All the things

Baleadas.  Dang they are good.  Basically a baleada is a traditional Honduran food that is made with a thick tortilla filled with mashed beans and stuff.  My first bite of one solidified what “stuff” is for me – egg, chorizo, avocado, and queso fresco.  There aren’t really words to describe the amazingness of this food, but I’m craving one now.

The amazingness of the food is little in comparison to the amazingness of the person who introduced me to the food.  Because I teach in a VERY diverse area, I have students from all over the world.  Currently, I can name students from Mexico, Argentina, El Salvador, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Madagascar, Italy, Vietnam, the Philippines, Spain, the Sudan, and many more places who sit in my classroom each day.  And after 20 years of teaching, I have students out there in the “real world” from pretty much everywhere else, including Honduras.   That former kiddo is the one who brought me my first baleada, and he’s one of many who have stolen a piece of my heart.

Currently, I have a student from Mexico who has captured another piece.  He is the hardest working student I have met in a long time.  He not only takes care of business for high grades, but he genuinely loves to learn.   I’ve only known him for twelve short weeks, and already he has impressed me with how honorable and gentlemanly he is, and he’s not the only one.  His group of friends is all like that.  Not just smart, but life-long learners.  Not just sweet, but authentically kind.  Not just students, but DREAMERS.

So many of my students were brought to the United States as young children.  They have grown up here, been instilled with the values that Americans hold dear, and live out the Pursuit of Happiness with unadulterated joy.  They follow the rules and they keep their noses clean and they contribute to society and they dream.  They dream of being able to become citizens of the United States and give back to this culture of patriotism and freedom that they have inhabited their entire lives.  They dream of finishing college and learning everything they can and making this world a better place.  They dream of having the opportunities that I had because I was born here.   I dreamed of all those things as well, and every day I get to live out that dream.  Do you know how I get to do that?  I get to do that THROUGH THEM.  As their teacher for one or two or maybe three years, I have gotten to make this world a better place by sending out into this world my students who I have (hopefully) instilled with a set of values that will allow them to continue to become adults who make a difference.

Not going into the Dream Act and DACA and all of the political stuff behind this post today.  It’s something I’m researching and working on.  But for those of you who love me and pray for me and support my endeavors to reach my students, keep doing that.  I’m hoping to embark on something that will benefit not just my Dreamers but benefit our American society as a whole.  I have no physical power, but I have my words, and words are powerful.  Pray that I use them well.

I’m ready to introduce the Food Crew to baleadas.  I’m just saying.

There is no kind of tired like first-week-of-school-teacher-tired.  By the time school ended on Friday, I was absolutely exhausted.  This weekend, I have watched seven episodes of Game of Thrones, eaten three meals that were off-plan, caught two Pokemon that I had never gotten before, slept for 7+ hours twice, taken one nap, and read half of a book.  But I have to go back tomorrow.  If I’m kicking and screaming in the morning, it’ll burn calories, right?

Best macaroni and cheese ever.  I’m just saying.  And I ate both steaks.  I’m just saying.  #sorrynotsorry

Have you ever seen the episode of Friends (“The One With Frank, Jr.”) where they make individual lists of five super-hot celebrities they can sleep with as a “freebie” and no one can get upset?  I’ve seen all of the Friends episodes many times, and this one always makes me laugh because Ross bumps Isabella Rossellini off of his list, laminates the list, and then runs into her at Central Perk.  After the episode aired, my [real] friends and I started a little game when we go to the movie theater called “Date for the Evening.” We each pick a number between 1-5 before the previews start.  The leading man in our “number” preview is our “date for the evening” and no one can get mad.  For instance, if I pick #4, and the movie previewed in the fourth trailer is Matthew McConaughey, then my East Texas boy is my “date” for the evening, and his wife can’t get mad. Neither can my date if I happen to be on one.  Another after-effect of the Friends episode is that I made a Top Ten Laminated list. I call them my husbands.  I’ve un-laminated it and changed it a few times (it’s on Pinterest, so it’s easy to “un-laminate”), but here are the main ones (the last few fluctuate):

1. Michael Vartan (Vaughn from Alias)
2. Christian Bale (Batman)
3. Ben Affleck (Batman)
4. Matthew Lillard (Shaggy from Scooby Doo)
5. Joshua Jackson (Pacey from Dawson’s Creek)
6. Harry Connick, Jr.
7. John Krasinski (Jim from The Office)
8. Edward Norton
9. Jason Dohring (Logan from Veronica Mars)
10. Jason Witten, Adam Levine, Orlando Bloom (as the elf), David Tennant (Doctor Who)

If you know who these men are, you can kind of see my “type”.  I like tall guys.  I like handsome-but-not-vain guys.  I like goofy guys.  And apparently I have a thing for Batman.  I mean, I like Superman and Wolverine and Captain America and Ironman and Deadpool and all the other superheroes.  But there are two Batmen on my top ten list.  At the top.  And they haven’t been ousted by any other “freebie” celebrity in over a decade.  I like Batman.

