Social Experiment

My social experiment has been  almost 14 years in the making, long before I knew I was performing a social experiment. I'll leave off all the normal disclaimers. What is working for me will undoubtedly not work in every situation, nor for every person who tries it. However, what I've learned is working. I thought it was something that I mostly employed in my chosen career, but as I continue experimenting, I'm finding many practical applications outside of education.

I started working in developmental education when I was 20, a senior in college. I had very little training in education, no formal training at all, and yet I instantly found a connection with my students. I was silly. I was often preposterous. Most of all, I genuinely enjoyed my students.

I was so young. I had no idea what I was doing. 

Developmental education on the college level has changed monikers several times throughout the years. Academic support, college preparatory. In a nutshell, I basically worked with students who had not been academically successful. Low test scores. Negative attitudes. Behavioral problems. Lack of study skills. Poor concept of education. Intuitively, I acted like they were all simply marvelous and diamonds in the rough who just need a bit of positive polishing here and there. Even back then, one of my favorite activities was taking a student no one else seemed to like much, and encouraging that person to shine.

Over a decade later, I'm still working in developmental education, but in a very different environment. I am still getting the students that other teachers have labeled troublesome, deficient, delayed, problem, behaviorally challenged. In fact, in 2004 I gave birth to a son who would go on to be similarly labeled by the public school system (Ha! Thanks, Universe, for giving me my very own test subject!).

My little social deviant in need of frequent in-school suspensions. In kindergarten.  

At my current place of employment, I was given a six year old referred for remediation. I could write pages on how I don't think a six year old should ever be told he needs remediation, but let's skip over that for a moment. A cursory glance through this boy's file will show a negative relationship with his teacher, behavioral frustrations, low performance on testing, and a hint that perhaps some emotional/behavioral/psychological testing is in the works. A cursory glance at the actual child will show you a very cute little boy, with a quirky smile and a vocabulary older than his years. Look a few extra moments at his eyes and you will see the insecurity, the uncertainty, the self-doubt and the questions lurking there. "Am I smart? Am I liked? Am I ok?"

He writes his S's backwards and spells "Pikshre" for "Picture." Adorable! 

I gave this kid a goofy nickname, started calling him "My favorite [insert child's name withheld to protect the innocent]" when he walked into my job, and began praising him every single time he did something right, while completely minimizing his mistakes. As he opened up to me, he would ask, "Am I smart, Miss Kara?" And I would grin from ear to ear and answer with a resounding, "So smart!" Now when he is working independently on his little phonics workbooks and manipulatives, I can just barely catch him whispering to himself, "I really am smart!"

Instinctively, I believe we should tell all six year olds that they are smart. Every single one of them.

I have a middle-schooler who is simply fantastic. Somewhere along the line she has been told she really stinks at math, so now she is in remediation for math. She has a flair for the dramatic (how's that for redundant: dramatic middle schooler!) and frequently puts herself down about how dumb she is. I think she is charming and nothing short of hilarious. At first, she was a little surprised I laughed at her jokes. Quite frankly, I was a little surprised everyone in the vicinity wasn't laughing at her jokes. Also, I take pictures of her drawings because they are awesome.

This is Sad Giraffe. So sad. So freaking awesome.

I have hundreds of these stories, stories of these kids I've worked with. The quirky little characteristics about them that I fall in love with and have no shame in telling them so. And as I love them (oh, yeah, I have to teach them sometimes, too), I start to see amazing things happen. I watch as they blossom. I see them gain confidence. What is more, I see their own developing confidence helping them so much more than just curriculum and drill-and-kill and worksheets and textbooks and even elaborate projects. I've been watching this phenomenon in my career for almost 14 years.

~

One day, an indefinite amount of time ago, I met someone I was instantly unfond of. You know how it is. You more than just "don't click" with someone. You pretty much off the bat can't stand them. It happens. It's regrettable.

This is the face I used to give people when I didn't like them. And then I wondered why they didn't like me, either.
I've grown up a lot since then. 

