Well Done, Good and Faithful Car*

*I hope God doesn't mind my borrowing His phrasing for a blog post about my car.

Ginger - my car - and I have been together for a lot of years now. We first became a couple in June of 2001, which seems much longer ago than a mere eight years. She was a cute young thing, a silver Plymouth Neon, brand new, less than 10 miles on her when the keys were in my hand. A frisky go-getter, we had a good time together in those first few weeks, jetting around from place to place.

After only six weeks, I failed Ginger completely. Due to my terrible driving Flustered by an unexpected construction detour in the middle of nowhere (and a totally unfamiliar middle-of-nowhere at that), I lost control of the vehicle, spun out, slammed into an embankment, and almost flipped over. Ginger looked okay, but she had severe internal injuries: The undercarriage had essentially crumpled and twisted in on itself, and she was declared TOA - totaled on arrival. I was despondent and furious with myself for letting her down.

She was young, however, and healed quickly with the help of skilled mechanics. Soon enough, we were out and about again, quite an exciting pair. On tour with my a cappella group, Ginger was renamed the Evilmobile, which had much more to do with the passengers (and driver) inside than with her. Some idiot in Vegas gave us a little crash running through a light without looking, but Ginger mostly healed from that too, though she would forever make a slight popping noise when the passenger door was opened. Small children - my charges as a nanny - would make their marks through the years all over the backseat - with chocolate milk, with strawberry jam, and, on one particularly memorable occasion, with ballpoint pen.

Lovely, right?

Ginger has also housed a variety of reptiles and amphibians in her lifetime. Most notoriously, Ginger was the final home of our dear departed Iggy, and he died cradled lovingly in her arms cupholder. Ramon enjoyed his shady spot for many years, only recently departing for a brief vacation in Tahiti my purse. Melvin, of course, met a gruesome end, displayed for all on the dashboard as a warning of Ramon's latent maniacal tendencies. And we do not mention Jimmy the Squid, a golden-yellow lizard who made a home underneath the driver's seat for a few years; his mysterious disappearance may have had mafia ties - we cannot say for certain.

Yes, Ginger and I have had a wonderful run. But recently, in the last year or so, I have felt us drifting apart. Oh sure, there had been earlier signs - the sunroof coming off its track, the driver's side window motor dying, the brakes making that infuriatingly annoying screeching that the mechanics assured me was not actually indicative of a safety issue. But those were easy enough to fix (though not always cheap), and fairly spaced out in terms of time.

More recently, however, it's been one thing after another:
- The water seal has failed in numerous places, so when it rains, water drips in.
- The rubber seal around the driver's side window got sucked down into the car door and doesn't seal anything anymore. This causes a loud rubbing sound anytime that window goes down or up.
- The steering wheel started leaking sticky black gunk. (That's why that blue paper is wrapped around the steering wheel in the picture above.)
- The volume knob on the stereo stopped functioning correctly.
- The electrical system started failing MID-DRIVING because of a bad battery connection.
- And when that one was fixed, the engine refused to turn off even when the keys were taken completely out of the car.

Yeah, keeping Ginger was becoming expensive, and I was beginning to hear the siren song of a new love:

PRIUS.

Meet my new baby:

I have no idea why this picture had to be taken at this angle...

Sorry for the poor quality - all photos taken with my iPhone.

Had you heard I got an iPhone? I got an iPhone. It's awesome. I also got a Prius. It's also awesome.

Isn't she GORGEOUS? I love her with all of my heart (well, all of my heart that's healthy to devote to a car, which will never love me back). I adore driving her, and I adore the way she smells, and I adore bragging about her and showing her off to all my friends.

But she needs a name! And that's where you come in. What should her name be? If I choose the name you submit, you win an awesome prize: the honor of having named my car. So help me out, O creative readers!

Go! Comment! Name!

Two Sides of the Same Coin, Really

Yesterday was a teacher in-service day at school, which is when the students have the day off and the teachers get to come to school in casual clothes and learn... something. We were supposed to have a sexual harassment prevention seminar in the morning (and we were reminded frequently that it was NOT a "sexual harassment training," as we all kept calling it at first, but rather a "sexual harassment PREVENTION training"), but it was canceled because our legal counsel had some sort of legal emergency. So instead, we moved on to the learning simulation originally scheduled for the afternoon.

