Another exciting day in tengrrlland. I got my mail out of bondage this morning before I went to work. The bag seemed lighter than I expected. I sorted through all of it this evening. Mostly garbage catalogs. Three bills, a bank statement, and two Christmas cards. I’m such a good girl that I even paid the bills this evening, instead of letting them wait till the weekend.

I did listen to some of the Alito hearings today. I don’t know why these things entertain me so. Probably because I like to hear the rhetorical gymnastics.

This evening, I tried to work up the Computers and Writing Conference proposal that I promised to my dear colleagues, who promise me that I don’t actually have to be in Lubbock to present. I always feel so stupid when it comes to these things. Everyone else has really pretty proposals that point to research lots of (important name, significant name) stuff. I can’t do that kind of writing. I’m a practice girl, not a theory girl. I often can’t explain why my educational decisions are right or best. I just know that they are. I feel like anything I write will be so stupid. I’ve sent them some rambles, and we’ll see what they say in response (if they can make any sense of it).

It’s not been my best day. I overslept horribly, due to alarm error. I’m 44. How is it that I still screw up sleeping? But screw it up I did, and I do.

The doctor’s appointment was a joke. I could have better spent in a hundred other ways. Doctor’s advice was things like:

• Take off your rings so that your fingers don’t swell.
• Lose weight.
• Don’t move your hands in ways that hurt.

What miracle observations! First thing I did was come home and lose 100 pounds. What a difference! Oh, and I left out the part where she said, “Take ibuprofen or Aleve.” I tell her that I can’t because I have acid reflux. Oh, she replies, then you can’t do that. But she didn’t suggest anything that I could do. Why did I even bother? A monkey with brain damage could have figured all that out.

I haven’t finished the Inbox for tomorrow because of some problems putting the files where they belong on the server. When it goes up, it will focus on Martin Luther King Day activities.

I didn’t really accomplish anything else. We reviewed some lesson plans as a team, and that was about it. I should just take the month as sick leave. I’m a waste. A waste with screwed-up hands.

Despite my slacker malaise and inability to move, I did go out to the car and get the dirty clothes so that I could do the laundry. Got the clean clothes too for that matter. There was a small pile of things that I could have been wearing if I weren’t so lazy. My hair dryer was easily accessible, so I grabbed that too. Considering the pile of things that is still in the car, it’s not really an accomplishment. But anyway, I did put on jeans and walk outside. I even took the trash to the street and lamented on how I missed the lesbians who used to live across the street, not that I ever talked to them more than once every six months but it made me happy to know that they were there with their little girl.

I’ve spent most of my waking hours today going through drafts of content for an online course NCTE is putting together while listening to and occasionally watching the playoff games. The hard thing about reviewing these course modules is that they really aren’t what I’d do, but they are based on what I’ve written for my kit. What I’d do doesn’t really matter. These have to be more generic, suitable for anyone who might enroll. It’s still hard to read your text woven into things that you wouldn’t necessarily do. Oh well. I did all the commenting in Word on the laptop, because of my hand issues.

I really wanted to go back to bed most of the afternoon and early evening. I’m not sure why it’s better to sit up half staring into space and being skittery unfocused; but I’ve tried to convince myself that hiding away in bed isn’t acceptable.

I didn’t do much with the diet site today either. I’ve been an eating machine, so why bother. I realized that I’m mostly eating like a cow now because when I’m dieting, I won’t be able to eat anymore. I’m so bad at all this. I decided to name this strategy “Hibernation Dieting.” Eating and eating and eating because soon there will be a long fast. Maybe I’d be more successful if I identified the things that I do want to eat and designed a diet around that. Instead of trying to disallow red meat, go ahead and have a piece every day if I want it. Part of the problem, I’m sure, is the things I’m not allowed to have and the endless pile of things that I try to eat to satisfy a need for those things that I’ve disallowed. I don’t know anymore. Clearly I’m a major failure at this, and I haven’t even officially started., from my perspective.

Tomorrow, I have a doctor’s appointment with a resident. My hands are so problematic. Sometimes I’m sure that it’s carpal tunnel. They can be all needles and pins numb. Other times, when it’s this horrible pain that I get when I make a fist or try to open a jar, I’m not sure what it is. Tendinitis? Arthritis? I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense that the problems start with driving home at Thanksgiving and get worse while I’m in Virginia. Makes it hard to believe it’s arthritis or something. It must be some repetitive stress thing that I do when I’m driving and when I’m cooking in Virginia. Every time I had a sharp pain I was doing something with a spatula, or my hands would be going numb as I’d whisk something. But none of that explains the sharp pain that showed up that one night when I tried to make a fist. I hope the doctors tomorrow can make something of it, and I hope that whatever it is includes strong drugs that make it stop hurting. The appointment isn’t till 3:30, so I’ll just have to wait it out and try not to open any jars or make any fists in the meantime.

