Day 26: Duplicates

(Not my school filing cabinet, but a similar mess of papers)

I realized today, bored to tears as my students silently trudged through their practice LEAP tests, that this lenten purging doesn't have to be limited to home.  According to the graphing calculator I did keep, I spend about 42% of my waking hours each week at work.  While I don't expect to spend 42% of Lent giving away things from work (the school might not like that), it seems only fair to dedicate at least one day to clearing out my classroom's main offender: the filing cabinet.

When I started teaching at Lusher, I took the position and classroom of a man that had just retired.  For those of you who are not teachers, what that means is that I inherited all of his crap.  Now, it could have been a lot worse--I was lucky enough to have a couple of teachers and administrators give it a first go-through before I got there.  Nonetheless, it was overwhelming.  I came in to find the room in disarray with piles of worksheets, lesson plans, and random notes about things like circumference (which I don't even teach) on every available surface.  I somehow managed to get things in a decent enough order that I didn't go into some kind of claustrophobic shock, but I do not lie when I say that I was still throwing out the man's papers at the end of the year.

That being said, three years later, I find my desk and filing cabinets in a position of similar disarray: papers and binders covering the available surfaces, files so atrociously full that I can't get to the ones in the back without the taking out the ones in the front first.  So, as my students prepared for state testing today, I opened up a drawer and started weeding.  Two hours later, I had only managed to successfully rid myself of duplicates and outdated copies of tests and quizzes from most of my fourth grade math files.  While that is one large step for Olinde-kind, it's a real small step in the scheme of things and means that next week, when I am not sitting for hours on end watching students bubble in answer sheets, I'll have to tackle the rest of those papers.  Recycling group, get ready for a workout.

Day 25: Exercise Ball

I had every intention of giving away the paper-mache gargoyle I made in art camp the summer after fourth grade.  I took a picture.  I wrote "Gargoyle" in my lenten calendar.  I posted it to facebook.  But when I actually took it down from its bookshelf perch, I knew I couldn't give it away.  This gargoyle had been with me through so much: the awkward middle school years, the stressful high school years; it was there every time I visited home during college, and it moved in with me when I came back to New Orleans.  It is a testament to perseverance and, like a small clay dinosaur I made around the same time, evidence of my poor sculpture skills.  These things I cannot give away anymore than I can give away my dad's rock collection.  They took time and a little more work than we bargained for, and they will stick around a little longer than we originally planned.

Instead, something else must go...

This is what I get for buying something I saw on an infomercial.  All these years, I managed to convince myself I didn't need a BoFlex, or one of those glass tubes that automatically gives plants the perfect amount of water, but this seemed so practical, so useful...

Exercising in college was a lot harder than I anticipated.  As kids, my siblings and I were constantly being thrown out the door, I think in the hopes of moving the chaos outside and giving my mom a chance to breathe.  I played a sport for at least one season each year up until my junior year of high school, too.  But when I gave up volleyball to go back for a second year of writing at NOCCA, and had no PE or extra time for anything but schoolwork, it was easy to fall into a sedentary life style.  College didn't help much, but for different reasons.  I had time--much more than I expected--but instead of spending it exercising, I tended to spend it talking with friends, drinking smoothies in gardens, watching chick flicks in the living room, and hanging around the dining hall, hoping to accidentally collide with a really cute guy who would then have to pick up my tray and, of course, get my phone number (never happened).  I may have spent a few hours reading and writing papers somewhere in there, too.

That's not to say that I didn't try to exercise.  My first year of college, I have a distinct memory of trying to run.  I'd seen people do it around campus all the time.  So, I got my headphones and my Discman (a special jogging discman I had bought just for the occasion), popped in some uptempo Jesus music, stuck the cd player in my Discman-compatible waist belt (read: fanny pack), and started jogging along a path through the dorms.  About three steps later, my Discman starting skipping.  So I stopped, adjusted it, and tried to run again.  Again, three steps later, it skipped.  I tried to shuffle my feet to lessen the impact.  I tried to hold the cd player out away from me.  I tried shaking the thing.  No matter what I tried, it skipped.  Needless to say, I gave up and walked back to my room.

