Once a Bills Fan

When I moved to Texas in the 90’s, I moved my Buffalo Bills fanship with me.  My Buffalo roommates and I, along with relatives and friends, would meet every Sunday at Snuffers; ostensibly to root for the Bills in a bar that aired them, but mostly to drink underage beer and eat every-age cheese fries.  I don’t know if you know, but Cowboys fans are crazy and when my roommate and I wore our Bills’ shirts to Target to get supplies for the Superbowl, we were honked at, cursed at, told “for shame”, and even had cars swerve dangerously close to us.  We were shocked and hurried to get our errands done and return to the safety of our apartment and our little Bills’ nation.  I think it was the first time we learned it can be rough to be a Bills’ fan.

I will admit that there are a lot of years after that where I didn’t always catch a Bills’ game.  They are not often aired in Cowboy country.  When I moved from Dallas to Austin in the 2000’s, it was nice to get out of central Cowboys territory but I found people here rooted not only for the Cowboys but the Texans as well.  I was also busy raising small kids and again, rarely caught an actual game.  That didn’t matter; if anyone asked what team I was going for, my answer was always “the Bills!”.

I am proud of being from Buffalo. I tell my classes every year that I am from Buffalo and ask who else in the class is.  I have never had a student tell me they are from there but occasionally they will have a parent who is from Buffalo and I will get excited and say “Go Bills!” and they will look embarrassed or indifferent.  Fair enough; it is the first day of school and I teach Juniors and Seniors and they do not want to be seen sharing a moment with an over-eager English teacher.  Usually someone will say “Didn’t they lose like four Superbowls in a row?” and I will counter with “Didn’t they make four Superbowls in a row?” and this gives us a great time to talk about perspective.

This year, however, I have seen students at school with Bills’ gear on. I stop every single one of them and say “Nice shirt, sweatshirt, hat, etc.”  Kids in class will talk about who they have on their Fantasy Football teams and I always say that I hope they have Josh Allen.  They will either readily agree and talk to me about football or they will learn to whisper and sit farther away from my desk.  Yesterday, I may have spoken very loudly to a man across a restaurant to say “I love your shirt” because he was wearing a Bills’ shirt.  Later, I stopped to consider that maybe this man really just wanted a taco and coffee and not to be accosted by a strange woman talking about his shirt.   But for me, at that time, it was a very nice moment of being Bills’ fans together in a sea of confused Texans and it made me feel like home wasn’t so far away. 

If you are wearing something with this logo, I am 100% talking to you.

It’s easy to be a Bills’ fan this year; they look great and the games are exciting!  Except that one where they won and lost and won and lost 18 times in the last two minutes.  That one was more ulcer-inducing.  I can say confidently that I will always be a Bills fan and proud to be one.  I had a kid scoff earlier this week and say “I don’t know, Miss, think this is really their year?”  I answered yes immediately.  After a few seconds I added, “I always think it’s their year.  That’s what being a fan is all about.”

Time: It's On My Side

 You know what I had plenty of this past week?  Time.  I am truly grateful to have had the entire week off for Thanksgiving.  Soccer season starts tomorrow and that is three straight months of practices and bi-weekly games, and travel and, of course, doing it all in soccer weather.  (for those who don't know, soccer weather is anything 50 and below and accompanied by any form of precipitation from rain to grapple to snow) And I love it and yet there is so little time to do anything else after teaching, coaching, and normal grown-up life things like groceries, errands, and couch naps.  So what a relief and a reprieve to have this whole week of time.

I will admit I started the week off sad.  I put the girl on the train back to her dad and it was like sending away not only my daughter, but my really good friend.  And my heart twisted and ached in my chest but I had time to just be sad.  I had time to cry my sinuses out because I would miss her and I missed her brother and stupid holidays and sharing kids and wah.  I didn't just push it down and do my busy life; I had time to acknowledge the sadness and then, I had time to move on without it. 

I had time to spend Thanksgiving day with a friend I rarely have time to see. Our families spent so much time together when the kids were little and as I walked into her lovely, welcoming home to hug her, it was like no time at all had passed.  I had time to sit and visit and recollect and catch up and I had time to think how amazing it is to not be the one in charge of dinner on Thanksgiving.  I also had time to still miss my family but be absolutely mesmerized by another family's dynamics and to be so grateful that they invited me in to take part.  Well, to be fair, they invited me for dinner, I added the appreciation of family dynamics on my own.

I had time to watch a small child of my friend and realize that while I might miss some days when my own kids were small, I do not miss bedtime when they were small.  I had time to hike and see that Texas is really trying its best to produce some fall leaves and colors and smells.  I had time to watch all of Great British Baking Show and cry because those people are just so damn beautiful to each other and 1899 and I need someone else who has watched that to let me know so we can talk about that ending.