I had been thinking a lot about my positive success with students over the years, mostly about how just acting like I was thrilled to see them and thinking they are ever so smart and funny, and that they absolutely have something worthwhile to contribute changes them on an intrinsic level. And then I thought, what if -- WHAT IF! -- what if I started treating... wait for the epiphany... what if I started treating everyone like that? What if I started treating -- oh goodness, my brain is coming up with the impossible! -- people I don't like very much like that?

It's Christmas, and I just pulled a miniature frying pan out of my gift bag.
This face adequately expresses how I felt about my epiphany. 

I'm game for social experiments. Why not? In all honesty, what's there to lose? I picked that one really hard-to-like person who had come unexpectedly into my life. This time, when I saw her, I smiled hugely and waved and generally acted extremely pleased to see her. When she said something funny, I laughed. Then one of the most interesting things happened. She began to not be so annoying. Or rather, I began to not be so annoyed by her. It's hard to pinpoint exactly who changed, her or me.

This social experiment is still in progress, but I think I'm on to something.

Dismantling

Stripping off spandex
or toga
or laurel crowns
Laying down scepters, and walking away
A hero, the antagonist,
head shaking as words muttered

What if the hero struggled
Weighed the pros and cons
Decided superpowers were too costly
The world can't be saved today.

What if those heroes
fallen from grace
were weighted by their choice to give up
but didn't know what else to do.

What if the choice
were braver than to remain
super-human strong
noble.
Valiant.

Hardly chivalrous to break
fall, fail, flounder
One half-hearted shove
at marble walls,
but really just not care
to be anyone else's hero today.

Say, "Cheese!"

One of these days, I'm going to get a real camera. I've tried getting real cameras as gifts for Christmas or my birthday in the past, but these gifts are never real cameras. When I get my real camera, I'm going to do something I love doing: Taking over 70 pictures at a time and finding 4 I actually like out of the bunch. Haha!

I took this one of the boy. He's hard to photograph because he's at the age where "Smile!" means pulling his lips unnaturally over his teeth and giving a wide-eyed psychopath expression. That can be cute sometimes... just... not very artistic to have 70 pictures that look something like this:

One can easily see that the first picture has a much softer, more artistic feel to it. I like it. It captures the sparkle in his eye and the glow to his naturally brown skin. While the second picture is good for a giggle. And to save to show future dates he brings home (insert low, maniacal laughing).  

The girl is even harder to photograph. She loves posing for the camera, but her poses are a little too dramatic to translate well into pictures. That, and her facial expressions are intense and fierce, but don't include natural smiles very often. And she's two, so she moves. A lot. My best bet with her is to give her props to play with and stand back snapping picture after picture to hopefully get one good one. 

She's my little imitator. She wants to do every single thing I do. It's humbling and adorable. So I give her my high heels. 

What I really want when I take pictures though, is not to have pixilated end-products with low resolution. The blur ruins perfectly good moments. Like this one:

So I want a real camera. A good camera. A real, good camera (I dare someone to try to correct my grammar there...).

I think it would be extremely fun if at some point I could do bigger things with my photography. 

The New Confidence

The scar is getting better, slowly but surely. It's still very noticeable, but I'm getting used to it.

I use helichrysum hydrosol and argan oil on it every day, but instead of the scar bothering me, I imagine all sorts of ridiculous scenarios. Like, painting my neck green and drawing on big stitch marks so that I look like Frankenstein's monster.

Or, draw eyes above it and make it a weird smiley face. This really makes me giggle.

My poor scar is so embarrassed when I blatantly ridicule it.

 Now it wants to go incognito.

If I keep this up, it might go rogue on me, and then who knows what kind of fanged beast it will turn into.

Yes, I've taken to mercilessly making fun of my own scar. I do something similar in my college developmental writing class. When I get just a little too excited about grammar, I make fun of myself for my own enthusiasm. This kind of self deprecation is a good deflection.

If I'm making fun of myself, it kind of takes the steam out of anyone else making fun of me. Laughing at myself, I'm totally brave and confident.

Please don't call Hoarders...

This is my craft table right now.

And I'm using all of that stuff.

