I Exist

It’s kind of wierd to be back here again.  I’ve been avoiding this for a really long time now, partly because I felt I didn’t have anything to say, and partly because I didn’t want to say the things I could.  Because I’m floundering here.  And I didn’t want to admit how low I’ve been or how far I’d fallen.  I still don’t. 

I’m in a job that pays next to nothing, sucks the life out of me, and keeps me continually ill but doesn’t offer health insurance.  I come home exhausted and brain dead, stuffy nosed and shivering (because both work and I are too cheap to put the heat up past 60 degrees, and also because I’m almost always fighting off a fever).  There are a lot of days where I just break down and feel like I can’t take it anymore. 

And still I find it a hard place to leave.  I know that I won’t be there any longer than this school year (I hope by then I’ll have a nice library job), but as much as I want to leave I know that it’s going to be really hard too.  These kids constantly hug me and say “I love you” and fight over who gets to sit next to me.  They brag over who’s my best friend, and one boy told me that he’s my little buddy and will be forever.  How can you just up and leave that?  I know they mean everything and they’ll be sad when they don’t see me anymore.  But I also know that they’ll be over it in no time, and in the grand scheme of their lives I’m just a blip on the radar.  I do wonder though if they’ll remember me, if they’ll appreciate me when they’re older.  Some have said, “Miss Cyndi, I’ll never forget you.”  But will they really?  I know that some won’t remember me at all, and some will remember a few specific times.  They’re young, and I’m only one person after all.  But I am hoping that maybe I can plant some seeds in their heads that will inspire them later on.

One day a week I have a science class with the kids, and for the past few weeks we’ve been learning about our solar system, starting off with space in general and the sun, and then doing two planets each week.  Right now we’ve finished up to Saturn.  I’ve been doing pretty difficult stuff with them, and I’m amazed that they’re actually retaining it.  They’re 4 years old and they can actually list the first six planets in order from the sun, and tell you at least one feature of each.  Last week a boy was looking through some red glass and said, “Hey, it looks like Mars!”, since we’d learned that Mars was red.  One girl brought me a picture of a volcano in a book and said, “See, it’s like on Venus!”  And ever since I used watering the plants as an example of gravity (as in, gravity pulls the water down as you pour, not sideways or up), someone says, “let’s test gravity!” whenever I get out the watering can.  (I also taught them that scientists like to test their ideas over and over again to be extra sure they’re right).  Three kids have told me they want to be scientists when they grow up, and my “little buddy” wants to be an astronaut.  Every day at least one kid asks, “are we doing science today?”  It gets annoying sometimes, since they know that science is only on Tuesdays, but it’s nice too because it shows that they like it and want to do it.

I won’t get to be their buddy forever.  But if I can get them to think that learning is fun and that school is a positive place to be, then maybe I’ll have accomplished something really great with my time there.  I think I’ve been doing a good job so far.  Last year my “little buddy” was something of a behavior problem, but this year his parents gave me a Christmas card that read, “Thanks so much for all that you do.  T talks about you a lot.  He really enjoys school.  Thanks for making it a positive experience for him.  We really appreciate all you do.  Happy Holidays, the Z’s.”

In fact, I got a lot of nice Christmas cards (my favorite is one of those new recordable cards and when I open it my student says “Miss Cyndi?  Merry Christmas!  Happy New Year!  Byyyyeeeee!” and then it plays a song) and presents from the kids and their families.  16 in all, I believe.  (I counted because I have to get thank you cards for them all).  And these are nice presents.  I have over $130 just in gift cards.  And that’s only 6 gifts.  I have so much chocolate and cookies and goodies that my plan of not eating Christmas sweeties this year is officially out the window.  But it’s not just the nice gifts, it’s reading the cards and knowing that what I do and suffer for is appreciated, sometimes very very much.  And it’s the thought that somewhere down the road one of these kids is going to be sitting in a classroom and think, ‘gravity, ha,  I learned that in nursery school’, or that one day I’ll see my “little buddy” on tv take mankinds first steps on Mars.  It’s the thought that, whether they remember me or not, whether they realize it or not, I’m making an impression.  I’m impacting their lives in a positive way. 

That’s the thought that’s going to keep me going in the coming months when money’s tight and the bills are pilling up that I just can’t pay.  That’s what I’ll try to latch onto when I’m in the doctor’s office for the umpteenth time.  And that’s what I’ll remember when I finally pull out of that parking lot for the last time.

