for me, but i could only remember the author's name and the word dark, but the man working at the counter took forever as he looked on the computer and wasn't very good at narrating what was going on as i waited (why couldn't he have been a nice woman?) :) but, then he found the title "dark nights of the soul" and perhaps realized that i was in a bit of a desperate frame of mind. i was trying to be gentle and sweet, and he warmed up and looked on the circulation shelf and found it under "hunter berg." thanks, zulaika, for remembering my full name. i rarely remember the whole thing.

as i drove away from the library the man who helped me was outside smoking a cigarrette. he saw me in my car listening to christmas music trying to be cheerful. i've realized that i feel like clint and i didn't do a good job of christmas. we were so busy with work and then rushing to get presents, and we didn't do a tree or exchange gifts or do christmas lights. i realized i need those things. i need a bit of tradition in my own home.

i've also realized i'm going to be okay without my teaching gig. i'll get enough work with substituting, and i'll have more freedom. i won't have to call home or grade and plan lessons. and learn how to cope with the kids. i'll have more time for yoga and writing. and i make take another graduate english class. this could be good . . . either clint and i will stay together and get to the point of having a kid, i hope, or we won't and will divorce and i'll move to california or something. my friends are reassuring me that either way i'll be okay. and my dad's being a good dad. i've just got to stay gentle and learning and learn when it's time to leave situations, and things will be okay.

not as bad as the next guy

a coach i make copies with every morning had some bad luck last week. he was driving on the interstate with his brother when his trailer got unhitched. he was pulled over reattaching the trailer when a car hit the trailer and pinned him to his truck.

bob's skull, pelvis, and leg were injured. he's had several surgeries and might lose his leg.

i haven't lost my leg. and i didn't decide to lose stability. it decided to lose me. which you rather have: a leg or a job, retirement home, kids, and wife?

my bucket is empty and broken. fucking cold.

nothing good so better get firm?

i do have one community college class i'm teaching next semester. there's an assured $500 a month. technically, i guess if i stay here i could pay half of the mortgage.

everything else in my life is up in the air, except that i think my dog's health is good. i accidentally exposed her to chocolate yesterday, but she's a fighter.

so am i unfortunately. but i'm also a peace-lover, and i'm sure i will experience peace again.

so this is why people exercise. there comes a time when there is not enough tranquility to read or watch movies, so we move our bodies.

i hate that life is like this 4 days before the new year. especially when things actually could get worse. until everyone i know and i are dead, things could get worse. aren't i lucky that my country is an aggressor and it's not me they're dropping bombs on. not literally anyway.

nothing firm but looking good

so i didn't hear from the district office today that they're making me an offer, so in a way i've just got to get over it for 12 days until we're back in school. that kind of makes planning hard, but whatever, i'm on vacation, i'm going to enjoy it. also, it seems unofficially like maybe i'm going to be hired. marissa, the chair of the department and one of the three who interviewed me yesterday gave me a card today in which she said to let her know how she can help in the 2008 school year. and then she printed off a schedule for next year with my name on it. so maybe these were nice clues in lieu of anything official. most people would probably say they are, the more i get over my paranoia and relax into vacation, the more i'm able to slip into yeah, probably things will be okay, and if not, at least i'm relaxed now.

clint and i watched an interesting discovery show tonight on babies and their first year. as they learn new tasks, they're unable to do others as well for awhile . . . the whole thing was really cool and interesting and comforting to have some of the complexity and fragility of babies unpacked . . . i also want to relate babies and their tasks to me and my almost 30-something friends. i think we've taken on more tasks than many women previously our age did. our tasks are different in that we all think (or face a reality that dictates, encourages) that we need to first get a BA and dedicate a lot of energy to that and figuring out a major. my friends and i also wanted to travel abroad and maybe learn a foreign language. we are independent and want to be fine without being in a relationship. we made our friends every important to us. our families are also important, but we've wanted the independence to live away from them. and then eventually (and on some level all along), we're also interested in finding a mate, but he has to be evolved in many of the same ways as us . . . at the very least he has to be intelligent, gentle, good-looking and able to support us in all of the goals we set for ourselves, and then he has to kind of have his own thing going, too . . . so finding all this takes awhile, and then getting the career going, some decent housing, etc., and probably a degree beyond the BA before having a baby. this leaves us in various states of unfinished family foundation by the time we're 30. some people (or maybe just teenagers) think we're kind of old by the time we're 30, like why don't we have kids yet, or that we oughta get a move on . . . but my whole point of narrating the lives of my sub-group is that i'm generally finding that (thankfully) none of us have all of the pieces quite yet, and we're content with different paths, but if we are seeking some sort of family thing, it's at least comforting to all of us to see that no one quite has everything together yet, but we've got so much else together, and there's just compensation in that.

