Forgot to Post the GOOD News.....

After whining shamelessly a week and a half ago, lamenting the fact that I only lost eight tenths of a pound in a week, I can't believe I forgot to post the better results after last Thursday's weigh-in.

I lost 2 pounds in a week. Not as much as I would like, but better than eight tenths. And in realize in my BRAIN that 1-2 pounds per week is a healthy rate at which to lose weight. It's my HEART that wants to take off 5-6 every week.

One of my team members lost 1.2, and the other lost 3.

I weigh every day, but I'm definitely not a slave to the scale. I realize that weight fluctuations are bound to occur, and I don't get down in the dumps (much) if there are bumps in the road.

When I'm in a "competition" of sorts, though, I don't want to let my team members down. I arrived at the "Y" right behind one of my teammates last Thursday, and when we were in line to weigh, she handed me her WATCH to hold, for crying out loud. When I took off my heavy sweater (HEY, I had on a tank top underneath), my necklace came off with it. She offered to hold the necklace for me. I said, "No, I think I have to draw the line somewhere."

Back when I was a Weight Watchers leader (sigh), some of my members would look kind of sheepish when they removed their jewelry. I would always say to them, "Hey, a truck load of those rings would weigh SOMETHING, so by all means take them off if you want to."

When I was approaching my goal weight (I lost 50 pounds back then), naturally the weight didn't come off as quickly as it had at the beginning. And it was November, so the weather had changed. I was accustomed to going to my weekly weigh-in wearing bicycle shorts and a t-shirt. When it got cold, though, I had to wear more clothes. Imagine the look on the face of the (male) substitute leader when I approached the scale and started removing my jeans. I had on bicycle shorts underneath, but he had no way of knowing that. I wasn't about to wear those jeans on the scale.

I have no idea how those 50 pounds found their way back onto my body. And some of them brought their friends. But I'm working on it again.

I really didn't intend for this to become a "weight" post.

Gonna Hop a Freight Train.....

Well, not really.

But I've always wanted to. Back in a previous wifetime, there was a side rail near our house where freight trains frequently pulled over to allow another one to pass. There were always empty boxcars with the doors open on them, and I have always wanted to jump on one just to see where I ended up. Besides jail, of course. I'm not athletic enough to jump on a moving train, so I would have to sidle up next to one that's stopped on the track and hope I'm not spotted.

I had this great idea that I would take a laptop (now it would be my iPad) and a cell phone, some money, warm clothes, a pillow and blanket, and hope against all hope that the boxcar I chose would indeed be empty. I wouldn't want to share my space with just any old hobo. On the other hand, I'd be willing to bet that hypothetical hobo would provide lots of interesting material for my writing. That is, if he didn't cut my throat and/or steal my iPad and/or cell phone and/or money and/or pillow and blanket first.

I seriously considered adding hopping a freight train to my 50 Things to Do list, but I knew then I would be obligated to attempt to follow through. And I'm too close to retirement to risk being fired for "moral turpitude."

It would be just my luck that the boxcar I chose would be headed for the scrap heap. The train would stop, I would hear someone approaching, but I'd be too afraid to call out, and before I knew it, the doors would be locked and no one would ever find me.

Maybe this isn't such a good idea after all.

A Blog Post in Two Parts......

I'm going to write this post in two parts.

In the first part, which I'm writing at about 12:30 PM on Saturday afternoon, I'm going to write as if what I WISH would happen at the gymnastics meet today really DID happen.

After the meet I will post what really happened. I apologize to those of you who do not share my passion obsession with college gymnastics. We're halfway through the regular season already, so you only have to suffer through a few more months of this.

REAL RESULTS

They were better. We lost.

FANTASY RESULTS

Vault: Cat Hires led off with a powerful vault but took a step sideways on the landing. Kat  Ding returned to the vault lineup and nailed her Yurchenko full exactly the way she did at 2009 NCAAs. Mariel Box finally landed her powerful vault without taking that enormous step back, and Lindsey Cheek continued to amaze everyone with her near-perfection on vault. Our two seniors, Cassidy McComb and Hilary Mauro, each threw a Yurchenko 1 1/2 and stuck the landings. Oh wait, I just left out Noel Couch. Let's put her in in place of Cat Hires, because Noel has stuck a couple of landings in her own right.