She's really trying.

I had time to start two books I will never finish and sigh about the fact that I can't remember the last time I read a book that really captured my attention.  I had time to choose to not check my work email because, it will be there on Monday, and now is not the time.  I had time to take my dog on very long walks in the middle of the day just because. I had time to nap. I had time to realize that there is an hour of the day where the sunlight coming through my patio door shows every piece of animal hair on the floor and learn to run errands during that hour.  I had time to get coffee with a friend and phone calls with relatives. I had time with my partner to just enjoy being with one another and laugh and rest and simply be.  

I had time to think about, rue, and then celebrate my life choices.  I had time to think about what I want to do with this life, my job, my words.  I had time to realize that there is never a straight-forward answer.  And the knowledge that I have time to figure it all out.  

I hope that everyone has some time in this busy season to, well, just have time.  Time for yourself, time for your thoughts, your feelings, your sense of self and purpose.  Time for a good or bad glass of wine and a bubble bath. Time for a warm cup of coffee in your cold hands.  Time with those you want to spend time with and less time for those you have to spend time with. Time for moments that make your heart ache and time for moments of pure joy and time for all the emotions in between.  Time to appreciate where you have been, where you are now, and what you have to look forward to.  And most of all, time to take a couch nap with a soft blanket, a bad dog, something British or football droning on the TV, and the knowledge that this is truly the very best use of your time.

Votes For Women

 This one starts with a confession: I almost didn't go to vote.  Gasp! I know.  I am very ashamed of myself for being so lazy and entitled and well, apathetic. The good thing is that I did go this morning (no lines) but I understand why turnout is so bad when it seems so critical that we be out there voting.

In my defense, I just moved and I am exhausted.  If you haven't moved in awhile, don't.  Just stay where you are, or leave everything behind, especially any pets, for the new owners. I swear that the next time I move, I am seeing what will fit in my big hiking backpack and that is all I will take with me.  You know what won't fit in there?  Baskets.  I don't know how I became the owner of so many ugly and non-functional baskets, but while I was moving three years ago, I stood in my garage with a friend who said "Lose some of these baskets."  And I did, but I still had a ridiculous number of unseemly baskets to lose this time as well.  

I am physically exhausted from heaving boxes and climbing stairs.  I am emotionally exhausted trying to remember why the hell I have so many baskets as well as culling my kid's childhood memories.  I decided that the Valentine's container made from a milk jug about 13 years ago wasn't moving but I cried as I put it in the dumpster.  I am also truly just tired because cats are assholes and they didn't take the move well; hiding and yowling all night long.  It is like having a newborn and, friends, I am way too old to have a newborn.

So moving tired plus working with apathetic teens put me in this place where I knew voting was happening, where I was liking people's statuses about voting, but never made me feel like I needed to go do it myself.  (Don't worry; I also hate myself as I reread that). And maybe my Zoloft is too high and I am not feeling as passionate as I should be about the state of the nation and world, but if it wasn't this high, I probably could not do this job every day.  What a modern-day dilemma!

This morning though, as I sat watching the news and seeing the voting coverage, the guilt and shame settled in.  Not so much that I was frozen or indifferent, but enough that I started to think.  I thought about the clip from Iron-Jawed Angels that I show each year that has Hilary Swank as Alice Paul being force-fed in prison.  For wanting to vote.  Force-fed in prison for wanting to vote and here I was on my comfortable couch, sipping coffee, and trying to see if I had time before work to go because I didn't want to end up standing in a line.  (yep, hating myself again.)

As I teach and preach each year, these women sacrificed so very much. They faced so much vitriol and hate and persecution, yet they stood.  They marched.  They chanted.  They kept the fires going in front of the White House.  They sat through prison.  They endured torture.  They did this for us.  

If you are sitting on your couch, hating yourself because you also have been lost in life and haven't gone, it's okay.  Shake off the guilt and go.  Early voting til 7pm tonight and voting all day on Tuesday.  We don't have time for guilt.  Just acknowledge that life is exhausting, carve out 10 minutes somewhere, and go vote.  Vote for yourself and for your daughters, but really, you are also voting for them.

Victorian-Era Women and COVID-Suffering Me (say it fast like "American Woman.....stay away from meeeeee")

This is me.  Or how I am picturing myself as I lie upon my couch upon day three of COVID isolation and suffering.  What difference is there between myself and Victorian-era heroine enduring some terrible, undiagnosed illness and left in a constant state of repose while her active brain scrambles to make sense of her state, the world, and the nature outside her window?  None. Obviously.  Right now we are all so weary of COVID that we don't even stop to remember that people with it can still be so, so sick and it's easily dismissed and Victorian-age women were dismissed well, for being women.  Honestly, not one week before I got COVID, I know I said something stupid like "Haven't we all had it and not known it by now?".  I was a fool!!