impatient

not liking waiting to hear at all. very uninspiring. guess i have to go to yoga at 5:30 because i should try to feel balanced. guess i will read but want to sleep, but that's bad for my sleep cycle. not liking this funky day. at all. there is a position in nebraska city open, and i do not want to apply. i think i have time to watch a movie between now and yoga. need something passive.

post-interview

i am vaguely terrified after my interview, but it really helps that i came home to two emails on my gmail, one from my sister ann and one from linda, saying that they'd read my blog, compliments, support, etc. that does help. the interview was scary. i sat on one side of a big table in a conference room, and on the other side sat the associate principal who is my supervisor, the administrator who used to teach spanish whose place i've been taking, and the chair of the foreign language department. i have pretty good relationships with all of them and two of them in particular i even feel kind of close to, like they've mentored me, and we connected, and now i was "on the hotseat" there for them to judge how i present myself, what i've done, and whether i should continue compared to the other candidates they'd interviewed just before me while i was upstairs actually dealing with the kids and trying to teach them spanish two days before winter break. i felt like i was able to articulate my experiences previous to teaching in impressive and multi-dimensional ways. they hadn't heard that i worked as a bilingual crisis line coordinator at a battered women's law center in berkeley. they didn't know i lived with a family for a month in bolivia. and maybe they didn't know how much i'd opened my heart up to my students and let them in to survive. or that i really loved working at lincoln high and had wanted to work there since i decided to teach. i felt like having said all that, they'd be kind of heartless not to hire me . . . but i also admitted that i didn't think i'd had the kids speaking spanish enough, and that both katie and i had set the goal for next semester of really focusing on getting the kids to speak in spanish. it was hard admitting my shortcomings when other teachers get to go on having weaknesses with impunity and are not evaulated at semester for their position. they apologized for the awkwardness of it, which was nice to have recognized, but there was no reassurance accompanying the apology. this was/is still my reality. and it's not like i have cancer, and they were telling me my prognosis, but it oddly felt like that. i will be okay though either way. it's just that when you're trying to become a teacher, you kind of want the freedom and security to be able to accomplish that task. and i have not had the security. thankfully, i've not just been a subsitute teacher, but to be honest it's all frustrating when i have a lot more education and life experience than many of the new teachers who were hired this year, but i'll get off it because a) it pisses me off, and b) i try to be thankful for the result of my part-time position: i've been able to get experience at one of the most interesting high schools in lincoln teaching spanish while also getting experience teaching english at a community college, which one would think would make my prospects for the future all much better. it's been good, but damn, i just want a friggin' full-time job so i can get knocked up and have financial security for that and get on with my life. i'm almost 30, okay? i went to college for about 10 years, and i deserve a friggin' job. i'm a hard worker and all that, and this is just getting ridiculous.

thankfully, i had lunch plans with a friend who also happens to be a counselor so she did help me work through some of my immediate nervous feelings. and i'll know tomorrow (hopefully) and then have a break to try to get over or into all of this, whatever that might be. and i'll read and write some more blogs, go to some yoga, do the christmas thing . . .

my phone just rang, and it wasn't the school district offering me the job. but it was a friend who needed help about a difficult road i'd been down, and i was able to help. that was good.

