What NOT To Do
Filed under: Back in the Classroom, Mental Strain for Mama
Last week, I realized that my "clicker," also known as a wireless presenter, was missing its USB plug-in-thingy. Yes, technology and I are close friends. Can you tell? Then, I promptly forgot about it. . . until yesterday afternoon.
Today is the day in class where I stand up and show the students I know what I'm talking about. I perform a eulogy speech for them. It serves several purposes. First, it tells the students a little bit about me. Second, it shows them that I can deliver a decent speech so therefore, if they just pay attention and do what I tell them, they will also (at some point) be able to produce a decent speech themselves. Finally, it serves as a fantastic example of how to have a power point presentation that supplements your overall presentation without taking over your presentation.
In theory, that's what it's supposed to do. Every other semester that I have done this (all five), it has worked perfectly.
Today? Not so much.
I told Mr. BBM that my wireless presenter thingy was gone and he told me he had a solution for me. Rather than going out to buy a new one, he dug out this wireless computer mouse thing and told me it would be just like my presenter (except not really like it at all, even slightly. No).
I arrived a little early for class, brought my slide show up on the computer screen and tried it out. It worked! Sweet success! Yes!
I took my place in the center of the room, near the podium, and began my speech. I held out my hand to click to the next slide and nothing. I moved closer to the computer. Nothing. I moved right on top of the computer and finally it clicked. . . through the next three slides. This was going to be a problem.
I will spare you (and therefore myself, again) the embarrassment and nightmarish awfulness that occurred over the next few minutes. I would get it to work, click through four slides and be unable to click back. I'd have to hit "esc" and go back to the main screen again. Then, sometimes, the little message would appear on the screen, right smack in the middle of the slide that would have a little menu like "next slide, previous slide, etc." Except here's the thing, when you clicked on that, it didn't work. And then I did what I always tell my students NOT to do. . . I apologized.
I finally gave up on the wireless mouse working and just clicked the regular old computer mouse to get from slide to slide. If there was ever an example of working through it when everything technological is going wrong, I was it.
When I finished, they clapped and I shook my head in disbelief. "That was what NOT to do," I told them. "Don't ever apologize, even when you're flustered. Don't ever assume your husband knows what he's talking about when it comes to wireless mouse things either."
They laughed and I laughed at myself. What else could I do?
I normally like to give them an example of what TO do, not the opposite. Today, I hope they learned just as much by me having a major screw-up of a day. One thing that is for sure? My favorite office supply store will be selling another wireless pointer this week. This was one lesson I don't care to repeat.
My Very Own Horror Story, “Blood” and All
I've been taking care of Finny the cat this week while my parents are away on a trip. Tuesday was one of the days I had to go over there, and after the horrible weather we had in the morning, it had to wait until after Big I's orthodontist appointment in the afternoon.
While we were still contained within the walls of the orthodonist's office, she seemed fine. After sucking it up for over an hour while they put the braces on her teeth, she was even smiling a bit. But when we got in the car and started driving to my parents' house, the drama began.
"I want to kill myself," she said. "I look awful. I look like a teenager."
I told her how ridiculous it was to say something like that, and used it as a lesson to talk about the implications of committing suicide. When I was finished with my diatribe, I think she realized how silly it was that she said that. I thought the drama was over.
We arrived and I sighed. No kind neighbor had come over to snowblow their driveway. A good two-three inches of snow and ice were piled up on their steep and long driveway and on all of their sidewalks. Big I and I made our way down through the snow, not wanting to slip on the ice and I asked her if she could take care of Finny while I started shoveling.
As we were making our way to the front door, Big I pointed to a red spot on the snow. "Look Mommy. It looks like blood."
I looked at it from a distance and thought the same. I glanced down at my knuckle thinking maybe the cut I had opened back up again. It hadn't. I shrugged it off, went in the house and showed her what to do, before going back outside.
Back outside, the weather was brutal. Freezing rain was coming down slowly but surely and I nearly broke the plastic shovel because the snow and ice were so heavy. I found a metal one and started the long process of shoveling the windy sidewalks and the plunging driveway.
Then I started noticing something.
There were little red stains on the snow everywhere. They were in front of the house, across the sidewalk, across the driveway and even down near the stream. My imagination started going wild. I imagined some criminal, injured in some way and bleeding, hiding out in the woods surrounding the house. I realized that it was super quiet and that perhaps this criminal had taken shelter and snuck inside the garage while I had my back turned. My stomach tied itself into a knot as my rational side told me to calm down and my martial arts side told me that if my gut felt something was wrong, then I should trust it and figure out what to do.
And then I heard the screaming.
