Gratitude Day 19 - My Bed

When I was in college, I slept through pretty much every 8:30am class I had.  Thank God for Brooke Gintert's work ethic and note taking skills.  And Dr. North, well, that B- couldn't have been wrapped in a nicer bow when you gifted it to me.  I just loved sleeping.  Every year I would get a new blanket for my XL twin dorm room bed.  And selecting pillows was an art form.

I don't know when it happened, but I discovered at some point that there are different kinds of sheets.  I don't know if my mom was keeping this a secret from me or just didn't know about it, but the higher the thread count, the colder that feeling on the cold side of the pillow.  I don't understand how, but it's true.

Couple excellent sheets with a heavy down comforter and a decent mattress, and it's a wonder I ever get out of bed at all.  Today I'm thankful for groupon sheet deals, my 10-year-old holding pillow, and the best bed I've ever had.

Gratitude Day 18 - Self Dates

I must have been about 10 years old when I was sitting with my mom at a restaurant and saw someone having lunch or dinner alone.  I was even more sensitive then than I am now, and I was overcome with sadness for this person.  I said to mom, "I think whenever I see someone eating alone I should go over and sit with them."  She gently recommended against ever doing that and I couldn't understand why.  It was the most depressing thing I had ever seen.

And then I turned 28.  And oh my God, Self Dates are the best invention ever. Of course, you'd rather the girl that you're crushing on come with you.  Yeah, yeah, if you don't have anyone to go with, you might as well just eat cottage cheese and an apple standing at your kitchen counter.  Wouldn't it be better just to eat the rotisserie chicken right off the chicken while watching reruns of 30 Rock than to have people think you're pathetic and alone?  Maybe.

But what about this:

This guy.  Feet up.  No shoes.  Winner.

Go to your favorite restaurant, a block from your house, where the waitresses know you by name and have the correct beer on your table when they see you coming in.  Sit back in your booth, watch the football game, and have someone cook for you.  Don't talk to anyone, because you don't have to.  No small talk.  No awkward pauses.  No self-conscious ordering.  Maybe bring a book, or catch up on BuzzFeed and facebook while you wait for your food to come.  Eat as fast or as slow as you want.  Leave a nice tip.  Head home. DO NO DISHES.

There's a time and a place for everything.  And tonight, it was time for a Self Date.  And for that, I'm so thankful.

Gratitude Day 17 - Brandi and Melissa

Back when regular people could get up close.

So this is maybe more obvious than the fact that I love Amanda Hollander.  Y'all.  I love Brandi Carlile and Melissa Ferrick.  But that wasn't always the case...

I was never really into music when I was younger.  I got my first two CDs for my 10th birthday in 5th grade.  Jeremy Hobson bought me Kenny G's Forever in Love and Liz Chubbuck bought me the soundtrack to The Bodyguard.  I thought I was so modern and sophisticated because Jeremy and I finally stopped having sleepovers and listening to Oldies 92 all night long.  Musically, I had arrived.

Then middle school happened, and all the kids started listening to cool music.  They were the original hipsters!  Liz would go to shows up near Chicago and come back with concert t-shirts.  She just kept getting cooler and cooler!  Meanwhile, I wasn't even close to knowing about random bands.  I didn't even get what was so great about Nirvana.  And Smashing Pumpkins?  What were they so upset about?

The only hipster I ever loved.

I kind of coasted through the first few years of high school, nodding ambiguously when people were talking about bands.  Katy Love kept writing "Kurt Lives!" on everything, and I couldn't figure out why she was talking about our classmate Kurt.

But I went to summer camp before junior year and finally understood why people liked music so much!  It was as though I had finally glimpsed a sight of the magic that drove my friends' epic CD collections.  And the magic was The Indigo Girls.

Thus began my love affair with female singer-songwriters. Meeting Amanda helped broaden my musical taste to such disparate artists as Ani DiFranco, Dar Williams, and Patty Griffin.  I mean, talk about RANGE!   Gradually I stopped pretending like I had a varied musical taste, and just listened.