As I started comparing myself to some Jane Austen character, I came upon more similarities.  Victorian women were often gasping for breath and faint and I too am currently gasping for breath and faint! True that in their case it was their whale-bone corsets and I haven't put on a bra since Saturday, but that is the only difference.  

Victorian-era women suffered from all sort of mental woes because they were expected to look pretty and play a role. My mental health is also suffering as I sit with only myself for company, feel I am going to be sick every day the rest of my life, and find all this time alone perfect for an existential crisis.  There is nothing quite like waking up fever-soaked, wondering where you are, and then instantly wondering why and how you are here.  Like on this Earth. 

Victorian-era women busied themselves with small things and projects that appeared dainty and didn't require much physical effort: painting, needlework, letter-writing.  I am also busying myself with small things!  Napping, moving from my bed to my couch to lie listlessly, and occasionally sitting upright.  Exhausting work.

Confined to their homes and even to their beds, Victorian-era women lived for an incoming letter full of news of the world outside what they could see from their window.  Their small worlds coming alive with the latest gossip, fashion, and perhaps a nod to a forbidden love.  Overjoyed with what the words on the page contained, she would smile or gasp, and lay a hand to her forehead while gazing out the window and seeing a whole new world.  I find myself listening for the "ping" on my computer announcing new email.  Sadly, I have only found a lot of "do these things!" in my email along with "Miss.  Can you grade my late work? I know it was late but you haven't graded it."  I press my hand to my forehead, shut the offensive screen, and stare out the window instead.  I still see my boxed-in patio and the siding missing from the water heater closet courtesy of the ice storm of 2021.  God, I really need a moor out my window.

I will say that today is the first day I woke up and felt slightly better and can see my world as a suffering Victorian-era woman coming to a close.  Writing this has helped me feel better because writing always makes me feel better.  Writing helped them feel better because it gave them a voice in a world that kept telling them to "shush".  Yuck!  Give me COVID, vaccines, no corsets, and a world I can speak loudly in any day. You know how I feel about being told to shush.  I would still like a moor out my window though.

The Mountains Are Calling

Having just returned from the adventure of a lifetime, I find I am having trouble articulating how amazing this entire experience was.  I hiked a mountain!!!  I swam in a snow-fed alpine lake!  I pooped in the woods!  I survived a bear attack!!  All of this is true and only one is slightly embellished based on an irrational fear and how I interpreted the situation, but more on that to come.

Our trip started out at the REI store in Denver and I must have looked as nervous as I felt because the guide told me as I walked in that “not to worry, we would have sandwiches to eat before we left.”  Which, while I am always concerned about food, actually wasn’t my main concern at that time.  I do like that my nervousness presented as hunger and not uncontrollable sweating or crying.  At the store, I met the other hikers, learned some quick basics, ate the promised sandwiches and then departed for Rocky Mountain National Park.  It was about a two hour drive and small talk was made and silence was heard and the guides pointed out interesting things in the landscape as we got closer.  Oh, and that thudding noise? Just my heart pounding in my ears.

That first night we camped among other campers and had flush toilets in walking distance.  We learned how to set up our tents, how to dig a hole to poop in it later, how everything that had any odor had to be in a bear canister, but don’t worry about bears, there are hardly any bears in the park.  Hmm, I thought.  One guide stayed behind to make dinner and the other guide took us on a quick walk to the lake where the sun was setting and moose was grazing in the water.  Picture perfect and sublime!  The air was cool but not cold, the company was nice, and the scenery was more than my eyes could take in.  We walked back to a full dinner with a Hatch Green Chile Stew, carnitas, and cornbread.  We didn’t help cook it, we didn’t help clean it up. We offered and were turned away.  These guides took care of everything!  EVERYTHING! With a full stomach and happy heart, I went to bed in a tent I put up by myself!  I was like a pioneer!  A pioneer who had people cooking for her and a thermarest and cushy sleeping bag, but a pioneer nonetheless.  Laura Ingalls Wilder and her wagon had nothing on me!

I set this up!

The next day was the hike up the mountain day.  We had a good breakfast, made ourselves a sandwich for lunch and chose from unlimited snacks and coffee things to take with us.  I was never, ever hungry on this trip.  We also repacked our bags and there was some sweating, me, swearing, again me, and adjusting as we made room for tents, bear canisters and camp gear. As I dug my hand down and pulled it back out along my pack, my Fitbit band snapped off and I almost wept.  How was I going to brag about what I did if I couldn’t count my steps?? I shoved it in my pocket and was thrilled later when I looked at it and it was still counting steps, just not my heart rate.  I didn’t need it to tell me my heart was working; felt that just fine on my own.

