And then. . .

This morning I saw a video titled "If We Treated Teachers Like Football Stars," of course I watched it and laughed. "If only" were my thoughts. Later at school I was talking with a friend and he asked, "You really want to teach, don't you?" and I nodded. Yes, I really do want to teach. Never ever ever ever did I think I'd want to be a teacher. I left my last life because it didn't have any meaning. I felt as if I wasn't doing anything important. Now, although some days are rough, I do feel as if I'm making a difference. Now, I can go on and talk about why I'm being selfless and improving students lives, but that would be a lie. Not a complete lie, but a little white one. I don't help all students. That's not because I don't want it, it's because they don't want it. They sit there the whole semester with a bored and or smelling shit face, and I can't do anything about it. Instead of griping with other facult...

The last few weeks I've been thinking a lot about getting older. This year for some reason I forgot I had a birthday. My mind just skipped over it; kind of like forgetting the milk when you go to the grocery store. But, the last couple weeks several things have happened which have reminded me that I am in fact getting older, and although there is nothing I can do about it, it's been naner- naner haw hawing in my face. (I think age is a bitchy girl who was once pretty and turned into an old hag and wants to make the rest of us miserable.) What's been bogging you down you ask? Well, last week I found a friend from high school passed away. I had not spoken to Javier in a while, but there was a moment my senior year in high school where he and I were part of a happy foursome--with Vanessa and Collete--and we were inseparable. He passed away suddenly, and Facebook and texts were flying trying to figure out what happened. I think many people thought it was just gossip, "O...

This is me you say, at least I say. "This is me, what you see is what you get," but there are so many sides to me, to each of us. Today I woke thinking about roles. The roles we play in our own lives as in others. I began thinking of one of those multi-faced dolls, the same face, but each is something different in a way depending on the angle. Somehow as we get older those roles begin to multiply further. More and more of our profiles appear like a flick of the finger against an endless line of dominoes with our features etched on the side in a continuous cascade.  daughter          sister granddaughter                niece                 cousin               aunt  sister-in-law                 wife    daughter-in-law           sister-in-law   ...

In a week where everything has gone up and down and all around. I want to pause a la Woody Allen and tell you, "This has been a very odd week, indeed." "What are you talking about? What happened?" asked the reader.  I had a visit from my prior life in the shape of an ex-regional manager now friend. I loved talking and seeing my now friend, but moments of surreal flashbacks of my prior life popped in and out. I heard the language I used to speaking fall from her lips, "Yes, we made the day with a 12% increase," only now it sounded foreign. For many years before I moved back to El Paso, my Spanish slowly shrunk down into a tiny space that almost didn't exist because of lack of use. I understood when people spoke in Spanish but couldn't always communicate with them. I felt the same shrink effects on my business language, the phrases she said, "SIM, LY, Decrease, Increase, Rally, were all familiar, I understood, but I couldn't quite comm...

The thing about waiting, for anything, whether in a line at the 24-hour Walgreens or the drive-thru at Starbuck's waiting for your morning Skinny Mocha, is that, well it sucks. No one likes to wait in lines, and in a world where we can do multiple things at once at all times and post how we're feeling to the world in seconds, the waiting seems worse. It seems like, well, we're waiting that much longer. We're standing behind the guy with a shaved head and tattoo's who's moist pasty skin rolls peak out from the rolled edges of his cut dingy t-shirt waiting to get the birth control that will keep us from having his three noisy kids that keep grabbing the bottles of vitamins off the shelves as ten people stand in line try not to stare at the kids like they are monsters.  It's also sitting in our cars Tweeting, Facebooking, Google +ing, Instagraming, What's Apping, all about coffee, then wrinkling ours noses as we notice we forgot to hit the re-circulation ...