garlic winter night

the smell of garlic frying on the stove. clint in a red, plaid flannel tending a healthy meal. kyla sleeping peacefully on a green-leafed rug. clint says she smells like dog. i don't notice.

two nights away from the shortest day, and i am thankful for the time indoors. also for some sun today to melt the ice. i don't feel like such a weather-martyr when the sun has finally come out. these are the same cycles i've always known -- four seasons, a break at christmas, back to school, and then summer. we get two mondays off no teaching in january! two of my students are proud and have gone out of their way to tell me they share a birthday with martin luther king, jr. when i told vilma that's aldin's birthday, too, she knew, even though he's in another class!

i've made my home here because my family's here, and they are always an hour away. i've made my home here because i get letters like katie's. i've made my home here because there is a unitarian church down the street. and even though a family like mine is unusual in nebraska, with international christmas celebrations and no strong ties to christianity but to humanity, it is a place known for the salt of the earth. lincoln is in the salt valley. when i meet people from nebraska living in other places, there is still something in them i recognize. for the most part, we all grew up with christmas lights on the house and christmas trees inside to help get us through the winter. it's a place where people are comforted and more at ease when a new football coach is hired during a bad season. while i can't relate with that, i'm glad such a thing can bring them comfort. and i'm glad to be able to escape to a mexican restaurant over lunch with a friend and be speaking another language, not even having to deal with the thoughts that come to my head in my own but able to revert back in a second. kind of like living an hour away from my family in a college town . .. there may be a few more visible opportunities for worldliness here, but then home is only a code-switch away, up the interstate. only closed, icy interstates can keep us apart, and even then we call and say i want you to go down that aisle to graduation because you know i'd be there if i could.

and for those of us not so close to our families, we know our friends care like family. and this stuff is not just here. but it is here, too. and it is all the little strings amongst our hearts tied together that make us able to bear the cold, feel stronger for doing it, and warm our hearts seeing that this is the true weather for for my furriest friend, kyla.

Letter Under My Door Today

Thanks for the support today!

When I checked my facebook account this morning, I had this message on my wall from Elias:

hey... i read your blog entry and wanted to send you my best. i remember from when i was in the classroom how rough the last few weeks before break can be. you'll make it! also... i always liked the shady kids the best...

Then, tired, I opened my office door at school at 7:20am only to find this letter had been put under my door:

My dear Heather-
Hey girl! Can you believe we've made it through teh semester almost unscathed? Let's both take a sigh of relief! I have been thinking about you over the past couple of days. I have been thinking about how unfair it seems to me that you have to interview for the position to which you've been a huge help to the students you tutored to go on to 4th year. Basically, I was thinking about how underappreciated you are. I wish I could go on the loudspeaker and remind everyone (LHS & students) what you do for them. You are so brilliant Heather. I've not met a mind like yours before that's so perceptive to people's needs and worldly conditions. You truly care for anyone that crosses your path. i have been so blessed to start my teaching career with you as my colleague but moreso as a friend. You are beautiful and I want you to know that whatever happens with your position here, I will always appreciate you and think so much of you because you are more than deserving.

Love, Katie


Thank you, Elias and Katie. I really love teachers and am proud to be in their ranks. It's a heavy day today waiting for this interview tomorrow. Off I go now to rent "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Elf." I'm going to watch "Pan's Labyrinth" again tonight with my students in mind to see if they can handle watching it (one student, who is missing some fingers and was adopted from Vietnam said she doesn't want to watch torture). If I think it will bother her at all, we're watching "Elf" for our Christmas fiesta which starts tomorrow!

Also, I want to give a shout out to Cindy and Zulaika -- our little Piscean trio is a strong, sensitive family getting us through the trials speaking Spanish all the way!