This Just Says It All

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=184086

Open Up My Eager Eyes

I just spent the last few days in Indianapolis.  And it was amazing.

I went to a conference for the business that I just started.  I left with my roommate S (who’s also in the biz and the one who got me started) on Friday morning at 5 am in our rental car.  We drove in shifts for 10 hours across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and then into Indiana.  When we got to our swanky Marriott hotel, we found our room, which we were going to share with two other girls from our business team that I hadn’t met yet.  One of the girls, D, had already arrived and was chilling out in the room when we came in and dumped our stuff off.  We sat down for a hot second before we were swooped up by the rest of our team that had all ready arrived.  All together there were 13 of us, and since the conference didn’t start until Saturday, we all went out to explore the city.  Downtown Indianapolis was really nice (and clean!) and the people were really nice too.  It seemed like a kind of small city that wasn’t too crowded, which to me was kind of the best of both worlds – city, but not tons of people all up ons!

Then we found a downtown mall, which was really cool and fun.  We all ate dinner together at Champp’s and then went to GameStop, where we played tons of arcade games and had lots of fun.  Even though I hadn’t met some of the group before, everyone was really great, and I felt so at home with them all.  After our fun, we headed back to the hotel and hung around in the lobby for a few hours, talking to each other and making friends with the other hotel guests.  The hotel was also hosting SegwayFest, so there were tons of people zipping around on segways.  We made friends with a German man who designs custom products for segways and is part of a segway polo team, and he let us take turns riding around on his segway in the lobby!  It was really cool.  When I finally couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, we wrapped up and went to bed.

Saturday we spent the majority of the day in the hotel’s massive conference room for the Syenrgy ‘08 LTD Conference, where people from the business talked and shared their experiences with the over 2500 people who came from all over the country.  It was really interesting to hear from the people who were already successfull, telling us how we could build our businesses to their level in about 5 years (for the record, “their level” is a half a million dollars a year and up, so I took careful notes).  And besides having a bit of a sore bottom at the end of the night, the day was really informative and inspiring.  That night the girls in the group came to our room, ordered pizza, and had a little impromptu dance party, which was super fun, even at 3 in the morning.

On Sunday, there was the option of going to church, but D and I passed and instead decided to explore the city a little bit more.  We took a self-guided tour of the State Capitol Building, which was around the block from our hotel.  It was a really nice building from the outside, so we wandered around for a while trying to find the visitors entrance, which led us into the basement of the building.  From the look of the basement though, we didn’t hold out much hope for the rest of the place.  But boy, were we wrong.

And since there was literally no one in the building after the security checkpoint, we decided to have a little fun.

It was pretty awesome.  Then we went back to the GameStop arcade, since D still had tons of points left on her arcade card.  We played some Dance Dance Revolution, which I surprisingly kicked ass at, and some Alpine Race snowboarding action before it was time to head back to the conference.  We spent the afternoon listening to more speakers, and me taking furious notes.  This part of the conference was so amazingly informative and mind blowing that I was just so incredibly pumped up to be there and be a part of it all.  It was actually life changing.  When it was over, our group went out one last time to the mall food court, where we had some grub, talked a little more, then wandered off to our respective cars to head home.  S and I took turns driving back again overnight, which was considerably more difficult than driving in the morning.  Trying to stay awake-wise, that is.  We got back this morning at 5:30, when I slept till noon.

All weekend I was extremely exhausted, and had an extremely amazing time.  Indianapolis is a lovely city, and I really liked being there.  And I’m incredibly excited to be starting in my new business, and I know that I’m going to be working with a fabulous group of people and I’m going to have so much fun!