The point of the learning simulation was for the teachers to experience what students with learning differences (we sometimes call them "LD students," or "learning different") experience in a normal school day. Ideally, we were told, we would feel frustrated, anxious, tense, and/or stressed out by the activities we were going to be asked to do. And let me tell you something: You put a bunch of teachers in a room and tell them you're going to make them feel frustrated, anxious, tense, and/or stressed, and you will get one of two responses.

Response #1: Aw, man! This is going to suck.
Response #2: Bring it on - that's every single day of my life.

You can imagine which response I had.

Still, though, it was interesting. One activity was a spelling test administered via tape recorder, and it simulated different kinds of hearing loss. I got 9 out of 30, and the 9 I got right were only 9 out of 10 words with the "hearing aid" assistance turned on. Another activity involved trying to write and/or draw by looking in a mirror - the actual paper and our writing hands were covered by a box so we could only see the reflection. There were also two different reading activities - one was an alpha-symbolic code that didn't quite remain consistent from one page to another, and the other was written mirror-image and significantly faded.

They were all illuminating in various ways, and we discovered the different ways that we, as grown adults with a wealth of experience in the world, compensate for the challenges before us. Many of us did end up compensating the way that LD kids often do - we became class clowns, we cheated (yes, Christian teachers and we totally cheated), we became angry with the facilitators, or we decided we were just "too stupid" to succeed and gave up.

After the session, I was talking with one of the history teachers about the activities and how we each dealt with them. One in particular was framed as a "job interview," and we had to take orders over the phone for a department store. Like the spelling test, this was on a tape recorder, but the point was to test attention and focus. The man giving us our instructions and saying the orders was surrounded by other noises - other people taking and giving orders, as if we were standing in the middle of a floor of cubicles, and everyone was on the phone at the same time talking to customers. We had to focus our hearing on the one man's voice only, ignoring and filtering out all the other extraneous noises.

The history teacher I was talking to about this is a former military man. He talked about how it reminded him of combat situations he'd been in. "I just remembered," he said, "how I had to listen to one guy giving me my orders, but all around there are other orders, info coming in over the radio, engineers reporting to officers, bombs, rifles, all this stuff and you gotta listen to the ONE GUY." He had gone back in his mind to a situation he felt was similar, so that he could focus on the important information.

"Interesting," I said. "It just reminded me of when I used to teach preschool." Because believe me, when you have 13 kids, ages 2-5, all talking at once, you are listening to all of them to figure out which one has the important information.

"My mommy baked cookies and I got to sprinkle them..."
"Doggies are better than fish because they can wear a leash..."
"One time I saw a picture of a rainbow but it didn't have the color blue in it..."
"I think I have to go poo-poo..."

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner - off to the bathroom we go.

Combat situations, preschool, po-tay-to, po-tah-to...

Rediscovering Lara

Last night I went dancing. I don't go dancing much anymore, but it used to be a huge part of my life. My close friends were all dancers, and I used to have rehearsals, performances, or social dance events to attend 6-7 times a week. Now, though, my life is pretty much work and... work. There is little to no time for dancing.

But I went dancing last night. I was afraid it wouldn't be fun - or, more accurately, I was worried that it would be awkward and uncomfortable. For one thing, the event was a reunion of a dance group of which I was never actually a member. Lest you think I was totally crashing the party, I was, in fact, invited to the event. It's just that I was invited by mistake (as were a few others), because I have been a part of so many dance groups with so many of those dancers that they tend to assume I was a part of this one - the one having the reunion - also. But if anyone was angry that I was there, they hid it well, because I never had anyone walk up and call me a poser and tell me to get out of their event.

I remembered, last night, that dancing is FUN. That dancing makes me SMILE and LAUGH. That after dancing to the point of heaving breath and aching muscles I feel GOOD.

What was even better, though, was that last night, I remembered who "Lara" is. I spend almost all day, every day, being "Miss David," and I'm rarely ever "Lara" anymore. "Miss David" is a teacher, and she's a good teacher, and she's a hard teacher, and she kicks your butt and makes you learn but only because she loves you. But I'm more than that, though I never get to see it anymore. I'm also "Lara," and "Lara" is a dancer.