I Thought *Joe Was Shady

regardless of all the life experience i like to think i have, i am still a first year teacher. i am still finding my feet in front of all of these teenagers every day. i am still uncertain about my future job prospects. i interview for my same position on thursday and will hope selfishly that some person with lots of teaching experience is not also interviewing for my job. it is a hard job, and i don't always think i'm doing it wonderfully, but i don't want to give it up. i love my students. i wouldn't keep all of them, but the notion of keeping some of them when i have sent my heart out into their veins, whether received, recognized, or not, matters.

i thought *Joe was shady. *Joe can be kind of shady. when my book was missing, i thought maybe he took it. but when a cop was talking to him one day after school, while he was sitting in a desk in the hall, re-taking one of my quizzes, i got defensive. *Joe may be shady, but he is my shady. sometimes *Joe doesn't do his work. one day i had to make a point about it when he just sat there. i sent him into the hall. when he i went out to talk to him he gave a lot of excuses about staying with his grandma and taking care of her and leaving his book and workbook at home. i didn't really totally believe him in some part of me. i told him, "well, do i need to call home to make sure you can get your things while you're staying with your grandma?" he assured me, no, he'd make it home. maybe in some way i was being a bitch. maybe i was also reading him. i asked him, though, if everything was okay, and i told him that i care, and he said don't, and i said too late. i don't always know what he thinks of me, and he probably doesn't either. but he comes to my class (first class of the day) early every day with a lot of donuts from a convenience store and a lot of chips. i've tried to encourage him down other paths of food choice, but he says he needs to gain weight, he's too skinny.

sometimes in the hall, i see teachers kind of get some recognition from someone else, and they light up and shoot back lots of energy, and sometimes i wonder when i'll stop feeling invisible. today i was leaving the associate principal's office, walking back to my 6 x 2 office, and i got a big shout out. it was *Joe. really giving me a shout out, like i am so happy to see you right now. even if i sometimes thought he was shady, *Joe also got that i also care. i was so thankful to this shady, sweet, learning, donut-eating dreadlocked kid.

i am a student in this building and a teacher. sometimes i try to feel my feet more firmly as i make peace with the overhead, the pedagogical extension of what i'm trying to communicate. yesterday i felt my feet less firmly and seemed to reach the students more lightly. it is a tenuous experience . . . shape, step back, be in control, be vulnerable, be teacher, be human, your turn...

since i have decided to start blogging, my mind is almost racing with all of the things/stories i want to say/explore. it's kind of of neat to know someone might read this and then kind of okay too knowing that maybe no one will. just to have a forum. just to make my expression not dependent on another person but to know that partially, it is the existence of these other people that motivates and inspires me, and maybe something i will say will spark something. that's what we do. and feel more connected to something, even if only and especially to myself. which let's there be more. weird how this all works. technology, for now, is my friend. a journal is good and find, but there is something to this today.

Be Aware of the Arterial Spread

i read tyler's blog today (after looking through my facebook "entourage" and being attracted to the pool he was in his picture and then wondering what he's writing lately). sometimes i think the power of writing is to hear our own voice and then to awaken others to what their voice wants to say next. it's a pretty simple thing. it is art in many ways. for me it's also spirituality because words have that much power for me. but it's also good to be reminded of the power that exists beyond words.

my yoga teacher. i could write a book about her. she is in her late 70's (as is my dad), so i know enough about the potential of that age to not be so shocked by her but still bowled over in ways that are positive. every move that woman makes strikes me as exactly what i needed, and that sentiment brings tears to my eyes. i've had that feeling about four times in the last four days, which is lately unusual. liz has the age in her voice when i need the wisdom and reassurance and lightness when i need the compliment of connection. her nimble body is enough to inspire me to age. she danced in hollywood in her early 20's, and danced in movies with elvis presley, marilyn monroe, and frank sinatra. it almost seems like anyone who's anyone in lincoln knows who she is, but that's the silly stuff. i have the opportunity to work with her 5 days a week, when i can make it, and she says things that grow new roots in my body.

