Frustration

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My new laptop behaved poorly today. It would not transfer the image to the projector and it is being funky about returning from sleep mode. Mother Fucker. And it won’t connect to the network at my house. It hasn’t since I got on Kevin’s network. Or rather, it gets on and then disconnects every five minutes. This means I: use Puppy’s computer (with the keyboard that seriously sucks) or I sit on the floor in the cold gun room. I am not thrilled with either option. I hate netgear.

My seniors are little bastards and I think I am going to have a pretty heavy duty drink in about five minutes.

Puppy wanted to stay at lab tonight so that he could spend the time with Ken. But that isn’t what he told me originally. Just that he though he should test run it. I feel like he isn’t being up front. Why do I have to play 20 fucking questions.

I have not gotten any packing done recently and I am upset with myself for it.

I’m actually thinking about going and looking at a bunch of apartments tomorrow and basically signing a lease and starting to move next week. This commute is just horrible. I feel like I am wasting soooo much time.

I have to do two unit plans basically within the next week. I have two new units starting in 10 days and I am freakin out. The two units are on poetry and The Mayor of Casterbridge my least favorite part of teaching English (poetry) and a book I sort of read once last year. No one else in the school has taught it before so I get to make it all up from scratch. This is good and bad.

I need to get started on my seminar paper the sooner the better. I have about a month left on that.

I have something like four books that I should read in the next two weeks.

My juniors are doing well though.

I think tonight will be lesson planning and crying.

I have these plans of being social this weekend. Uhm, it may not happen. Depends on how much I get done tonight. 🙁

4 things meme

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Four things I use everyday:
toothbrush, shoes (very sad really), some sort of hair tie, glasses

Four jobs I’ve had in my life:
Ross–sales associate, sandwich maker at Togo’s, jill-of-all-trades for theatre, teacher!

Four TV shows I watch…
yeah no

Four people I’ve talked to on the phone recently:
Mommy, Julia, Puppy, uhm… I don’t know. I IM everyone. I called all of my kids’ parents.

Four movies I could watch over and over:
Shawshank Redemption, The Color Purple, Beaches, First Wives Club

Four things I want to do in life:
Finish my fucking masters, have kids, see basically all of Europe, spend more than a month on all of the inhabited continents (time does not have to be sequential).

Four family members I am close to:
Alex, Anna, Ali, and Julia. These people are my family.

Four places I’ve been on vacation:
Hawaii, Ireland, Alaska, Australia.

Four costumes I’ve worn on Halloween:
Pooh, ghost, clown, Snow White. (In totally random order.)

Four schools you have attended: (HA! This one is ridiculous.)
SJSU, CSUH, WVC, FHC (four colleges)

Four of your favorite pizza toppings:
olives, ham, pineapple, cheese

If you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.

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“If you need something, ask for it.” Easier said than done, lemmetellyou. A lot of what is going on with me lately is feeling scared and lonely and trapped and helpless. For me a lot of this manifests as feeling little. But my relationship with Puppy is firmly “big” and so I don’t have much space to work through those feelings in my current environment. So I’m creating a space where I can be little for at least a couple of hours this weekend. I am so grateful to and for my friends. When you think about it, it is kind of odd to talk to a friend and say, “Can I come over and be little this weekend?” I miss my Daddy right now. I have sent Tom a couple of emails and he is ignoring them. I know he is overwhelmed at work though so I’m trying not to take it personally. The last time he and I talked about it I asked him if he would still be my Daddy and he said yes, but that was well over a year ago.

I don’t know what I want or what I need right now. Today I’m not feeling well–tickly throat and achey stomach–and it is contributing to me just not feeling big. I know what I ‘need’ to get done for school but I just want to hide under the covers. I hear a visit from the waaaaaaaaaambulance coming.

*sigh* Must be productive today. This morning even. SUCK.

