Aha! Perfect Heart is not a teaching blog after all! It’s a teaching and birth control blog! How do you like that?!
Today (I’m pretty sure) I am going to go on birth control for the first time in about five years. I don’t like birth control. I don’t like gaining weight, I don’t like sore and swollen boobs, I don’t like mood swings. I especially don’t like migraine headaches, which did not noticeably increase last time I was on the Pill, but certainly could this time. I also don’t like the panicky feeling that I have forgotten to take a Pill, or that I need to take one soon, or that I forgot to put my Pills in my purse and so I need to be sure to be home in time to take one. Pills! I don’t like them!
But.
I also don’t like having babies. Or rather I don’t like worrying about having babies. I have 22 babies already germing all over me at school- I don’t want any more! So I made the (not entirely decisive) decision to go back on birth control. I (sort of) decided on the Nuvaring because a) It’s low-hormone, b) It’s not a Pill, and c) it seems cool. I actually got a prescription for it a few months ago, and have been meaning to start. But then I got a migraine and it freaked me out, and then also I started teaching and I was worried about hormone-related mood swings or depression. I’ve already got enough 1st grade-related mood swings and depression, right?
So.
School has been going pretty well, I haven’t had another migraine, and my bf comes back on Tuesday. Seems like a pretty good time to stick that flexible plastic ring into my VJ, right? Today is the first day of my “cycle,” and it is also a Sunday which is the day they recommend starting. All signs point to yes.
And yet.
IT’S VERY SCARY TO GO ON BIRTH CONTROL!!!
I just have to do it.
Trying never hurt a person and the rewards seem worth the risks, right?
Ugh.
Scary.
But worth it.
By midnight tonight I will be under the control of the Nuvaring.
(As long as I don’t chicken out.)

Thursday night was Curriculum Night, aka Back to School Night, aka Firing Squad. I spent 14 hours at school all told, which was really the hardest part. Basically I just had to stand in front of my classroom full of parents and justify what I am teaching to their children. Twice. Because there were two sessions. A lot of other teachers prepared Powerpoints and slideshows, but I kept it mellow. I wrote my agenda on the board behind me and just talked them through their child’s day, I explained the developmental theory behind everything I teach, and they ways I meet the national benchmarks and standards for first grade. I also made sure to tell them how much I love their children, and how I am working to get to know them all as people, not just students. I also talked through my plans for homework and class parties. Fun times!
I wasn’t as nervous as maybe I should have been? All week people at school were wishing me and each other luck for Curriculum Night. It’s a pretty big deal, I guess. But my parents have been real nice and supportive this year, and I just sort of intuited that it would be cool. And it was. There were a couple of tough questions, but overall they seemed satisfied, and a lot of them told me how much their kids like coming to school. One mom, who had earlier told me that her daughter hated kindergarten, told me that at during grace the night before her daughter said, “Dear Lord, please don’t let there be weekends anymore so that I can go to school every day.” !!!!! I am doing a good job.
Of course on Friday I was completely fried. A few kids were absent, so the class was really small-seeming and mellow. I just laid it out for them. I was like, “Look, I was at school longer than you were awake yesterday and now I am a very tired, sort of cranky teacher. I need to ask you to be super responsible and on-task today because I am not feeling very patient.” And they totally did it! They were hard, quiet workers, and they were totally sweet and polite all day long. I read out loud to them a lot, and yesterday I let them lie down and turn off the harsh fluorescent lights and just listen. I think we were all happy to have a little down time.
Teaching is hard, but it feels manageable now. I have more energy in the evenings and on the weekends, and I don’t have the constant feeling that I am forgetting something major (like how I forgot to teach handwriting for the first 3 weeks. Oops!) In other words I feel like a human being again, and not just a weird boring teacher who can only talk and think about teaching. “Dear lord, please let me be a person and not a teach-machine, and please let the weekends last a long time.”
Amen.

