Lost

This is how the morning began.

I woke but couldn't imagine why until the third alarm. I shut if off but lay in bed for warmth. One cat jumped on me. I pushed her away but heard the other cat puke downstairs. I remembered then that I had to shower. Time to get up. I was so tired.

In the shower I thought about the midterms, how Democrats lost Senate seats and our repugnant held his House seat. There won't be any real check on the monster in the Oval Office. We lost. Again. What is wrong with this country? I wondered.

I went downstairs, crossed the dark living room to get my bag, and stepped in cat puke. Hopping on one foot into the kitchen for paper towel I found the roll empty and by then had slicked the inside of my pajama leg. I sighed, found paper towel, cleaned myself and the floor thinking I should call in sick (I've got a cold), and go back to bed, but I needed to write morning pages. Out loud, I asked, where have I put my pen.

Understand that I write with only two fountain pens, one from 2008, the other from 2011. Aside from my wedding band, they are my most prized possessions. I always have them. But the 2011 pen filled with blue ink wasn't in my bag or my fleece, wasn't on the table or desk, and wasn't anywhere I could find it. I was already a few minutes behind because of the shower and the cat puke. I didn't have time to search but went outside barefoot in cat-puke pajamas and a white undershirt to search my car. It wasn't there. Back inside and running late, I grabbed my other pen and wrote a version of this. The next paragraph read: **

Maybe the pen is in some dark crevice of my car. Maybe it's in the house somewhere I don't expect. But there's the chance it's in the parking lot near the Carrier Dome or on the shoulder of Route 81 South. I just don't know. The combination of not knowing and feeling as though I am a fool for losing it is eating me up.

I was tired from staying up late watching bad results from the election. Having been sidetracked by bathing, cat puke, and a lost pen, I was running late for a job I didn't want to go to anyway but at which I'm stuck for the time being. In this state, a lost pen, one I've held onto for seven years is enough to ruin my whole damn morning.

It was a chance to practice letting go and accepting. I need more practice at those things, let me tell you. I finished my pages and went back to the kitchen for breakfast and to make the coffee, morning pretty much shot and hope fairly run out.

But wait, there's more to this story coming soon.

Work At Home

I almost logged into the school online grading system from my living room just now. Grades are due tomorrow afternoon and I was going to get a few of them done here at home because the internet connection here is seventy times faster than at school. (Yeah, I measured it. We are basically on dial-up at school.) I almost logged in, thinking it made sense. It was this close, but don't worry, I'm okay.

Teaching is my job. I like it. I liked it a lot more a while ago. I have had jobs teaching at Le Moyne and Onondaga Community College that I have absolutely loved. Those were more than jobs; they were work. I do a job for a boss so I can pay the bills, but I do work because it's all I want to do. I drive home from my job and then it's time for work which includes:

• helping to raise two daughters
• making a good home
• being in touch with friends and family
• writing, writing, and writing

I can't let my job interfere with any of that.

As a kid I watched Mom and Dad work together around the house. They cleaned, remodeled, raked the leaves, cut the lawn, painted, and did everything together to make a good home. I visited Dad working in his office, balancing checkbooks, writing bills, taking care of his business. Both of them taught me to get the work done. Do your work, then you can go play. Now I do my job so that I can dig into my work, the stuff I most want to do.

I almost messed that up. It was close. For a moment I forgot that the job is at school and home is for work, but I've got it now. It feels good to me, sitting here listening to music, working on a piece of writing, thinking of Mom and Dad hard at work on raising me.

Who's A Good Boy?

I'm in staff development today at school. The morning was about celebrating good things about school then placing kids in tiers of need (academic and behavioral). As such things go, it wasn't useless. This afternoon we attend training for active shootings.

It's sad that in the supposedly greatest nation we must prepare for school shootings because we can't get our heads out of our fat asses about guns. Maybe the red baseball hats act like barbs. Whatever. This is schooling in the United States.

Rather than fight this — I've foolishly fought the battle too many times — today I'm trying to breathe and keep to myself. This goes against my nature.

Leo Babauta wrote this week about training the mind as if it were a puppy. I'm not yet housebroken so it seems a reasonable approach. Begin small, focus on doing well, reward good behavior, don't punish, and keep at it. Today I've earned a coffee.

The real reward is getting a new job, but that's a big project. It's like training a guide dog compared with teaching a puppy to sit. Today I'm just learning to sit. It may lead to me guiding myself to some new adventure. I just need to keep asking this question: Who's a good boy? God, I hope it's me.

Possessing Harriet at Syracuse Stage

Went last night to Syracuse Stage to see the world premiere of Possessing Harriet. It's just good to attend the theater, to see actors working in person, and to be largely uninterrupted for almost two hours. My youngest daughter and I attended the show and it was good, had us talking afterward, and will have us still thinking about it today.

The show is described in this way:

In 1839, Harriet Powell, a young, mixed-race, enslaved woman slips away from a hotel in Syracuse, New York, and escapes from the Southerner who owns her. With the aid of a mysterious free black man named Thomas Leonard, Harriet finds temporary safe harbor in an attic room at the home of impassioned abolitionist Gerrit Smith. With the slave catchers in pursuit, Harriet spends the hours before her nighttime departure on the dangerous journey to Canada in the company of Smith’s young cousin Elizabeth Cady, an outspoken advocate for women’s equality. Confronted with new and difficult ideas about race, identity, and equality, and with confusion, fear, and desperation multiplying, Harriet is forced to the precipice of radical self-re-imagination and a reckoning with the heartrending cost of freedom.

It was a good show, but I hope it will change and grow as it is produced elsewhere. There was more speech making than I would have liked and I kept being reminded that I was watching a play. The medium made itself too apparent when I wished to be enmeshed in the story.

That said, I recommend the show as a reflection not just on our past but as a reminder of the discrimination based on race, gender, creed, and more that is as prevalent today. As was the case with abolitionism, these things are not discussed enough in our parlors because they are deemed impolite and impolitic. The show, without reaching, is commentary on our current situation and the disaster of our current leadership.

Possessing Harriet reminded me that believing something is wrong and doing something to make it right are very different things. It had me feeling some shame for not doing more.