It stopped me in my tracks, but I couldn't quite figure out where it was coming from. It had definitely been there and loud and then it was gone. It didn't take long for it to start up again. I started to move towards it as quickly as the ice underneath me would allow as I made my way to the house. I took a mental inventory of what I could use to defend myself and fight off an attacker. I had my keys and I had a metal shovel.
I made it to the only locked door at the house and looked in the window. There were finger marks and what looked like fresh steam marks from breath on the window pane. And there was Big I. . .
She was face down, sprawled across the sofa, her feet still on the ground. It looked like someone had taken her and turned her at a 45 degree angle and thrown her across the sofa. She was screaming. I fumbled with my keys (it's a deadbolted door) and scanned the rest of the room. Where was the attacker? Who was doing this to her? I screamed her name and she sat bolt upright.
She ran to the door screaming and crying, "I couldn't get out. The door is locked" and then burst into drama-laden tears again.
Still convinced there was more to this story and scanning the house, I mean, there had to be right??? I screamed at her, "Are you ok?" I expected her to tell me the attacker was coming back. He was in another room. . .
"I just hate these braces," she yelled back at me, as she covered her face and assumed her 45 degree angle position again across the sofa, careful to leave her feet on the floor, lest my mother find out she was putting her feet on the new sofa.
Then it dawned on me that the front door and the garage door were both unlocked. She could have gone out either one of those doors, yet she chose to stand at this door and scream the scream of someone being ripped limb by limb, completely apart. I turned around for a minute to compose myself because I was seriously ready to kill her myself and that's when I noticed another red stain in the snow. . . this time with a half-eaten, bright red berry beside it.
I breathed a sigh of relief before turning around and telling her what I thought had been happening while she screamed ridiculously from inside the house. I then pointed out the two very unlocked doors, which had been only steps away from her.
"Oh," she said.
Oh.
Perhaps the orthodontists of days gone by were onto something when they chose to put braces on older children. Perhaps, certain 9-year-olds aren't exactly prepared for the brace-face that will greet them in the mirror. Maybe they haven't learned proper coping tools this young in life.
Maybe this 9-year-old just saves the best possible, ridiculous, scary, nightmarish drama for her mama.
Make sure you visit The BBM Review and enter for your chance to win a $100 Visa card on the Jimmy Dean review!
First Responders
A couple days ago, Mr. BBM was talking to me in the kitchen when he said, "Your butt is small." I turned around and glared at him. "So, what? You're telling me my butt was big before?"
"No!" he yelled out, "I'm saying your butt is tight."
"Wait," I said, "so now you're calling me a tight-a$$!?!"
"No!" he said laughing. And then he made some comment about trying to give me a compliment. I've been working out and I've been extremely committed to it. I'm also a woman and am therefore skilled at turning would-be-compliments into insults.
I've been noticing some changes in my body too since I started working out with my trainer again (and started "Dance Dance Revolutionizing" at home with the Wii). It doesn't take long when you have someone seriously kicking your butt on a weekly basis. These initial changes always seem to be my "first responders." While it's awesome to see things changing and know that you're progressing, it can be frustrating when other areas lag behind.
Here's what happens with me. It doesn't take many workouts for my butt to respond. But what frustrates me is that the very upper part of my legs don't right away. In fact, I can't think of a time when I've ever really been satisfied with that little ring of stuff around my upper thighs. Back when I was in high school, I had toothpicks for legs. I liked my upper legs then. So the other day I told my trainer I wanted to concentrate on knocking those suckers down a notch. He looked surprised. Apparently he has a lot of girls come to him who want to bulk up their butt and upper legs. I am not one of them. I want nothing to do with "bulk."
The other first responders for me are my arms and shoulders. I swear that after just one workout, I start seeing changes. This is what happens when your arms are toothpicks. The other day, Mr. BBM grabbed my arm and said, "Woah, you've got muscles." Damn straight I do. The other day, during a brutal upper body workout, my trainer gave me that devious look he has when he's contemplating really killing me.
He walked me over to one of those power tower things and showed me what he wanted me to do. A former football player with plenty of bulk and years of muscle strength, he easily lifted himself up, tucked his legs underneath himself and started doing perfectly formed dips. He jumped down and I raised an eyebrow at him.
"For real? You think I can do that?"
"I'm gonna help you," he said.
So, I stepped up there and raised myself up, which was an accomplishment right there. As I tucked my legs up, I felt him grab my feet and lower legs. "Alright girl! Do it."