Was I ready to teach children today, after my very weird and not-that-fun weekend? NO. But apparently that is my job. So. The morning went well, my deep fondness for my students swelled in my chest. La la la, life is great.
Until. It was time for Number Corner. We were looking at the calendar and a little boy said, “this is the day the planes crashed into the towers.” To which I (mentally) replied, “Fuck.” Because what am I supposed to say to 1st graders on the 5th day of school about terrorism, war, our government and homeland security? I was planning on avoiding this anniversary altogether, letting families decide how to deal with it with their kids. But then the topic was raised and kids were alarmed, and I worried that if I didn’t lead a discussion they would just talk about it out on the playground and you know how that goes. Next thing you know there’s no Santa Claus or whatever. So I just went for it. I said that the anniversary of 9/11 is an important day for a lot of people. That they were literal babies when the planes hit, but that every grownup remembers where they were and how they felt when they learned what happened. I tried to emphasize the (fleeting) feeling of unity and charity that the world felt after the attacks. But then it turned out that half the class had never heard about 9/11. So I had to backtrack. Which was intense. I basically had to tell them what happened that morning, in the simplest, gentlest way possible. Of course they all wanted to know why, why we were attacked. And I didn’t give them the easy, “bad guys against good guys” answer. I said that in America we are lucky to have our basic needs met- food, shelter, clean water. I said that though there are many nice people living in America (like us), we don’t always share what we have. I said that other countries in the world think of us as bullies. And for that reason and others some people got mad and decided to harm us, because they thought we were not being fair or nice. And I said that the best way we can help stop this from happening again is to learn about the world, to be humble, and to be giving. I needed to give them a message of hope, and though I know I oversimplified (and possibly misrepresented a bit), I tried to present it in a way that 6 year olds would be able to handle. 6 year olds get bullies and sharing. I hope I did alright.
So yeah, that was my morning. In the afternoon, during Choice Time, I noticed a funny burning smell right around the time that kids started shouting that “Curtis threw a tinker toy on the lights!” Uh huh. He threw a tinker toy up into the light fixture and it started to melt and we were all breathing in the toxins. One girl told me that she felt dizzy. Ugh. I turned out the lights for the rest of the day, and tried to get the boy to tell me if there were more items up there. Of course he said no because he already knew he was in trouble, but later the custodian found an eraser. Have I mentioned in this entry that my life is very glamourous? Well it is.
Mike is in Atlanta and I miss him. I’ve decided to replace boyfriend time with “cooking time” and “blogging time.” So here’s to being back on the Internet. Cheers.

I’m talking about car accidents.
Yesterday was the weirdest. I was keeping Mike company as he ran errands in preparation for the 2 week road trip he and his brother will begin today. We were on our way to New Seasons to buy some Stumptown coffee and Mike was at the wheel. It was late afternoon and I was in the passenger seat trying to find the perfect Bowie song on my iPod. I was looking down when I felt the car swerve and saw a sedan coming towards us from the corner of my eye. “Did they run a red light?” I asked just before they hit us.
It was not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. My car has some body damage but runs fine. The other car was leaking anti-freeze but looked okay. Maybe it needs a new radiator? I don’t know. No one was hurt and insurance will cover the damage to their car. The case is under investigation so I don’t want to go into a lot of details, but we’re pretty sure we are at fault. I only have Liability insurance, which is dumb I know, but I was broke when I signed up for my plan and you know how it goes. I just drove really carefully and hoped nothing bad happened.
So in the end it was totally minor. But god, it was so scary! The sound of the crash, the panic we felt before we learned that everyone was okay. Mike and I took turns comforting each other, and luckily our waves of anxiety were staggered. The people in the other car were nice. They saw that we were real shaken up and dealt with us gently. The lady embraced me when I started to cry. Later Steve and Rebecca came by to cheer us up and we watched Ultimate Blogger videos from Season 1 until we were laughing easily. Mike packed, we drank some wine, and early this morning I drove him to the airport. We’re fine.
But I still feel so shaken! Cars are scary. They’re these fast-moving metal boxes that whiz around while their operators talk on the phone, rustle in the glovebox, and swat at insects. Mike was driving carefully and slowly. He wasn’t inebriated or distracted. But we still got hit. It could have been so much worse, and I guess that’s what’s really scary. I’m in the car for at least an hour every day going so fast on my way to school. Mike is embarking on a long road trip today and will be in the car for 8-12 hour stretches. We’re both good drivers, but what does that mean? Everyone makes mistakes, and in a car those mistakes can be deadly. We all know it, but right now I just really feel it.
It was hard to let Mikey go today. I want to be able to keep him safe, to reach out and feel his chest rise and fall. This feeling will fade, I know. He’ll have a great trip, I’ll be busy with school and the weeks will fly by. I feel so silly letting this get to me.
Tonight I’ll catch up on Project Runway. Nothing like Tim Gunn in Paris to cheer a lady up.