I won't lie, though - being "Lara" isn't all fun and games. "Lara" has problems that "Miss David" doesn't. Problems with relationships, old and new, problems with loneliness, with depression, with broken hearts that never seem to heal no matter how much time goes by. But still, in spite of that, it's good to remember that "Lara" is still there, even if "Miss David" is out more often these days.

Who are your multiple personalities? Are you sometimes "Jane," sometimes "John's wife," sometimes "Jimmy's mom"? What helps you remember the YOU inside?

What I'm Thinking in My Head When I Take These Photos

"I look pregnant. If I post this on the blog they're going to ask if I'm pregnant."
(Note: I swear I'm not pregnant. Just fat.)

"I'm sure this picture will turn out great - not blurry at all - and wonderfully show off how well my green shoes match the green in my necklace. Yep, not blurry AT ALL."

"I'll point at my mom, sitting behind me, so the blog world can see her visiting me! Because, you know, I'm not standing in front of her completely blocking her from view or anything."

"My mom is one of the most wicked good looking chicks I know, especially for her age. I'm not too shabby myself."

"Crap, my hair looks so much better when it's curled a little bit like this. Now I'm going to have to either curl my hair on a regular basis or accept that I *know* I could look better but have decided that I'm too lazy to make the effort. Crap crap crap."

"People are going to think I'm in mourning. Eh, whatever, maybe I am."

"If I can just keep sucking in my tummy like this all day, I'll look great..."

"Oh, hey, I look pregnant again..."
(Note: Still not pregnant. Still just fat.)

This is a very weird outfit. I wonder if it will still look weird when I put it on the blog.
(Note: Yes.)

So that's what I'm thinking in my head when I take these photos. What are you thinking in your head when you look at them?

Be Back Soon

I'm sure you've all had this happen:

You start to notice that a blogger has recently stopped updating - or at least started updating significantly less frequently - and you wonder why. And often, when he/she does finally update, it's to say, "Hi, I've been out enjoying life instead of blogging about it. Because, you know, that's kind of how it's supposed to be." And you agree, of course, because life IS supposed to be about the living, not the blogging.

I'm not going to say that, though I am going to say something similar. I have not, sadly, been out living life. I have been working. Pretty much non-stop. To the point of exhaustion.

I know what you're thinking. "Isn't this, like, exactly the opposite of a post about being out enjoying life instead of blogging about it?" Yes and no. It's true that this isn't the kind of "I've been out enjoying life" post where the "enjoying life" is really obvious. It's a stealthy, secretive life-enjoyment that hides in the guise of mountains of essays to grade. Still, I do love my job.

But recently, part of my working so much has been in the anticipation of enjoying life this weekend, because my mommy is coming to visit. And while work is important, spending time with the ones you love is more important.

A lovely dance friend passed away a few days ago, and the loss has definitely shaken me. I want to appreciate life and my loved ones more, the way she did. So for now, I'm working my bum off instead of blogging, so that this weekend I can hang out with my awesome mom instead of blogging.

You understand.

Go Ahead, Make My Day

Hang on, before we do anything else, I need to admit something shameful. Just now, as I was going through the photos of my work clothes from this week, I realized that on Tuesday and Friday - of the SAME WEEK - I wore uncomfortably similar outfits:

Tuesday:


Friday:


What the heck was I thinking? What is wrong with me? I can feel my reputation as School Fashionista slipping through my fingers.

Of course, the real question is whether anyone else noticed...

Outfits for the rest of the week:



(That skirt was made in Malawi - hooray!)

------------------------------------

Have you seen It Made My Day, a new site from the same folks who run I Can Has Cheezburger and FAIL Blog? Basically, it's a collection of short anecdotes people send in, each one followed by "IMMD" ("it made my day"). Yes, I know, I already sort of copped out on a blog post by ripping off 1000 Awesome Things, but in spite of that, I am going to do it again. So here are a few things that recently made my day:

A girl from my French class last year came to tell me she got an A on her first French test. She came to tell me specifically to say I "did a really good job last year" teaching her. IMMD.

We had a car wash yesterday after school to help buy school supplies for kids in Malawi. We charged "donations," meaning however much the people wanted to pay. One student - a student - gave $40. IMMD.

I wore my hair in pigtails down to the farmer's market this morning. There was a little girl wearing pigtails too. I smiled at her. She giggled and smiled back. IMMD.

My mom is coming to town next weekend, and I asked if she could come watch my classes on Friday. The administration said she could. IMMD.

