It's Official...

Jff and I are completely obsessed with our kitty, Leo. I realized this, this morning while I was at work. Before the kids got there, the phone rings. It is Jff. "Just wanted to let you know how you can tell that it is beginning to be spring." I, of course, eagerly want to know. "Well, Leo has begun to shed. I just got a brush full of his hair. You might even want to brush him again when you get home tonight."

As I got home this afternoon, my first thought was that Leo had not had a chance to be outside yet today. So I suited him up, with his collar, and he hopped out the door with enthusiasm. As I came home from my run a while later, I started yelling for him to see if he was ready to come in. No trace of Leo. Two seconds after I had shut the front door, the door bell rings and it was our next door neighbor girl with Leo in her arms. Leo was looking exasperated and I realize that he had been IN her house instead of outside romping around. This is annoying. I didn't want to be rude, I am sure she is just a girl who desperately wants a kitty and can't have one, but... "He isn't yours!" almost came out of my mouth. Instead, with teacher voice, I said, "you know when he isn't outside I get worried, it is best if you just leave him outside!"

So, I let Leo out AGAIN a few minutes ago. As I was standing in the dining room just now, I looked out the window and there is Leo- fifty feet up in a tree chasing a squirrel. I am a little worried about my next move, though. I just took a picture of him and now I am blogging about it. Is there any hope for when I have kids?

In Close Proximity...

I have had many reports that as a baby and a young child, I was enamored with being clothes-less. As my mom tells it, I would be outside playing in my diaper, and without much thought, I would drop diaper and be streaking around naked. It just felt like the right thing to do, I guess.

I can't remember much of elementary school, but as a middle schooler I began to incredibly modest due to my larger-than-average-chest and just the horrible experience of being an adolescent girl. I don't think it was until I was a camp counselor while in college that I began to relax about being seen naked(I think it was the forced communal living). Finally, I realized that no one really cared what I looked like naked, because I didn't really care what they looked like naked. It was good to relax about it.

I started thinking about all of this the other day when I went to try on my bridal gown. In mid-discussion about my bodice, the seamstress plunged her hand down the front of my dress- without notification, nor care. (Now, first of all it is a bad sign that there is even enough room in the bodice for this sort of activity... But that is another issue) Regardless, I was shocked by her willingness to disregard social norms, as I was shocked by my own very modest reaction to the ordeal.

Is that what getting older means? Letting go of our previously less inhibited beliefs and ideals? If so, I am already recognizing it in myself. I really don't like incidental contact from strangers. I feel funny about the woman at work that doesn't regard normal rules of personal space when talking to me. I am not as much a "hugger with reckless abandon" anymore... I think I have even become less outgoing in my older age.

So, as I turn 29 this month, I think I am going to focus on getting out of that comfort zone I have developed lately. I still won't offer strangers a grope, but I will try to offer more hugs and warmth and see if I can break out of my 'shell'.

A Quick Thought

No time to write, but a nice thought for today from one of my favorite writers:

"People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around."
- Barbara Kingsolver

Like an old friend once told me, "Trust only movement- action is commitment".

Want Ads

There is a question that plagued me daily while I lived in a big city where I knew no one. "How do you make friends?"- When do you begin to feel like you are apart of the life around you- instead of just an observer?

It wasn't until I began to pack up my apartment in this city, that still felt somewhat foreign after a full year, that I realized I was leaving something. There I was packing boxes, and the phone was ringing - and to my complete shock they were local calls. People who had found out I was moving. I had told my one friend and that was it- and all of a sudden everyone was sad. I remember crying, not because I was sad to be leaving, but because it would have been nice to know someone cared while I was actually there.

Strangely enough, I am starting to hear that little question bouncing around in my head, again. "Where could I meet a friend?" or "Wouldn't it be nice to have someone to hang out with on a Thursday evening?" I am lonely. Really? Strange. I have an amazing fiancee who is my very best friend. I have college friends all over the country. I have the same "best friend" that I have had since 7th grade. My fiancee has a great group of friends. I work with a lot of people. I have not just one, but two families.

I am starting to realize, though, that with some exceptions I am either coming or going in many of those friendships. College friends are starting to drift apart, we are all doing different things in very different places. K and I desperately try to stay in each other's lives, but with fiancees, busy schedules, and different states it is hard. A and KL are in such different places in their lives than I am. In essence, all the people who really know me are on the phone with me, but not next to me, while I try and figure out something like my wedding.

In other areas of my life right now, I am the observer, the newcomer. I am the new social studies teacher. I am jff's fiancee. I am a player on the frisbee team. I am a shadow in the room, but not really a separate person in those places. Conversation goes on around me but not always with me. Hopefully in time, those people will be friends, I will be an individual to them, but mostly not yet.

So as I move forward into the future, I wish for friends of my past. I try not to believe that after a certain age, "you just don't make friends like you used to". I am going to keep hoping there are future friends out there who will give me an honest answer about how a pair of pants look on me, who have a good kitchen table to talk at, and who will laugh with me about the those goofy things we all do each day. And although jff does all of this and more, he just isn't a good girl friend. Girls just need girls sometimes. So, in the mean time, I will keep my eyes peeled, with preference going to a gal with a local phone number...

Busting into the 21st Century!

After watching from the sidelines for quite awhile, I think I am ready for this blogging adventure. I was finally convinced when I starting thinking to myself, "If I had a blog, I would blog about that..." Maybe my first blog will turn off all those that hate teacher-talk and I will have uninterrupted privacy in cyber space!

Today at school, I had my students participate in a simulation called "Making Ends Meet" to wrap up our unit on the Great Depression. It is an activity where students are given a family's budget that is in the red and they have to find ways to pull the family out of a negative income situation. The real challenge is that the family is really poor and is living with only the essentials. The point is for the kids to see that they have to make really tough decisions and trade-offs that they would never think of to get the family back to a positive income. After the students find solutions they think are good ones, we discuss their ideas, and talk about the cycle of poverty.

This is a particularly interesting simulation to do with my very affluent students, especially on a day like Valentine's day, when they have lavish gifts sitting next to their desks on the floor. Many times I heard exclamations like, 'this is hard!' or 'that really sucks for them'. The best part was the disagreements this activity created, 'what are you heartless?', and 'they are still people, you know'. Our debrief was fantastic. Pin-drop silence met my question of "how would it feel for you to live like this?" The eventual responses were poetic coming from my students.

On days like today, with all the frivolity of St. Valentines, I am thankful for my upbringing. Not that having divorced parents was ever good, but I think the experience of having a single mother and an extremely budget conscious father was priceless for me. It is in class today that I remembered not trying out for the Nordic Ski Team in high school, because I was worried it would have been too expensive for my parents. And although, I live a life today that many would consider extremely comfortable, I try to always remember the difficult choices that are being made, day in and day out, by people next door, in the next neighborhood, or across the world.