My third day of school was the best day. The first was pure adrenaline- a smile plastered on my face while my brain was on a constant loop of “I am a total fraud!!!” I put two girls on the wrong bus that day. The second day I was exhausted. No more adrenaline, just twenty-two kids who were also exhausted. I put one girl on the wrong bus that day. Today I didn’t feel like a fraud. I put my kids on the right busses. At the after school ice cream social I joked with the parents of the misplaced children, “Oh my God! I lost your BABY!!! Ha ha ha…” They were very good natured about it. It wasn’t my fault, really. I didn’t make the lists of after school plans, I just followed them, but even so. I’m a brand new teacher and I lost THREE children in two days. Anyway, today I sorta found my rhythm. I got them to PE on time and my art and writing lessons were not disasters. I doesn’t seem like much on paper, but hot damn. I think I’ll stick it out a little while.
After school my colleague and I went out for a snack. She is also in her first year of first grade and she was feeling so low. A parent had yelled at her this morning about some kid bullying her son, “You can tell that bully that my son know karate so he better look out!!” What?! Such a terrible way to start the third day of school. I don’t know. I feel pretty lucky- my kids are generally sweet and the parents seem good natured enough. I can’t imagine what getting yelled at would do to my fragile morale right now. Ugh. I wanted to do karate on that lady, I tell you what. Chop chop, you know?
Like I said, my kids are pretty sweet. One boy doesn’t have a mom and so he holds my hand whenever we leave the classroom and he pulls his chair up to my desk to do his work whenever he can. He nearly knocked me down at the ice cream social tonight with his big hug and it just about melted my heart, not to mention my cone. Another little girl with a really loud voice called out to me on the first day, “I don’t WANT to do it!! I just want to watch TV!!………………….I mean READ!!”
I don’t know what to call the other teachers. Right now I only know first names, so when I give a kid directions to the bathroom I say things like, “It’s right across the hall from Mrs. Um, huh. What’s Nicole’s last name?!? Near the work room… Well anyway. Go upstairs, you’ll find it.” Ah, teachers. They have all the answers.
Today I was at school for eleven and a half hours. Let’s just round up to 12, shall we?
Tomorrow will be total TGIAF. (Thank God It’s A Friday, for those of you not in the know.)
My yogurt was rotten this morning. Really bummed me out at snack time. Mold on it and everything.
One of my students has a British accent and one has a Texan drawl.
One girl has braces. On her baby teeth.
I need more teacher clothes.
In only 18 days I will get my first paycheck. In 23 days my health and life will be insured. And my teeth and eyes.
I am a member of a Union.
A boy brought a big ol’ thing of hand sanitizer to school and then freaked out because other kids were “using it up” and so took it home in his backpack today. It weighs like three pounds.
Allison is gone from my home and my city and I miss her. Also it is her birthday.
Mike leaves on Sunday for a nearly 3 week road trip and I will miss him too. A lot.
I was in bed at 9:15 last night, asleep by 9:45. My friends were LITERALLY partying in my hallway and I slept right through it. Apparently Mike kept shushing them, which is cute. Apparently they wanted to come in and wake me up with kisses and hugs which is also cute. But Mike wouldn’t let them. Everyone wins at being cute!
I’m washing my hands like I have OCD, but I have a tickle in my throat. Germy jerks!!!! And so it begins….

