Gratitude Day 26 - Jace, Lisa, Kelsey, and Washington Park Chiropractic

I woke up yesterday to a pain in my neck.  Instead of gradually loosening up, it got worse after my shower and light laundry-folding activity.  I was supposed to head up to see family in Boulder for lunch, and I was in a ton of pain.  I called my good friends at Wash Park Chiropractic and they were chock full of people getting the pre-turkey-binge adjustments.  Kelsey said she'd call me if there was a cancellation.  I fully expected to spend the day in loads of pain, and five minutes later she called me back with an appointment at 11.  SCORE!

Jace is my normal chiropractor.  I'm never quite sure why they let someone so funny, youthful,and sarcastic be a doctor, but he has done a great job ever since my first adjustment at a pumpkin carving party a year ago.  No joke.  But Jace was full, so I got to see Dr. Lisa Goodman, the owner of the practice.  She knows me peripherally through my not-cousin, and has steady, calming hands and an incredibly pleasant bedside manner.

When I got on the table, she felt around my neck and shoulders for a bit.  Then she said she had good news and bad news.  The good news was that she could make it better.  The bad news is that it would hurt and wouldn't start to feel better until the next day.  Luckily I trusted her and gave her a go.

If you have never had a chiropractic adjustment before, it is the scariest shit ever (especially if you just rewatched the first Hunger Games movie where Cato breaks that poor kid's neck with a quick twist of his arms).  They grab you by the jaw, wiggle your head around to lull you into a false sense of security, and then yank your head so far to the left or right that it feels like it will fall off.  And the cracking noises that come out are just plain gross.

And then all of a sudden the blood flow is restored to your brain and you feel AMAZING.  A few more cracks to the back, and a rub down with some cooling gel had me feeling a bit better.

But this morning, well it's a Thanksgiving miracle.  The sharp pain from the "sleep trauma" yesterday is gone, replaced by a dull ache that is taken care of with advil and more of the cooling gel.  Imagine if I hadn't gone to see them yesterday.

Today I'm grateful for the good folks at Washington Park Chiropractic, for getting me all fixed up!

Gratitude Day 25 - Random Acts of Kindness

I had been driving around for two months with no blinkers.  Scary stuff.  I bought a $12 part from auto zone and they couldn't install it for me.  Another mechanic couldn't find where the piece went, so I had to go to the dealer.  Dealers typically equal tons of cash (and good coffee in the lobby).  Well, I pulled up and my man Alex said they couldn't get me in that day.  I said I was leaving town the next morning.  He said, ok come back and 3 and we'll try to squeeze you in.

So I came back at 3, and he said it would be an hour or two before someone could get to it.  Then he got a twinkle in his eye.

"You already have the part, right?"

"Yep."

"Alright.  Just because I'm curious."

He looked up a diagram of car guts, took the part, got down on the shop floor in his well-pressed dress pants, popped out the panel, and my blinkers were working in under five minutes.

"How much do I owe you?"

"Have a nice trip."

So today I'm grateful for Alex and his random act of free, efficient kindness.

Gratitude Day 24 - Real Mail

There is no better feeling than getting real mail.  Nothing. Like, back massages are great.  Sneezing, falling asleep after you cry?  Good stuff.  But when you're sorting through the mail you haven't checked because you live in a townhouse now and need a key and to walk outside to the mailbox, and there's bills, bills, bills, parking tickets, overdue taxes, and then THERE'S A LETTER WITH HANDWRITING ON IT!!

Lately, real mail usually comes in three forms.

Letters from Amanda: Though these have decreased in frequency over the years as Amanda has fallen in love and gotten married, I can always count on a few real letters a year from my best friend.  Amanda letters are special because they are more than just paper in an envelope.  Sometimes they are in the form of handmade stationary by her godson Isaac.  Other times she writes on weird stationary from San Francisco about which she is suffering buyer's remorse.  Once she turned a photograph of me jumping off the bow of our ship into a postcard.  Often she makes the envelopes from calendar pages.  Always, every time, they are sealed with a tiny heart.  This heart has come to symbolize our best friendship and is the last thing I see before I open envelopes with tales of my country mouse's most recent adventures.

Packages from Uncle Jim: Uncle Jim has really embraced the lion mascot of my new school, and he and aunt Gina find tiny stuffed lions at garage sales and send them my way.  It is so nice to know they are thinking of me and my kids, and I have quite a collection going.