(Except the sippy cup. I've mostly outgrown those)

Creation

I've remembered something in the past week and a half, something that I forgot was critical to my happiness and mental health: creating brings me inner peace and focus. Creating anything, really. I remembered that the times I am not making something are the times I am the lowest.

Writing proved to be a little tricky, so throughout the last week, I've thrown myself into creating. I wasn't even that intent on the product, but the process. Sitting at the table my grandmother just gave me, I made things, immersing myself for hours in a blissed-out world of creation.

First I made flowers. And then I put those flowers in my daughter's hair.

And speaking of my daughter's hair, she finally has enough to do this:

I also made French bread. 

And then I ate French bread. I will say, making bread for two hours and eating said bread in mere minutes was one of the most satisfying pastimes I have indulged in. 

And I made preschool games for the class I'm teaching this term. 

(By the way, why in the world did I sign up to teach preschool this term? As I struggle with healing and muscle weakness and chronic fatigue, teaching 2, 3, and 4 year olds is a bewildering task for me to take on. They are most exuberant little people.)

While the finished products might not seem impressive to the casual passerby, the process of making and putting aside all the physical and emotional struggles in favor of creation has been more healing to me than medicine. 

The laundry pile can fall down around me, the kids can climb the walls, the dishes can stack on top of each other. I'm busy re-making myself during one of the most challenging times in my life. And doing random interpretive dancing in the woods, just for giggles. 

For real.

Self Image

My mind is going in many directions lately. Mostly crazy directions. And fragmented like reflections off a broken mirror.

I suddenly have much more interest in my appearance. Before, make up never held my attention for long. I was ambivalent in my resignation that my hair would never be coiffed in anything resembling the latest fashions. I silently judged women who obsessed over their looks; surely they were superficial or insecure. Surely I was above all that.

And then I had my neck sliced open twice in ten days. Surgery left its mark.

I'm superficial enough to be bothered by the red raised scar at the base of my throat, insecure enough to want to compensate for its rawness in other ways. Concealer masking. Eye liner drawing attention up, away. Bronzer highlighting. Shimmers reflecting, lip gloss wet and inviting. I braid, twist, coil and curl my hair, accessorizing with flowers and ribbons and scarves.

To be honest, I'm not caring about impressing others. It is myself I am trying to distract. I don't want to look in the mirror and see the sad, scarred woman I am slowly morphing into. If I highlight the right areas, maybe the ones that shame me will be muted.

Maybe I can recreate my own self portrait. Perhaps I can twist and coil and curl the struggles with my health into something worthwhile. "Cancer survivor" sounds heroic and so much braver than I feel, but I can apply it to my list of attributes like a coat of mascara. "Survivor" is a liner I can draw all over myself, really -- depression survivor, sexual abuse survivor, drug abuse survivor. Natural, unassisted childbirth survivor. Fingernail biter survivor. Multiple body piercings survivor. Counting experiences I have come through or encountered that haven't killed me yet is almost exhilarating. Difficult situations somehow sparkle under the word "survivor."

My fragments of broken mirror can be pieced together in a Picasso-like mosaic, a girl before a looking-glass. A girl looking at all the different pieces: lines, marks, colors. I'm reading my reflection to understand who I am now.

Like make up, Picasso never held my attention before. Yet now, like bottles of powder and color and shimmer, he is relevant to my life changes.  My changes in self perception.

On Depression

For me, depression has been a parasitic disease. It grips my neck with razor-sharp teeth and breathes heavy snarls in my ear. It plays Shrink and Regrow, almost disappearing entirely so that I forget it's there. Then it swells back up, thick and engorged like a giant mosquito drunk on my lifeblood.

Depression is an embarrassing parasite. I look around my home, my beautiful children, the things I have that so many others do without, my loving family, my network of caring friends. The shame of the disease adds up with many other negative emotions that float around me like a cloud of pollution: Self-loathing. Disappointment. Frustration. Anger. Grief. I often find it hard to breathe. Or, I just stop caring altogether. Apathy is embarrassing, too, so I pretend I care deeply and passionately about whatever it is I am supposed to care about.