I would love to write about my first two days of teaching, but I can barely move from exhaustion. My children are sweet and wonderful and also WILD!!! It is 9:12 PM and I am going to sleep. Sorry. In the meantime I will reprint the most awesome MySpace message ever from my long lost Brazilian exchange student friend from high school. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do:
Subject: are you gonna remember?
Body: Hello beautiful!
Do you know how many Willows are in MySpace? Around 200!!! I’ve been lokking for you, you know!?
Maja went Colo few days a go and had a chat with Nick…she sent me a message saying that he was in MySpace so I found him and started lokking for you. MySpace is not that popular in Brasil. People here are using orkut a lot but as I didn’t found any of my american friends, I quited it.
So, how are you? I can see that you are no longer living in Colorado and that you are a teacher!!Yeah! I got pround, you know?!!
Well, I’m still studying – for a master degree now…but that subject is quite boring…I’ll be in the University forever, cause I’m plannig to apply for a Phd…
Last year I went to Firenze to visit Maja and we had such a good time in Italy.
I’m planning to go to US (in the next five years, I guess), so lets keep in touch, I really would like to see you.
I’ll wait for a repply…A giant kiss, dear!!

The last two weeks of my life have been devoted to setting up my classroom and going to district meetings. Ay yi yi. Kids come on Tuesday and stay until June 15th. I continue to feel more excited than scared, and though I still have lots to do before Tuesday I’m not totally overwhelmed. I will be a teacher! In three days! It’s crazy. We had an open house last week and I met most of my students. I have all of these sweet nerdy boys who just love science and blocks. Period. I feel so lucky to have these dudes as opposed to my friend who is also teaching 1st grade and has a class full of soccer playing rough necks who showed up to the open house in their shin guards and tore apart her classroom. Yikes! I’m sure they’re totally cool too, I’m just already partial to my own little guys.
One of my students wrote me a poem. She typed it on the computer. And then she googled me. And found my Friendster page. And downloaded a picture of me. And pasted it at the top of the poem. And gave it to me.
Allow me to reiterate: MY 6 YEAR OLD STUDENT FOUND MY FRIENDSTER PAGE AND LOOKED AT MY PHOTOS!!!!! Dear lord. Luckily it’s pretty PG rated and there are no links to my blog. BUT STILL!!! I gotsta be more careful about my internet presence.
My phenomenal friend Allison Halter is staying with me right now. You might know her from such endeavors as Fash Attack, Dites Donc, and (briefly) Best Friends Forever. Also Connexion and Reflexion. She came to play Catch That Beat and stayed to keep me company and keep me sane while I gear up for my new career. It had been a joy having her here, honestly. She cooks for me, does my dishes, helps me in my classroom and talks shit with me ’til all hours. She also fixed my sewing machine, so what do you say about that?
It’s just nice to have a friend to come home to. I feel so removed from most of my friends right now because everyone is so busy and I am probably the busiest of all. If Allison weren’t physically in my home I don’t know if I would feel very connected at this time. I ain’t emo, I’m just saying.
The life of a professional!
It is happening!!!

I did not blog for a long time because:
a) I got sick of the movie,
b) I went to Denver and had limited Internet times.
I was keeping a mental log of great anecdotes to share here on PerfHart, but now enough time has passed that the details of these anecdotes are fuzzy/stale. So I will just post the highlights:

* Heather hosted an awesome party at her parents house featuring a homemade photo booth. You can totally see the progression from sober pictures of smiling families to tipsy shots of shaking bootys and thrashing heads. You can check out the flickr set here. I highly recommend taking a look.
* The next night the Flobots played a show at Red Rocks Amphitheater. It was so neat to see this band who’ve been together in various incarnations for like, ten years play to an audience of screaming fans at one of the coolest venues in the world. After their set they were swarmed by teenage girls for about an hour. When it got dark they played “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” on a big screen and the woman who played Violet Beuregard in the original movie made a speech and shared some “behind the scenes” gossip. Did you know, for example, that Augustus was actually German?!? The only English he knew was his lines for the film!!! Electrifying, isn’t it? Anyway, it was cool to see it on the big screen. Gene Wilder is sort of my hero.