(Last one, this requires some background info. This year at school, I have really become more vocal about our trash problem. Our kids just leave garbage all over the school campus, and it bothers me to much that I've started trying to raise more awareness of it. A lot of our students are genuinely good kids, and I think for many of them, they don't help fix the problem because they literally just don't pay enough attention to notice. So I took some pictures:


So this has been a big issue for me lately. Then...)

I was leaving school yesterday afternoon and saw a group of kids I didn't know eating snacks at a table. I said, "You're going to clean up all that trash when you're done, right? So that the table doesn't look like the rest of this disgusting stuff?" (I pointed at the trash all over the ground.) "Yeah, we will," they said. I added, "You know, if you feel like it, when you throw your stuff away, maybe you could pick up a couple other pieces of trash and throw them away too. You don't have to, but it might be nice." "Okay," they said. I wished them a good weekend and walked out to my car. When I drove past them on my way out of the parking lot, they were racing each other to see who could pick up and throw away the most trash. IMMD.

What (or who) has made your day lately?

TMI Doesn't Even Come Close to Describing This Post

So... I bet you're all wondering about that whole "scalpel to my lady bits" thing, huh? Well, I'm going to tell you all about this horrible terrifying experience I recently went through, even though it seems kind of embarrassing and involves repeated use of the word "vagina." But here's the thing - most of the reason I was so terrified by the experience is because I'd never heard of anything even related to what was happening to me, even though my doctor claimed this kind of thing is "actually pretty common." So it's common, but no one ever talks about it? Well that's dumb, because all that means is that every time it happens to some woman, she's going to be terrified because she has no idea what's happening to her, in spite of the fact that it's "actually pretty common." So I am going to shed some light on this subject, in the hopes that I can help even one woman somewhere out there feel a little more peace about her gynecological health.

In short, this post has nothing to do with me wanting to talk about my vagina, and everything to do with me wanting to help other women with their vaginas. I am so selfless.

So last week, I was noticing that every once in a while, I would sit in some certain position (not always the same position - different positions at different times) and feel some discomfort down below. Not pain per se, but definite discomfort. I would shift slightly, and it would go away. I figured maybe my pants were riding up or something - no big deal. But after about three days of this, on Friday night, it finally occurred to me to check if anything looked or felt unusual in the area. And here is my first piece of advice to you women out there: If you feel unusual discomfort in your vaginal area, check it out ASAP, rather than waiting. If there's nothing wrong, great, and if there is something wrong, finding it sooner is better. Also, finding it when you can get an appointment is a good thing; finding it on a Friday night when you won't be able to see anyone until Monday is REALLY UPSETTING.

So yeah, I grab a mirror to check things out - if this grosses you out, 1) you need to grow up and start understanding that looking at your genital area when your HEALTH is in question is not dirty or gross, and 2) you should probably stop reading this post right now, because you are only going to get more grossed out. Okay, now that only the mature adults capable of handling health-related discussions are left, let me continue. I grabbed a mirror and inspected the area, and in less than 10 seconds I could see the problem: a large swollen mass on one side of the vagina. I poked gently with a finger and could tell that it was a lump about the size of a super bouncy ball, just hanging out under the skin. It was tender to the touch and a little red. I had never seen anything like this before in my life.

Needless to say, I was FREAKING THE HECK OUT.

Keep in mind that it is 10:30pm on a Friday night. I am smart enough to realize this is not the kind of thing that requires a trip to the emergency room, but I'm certainly not going to just sit around and ignore this huge lump that is NOT supposed to be anywhere near my vagina. So, like all intelligent people when faced with a health concern, I turn to Dr. Google. Now if this were something common (and it turns out it is) that people talk about (it turns out they don't), then I probably would have found some quick info on what it was, alleviated my concerns, and decided to make an appointment on Monday. But Googling "vaginal lump" produces all sorts of info about genital warts, herpes, and - the most fun of all - various cancers. Nothing eases the mind like having your worst fears confirmed by Google: I might have cancer in my hoo-ha.

Awesome.