our body, mind, and spirit should be equally strong. this is a new concept after surrendering so much of my energy to my brain in college that i almost wanted to find against the notion of a body and spirit and their needs. every day we use 12 of our body's muscles. in yoga we use all of them (which is about 200). in one week, our cells completely regenerate our intestines. liz says things about the power of our mind and our thinking, and forming knowledge of the body. each time we practice a posture we are sending signals not of "i can't, i can't," but i can. today i was doing tree pose and struggling with my ego looking at others, accepting their presence around me, and liz always seems to be aware of what i'm experiencing. she made some suggestions, and eventually i got to a place of balance where i thought i could hold the pose forever. she came up to me and said "looks like you've found your balance. you could stay like that for a very long time." then i wanted to stay there forever, but we moved on. in the relaxation, she reminds us to let the earth hold us, give the floor the weight of our head, back, check in with all these parts to make sure we surrender their weight to the earth.

i hope some day i can others even a fraction of the reassurance that she gives me. today i opened a package from a new friend linda in san diego. she met my mom in a bathroom in the 70's, and my mom thought she would be perfect for her ex-husband. linda and jeff did marry and moved to whittier, where some of my best future friends would soon be born and toddle.

linda and i met about a month ago in a mexican restaurant. my brother kyle had forwarded me a forward from her, and i emailed her, having always wanted to get in touch with this woman who knew my mom someday. i was nervous for our meeting, and soon a little jealous that my brother had had this sort of step-mom all these years, and i'd never been a part of that. she was/is amazing, and i almost felt like kyle and i were competing or mutually yearning for a woman's attention of the age that our mom would be. it was weird; when she went back to the buffet (though she's a really small woman), i asked him if this is what it would have been like if we would have had a mom. after our meeting she emailed me that if she would have had a daughter, she would have liked her to be like me.

linda sent me a package with a home-made apron and i put it on and wore it for like an hour while i checked my email. it sort of felt like a legitimization as a mothered person.

then today i also saw my friend alison's blog of her pregnancy and now of her daughter hannah. alison is a mom now, and that's pretty much almost natural. it amazes me that one can go from having sex as a single body united for that bit, and from that bit can come this huge expansion of the body, and from that comes a natural but volcanic birth and from that a new human who can need up to eight hours a day of breastfeeding to grow. i heard a girl in the lincoln high bathroom yesterday say she thought she was pregnant, and her friends said cool, and i felt such disdain for their lack of knowledge of good timing, and yet her body is ripe for this. we're supposed to love the new generation, and a latina student of mine has a high-school sister that just had a baby, and i want to think "yeah, now are you sure about this, look what's happened, etc." and yet it's a baby who they love, and a new person, just like my brother was a new person born when my mom was 17, and yet i want to say, there's so much of yourself you don't understand or know or even to know can possibly emerge (i want to say in the best sitatuation, with more education), and yet a mother will emerge, and how can a mother not be a fulfilled state?

it is the scariest thing i can face, now that i'm facing teaching. i face/d marriage and now allow myself to love and be frustrated with so many students, and it seems like yeah, this should be easy. how can something be that scary? and yet it seems like a new conception of myself when maybe i wouldn't want it to be, or maybe i would want to have choice about which parts of me would be reconceived but somehow maybe that power would be taken away. but maybe it wouldn't. it doesn't matter that others don't see me or do see me as a particular type? yes, you'd make a great mother; you don't seem like the type who would marry, and i have to let it roll off me and keep going and not define or redefine anything.

arterial spread though . . . that was said on npr about sweeney todd... what kind of arterial spread is this life i'm leading with dozens of kids i have to let flow through me... and so it is good that i can let the earth hold my head and my body and let liz lead me into leading me into leading others into better leading themselves and be led.

first post

What I like about the black background is that it looks like a hole I put my words in, but the bright white screen I compose in sort of ruins that effect.

I've got two minutes to write before leaving for hot yoga. Clint has called and is coming home, no need to put the dog out, we've coordinated schedules. But he's hungry, we may not eat together. That is one of the main things couples do. But we'll watch TV later.

It is almost Christmas, one week away, and fellow teachers think I'm a heathen for not celebrating Christ, but I am exciting to see my family. I think that's good. And I live in a place where there's snow outside. As if that's a virtue. :)