Through the Looking Glass

Lyra has met her Jabberwocky, and its name is Psycho cat (or something -- it didn't stand still long enough for me to read its tags).

She's perched on our ledge by the stairs, flipping her tail with dangerous speed and making her crazy high pitched mewing sound, that I believe translates to, "Are you guys frickin seeing this???!!!!!!!!!!"

The Jabberwocky cat is an outside/inside cat (a bad idea, if you ask me and many vets) that belongs to an apartment near ours and spends a lot of its time sunbathing on the white sedan parked outside our window. This drives my poor kitty nuts. The Jabberwocky cat is black and white -- just like my baby -- so I wonder if she feels as though she's having some crazy Trainspotting kind of hallucination. Poor kitty. Sadly for her, I am not going to let her outside to investigate.

First day of school was golden. The half-hour lunch was superb -- at my old school it was technically 20 minutes, but with students milling about during the incorporated passing time it ended up being about 15 minutes of alone time for lunch. Not enough when you teach at a middle school. 30 minutes is a great improvement.

The kids were awesome, and let me tell you -- if anyone here needs a burst of energy, just go walk around in an 8th grade classroom for awhile. If you are at all an extrovert, you will be so powered up. I believe introverts might find themselves intoverting back into their intestines just to escape the crazy (but wonderful!) children and their hormones all around you. They say it takes a special person to teach middle school...but I don't know about that. Sometimes I think it must take an insane person, but that doesn't seem very upholding of my career choice...oh well! They are great! And if you ever want to feel like you are seriously changing lives day by day, teach middle school. They will yell and kick and scream with every lesson, but (seriously now) you can see it in their eyes that they know its important. And when some kid tells you on the first day that you're their favorite teacher so far (what a dangerous thing for me to hear...that could go right to my huge head) because you smiled at them (that's all it took...wowsers) you will know it's all good. I love my job.

Anyway, I'll switch the channel from Lifetime here to tell you a little bit more about my new Vegas lifestyle. Buckwalter and I have been going strong with our slow-but-steady exercise plans, and I've found a new outlet for mine -- cardio pilates. Seriously crazy stuff. Now, I have never been as fit as I'd like to be, but I'm probably at least as fit as the "average" American if not a little more (that's my optimistic side talking). But I love this stuff because I have always hated the monotony of cardio workouts. I've tried lots of stuff that other people love, and it's just so boring to me. Plus you get sweaty and hot and thirsty and it sucks. The first step in helping my cardio health was our little mini-iPod, Greeny. She's helped me to keep from being too bored at the gym and helps me think more about "Act(in') a Fool" and doing my "1,2 step" than about the icky icky sweat spots growing in my armpits. Gross. But now, I have my new friend, Ana, who leads me through an awesome Pilates mat workout with lots of stretching but not too much overkill on the different poses, and then takes me on a fun, jazzercisey cardio time at the end! It was awesome! I was sweating and I didn't mind! And believe me, that's a big step.

So that's it. My day in a nutshell. Or at least, my day in a post. Ha ha. Wish me luck tomorrow...the first day "charm" will have worn off...