25-50-75: Day 1

Though our last contract day at school was Friday, so technically this past weekend was the beginning of my summer break, it didn't really feel like break until today.  Why?  Because today, I went to the public pool for the first of many leisurely and sun-drenched afternoons to come.

I should start by saying I woke at seven, read for a bit, had breakfast, played with my dog, and then took myself to Half Price Books in Olathe where I purchased some of the materials I will need for that elusive number up there in the title of this post.  But, again, I'm getting ahead of myself.

When I was a kid, we went to Kanopolis Lake a lot.  Enough that my brother and I looked like little brown loaves of bread with butter hair--we were both blondey blonde then.  As we aged, we darkened up. Well, our hair did.  While we both still get a little color in summer, it's nothing compared to the lake days.  And we went to the public pool in Salina, too.  I don't remember who we went with, it must have sometimes been a babysitter of some kind since our parents both worked, but there are times I know we went as a family because I remember thinking how beautiful my mom looked in what I think of now as her ultra-80s white one piece--oddly reminiscent of that famous one worn by Liz Taylor--and I remember watching my father execute picture perfect dives off the high board.  Not very many dads can do that.  Mine was a champion diver in high school, so he was skilled in that area, but at the time I didn't think about his training, I just thought he was infinitely cool.

In grade school I took private swimming lessons, lessons at the public pool, and lessons at the YWCA.  I lived for the water.  I was advanced enough to take lifeguard classes by the time I was 12, but you weren't allowed to take them til you were 14, and then we moved, so that whole guarding life thing never panned out for me.  

The point of all of this is that I love the water.  I LOVE the water.  Perhaps it's cliche to mention here that I am also a Cancer, a born water sign, but it's true no matter how silly it seems to say so.  When I am near water, all pressures of the world ease.  I float, I feel the sun, I hear people being obnoxiously loud, sure, but more than that, I hear the lapping of the waves, I smell the lake air or the thick huff of chlorine.  And, a couple of times, I've even been lucky enough to suck down giant lung-fulls of ocean air.  No matter what the water source, when I'm near it, I feel at home.  

Which is why today felt like the start of break: I was near the water.  I packed my bag, grabbed my summer pool pass (a steal during last week's per-season special--at only $60 for the whole summer, it means I'll basically be paying about a buck fifty for each trip versus the cash in had price of four dollars), and headed out.  

As I lay there reading Julie & Julia by Julie Powell, I got this idea.  Her project--to cook all 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in just 365 days--was daunting, irritating and times, but I have to admit it was also a bit inspiring.  I kept thinking about my summer break.  I will be working in my building to inventory and re-organize our department book room every morning in June, and most mornings in July I will be up there working up course packs, curriculum guides, and lesson plans for the classes I'll teach all year including a new on I'm really excited about, but I will have afternoons and evenings free.  No papers to grade, no school meetings, just me and time.  And me and time have never been good on our own.  We need a buffer.  A plan.  A helpful friendly routine to make one of us pass productively without the other one passing out.

So, I have devised the following plan.  From today, May 28th, through August 10th, I plan to lose 25 pounds and read 50 books in what works out to be 75 days.  Technically classes don't start back up till the 16th, but the 10th is the last free Friday of the summer, and I know I'll spend part of that last weekend up in my room getting ready, so the 8/10 is a good stopping day. 

What do the 25 pounds and the 50 books have to do with the pool?  I'm glad you asked.  I have been planning to start going to the gym again this summer for awhile now.  I like myself, but I could feel better.  Less winded walking up stairs, more energy on long days, etc. and being at the public pool is one helluva motivator.  Every shade and shape of humanity graces that joint, from Skinny Mindy and her nearly concave stomach and abs to Too Tall Tessie with a backside twice the diameter of mine.  I made myself a promise to cut out my occasional fast food habit, to cook more, and to go to the gym at least once for every time I go to the pool.  Since I can't hit the water tomorrow, I've got a date with the elliptical at 7 a.m.  

As for the books, I read voraciously given the time, and there's nothing but time at the pool.  I want to prove to myself I can do, and I want to get at some of the stuff I bought last summer that never made it to my bedside table.

So, here we go world.  Day 1:

25 Pounds

Well, it's day one.  Healthy breakfast.  Last fast food for the next 75 days at lunch--you didn't expect me to not eat fries one last time did you?--dinner is in the works: angel hair with lemon, grape tomatoes, fresh basil, green onions, and goat cheese.  Lots of water all day, evening plan to make a new kick ass gym mix for the iPod.  Don't expect me to tell you how much I weigh today, I'll just give you the total loss at the end.  I may be interested in accountability, but all the hutzpah in the world wouldn't make me post my weight on the interwebs.  I am a lady after all.

