Sistah Pat

I haven’t been writing down my food and I said I would. I’ve been doing pretty good with eating healthy but I really need to keep track of the calories. I’ve just been so busy I don’t make the time to log on and write everything down.  Yesterday, I had some mandarin orange and pineapple slices for breakfast, a sandwich of Muesli whole grain bread with mustard and deli ham for lunch, and a big salad with lettuce, red peppers, grape tomatoes, shredded carrots and Paul Newman’s Light Honey Mustard dressing for dinner.  THEN, yesterday evening, I had a handful of grapes, 2 protein bars, and another sandwich.  All that stuff is healthy but I don’t know how many calories it was.  I’ll try to write it all down today so I can keep a handle on it.

I didn’t exercise.  Another one of those long, grueling days at work, a stop by the grocery on the way home, a short visit with a friend who dropped by for some computer help, and then a total collapse on the couch in the evening.  See?  I’m doing okay (I think) but I can’t seem to get things totally pulled together.  The irony is that I’m just too tired but I know that a few weeks of exercise would give me more energy.  Guess I’m too tired to get energized.

Oh, well…I’m not there 100% but I’m puttering around at 80%.  Will that get me where I want to go?  Maybe…eventually….

The weather seems to be cooperating.  The forecast calls for 61 degrees and partly cloudy today; 67 degrees and a chance of rain tomorrow.  The next few days show about the same but with a lot of rain coming in.  What’s better?  68 degrees and rain or 40 degrees and partly sunny? Think I’ll take the rain.

On other things: called the spa cover company and they said they’d call me back.  Still in a holding pattern on the doctor, I don’t know what I want to do next.  See a new one?  Argghh! My new students are great and T was a sweetheart yesterday.  It seems like everyone in my environment (the library) treats him like a jewel and he thrives on it.  Paul, Barbara, Sharon, Phyllisann and I all call the library home and everyone in that environment knows how I feel about T and have started noticing the change in him.  We’re all smiling at him and complimenting him and asking him to help us with techie stuff and I wish we could keep him right there in the library.  I sent him out yesterday to pick up a couple of broken laptops from a teacher and he came back and told me that the teacher answered the door and said, “I can’t give them to you right now. I’m busy!”  He was red-faced and said the guy was really rude to him.  I told him that busy might just mean busy.  It doesn’t have to mean anything else.  I told him that teacher is really a good guy but he tends to get a little touchy when he’s feeling overwhelmed.  I called the teacher and said, “I sent T down to pick up a couple of laptops and he told me you couldn’t give them to him right then.  I had hoped he’d be able to fix them for you and get them back before class was over but I understand if you’re too busy to deal with it right now.  I’ll try to get back to you in a few days.”  Of course, the response was, “No, no, send him back down.  I didn’t understand what he wanted. I have them right here!”  So…T went back down, came back with his face serene and smiling and said the teacher was “Really glad to see him.”  He fixed the computers and took them back before class ended and said the teacher was “Really happy!  He thanked me for fixing them so quick.”  I’ve learned that T takes any kind of rejection badly.  Hope I can help him see that there isn’t always something else behind every remark he hears.

Okay, I’ve got to get in the shower.  Today is the only day this week when I actually don’t have anything going on after school.  Hoo Rah!  For today:  I WILL write down everything that goes in my mouth and calculate the total calories.  New goal - 170 by April 1.  This morning, I’m at 177.5

11:50 - Okay, I decided to take an bonafide lunch break today.  An actual, authentic, “leave me alone” lunch break.  All twenty minutes of it.  I wrote down what I’ve eaten today. 

Oh, crap!  Tyler just had a blowup in the hall and is being escorted out.  What happened?  Guess I can scrap the lunch break.

3:45 - Can’t believe I’m home this early!  I might even have enough energy left for a walk!

My lunch was interrupted by a vision of T being herded down the hall with our school security guard on one side of him and our school-based policeman on the other side.  He was ranting at the top of his voice, “Fu@k this school!  Fu@k that B!tch!  I don’t need this school and I don’t need any of you Mother Fu@kers!”  He veered off the path enough to stick his head in the library, spread his arms wide and say, “You see?  They ain’t gonna let me be in this school! They hate me!  All of them!”

They escorted him to the office and stood guard while they waited for the “jerk” AP to become available.  I asked if I could speak to him a minute and he came out in the hallway.  I asked him what happened and he said he was taking a test and the teacher got “smart” with him.  The eighth graders are taking state-wide tests this week and I have a feeling he wasn’t able to do the test so he got an attitude.  He said the teacher came up to him and told him to get to work and he put his head down.  She got “an attitude” and told him she wasn’t going to put up with him sleeping during the test, snapped the booklet open on his desk and told him to get to work.  He said he mouthed the word, “Bitch”.  According to T, he didn’t say it but he “mouthed it” and she told him she was sick of his attitude and called for security and it made him mad. Of course, I told him he was totally out of line and had only hurt himself and he apologized to me.  I told him he didn’t need to apologize to me, he needed to apologize to the teacher.  I advised him to be polite to the AP, apologize, and keep calm.  He promised he would but I found out later that the AP didn’t even talk to him.  Just called his dad to come and pick him up and suspended him for three days.  (sigh)  I asked around and found out that his mom left a few years ago and dad is an alcoholic.  Don’t know any details but I suspect there are some pretty bad things going on with the dad.  I think I’ll talk to Bill tomorrow and see what I can find out about the home situation.  I don’t know what else to do.