So even though the critics hated it and the only people I know who raved about it were comic-book fans, I was super excited about the new Batman vs. Superman movie.  I mean, My #3 Husband. As Batman.  After a round of three Batman movies with my #2 husband, now I would get to see Ben as Batman.  I was stoked.  The movie started on Good Friday, and after our cross service (amazing, wonderful, impactful service every year where my pastor builds a full-sized cross with trees and hatchets and axes and sledgehammers and iron nails while telling the crucifixion story), I went to see it.  I went alone, to a nearby theater, thinking that the late late movie would have ONE EXTRA SEAT.  But no, it was full.  And all showings the next day were full.  In fact, the only showing that wasn’t full was on Sunday morning, and I was scheduled to sing for our Easter service that day.  So I didn’t get to see it.  My attention was gotten and my curiousity was fired up, however, since it seems that everyone else wanted to see it, too (and beat me to getting tickets).

Then comes the next weekend.  My colleague and I had to take our Destination Imagination team to the state competition in Anna, TX (i.e., sweet little podunk town with no hotels, restaurants, or movie theaters), so I had resigned myself to the idea of not seeing the movie for yet another week.  But Fate smiled upon me, and my team was finished performing and we were out of there by noon with eight hours to spare until the awards ceremony.  We had plenty of time to drive to Sherman, eat a massive lunch at Cheddars, prowl around Books a Million, and go see Batman vs. Superman.

Working on less than five hours of sleep proved to be too much for my teenage boys, who fell asleep through much of the film, but not for this girl.  My husband #3 was BATMAN!  And he was going to fight Superman!  I wasn’t sure how plot-wise this was going to play out, but knowing the cast, I figured beforehand that Lex Luthor was going to be behind it.  I mean, Jessie Eisenberg?  He has a knack for playing the crazy-weirdo, so I knew he would be a manipulator.  Honestly, I prefer Michael Rosenbaum (who sometimes makes it onto my Top Ten Laminated List), the Lex Luthor from Smallville, but I had to accept the new one.  No one else I knew was excited about Ben playing Batman, though, except for myself.  I understand, really, I do.  As much as I love him, I agree that he’s an amazing writer and director and just an okay actor.  But everyone else was wrong and I was right.  He was a great Batman!  He played it a little bit differently than Christian Bale – maybe not quite as dark but definitely as in-depth (and hot).  Not as cartoony as Michael Keaton (who isn’t on my list but was a great Batman) or angsty as Val Kilmer (handsome, but not list-worthy) or not-Batmanny as George Clooney (who has made it on my list before, but not as the bat).  Ben was his own Batman, and I loved him in the role.

Superman was good, too.  I prefer the ruggedness of Batman, however.  Superman has always been the “epitome of superheroes”, but he has never been my favorite.  I felt sorry for him in this movie (a direct response that was elicited by the plot), yet I was on Batman’s side.  You were forced to choose sides, another direct response to the plot, and it was well-done enough to make a divided audience.  A few times the action got to the point that I couldn’t tell what was going on, but after a few minutes I could sort it out.  And then Wonderwoman showed up.  And she was bad***.  Loved her.  Wanted to be her.  Too much coolness to handle.  Am now looking forward to her starring in a superhero movie.  She saved a rather cheesy part of the movie where I was having flashbacks to the Cave Troll in Fellowship of the Ring (where my elf, see the list, saves the day).  Overall, besides the fact that Lois Lane’s stiletto heels are unrealistic, I liked Batman vs. Superman and am looking forward to the continuation of this series.  With husband #3 as Batman.

Seriously, I like Batman.

I’m grateful for glutes and abs.  Seriously.  I know they are important.  And right now, apparently, my glutes and abs are weak. KD, my personal trainer, met with me yesterday and did a fitness assessment.  This time, I chose a personal trainer who isn’t out for my money.  He isn’t out to make me a “hard body,” nor is he someone with no sympathy for me. He isn’t 20 years my junior to where he doesn’t understand aging aches and pains.  This time, I chose someone who is near my age, who is gentle, who believes me when I say  I have the pain levels of a 60-year-old instead of a 40-year-old, and who knows that my goal isn’t to be a skinny minny with no body fat and rock hard abs.  My goal is to be pain-free without prescriptions, to lose weight without gimmicks, and to feel healthier and better as I become not just forty, but a fortysomething.