People Will Always …

This weekend, while visiting at my parents house, I needed to find my college diploma so that I could bring a copy to work (they have all of these crazy requests of things that need to be on file, I’m surprised they haven’t asked me for a kidney or my first born child).  I looked in my old room in the top drawer of the white chest where all of my important documents were, but the drawer was empty.  In fact, the entire dresser was empty.  Perturbed, I asked my mom where my things were, when my sister said that she had emptied out the dresser and put everything into a box on the floor to clean it up.  Since moving it out of a dresser and into a box on the floor makes everything so much cleaner.  Well, I was somewhat pissed off, for a few reasons.  One, that all of my carefully filed things were now in a box on the floor, and second, that my sister had rummaged through everything.  Her saying that she put the “important looking things” in one box and the “crap” in another box didn’t help matters, since what the hell does she know about what is important and what’s crap to me?  So I told her that she had no right to go into my room and sort through all of my things, especially since there were my diplomas and health records and things like that in there.  What if everything got lost since it’s thrown into a box?  Or, hello, maybe I just don’t want other people poking through my things??  All of this was lost on her, and she made the argument that since I moved out that she can do whatever she wants with my room, since everything I left behind I obviously didn’t want.  (P.S. – she’s 28 and still lives at home with our parents.  Just saying.)  She didn’t seem to grasp the fact that since I didn’t move into a permanent new house, I’d left behind the things that were the most important so that I wouldn’t lose them in a house full of roommates.  Then she literally told me to go fuck myself because she didn’t give a shit and she was going to keep doing whatever the hell she wanted.  To shorten an already long story, my sister has always been a two-faced bitch who will be all sweet to anyone she wants to impress, and take a shit on everyone else.  And I’m the kind of person who always gives her another chance, and just when I feel that it’s going great and we’re getting along, she shits on me again.  Which proves a lesson that I should have learned long ago:  no matter what you do, people will always disappoint you.

Today at work, one particular little boy started his day out the usual way, by throwing a tantrum and hitting the other children.  A lot.  He’s just that kid that is always throwing things at/hitting/kicking anyone who happens to be near him.  He also doesn’t listen to a word you say and keeps doing whatever he wants, all the time.  Needless to say, I do not … enjoy this child.  I don’t dislike him, I’m always nice to him and help him whenever he lets me needs it, and I try to gently encourage him.  But I still don’t actively seek his company.  Getting him out of the pool is especially difficult, since he loves it so much.  You really need to force him out and push his shoes onto his feet while he screams.  So imagine my shock when today I said, “Ok guys, time to come out of the pool, let’s get our shoes and towels!”, and he went over to his sandals, put them on, got his towel, and stood patiently waiting for the other children to be done.  I didn’t have to ask him twice, I didn’t have to force him.  So I praised him and hugged him and told him that he was being such a good listener today.  Which proves a lesson that I should have learned long ago:  people will always surprise you.

Most people will never disappoing you all the time, or impress you all the time.  Most people will sometimes disappoint and sometimes surprise.  That’s what makes us human.  There’s always the capacity to do something good, even in the people you don’t expect it from.  And while I’m not ready to call my sister yet, I’m hopeful that someday I might.

Umm, Stuff

Hello all!  I know I haven’t been on here in, oh, forever, but rest assured I am alive!  I guess I’ve just been insanely busy that I’ve been too tired out to post anything.  But here’s the rundown on what I’ve been up to:

• The Ringer?  Turns out that he wasn’t that great after all.  Sorry to dissapoint, all!  We had one date, it was ok, but nothing romantical.
• I’m still working at my school’s summer camp, where I run around all day playing tag, pushing swings, and splashing in the pool with kids.  I’m extremely tired and the most tan I’ve ever been (which puts me at a nice normal color since I’m generally Nicole Kidman pasty).  One of the highlights includes this week when a 2 year old who speaks only Chinese said his first English words.  They were: “Miss Cyndi!”
• I’m chugging away at my grad school classes, which is tought since I’m almost a full time student as well as working full time.  Thus the exhaustion.
• Oh, and I started my own business!  Mwah hah hah.  It’s through the company Quixtar and I’m working with brand name companies to sell their products through our website, where it’s cheaper than retail!  So chiggity check out my online coolness myah and myah.

So that’s all the stuff I’m working on at the moment.  I hope all of you guys have been having super fun summers, and I swear I’ll be catching up on all of your blogs!

Ringer

Someone on eharmony is screwing with me.  There is this one guy who I’m “communicating” with (as in picking questions from a preset list to send back and forth for the other to answer) who I feel like cannot possibly be real.  This man is in my head, dude.  He knows too much.  From his profile to his answers to my questions, everything he writes is, well, perfect.  It’s exactly what I would have written or what I’d hoped to read.  We’re the same on the important things, and different in the little things, which I think is probably ideal.  So either this man is my one true love, or one of you guys totally made up a fake account to mess with my mind.  I shall be optimistically suspicious until I find out if he’s real, a clever ploy, or a serial killer.

Yes, I Had This Conversation

4 year old boy: Um, Miss Cyndi …

Me: Yeah, Brian?

boy: Um, I went to the bathroom and I have poop in my pants.