We drove to our next stop and after parking truck and trailer, learned how to use trekking poles.  I might never hike without them again.  They saved me more than once from a slip or a fall and when I got lazy legs, they were there to help.  And then we were off!  Up a mountain!  And it was hard, hard hiking.  There was a great trail but it was a long one and we gained 2000 ft of altitude over the day which makes your heart pound and you sweat and you are just working so, so hard.  The best words I heard over the course of the day were “Packs off break!” and we would take our 35+ pound packs off and sit and eat and drink and marvel at where we were.  I will be honest and say that sometimes I marveled at the wonders around me as I moved forward and sometimes, I just looked at my poles ahead of my feet and the feet of the person ahead of my poles and inched forward.  It was about six hours at a slow pace and my Fitbit would like you to know, 26,000 steps that day and about 230 floors.  I should have done more cardio to train, but my legs held up just fine.

We made it to camp and whooped and shouted and set up tents.  My brain was no longer working.  It felt like it kept making my body move but I couldn’t understand what people were saying and I couldn’t find words to use back. I wanted to lie down and sleep and never move again, but there was a lake to see and so I shoved my stinky feet back in my boots and went.  Oh!  These alpine lakes!!  With mountains all around and snow on the ground and everything so green and lush.  We went back to another amazing dinner and I ate and ate some more and found I really could no longer stay sitting up. I thought I would go back to my tent and be instantly asleep, but as I laid there, the day caught up to me and I was physically exhausted and began to worry about the fact I had no cell service if the kids needed me and the fact that I had not taken any time to worry about mountain lions all day long.  The altitude and exertion had me a little fragile but I eventually went to sleep.

The next day was a day-hike day!  Leave the tents set up, leave the heavy pack behind, grab some water and go.  I felt so light without that pack!  Everything was much easier.  We went down 1000 ft and then up 1000 ft to a new lake.  We walked over snow to get there and as soon as we saw the lake, we started running to get closer to it.  We took off our sweaty, stinky shirts and pants and ran into that lake with our underwear and sports bras on.  I would like to take right now to inform you that I had on the largest underwear in the history of the world that never once gave me a wedgie or moved while hiking, but the least attractive when it came to alpine lake swimming.  I mentioned the snow, right?  That lake was one step above freezing and we ran into it shrieking and splashing.  It dropped off suddenly and I did sink all of myself under and in that moment had a moment of true joy.  I was ageless, weightless, exhilarated and so very alive.  It could be the shock I caused my body by submerging it in a freezing lake, but it presented to me as freedom, living, and bliss.  We sunned ourselves on rocks and ate sandwiches and absorbed the sun and the day and all we had done.  We walked back down 1000 ft and up 1000ft to camp and to another amazing dinner and a peaceful sleep in our tents.

Swam in this!!

The next morning we prepared to leave.  It seemed to soon.  Until the guides told me that A BEAR CAME THROUGH OUR CAMP!!  I survived a bear attack by sleeping though it!  We all swear we heard something but blamed it on our fellow campers. (This was much like the night they fed us curried lentils and quinoa).  In all honesty, the bear knocked over the bear canisters and ran off with a mesh-cooking bag.  It really did want nothing to do with us.  I don’t care about that; I care that I SURVIVED A BEAR ATTACK!  

We started with our heavy packs, slightly lighter, and made our way back down the mountain.  Going down was easier, but it was still alot of work.  We saw so many waterfalls; each one different and beautiful.  At our last waterfall, our guides (have I mentioned what amazing women they were?!), suggested we take ten minutes and just think about what we accomplished and saw on our time on the mountain.  I sat on a rock off to the side and watched the water careen over rocks and bubble and ate and felt so very accomplished.  I had done a million things on this trip, with strangers, that I had never done before.  I had seen a moose, a marmot, geese, chipmunks, mule deer, and elk.  I had done things that I was scared to do and survived a bear attack. Two things began to stand out to me that would change how I do this life and as they repeated themselves in my head, I wanted to laugh and cry and hold it in and for once, just be quiet.  

My two things are this: no longer do I have the goal of hitting a certain age, giving up, going round, and wearing snap-up house dresses from Walmart.  I want to be that 70 year old woman on the trail with my sunhat and BFF and poles and beginning another adventure.  The other thing?  I am capable of so much more than I think.  And I am going to take these two things, the adventure I experienced, the freedom I felt, and work to take more trips like this and to live my very best life.  Plus, having survived one bear attack, I think the odds of another one are much smaller.

Rocky Mountain H--oly crap!

In less than a week, I will leave to take my first solo vacation that does not involved visiting family.  Technically, I am still visiting family for the first few days, but after that, it is just me, a backpack, an REI guide, and about 8 women I have never met before hiking through Rocky Mountain National Park.  Oh, you didn't know I was this adventurous? Believe me, neither did I.