Nice phone calls

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It is a good thing to call the parents every so often and just say, “Your kid is doing great! Will you please encourage them to do the upcoming assignment?” Cause then the parents think you are awesome and caring and stuff. Really, it is just a front though. 😉

{therapy}

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So I’m still not sure what I think about my therapist. Though she talked more this time than she did last time.

Something that is driving me crazy is feeling like I don’t know where I belong. I come from white trash, there is no nicer way of putting that. I come from people who consider a high school diploma to be a nearly unreachable lifetime goal. People who are still living in large houses with too many people per bedroom because they can’t afford to live independently. Though more are independent now than ever before. I’m not like them. I’m just not. Through whatever accident of fate, I managed to change my destiny.

But now what?

I don’t know where I fit. I don’t know where I belong in life. I am about to financially qualify as middle class, but let me tell you–I will never really be. My life expectations are colored by the pessimism of my class. Even saying that makes me feel bad, but it is bloody true. If you have not grown up truly poor (and few on my friends-list have) then you just don’t know what I am talking about. If you did grow up poor, dude–you know. If you are poor you assume that things will always suck no matter what so you don’t bother trying to change your life. And when you do try to change your life you deal with the attitude from the people who won’t try. IT SUCKS.

So I don’t know where I fit. Or even where I want to fit.

And then there is this boy whom I love to distraction. I don’t know why I love him so much, I just do. It would make my life easier if I could just stop.

Not Good

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So uh… the hard drive on my laptop died yesterday. After excessive consultation with people who are smarter than me I surveyed my options and decided that I am buying a new laptop. More consultation with said smart people led me through my options and pricing and such. I will be buying one today.

Woof. Not Cheap.

meme-age

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Leave one memory of you and me together. It doesn’t matter if I know you a little or a lot, anything you remember! Next, post this in your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you.

(Icon is a cool memory I have of a friend giving me a place to belong last Thanksgiving. Uhm, I didn’t need to explain that. But I wanted to.)

stuff to do and stuff to not want to think about

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Tomorrow my goals are:
Make the guest room neat. It doesn’t really matter that it is a mess, but I hate it and want the mess to go away.
Lug all of the bags out of the gun room down to the garage.
Start sorting out books that I will not need in the next year and pack them.
Finish grading the papers for the seniors and get mygradebook up to date for the juniors. Which means checking their WW, reading quiz, and vocabulary tests. I should put in their some of their upcoming points.
Put together lecture on suffering.

Stuff to not think about:
Why am I staying in this relationship?
Why is he completely unwilling to defend me when his family says rude/mean/hurtful things about me?
Where am I going to spend Thanksgiving?
Where am I going to spend Christmas?
Where will I be living in a year?
Why do I pick men who are unwilling to pay attention to me?

Stuff I’m getting rid of.

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I assume that some of my friends are interested in some of this stuff, so I’ll let ya’ll have first crack.

One green suede skirt, knee length size 14. ($15)
One black pvc dress. Sleeveless, zipper up the whole front, scoop neck, size 14ish. ($10)
A huge stack of vintage seamless stockings. Fits approximately a size 8/10 leg. (free to a good home)
One black pvc dress in size large. It is kind of snake skin looking with a zipper down the front that allows some extra room or makes it tighter. The zipper is over a pleat kind of thing. ($25)

White baby doll pumps in a size 8. ($5) They are fairly scuffed. These stupid things scuff the first time you wear them. If you want them, take the suckers.
These shoes http://www.pierresilber.com/blhihesh.html in size 9 (they run small). ($10)
These shoes http://www.pierresilber.com/5oxford.html in size 9 (they run small). ($10)

Prices are based on what I paid when I bought it and how many times I wore it. If anyone wants to be nice and give me more money that would be just fine. Or I suppose you could try to negotiate me down if you are also a poor person and you think I will have pity on you.