We started out not by him weighing me or taking my measurements or checking my BMI.  We’ll do that eventually, but he wanted to check my range of motion and endurance instead for this first time.  Really?  Every other time I’ve ventured into this realm, my weight and being told that I’m overweight and getting a “you really need to lose weight” lecture has been the focus.  But with KD, he wanted to see what I was capable of.  First, he made me do squats.  He checked my knee-over-ankle alignment, my back alignment, and my shoulder alignment.  My alignment, folks!  Not my weight!  He didn’t even mention that “by BMI scales [you] are in the ‘overweight’ category.”  Nope.  He wanted to make sure that I could move properly and with the correct form.  He made me do squats with my arms raised to see if I lean forward when I move downward.  He made me do them on the carpet and again on the solid surface to check how my feet moved.  We did squats.

Then I showed him all of my toys.  I’m kind of an exercise-product junkie.  I have two exercise balls of different sizes, two sets of exercise bands, a kettle bell, a jump rope, and a mini-elliptical-walker-thingy, as well as a massage chair, a foam-roller, a medicine ball, and this stick doohickey that I can use on my IT bands and hamstrings that hurts like all git-out.  He was impressed.  Then I told him I didn’t know what to do with any of it.  He was less than impressed.  He made me put away most of it and took out just an exercise band and a blue band-like-thing that I didn’t even know I had that looks like a little-bitty tarp.  He made me lay down on my back and raise my leg and he put the blue thing on my foot and made me stretch it out and move my leg around with it attached to my foot.  Oh my gosh!  It was awesome!  It was exactly the kind of stretching for my hamstrings that I have been wishing I could do!  I had always had the means to do it but not the knowledge.  Then he took me in the back yard and put an exercise band around the fencepost.  He showed me how to pull the bands correctly so that he could see the range of motion in my shoulders and arms.  He made me squeeze my shoulder blades together while keeping the form.  I had to move really slowly in order to keep the alignment correct.  That seems counter-productive to me, especially after watching people in the gym, but KD told me that he really wanted me to concentrate on slow movements with correct form rather than weights and reps and all of that.  He wants me to build endurance.  Endurance people! Not pain and horror like my last trainer!

Next he checked my abs.  NOT a fun experience.  I’ve known my whole life that my abs are weak and are a major source of my back problems.  And I HATE HATE HATE the poochy tummy.  But he was understanding. He didn’t focus on the amount of weight I want to lose or the size of my pooch but on the strength in my core.  I held a low plank for 35 seconds, but after that, my arms wouldn’t hold me for very long on a high plank.  Not a big deal.  He is going to have me strengthen my glutes and abs.  Those are my weak points.  We found that I use my quads for just about everything – lifting, moving, probably even breathing – and that my glutes and abs are very weak.  And it wasn’t a big deal!  He didn’t lecture me or make me feel bad.  He didn’t make me do a million crunches or ab exercises so that I couldn’t stand up straight today (that’s what my last trainer did, as well as made me do 50 pull-ups to where I couldn’t straighten my arms for two days.  I couldn’t even drive).  He just assessed me gently.  That’s exactly what I needed.

Lastly, we talked about cardio and food.  He knows that I’m going to be doing Trim Healthy Mama as my eating plan.  It’s the best I’ve found for being natural and healthy without depriving me of anything.  Blogs about that to come later.  The biggest change right now is that he wants me to eat more often.  I normally eat breakfast at 6 am and have nothing besides my coffee until 11:30,when I have my 30 minute lunch.  So we’re adding in a snack.  Probably fruit since I don’t eat much of that.  As far as cardio goes, he now knows that I hate it and I now know that he’s making me do it and we both know that running isn’t an option.  So this morning, I got up at 5 am instead of 5:30 and I did it.  5 minutes of yoga to warm up (speaking of which, yoga is going to be a major part of this journey, but KD isn’t my trainer for that.  EH is), 5 minutes of tae-bo, and 15 minutes on the walking machine.  I worked up a sweat and my heart rate went up, but it wasn’t taxing or overexerting.  I’m waiting on a text from him now to let me know if he wants me to do more cardio at the gym tonight.  I will do this.  I will do whatever he tells me to do.

All this to say, I’ve started my journey.  I am on a journey to wellness.  To living pain-free without prescriptions.  To strength and agility.  KD is just the first step.  I must choose to do something good for myself (as EH says during each yoga session).