I was sobbing by this time, because seriously? WHAT IS HAPPENING DOWN THERE? AM I GOING TO DIE? I AM NOT READY TO DIE! And who the heck do I talk to about this? I was unwilling to call my mom, who was, I could be sure, already asleep, and who would, I was definitely sure, only become terrified with me but still have nothing useful to say. I couldn't think of a single person to whom I would feel totally comfortable saying, "I have a lump on my vagina and I'm freaked out that I might be dying of cancer." I told myself Tpiglette probably would not mind the TMI-nature of it (and when I eventually did tell her, I turned out to be right), but I was still embarrassed. And if I couldn't even talk to my best friend, there was no one else I was going to be able to talk to about it. Except for medical professionals.

So I called Kaiser to talk to an advice nurse. She was extremely unhelpful. She told me nothing about what it might or might not be, and she told me to call back the next morning - anytime after 6am - to try to get a same-day appointment to see a doctor. I set my alarm for 5:55am to wake up and call for an appointment, because I wanted information ASAP. I called in and got a much more helpful nurse the second time. She informed me that the OB/GYN department wasn't open at all on weekends, so I wouldn't be able to get an appointment until Monday - thanks, Friday night advice nurse, for getting my hopes up about a weekend appointment. Saturday morning nurse also gave me the first real clue about what it might be: a Bartholin's gland cyst.

"The Bartholin's gland is a tiny organ on each of the labia (vaginal lips), near the opening of the vagina. ... They make a small amount of fluid that lubricates the vaginal lips. If a flap of skin grows over the opening of one of the glands, the fluid backs up. It causes a round swelling called a cyst. The cyst can grow from the size of a penny to larger than an orange, although most don't get bigger than a golf ball. Cysts can be tender."

Finally! Real information! This did, indeed, sound exactly like what I was experiencing. It also did not sound deadly. Praise God! Except, of course, I was still terrified, because it still might be something much scarier.

I called in at 6am Monday to get an appointment, and got in to see a doctor at 2:30 that afternoon. Tpiglette came with me to keep me sane. I was called in pretty much on time, and taken through the basic tests - blood pressure, weight, temperature, etc. Then I was taken into an exam room and told to get naked from the waist down and the doctor would be with me shortly. Then I sat half-naked in a cold impersonal exam room for 27 minutes. Waiting for the doctor always sucks, but there are probably relatively few times in your life that it sucks more than when you are half-naked (which is a little uncomfortable in the best of circumstances) and afraid you might have a terminal illness. It was a looooong 27 minutes.

Finally, the doctor came in to do the exam, and pretty much as soon as she began she confirmed that it was a Bartholin cyst. Since it was large enough to be causing me problems, she recommended draining it. This procedure actually wasn't too terrible - so far as medical procedures can go - but it was still unpleasant. I had to have a shot of local anesthetic to numb the area (yowza), then she took a scalpel and made an incision (which I thankfully did not feel) to drain it. Fortunately, my cyst was not infected, so it drained clean. Then she wanted to insert a small catheter to keep the incision open and let it continue draining - without that, the chances would be higher that it would come back again. But try as she might (and she tried many times, and that anesthetic was not as powerful as I would have liked it to be), she couldn't get the catheter in and/or to stay in. Eventually she said she couldn't torture me anymore, and we would just have to hope it didn't come back. (So far so good.)

I was in quite a lot of pain on and off through the rest of the day after the anesthetic wore off. Imagine how a really painful cut feels when it's still fresh - like a big paper cut. Now imagine it on THE MOST SENSITIVE PART OF YOUR BODY. Yeah. By a couple days out, though, I was feeling pretty normal again, and thankful to have been assured I didn't have any kind of cancer. All's well that ends well, right?

Except... it really bothered me that I had never, in my ENTIRE LIFE, heard anything about this "actually pretty common" thing. Tpiglette had also never heard of it. My boss, B., and coworker, A. - whom I also told - had also never heard of it. So far, the only person I've talked to about it who had heard of it is a physician's assistant at a women's clinic, so yeah, I expect that she would have heard of it. But no one else.

Doesn't that seem wrong?

Our health is important, and that includes our vaginal health. If we avoid talking about it because it means having to use words like "vaginal," then that's dumb and we need to get over it. If I had found a lump in my breast, I don't think I would have been nearly as freaked out, because I know that women find lumps in their breasts and I know that it is often a benign cyst of some sort, though it can be cancer. But a vaginal lump? I'd never heard of it until it happened to me.

So now I've told you about it, and if it ever happens to you or anyone you know, you will be a little more information-prepared than I was. I hope it's helpful.