It's cool.  I know I'm a groupie.

Then one day I was visiting Amanda in Maine, and she put on some Brandi Carlile.  My life was changed forever that day.  That voice!  Sometimes she sounds like a cello, sometimes her country roots come out, and the result is always incredible.

A few months later I caught the gay, and went to a Melissa Ferrick concert at Pride.  Mind.  Blown.  Her stage presence and sheer level of inappropriateness and hilarity made me a believer in lesbian folk singers once and for all.

Besties.  Obvi.

I have been to 15 Brandi or Melissa shows since I learned about them both in 2008.  Each one is a gift, unlike the one before.  The only thing better would be seeing them together.  But I think there's an awkward "You stole my drummer" thing that they still need to work out.

No matter my mood, turning on Give up the Ghost or Goodbye Youth adjusts my emotional thermostat to a pleasant 72 degrees.  And if they heard me harmonizing in the living room, I'm pretty sure they would fight over who got to add me to their band.

So tonight I am thankful for Brandi Carlile and Melissa Ferrick.  The beauty of their music, the courage of their out-ness, and their sheer hotness make me happy to be alive.

Gratitude Day 16 - The Lesbifriends

I moved to Denver with a partner.  When that ended, I was left without a support system except for my not-cousin Jenny.  It's scary being in a new place and only knowing people from work, especially when those people routinely work 18-hour days and read education blogs on their downtime.

So when Heather, a friend of Jenny's invited me to a pumpkin carving party last October, I was hopeful that this would be the beginning of a great friendship with a wonderful person.  I got SO much more than I bargained for.

At the party I was greeted by a table full of pumpkin desserts, and as I made my way through the kitchen and into the back yard, I couldn't believe my eyes.  Lesbians!  Everywhere!  There were faux-hawk lesbians, and olympic soccer lesbians, and country-western lesbians.

About an hour in, this text message conversation ensued:

Kate: Pumpkin carving party full of lesbians.
Rebecca: Picture or it didn't happen.
Kate: *sends picture*
Rebecca:  Jesus.  Even that DOG looks like a lesbian.

(It was a picture of these three people, with a dog in one of their laps.  Sadly, the picture will never be seen again because I had to reset my phone.  But you get the idea.)

The end of the pumpkin party featured a marriage proposal carved into pumpkins.  I started the day knowing no one but Heather, and ended the evening being trusted to do the lettering and carving of said proposal.

And that was the beginning of a wonderful winter of friendship with 10-or-so of the best ladies I know.  We had family dinners, endless nights of dancing at Charlie's, white dolphin Christmas exchange, and like 3 non-stop days of eating Thanksgiving food.

Last night was Heather's birthday party.  Last year, all the lesbifriends took a limo to dinner and to the party.  This year, most of us arrived separately, with our own dates.  Last year, we spent every Friday and Saturday night together.  This year we see each other more often at major events.  And this doesn't make me sad.

What I learned last night is that even though friendships change and relationships grow and develop, we need to be forever grateful for those moments of genuine joy and friendship we feel.  So today I'm grateful for the original Lesbifriends, and all those who have been added to the mix.  I am truly blessed to know each of you.

Gratitude Day 15 - Friday at 5:30

Detention feels like it will never end.  And I'm the principal.  I couldn't take it any more, so I let them go at 5:25.  It was like the best celebration ever.  For all of us.  Friday nights have pretty much stopped being exciting for me because I usually want to come home and sleep.  So tonight I'm thankful for Friday at 5:30, my couch, and a nap.

Gratitude Day 14 - Elisha Roberts

Just about a year ago, I was at Second Friday, a monthly gathering for gay ladies who are, or who try to be, fancy.  I was there with a couple of friends, and there was a lady staring me down.  Nikki said, "Kate, that woman keeps looking at you."  "Yeah, and she's cute," added Heather.  So I looked back.  We both started at each other for about five minutes.  Sure, we were both super fine, but there was more to it.  We KNEW each other.  We just didn't know how.

