La Corrida: One Long, Luscious Laugh

"You got to get yourself together man you're stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it." U2

Have you ever had one of those moments?  One that sends you down a spiral staircase for days and you enter in and out of bliss with the remembrance but pain of knowing that it will never come again.
It was April 2012, my second year, at the infamous snail party in Lleida, Spain.  The second afternoon, there we were, Jordi, Maria, Albert, Marta, Eli and Jose and their two littles and my partner, Andres, walking through the carnival.  Salty, buttery octopus stunk up the air and a rainbow of balloons floated at eye level making me feel as if I was in a scene from the Little Mermaid.  We were slightly buzzed post lunch, a vermouth to start, followed by wine, and a digestive of Orujas and with beers in hand, we felt like we owned the place, like a group of 1970s twenty-somethings staking their territory.
After a 10 minute walk through the carnival, we put down our beer cans and decided firmly upon our ride of choice.  The bull ring, which consisted of 5 bulls or so that shaked, rattled and rolled and then a floor that also shaked back and forth.    And so, us four couples sat down, one per bull, we climbed aboard, straddling and giggling, the girls holding onto the bull horns in the front.  The boys arms wrapped around our waists.  And then came the music and the movement, and buckets of laughter.

As the bulls bucked up and down and left and right, one by one we went flying off laughing so hard my stomach shook and my face hurt from smiling.   As we stood up, the ground shaking like an earthquake, we tried to jump back on the bulls.  Bam! They would buck us off again even before we had saddled up.  When I got off the ride, my legs felt like jelly and I couldn't stop smiling and with sweet surprised splendour.  I felt like I had been injected with a shot of seratonin and each time I think of that moment, my eyes shine, cheeks warm and I get a little grin and have a sweet, long, luscious laugh. 

#TWTblog #SOL18 #Sliceoflife 

In the last minute: Who's winning?

The hour before he goes to bed is quite labyrinthine.  He, being my 8 month child, has the volatility of a middle aged bipolar adult, fluctuating between angel, devil, cooing, wailing, adorable and evil and you never know what road the evening will take you down. 

The hour begins with Pablo, aka a 10 kg weight, glued to my right hip, usually not happy about being put down. I'm sure he is thinking something along the lines of I have 2-3 hours with you, Mom.  Just let me be close to you.  And when I consider that and write it down, I feel pretty guilty about calling it freedom. 

It's just that for all of the day I am mainly someone else's.  My job, my trainer, my son, my husband's.  It's the minutes in the car listening to podcasts and giggling to myself and questioning something whimsical or the time after he sleeps when I send my husband to cook and get to indulge in some words, that I feel like I am me, doing something for myself, being what I envision myself to be irrespective of all those other things that now define me to the outside world.

Pablo and I mosey into the kitchen.  I usually ask him "What's for dinner?"  His gorgeous ash colored eyes pop out and his tummy grumbles and I try to cess out the situation through deductive reasoning on what the nanny fed him for lunch.  You might be thinking, shouldn't you know that?  But I am trying to relinquish control where I can and Pablo's lunch seems like a reasonable place to do that these days. 

Tonight's special is a 1 egg omelette with some aged Parmesan.  I wonder if my diet was as fancy back in the 80s.  I am going to guess no but you never know.   He gobbles it down like a hungry sailor and then happily indulges in some pineapple and bits of peaches that I have regurgitated after gnawing the skin off. 

I scoop him out of his chair and am happy to say that tonight's meal was quite a tidy one.  There is not food in my hair, nor really on him, and the surrounding premise is still fairly spotless.   Mom is up 1 point.

We head for the hills or up three flights of stairs towards the bath.  Every time I turn on the water, his eyes sparkle and I am not sure why as I am still determining whether or not he loves the bath or simply stands it.  We hop in together and he's moaning a word that sounds like "Bu" I say the word book about 15 times to try and get him to elaborate but I am not scoring any points here.   He does keep talking so I am calling this one even. 

Outside of the tub, we do the evening struggle of pajama time.  This is a new and not so wondrous point in his life also known as "Let's try to not get dressed." Mom loses only 1 point tonight because it's less painful than usual.

Finally, we retreat to the bed where Pablo latches on sweetly and is out in about 20 minutes.  I lower him to his ground crib and he rolls over settling into his sleeping position.   Mom is up 2 points for this success.

Today Mom is victorious but tomorrow's another day.

#TWTblog #SOL18 #Sliceoflife

Why I Run

Why I Run

I run to release

the stress

locking my 

jaw 

when days go bad.

I run to 

REVIVE

and get energy

so I can go 

home and lift up

my babe.

.

I run to get lost

in cities, 

mountains,

countryside,

beaches,

riverbanks

and 

rice paddy fields.

I run to interpret

my own 

and others 

feelings

about hard days at work.

I run to give

myself a physical

challenge, 

motivation to 

improve upon

times. 

I run for the 

togetherness.

What doesn't

kill us makes

us stronger.  

Each time we pass

one another, I feel 

my heart lift up 

and my shoes get

a little lighter. 

#TWTblog #SliceofLife #Runhard #MWM

This morning: Saturday, March 3

Part 1:
This morning was
Crusted eyelids
Rolling over to check the
5 am
Deciphering hungry cries or
grumpy grunts and
Finally
Succumbing
A baby in one hand
Another pulling out the breast
A latch and a sigh
My head resting on the wall
Back squishing into pillows and
Pablo sucking away
Satisfied.

