full plate

* new job (fingerprinting, TB testing, new curriculum and colleagues, moving boxes and boxes of classroom stuff, background check, payroll and benefits stuff, making good first impressions and schmoozing with dozens of people…)

* resigning from old job (this entails MUCH more that you’d think)

* preparing to move in with boyfriend (packing <living with the mess of packing is traumatizing for a type A person like me>, transferring utilities, negotiating new furniture, assuring boyfriend that I won’t ruin his life, etc.)

* National Writing Project (7 hrs a day of intense writing, revision, assessment, and collaboration)

* Independent Study to wrap up grad school

aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrggggghhhhhhh!

(insert clever title here)

I am so psyched to move. We don’t get the apartment until the second weekend in July, but I already have a bunch of my stuff boxed up.

I have gotten so used to living by myself (ok, so it’s only been a little less than 2 years) that at first I was a little worried about how I will do sharing space with another human being. But the closer the actuality of it gets, the more I am excited. Although I had some issues with former roommates, I also had some very good times with them. And this roommate is extra special. He and I tend to balance each other out quite well, and are good at allowing space when necessary.

One thing I look forward to is eating meals at home together frequently, for two reasons.

First, it is a time to sit down and talk. Barely anyone does that anymore, but we do. Even breakfast a few days a week… it’s comforting to sit with someone you care about and talk about the dreams you had the night before and your plans for the day.

Second, that it will keep me focused. From my own experience, I think that eating disorders are like alcoholism… even when you have no obvious symptoms, they are always lurking in the back of your mind. Since getting “better,” I still frequently have issues with food. Sometimes on my own I can’t make myself eat real meals for days, so I just pick at whatever I can tolerate until it passes. Not healthy. Other times I panic at feeling hungry (I used to LOVE that feeling so much, I am sometimes afraid that it will control my life again someday), so I eat whatever is quickest — cereal for dinner, for example — rather than eating something nutritionally balanced. When I am shopping/cooking for both of us, I do so with INTENT. This yields healthy, “real” food on hand to be consumed at regular intervals. Score.

It’s amusing how domestic CJ has become since we agreed to move in together. He talked about painting before I did, and he even brought up the prospect of getting a new table and chairs for our dining room. He’s completely cracking me up. I love it.

Ok. Time for bed. Tomorrow is check-out day at school, which should be pretty interesting since we’ve been advised by our union reps to completely clear out our classrooms due to an impending strike (more will come on that topic, I promise… unfortunately). Then on Tuesday I have a pedicure appointment with my friend A, a last-chance interview with the superintendent of a kickbutt school district (they’ve narrowed it down from 300 applicants to me and some other chica), and then it’s off on a road trip to the ocean with A, Mi, and Mg. Damn. All of this code shite makes my ladies sound like they fell off the Periodic Table of Girlfriends.

Tata for now.

Cruel.

I think it is terrible that “Senior” formula cat food only comes in small and medium sized bags, not the uber-big ones that last for months. Why don’t they just print on the label “We don’t want you to be haunted by leftover kitty kibble in the inevitable situation that your cat dies before eating this entire bag”? My cat is 12 and VERY healthy, gosh darnit.

please don’t let this jinx anything…

I have these two slightly crazy, yet persistent theories about my life:

#1: If I envision horrible things happening, they will not actually happen. Slightly OCD, maybe, but it’s followed me my whole life and I’ve learned to deal with it. Example: out of nowhere I have these horrible visions flash in my mind of falling down stairs, my apartment building or the house I grew up in burning down, my parents or other loved ones dying or getting hurt, etc. and then I rationalize the random and disturbing thought by thinking well, I suppose since I thought of it it won’t actually happen now.

#2 If I write too much about something good, it will get ruined. Seriously. Hear me out on this one. I have kept journals since the age of six, and there have actually been times when I’ve let my pen hover over the page for a few moments thinking that if I write a certain prediction/hope/dream/etc. down I will be jinxing it. Well, so far every time I have gone ahead and written about something in that sort of situation, it has been doomed to disaster. I completely realize how irrational this belief is; it’s just the natural course of life that most things don’t last forever.

The second theory is the one that is really getting to me right now because there are so many good things going on in my life that I want to write about. I just need to get over my fear of ruining things by overthinking them. I have to go pay some neglected family members a visit for the afternoon, but maybe by the time I get back I will have grown the guts to put it all down in writing.