* Heather, Dave, Stephen, Galen, Kagen and I made a pilgrimage to Lakeside Amusement Park to take some photos and relive our childhoods. Only it turns out they don’t allow photos. Or sketches. (Sketches?????) Apparently these recording methods “detract from the carefree atmosphere of the Park,” or so we were told by the 60-something manager lady with the walkie-talkie. She told us they’d had “one too many student groups around here,” and that “if [we] were taking pictures of our grandchildren it would be one thing, but they had to protect their guests from exposure.” Huh? Galen had to return his portfolio (not actually a sketchpad mind you, it just looked like one) and Heather her camera to the car before we could “enjoy the carefree atmosphere.” Later another (less crazy) security person told us that there had been a lot of undercover reports done recently about safety issues at the Park, as well as an expose by Bill Moyers on “fading amusement parks,” so the owners were a little sensitive. Whatever. We recovered from our indignation and managed to have a good time.

* The last noteworthy part of my trip (aside from seeing cool friends like Travis, Sam, Simone, Marissa, Brion and John Shoe) was the late night walk Galen and I took the night before I left. I had been hanging out at his house in Capital Hill, and needed to return to my mom’s place in Washington Park (this is about a four mile distance, for you non-Denverites.) John and Aubrey offered me a ride, but then Galen offered to walk me there, and seeing as it was a pleasant evening I accepted Galen’s offer. Now before anyone starts drafting haughty emails to Mike, let me assure you that this story does not lead to kissing (Galen is like a brother to me) but rather to nice conversations about public transportation, comic strips, and growing up. Maybe it doesn’t make for good blogging, but getting back at midnight after walking through four distinct neighborhoods made me love Denver and my friends there so much, all over again.
Now I’m back and orientation has started in my district and in a week and a half I will have students. I’m feeling way more excited than nervous which is a good sign, I think.

They are making rain on my street now. Imagine manufacturing a rainstorm in Oregon! Ha ha ha ha ha. And yet they are doing it:

Lots of stuff is happening in my life besides this blasted movie, you know. Like… um… uh… hmm. Well, my friends are doing cool stuff anyway. Steve made this wonderful movie that I am very proud of/inspired by. And Mikey just bought a Sidekick, which means he’s practically living in the future. And Rebecca is getting all geared up for art school, where she is gonna hang those suckers out to dry. (I don’t know what that phrase even means!! But she’s gonna be the coolest of the cool, I know that.)
And my cool book drive is going pretty well! Check out photos of the recent additions to my library from Mike, Nicole, Erica, Patti, and Tim (not pictured because I already brought his books plus a few of Mike’s to my classroom.) Thank you, awesome dudes! I’m just a couple of weeks away from the start of school, so it’s totally not too late to donate! If you have no idea what I’m talking about, check out my awkward plea/amazon.com wishlist here.
I’m getting pretty nervous about the whole thing, but I’m trying to suppress it so I won’t blog about it yet. Teaching?!? Who wants THAT kind of responsibility? I just want to bang on these drums all day, you know?

Well, one pic. Here’s MISter GREg KINnear, in his big scene:

It’s an action film. You can tell by all the pyrotechnics!
This movie thing is actually getting to be sort of a drag. They started setting up equipment on the street around 6 this morning. It was very loud. Mike and I had to be up early anyway because he left for San Fransisco today (I loathe that boyfriend-stealing city), so it wasn’t TOO bad. But once I got back from the airport exhausted and hungover I was pretty irritated. There is this crane that holds lights or something and they kept raising it up and then bringing it down over and over, and it made this terrible chainsaw sound. Ugh. I napped for a bit and then headed down to the makeshift Fresh Pot to gripe with the other displaced regulars, while at the same time angling for a glimpse of Morgan Freeman’s stand-in. The ballroom below me is being used as a “holding pen” (their term!) for extras. They are all dressed up in these cheesy hipster-parody clothes and look exhausted from being here all day occasionally being called to ride a bike 40 feet over and over in the hot sun. Ha ha ha! The price of fame! Some of my disgruntled neighbors are showing their displeasure at this brouhaha by blasting music out their windows, forcing P.A.’s to scurry around trying to appease and silence them. So far I’ve heard Led Zepplin (8am) and Black Sabbath (10am).
And now a tip for telling Morgan Freeman apart from his double…
*** His double has a beard!***
Wow. US Weekly should be banging down my door any minute. Any. Minute…
…
…
Hrmph.