Here I sit in my house cape (yes, I have one of those) and my other new favorite article of clothing--maternity pants (!), and I think I'm ready to share my long-winded thoughts with you on this baby making business, Internets. Are you ready?
At nearly 17 weeks pregnant, I find it alarming that I have barely documented any of my experience on this matter for future nostalgia. I have one "holy shit!" personal journal entry from the week I confirmed the news 3 months ago, but I really would have expected more from the girl who loves to reflect on all of the things.
Pregnancy has changed me in ways I never would have expected to be so sudden and unavoidable. From the moment that little pee stick had two lines on it, my thoughts went from "At least I get to finish that bottle of chardonnay in the fridge if this is negative again..." to this whole being paradigm shift and shockwave occurring that I can hardly explain and will never likely recover from completely, even when I do get to kill a bottle of chardonnay again. Sigh.
I have to say that parting with my wino tendencies of recent years is the only downside to creating a whole other human in my belly. I feel like a magic person walking around all of the time. Like a super hero. When I see other pregnant women I feel in awe of them too. I want to run up and high-five them and be like "eh, eh...right?", but I don't. Don't worry.
Now let's talk about body image. I have pretty much concluded that I've had body dysmorphia for most of my life. I dabbled in the "let me see how little I can eat and still get by" game in high school until I decided I liked food too much to be anorexic. Then, I felt like a cow at 21 when I discovered the hard way that you can't come home from a midnight shift at the bookstore where you work and eat a box of macaroni & cheese and drink Dr. Pepper & whiskey until 4 am all the time without eventually gaining 15 lbs. Then, there were my magical college years when I walked up and down hills at UT all day every day, ate whatever I wanted and remained a seemingly effortless size 4. My point is, folks, that I've never been more than 140 lbs. in my life, but I've always had this strange inner fat girl sabotaging my self-esteem in the mirror periodically since forever. I once told B. this past summer about my self-diagnosed body dysmorphia, and he replied with "what is that?...I thought that was just called being a woman."
Cut to 4 months pregnant, and I have this big growing belly hanging out of these glorious pants with a mile of extra fabric to support it, and I am so in love with my body. I feel completely beautiful and amazing every time I look in the mirror, and I'm fully interested in taking some classy Demi Moore esque photos at some point before all this is over. It's quite the lovely feeling, even if it is hormone induced.
Other changes have arisen in simply how I feel about the future and my current career woes. I truly feel blessed to have landed at a job in a district I admire and respect, at a campus environment that is warm and positive and filled with co-workers I love and adore, BUT all of it would be way more enjoyable if I wasn't teaching 20 thousand subjects that aren't art in a tiny windowless room. That's an exaggeration, of course. I actually really enjoy teaching Advisory. As Brandon put it during our lovely lunch conversation earlier today about it--it's like being given a blank check as a teacher. It's a class about life, and advice on how to be successful in it. It's basically a soap box curriculum, and I eat that up with a spoon. And the Art, Advisory & Computer wheel class (yeah, that's what it's called!) has made me feel like a genius at creating interdisciplinary lessons that challenge and engage the students in all three subjects at once. And when I do purely artistic lessons, I'm really learning to let go and just let the kids be free and have fun with art making, because I'm so limited in my time or ability to teach art in my classes. I'd rather them just make a happy mess some days if it's all I get to do. In the past, I've sometimes set the bar a little too high and made kids jump through unnecessary hoops in a "no pain, no gain" attitude toward certain art mediums. It's so neat that the year I barely get to teach art, I feel so rewarded as an art teacher though. My students still consider me their art teacher, and they seem to adore me more as an icon in their lives like never before. Hell, I even got awesome recognition in the newspaper recently!
I'm still the one having an identity crisis all the same though. It's the Computer Apps class...Typing, MS Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Internet Research Skills...these are not things I am passionate about teaching. And the kids forget that I'm the art teacher in that class. I'm so uncool in those classes. No one is idolizing me at the back of the computer lab. I recognize the personalities of students I could shape and inspire if I were teaching them to draw, paint or sculpt in those classes, and the opportunity is just lost as I watch them type and get annoyed with them when they can't ever seem to learn to save a document properly! I did brainstorm with Katie & Eric over our New Year's visit about exciting ways to make the class more fun and creative the second time around (I get new students and the class starts over in the 2nd semester). So, I'm actually really excited about implementing all of my new plans next week. Still, the fact remains, that it totally sucks... It's not very rewarding, and it feels like a practice year of teaching in the end. I'm really okay with that though at the moment. I'm learning so much about myself through this curve ball my career threw me. I never became a teacher because I thought I was done learning. I'm taking tons of notes and growing exponentially as a result all the time.
In closing, nothing much else seems to matter when I think of myself as the magical, body-loving, super hero creating a new member of our family we can't wait to meet in June. I'm going to have a new little friend to teach and learn from in all of the ways I can and can't imagine. I'm pretty sure it's a boy, but of course I could be wrong, and we will know if my instinct is correct in just 3 short weeks. So, stay tuned to the long-winded channel to find out!