There was a gym near my dorm, so I tried that, too.  Somewhere I had heard that it was good to do a little cardio before you work out, and jogging on a treadmill seemed like a fair option.  There was a place to rest any cd players, though I was plenty content with the gym's loudspeakers (anything to avoid further conflicts with mine and its supposed "anti-skip" feature).  But this gym was one of those gyms, you know, the kind where you go to see and be seen, so the treadmills were set up on the second floor in a rectangle above an opening to the first floor.  That means that your only options were to look at the girls on the stairmasters across from you (who were in painfully better shape), look at the girls jogging on either side of you (awkward), read a magazine (how? the words don't stop moving), or watch the televisions set up above the rectangle (not coordinated enough).  And when I say not coordinated enough, I mean that there was no possible way.  I have serious issues with running when I am looking anywhere but straight or down, and I swear I almost ate it multiple times trying to read the subtitles.

Weights were no good, either.  Beyond the fact that pulling a bar up and down twenty-five times provides me with little to no mental stimulation, I felt constantly belittled every time I followed up a guy on machine (...oh, wow, you just bench-pressed 150 pounds? I'll be moving that little pin there up to the 5-pound weight, thanks).  Surprisingly, I worked out on and off for a good part of college.  Also surprisingly, it had little to no effect on my muscle mass.

Then, in my last year at UVA, I was watching television one day and an infomercial came on.  Generally speaking, my reaction to all infomercials is: "That's cool, but what idiot would actually buy that?"  That day, I was the idiot.  But I justified it to myself: this mini-exercise ball was more effective than on-the-floor crunches and it'd put less strain on my neck.  It was the answer to my exercise prayers, I was sure.

But this ball was clearly meant for someone with more common sense about exercise equipment than I have.  I read the book, I followed the directions, but I could not for the life of me figure out how to make the thing work.  If you want to understand how it was, imagine me hand-pumping a ball about twice the size of a softball, and then placing it under the small of my back.  Then, imagine me leaning back to do a crunch and rolling off the ball.  Now, I'm pretty persistent, so imagine that scenario a dozen more times.  I kept trying, I think hoping that if I could figure it out, I would feel like less of an idiot for buying it in the first place, but that moment never came.  It ended up deflated in a drawer with other little-used items like Mardi Gras frisbees and an old Karate white belt, and I learned my lesson.  Just say no to infomercials.

Day 24: Decorative Stuff

I SPY...
1 Muses Bracelet (2010)
1 Old frame and drawing of a little girl baking
2 Saints flags
1 "Make Levees Not War" button
1 YLC mini orange cone
1 BFHS alumni sticker
1 Bottle of bubbles
1 Poster from a trip out west

It's Day 25, and it's taking more time now to choose what to get rid of. Yesterday, I was itching to add more to my lenten pile, but it seems that that feeling comes and goes. If I don't think about it for a while, my stuff becomes comfortable again.

As I take down the things I've used to decorate my room with all these years, it begins to look more bare, but a kind of bare that feels right for this time in my life. Perhaps as a child, you accumulate clutter because the big stuff--the bed, the desk, the chair, the dresser, the room itself--none of it really belongs to you, but the stuff, oh the stuff is all yours! What parent would ever want to claim that old bottle of bubbles you kept from a wedding, or a sticker for a school they never went to, or a partially torn poster that you begged them for years ago? As a child, you claim possession of whatever you can get your hands on. This is my wallet. This is my stuffed animal. This is my mini orange cone, however useless it may be. (It can't really even be considered a paperweight; it's foam.) As an adult, though, that possessiveness shifts. Now it's my house, my piano, my table, my computer,...the things that I cling to now are bigger, more expensive, and they actually serve a purpose, but I also become more dependent on them. It's easy to take these things for granted; it's easy to find yourself unable to function without internet or a saucepan or a new graphing calculator. When have you ever heard a child say they can't live without their teddy bear and mean that they can't get in touch with their boss or heat up some red beans without it? Kids appreciate things for what they are. Not so much as objects necessary to the workings of life, but as treasures, to be treasured.