Damn this link has shrunk. Thanks ya’ll!

prep for moving

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So far I have collected 24 grocery bags worth of books to get rid of (maybe half of one of those bags is Puppy’s stuff) and I have a lawn trimming bag of clothes. We are going to be getting rid of a bunch of kitchen stuff as well. I can feel my belongings cry as they think of going away. 🙁

But Jesus Christ on a pogo stick by the third move in just over a year it is time to pare down.

finding hope

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Today I stood in front of my class and I asked them, “Why do you think I had you do this assignment?” I got half-hearted “cause it will help us” responses. I absolutely went off. I told them that I do not give them assignments because I am trying to find a way to kill an hour of class. I told them that I do not go out looking for ways to torture them just because I find it amusing. Every single thing we do in this class is for YOUR benefit. The point of yesterday’s exercise was for everyone to become an expert on one word and help everyone else in the class understand that word and give them context for being able to remember the word later, oh… on the test on Monday maybe. Instead I got upset and pissy in class because most of the class was not working or paying attention. We wasted a class period on screwing around and now if anyone wants to pass the test I suggest that they study over the weekend. The students didn’t let me down, they let one another down and that is a really sad thing.

I told them that I have had complaints about the screwing around distracting people so that they can’t pay attention and learn in class. I told them that I don’t like coming down on people and writing up referals is not my idea of a good time. But if I allow the misbehavior to be the rule of the day in my class then I am failing each and every student because I am not giving them the opportunity to learn that I agreed to do as my job. If I do not teach my students then I have failed and I am unwilling to do that. So the talking and sleeping and lack of work will no longer be tolerated. I will have a stack of referals on my desk and I will no longer engage with the people who are refusing to participate in their education. I qualified that yes, I have some kids who are fully participating and doing everything as they should–this lecture is not directed at any of them.

Most of the class looked very chagrined. I think maybe they heard me. I’m crossing my fingers for Monday. (They were really good in class today.)

hope?

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I’m having a lot of trouble with hope right now. I had a bad day yesterday–ok, I had one bad period and it wasn’t that bad. But I feel like a failure. And I feel like I will never be successful at a relationship. Part of my problem is exhaustion and I know it. I finished my unit plan last night for Mans Search for Meaning. I will have something to show in my meeting this afternoon.

This weekend I need to catch up and even get ahead on my masters class. I am slipping further and further behind and that isn’t ok. I need to figure out what I want to do my main paper on. I have no freakin ideas. *sigh*

I need to start packing. Maybe I will get busy on that this weekend. I’m not terribly optimistic about it, but it could happen…

I feel lonely. I feel like I can be in the middle of a crowded room and still feel completely alone. Yesterday several of my students touched me to try and get my attention and I freaked out. I started chanting, “Don’t touch me.” I walked out of the classroom to calm down before I could handle them again.

I didn’t get pictures. By an hour into the day I wasn’t feeling very princess-y anymore. 🙁

I need to figure out how to challenge my students more. I feel like I am sucking.

Therapy went well I suppose. She is a very active, action oriented person and I appreciate that. She immidiately recognized some concrete ways that both of us will have to adapt if we are to stay together and made no bones about it. I’m scared though.

Today, I’m pretty!

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And I don’t mean that I am not smart. 🙂 Today is Princess day!!! So uhm… yeah… guess how into that I am. 🙂 *bounce* *giggle* I’ve been looking forward to this for two weeks. My kids know that I am dressing up, but… yeah. No one will expect a full ballgown with hoops and such. YAYYYYYYYYYYYYY A day JUST FOR ME!!!!!!

*bounce*
(Think I will be able to talk my class into calling me Princess from now on? That would be so cool.)

I will try to post pictures later cause my hair is cool and my dress and…

sooooooo tired

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I want to go to sleep right now. That’s all I want to do. I don’t want to write my lesson plans for tomorrow and Friday. I don’t want to go to this stupid class. (I really want to drop this class. I hate it and the teacher but if I do there is no way to graduate next semester.)