Part 2:
Breakfast at the cafe
Please don't bring those
plastic things
They are only toys to him.
Banana pancakes mmm
Mess distress
A smile makes it all
fall away.
Your antsyness perserveres
and we feel the need to
move. 
Luckily we don't need much
coercion with a 4 year old
cheering us onto
the park.
To the swings! Hooray!

Part 3:
Your wiggly body
is easy to manipulate
into the curves of the
seat swing.
We jiggle those arms so that you
can grip for dear life.
Smiles fluctuate
as you drift slowly
back and
forth,
back and forth,
sucking the air and
the world around you
in.

#slifeofLife #TWTblog #kualalumpur #babylove #morningswithPablo

Cotton Candy Skies

Cotton Candy Skies

The skies this morning were soft piglet pink
 and shades of lavender
swirled with dashes of baby blue. 
These colors
and the sticky, saturated Malaysian heat
sent my imagination
through a portal to
Coney Island boardwalks.
Smells of buttery, salty popcorn
drifted through the air, while
cheerful smiles, caramel cornered
light up the stalls
of vendors.
Bright eyes
illuminate the night sky
on roller coaster rides
going up and down
up and down
spiralling wildly
as if to pump up
the laughter.
And so I smile
to myself and slowly
return back to my
day, wondering
where the weather
will carry my
mind.

#sliceofLife #isklproud #Malaysia #weatherwords #teachwrite #twt

The Blinding Ride Home

The rain sputtered slowly down on my windshield and although the sky had morphed into a milk, hazy grey color, I had no fear of the rain.  I live in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  The rain is just another part of our days particularly in the afternoon. It's not a matter of if but more of a matter of when and how much. 

The sputtered drops came out like a slow puffy muffler giving no sign of the fierce wall cloud that appeared within minutes, creeping in from every angle of the earth and making me feel so small.  I sat my eyes moving left, right, up, down.  My mind envisioning my car lifting up like Dorothy's house in The Wizard of Oz and floating us to a faraway land.  But the silver Myvi sped on knowing that was all we could do to get home, knowing that was the only way we would not become a victim floating in the mini pools forming on the DUKE highway and counting on my eyes to help bring us back to our homeland.

#kualalumpur #sliceoflifechallenge #marchmadness #teachwrite 

Recipes for Success: Recruiting 2017

I have been MIA for the last 6 weeks.  It was all due to the monster some of you may otherwise know as recruiting.  Recruiting is a beast that I find hard to tame even after being in the professional world for nearly 20 years.  Recruiting is a beast that will consume you, toss you around, make you doubt yourself and at the same time make you better at your game than you've been in awhile.  It can suffocate, empower and move you to creative wisdom or put you on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

To be honest, it all could have been worse.  I had one of the most pleasant recruiting sessions I have had in my existence and why, a few good reasons.  #1,  I didn't obsess.  I mean I did.. Don't get me wrong.  I updated my website.  I started blogging, tweeting, more.  I checked TIEonline twice a day for new job postings and I sent some pretty crazy last minute emails when considering if I needed to buy a fight to Dubai the next day.   Okay, maybe I did obsess, a little.  #2 I obsessed a little but I zoomed in on what I wanted.  This was a big shift in years past.  I am lucky that the nature of my job over the last 2.5 years has morphed from literacy coach to ES learning specialist and my toolkit has expanded.  Having said that, my work in the last two years has made me even more aware of the fact that I would prefer not to be in the ES classroom while it remains in the traditional current model.  ES classroom teachers are incredible super humans but they are undervalued, highly underpaid, overstressed and the demand of being competent in 4+ subject areas, a wizard of instructional strategies, a master of differentiation and a counselor/ psychologist to the ever shifting needs of 21st century learners; is highly unreasonable.  Therefore, my job search was basically down to two options: instructional coach or MS Humanities teacher.  I saw pros/ cons of going back into the classroom or staying out and building on what I have the last 2.5 years but in narrowing my choice down to those two positions, I breathed a little easier.  #3 Consider those who count. I have a family to think about.  Andres, my dear partner, moved for me this last time.  He wanted to move again but after experiencing the wonderful world of international teaching and not always so rosy, as a trailing spouse, we both had clearer criteria of what we wanted next, and with super Pablo in tow, we knew having help was crucial to our well-being as professionals, and as passionate lovers invested in one another. 

Those of you around the world who both work without help and a young child, or two, or four, I repeatedly pray for you daily and salute you from afar.  #4 I identified my strong network of friends going through the same process and we coached one another.  Whether it was talking through potential interview questions while pumping for our babies or discussing positives and negatives of job offers; having two women who I admire as educators and aspire to be like as mothers and global citizens was definitely a success factor.   Finally, #5, I tried as much as I can for having control issues and wanting to clear mental space to not care too much.  Staying in Kuala Lumpur was an option: a good job, an easy city, solid friends across neighborhoods and a wonderful nanny, we had very little to complain about.  I tried to say a mantra of "It's going to be fine and work out" everyday and I reflected at the beginning on all that I wanted to be and at the end of the day on all that I was thankful for.

So there you have it, my Recipes for Success as you go into recruiting season 2017-18.
1) Don't obsess. Okay, you can a little, but give yourself a break.  You are probably much better than you are giving yourself credit for.
2) Zoom in on what you want.  I know this is hard, but you need to think, job, country and consider the characteristics that affect your happiness that will theoretically always surround you. It could be your cat OR your desire to drink wine easily, be outside and run (in which case, do not go to Dubai).
3) Be aware of your needs and the people who matter's needs.
4) Surround yourself with love and people who are going through the same experience.  Coach one another.
5) Try not to care too much.

And for those of you who don't know where Andres, Pablito and I are going next... you owe me an email. XoXo