The pieces that adorn my walls are more adult now: city flags, paintings, and diplomas. My desk is littered with bills, letters, calendars, and Save the Dates. My art is more refined; no longer homemade sculptures and magazine clippings. My bedspread is gold and green instead of the old purple and pink plaid print I used to have. All of it smells of growing up. And as I take notice of all these signs of burgeoning adulthood, the Toys'R'Us song keeps popping into my head. Oddly, though, I'm okay with growing up. Sure, there are things I could without--rent, for example--but it's worth it. It's a fair trade-off: dependence and obedience for freedom and responsibility. Problems are bigger now, but I can handle them better now. Decisions are harder to take now, but they're decisions I have more control over. As I give up these childhood-inspired trinkets, I say goodbye to an era of clutter and hello to a new period of simplicity. But I hope never to lose the ability to treasure, to really appreciate the things I keep.

Day 23: Nail Polish

After filing with the IRS, and giving the U.S. government permission to shake down my checking account, I briefly considered making today's entry: "Day 23: More Taxes Than I Thought I Was Going to Have to Pay." But it seems dishonest to count something, when the alternative to giving it away is going to jail. Newest rule in this exercise: lenten guilt is the only acceptable form of duress under which things shall be given away.

On my way to church yesterday, I drove past a parked car with a bumper sticker that caught my attention. It read, in simple two-tone lettering: "The best things in life aren't things." How apt, I thought. Several lighter drawers and cleaner closets later, I'm beginning to need less and less convincing of this fact. For example, yesterday afternoon, hungry though I was, I made a deal with myself: you will not eat lunch until you clean up your room. After at least a month of watching piles of clothes, shoes, papers, and other miscellaneous items pile up along the edges of my room, it was time to finally deal with the mess. Originally, it was just that simple: time to wash some clothes and put things away. But somehow, it turned into more than just tidying. Over the course of three hours, I got rid of at least a dozen old prescription pamphlets, plus jackets, socks, underwear, hangers, Mardi Gras beads, old makeup, expired medicine, and t-shirts I couldn't bring myself to give away on day 7 but finally admitted I didn't need. All of a sudden, I was ready to get rid of everything. Opening drawers and doors and sifting through shelves, it became clearer how much stuff I have, and how little of it I really need. Of course, I had to stop myself after a large shopping bag started to overflow. If I give away everything all at once, what will I do for the remaining days of lent? Even as I write this, I am picking things up and forcing myself to put them back down.



When they say "Man, that was a nail-biter," I realize that as a kid, that described pretty much every situation. The nail-biting seemed constant. I was like a teenager addicted to cigarettes, except that no one mistakes nail-biting for something cool, not even people who do it regularly. It is at best a nervous mannerism, and at worse, an unattractive, unhygienic habit. It leaves your nails short, your nail beds sore, and your mouth constantly vulnerable to whatever bacteria was on the last thing you last touched. Thinking about it now, I'm amazed I didn't die of the flu as a child.

I don't remember when I started biting my nails. In my imagination, though, it started when I was three, on the very day that my parents weaned me off my pacifier by throwing the last one I had into a tree in our front yard. I, of course, don't remember that incident, but just hearing the story makes me want to bite off a nail. I mean, imagine a three-year-old me with no pacifier to comfort her, wondering what other beloved item will end up doomed to that very same leafy fate? This is probably also when I stopped climbing trees and gained an overly-active fear of heights, a likely result of vicariously living out that pacifier's last day.

However the nail-biting really came to be, it was the beginning of a habit that could not be broken. My parents, not being nail-biters themselves, were ill-equipped to help me stop, so I had to resign myself to creative problem-solving and painful consequences when it didn't work. I remember those days vividly, those first fifteen-plus years to be exact, when I would wrap band-aids around my too-short nails as tight as I could to distract from the pain (an exposed nail bed is not something to play around with). I tried quite a few things: nail polish, sitting on my hands, ipecac, hair twirling...but nothing really helped until I set my chocolate sacrifice aside and gave my nails the lenten treatment instead.

