Roll, Muddy River, Roll Muddy River, Black Muddy River, Roll

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analogies, Autism Spectrum, harried, I love my job, muscle fatigue, new experiences, new job, postaday, special education, teaching, The Grateful Dead

Let’s say I was a marathon runner. We’re playing hypothetically, just so you know. I don’t run. So let’s say suddenly, I decided to quit training for my marathons and become a rower. Although I am an athlete and I am very strong (we’re still in the hypothetical), my arms aren’t used to the muscle strain. Suddenly, I experience muscle fatigue unlike anything else, but it’s a familiar feeling that I recognize and welcome. This is how I describe my new role as a special education teacher. I don’t have the muscle memory, but I know that the old adage no pain, no gain rings true.

This might be a ridiculous analogy for some, but after 12 years of teaching English, I am using a very new set of muscles. I’m a little sore, and my reflexes are slowly returning to those when I taught English, but IT’S DIFFERENT. I wish I could explain it better.

I’ve been asked to dive head-first into a pool of unknowing, blindfolded. And here’s the kicker: there are butterflies, but I am not afraid to let my feet leave the diving board.

When I began teaching in 2001, I had left finance and found myself in the unchartered waters of teaching. Talk about a fish out of water. I was told by the very wise Victor:  go with the flow, ask when unsure, voice concern and frustration before you really feel this way.

I hold on to these sage florets of advice.

So the past five days have been trial and error. There are so many variables outside my control, and thank God I realize this. I haven’t even given these variables a second thought. My students run the gamut of Cancer support, Autism Spectrum Disorders, your classic “learning disabilities” like dyslexia and spacial issues, if those are considered classic. And then there are those that fall into no category, something that more and more teachers, both mainstream and special ed are experiencing. It’s not cut and dry (although, let’s be honest. No PERSON is cut and dry).

Today I had an out-of-body experience. I asked a student to step outside to congratulate him for an amazing goal he reached yesterday in another class. He was still focused on a negative situation from earlier in the day, and suddenly, out of nowhere, I said, “We need to put that thought into a box temporarily, and take a look at the thought I am handing to you right now”. Oddly, I remember using the analogy of a box for thoughts with one of my kids over a decade ago in Connecticut. It came naturally. And today, when I pulled it out of nowhere, it worked.

After a harried day of no preps, teaching through lunch, meetings before and after school, and putting out fires every class period with a very struggling student, it hit me. I know more than I think I do. Like riding a bike, I remember how to do things.

This realization kept me going all day, even past my grad school classes that finished after 9pm tonight.

Yeah, keep rolling, muddy river. I got you.

It’s going to be a mostly bumpy ride, but thank God I love roller coasters. And that I LOVE my job.

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Is She Really Going Out With Him–Joe Jackson

We Can Touch the Stars–The Jayhawks

Misty Mountain Hop–Led Zeppelin

Black Muddy River–The Grateful Dead

Freedom–Blues Traveler

The Boat That I Row–Neil Diamond

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We’ll Frolic and Play the Eskimo Way

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cheeseballs, christmas, cookbooks, DPchallenge, festive, Friends, Gram, Hero, memories, nostalgia, parties, postaday, recipes

For the past week, I have been “coaxing” Christmas songs to pop up on my iTunes. And finally here they are! Perfect timing, after the best of the 8 Christmas parties I have thrown. The food was a hit all around. I’m very pleased. Salad was killed, no one left a bite of dessert, and I have only half a lasagne left. Mrs. Desmond’s cheeseball was even better this year because I didn’t have Worcester sauce and replaced it with soy sauce and sriracha. Wonder if ol’ Mildred, from Richmond, Virginia, would approve. Well, my friends did. It was really good.

We didn’t eat dinner until nearly 10. Not because it wasn’t ready, but we were too busy chatting and opening gifts and telling stories and drinking champagne. Most people left at 12:30 which is impressive. I moved the party from Sunday night to Saturday, and it made a difference. I began this party the first year I lived alone, which was my last year at USF. There were six girls, and it was a white elephant. We had a silver madonna boob purse, a scary wooden cat with real human hair, lottery tickets, and giant underpants. I didn’t have the cheeseball. I had a store-bought cheeseball. Until I didn’t.

The story of the cheeseball is that the year before Gram died, I interviewed her about her recipes because I wanted to write a cookbook for all of us. It’s actually a beautiful book, filled with awesome pictures of my grandmother in the 50s and 60s and beyond, in her kitchen, in her apron. I asked her about family recipes that we grew up eating, most of which I already knew how to make by heart. Each recipe in the book comes with a story, of the reason behind the recipe.

We sat for hours in her small assisted living studio, only furnished with a microwave. She told me who her cooking partner was in 7th grade. She recited her recipe for Hermits from when she was five. This was the woman who at nearly 90, was slowly losing her mind. The stories I heard that day from a woman who had always been my hero, always been my best friend, amazed me. How she could remember that if your fruitcake was too moist, stick half an apple in the tin and put it in a dark cupboard? And that you always press down ginger cookies with a glass dipped in sugar?

Mildred Desmond, or Mrs. Desmond as I had always known her, was Gram’s next door neighbor when they moved down from Canada. She was a lovely woman. We always

You’re In Need of Something You Can’t Find

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charm bracelet, dreams, gift, Gram, Lenny Kravitz, lost things, mom, postaday, San Francisco Giants, searching, start again, World Series

I seem to have lost my sense of time in the past few weeks. I don’t know where it has gone. It’s kind of like I am in a hamster wheel. Perhaps it’s not the worst place to be, but this annoys me. To my credit, this fall has been intense. For starters, once again, the San Francisco Giants, the baseball team I grew up with, moves on to the World Series tomorrow night. I have been watching a lot of baseball, which is usually the case in the post-season, regardless of who’s still in. Well, with the exception of the Dodgers and the Yankees.

Since I was a teenager, I have had a reoccurring dream where I am searching everywhere for something I have lost. Sometimes it happens when I really have misplaced something I care about, other times when I am overly tired. I tend to lose everyday things for a few hours–a day or two tops–but for the most part, I am able to have reconnaissance missions to locate them. Except twice.

In high school, I lost a gold and sapphire birthstone ring I received in 3rd grade. It was for my birthday, and I had scoured the Best Catalogue over and over. With enough nagging and proving to my mom that I wouldn’t ever lose it, there it was on the fireplace hearth, ready for me to open after dinner and cake. I bent the hell out of the ring over the years, and had it straightened with my dad’s pliers, broke the shank in half, and even had to have it resized. This ring survived endless abuse, but it was loved. Until I lost it, and then it was adored and revered.

I was in high school, maybe college, and the ring went missing at some point. I didn’t wear it daily; it had a permanent resting place in my jewelry box. But then it didn’t. I stewed, and searched, and got teary. I mentioned it to my mom, who was as baffled as I was. It came up in conversation that Sunday when my Gram came to dinner. The next day, she called our house and asked to talk to me. She told me that she had a dream the night before about my ring, and I should check behind my nightstand, under my bed, anywhere near where I could have taken it off in my sleep. Low and behold, I found it underneath my nightstand. It was the last piece of jewelry I lost. Until 2007.

When I graduated from 8th grade, I received a 14 karat gold charm bracelet from my Gram, with a charm on it. It was a gold filigree cross. That same day, I received a shamrock from my parents, a “13” from the family I babysat, and I was slowly on my