Cards from Family and Friends: Birthdays, holidays, TNT donations, all wrapped in the shiny gloss of a papyrus greeting card.

Special Yearly Treat - Gwyn's Christmas Letter: G$, my roommate from Mississippi, has a traditional Christmas letter.  Usually it comes out in April -- in a glittery Christmas card.  It is always many chapters long and has tales of romance, car trouble, and gay stuff, both joyful and just gay.   And it is ALWAYS hilarious.

So today, I am grateful for the magic of real mail.  Always a surprise, it brings me the simplest, most old fashioned kind of joy.

Gratitude Day 23 - Team in Training

I know I mentioned this back on day 3 or 4, but it bears reiterating.  I am incredibly grateful for Team in Training.  They have raised millions of dollars for leukemia and lymphoma research, keeping Amanda's dad Toby, my student Raul, and thousands of others alive.  They have provided support to families and patients to make struggling through diagnosis and treatment bearable.  And they have inspired thousands of participants to help raise money and train for endurance events, all in the name of finding a cure for blood cancers.  So today I'm grateful for TNT, for getting my butt out of bed to do a good thing for my body, and a good thing for our world.

Gratitude Day 22 - STRIVE Prep - Excel

 In just three short months, 15 adults and 129 children have created a community of acceptance, love, support, academic excellence, and joy.  Here are some highlights from last week that exemplify why I love my job, and why I love my school.

My Student T: T was horrible on Friday.  She wouldn't listen.  She did what she wanted.  She threw a donut at another kid and couldn't understand why she was in trouble.  And yet I love her.  She is navigating a rough time in her life, exacerbated by all the nonsense that teenage hormones cause under the best circumstances.  She's fighting to survive the best way she knows how.  I love T because of her spirit.  She is brilliant, and when she figures out how to make the world work for her, there's going to be no stopping her.

Community Meeting: CM happens every Friday, and is our chance to celebrate the successes of the week and have a little bit of fun.  This week featured performances by the vocal and guitar classes, as well as a giant game of Thanksgiving Scattergories.  The creativity, enthusiasm, competitive spirit, and joy felt by all members of our community was palpable.

The 6 Word Memoir Meme: Ms. M's composition class spent a day working on word choice and succinctness with 6 Word memoirs.  Ms. M. shared RSFs memoirs, "Don't run away from the problem," and "Don't dig yourself in too deep."  That RSF was able to be vulnerable and self-aware was damn near a miracle itself.  What followed though, was a series of staff 6 Word Memoirs that had us all giggling into our inboxes.  V's mom saw a hickey on her neck in the office, which led to "THE F*CK IS ON YOUR NECK?!"  A teacher responded with "V's partner has missed the mark."  Most of the other contributions were inside jokes but the joy that abounded in this 15-minute e-mail chain of hilarity got us through the rest of a long week.

The Gratitude Project: Ms. M. also had students write about the person who had the biggest influence on their life.  Then, as a twist stolen from a SoulPancake project, Ms. M. allowed students to call the person they had written about.  Kids were nervous, so I called my mom and read her my note.  The kids were all "oohs" and "awwwws" and a mad flurry of hands went in the air.  Kids called moms and sisters and it was a big old gratitude sobfest.  Vulnerability and thankfulness at its finest.

There are more stories to recount, but each day I am thankful for our team, our wonderful staff, our hilarious students, and the amount of effort and perseverance they put into everything they do.  I'm so grateful that together we strive for college!

Gratitude Day 21 - Mrs. Roth and Young Adult Literature

Thursday night I went to the Hunger Games/Catching Fire double feature.  I walked out thinking that the gratitude for the day would be Katniss Everdeen because, come on.  What an amazing character, and what an amazing portrayal by Jennifer Lawrence.  Also, that dress.

However, I got behind on my blogging and as I sit down to reflect on what I was most grateful for at the end of last week, I keep going back to all the books I read in fifth grade.  Obviously, you can't be grateful for The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle if you're not grateful for Sharon Roth.

Coming out of fourth grade, life was rough for me.  The previous two years of schooling had been an awkard mix of nerdy excitement, adoration from teachers, and bullying from students.  I ended the year in a ball of anxiety and wanted to disappear from the classroom forever.  When I was placed in Mrs. Roth's class over the summer, my amazing mother sat down with my new teacher and told her simply to ignore me.  She explained to Mrs. Roth that the previous two years had been rough for me and that all I wanted was to be a normal kid.