Last summer, I got wistful thinking about the boy graduating and the bulk of parenting behind me. (never over, but those formative years are done).  I thought that if I was this sad about it a year in advance that I would be a mess come actual graduation.  What could I do to change this narrative?  A friend suggested that I do something I have never done, something for just me, and the solo vacation idea was born.

I love to hike, so make it about hiking!  I have no natural sense of direction and a completely irrational fear of bears, so it had to be a guided hike.  Plus, as a woman, I have a healthy fear of hiking on my own due to serial killers, rapists, and misogyny.  Hello, REI guided tours!  I also flatter myself thinking if I was in a co-ed group of hikers that I would have to fend off the tiresome advances of my fellow hikers, so an all-woman group it was.  

I know this fat bastard is just waiting for me.

At first, I chose and paid for the REI trip through Yellowstone.  I couldn’t wait.  It was rated Difficult.  I know difficult; no problem.  I started buying supplies, thinking about how to get in shape, eating right during soccer season because I figured the less I weighed, the less I would have to haul through the mountains.  I, um, got a map of Yellowstone and plotted out my hike.  I watched the news from Yellowstone about bear attacks.  I was prepared.  However, two months before my trip, REI emailed to say that they could not get backcountry permits and the trip was off.  This news came at the end of the school year and I was beyond fragile at this point, so I wept my sinuses out.  The bitter disappointment!  What had I logged all those calories for?  I have to say that REI was great about reaching out, listening, and then helping me pick another trip to take within days of the cancellation announcement.  With some time to reflect, I really think it was the world watching out for me.  Have you seen what a terrible mess Yellowstone is right now?  Also, I don’t think they were lying about the difficult rating and while I have prepared and trained, I have a feeling that their difficult might be more difficult than my difficult.  

Me, my backpack, and a group of women set to take on Rocky Mountain National Park.  I can’t wait!  I also can’t believe it!  And is it grows near and I have packed and repacked my backpack 82 times trying to see what I need, what I don’t, necessity vs luxury, I am getting very, very anxious.  I love to hike but do I love to hike with a 45 lb pack on my back for four days?  I have camped twice in my life: once was terrible and prevented me from camping for another twenty years, but the last time was great!  But, even great, my body was really sore from being on the ground over night.  Will I be able to move after three nights on the ground?  What if all the women in my group hate me?  What if I hate all of them?  What if I am too scared to get out of my tent to pee at night and get a raging UTI from holding it in and then have to hike with a raging UTI?  What if I have seriously overestimated my physical condition to do this?  What if, what if, what if.  

What if I am stronger than I think?  What if I see things I have never seen before?  What if my kids step up and take care of themselves and each other while I am gone?  What if I find purpose, a sense of self, and the room to breathe in this busy world?  What if this is my “Eat, Pray, Love” (minus the love) meets “The Wild” moment?  What if my legs and lungs burn with every step, but I keep stepping?  What if, what if, what if?

The last time I was this adventurous, my friend Amy and I got into her Plymouth Laser with AAA maps and drove from Buffalo to Dallas.  No cell phones, no GPS.  Two dumb teenagers in a car pointed south.  We made it there and back and only got a little lost in Indiana for about an hour or so.  We made it then and I will make it now.  I don’t need to lead or be at the front of the group, I am happy somewhere in the middle.  I don’t need to make friends because I like my own company.  I don’t need to be a rockstar backpacker, I just need to do it.

I will continue to worry just a little because that is how I am wired.  I will lie awake and worry about small things and big things and google “bear attacks RMNP”.  However, I will also let myself stop to think about how amazing this will be.  How I have waited a very long time to do something as adventurous as this and how I deserve it.  All this will happen as I pack and repack my backpack another 82 times.  The one thing I never waiver on taking?  A journal to record it all.

I Am Woman, Hear me ROAR

If you know me, you know that I have been passionate about Women’s History since forever.  At first it was probably because I always liked history, it is after all, just a story.  But as I was enjoying history I was always wondering “where are the women?”.  Great about George Washington, but tell me more about Martha.  I had to do a lot of digging and reading on my own to find out where the women were because they didn’t teach that in the classes I was taking.  And I learned that they were there all along, doing all the same things these celebrated men were doing but in voluminous skirts and with a baby attached to them at some point on their body.  Go women!  When I began teaching, I became absolutely passionate about making sure we were not just reading the works of dead, white men.  We were reading Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” and talking about why she was so happy her husband was dead.  But even this wasn’t enough.  I wanted an entire class where we just learned about women and after some patience, some persistence, and um, some departmental debate, Women, Words and Wisdom was born.  This class is my passion, my chance to teach about the women we never learned about, an elective for curious students, and this is a class that I almost lost because I was too tired to fight.