While probably not adhering closely to the actual purpose of Lent, as a habit-forming or -breaking exercise, lent is amazing effective. If I made it a New Year's resolution to stop biting my nails, I might have made it a few days. But when nail-biting took a sinful turn, all of a sudden there were faint traces of white at the end of my nails. Like the top of a baby's head after 9 months of pregnancy and 12 hours of labor, those slivers of white at the end of my nail were a testament to a new beginning...and less frequent trips to K&B for bandaids.

Even with all the progress that I've made, I still never paint my fingernails. Sure, toenails, that's fine (As the less attractive digits, they could use a little glamming-up), but not fingernails. I don't know exactly the reason. Maybe the juxtaposition of dainty fingernail polish and large, bearish hands is just too much. Or maybe I like seeing the sliver of white at the end of my nail; it reminds me of a bad habit overcome. Either way, all this nail polish is a waste of space.

**
While searching for information about fingernails (apparently the white part I was talking about called the distal edge), I came across this little gem... People are so weird.


(Modern Mechanix, 1932)

Day 22: Water Bottles

I'm pretty sure that I would qualify as at least a beginning tree hugger. Between the over-full recycling containers in my kitchen, my (amateurly-managed) compost bins, and the Planet Earth class I run at school, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised when people give me presents made specifically for those of us who see the world through jade-colored glasses. What does surprise me, though, is how many water bottles I receive.

Within the past three years, I've bought or received upwards of six water bottles, of which I consistently use two: one at home and one at work. The one at home stays mostly at my bedside table, but the one at school I carry around with me everywhere. Everyone knows the red water bottle with the green koozie. Three years into teaching, it is my mark, and it's an odd mark for a teacher to have.

What makes this so odd is that to be a teacher means to be in a perpetual state of dehydration. Bathroom breaks are reserved for the fleeting moments when you aren't solely responsible for the welfare of twenty plus children, namely before and after school and during lunch and planning. So, I have become incredibly adept at controlling when I do and don't need to relieve myself. Granted, I already had some practice from all the road trips we would take as kids (a result of my older brother's penchant for talking about rain and waterfalls when you really had to go, and my dad's refusal to stop for bathroom breaks), but doing it every day takes it to a whole nother level. They say that you shouldn't wait until you're thirsty to drink water, but when you can't just get up and go whenever you feel like it, water intake is something you limit. And what other choice do we have? Leave our students for five minutes and hope to God that they behave better without you than they do with you? Stay hydrated and try to distract yourself until lunch? It won't work; inevitably, the day you drink too much water is the day you're teaching the water cycle, or watching a video on tsunamis.

So as useful as these water bottles are, what good are they to me, someone who rations water when there's no shortage? I'll stick with the two I have and save my water binging for home.

Day 21: Rings

April Fool's! (An SAT analogy for you... diamond: real as I: engaged)

In addition to big heads, my family also has large hands. My mom also said they were great for playing piano, and I did play piano for a long time, but that doesn't help the fact that every time a friend and I compare hand sizes, my fingers could eat theirs for dinner. Perhaps one day I'll embrace my large mitts and be proud that I can grip a basketball with one hand (I can't, but it'll be a while before this happens, so I've got time to practice). For now, I think I'd rather wallow in hand envy.

Over the course of the past ten or so years, I've managed to rack up a total of six rings. That doesn't seem like a lot, but when it's six more than your indelicate hands ever actually wear, it is. So out goes the Mignon Faget bow ring I got in high school, the fake diamond ring my friend Danika gave me for no apparent reason, my high school class ring, a flashing jelly ring I caught a Mardi Gras, a cheap heart ring I didn't even know I had, and a beaded ring I think I got out west one year.

Day 20: Straightener

I have always had naturally straight hair.

So why I ever went out and bought a hair straightener is beyond me. Did I hallucinate waves in my hair? Did I mistake it for a curling iron? It's like me buying a hard top for my non-convertible or getting a product that would make my skin whiter. Have you seen my skin? It's already plenty white.

Here's to the redundancy of this straightener, and to finally getting rid of it.