After those awkward few minutes, she walked over to me as my friends tried to keep a straight face.  "Do I know you?" we both asked.  We spent five more minutes trying to figure out why we seemed so familiar to the other.  High school?  TFA?  Camp? (My friends still make fun of me for asking about camp.  They clearly never went to camp.)

Finally, we figured out that we had both attended Occidental College, were both in education, and were both mentored by the same fabulous professor.  The similarities stopped there, however.  I was a charter school principal in training.  She was a union representative public school teacher.  I did TFA. She definitely did not.  Her friends worked at North High.  My school was trying to move into an old wing of North High.  Then.  THEN.  She talked crap about Charlie's on facebook.

WHO WAS THIS LADY????

Well, this was Elisha Roberts.  Over the next several months, as I obnoxiously posted about how much I loved my job on facebook, and she posted less than stellar reviews of her life at MLK, we had a few conversations about education.  And then one day she popped the question.  "Are you hiring?"

I was skeptical at first.  We both were.  Could she reconcile her educational philosophy with the charter world?  Would she be able to wrap her brain around all STRIVE Prep had to offer?

But thank God she applied, and thank God she had such an outstanding reference.  I got an excuse to call my friend Mary who told me we wouldn't be best friends, and that we would be a really good match.

She couldn't have been more right.  Elisha is my work wife, my other half, my wing-woman, and just plain awesome at her job.  She is disciplinarian, detective, motivator, teacher coach, data magician, and incredibly positive influence on our students.  Listening to her drop some "Slaves died so you could go to school" science on Mariah B. the other day gave me goosebumps.  Plus she's funny as hell.

Elisha constantly catches things that I've let fall through the cracks.  Things I'm too overwhelmed to do, oh, like PLAN ANY EVENTS OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL DAY, she's on it.  Want to see a play?  Do a ropes course?  Have a dance?  Start recycling?  Elisha's your girl.

And she's so supportive.  If I've had a bad week, or a bad day, or a bad minute, she's the first one there telling me I'm doing a great job as a first-year principal, and that she's glad to be part of my team.  And she says it in such a way that I actually BELIEVE her!

I can't tell you how tired I would be without Elisha here.  What I can tell you is this school wouldn't be half the place it is without her.  So today, I'm grateful for Elisha Roberts.  She IS STRIVE Prep Excel, and we are so blessed to have her.

Gratitude Day 13 - Karen and Therapy

I struggle with depression.  There it is.  For everyone to see.  It has taken me four years to say those words.  In 2010, it got really bad.  Like, about as bad as these things can get.  And I was so fortunate that a few months before it got really bad, I made a stupid choice, which made Kelly think I needed therapy, which made me go to Karen.  Today I am a living, functioning member of society thanks to the support of a lot of people.  Especially Karen.

Karen is a lot of things: funny, brilliant, Dana Scully look-alike.  Because of these things, we connected immediately.  At times I thought she was my friend, my mother, my girlfriend, Dana Scully...  All of the transferences, I had them.  Every couple of weeks I would say to Karen, "I'm cured!" and pretend like I was done seeing her.  I think I made this comic 6-weeks in.  That's me...with the cape...cured...

She would ask me lots of good questions and make sure before I left that I knew that I was not, in fact, cured.  Then I'd come back the next Tuesday at 5:15.

Karen helped me learn that I am quite the catch.  And we had to dig through a big pile of packed down shit to find that version of me.

I can't quite remember who came up with it, probably Karen since she's so smart.  Anyway, we came up with the whole lily pad metaphor on which my life philosophy is based.

After three years of looking out her beautiful top floor Dupont Circle office window, I was a lot better.  And I was moving to Denver and I wasn't done with therapy yet.  So Karen did something difficult.  I mean, it was definitely difficult for me, and I like to *think* it wasn't super easy for her.  She cut me off.  Not before she helped me find Meredith, however.  And my work with Meredith out in Denver has been so different, and so valuable.

So today, I'm grateful to be alive, I'm grateful for Karen, and I'm grateful for therapy.  And I HOPE Karen is grateful for all those cookies.