What I’m Looking Forward To, to get me through the colder months.

• Any day like today, when it’s almost 50 degrees outside in a normally wretched month
• Getting to know some maybe normal men like the one I met yesterday
• Downton Abbey
• Being so busy that my DVR properly fills up by Friday night veg time
• MOVIES for Oscar season
• Spinning class
• Sundays with Heidi the trainer
• Drawing

I spent the first days of 2012 rather melancholy and nostalgic for the small-town life I could’ve had last year, for the part of someone I never did and will never have, but ended up in a fierce creative streak because of what I do have.  Can’t say that I’ve been so inspired to be back at work, but that will change.  Ebb and flow.

Yesterday, I met someone who, while claiming to be incredibly private, was very open and honest with me in a way in which I have become accustomed, really.  Once again, a stranger bares their soul.  I did not expect that from him, though, and I did not expect to ask the questions I had told myself not to ask him, but I did.  Someone who is not perfect, and who I don’t know if I’ll ever talk to again, but I liked him.  He was different from the big personalities.  Kind of dark.  Kind of messed up.  Very kind, thoughtful, and intelligent.

We’ll see.  But, I know I want more of all those words in my future.

Soon.

It’s been a while, art.  Nice to meet you again.  I’m Belle, and you may be seeing a lot of me soon.

Supporting this vendor has become very important to me, and even after just putting it as a blurb in my newsletter for staff, the department secretary placed an order for the English department.

So, one more way that this change has been a right fit for me.  I’m able to do more good, and use my influence for the positive.  Yes, it is all business, but I like the thought that my purchases are helping my community and state do better.

By now, even though I hope for different every time something new begins, I know that I am a slow burn.  I start subtle, get comfortable, and then release the beast.  Without fail.  I’m learning.

The Language Arts department has adopted me as an unofficial, non-voting member amongst themselves.  Science cracks their naughty 8th grade jokes around me because I am one of them now.  At the beginning of the year, I was terrified by the thought of such a large school and what my principal talked up as its Email Culture. This to a girl who’s only ever been successful when using her god-given one-on-one abilities and personality quirks to get the in with people.

RIGHT…email culture.  Not so much.  I discovered quickly that people just do not respond to emails AND that I work with cowboys now.  Eat in their own departments, disappear into their rooms and do their own things kinda cowboys.  Independent as HELL kinda cowboys.  Do I understand these kind of people?  Why yes, yes I do.

What do you do with cowboys?  You meet them at the canteen.

The school’s administration has been supportive to me and what I’m trying to do.  They’re not pointing out my screw ups, they’re letting me learn, they give me the space to do what I want to do.  The district administration has blown me away, and I’m not sure how, but their approval is apparent of what I’m trying to do, and the potential they think I have.

The kids are a different story.  I’ve never been so challenged.  Even the good kids were putting me through my paces as a new person, but the bad ones will come back and lie every day.  The transition between small town and even a first-ring suburb was huge for me, especially coming off a year where the kids and I were so incredibly close and bonded where I was.

We’re getting there.  The rules are still the same.

• Get to know the seniors, they’re an in.
• The long, curly hair?  Superficial, but effective.
• Get to know the regulars.  They will bring their friends.
• Teach the classes, tell them what you do and why you do it.
• Make things about them.
• Everybody likes candy on Friday.
• Listen to who the kids respect as teachers and go observe those people
• Every day’s a new one.  It has to be.

She seemed like she was making some poor choices for someone so promising and talented.  Didn’t make sense, but then again…I didn’t know for certain.

A colleague brought up starting a reading club lately, telling me she’d had some girls who were really interested.  And one’s mom had just died, so maybe this would be really something for her.

Then, she came in on Friday, in the middle of a stressful moment that ended up with an hour long conversation in my office.  I had known something was off, but I realized that she was our reading club girl.  It was just her and her dad, she’d been fine for eight months and now all of a sudden, just wasn’t.   Couldn’t focus, couldn’t cope, hated every minute of not being able to do these things.  They don’t talk about it.   She’s lonesome.

Today, two of her teachers told me how much she lights up when she talks about me, how grateful they are for that…and I could see the longtime concern on their faces when they said it.

Humbling.

Stalking houses online.

I can pay my bills without worrying at any point of the year.

There is no thundercloud of grad school in the distance anymore.

Plenty of lovely people to spend time with…on the weekends.  One at a time.

A quiet life.  Orange Fluffy is keeping me company right now before I get ready to go to the gym.  I like her.  She’s perfect.

Getting used to a tough crowd of kids at work, settling into a new culture, getting the hang of things in a bigger school.  Settling into the 1.2 full time jobs thing.

Need some new hobbies.  Like estate-sales, making jewelry, repurposing furniture.  Some way to spend my time, not on homework or the jobs or working out.

Turns out, that is exactly the IRA that my new 0.2 gig uses because it is part of the same system of state colleges, and now I have two active retirement plans.  The second contribution is not much anymore, but it’s something and it wouldn’t be possible if I hadn’t gotten the job.  Opened another door.