Fifth grade was the best year of my childhood thanks to Mrs. Roth's expert teaching.  She built a classroom culture of acceptance and peace, and she encouraged all of us to love reading and writing not because we needed to get good at it, but because it was beautiful.

Every day in Mrs. Roth's class, she would read to us aloud.  After second grade, most teachers stop doing story time, and at first we thought this was strange. During reading time, we were allowed to relax, sit comfortably, and even doodle if that made us happy.  It was maybe 30 minutes of peaceful enjoyment, the pure purpose of which was to teach us that books are AMAZING.

I remember the heartbreak I felt for Georgie in The Lottery Rose, as he tried so hard to make sense of the horrible abuse he had suffered.  I began a life-long love affair with post-apocalyptic (?) fiction after hearing Mrs. Roth read about the few survivors of nuclear war in Z for Zachariah.  Though science fiction remains my least favorite genre, I loved Eva, a gripping tale of medical technology and the ethics of animal research.  But nothing, nothing, could compare to Charlotte Doyle.

From the first pages, our class became fully immersed in the high sea adventures of this teenage girl.  She was strong, independent, and morally sound.  The story included murder, sexism, racism, and cruelty.  But (spolier alert), Charlotte triumphed over all these things and held steadfast to her belief that justice should be served, even if it is a young girl who must enforce it.  Our whole class was obsessed with Charlotte Doyle.  We pretended the class was the crew, we made a round robin to overthrow the class (not out of disrespect for Mrs. Roth, but rather for the thrill of bringing fiction to life).  Jeremy and I talked about writing a screen play.

And Mrs. Roth was more than just the inspiration for my love of young adult fiction.  She taught us to pursue our own interests as a way of learning more.  She encouraged our growth into young men and women capable of critical thinking.  Mrs. Roth was there at the most awkward of times, the beginning of puberty, when Liz and I came to her with a new crush every day.  She called my tendency for quickly changing loves "the garcon du jour", and teased us gently, knowing that we were beginning to become our real selves.  She loved us each for what made us special, while at the same time understanding our need to fit in.  Plus she was downright funny.

My year with Mrs. Roth is a big part of why I became a teacher and stayed in education to become a principal.  My unspoken goal is to give as many students as possible the opportunity to interact with a teacher as excellent as Mrs. Roth.  So today, I'm grateful for Mrs. Roth and for the young adult literature she introduced me to.  I love reading and I found my life's meaning because Mrs. Roth showed me the way.

Gratitude Day 20 - Sister Sisters

I am blessed with three sisters.  Wait, what?  Girl please you've only got two sisters.  Ha ha!  That's what you think!  TWIST!!!

First, there's Kelly, pint-sized math teacher, salsa-dancer, and latte drinker extraordinaire.  We used to teach classes next door to each other at Maya Angelou, and I can truly say that every day Kelly made me a better teacher.  Maybe it was our competitive spirit, but we always pushed each other do do more for our kids than we had the day before.  Kelly has been a DC teacher of the year finalist, worked at the highest performing charter school in the country, and works harder for the toughest kids than anyone I know.  Plus, according to our student Rissa, "Your sister, she be tellin' the corniest jokes.  And she be THE ONLY ONE LAUGHING!!!"

Then we have Rebecca, or Rebes.  We used to spell her name Rebs until she learned about vowel-
consonant-e and told us we were spelling it wrong.  Yeah.  That's Rebes.  She struggled greatly in middle and high school, yet somehow grew up to be a brilliant, funny, kind, supportive, hilarious mother and friend.  I can always count on Rebes to keep it real with me, especially grouchy real when I beat her at poker.  And to see her with her son Aiden, well, it's the most beautiful thing.  She loves him so much, and respects him as a person, though he is not yet even two.  She is teaching him to be independent and funny.  Plus he says Nana (his name for our mom) whenever he sees a glass of red wine.  There's a lot of funny in the family.

A few years ago, just when I thought our family couldn't get better, we added Span.  What kind of name is Span, you ask?  A GREAT ONE.  Span, or Andrea, is our brother Thomas' person.  And she is one of my top 10 favorite people in the world.  She is hilarious, humble and crafty, and brings out the best in my brother.  In fact, she brings out the best in all of us.  I admire Span so much for the way she has faced challenge and tragedies in her life, and she makes me want to be a stronger person.  Plus, she made me the best bitstrip character possible.

So tonight, after a day full of g-chatting and text messaging, I'm so thankful for all of my sister sister sisters.