I started out with a list of 40 things I wanted to do before I turned 41.  Once I started doing the list, I realized that I would not be able to afford to do them all, so I added a year to it.  I’ve wanted to blog about them all, but I got sidetracked by life, so I’m going to just post an update to the list and hope that I’ll be able to blog more often about it.  There are other little things I want to regularly blog about, too, such as movie/book/restaurant reviews, my journey into painlessness (more about that later), my students…all the little things in my life.  So here’s my 40×42 list:

1. Go to New York (May 14-17, 2015)
2. Go indoor sky diving
3. Share my faith with 40 people (I’m at 15)
4. Do three 5Ks
5. Finish my “Girls’ Guide to Guy Things”
6. Break bread with someone half my age and someone twice my age
7. Go to Harry Potter World
8. Try 40 new restaurants (I’m at 30)
9. Memorize 40 Bible verses I don’t already know (I’m at 7)
10. Do 40 Random Acts of Kindness (I’m at 11)
11. Take a class in something out of my comfort zone
12. Get my CHL
13. Road trip to visit a friend I haven’t seen in 5+ years
14. Learn to play a new song on my guitar OR learn to play the ukulele
15. AMTRAK to someplace I’ve never been
16. Lose 15 pounds (I’m at 6)
17. See an Aggie game in the new Kyle Field
18. Go to one of each: Mavs game, Rangers game (June 13, 2015), Stars game, Cowboys game
19. See these in concert:  Jonny Lang (May 9, 2015), Harry Connick, Jr. (July 25, 2015), Aerosmith or other 80’s favorite
20. Meet and have a conversation with a celebrity
21. Find three local band concerts
22. Cook a meal entirely of food I’ve never had before
23. Write an adoption story collection called “Gotcha Day”
24. Restart my blog and article writing (Here we go!!)
25. Ride an elephant
26. Write 40 encouraging notes/letters to people other than students (I’m at 1)
27. Paint a picture
28. Give up social media for one week
29. Pay a stranger’s restaurant bill
30. Go geocaching
31. Get a new bed (March 11, 2016)
32. Go to three museums (9/11 Memorial Museum on 5/26/15, )
33. Get a cute pedicure in different color combinations every month
34. Go fishing four times
35. Visit Stevie Ray Vaughn’s Memorial in Austin
36. Get out of debt besides house and car
37. Helicopter ride over DFW
38. Get LASIK surgery (March 10, 2016)
39. Think about and possibly get a dog
40. Is a secret

So lately I’ve been hurting.  A lot.  My hips, my back, my neck.  And my chiropractor can’t figure out what’s wrong.  My rheumatoid factor is high (but just barely), and my muscles are hypertonic (super-severely tight).  I’m on a magnesium supplement and use magnesium spray, I’m putting theralgesic on the tough spots, and I borrowed some muscle relaxers from a friend to see if those will help (shh…don’t tell).  But the little thing that I’m so grateful for, especially now that the weather is starting to turn cold, is my heating pad.  It relaxes those muscles.  It doesn’t heal anything, but it sure does feel good.

I turned 40 in June.  I don’t look it, but I do feel it.  I spent the whole month celebrating because I’ve made it this far.  I went to dinner with several different people on different days, I went to see several different movies, and I even got taken to a water park spa and sauna that was absolutely amazing.  The things that most women are afraid of about getting older don’t scare me.  I have gray hairs – so I get my stylist to cover them.  I have very few wrinkles – my Native American heritage and oily skin mean I might never get them.  My breasts are starting to sag a bit and my hips are starting to spread – but a good pair of Spanx and a good bra can fix all that.  Those things don’t bother me.  But the pain.  The pain of getting older scares me.  And if I hurt this much at 40, what am I going to feel like at 60?  or 80 if I live that long?

Sorry.  For a first blog in two years, I probably should have been a little more uplifting.  But yesterday I had to go to our chiropractor on campus and get my neck adjusted so I could drive home.  It was magical.  Then at choir practice last night, my right hip felt like someone was shoving an icepick in it.  I could hardly walk when I stood up.  It’s what is on my mind.  I’m going to go walk around my classroom now and stretch.  And maybe use the heating pad I brought to school.  Heating pads are awesome.  It’s the little things.

