Midnight & Mountains

I started writing at exactly midnight, and writing feels like climbing, with my arms and legs burning and my eyes stinging from the harsh wind. I want to stop and sleep. But I can't. 

I started climbing this mountain a week ago. I’ve been in the foothills all week and we are nearing the summit now. By Monday I’ll have reached the opposite edge after which I’ll freely tumble down. I’ll take a nap when I reach the bottom.

There is so much here to be said, and I would like to be brief, but you see… I still have this mountain to climb. I don’t get to stop climbing until 1:00am. It’s a decision I made on my own, without fully understanding what it would mean for me, but hear me out. I’m not crazy for doing it.

See, I’ve written about post-cancer life—and yes, I have decided to just call it “cancer” because that’s honestly what it was. Poison is poison, no matter what clothes it may be wearing. I've talked about the doctors appointments, the nonsense I have endured at their hands, the surprise biopsies and terrible responses to what I want to do with my life.

I haven’t written about the most recent and unexpected change in my life, however.

It’s not that I’ve been keeping it a secret. There are just so many details. So many words to be said. So many thoughts to express, emotions to explore. I am actually planning on writing a book about the experience, if things ever calm down for more than four days at a time. It will be all of the funniest things I'll ever say for the rest of my life. Probably.

Here is the not-secret-secret: I got a second job at a restaurant.

This has come with a multitude of complications, of course. It’s the same restaurant where my husband is a server. I work as a host, a job which is easy enough, but requires a lot of energy for a poor introvert like myself.

I am trying desperately to avoid telling you everything about the work I do. I have a multitude of hilarious stories, but they’ll have to wait for another time, because this is a serious post. 

Seriously, I mean it!

Not surprisingly, this job wears me out. My back stopped hurting after a few weeks but my feet still get sore—my right foot in particular is in constant pain because it “suffered trauma” once. (That’s doctor talk for “it broke.”) The hours are long, you don’t always get to eat or take a break, and even if you get yourself something to drink or bring a water bottle someone else will inevitably move your drink, or spill it, or toss it out because it “might get in the way.” (Goodbye, my beloved cup of coffee…)

What I didn’t expect that during these first days of each month, these days where I take a drug (see other blog posts for that excitement) that makes me hungry for odd foods (I am really craving pineapple right now), I would find myself in a state of compressed exhaustion and I would lose my ability to stay up late.

It's really too bad that I must stay up late.

On the weekends the restaurant is open until 11pm. I am often a “last guest closer", which means I have to stay in the restaurant until the last guest leaves. So if a family comes in at 10:59pm and they enjoy their meal until 12:27am, I don’t get to walk out the door until I have watched them leave first.

So, back to the drugs.

I have to take them at the same time every day. And I mean the that. The same. Exact. Time. 

This is not like an allergy pill, or even birth control, where you can take it 5 minutes or perhaps  an hour late and you’ll be fine. If I take this 5 minutes late, the entire cycle of pills is wasted. I won’t get to reset until the next month.

I actually took 2 months off from taking it just because I was so concerned about getting it wrong. Don’t you worry, my anxiety about this was not misguided!

When January came I started taking it again. I concluded, based on my work schedule, that I would take it and my antidepressant at 1am. These are the only two meds I take that require a schedule and so it’s easier to take them at the same time, rather than set extra alarms and carry drugs around with me all day and potentially lose them. I know I’ll be home by 1am and so this was the most logical solution I could come up with.

You get it now? You see that this was logical?

It was logical, I promise. I planned well, to the best of my knowledge. But little did I know that for the next three weeks I would NOT be a “last guest closer;" rather I would be home before 10pm, but I’ve already started taking the pills at 1am and it can’t be undone!

So here I am. Sitting. Waiting. Ready for bed, Wishing I was asleep. I have been in this state for three hours, and I'm getting so close.

It’s within my grasp now; I can see the mountain top. My eyelids are heavy, my breathing slow and even, I am warm and comfortable and totally prepared to plunge my pickaxe into the rock and rest for the night.

Thanksketching: Day 2

'

I am thankful for

employment

among children

and colors.

Thirty Thanks, Day 10: Mistakes

Everybody makes mistakes. It's one of the purposes of this blog--to fully accept my failures, my blunders, my losses. Every body is a loser at some point (some more often than others) and so it's easy for people to connect to the concept. We all fail, we all mess up. Processing and healing (or letting go of) these things is easier if we can start by accepting that they happened.

