Teacher Sick (Warning: Naughty words rant)

 We started Thanksgiving Break on Friday afternoon. I spent Thursday night, some of Friday, some of Saturday and ALL DAY SUNDAY in SO MUCH PAIN! My period, which shows up now about once every three months, showed up with the fucking cavalry, and I want to curl up into a tiny ball and make all of the world just fuck off right now. It's gross, it's painful, I don't like it. One of my good friends is - unfortunately - having a hysterectomy because of reasons, and right now I am so fucking envious of her.

On top of that, and the reason for today's post, I have something akin to a cold, or something. It started Friday night. Now, this is something I'm used to. Nearly every break, I spend the first few days sick. (Yes, I am wishing that Thanksgiving Break was longer.) I'll be fine after a few days, but it almost always happens. 

According to WebMD, I have what is called "leisure sickness."  It's where you have a job that is so stressful that you build up this strange immunity and "put off" being sick until your body can handle being sick, which is when you're "not stressed".  I guess it's like if I am going to have a cold, or the flu or something like that (or, I guess, my period) my body realizes that I am too stressed out to deal with that illness right now and instead files it away for "later" when I'm not as stressed out.  And later comes during holiday breaks. 

Apparently this can happen for emotional distress too, I think. I can deal with emotional stress and not get emotional about it.. until I'm on break. So I not only spend my first few days of nearly every vacation in a ball of pain and phlegm (pretty picture, I know), but I'm also a crying, emotionally wrecked ball of phlegm. So much fun.

Fortunately, Thanksgiving isn't until Thursday. I should be done with all of this (hopefully) by tomorrow and be able to make wonderful pies for my family for Thanksgiving as well as some broccoli in brown butter with cotija (because I can't find mizithra cheese anywhere). 

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'm going to go drink a Monster, write five thousand words and crochet until all the stress leaves my body.

Yay!

Episode 88: Cred

So, I went to a conference this weekend. It was pretty awesome. I learned a lot of educating stuff, and I got to hang out with and strengthen my relationship with some of the teachers around my district.  I would like to see my district, a quite large one, learn to use the information that we were given at the conference.  I would like to see deeper collaboration, time spent on learning, getting to know each other and having a good time doing it.  I think that is what a lot of my district has a problem with. There are so many bitter teachers that sit around and complain about how awful the district is and how we have no choice in the matter without actually wanting to do anything.  They need to change that attitude... and I guess, so do I.

Mostly I need to change my attitude about weight loss and getting healthier.  I admit, my attitude isn't the greatest.  I could be a lot better.  I complain that I hurt; I complain that I'm tired; I complain that I'm just not in the mood.  But when it comes down to it, I think there is a little bit of fear there as well.  While I'm not entirely comfortable in my body.. ok.. I'm not comfortable at all in my body, I have found that I'm sort of scared of the expectations of other people.  I think I had a blog post about this about a month or two ago. I haven't really been blogging and I'm tired of saying "oh, I'll get back to it" and then not, so I'm just going to do it. I was losing weight and being healthier when I blogged, and so I just need to do it.

I am finding that I blog more about what I think people should hear, or do things that people think that people expect me to do or say. I have great ideas, but I'm awful at enforcing them on myself, I guess.

So anyway, to today's topic.  (I did mention I ramble, didn't I?)

At my conference this weekend, they gave out these Google Badges, one for each level of learning.  If you went to certain sessions, you got the badges and you had a certain amount of.. well.. teacher cred.   I got all three badges from the conference, and I was able to brag to one of the administrators who had joined us.  And then AM and I were discussing weight loss and Weight Watchers and points and such. We use an app called Fooducate sometimes to tell us how healthy certain foods are.  These foods come with a certain point system.  Point systems just work sometimes, you know.  And badges. Which is why Weight Watchers sort of worked for me.  It was a definitive, easy to count amount of points, and you could earn little trinkets and badges and such.  You got weight loss cred.

Unfortunately, I have lost all of my cred. Excepting the 4 pounds I seem to keep losing and gaining back (and 4 pounds really isn't that much to me) I am at the heaviest weight I can remember being ever.  I need to get my cred back. Maybe the way I can do that is with stickers, or badges that I create. I could have a smallish one that is for each pound that I have lost. A bigger one for when I lose 5% of my body weight, a bigger one and a non-food item that I want when I've lost 10%... and keep going from there. I would often lose 10% of my body weight with Weight Watchers, but because that was the last bit that you could lose before they expected you to get your "lifetime" goal of whatever the BMI recommendations are (which for me are between 110 and 130), I would quit because I didn't have that reward system anymore.  I would have to lose half of myself and then half of that again almost to get down to that place, and that is intimidating.  Lost 30 pounds! Yay.. 10% of my weight, but then.. what after that. It is nearly 200 pounds without any sort of reward, just a massive slog and a lot of plateaus.

No, I won't go back on Weight Watchers, but I do need to start giving myself, or making myself badges.  If I could figure out how, I would post them to my blog, somewhere visible.  A whole stream of little stickery badges down the side, 230 of them for each pound I will lose. Give me some Cred.