And I did. I'll be honest, as I approached 10, I was putting a whole lot more weight on him than I should have been. It was HARD. When I finished that set, we both laughed. My arms were shaking and I was sweating something fierce. We went onto my other two sets and came back to the dips. Instead of putting me back up there, my trainer said, "let's do them on the bench. We were both just surviving over there." I laughed. It had to be a funny sight. Me just trying to hold myself up and him eventually taking on more and more of my weight.
I started doing dips on the bench a couple weeks ago and tried with my legs straight out. It wasn't possible. So, I pulled them in closer and did them like that. After my ridiculously hard set yesterday, I pushed my legs out straighter and made it through two additional sets of dips.
I've identified a new goal: dips on the power tower by myself.
The good news is that my arms, shoulders and butt are responding well to all these workouts. The even better news is that I told my trainer that my upper legs and abs are frustrating me a bit and he's going to help me concentrate on those areas. Despite the fact that I'm noticing little lines of muscles on my abdomen, there's still extra stuff there that needs to go. And it's gonna go, because I have never been more motivated to succeed.
So far, my New Year's "goals" are working out just fine. How are yours going?
When you're finished here, stop over at The BBM Review for a chance to win $100 on the Jimmy Dean review.
Starting Off 2011 the Right Way
Like clockwork, New Year's Eve is usually a bad night for us. We don't usually have any plans and so I imagine this great night at home, ringing in the New Year with my husband. I create this whole fantastic night in my head that looks like a soap opera. We toast with champagne; my hair is teased high and I'm wearing some ridiculous dress and too much eyeliner. My husband looks dapper and whenever he makes eye contact with me, it's that sly "come hither" look that makes girls swoon. You know, kind of similar to how Vanilla Ice used to address the ladies. Like that. . .
Or not.
Instead, we usually listen to depressing music, courtesy of the IPod "Genius" which I swear is intent on making people need Prozac. We start off with Taio Cruz and the next thing you know, Mazzy Star is playing and you want to either fall immediately asleep or cry until you have nothing left but toilet paper to wipe your eyes with. Then, we get in a stupid argument and one of us storms off to bed to watch the ball drop solo. It's been the status quo for a couple years now, so much so that we actually joke about it.
This year started off differently.
First, we had many invitations to be elsewhere, which is kind of ironic because we ended up staying at home. We had four friends over (one set of friends was a blind date hook-up) and we spent the night eating, having some drinks and playing games. I knew I invited the right people when all of them were willing to get up and play "Dance Dance Revolution" for the Wii. "We" all had a blast and the girls even had a good time too. They raided their dress-up boxes and decorated our guests with feather boas and fun. It was definitely a good way to start off the New Year.
Another reason the year started off right is because I started my "resolutions" a couple weeks ago. Waiting until the New Year sets me up for failure. I put too much pressure on myself and I end up falling off the resolution wagon quickly. Plus, I don't like the word "resolution." This year, I'm making personal goals and "suggestions." Less pressure means less of that falling off the wagon business. So here they are:
1. A couple weeks ago, I started working out with my trainer. He has been motivating me and inspiring me to take my fitness more seriously. He's helped me with some great tools too. I've started using protein shakes instead of eating a bag of potato chips when the mid-afternoon hungries set in. They are giving me a lot more energy and they make me feel better about myself with each one I drink. I also bought a workout journal and that is also going to help me with goal setting and accomplishing. My trainer knows how to kick my butt; but he is also really good at inspiring me to keep it going.
Goal #1: Maintain a fitness routine, get toned, look hot, and own it. Oh yeah.
2. I made a decision a couple months ago that my volunteer responsibilities were no longer going to trump my family. I put that one into action and it has made a world of difference in my life. Sometimes taking a step back and away is the best way to go. I'm still doing what I need to do, but I'm no longer living and breathing my volunteer responsibilities. I've found that I care much less now about what people say about me and it's given an opportunity for other people to put up or shut up. I'm especially enjoying that part of it.
Goal #2: Keep everything in balance and remember that family comes first!
3. I started a new business in November and it's been going really well. I'm selling Miche bags and I'm having a lot of fun with it. I made a decision to invest a little more in my business and am going to become an inventory representative which basically means I'll be like a mini distributor. I have been busy coming up with marketing ideas and strategies and it's fun watching them actually work! I am concentrating on growing my business and am hoping to bank the cash I make so that we can finish our basement and go on some trips. (And yes, I'll ship anywhere!)
Goal #3: Build my business to help my family financially (i.e. Jamaica-here we come!)
These three goals are specific and manageable and I'm sure this is going to be a fantastic year for me. What are your goals and "personal suggestions" for the new year? What are you doing to make them happen?
For additional ideas on ways to make your new year productive, visit my "Better for You" review on The BBM Review.
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