Funk

I was in a funk today. I'm still teetering on the fringes of that funk, but I guess that means I've arrived. Things aren't all shiny and new, pretenses have dissolved. I'm feeling authentic things I'm meant to feel because, teaching and parenting and living in the world is sometimes sunshine and lollipops but it's also half-eaten gummi bear vitamins stuck to the bottom of your shoe, isn't it? The window of being the new kid is quickly closing and the grace period of not having my stuff together is on the wane. I remember a friend of mine writing that post 9/11, everyone in New York was just being way too polite and sensitive, and that she was actually happy once people got back to their cranky selves on the subway commute because she got her old NYC back.

While nobody terrorized me this morning, things didn't go as planned in my design class and I felt super bummed about it. The very sweet teaching assistant e-mailed me and said that she really enjoyed class and that I was doing a good job. She must have been in someone else's design class by mistake because the one I taught this morning was a disaster like something fierce. The lasso tool in Adobe Illustrator was totally conspiring against me and making a liar out of me right in my own classroom in front of students on a big projected screen. Economy size can of urrgh is what I was projecting, that's what.

Oh, but then? We had a convocation with an embedded journalist who had spent his summer with a crew of Marines in Afghanistan. Summer. In Afghanistan. Can you say put an umbrella in my drink??? F-U-N. No.

I lifted the body armor of the journalist and it weighed far FAR more than Little Man. And I cannot carry Little Man across the dog food aisle without huffing and puffing because boyfriend be heaveh.

That really put into perspective for me what the men and women fighting overseas experience. They experience, at the minimum, having to wear a body armor greater than Little Man's bodyweight in order to defend our freedoms.

I cannot say that perspective snapped me right out of my funk, but I am certainly grateful for moments and feelings and people and body armors that are so real that they remind you that you are alive and that this life ain't all that bad. Sometimes it just seems that way.

*** Sometimes when I'm in a funk, I look at old pictures. Like reaching into a pocket of cheer.

This day a year ago:

This day two years ago:

This day (sniff) three years ago:

Gulp. Four years ago:

Five:

*** One more week to support the ASH campaign. Ending malaria! Let's do it!!!

Among kindreds

The other evening, my department threw a welcome party for the students majoring in our, um, major. There was a slip n' slide that Guinness and his book of records should know about. There was also a photobooth. My colleagues and I wanted to model good behavior, so we did our own photobooth demo. May I just say that I am so so glad to have landed in a place where pedagogy is our prime occupation and taking ourselves very seriously is all we have time to do every day?

Regalia

Dear Diary, This past week, the dream I held for myself when I was a little girl? Did not come true.

And thank God for that.

Especially since I think being the first U.S. Olympic Team woman figure skater to be featured on a Trapper Keeper wearing hot pink and orchid-colored leg warmers now seems a little ill-advised. I mean, the Trapper Keeper industry seems like it has sort of taken a slump in the Western market (but who knows for Asia, you know?). And I think the cold, cloistered life on an ice rink would have bummed me out after awhile, anyway.

So, I'm glad this past week to have just embraced this new dream. I taught three classes that I'd never taught before, to students that listened and engaged and asked questions and said things like, "Those are my faves." I was glad when they laughed when I dove across a table pretending to be a Serious Journalist on a Deadline, but I was less than glad when they tried to add me as a Facebook friend because, urrm? Where else am I allowed to talk about students?

I was also proud of my Loverpants who also taught a college class and he not only wore a bowtie and cufflinks and red Converse chucks but also launched his course with a cultural anthropology exercise that very much rocked.

Toward the end of the week, I walked in a parade of people wearing robes and funny hats with tassels, and a little part of me wondered if this was sort of the same thrill as landing a triple salchow.

::OOOOWWWWOOOOWWWWW goes the crowd::

I am a very fortunate liver of this proffy dream.

To academic integrity, and beyond!

Yours, K

***

Loverpants ironing my regalia. I like most domesticity but the ironing is not one of my faves.

***

P.S. I am $285 away from reaching my goal for ASH. Could you throw a fin toward sustaining medicine for women and children outside of Nairobi, Kenya?