Bars: Christa Tanella led off with her usual precision and even stepped it up a notch to keep her very vocal critics from labeling her routine as "sluggish." She threw a half-twist into her double tuck dismount (does she even HAVE that?) and drew a fist pump from head coach Jay Clark. Lindsey Cheek returned to the bars lineup after a couple of weeks competing in only three events, and she did not disappoint. Cassidy McComb did a beautiful routine and even managed to point her toes. (Okay, that's a real fantasy, since her feet are as flat as they come, and I don't think people should blame that on her, but they do.) Noel Couch earned her season high score as she not only looked less herky-jerky, she stuck the landing. Gina Nuccio returned to the bars lineup and wowed the crowds - and the judges - with her beautiful routine. Because she was so near perfect, Kat Ding followed with the season's first perfect 10.0 from any gymnast in the country.

Beam: Christa led off on beam as well, executing her routine flawlessly, including that UGLY side somi. It's hard to make that skill look pretty. Or even decent. Noel followed with one tiny bobble that she covered up with a dance move. Lindsey got her highest score of the season because she took out that butt wiggle after her full turn that looks like a wobble. Cassidy and Hilary both nailed their punch fronts and their dismounts. It's getting harder and harder to make this crap up. Some random gymnast came in for the 6th spot and did a fabulous job as well.

Floor: Noel got things started with her usual herky-jerky self, but her piked full-in brought cheers from the crowd. Lindsey fired up the student section with her B-52's-inspired routine and fixed that twisting thing she does on one of her passes. Mariel continued to stick every landing and matched her high score of the season.  Cassidy was perfect in everything, including her beautiful triple turn. Hilary finally nailed that double front she starts off with, and Gina returned to the floor lineup and amazed everyone with her amazing double Arabian.

Final result: Georgia wins by a tenth. I'm not going to jinx us even further by predicting the score.

Tune in later for the REAL story.

Trying to Generate Some Mojo......

A good blogger would have produced pictures for this blog, but THIS blogger is tired.

Tomorrow our gymnastics team has a meet against the #1 team in the nation. I remember when WE were the #1 team in the nation. We, however, were never unbeatable, as this particular team appears to be. They came out of the gate putting up scores that usually don't show up until mid-season. There were a few little squeaks about the possibility of their peaking too soon, but I don't think they HAVE a peak. They just keep going up.

And it's Florida.

Florida, of all teams.

The college we most like to hate in all things sports-related.

And you can't take anything at all away from their team. They are just stacked with talent from top to bottom ... wait, they don't HAVE a bottom. They're just stacked with talent. Period.

Last year we lost at THEIR place, but only by a tenth. That's a stuck landing. A wobble on beam. A shuffle of the feet.

This year we have been decimated by injuries and graduation. We have had an AWESOME freshman step up, and if she's on she will score huge. We also have a walk-on who has made her way into the lineup on two events, but she's been injured too.

I did everything in my power to generate as much Friday mojo as I could. I wore my Uga VI shirt (even though he is now THREE mascots ago, may they rest in peace) to school today. I wore my new leather UGA logo tennis shoes. Socks. Bracelet. Earrings. My special Gym Dog necklace that Frogger Blogger had made for me.

I'm now unashamedly begging for help from the public. If you don't have anything else to do tomorrow at 4:00 PM EST, send some warm thoughts toward Stegeman Coliseum in Athens, Georgia. My hope is that our team will shine with some good scores, even if they don't win in the end. If your warm thoughts cause a Florida gymnast (or two or three) to fall off the beam or slip from the uneven parallel bars (without injury, OF COURSE), well that's all part of the game.

This would be a good time to break the 197 mark. For US, not them. They've already done it (twice).

If you don't give a rip about college gymnastics, send some warm thoughts that I don't suffer a stroke in the middle of the competition. It would dampen the enjoyment of the meet for Katydid and Frogger Blogger. They might have to shove my inert body out of the way for a better view of the floor exercise.

I'm Not Sure this is the Same Kid......

When we interview students for our program, it's hard to predict which ones I will gravitate toward when they actually become our students. Because of A) my cynical nature (gasp! you say) and B) the number of times I've been burned, I try not to get my hopes up too high about any of them. You're a loser until you prove me wrong. Well it's not quite THAT bad, but they know to put on a pretty face and say the right things in their interviews, and then their true colors shine bright once they enter our program. Therefore I try to reserve judgment until I've had a chance to see them in real action. Or inaction, as the case may (all too frequently) be.

I've always been drawn to the trouble kids. And the troubled kids. I'm not bragging when I say that in a lot of cases I was able to relate to them when other teachers couldn't. It's not a skill, it's not a talent. It's just something I have that I don't know HOW I have. Perhaps it's empathy for those students whose misbehavior reminds me of that of both my brothers.