Just took the SparkPeople Diet Personality Quiz. Here are the amazingly shocking results:

Emotional Eater The main problem you face is eating when you’re not hungry or eating to satisfy something other than hunger. “Food for your mood” can cause your diet to vary a great deal. Too much of your eating is driven by boredom, stress, or dejection – you might even find yourself in the kitchen, open cookie bag in hand, and not know why. Mindless and emotional eating for you can be caused by any number of reasons. It is likely you have more weight to lose than most or have grappled with weight most of your life. A tendency for this personality type is to yo-yo on dieting and swing through “all-or-nothing” extremes (e.g., I’ve blown it already this meal so why not have dessert?) A few spoonfuls turn into a snack turns into a binge…especially around the high stress holidays. What can you do? A diet alone is not the best option for the Emotional Eater. Emotional Eaters can become fixated on what’s good and what’s bad and grow obsessed about eating. The emotional eater needs to become more conscious of when and what they eat and surround themselves with the support they need to change. You will need to develop new skills for dealing with boredom, stress and/or sadness. You need a conscious connection to your hunger. Confidence can be the missing ingredient and starting small is key. Consider starting a streak for a predetermined period (say two weeks) and focus on regularly reaching just one goal for that period. An example would be to drink 8 cups of water each day. This success will give you the new habits and confidence to try another goal. Emotional eaters do well with friends by their sides to help coach and maintain a degree of accountability. How SparkPeople can help For you, weight loss is more complicated than simply counting calories and it will take some investigation to get to the root of your eating habits. The SparkPeople support message boards and expert coaching will give you the strength and insight to overcome past problems. The circle of friends and the support group at SparkPeople will help you take the pounds off quickly – and keep them off! Our food tracker and reporting system of over 10,000 foods, when used with the online journal, can expose those mindless and emotional eating times and help you develop strategies for dealing with them. Helpful hints for emotional eaters Surround yourself with positive re-enforcers, like pictures and goal reminders. Track your eating patterns, including when and why you pick up food.

I’m sure that everyone who knows me is amazed.

In the News: Verzion Owns Me

Verizon Completes $8.5B Purchase of MCI
I belong to Verizon now.

We don’t know what this will mean for ReadWriteThink, but we’ve been told not to worry (which is easier to tell someone to do than to have them actually do).

The three wise witches gathered on my porch this morning, offering slippery herbs to cut the windsome dawn.

I don’t really know what that means, but I couldn’t think of how to start writing, only of things I want to say; so I called the harpies to initiate the discourse.

I continued trying to get back on track at work. I’m still trying to figure out what to work on more than anything. I have a list of to-do’s, but I feel bungled about where to start. I did create a Word doc that prints on Circa paper for my notebook. With the problems in my hands, writing the lists out manually just isn’t an option. I do have an appointment with a resident on Monday to try to stop the pain. I can’t wait till the doctor’s appointment on the 19th. I also moved the April calendar entries forward for their 2006 revision and editing. Had my weekly update with Sharon, and she shared information about the Leadership Meeting that took place in the building this week. I need to spend more time focusing on the strategic governance areas:

• Teacher Quality
• Testing and Assessment
• Multimodal Literacies
• Adolescent Literacies
• English Language Learners
• Literacies of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics*

I need to try to make the Inboxes and ReadWriteThink content better fit into those areas. (*I think that’s correct. The paper I saw used STEM as an abbreviation, and I can’t remember how it was written out.)

I turned in my registration form for CCCC today. I can’t really justify it, as it has nothing to do with my job anymore. I’m all K-12 these days. I’m not on the travel list for the event, so I have to work out all the details on my own. That’s just as well though. If I were on the list, I’d have to work. If I take vacation, I can attend sessions and do what I want. There is much to be said for just having a hotel room for a few days. No I can’t afford it. Yes, I will be bringing peanut butter and jelly to eat in the room for my meals. But at least in a hotel, there is nothing messy for me to have to deal with. Someone else gets to carry everything and deal with everything.

My car is still full (obvious transition, no?). I can’t seem to get the energy to unload it. I did go to the grocery store after work, and I bought mostly healthy things. Not that I have really started that diet yet. I read something about starting small, with doable goals. It may actually have been a management thing from LifeHacker. I can’t remember. Anyway, it suggested doing little goals. One article talked about making them short-term even, one small goal each New Moon.

