Bookish (and not so Bookish) Thoughts

Fine. I confess. I’m totally going to listen to Jessica Simpson’s memoir. Does anyone remember her MTV reality show with Nick Lachey? Just me?

I’ve mentioned this podcast before, Bad on Paper, but I just have to mention that Alyssa Mastromonaco did her third episode with them, explaining some things about Caucasus and primaries, and it was so interesting. She’s the best and I just DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY SHE WON’T ACCEPT MY INSTAGRAM REQUEST AND BE MY BEST FRIEND. Someday I am going to do a huge post on her and then inevitably it will show up on someone’s Google alerts on her (her own, her agents, whomever) and she will be forced to accept my love. Or be afraid. Anyway, just listen.

I just want to officially put this out there: the other day a coworker delivered a box of Girl Scout cookies to me and the entire day that it say in clear sight on my desk I only ate two. I also bought a gallon of water to drink this week at my desk, alongside Diet Coke. Is this not proof of miracles?

I have officially begun my IB IOC testing, which means over the course of a little over a month I am out of the classroom 1-3 days a week to orally assess my students in twenty minute blocks. It’s absolutely grueling- I test 11 kids a day, 8 of which are back-to-back, which is just sooooooo long. Meanwhile, I have to do sub plans for each day, grade the work they do while I’m out, and still plan for the other days I am there. I can’t wait for it to be over.

This weekend is it! I drive down to Huntington Beach on Saturday afternoon to pick up my race bib and then am spending the night the night down there so I can get up bright and early and run the half! I know I won’t run a fast race; I am more focused on endurance. Last time I ran a half was like four years ago and I crashed and burned big time, since I hadn’t trained well. This time I have stuck to a plan, completing an 11 miler last Saturday. I have some friends from work doing it and my cousin, too, so I think it’ll just be a fun time! Plus I will get some time to myself, which is always nice.

Tomorrow I (tentatively) have a personal post going up about how frustrated I have been feeling with the “everything’s fine, it could be worse” mentality. January has been a tough month on me, for a variety of reasons: some things at home, gloomy weather, stressful ruminating, etc… I’m always hesitant to post things like this, but I’ve been really interested in the personal essay form lately, so it was a sort of dive into that, I suppose.

Speaking of feeling this way, I just discovered Headpsace is free for educators! Some places have said it’s for a year, some imply indefinitely, but I’ll take it! I’ve always meant to meditate, so this will help me start. I at least partially feel like it’s really just a placebo effect, but that’s fine too, right? As long as it works on some level. Realistically I don’t know if I could ever do longer than five minutes without crashing, but something is better than nothing.