Me: You went to the bathroom in your pants?

boy: Uh huh. 

Me: Ok, well can you go tell Miss Cassandra that you have poop in your pants?  I have to put back the bucket of dead octopuses.

boy: But I want you to help me.

Me: I can’t help you right now, Brian, I have to put the octopuses back under the tree for Miss Pam.

boy (quietly): But Miss Cassandra will be mad at me.

Me: She won’t be mad at you, just go tell her you pooped your pants.

boy: I want to come with you.

Me: No, you have to stay here, I -

boy: It’s a big poop.

Me: It’s a big poop?  Then go tell Miss Cassandra, she’ll give you new pants.

boy: … I’ll wait for you.

Me: Brian, just go tell Miss Cassandra that you have poop in your pants, I have to put the dead octupus bucket back.

Yes, my friends, summer camp is upon us.  Yesterday the older kids let the youngsters I work with sneak a peek at their science camp projects – dead octopi.  Some kids wouldn’t touch them at all.  Some kids rubbed an octopus all over themselves.  But either way, they all still poop their pants from time to time.

Perfici

This last week was hard.  Really tiring and debilitatingly draining hard.  But I achieved a lot and I learned a lot from it.

Last week held the last day of the school year for my kids.  It was hectic, stressfull, and sad to say goodbye to the kids I knew wouldn’t be coming back next year.  But it also made my day.  A bunch of students brought in presents for me and the other teachers as thank you gifts for the end of the year.  I recieved hand drawn pictures from the kids (my favorite was a hand made paper “card” that when you opened it said “From Olivia” on one side and “I love you” on the other with pictures of hearts.)  I also recieved a myriad of gift cards, tidbits, a potted begonia plant, a chocolate and oreo crumb covered apple, and some cards, one which had possibly the nicest thing ever written about me on it: “Miss Cyndi – You have a wonderful heart and spirit that shines in all that you do.  Thank you for your energy and joy – you brighten our days!”  Now, I would have still thought this was great coming from a family that I had seen all year and interacted a lot with.  But I’ve only been there a few months, and while I’ve worked with the daughter a lot, I’ve only seen her mom for about 45 seconds in the mornings of the last few weeks of school, when I helped kids get out of the cars and into school.  So for a woman that I just met and barely see to write that card to me was really amazing to me.  And I learned that while this school year has been freakishly difficult in so many ways, I am appreciated.  I make a difference.  I am loved.

Last week on Thursday evening I discovered that the final I thought was due much later was actually due on Friday night.  In true me fashion, I had not started yet.  So I wrote the three page introduction to my topic and found a few sources that I could use for the next day in a couple of hours on Thursday night.  All day Friday at work I freaked out about it, since the final was due that night and I didn’t want to be up late, especially on this night – I had a dragonboat regatta the next day and had to be up at 5am!  I managed to sneak out of work a half hour early to get home and work on my final.  In about three hours (I took some breaks here and there, so there was 3 hours of actuall work spread out over 5 hours) I had 16 pages worth of material, and finished in time to watch the all new Doctor Who at 9.  Then I looked over my project again and sent it in.  Of course, who knows the grade I got on it (I’ll let you know when I find out), but what I learned once again is that I am capable of doing some really great things when I put my mind to it.  Because I’m lucky that even my half assed attempts at academic pursuits generally turn out looking somewhat wonderful.  So what I learned from this adventure is that I should stop freaking out when faced with a seemingly impossible deadline.  Cause I can do it.  I just need to actually get started and, well, do it. 

Last week I participated in the second annual Independence Dragonboat Regatta on the Schuylkill river.  Despite getting up at 4:45am to eventually discover that I had plenty of time and could have slept the extra 15 minutes, and the fact that it was a million and a half degrees outside, it was a fun day.  I was with some friends, there was food, shade, folding chairs, and a deck of cards.  Oh yeah, and a dragonboat regatta.  Last year our team’s best time for the 500 meter distance was 2 minutes and 55 seconds, and we finished 27th out of 29 teams.  This year we finished our final race in 2:39 to scoop up a bronze medal in our division, and we placed 19th out of 49 teams.  We were awesome.  But back to what I learned.  The day was stifflingly hot, I’d had not so much sleep, and the almost three minutes of each race was exhausting.  We raced three times, and with each run the entire team threw more and more of themselves into the race.  When our final race came, the race that decided if we would finally get a medal or go home with nothing, we all came to the same conclusion – you can do anything for three minutes.  Forget the pain, forget the exhaustion, hunger, and fact that you really have to pee.  Just paddle the shit out of that boat for three minutes.  And viola, there was our medal!  After being shafted last year by a lame categorizing system, it was finally ours!  From this day I learned that sometimes the things you want are really, really hard to get.  And sometimes you give up a little sooner than you could because it’s hard, and it hurts, and is it really worth all this trouble?  But if you just tell that little nagging voice in your head that says “quit” to shut the hell up, you can do anything.  For three minutes.