I'm thinking about this because I totally messed up today. It wasn't anything too horrible, but it was pretty embarrassing. Today was a math day at kindergarten, and I'd been planning this awesome lesson. It's "Around the World" month, and this week we're in Mexico. All of that is beside the point, because I was going to teach them about "touch numbers," which is when each number has dots on it to help you count. I made a poster for the wall and bookmarks for each student. My co-teacher (an awesome undergrad student getting Service Learning credit) and I laminated everything right before class and they looked great.

So we taught the touch numbers, and the kids caught on pretty quickly. We had moved on to practicing counting +2 and +3 with dice when a student asked me, "Why do the numbers go five, seven, eight, nine? Where's six?"

My co-teacher looked at me and then we both looked at the bookmarks and, surprise! There was no six. I designed the poster over a week ago, and worked on the bookmarks all weekend. We had sat there, cutting out the bookmarks and then laminating them and cutting them out again from the laminating sheet AND doing that whole process over again because the papers moved inside the laminating machine and somehow... somehow... neither of us had noticed that there was no six.

I have nothing to blame it on except that I didn't notice it. I spent so much time lining up the stupid little dots that I inexplicably did not notice I was missing a number. There was no 0, or 10. I knew that. But no six? Completely escaped me.

Tonight I went and remade it all. Re-laminated everything. Placed it all nicely on top of the supply box. I sat in the dark office all alone, still bewildered at how I could have missed it.

But you know what makes everything better?

Several things. 1. The problem was easily fixed, and I can give them updated bookmarks tomorrow. 2. My students laughed it off with me. They didn't get upset, or say something mean. (They don't know how.) 3. It gave me the opportunity to be humble in front of my students, and to accept my mistake gracefully.

I am so thankful for mistakes. In a world where social media allows us to only ever show our good side, our triumphs and victories, our ever-impressive lives... it is good to be reminded of what we are. We're human. We are all sinners, all in need of a savior. We mess things up. We say hurtful words and think destructive thoughts, we judge and curse and condemn, we ignore and neglect and abuse, we deceive and cheat and manipulate. Sometimes our mistakes are small and we need comfort or affirmation, but sometimes they're big mistakes and we find ourselves in need of grace, forgiveness, and redemption. Our mistakes give us the space to need saving. It's okay to need saving, you know. It doesn't make you less of a woman or less of a man.

It makes you human... a loser, just like me.

Thanks, mistakes. You make us incredible.

Thirty Thanks, Day 3: This Job

It seems to be the trend for college graduates to go out and work somewhere that doesn't quite match their degree. Maybe I get it from my dad, who, after getting his BA and MDiv and working as a pastor for several years, decided to move to Seattle to work in a parking garage and a Jewish bakery and even delivered newspapers. (Don't worry, I know the real story behind that. I think. But maybe if I make fun of him enough, he'll read my blog.)

My job isn't completely unrelated to my degree, but it is a little bizarre. I majored in English and Secondary Education. My life's dream (other than to be a famous published author with a big fancy house in which most rooms are actually libraries) is to be a middle school English teacher. That's right, I love middle schoolers. I think they are precious and pesky, wise and wild, but above all... they are hilarious. They make me laugh without offending me, and usually without offending each other. They are are that perfect age when they still admire their teachers but they can also have great conversations, like mini-adults.

But I teach kindergarten.

It's not full time, or anything. I actually work for my university, despite graduating over a year ago. I'm the "lead tutor" there for undergraduate tutoring. Students come to me with their papers and essays and other writing assignments--even articles! I love every minute of it. But as part of the University Student Success Center, I also teach the "Kindergarten Enrichment" program for an hour on Mondays and Tuesdays. It doesn't seem like a lot, but those two hours occupy much of my mind, and my heart.

I don't think I could ever teach this age group for a whole day. I would rip my hair out. Kindergartners are hilarious, just like middle schoolers, but they also require frequent potty breaks and often have sticky hands and I am always asking them to stop playing with their clothes. (Middle schoolers do this too, but if you notice and ask them to stop the embarrassment will keep them from doing it again.) I love them, but it's just not my passion to teach them.

Still, I am thankful for my wonderful job. 

I am thankful for the tiny child hugs, their absolutely hilarious misnaming of things (like calling sequins 'scorpions'), their unknowingly encouraging words, their total faith in me ("You're the teacher, so you already know how to do everything."), the joy I find in planning lessons and activities, the creativity I experience with them, the learning I experience with them. I am also thankful for the courageous college students that come to see me, who press on in spite of the "going to tutoring" stigma and ask for help. I'm thankful for their desire for improvement and their graciousness when I don't know how to use their Mac laptop or when it takes me more time than usual to explain something. I'm thankful, above all, for the opportunity to teach in these circumstances. I learn something every time I teach something. And I find that incredible.

Thanks, job.