blbbbddddappplkkkkkslkkdshlop.

if you couldn’t decipher that first part, i apologize. it’s been the first real week of classes, and as usual, i’m already up to my eyeballs in work. i listen with barely muted disgust to people who tell me they’re bored at work; “there’s nothing to do but surf the internet and gossip over the watercooler.” now i know that i’m probably exaggerating; i am prone to this, i’ll admit. but i can truly say without a shred of doubt that i am doing something as soon as i hit my classroom door until i turn off my computer, and my brain, at night to go to sleep and do it all over the next day.

please don’t mistake my statements for self-absorbed whining. au contrare, mon amis. the thing is, i love my job. sure, it’s only been five days of classes, but i really get a charge out of teaching. you can’t help but be energized when you walk through the door into a teeming pool of adolescent hormones and hair products. i’m in the freshmen/sophomore hallway, so they tend to be a lot more wired in the morning than the rest of us, which totally recharges me. by the time the bell rings, i am ready to tackle my day and the six different classes i teach.

do you guys remember the first day of high school? it’s kind of interesting how i get to live the whole thing over again and again. the freshmen are so cute, for a lack of a better term. they’re like deer caught in the headlights, so quiet and unsure of themselves. they’re all wide-eyed at the whole weight of changes in their responsibilities, expectations, ten classes, and dealing with seniors and swirlies…

of course the sophomores have been there, done that, and tend to have the swagger that only one year of experience can bring. there’s a reason sophomores are aptly defined as “wise fools.” the juniors are playing it cool, waiting for their chance in the spotlight, while the seniors are already making spring break plans for cancun and florida. ahh, to be eighteen again.

so i’m back in it, and will not resurface again until may. but one of my many goals this year is to make time for me and the things i love other than chaining myself to my desk.

but now it’s time for a bubble bath with just me and mr. bubbles. he’s a great guy, but he tends to hog the loofa, oh well.

later.

my mom and i had a really good talk the other night. she was a little more reflective than usual in our conversation; symptoms of an impending birthday. crazy how those birthday things tend to do that to people. all my birthdays went pretty good until i hit 25; i didn’t handle that one so well. for whatever reason, it seemed like the beginning of the end. thirty just seemed way too close. i was depressed for days and then got over it. i decided to pull myself together and save my energy for the big 3-0. and that’s years and years and years away, so why worry about it now…

back to my mom’s conversation. obviously, the older you get, the more important these little life checkups are, and she was going through one of those moments. i guess i was a little surprised; this woman ALWAYS has it together and then some. but like most children, i don’t tend to think of my parents as mere mortals. and approaching another birthday (a lady never tells which one) makes one wonder about what they want to be when they grow up. i guess there’s never really an answer to that one. but the best part of that question is that you still ask it, you still want to achieve and be something better than the present, even if you’re not a dewy-eyed neophyte whose only real world work experience involved a hairnet.

so what’s a youth-challenged woman to do these days?

ANYTHING!!!**

maybe that’s just optimistic naivete, but i really do believe that you can accomplish what you set your mind to do, keeping reality as a level-headed companion. i believe in making opportunities exist where there are seemingly none. gee, is this why i’m a teacher? hmmmm. maybe.

of course i know nothing of rejection and sacrificing myself to the opportunity gods…um, right. one of my personal goals is to publish a children’s picture book. last winter break i mailed of my six month labor of love to over twenty publishers. what happened? well i’d like to preface the results with: the hardest part of that whole process was actually mailing the damn things. i had worked so hard on my story, and to send it off to be skimmed by some office flunkie sifting through truckloads of unsolicited manuscripts, did not exactly inspire confidence. and then the rejections came back, and back, and back. so far my little story goes unnoticed, but does that mean it’s over? hell no!

one lesson i learned from my mother is persistence. once when my sister and i were just wee babes, she tried to get public assistance during a difficult financial time in our lives (we wuz po’). she was getting no help from the bored application processor who quickly denied us services. she sat her babies on the lady’s desk and said, “then you feed them,” and started heading for the door. point made, the lady quickly ushered my mother back to her clueless children and to an approved application. ahh, the gentle art of negotiation.

that’s what inspires me, to a large part. people that don’t take no for an answer, who carve out their own niche in life and go for whatever it is that makes it all worthwhile.

so that’s my birthday wish to all, myself included. keep doing what it is that makes you happy, and at the same time don’t be afraid to try new heights. you might enjoy the view even more.

**case #2837465: rita golden gelman’s fabulous book, tales of a female nomad. check it out!