I was told in March that budget cuts, teachers losing jobs, yadda yadda, my elective, my WWW, was being cut for next year.  March is the tail-end of soccer season. I was exhausted physically, mentally, spiritually; just a hollowed-out shell of a human. I was sad, but at the time, it just made me feel more tired.  I could see what they were saying and I nodded and went on with my very long day ahead of me.  The students in my class were livid.  They wanted better answers, they wanted to know if we could form a club, fight a fight.  (This is why working with teenagers is sometimes so rewarding: all that passion and fury!)  But, and I am embarrassed to admit this, it wasn’t until they presented their final exams that I remembered that I wanted to fight for this class too.  Their finals consisted of them writing a children’s book about their life, or some aspect of their life.  These stories were hilarious, they rhymed, they had original art work, and they were so, so personal.  They talked about not having their dads around, being raised mostly by women, about overcoming anxiety, about trying and failing and trying once again.  I sat at my desk laughing and crying and knowing we had created this safe space that they could be so vulnerable in and it shook me out of my exhaustion and reminded me I needed to fight.

And I know we are all exhausted and we run this world at the expense of ourselves.  We have to look at this new ruling of overturning Roe v Wade and we need to be shaken out of our collective stupor, and as always, we need to fight.  We are at this place because we are tired and we don’t go to vote or we forget that things are important outside our own small worlds.  Really, I don’t care if you are prolife or prochoice; I just want us all to be prowomen, and this ruling shows we are not.  This ruling is an attack on women, on their bodies, on their place in society. It is not about babies.  If any of this was about babies, there would be no child left in the foster care system or up for adoption.  This is about reminding women where they stand and forcing them, once again, to be smaller then men.  To be less than.  And this is going to hit women of color and women who are low-income harder than any other group.  Like all of history, really.

No abortion in the case of rape or incest?  What kind of Draconian punishment is that for having a vagina?  For being attacked and violated against your will?  For being held down and abused?  This is not okay!  This makes me want to scream “FUCK” into the void and I want you to scream it with me.  This is rape culture, this is saying boys will be boys and she shouldn’t have worn that shirt.  Fuck that.  Boys shouldn’t be rapists and she can wear whatever the hell she wants.

If you don’t think this ruling applies to your life at all, you are very wrong.  I am not going to have a child or get pregnant any time soon (two dusty eggs left in there and a shell of a uterus), but it affects me because it affects the young women I teach.  The women I teach with.  Women I know and don’t know.  It affects women.  It sets the precedent for changing any rule about women.  Did you know that it was only as recent as the 1970’s that women could own their own home, get a credit card, or a loan?  Maybe that is next.  I keep picturing the episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale” where Moira’s money is all gone because she doesn’t have a spouse to transfer her balance to.  That will be me.  That will be you.

If you have never studied Women’s History, get a book and read it.  You don’t have to start at cave dwellers; find an era that interests you and read about it.  See where the women were and what they did and how they were treated.  Watch Mrs. America on Hulu if you want to see the original fight for Roe v Wade and why the Equal Rights Amendment is still not passed.  Be curious, be open-minded, be purposefully angry.  Be reminded, as I was, that we are never done fighting.  Be educated, be supportive of other women, be committed to being active in a way that helps rather than hurts.  It is okay to be still be exhausted! Be exhausted while you do these things.  I know it is hard to breathe and act with feet on our necks.  RBG has said so nicely that  “all I ask of our brethren is they take their feet off our necks.”  This latest ruling is not only standing on our necks, but stomping.  

Be a feminist.  See if the men in your life are feminists.  All it feminism means is that men and women are equal.  Teach other people this definition of feminism.  One can still be better than the other at different things, but equal in their standing in society, equal in how they are paid, equal in their votes, equal in how they get to live their lives.  Be angry.  Be shaken out of your exhaustion and be ready to find a place to show your voice.  At the very least, take comfort that we don’t have to do all this in a corset or voluminous skirts.  Yet. 

Wanted: Actually Affordable Teacher Affordable Housing

 If the American dream is owning your own home and that house being the symbol of your success and hard work, well, welcome to my nightmare and my current failures. I think that might be an old dream though, and the new American dream is just finding someplace you can afford to live.  But again, welcome to my nightmare and current failures.