Today is the first day of 2014.   For several years, my friend and I have gone low-key with NYE festivities by eating dinner at Carraba’s and going to the movies to ring in the New Year with some of our favorite actors/actresses.  Last night, we saw Anchorman 2 and American Hustle, thereby ringing in the New Year with Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper (not a bad combination).  These aren’t the only movies I see during the year, however, and some of my blogs will probably be movie reviews.  As a quickie:  Anchorman 2 is utterly hilarious, and Steve Carell’s character is side-splittingly funny.  It was a great way to start our double feature.  American Hustle is right there in line with past Oscar nominees, which I predict it will be one.  Christian Bale’s acting is flawless, Amy Adams is awesome, and Bradley Cooper has REALLY nailed the freak out scene between this one and Silver Linings Playbook. With both of these movies, I was lost in the 70’s through the costuming and the soundtrack.  It was marvelous.

Here are the rest of the movies I saw during the year 2013:

In the Theater:

1. Promised Land

2. Zero Dark Thirty

3. Silver Linings Playbook

4. Django Unchained

5. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

6. Jack the Giant Slayer

7. Oz the Great and Powerful

8. Mud

9. The Great Gatsby

10. Iron Man 3

11. Monsters University

12. World War Z

13. Man of Steel

14. Despicable Me 2

15. White House Down

16. The Heat

17. The Lone Ranger

18. RIPD

19. The Wolverine

20. Eric Clapton’s Crossroads 2013

21. The Butler

22. Thor: The Dark World

23. Catching Fire

24. The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug

25. Saving Mr. Banks

26. Anchorman 2 (New Year’s Eve)

At Home, Never Seen Before

1. Looper

2. Beasts of the Southern Wild

3. Timeline

4. El Dorado

5. Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius

6. The Grifters

7. Our Idiot Brother

8. Heavenly Creatures

9. Scream 4

10. Super

11. Serious Moonlight

12. Red

13. The Thing Called Love

14. The Muppets

15. Pitch Perfect

16. The Other Woman

17. Loverboy

18. Men In Black III

19. The Perks of Being a Wallflower

20. Searching For Sugarman

21. Megafault

22. Real Steel

23. Source Code

24. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

25. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

26. Sharknado

27. The Odd Life of Timothy Green

28. Teen Beach Movie

29. Zodiac

30. American Graffiti

31. Downton Abbey, Season 1

32. Downton Abbey, Season 2

33. Limitless

34. The Christmas Ornament

35. The Three Gifts

36. The Sound of Music (Carrie Underwood)

37. A Very Brady Christmas

38. Downton Abbey, Season 3

At Home, Repeat

1. Cocktail

2. The Italian Job

3. The Big Lebowski

4. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

5. Billy Madison

6. The Book of Eli

7. The Bourne Identity

8. The Bourne Supremacy

9. The Bourne Ultimatum

10. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape

11. We Are Marshall

12. Braveheart

13. Bernie

14. Wayne’s World

15. My Big Fat Greek Wedding

16. Xanadu

17. The Butterfly Effect

18. Across the Universe

19. Veronica Mars, Season 1

20. Veronica Mars, Season 2

21. Veronica Mars, Season 3

22. The Breakfast Club

23. Alias, Season 1

24. Singles

25. Alias, Season 2

26. Alias, Season 3

27. Alias, Season 4

28. Alias, Season 5

29. Thirteen Ghosts

30. Hudsucker Proxy

31. Pulp Fiction

32. Breakin’ 2: The Electric Boogaloo

33. Christmas With the Kranks

34. There Will Be Blood

35. Bridget Jones’ Diary

36. Walk the Line

37. How the Grinch Stole Christmas

38. Elf

39. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

40. Scrooged

41. A Christmas Story

42. Rudolph’s Shiny New Year

43. 200 Cigarettes

Why am I starting a blog?  Because I love to write.  I’ve had a few things published, and I’ve got a few irons in the fire, but besides Facebook posts, I don’t write as much as I should.  I thought about a theme blog (teaching, cooking, cleaning, etc.), but I realized that I’m interested in way too many things to blog about just one theme.  So I’ve narrowed it down to the little things in life.  Sometimes those little things become big things, so even this theme isn’t set in stone.

So here’s how the blog is going to go.  I have a jar into which I am putting slips of paper upon which are written the little pleasures I find in life. (Notice the syntax that doesn’t end my sentence in a preposition?  Grammar is a little thing).  I’m trying for each blog to begin with one of the little things as the title.  The body of the blog will be about things that are super-duper important to me, which could mean just about anything:  Jesus, singing, movies, cleaning, things my kiddos say or do, football, food, pedicures, fuzzy things, A&M, answered prayers or things I’m praying about, new adventures and new hobbies, old adventures and old hobbies, or a million other things.

So here’s the new adventure.  Enjoy!