I felt all positive and accomplished yesterday. Today I can barely bring myself to do the basics. I am such a slacker that it isn’t funny. I’m not proud of myself right at this moment.

There is so much to get done I feel like I will never catch up, let alone get ahead. If I had two “good” (read: productive) days of lesson planning I could get a months worth of lesson planning done and not have to even think about it for a long time, but I can’t seem to manage that and I feel really bad about myself.

My goal for this weekend is to not leave my house and get shit done. *sigh* I hooooooope it works out. 🙁

Tomorrow Puppy and I have an appointment with a therapist. I’m scared.

The good, the bad, the ugly

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Everyone who talks to me immidiately says, “What is going on?” My most common answer is, “I don’t know.” Thus: I haven’t been posting much.

Right now we have reached the conclusion that we don’t really want to break up but we are terrified that this relationship won’t work out long term. So we are taking a step back to “dating” (whatever the fuck that means). I am moving to San Jose and he is moving into his lab because he can’t really afford rent. The plan will be for him to spend weekends with me. The purpose of this insanity one might ask? Commuting is killing both of us and we are so tired at nights that we aren’t exactly getting any “quality” time during the week anyway. He spends enough time commuting instead of working that he goes into work at least one day during the weekend and I don’t see him anyway. This means that our evenings/weekends in the next few weeks are going to be spent packing. SUCK!

Yeah, he dumped me. He dumped me hard and I freaked out. I am still not exactly happy. What happened is that he dumped me and we spent last Saturday apart as I freaked out and cried on the shoulders of some friends. I called some other friends later and several of them asked me questions that actually made me think. When he got home from work I asked him if he really meant to break up with me or was he just kind of freaking out and it got said and he didn’t really mean it. His reply was that he is scared and he isn’t sure if he means it or not. So we are talking and talking and talking. What is he afraid of?

He is afraid: that I am unstable enough that I need a truckload of emotional support that he can’t give me (We are having ongoing conversations about the concept of ‘boundaries’ and how no one can/should ever be all of my support and it is ok for him to say that he needs more space than I am automatically giving him), that I will never get along with his family and his family is very important to him (while complaining about how I don’t get along with his siblings–the same siblings who IM me every day because they like me and want to talk to me), that we don’t have enough in common (we have more in common than anyone else I have dated and I think we pretty much always have fun–ok, I don’t shoot), that a couple of places where we clash will be insurmountable eventually (though he concedes that these have in fact become significantly less as we have adjusted to one another), that he needs a partner who handles crisis very well because he freezes (I want to tell him to go talk to Noah about the accident), that I have a martyr complex (I totally do, but I have been actively working on it for a while)… Those are the main things. Maybe I am over-rationalizing but I think these things are all part of growing pains and not deal breakers. I don’t know if I am just being idiotic and looking at the relationship through rose colored glasses or what.

He wants to know why I want to be with him at all. He seems to be terrified that I will decide that I deserve better and leave him. AHHH. He seems to be doing a premeditative dumping because that is better than me leaving him and I am not thrilled.

So we are following the advice of a friend. We are removing a lot of the external pressure from our lives in general (crappy commutes and not enough time spent on work stuff) and seeing if we really are interested enough in this relationship to make it work despite the inconvenience of living ~60 miles apart. We are also going to try and find a therapist. Any recommendations? Pretty much anywhere between Hayward and San Jose is good for me and I am going to make him drive further than me. HA! I am absolutely terrifed and we are talking about that. He and Rebecca are both right though. Removing pressure and working through issues will decide if this relationship has a future a whole lot better than me buring my head in the sand and destroying my back will. Commuting is killing me and my car. 🙁

My life is going to be changing a lot. I don’t even know how yet. I’m really really nervous and scared. If this works out then our relationship probably will go the distance. If this doesn’t then it probably wasn’t meant to at all. I’m scared to find out which it will be.