I recently got very excited about a news story saying that there was some affordable housing being set aside for teachers.  I am a teacher!  I need affordable housing!  I scurried to find out what to send to who to see what I could do and in the meantime google-stalked this housing and appreciated the neighborhood, the floor plans, the cute exterior of my new home.  I entered a zoom call with 74 other people in the very tight market for these 30 homes.  Still good odds, I thought.  I had about four solid minutes of watching the presentation and thinking I could get one of these homes.  Yes!  I will volunteer 200 hours to Habitat for Humanity and build other people homes!  (ooh! I will need to get a tool belt and a flannel shirt). Yes! I have money for earnest money and closing costs! (look at me! So financially responsible) Yes!  I work for this district and I am a teacher!  Yes!  Until they got to the earnings slide and I gasped and sat open-mouthed as my heart tumbled out of my mouth, splatted on the floor, and lies there still.  Y’all.  I, a teacher, do not make enough money per year to qualify for teacher affordable housing. In order to be considered for one of these houses, a family needs to make 80% of the Median Family Income.   A three-person home, which me and two kids makes three, was over $70,000.  I laugh/cried when I saw that. Then I thought, they are adults, I won’t count them.  A single-person home, the income was $55,000.  I have no trouble telling you I made $51,000 last year; my income is public record.  I make $4000 too little to qualify for teacher affordable housing.  That $51k includes two coaching stipends and a professional pathways and any other hoops offered for a little more money.

I am a college-educated, professional woman who, as a teacher, cannot afford housing set aside specifically for teachers.  How is this possible?  And if it is this bad for me, what is it like for someone who doesn’t have a college degree? Someone who makes minimum wage? Where the hell are people supposed to live? Even if I did make the $55k needed for the teacher house, the mortgage and HOA fees would leave me about $1000 a month to live on. Oh, and don't think I didn't think about how to make that work. Well, if I only eat two meals a day and my Prius lasts another ten years and we never turn the lights on and keep the AC set at 80 and so on and so on.

The kids and I are currently in an apartment that is close to my school.  Even though they are considered adults by the government, they are still very much my responsibility to house.  My lease is up in December and I am holding my breath waiting to see how much rent here will go up.  And if goes up too much, then where do we move to?  When I look at other apartments, they are just as much and more than my current apartment and this current rent is now a stretch.  

I like to play this game of “Where Can I Not Afford to Live” each night and gaze at houses and apartments Zillow says are rentable in my area.  A current find shows a duplex down the street with a back yard!  My aging dog will be so happy!  Only two bedrooms though.  Looks like someone needs to go live with dad.  Oh. And one bathroom.  Well, it can be done. Maybe not with Sophie’s IBS though. Click on price; $2300/month.  This is $500 more than I am paying for my window-deficient, slightly slanted, 3 bedroom, 2 bath apartment.  Last year, I had a realtor friend set up a house search for me to see other options.  I asked her to please stop the search about a week in as the results were depressing.  Many of the options seem to include living among college students and a house that had recently hosted a murder in it.  Last year, I was hopeful and didn’t know that I was a teacher who couldn’t afford affordable teacher housing.  This year, I know who I am, I know what I make and really,  I am thinking that maybe the murder house wouldn’t be so bad. 

Currently selling for about 1.2 million, as is

Figuring it Out

It is my conference period and I am sitting at my desk crying.  For once it is not because of something terrible that happened, or some new data thing we need to do, or some frustration over a student or procedure or this job, and not even just because I am tired and therefore fragile.  I am sitting here crying at my desk because I just sat in the last ARD meeting I will ever have as a mom.  I have cried at many an ARD or pre-ARD meeting, but this time it was again, not out of frustration or procedure, but the fact that the boy has done everything he needs to do and is going to graduate in ten or so days.   William McMahon is going to graduate.

As a baby, Will took forever to hold a spoon and actually bring food to his mouth, and I joked that I would have to go to kindergarten with him just to be sure he ate. But I didn’t, he figured it out.  In kindergarten, he wanted to play tether ball so badly but was so bad at it, the teachers kept him from it for his own safety.  We put a tether ball pole in the backyard and again, he figured it out.  I thought he would always just be friends with the kids of my friends, but in second grade, he figured it out and came home with a friend who brought a mom friend for me with him.  

I thought that neither of us would survive his middle school years.  Kind kids are an easy target for bullies and kind kids with bad eyesight who don’t play a lot of sports are their dream.  It was hard and there was so much sadness and pain.  Eventually, he figured it out.  He found his people, he played his trumpet, and he did all the normal ridiculous things boys in middle school should do: talk about farts and boobs non-stop if I am remembering correctly. 

Onto high school, to team sports, a brand new school away from his people and it was an adjustment.  As he was attending the school I taught at, I definitely did too much the first year or two to make sure he could figure things out.  He got there.  And then COVID.  None of us have any part of that figured out, even now.  He got a job!  He was immersed in a world of customer service and working with people who were not his peers, and he figured out how to do that while going to school and passing his classes.  Not all three at once all the time, but enough of all three to keep going.  Enough to get us to the meeting that showed he has figured it out and has me crying at my desk.

