Big Month

Its been a pretty big month. I last wrote stuff around the end of October talking about how the school was and how well we've been doing. It seems that we have thrown most of whatever we'd been doing out of the window because of poor communication and lack of consistency. Since my life right now is pretty much centered around this school, I haven't really felt excited about blogging our disappointing mis-steps.

We had a real awkward conversation with my mom about my fathers ominous prostate test scores. My mom said something along the lines of "I knew something was wrong for a while back because I started seeing blood in his semen" ...at which point I tried to think really hard about anything but the mental picture that quote implies. I wasn't successful.

I went to guatemala. I bartered for Hammocks in broken spanish, ate pretty awful food, and saw some amazing mayan ruins. Did you know that they never tore down a building or built additions, they just sort of sealed the old building and then built a new one on top of it. So all those big mayan pyramids are actually the product of 6 or more smaller pyramids being built on top of each other like one of those seasonal russian eggs. I also took time in Guatizzle to drink again, cause I felt like a bitch and no one should feel like a bitch, and to straight eat it on some pretty sad looking cliff dives (see above).

We had parent teacher conferences at the school, it a little nerve racking. I wanted to post something around this time to mention how lame it was, but writing about school really was starting to lose its pizazz around this time, as was thinking about school in general. To some extent working at this particular public school, at this particular time in its development, in this particularly annoying city was really starting to lose its pizazz.

After this I lost my phone, and phone numbers. I called sprint and someone was making calls on it after I lost it during the students' lunch period. Maybe this was good in away. I didn't have to call up the no show parents after conferences. I didn't have to make the calls to the pregnant girls mom to hear how the mother cried for three straight days when her daughter told her the news. and i didn't have to worry about doing alot of stuff for the school, but since I didn't get my phone on thanksgiving I didn't have a chance to call anyone at home. Sorry if I didn't call you.

I did get to spend time with my family which was cool. I have a whole set of (second?) cousins who are now old enough to get together on holidays and put on little skits and tell jokes and now I'm old enough to drink Hennessey and laugh at them with rest of the old people. My dad had a doctor-ordered, iodine-free thanksgiving dinner because they had found cancerous cells in a growth they removed from his neck, so he is on a special diet before the test to see if they removed all the cancer. Talking to my dad about the whole situation it would seem like there was nothing but roses and butterflies in his throat and prostate right now and I have a theory why, beyond the fact that he is overly optimistic. I think if you have a mental illness you have to sort of suck it up and deal because no one wants to really hear about your ebbs and flows with the disease. Unless it is a hospital-worthy episode, most people don't want to hear about it or overreact to any talk of it so its better to clam up and trust that your doctors and therapist.

I called my therapist out the other day for forgeting something that we talked about, which was hilarious watching her backpedal and stammer about "Its in my other notes," but I really need to quit that or talk to someone else. Anyways, I returned to New York got my phone and am now making all the calls I didn't want to make earlier about school. I am also traveling with the basketball team lately and wondering why some of these schools we visit have more of their shit together and why we can't get kids to not pull the fire alarms every day (actually the didn't pull it on monday or last friday so maybe things are getting better).

Either way I think I need to stop thinking about school and find something else to do like your comments said on the last one. Right now I think I'll have to settle on having it be christmas shopping, it doesn't look like its blogging cause I really don't have much I feel like writing about lately.