So anyway, my goal this next week is to eat something fresh every day, a fruit or veggie. More than one is a bonus. To try to be wise, I didn’t buy a big bag of apples. I always end up tired of apples when I do that. Instead I bought a couple apples, a couple pears, and a couple of bananas. Plus broccoli and green beans and cabbage and romaine. No doubt because of the grocery store’s plot to entrap the New Year’s Resolved, Lean Cuisine meals and Skinny Cows were on sale; so I bought up tons of those too. And little bags of pretzels, because big bags are trouble. My downfall is butter, but I bought it anyway. If I don’t have it, I’m just going to be pissy and eat a pound one night. So I just have to say, “Butter is okay as long as I’m being careful with everything else.” Oh, and cheese. I have real cheese. So, yeah. We’ll see if this works. I can make good choices in the grocery store, and then spend the week eating lard. And in my head, the diet hasn’t even started yet. I’m putting that off for a good moment.

When I’ll find a good moment, I have no idea. As I said, I can’t seem to get anything done. I wanted to go to bed early again tonight, but made myself stay up. There was a time when I always went to bed very early on Friday nights. If you’re asleep, you don’t notice that you’re not doing something. I had a friend who would call me around 2 am frequently, after all the bars closed. I wasn’t good enough to be seen with, but I was fine for providing more liquor or whatever after 2 AM. I would go to bed soon after dinner. If the phone call came at 2 AM, I got up and took stuff over for the hour or two that I was considered a “worthy friend.” If I slept till the next day, at least I hadn’t been up wondering if the 2 AM call would come and getting disappointed when it didn’t. Yes, I am this pathetic. I can know that someone is using me, and yet I am alone enough that I go along with it. That was years ago. Many, many years. But I still have the tendency or flaw or whatever it is.

So tonight, I considered going to bed tonight. Tonight (and probably all weekend) I am trying to avoid that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m bungled and scattered. And that I don’t have the will power to go unload the car or do much of anything else. I have to read drafts for the online course this weekend, and I can’t even do that. I wish I could blame my hand problems. I have pain when I try certain things, but it doesn’t hurt to read. And you can hardly claim that you need bedrest for tendinitis.

I just need to escape and disappear. I could almost hide in the house all weekend, but there’s all that stuff in the car. Apparently I am dark now. Someone has told me. Sharon said that she wished I weren’t so sad. I thought I was hiding it. I guess I just cry too much. I didn’t think anyone had seen me. I don’t know. Maybe she just guessed because I can’t concentrate. I dunno what it is. Maybe going to bed makes more sense than blundering and babbling though.

Mac Resources: Essential Applications

Essential Mac OS X applications via LifeHacker

Linux Distribution Chooser [ © 2005 – zegenie Studios], also from today’s LifeHacker

I managed to go to work, and I have mostly cleaned off the desk. We have to put all our belongings up on our desks before we leave for the December holiday break because they have the carpets cleaned while we’re all gone. I think it took the majority of the day just to get back to the desk again. I still feel very rudderless.

I went in late and left early, though I left early because of an appointment for my hair. My grays are all hidden again, for whatever difference that makes. It needed cut more than anything, so it’s probably happier now.

I may be entering a special dark period. I just don’t seem to have any focus or to know what I should be doing. I have just felt like going to bed for several hours now, which is really uncharacteristic for me. I feel like I’m falling apart with all the hand problems. I managed to get an appointment with a resident on Monday, rather than waiting till the 19th for my regular doctor. It’s so incredibly painful if I move my fingers the wrong way. It can’t be normal. I think it’s tendinitis, but there has to be something I can do to help it get better. Bedrest maybe. Hmm. maybe that’s how I can justify going to bed so early. I dunno what’s wrong with me.

For those of you following my exciting travels, let me announce that I’m back home. I can’t say that the car’s unloaded completely. I got here a little over an hour ago and brought in my drugs, clothes for tomorrow, and my laptop. Oh, and my pillows and Shamu.

My house is freaky quiet. I keep hearing noises and jumping. I’ve taken to turning things on just for background noise so that I quit jumping around. Unfortunately there was nothing on TV that I could commit to so I’m back to listening to NPR on the laptop.

Tomorrow brings another work day, but I feel absolutely energyless (is that a word?) about it. Maybe I’m just depressed. I dunno. I wish I could just hide out for a while. :(