Waiting to Go Back

January 7, 2025 I am still waiting on medical clearance to go back to school, even though the new semester started today. I am feeling very guilty about having left my kiddos, since even with the best of subs the experience isn't quite the same. Having A.P. and Dual Enrollment students makes it even more stressful because they are worried about being prepared for the A.P. Exam and their college-level courses. I know I have to make sure I am fully able to go back without putting myself in position to reinjure my knee, and I also know that the kids will survive without me. Still, I wrestle with the dual roles of taking care of myself and taking care of my students. I will be back very soon, however, and we'll make the most of the rest of the year together.

Brianna's First Day

January 6, 2025 After 13 years, Brianna has made her way back to the Central Valley! I'm so happy to have her home with me--quite literally for a time, since she and Leslie the Puppy are staying with me for a couple of months until she moves into her own place. She started her new job as an E.A. with State Center Community Colleges. Now we have three of us who work in the district in various capacities--Bree at her job, Lisa as the VPI at Fresno City College, and me as an adjunct faculty member at Clovis Community. All in the family! Although Bree's day got off to a rough start, she jumped in and started learning the ropes in her new role. Since she has lots of experience as an E.A. (Executive Assistant), I'm sure she'll be up and running in no time. Her rough start, by the way, didn't come from the job itself, but the act of getting to the office. Bree has been living in Seattle, and prior she lived in Washington D.C., both of which have great and easily accessible public transport. Because of this, she hasn't owned a car for the past few years. Moving here will necessitate having a car, and until she makes that purchase, she is borrowing Lisa's second vehicle. Bree wanted to give herself plenty of time to get to work early this morning, and it's a good thing she did. Not being accustomed to warming up a vehicle on very cold mornings, she went out and found that the van's windshield was frozen, and nothing she did-defroster, water on the windshield, etc.--helped make the windows safe for driving. That's a frustrating way to start any day, but even more so on your first day at a new job. She kept calm though (I probably would have been in tears!) and called herself an Uber. Because she was leaving so early, she had built in enough of a time cushion that having to wait for the Uber didn't put her behind. She made it to the office just a bit early and got ready to check in to the new job. I was pretty impressed that she didn't let the situation frazzle her!

It's The Little Things

January 5, 2025

Being a homeowner means there is always something to be done, and I don't always have the skill set to complete all the chores quickly or easily. I am so thankful that Rafe is not only a good handyman, but that he is absolutely willing to jump in and take care of things that need to be done. He is a true partner in that way, and I feel pretty lucky!

In Limbo

January 4, 2025 In October, I had knee surgery. Lisa and I were taking salsa dance classes, and one night while being spun by my partner, I heard a familiar snap. (Familiar because I have heard that snap before while jumping on a trampoline, and it signaled a torn ACL and meniscus.) My instincts were right; after a few weeks of some hobbling and significant pain, I went to the orthopedist who diagnosed a torn meniscus. I was thankful it wasn't the ACL, since that would have been a more intense recovery. I scheduled surgery and let my school know I'd be out for a few weeks. Little did I know! When in surgery, the doctor found cartilege that was torn all the way through. He opted to not only repair the meniscus, but to perform micro-fracturing, which is a process by which drilled holes in the kneecap down to the marrow are done in order to promote healing and rebuilding of the damaged cartilege. I'm glad he did it while he was there, but the repercussions of that procedure were that I was to be completely non-weight-bearing on that knee for a full six weeks while it healed. Far longer than I anticipated, for sure, and after that there was physical therapy to rebuild strenghth and stability in those muscules. That's what I've been doing for the past several weeks; I finally got off crutches (falling twice after I could finally start to put weight on that leg!) and have been trying to rebuild stamina and reduce my limp. Here's where the limbo starts: The doctor recommended 24 physical therapy sessions. My insurance will only approve ten at a time. The doctor's note for disability has me off until February 2, but I was hoping to come back early, when the new semester begins. The physical therapist said when my first 10 P.T. sessions were done that she wasn't inclined to recommend me going back yet, but since we still had a couple of weeks of P.T. during the Christmas break, she'd be open to seeing what my progress was like. In order for my insurance to approve of the next set of 10 P.T. visits, my doctor had to review my 10 visit report and agree that yes, he still recommended a total of 24 sessions and would like for me to continue. Apparently, however, communication among Doctor, P.T., and Insurance is something akin to the Bermuda Triangle. P.T. has said they have faxed the doctor with the report three times, and the doctor's office has said that they have never received anything, despite reaching out to the P.T. office. P.T. can't schedule anything without an okay from Insurance, and Insurance says they won't approve anything until the paperwork from Doc to P.T. has been submitted to them. In the meantime, I have been attempting to play middleman to no avail and haven't been able to get phyical therapy for two weeks, let alone clearance to go back to work. And so, although students return from Christmas break on Tuesday, I will be out at least for another week while waiting for everyone to figure out how to get me back on track.