I always joke that this kid will live with me forever and I better move up north and get a house with a basement for him to live in.  But I realize now that he will not.  He will not always live with me.  He has struggled and fought and figured out so much in his life and he is going to do the same as he moves out of high school and into adulthood.  And all the worrying and pushing and fighting for him and holding his hand and moving him forward, well, it’s all but done.  He will always need me to be his mom, but I see my role as advocate diminishing as he grows up and on.  

This kid I thought would never walk or talk or use a spoon, or fall with his hands out to protect his face, or grow top teeth, or remember on his own to use deodorant, this kid is graduating high school with the grades he earned, with the friends he made, with the job he holds, with kindness still in his heart and eyes, and humor that is terrible and funny all at once. I couldn’t be more proud of this kid if I tried.  I asked him if he wanted me to just be a mom at his graduation ceremony and sit in the bleachers with his dad, or if he wanted me to be a teacher mom and sit on his row. He didn’t even think about it and answered quickly “On my row, Mom” while giving me a happy smile that went straight to my heart. I think he has me figured out too.

Just Breathe

I've been doing a lot of yoga lately: at-home, on-my-mat, Adriene-on-youTube-type yoga.  I started because I missed going to yoga and after a few days I realized it really helped me handle some of the stress of this life a little better. Also, let me be honest and say I am 100% counting the 32 calories I burn while doing it as exercise.  If you have done yoga, you know how much they make you breathe in and out and in and hold it and out.  It is as important as Warrior II or mountain pose.  Feel your breath do this, feel how it makes your body do that.  Breathe in, breathe out.

Today, we have a snow/ice day from school and as I woke up and the realization that I did not, nor could not, be anywhere today hit me, I feel like I inhaled for the first time in a very long time.  I inhaled and thought "No school!", I inhaled and thought "No soccer!", I inhaled and thought "Nowhere to be!" and I inhaled and thought about how very long it has been since I felt like I could breathe this deeply.

I do a lot of exhaling.  Breath out in exhaustion.  Breath out in resignation. Breath out in wondering what the hell I am doing.  Breath out as I ask "Why has no one done this assignment even though we had two days to work on it in class?!?" Breaths out as I wonder if I am the only one who can smell the litter box? Warm, fetid breaths of tired, worried, stale air.  (I am in that mask nine hours a day; this is an accurate description, believe me). 

Some days, I have quick little gasps of inhalation.  Gasp in "I forgot that was due!", gasp in "I need to cook fourteen meals for the week so I don't eat only boxed mac and cheese."  Gasp in as my jeans are tight and I know it's because I have only burned 32 calories doing yoga and despite saying I want to go round and wear snap-up house dresses from HEB, I am still very vain and don't want to go round and winter is not the season for snap-up house dresses.  Gasp in, long breath out, gasp in, long breath out.  

Is everyone running like this?  Social media tells me yes.  We are running and we are out of breath and self-care is a phrase thrown about but no one believes in it anymore. Used to be a bubble bath, a face mask, and a glass of wine could hit reset, but they just don't anymore.  If someone had said I needed a face mask night prior to this snow day my only thought would have been "Fuck you and your face mask" as I slowly exhaled and forgot to breathe back in. (for the record, I did do one last night.  Nothing.)

Is my inability to inhale due to the worst teaching year in the history of teaching minus when Laura Ingalls Wilder had to teach in that tiny shack and the woman she was staying with wanted to kill her?  But even then, Almanzo!  Deep breath in!  Is it the teaching/coaching combination?  Yeah, it is a killer load, but there is joy to be found in watching young women do something they love to do and one that is not often found in my classroom.  Also, I believe passionately about two things in my life: sports in high school are purposeful and powerful for young women and need to be supported and that the Bills will one day win a Superbowl.  I can only help with one of those things though, so I do it.  Um, and I need the money because teaching does not pay a livable wage.  

We have been collectively holding our breath for so long waiting for our world to be normal, I guess it is normal that all we do is breathe out and out and out.  Other teachers and I have commented that our students are just broken, but I am starting to recognize that the adults are broken too.  Our world, our pre-COVID world, is gone.  And we are weary of waiting for it to come back.  And we are breathing out only as we realize it is not coming back. Not today, not this school year, maybe not ever.  Long, slow exhale here.

So what do we do to bring back the inhalations?  The joy?  The rest?  The equilibrium?  I have no idea and you now know my thoughts about face masks.  I would love to know what other people are doing or not doing but want to be doing.

Today, I am breathing in and in and in as I wear soft clothes and wool socks and drink hot things in a big mug.  I am breathing in and in and in as I read a book in bed and unleash this torrent of words.  I am breathing in and in and in as I step outside with my reluctant dog and feel my cheeks get cold and that sharp air hit my lungs.  Today, I will just breathe.