50 Books

Started Julie & Julia last night before bed and finished it at the pool today.  It was a good read in that I wanted to see how she came out, but I found the narrator--and book's author as it is a memoir--to be insufferable at times.  If it's so hard to do x, y, or z, then please stop doing it and shut the hell up.  In the end though I did see her point: sometimes throwing yourself into something everyone else says is crazy is the only way you can keep yourself from going that way.

At the pool I started Daniel Woodrell's Tomato Red which I'm sure I'll finish before bed.  It's good, less moving than Winter's Bone, but the voice is the same.  You can feel him working out the kinks in his Ozarkian landscapes that ready him for the bigger book.  He's the featured author for this fall's Read Across Lawrence, so I'm boning up on his work.  (Get it?)  

If you made it this far, stay tuned and wish me luck.  I plan to ride this sucker til the wheels fall off.

Daze

There were many things I expected to be doing this summer, particularly writing, but it turns out that hasn't been happening so much.  In fact, the majority of my time has been spent reading, watching movies, and lounging by the local public pool.  I have worked in my classroom some, I'm house sitting for some friends, I've had some really wonderful dinners and lunches with colleagues and former students, but I haven't been terribly productive in the sense that I have produced anything.

And you know what?  I could care less.

Sometimes, it turns out, even the most well intentioned people with the loftiest of goals--well, okay, maybe not the loftiest--turn out to need to just stop.  To breathe.  To reconnect with what it is in them that makes them fundamentally who they are, and it turns out, for me, it's water, words, and movies.  They're a pretty great foray into my little mess.  There are other things that make up the sum total of who I am, namely the fact that I am a fiercely loyal friend and daughter and sister and aunt, a teacher who loves her job, and a woman who dreams of one day sharing her life with a good man, but all of that stuff has been on the back burner this summer.  Not because it isn't important, but because--when I pulled my head up from the daze that is every day life during the academic year--I realized that I am important, my mental health, my sense of self, my, well, me-ness matters, and so I'm getting back in touch with that.

Does that mean I'm lazy?  Unproductive?  Wasting a lot of time doing a lot of nothing?  Some may think so, but for me, this is the best summer I've had in years because there is no point, there is no pressure, there's just me and the sun and the words and the images I love, and we're all--it turns out, much to my total shock--doing just fine.

A Summer Without Work, Pt. I

I have had a job every summer since I turned 13.  I started babysitting for a coworker of my mom's, her three kids, one a newborn.  I loved it.  I felt powerful and strong and in charge, and I loved having my own money.

From there I worked at a local bakery and gallery in Lindsborg, then at the Lindsborg Pizza Hut, then for my dad working construction, at an Applebees, as a telemarketer, at Barnes and Noble, at the Manhattan Public Library, for Lovewell in FL, for SYT in Lawrence.  This year, though, I'm not working.  Not officially, anyway.  I'm redesigning the curriculum for all three of the classes all teach in the fall--20th Century Lit needs to be more contemporary, more diverse, Adv. American Lit needs to be streamlined, and I'm creating a course pack for American LIt that students can annotate as opposed to having them read from textbooks so packed with extra features that they often miss the text itself--and I'm planning to write.  Really write.  I want to do something with my writing, have always wanted to, and so it's time to make that a priority.

And, honestly, it's time to make myself a priority.  I tend to throw myself into other peoples' projects, into work, into anything that distracts me from the here and now of my own life.  Not because my life is so all fired terrible that I can't deal with it, but I tend to put everyone and everything else first.  But, this summer, I want to settle and rest and focus and feel for myself.  I think it's time.

To that end, this was my first day: woke up at 8, played with Z, read and emailed for a couple of hours, went to the pool for three hours where I read The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg, picked up my last LAC paycheck, went to the bank, picked up new contacts, got gas, put away my laundry, played with Z, had dinner H & J, got yogurt from Orange Leaf, wandered CVS for thirty minutes, now watching old Law & Order SVU and blogging.

I was worried I wouldn't know what to do with myself this summer.  Not really feeling all that concerned anymore.  Up later this week: thrifting Thursday in KC with the girls, Samantha Crain & Langhorne Slim @ the Bottleneck Friday.  It's good to be me.