Albert's Birthday

January 3, 2025

A couple of weeks ago, Lisa, Bree, and Danielle and I went to a friend's house to make tamales. I'm not sure how we came into the tradition of having tamales every Christmas, except that opportunities for purchasing homemade Mexican tamales are plentiful at Christmas time, particularly in the Central Valley. Because of my fondness for them and easy access, my kids always grew up knowing that we'd have tamales at Christmastime--it's one of our traditions. When I happened to mention it at Thanksgiving to a friend, she offered to have us all over for a tamale-making day. I've always heard that it was a long day, tamale-making, and it was! However, with many hands and a few steamers, we were able to make about 18 dozen chicken, pork, and vegetarian tamales among all of us. (We talked, of course, and had the requisite singable songs going, which made the process much more fun.) I can confidently say that they turned out pretty well! Rafe suggested that we take some to his dad when we celebrated his birthday, which is today. Although I admit to a little trepidation about taking my homemade tamales to someone who grew up in a traditional Mexican household and whose mom used to make him tamales, we decided we'd go to Tulare for dinner and treat him. Rafe made beans and Albert made rice, and I must say we sat down to a very tasty meal together! Both of his parents thanked us and gave us the stamp of approval for the tamales, which made me feel good. I love visiting Albert and Cyndi because they are always so welcoming to me, so it really was a great birthday visit. :)

One of My Favorite Things

January 2, 2025

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love babies. Today I got to take dinner to a good friend who just had her third baby. Sweet Daniel was sleeping cozily in his dad's arms, but I got to see that precious boy and give his mama a hug. I can't wait to go back and cuddle that sweet boy! Just seeing that little family, in the aftermath of Christmas, just spending time with each other and focusing in on what's important while mama recovers and everyone bonds with their newest arrival made my heart happy. Oh how I wish our society valued that kind of family time together more than it values the work, work, work of every day life.

January-My Word for the Year

January 1, 2025

Each January I start the year by getting back into writing on this platform, sometimes with strong success, and some years (like last year), only managing to maintain consistency until February. Regardless of how often I post or how long through the year I keep up chronicling my life, I have come to reassess the idea of labeling resolutions of any kind as 'successess' or 'failures'. I think I managed 15 entries last year, and some years I have managed upwards of 200. However, I don't choose to see last year as a failure. I wrote 15 more times than I would have if I had not challenged myself to remember to set aside time. I count that as a win. Goals that we have are goals that we believe we want to prioritize. That being said, I also believe an important part of goal-setting is doing a periodic check-in with yourself. If you are not meeting a goal, are there obstacles in your way that you can in someway remove? Are there different ways you can try to reprioritize your time and energy to meet that goal? Or, if you truly reassess, is it possible that this goal is NOT now a priority for you at this moment or period in your life? Perhaps if you are not meeting a goal, you have consciously or unconsciously decided that your effort and energy are needed in a different area of your life right now. If that's the case, that's okay. That doesn't mean the goal isn't important or worthwhile; rather, it means that your focus is on something else that is also important. I have decided to give myself grace in this regard and recognize that I prioritized different things last year, and now I'd like to get back to this goal. A handful of years ago, I saw a post where the writer decided to focus on a particular word to carry with them through the year, rather than making a list of New Year's Resolutions. I adopted this tradition, and have felt the power of my chosen words each year since. In keeping with my musings about success and failure and goals and the like, I have decided my word for the year will be INTENTIONAL. I want to be intentional with my time, my resources, my energy, and my relationships, endeavoring to make sure that the way choose to operate in my life truly reflects my goals at any given time.