Recently, I was able to close a door that desperately needed closing in my life.  One that needed to close in order for me to move on with other things.  I am now done with my graduate education.  Um, well, I’m sure I’ll have lane changes through my district every year, the way things are currently going with “professional development opportunities” *cough*requirements*.  But, since I will not be pursuing a PhD, and I have been wrapped up in an educational system for the better part of 16 years now, I finally went belly up to the bar and said I was done.  Am I done with second master’s degree?  No.  Am I close? Yes.  But I decided just to take a certificate and my sanity, and practice what I’ve been learning about leadership in real life without worrying about where the time for my unwanted stepgrandma St. Catherine was going to come from, and resenting the hell out of every minute spent with her.  Save the $5000 that would have gone into it next spring and put that into a down payment for a house next summer.  It is only six straight months of hell, but six straight months of hell that I knew I finally could not handle.  My job is too demanding, my life is at a point where I want other things, and the sacrifices it would take are ones I’m not willing to make anymore.  So, we really did break up, my stepgrandma and me.

This change was brought to you by President Obama and his initiative to forgive Stafford Loans after 10 years of public service.  It has brought a freedom from obligation that is priceless.

Thank you, Mr. President.

A woman was walking past me at our school’s open house last week, complaining about her “wonky” knee from a state fair mishap.  I, of course, launched into conversation with her, as someone who also loves the word wonky.  She began talking of diversity work with our county (the one in which I now work!  Victorious!) and I was all, “Oh, what division do you work for, I used to sub for the libraries and loved it so much!”  Funny, this custodial grandparent of one of my new students has been with the library system for years, works at Central downtown and seems quite the influential personality.  We talked like old friends about the transitions that the system has been through, people we had in common…one, the supervisor I had when I was there who I loved.  Someone who was established and influential in the profession when I was on my way in and with whom I had a very similar background in education, academic work, and loving the publics so very much.

This week, they must’ve talked, because my former supervisor found me when she heard where I was.  Emailed to say hi.  I emailed back and told her she’d always been my favorite person there, and I didn’t know if she’d remember me after these years.  Her response: “I still remember…after I interviewed you, I told someone ‘That librarian is so good, she’s almost scary.’  Wish you were here with us.”

If I were ever in any need of affirmation that following my heart and instincts is the right way to function, right?  The schools are so similar to the public system, in the direct impact you are making, the exposure to so many faces, the teachable moments-small, impactful ones.  The academic library was not a good fit, not fast enough, and while I am sure I did an okay job at it, my heart was always here.  In the city, with these people.

So, a love of the word “wonky” let to a lovely new connection, a valued reconnection, and validation of what I’m able to do.  Pretty sweet.

People are awfully bold on the comment section of any online publication venue, in this case, my city’s online newspaper site.  A local reknowned snotty suburb fired its superintendent for making decisions that have hit the news all year.  She made a decision to integrate the low-achievers of the district into the “community schools” thus making them multi-class.  Did she do this well?  No.  But you know damned well that those parents weren’t celebrating new diversity opportunities as they took their money and kids to the neighboring reknowned snotty suburb.

The comments from the residents of this suburb were enraging.  “Don’t call us racist, we’re just classist.” A we want our rich suburb to stay the same and we’re entitled to it because we’re tax-paying Repubs message.  Not all, just enough to light the burning embers of hell in my eyes.  A lot were concerned about the level of education…to their credit.

I’m sorry.  When my friend married one of you, I told myself that it wouldn’t matter, but now she’s a douchebag, too.  A greedy one, who votes on her six-figure income.  When I see your unnecessary wealth flaunted and go back to my underprivileged kids at school…I know you are wrong and what you have is not fair.  And, yes.  I judge you in the opposite way you judge other people, because money has turned you into a douchebag.  Your “I want to control how my money is spent” attitude doesn’t take into account that the greatest honor we get in being human is to set up a system that can at least attempt to care for its least.  Your “tell them to pull themselves up by the bootstraps” tirades really don’t work for the mentally ill.  And, dammit, if you try to cut me off in the snotty grocery store parking lot when YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS TURNING ILLEGALLY SIR, so help me there will be hell to pay next time from me.  And Fake Jetta.

A couple of older ladies last night condescended to me that I must not like dogs because I didn’t grow up with them, last night at a community meeting about a dog park.  Bitch?  The Nelson’s had a new dog every year, and I’ve seen the wrong side of two dogs’ jaws.  Don’t tell me I needed a puppy as a child.  And, I am proud to stand up at a meeting and say that it is fiscally irresponsible to even speak of a $15,000 doggie water fountain installation and parks that are, at the very least, three times more expensive than you’ve allotted money for, in times when money is tight.  I would rather know that park workers got to keep his/her job than that the money went to enable a canine to urinate without a leash in what now equates to my front yard. Don’t care about fund designation, don’t care about allocation, it looks bad to promote such frivolity.