So last week was a tough one.  But it was a good one too.  I learned.  I grew.  I achieved.

Yo ho, yo ho!

I swear that I have actual stuff to write.  But this seemed like more fun at the moment.  I pirated this from the lovely Heather’s blog over myah.  She had a cool game where you type the answers to the questions into Flickr search and then make a collage from the pictures that pop up.  For a more concise explanation, here are the rules:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.

b. Using only the first page, pick an image.

c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

I broke the rules by not making my thingie with that mosaic website, since I had already made this one up and was too lazy to redo it and make up an account with the website.  So this will have to do:

I think it’s pretty cool though the way it is, it’s very … me.

A Speck of Honest Pirating

I stole this from Robin’s blog cause it looked fun.

The Rules: You highlight the things you can do and you leave in normal type the things you can’t.

Here I go:

1. Give advice that matters in one sentence.
2. Tell if someone is lying.
3. Take a photo.
4. Score a baseball game.
5. Name a book that matters.
6. Know at least one musical group as well as is possible.
7. Cook meat somewhere other than the grill.
8. Not monopolize the conversation.
9. Write a letter.
10. Buy a suit.
11. Swim three different strokes.
12. Show respect without being a suck-up.
13. Throw a punch.
14. Chop down a tree.
15. Calculate square footage.
16. Tie a bow tie.
17. Make one drink, in large batches, very well.
18. Speak a foreign language.
19. Approach a man out of her league.
20. Sew a button.
21. Argue with a European without getting xenophobic or insulting soccer.
23. Be loyal.
24. Know her poison, without standing there, pondering like a dope.
25. Drive an eightpenny nail into a treated two-by-four without thinking about it.
26. Cast a fishing rod without shrieking or sighing or otherwise admitting defeat.
27. Play gin with an old guy.
28. Play go fish with a kid.
29. Understand quantum physics well enough that he can accept that a quarter might, at some point, pass straight through the table when dropped.
30. Feign interest.
31. Make a bed.
32. Describe a glass of wine in one sentence without using the terms nutty, fruity, oaky, finish, or kick.
33. Hit a jump shot in pool.
34. Dress a wound.
35. Jump-start a car. Change a flat tire. Change the oil.
36. Make three different bets at a craps table.
37. Shuffle a deck of cards.
38. Tell a joke.
39. Know when to split her cards in blackjack.
40. Speak to an eight-year-old so he will hear.
41. Speak to a waiter so he will hear.
42. Talk to a dog so it will hear.
43. Install: a disposal, an electronic thermostat, or a lighting fixture without asking for help.
44. Ask for help.
45. Break a man’s grip on her wrist.
46. Tell a woman’s dress size.
47. Recite one poem from memory.
48. Remove a stain.
49. Say no.
50. Fry an egg sunny-side up.
51. Build a campfire.
52. Step into a job no one wants to do.
53. Sometimes, kick some ass.
54. Break up a fight.
55. Point to the north at any time.
56. Create a play-list in which ten seemingly random songs provide a secret message to one person.
57. Explain what a light-year is.
58. Avoid boredom.
59. Write a thank-you note.
60. Be brand loyal to at least one product.
61. Cook bacon.
62. Hold a baby.
63. Deliver a eulogy.
64. Know that Christopher Columbus was a son of a bitch. Your understanding of your heroes must evolve.
65. Throw a baseball over-hand with some snap.
66. Throw a football with a tight spiral.
67. Shoot a 12-foot jump shot reliably.
68. Find his way out of the woods if lost.
69. Tie a knot.
70. Shake hands.
71. Iron a shirt.
72. Stock an emergency bag for the car.
73. Caress a man’s neck.
74. Know some birds.
75. Negotiate a better price.

If anyone else wants to get on this train, then be my guest!