"Fake it til you make it." I can't quite understand this philosophy. Not that I haven't tried it extensively. Feeling low? Just smile and be uplifted! Frustrated at the never-ending cycle? Whistle while you work! Don't feel like having sex with your spouse? Just say yes and go with the flow until it's all wonderful! I'd throw up at the saccharine optimism, but I really hate throwing up. I prefer to sneer with disdain, wrinkling the left side of nose and almost-smiling with sarcasm. Boy, I love who I have become. I've faked it more times than I can count, and I still haven't made anything that I can tell.

Self-loathing. That's the feeling that I know what I am supposed to be but I just can't quite swallow it into existence. Self-loathing settles like dust in that place in me that just doesn't understand how to actually make anything happen. I'm supposed to be happy. I don't know how. Self-loathing. I'm supposed to be loving, but I feel nothing. Self-loathing. I'm supposed to work hard, but I'm lazy. Self-loathing. I'm supposed to... but....
I'm just a pile of gritty, grainy dust molecules. Gross and worthless. Wallowing in my own misery, hating myself for wallowing in my own misery.

Psychology suggests that expectation is the leading cause of disappointment. I feel about that similarly as I do about "fake it until you make it" which is to say, I hate it. I hate it because I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed that I'm not doing more with my life, that I'm not a missionary in another country or doing life-changing work in my community, or creating something of intrinsic value or... something. I'm disappointed that being married is so difficult, and that I don't know if I'm parenting well at all because my children seem rather soft and spoiled. I'm mostly disappointed that I don't enjoy life, living, barely at all.  I feel perfectly justified in expecting that things should be better than what they are right now, but I'm disappointed that I don't even know where to begin to make changes.

Ignorance is frustrating. I don't know what to do, and I don't know where to find the answers. I look for answers, but I don't understand them. I'm frustrated that I can't seem to pull myself together. Frustration and anger are conjoined twins vying for the same vital organs. They twist the stomach and harden into a lump in the chest cavity. I can't tell where one ends and the other begins. They just are.

Then, of course, there's the grief. Grief first stutters and struggles to convey itself. Then it settles into a sadness that never truly goes away. Grief for things lost. People. People who died, or people who moved away, or people who simply floated out my my life the same way they seemed to float in. No matter where they went, they are gone, and their absences are wounds stitched closed and scarred over. I grieve for lost ideals and hopes that never surfaced. I grieve for beliefs that proved untrue. Grief is forever a collar around my neck that I feel when I try to stray farther than my chains allow. I cannot follow the things lost.

I was once wild and untamed. I still have echoes of my former determination, so I will take my antidepressant, and swallow some vitamins, and do a few exercises to release endorphin. I will read the self-help books and other books for enjoyment. I'll play with my children and smile at my husband and go to church. I'll do my yoga breathing and call my mother. I'll do the laundry and cook dinner and vacuum the living room floor, over and over. I'll scratch at that parasite, and hold out hope that at some point in my life I will find the answers I seek.

Oh, and today is my birthday. Happy birthday to me.

La La... Lollies!

For the past few days, I've been playing with five very beautiful children. Of course, I'm biased; those five children came from the wombs of my sister and me. Since I think they are all as sweet as can be, I decided to do  a fun little project: Homemade lollipops.

The concept is really quite simple. I went to Michael's and spent only $11 on more than enough supplies (it could have been cheaper, but I got the fancy foil wrappers...). And as an added bonus -- Teachers get 15% off! Whippee! I purchased the following:

• a bag of assorted Jolly Ranchers
• a bag of old fashioned cherry hard candy
• lollipop sticks
• parchment paper
• fancy colored foil candy wrappers

For our first set of lollipops, the kids and I arranged the Jolly Ranchers in rows of three, whatever colors/flavors we wanted, on parchment paper. Then we put the tray in the oven for about 7 minutes at 275 degrees. When I pulled them out, we stuck in the sticks quickly before the candy re-hardened. 