When I first started teaching in an inner city school, I had some rough classes, because the newest members of the faculty always get the most difficult students AND WHY IN GOD'S NAME WON'T SOMEONE CHANGE THAT? I remember one particularly hardened group in my 3rd period class, all boys, all bored, all marginalized in some way. There weren't many in the class, because those tended to drop out fairly quickly, so at least I wasn't as outnumbered as I could have been. I tried to follow the curriculum and, because I was a new teacher, I wasn't nearly creative enough. We muddled through illustrated versions of Romeo & Juliet and other classics, and I truly thought I was doing what they hired me to do. I'm not sure I reached many of them, though.

There was a young man in that class who went by the name of "Red." I wish I could remember his real name. He wasn't redheaded, and he was trouble with a capital "T." But I liked him. And I was probably more than a little afraid of him. These kids were most likely to respond to you if you were REAL with them, and maybe that's why I got along with them. One day Red was flashing a wad of cash during class, and I scolded him. "What are you doing with that kind of money at SCHOOL?" I asked him. "It's not safe to carry that kind of cash around."

"I'm going to buy me a new pair of tennis shoes after school," Red replied.

"Well, don't bring that much money to school again. It's dangerous."

Sure enough, the next day Red sported a new pair of whatever the hot tennis shoes were at that time. AND he had a wad of cash. I jokingly (and stupidly and naively) asked, "Red, where do you GET that kind of money? Whatever you're doing, I think I want to try it too, so I can have me some money like that."

Red got dead serious, and I believe he would have turned pale if he hadn't been African-American. "No, Mrs. Bragger," he said, "I don't think you do." He looked genuinely frightened that I might do something foolish (as he was obviously doing) just to make some money. I believe he would have tried to stop me. I have been touched by that little exchange for my entire teaching career. I wonder what Red is doing now, if he's in prison, if he's still alive, or if he turned things around.

Another student in that same group was named Shawn, and I had had him the year before in middle school. Shawn had the worst stuttering problem the speech pathologist said she had ever seen in her ten years of working with students. He would open his mouth to speak, you could hear the air rushing in (or out), his mouth would move a few times, and occasionally he would manage to blurt something out, but it would be so fast that I couldn't understand him. It might be as simple as asking for a pencil, but it was an ordeal for both of us. I would apologize and ask him to repeat it. It's a wonder he ever spoke to me. But he kept trying. In middle school we all had to teach a "transition" or "special" or whatever the heck they called it back then, and I was assigned to teach an 8-week unit on speech communications. Lucky me, Shawn wound up in that class. Mercifully he was absent one day, and I spoke to the class about the fact that Shawn just wouldn't have the same set of requirements as the rest of them. Bottom line. End of story. I think they understood, or perhaps they were relieved they wouldn't have to watch Shawn suffer in front of the class, trying to make a speech about washing a dog or something.

Then Shawn wound up in my high school class, and he was probably grateful to have a familiar face. His stuttering was no better, but we got along fine. I was never one of those teachers who forced students to read aloud, and I didn't usually call on them cold in class just to prove to the rest of the students that some of them didn't know the answers. One day, though, I was going over some questions in class, and Shawn raised his hand. He volunteered to answer. I don't even remember if he had difficulty getting his answer out, but the fact that he WANTED to answer the question for me has remained in my mind one of the most triumphant moments in my career. I could easily have stopped the lesson right then and sat down and cried. I hope Shawn is doing well today.

The original purpose of this post, though, is about one of our current students. J.J. is nothing but a country boy, and during his interview he slouched in his chair and was fine with his mom answering the questions for him. We asked him about his past and why he hadn't been successful. He had failed most of the courses he had attempted, mostly because he didn't care enough to try. He would go to class and put his head down, and he only brought about 9 or 10 credits with him.

During the interview, his mother said what his main problem was. She pointed to the one male teacher in the room and said, "Taking orders from you, no problem." Then she pointed at me, "Taking orders from you, big problem."

I bristled at that, and I said, "Then we've GOT a problem, because if you look around this table, most of us are women." I think she said something to the effect that he would work on it, and I pretty much wrote him off in my mind right then. I knew he would come in with an attitude toward the women teachers, he would resist efforts to get him to do his work, and he would become a discipline problem. I didn't expect him to last long, especially considering the number of credits he still needed to earn and his past discipline issues.

Nothing could be further from the truth. He has already completed several courses, and he approached me one day about the possibility of finishing by this May (almost impossible, but admirable still). He has always been polite to me, he never talks back, he says "m'am" even though I don't expect it, and his attendance has been exemplary. Don't get me wrong, he's not the perfect student, but he has been a pleasant surprise. He has a tendency to want to play games on the computer, and he never complains when I take control of his computer and click him out of them. Or better yet, I see that he's playing some sort of skill game, and when I take control of his computer, he can't manipulate his character at all. He has to sit there helplessly and watch his guy die. Or his car crash. Or his bike tumble off a cliff. I take a wonderfully perverse pleasure in doing that. He'll spin around in his chair, grinning, but he never gets offended that I have interfered in his game. Again. But he genuinely cares about his courses, and he is working hard to get as many finished as he can. I believe he will graduate, possibly next December, but definitely no later than May of 2012. And he was for all intents and purposes a drop-out when he came to us.