Testing, testing...is this thing on??

February 17, 2024 My students had to transition this week to a new platform for submitting their work. They are dual enrollment students, so they had to interact with and submit an essay to the community college platform, instead of the usual Google Classroom platform. After my first few students came in and reported issues with logging in and 'finding' the right place to go, I decided I needed to devote class time to ensuring students could navigate the site. Mind you, we already did a trial run a couple of weeks ago and I made sure everyone could access Canvas. Nevertheless, students were struggling, so I scrapped part of my planned lesson and backtracked to offer support. In addition to devoting classtime, I also published a flier of Google Classroom with step-by-step instructions, and gave them reminders about how to navigate regular issues students were having. In class, I projected the flier and talked them through the steps. Still, I had students with issues. --Ms. L, it still won't let me login. It says I don't have permission. Me: Are you going to the webiste address on the flier, or another address? (She was not going to the website on the flier.) --Ms. L, it says it doesn't recognize my user name! But I'm using my I.D. number! Me: Which I.D. number? Remember that I said you needed to use your college I.D., not your high school one, since this is the college platform? (He was, in fact, using his high school I.D.) --Ms. L, when I log in, it takes me to a page that's not our class! Me: So, when I said when you log in it will ask you to update your communication preferences before you move on, this is that page. (It literally says, "Please update communication preferences before advancing to the next screen.") --Ms. L, I have to put in all that information?? It takes so much time! Me: It's verifying your name and email contact information. You can handle that. --Ms. L, now that I logged in nothing happens! Me: See the icon that says 'Canvas'? The one the flier tells you to click on? Click on it! (The icon wasn't even hiding from her; it was right out there in the open, just patiently waiting for her to click.) --Ms. L, can I just email you my essay instead? I tried to upload it, but it says it doesn't recongize the file. Me: I told you you can't share from your Google Drive, because this platform doesn't talk to Google Drive. Did you download the file as a doc or a docx so that you can upload it to the site? (No, he hadn't.) --Ms. L, I DID download it, but it says it won't accept it! Me: What kind of file? Is it a pdf? (Yes, it was.) Remember how I said NOT to download it as a pdf, because it would only accept doc or docx files? (She did remember. She just didn't think I meant it.) Most of the time, the intelligent, diligence, and knowledge of these kids is impressive. On a day like this, however, it's a little less so. This is not to say I don't have those days myself--we all do. But the collective troubleshooting ability was definitely not functioning at its highest level. My only saving grace is I am sure it saved me from about 90% of the panicked emails I would have gotten this weekend without taking that time in class.

Leslie Leaves

January 14

For the past several weeks, Brianna and Leslie have been staying with me while Bree had the opportunity to work remotely. Of course I was thrilled with the idea of getting to have Bree with me, but I had my reservations about Leslie. She is the happiest, friendliest little dog, but also pretty needy and occasionally anxious and nervous. And the hair! Let me tell you, one thing I have not missed about having a pet of my own is the hair everywhere. (Truth be told, I shed hair constantly. There is hair at my house. But at least I know it's mine when I'm living alone and I only have myself to blame for it.) But Leslie? That sweet puppy is a hair-making factory! Once she got here, though, she just endeared herself to me even more than she normally does. She's a cuddler and super playful, and I enjoyed having her here more than I knew I would. She mostly had the run of the house, but my room was my oasis, so at least I could have one space that was (mostly) pet hair-free. That was enough of a boundary for me. Leslie and I bonded quite a bit on her visit--she loves me and I love her. Today, as her mom wraps up her time her with me, so does Leslie. She has her own personal driver to take her back to Seattle--Leslie doesn't do well with flying, so she will not be airport-bound like her mom. This is our goodbye-for-now, but I will definitely miss her sweet happy greeting at the end of my workday each day. It's going to be an adjustment for me for sure!

First Books of 2024

January 13, 2024

I set my reading goal at 30 books this year, an increase of two books over last year. These were the first two entries for 2024. I enjoyed parts of both books, but didn't fall in love with them. I am also trying to do better about not holding onto to books I don't absolutely love when I read them, so I am currently trying to figure out just who I believe I know who will enjoy these next so that I can pass them on. It it really a lot of fun to play book matchmaker.