I put them in the fridge to cool faster while we worked on our second set of lollipops. This time, we put different colored candies in plastic snack bags, and I crushed the pieces a few times (with a wrench because I couldn't find a hammer at my sister's house...). 

Then we all arranged our candy pieces mosaic style on the parchment paper. Elena and I made flowers, Micah made a blobby man, and Christian made a colorful pile of something-or-other. 

Those melted for a few minutes in the oven; then we admired our delicious handiwork. 

Ahhh yes, vibrant globs of un-uniform candy. Simply perfect. 

While they were cooling, we taste-tested our first lollipops. They were, as expected, absolutely delicious. 

(The babies got a little lick too.)

We wrapped the remaining lollipops in colorful foil to save for later (or, as I encouraged, gift-giving). 

It was a quick and easy, inexpensive, undeniably and deliciously fun afternoon activity. And in between licks of her lollipop, my niece exclaimed, "This is the BEST day ever!" (The boys were too busy licking their lollipops to say anything at all). 

Kara's Adventures in Unadventureland

I came to the conclusion a while back ago that I am a strange sort of perfectionist. Not that I do anything perfectly (at all!) but that I often expect perfection out of myself, and even sometimes out of others as well. I won't go into how unrealistic and unfair that is of me... this time. No, today I am thinking about my strange perfectionism, and how I allow it to cripple me. So often I want to make changes in my life, but I am petrified of messing up or not having the desired outcome, so I fear to make that first step.

When I used to work my Dream Job, I would often counsel with students who were struggling beginning to write a paper. So often over the years I heard, "I just don't know where to start!" Perhaps somewhere along their life journeys they heard the absolutely wretched advice to "begin at the beginning... and go on till you come to the end: then stop"  (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland). My go-to counsel for such a frustration was simply this: Start anywhere! Start in the middle, or even at the end! You can always go back and build around wherever you start. Sometimes it would take a lot of coaxing to get a student to relax enough to start writing a paper in the middle. Wasn't that cheating or somehow not following the rules? In one of my finer moments in teaching (tongue in cheek) I told my students that freewriting was like Outback Steakhouse. No rules. Just write (/tongue in cheek). I saw many students go from frustrated and bound with tight ropes by writer's block to writing fabulous papers.

*Ahem* I give others such very good advice... Why don't I follow it? I allow fear of failure to dictate how much of my life I am really living. I allow fear of getting in over my head to keep me from actually trying to accomplish my goals and desires.

I decided I'm going to try to break free from these constraints and start accomplishing the goals I set years ago. I'm trying not to be petrified of falling on my face in dirty old mud and risk looking like an imbecile in front of family, friends, and perfect strangers. I decided a good place to start was in the middle -- my blog... and writing, which has been a life-long goal -- and I can always go back and build around my small successes. I don't want to be afraid of taking that first step, or fifth step, or 100th step anymore.

Grind 'em Beans

Sometimes I get caught up bemoaning that my life doesn't seem, at first glance, to be spectacular or even interesting for that matter. The daily grind, the routine my life seems to follow, feels more like survival mode than experiential living. I'm stuck in the cycle of invariably chasing that next cup of coffee to get me through the day.

I'm mostly at home, unconventionally educating my son, chasing the tot... always getting someone a snack, always taking on the Laundry Monster (whose hp continuously regenerates), forever picking up toys and putting them in bins, only to turn around and see that one kid or the other has dragged out 10 more.

Even as I sit on the couch to write, I have my daughter offering me toys, and she resorts to bellowing when I'm not interested in pushing the buttons on her pretend phone for the 100th time. She's so offended that I would want to carve out a few minutes to write or check my email or stare blankly off into space pondering how I can survive the crazy years with my sanity intact. She hands me the phone, again, and I push a button, again, and she giggles over the obnoxiously peppy music that erupts from the speaker. Again. She's heard that perky tune 101 times now in the last 10 minutes. Why is she still giggling? Why doesn't she throw down the toy in disgust and say she can't listen to it one more time without being committed to the looney bin? She holds some secret I've forgotten.