I'm so glad I can still be surprised.


I don't even hold it against him that he's a Georgia Tech fan.

Cooking for Two.....

Cooking for two should be a breeze. And it is, if we're eating the same thing.

Since I've been trying to eat healthy and lose (more) weight, however, it has become quite a challenge. Tonight is an example of just such a challenge.

My stove top has four burners (like I'm guessing 98% of the population, Pioneer Woman notwithstanding). In my kitchen tonight, however, I had six pans going: two different skillets for salmon patties, a small dutch oven for black beans and rice, a boiler with potatoes, a saucepan for field peas, and a small boiler for a yummy sauce (made with soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, and honey) to drizzle over broccoli. I was shuffling pans like a chef at a Japanese steakhouse slices and dices veggies. That's a terrible analogy, but it's all I've got.

In addition, I used the rice cooker/vegetable steamer to cook the broccoli and the toaster oven to toast some sesame seeds (sprinkled over the sauce on the broccoli). Two skillets were required for the salmon because Hubby likes his patties fried, and I didn't want the calories. So I used a nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray to cook mine. They didn't hold together quite as well, but they were still tasty.

Hubby won't eat rice, so the black beans and rice dish was just for me. I have enough left over to take for lunch tomorrow and Friday, and possibly some for dinner tomorrow night. I thought I made enough broccoli for lunch tomorrow too, but the sauce was so good that I wound up eating all the broccoli.

All this kitchen activity followed on the heels of a verrrrrrrrrrrry loooonnnnnnnnnggggggg walk in the park with Hubby and the dogs. It's early to bed tonight.

Right after I fold a load of laundry.

How Not to Get a Job.....

This will look a lot like one of those chain emails that gets spread all over the internet. It's a real, live email string that came to a high school principal today. This guy wants a job. First I'll share the body of his email message.

I wanted to know what kind of school this is and where its located?My resume is attached above and all you need to do is click on it.I'm looking for a possible transfer from _________________if the opportunity is better.as you can see I have over 10 yrs experience in this field and 5 yrs as a certified coach.If you have any questions my number is (xxx)xxx-xxxx.

Sadly, he wants a job in education. He is a paraprofessional in special education, but he has a college degree. Or at least his resume says he does.

That part is sad enough. Here's the real kicker: it came attached to an original string of email messages between him and (presumably) his girlfriend. And the subject line: "Verizon Wireless - Payment Confirmation."

Here is the original string of email messages. I've copied them chronologically so you wouldn't have to scroll all the way to the end to get the correct sequence.

Thank you for your payment

Dear ___________,

Your scheduled electronic check payment, authorized today, has been
applied to your Verizon Wireless account ending in ____.

Here are the details of your electronic check payment:

Date: 10/29 Payment Amount: $223.84 Payment Method: Electronic check; bank account ending in ____

Please note your payment amount will be debited from your bank account on the next business day.

i am very sick today.my sinuses are giving me problems this morning and I can't hardly take it.I might need to go to the nurse and ask for some sinus pills.my student didn't show up today,so I hope i have an easy day.hows your day going?  ***This is the job-seeking guy.***

I'm sorry you're not feeling well.  You probably need to start taking meds now so that you can catch it.  My day is going good.  (Girlfriend?)

i saw Coach ______ and coach (misspelled coach's name) talking about football in the hallway so i walked by just to see if he would look me in the eye,but neither one could.

Wow, they probably have a guilty conscience.  Nope no jobs.

 Coach _____said i should walk up to them and say thank you for telling me face to face.She is mad,because she said thats not professional!I don't know when,but i am going to do something about this ASAP.I can't
let them screw me over......

Yes I totally agree with you.  I told you that you should do something. All I want is for you to pray about it first. 

Baby can u email me another resume?I need to send it somewhere. 

Please try to keep up with it.  I'm going to eventually delete it from my hard drive because we were told they are going to start checking our computers.

People, he LEFT THIS ATTACHED TO THE EMAIL WITH HIS RESUME! And the Verizon Wireless subject line! And he wants to talk about people being unprofessional?

I have no words. 

His interview is next Monday.

JUST KIDDING!!!!!! (Just kidding about the interview. The rest of it is real. Very real. Painfully, sadly, tragically, pathetically real.)