Raydiance and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Yesterday constituted my worst day at work so far. It started off well enough. Every Friday my coworkers bring in food for breakfast. I thought it was my week and brought in a Mexican Egg Bake that I threw together at the last minute the night before (recipe below). I also brought homemade guacamole and whole wheat cinnamon raisin english muffins.

Two other teachers thought it was their week and brought in food as well: doughnuts, bagels, french toast sticks, etc. I haven't been able to participate in the Friday breakfast for a while because the food they bring in is often very fattening, but since I brought in my own food I had a nice breakfast before school began. I did give in temptation and ate 1/2 of a glazed doughnut but I deserved a treat.


By the end of the day I was laying flowers at the alter of temptation and ate 2 glazed doughnuts and went drinking that evening. To my credit, I did make some positive decisions such as eating a turkey sandwich before I went to the bar. I drank diet coke and rum, and...well...that's about it folks. I'm not too upset about the doughnut situation. At first I was beating myself up for eating those doughnuts when I knew it was because I had a bad day. Now I am grateful that I was CONSCIOUS of why I ate the doughnuts. Before I realized I am an emotional eater, I would mindlessly turn to food and wonder why the dryer kept shrinking my pants and why every store decided to cut their size 12's smaller. When you are truly aware of your actions and their agent provocateurs, you have the power to change things.

That brings me to my Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. In a stroke of genius I decided to hand out gradesheets to my special education co-taught class. This is the class that has such superstars as the Peacock kid.

The period started off with a confrontation with a newcomer, a black girl who has the most disgusting attitude I've ever encountered. After trying to recover from that (and by recover I mean resist the urge to kick her in the forehead with a six inch stiletto), my stride was off kilter. When you teach you get into a stride, a momentum, and that is what helps you get through the day. That stride comes from excessive planning and being mentally, physically, and emotionally prepared to teach. Teaching is a job where you have to be "on" at all times. So one kid asks me for a gradesheet and I say "Oh yeah" and pass them out even though that wasn't in my plans. But I wasn't "on" anymore, the girl got under my skin. This move was a monstrous mistake. I realized this as a maelstrom of moronic cretin's moved my way. They had awakened, suddenly realizing that they were failing. Since I was the messenger, they decided that it was my fault. I explained to the class that I would not use any class time to discuss grades and if they were really concerned they could talk to be before or after school.

Yea, I really thought that announcement would work with these kids. Had I been "on" I could have appreciated the panic in their face and chuckled while I imagined their possible punishments. These are the same students that I constantly have to wake up, that come to class under the influence of God knows what, that constantly talk or refuse to do work. I've been warning all of them for weeks now that they were failing. They are not failing because they received bad grades, they have no grades because they haven't turned a single item in.

As they continued to try to suck me in to their confusion by yelling and throwing temper tantrums, I moved on to the next assignment and they went back to sleep. However, my co-teacher exacerbated the situation by questioning me about the grades for kids in front of kids. She also told me that since it is special ed if a lot of kids are failing we could get in trouble or even get fired. You can imagine what this did to my psyche for the rest of the day. I wanted to go into the bathroom and cry because I was SO ANGRY. But I couldn't do that, I had to teach. That's what I miss about office jobs - you can go somewhere to gather yourself and return to work. That's nearly impossible in my profession.

As I sped away from the school at 2:45 p.m. I decided that these kids either (a) are playing a game with me and hope their behavior will provoke me to change my mind or (b) honestly do not see the consequences of their actions (well, inaction would be more appropriate). It's probably both. Then I had a eureka moment. When it came to eating, I fell into the "b" category. I was not conscious of the fact that I have to work on maintaining my weight every day. I was not conscious of how I abused food, alcohol, and my body. I was not conscious of how I let myself go. I had the nerve to be surprised and angry when, last year, I discovered the night before an interview that I couldn't fit into my old business suit.


From that perspective, I am just like some of these kids, except I don't have anybody to attack or blame but myself. I am my own teacher. When I look at the scale I really don't believe I lost 12 pounds. Sometimes I fear that this is just a phase and I will put the weight back on in a couple of months or that I won't reach my goal. I imagine what people will think when I get fat again after I've talked all of this self help bullshit in my blog. However, I remind myself that I have the key now: I am conscious. Hopefully that will be enough to prevent a prolonged relapse that will result in my gaining back all of the weight and more. No--that will be enough. Maybe this day wasn't so bad after all :-)


Recipes I thew together this week:

Mexican Egg Bake:

12 eggs
1 cup Vanilla soy milk
1/2 bag Frozen Stoplight Peppers (Trader Joe's)
Dave's Chipotle Hot Sauce
Sea Salt & Black Pepper (Please invest in quality versions of these spices and thank me later)
2% Kraft Mexican Cheese Blend

To taste:

Dash of Cayenne Pepper
Garlic Paste (Trader Joe's)
Onion
Cilantro (Gourmet Garden)

You can add move vegetables or meat, don't have to use soy milk, and experiment with the seasonings. Bake at 350 degrees in a 12x12 dish (or something close) for about 20 - 30 minutes. Be sure to watch it because I overcooked it but it was still good. Oh and make sure you spray the dish with a nonstick spray. I use a fat free butter flavor spray. Needless to say I got rave reviews. Two people told me that my guacamole was the best they've had in a long time (One said: "...and that's a shame because I'm Mexican.").

Bonus:

The other night I craved Chinese food so I took some frozen broccoli and nuked it. Then I sauteed it in sesame oil, rice vinegar, some hoisin sauce, sesame seeds, soy sauce (Bragg's), hot chili sauce, and salt and pepper. Now that I think about it ginger would have been really tasty in that mix. I threw all of that together and ate it with some brown rice and it was tasty and filling.