I realize that I want to learn from her, even as I constantly mold her young, forming mind. She's watching me -- brush my hair, cook dinner, read to her brother, scoop up handfuls of small wooden fruit and put them away in the small, pretend market basket. And I watch her -- tuck her favorite doll under her arm as she searches for a hair brush, stand at her play kitchen piling play dishes in the play sink, hold a book in front of her doll's face, tuck the pretend market basket in the cabinet where it belongs.

We do this every day. And it is spectacular. If I could freeze these moments, I would want to go back a hundred or more times to look at them, to remember with fondness the wonder of this experience. Even though the daily grind can get monotonous and tiresome in its tediousness, I'm encouraged to grind away at these beans anyway.

Because after all, every peppermint frappuccino started out as a handful of beans that needed a good grinding.

When Things are Hard

"Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard" The Scientist, Coldplay. 


I was poking around some of my old music this past weekend, and came across my Coldplay collection. Coldplay is one of the few mainstream bands I can listen to without cringing these days (thanks to my Husbeast for turning me into a music snob), and several of the band's songs have especially memory-provoking attributes for me. Rob and I danced to "Green Eyes" at our wedding, so that song can almost always bring on a nostalgic tear or two. 


"Honey you should know
That I could never go on without you"


 When Annabelle was wee and jaundiced, I used to sing "Yellow" to her... 


"Your skin 
Oh yeah your skin and bones 
Turn into something beautiful"

There's something soothing about simple, heartfelt songs with meaningful yet uncontrived lyrics. When I listened to "The Scientist" again, I sat and pondered the difficulty of life at times. I know I haven't chosen the easier paths of least resistance in many cases. Often, I choose more challenging directions in life because I believe them to be more noble, more rewarding in the long run, more in line with my beliefs about life, love, parenting, generosity, peace on Earth... goodwill toward humankind and all that. Nobody said it would be easy. But wow, I didn't know it was going to be this hard. 


I had a conversation with Rob this weekend about the weather (aren't we a profound couple?). Tallahassee isn't known for its idyllic weather. Oh no, Tallahassee has despicable weather. It's chilly and dreary in the winter (but with no snow), and it's hotter and more humid than an arm pit in the summer. However, for a few very short weeks in the spring, and even fewer shorter weeks in the fall, Tallahassee has breathtakingly lovely, soul-nourishing weather. Those are the weeks when it is pleasure to be alive, sucking in cool crisp clean air and feeling warm beautiful sunshine on skin. 


Rob and I decided we were ready for for a little spring in our lives, a period of less stress, less blood sweat and tears, a time when we can just sit back and take a breather, even if just for a short while. It's hard to find that place in between too cold and too hot, much harder than one might imagine. But then again, nobody said it was easy. 

Miso Crafty

My attempts at being crafty are usually dismal failures. This truth has no bearing my my attempts.

Today's fun, messy, somewhat-successful project was dyeing three playsilks using koolaid and vinegar.

I started out with 2 cups of water, 1/2 cup of vinegar, and a blank silk scarf. Exhibit A:

I was going for a purple color, so I mixed  Black Cherry and a Blue Something Or Other Koolaid packets. The red definitely prevailed, and as I was stirring the mixture, I suddenly was reminded that this very same bowl caught my placenta when Annabelle was born. Good memories. Exhibit B:

I microwaved for three minutes, cooled for two minutes, and microwaved again for three minutes. I then soaked it in vinegar, and gave it a cool bath under some running water. After drying... Exhibit C:

Not too bad for an uncrafty craft-wanna-be!

I wanted something kind of teal/turquoise, so I mixed blue and green packets of koolaid. I could tell right away that the green would prevail (blue koolaid is totally weak. Next time I'll double the blues.)

But the green is pretty nonetheless.

The smell of baking koolaid enticed Micah into the kitchen. He wanted to try it too. This time I mixed two oranges and one pink.

I had to tell him several times that the mixture, as fruity as it smelled, would not taste good. He had fun stirring and microwaving, though.

I ran out of koolaid, but I am going to do this again! It's fun, and it worked!