Back in the Saddle Again....

I would like to mention to anyone within shouting distance that I am back for my sixth year as principal of my little elementary school on the mesa.  Despite  the fact that my district has either A: Forgotten I am the principal out there or B: was truly desperate when I was hired,  I am back for another year of learning and fun.

I would like to tell you that change doesn't bother me at all, but I would be slightly untruthful about this if I did tell you so. Change is inevitable in any school..and usually really a good thing, on some levels.  But I will just mention that it is hard at the moment to write a welcoming back to school letter to the staff when I am not sure what is going to be true in the letter when they get it in a day or so.

Think I could start with "Hold on to your shirts, ladies and gentlemen?"

The one thing that I know for a certainty as an educational leader is that although chaos may be swirling around you (Kind of like Hurricane Hugo did to poor Charleston) said educational leader must remain calm, cool, and collected in the face of the debris that is sweeping past everyone's faces.  I am normally very good at that..with the exception of having beekeepers that decided to disturb a nest during school hours, leaving numerous stings on my faces as I marched indignantly after said beekeepers..trying not to choke them for hurting my students and scaring people to death. That, I think is a bit justified.

Change..and the concept of it can be unsettling to people, or it can be exciting and life changing. I have always thought that when things began to change, or if possibilities come up, it is always good from my  perspective that I when I am a little nervous about something, it usually works out well.  Don't ask me why..It's kind of like the dream I used to have before school started when I was teaching. I would dream that I would walk into my first grade/kindergarten/second grade classroom, and there would be gigantic football players sitting at the tables, informing me that why yes, they were in my class for the year. When I woke up trembling (yes, I am a bit intimidated by people taller than I am) this dream would guarantee that I would have a great first day of school.  The one year I didn't have this dream, I walked to pick up my new Kindergarten class, watching small boys circling the room as a piranha circles toes in the Amazon River...causing great confusion and a lot of delay to my neatly planned and orderly first day of school.

That one year was the reason I loved my Football player dream. I will note I do not have a football player dream for my first days of school as an administrator.  I am sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why that is, but I can't think of why my brain wouldn't cooperate about this  at the moment.

So this year, I am noting that I am a little on edge and a bit nervous about the changes that may entering my comfort zone at school. And to be honest, that is a good thing. I know that things happen for a reason and when they are supposed to happen. The universe has a way of taking care of things and situations that always tends to work out more successfully than what I have envisioned in my small principal like brain.

So I will continue preparing schedules, hiring the remaining staff we need to hire, print calendars, and look forward to more change and more exciting possibilities around the corner. I am fortunate to be in an environment where the impossible can come possible every day.

And buying new Sharpies to begin the year is always a bonus. :)

Moving up the Dating Continuum...

I am happy to announce (perhaps) that I have now entered a new level on the "Dating Continuum". I don't think one really exists, but since I am in education, and deal with continuums daily, why not construct a dating one? A 1 (or beginning step) would be Date One, with a 4 (or Advanced) would be when you actually get engaged..or married. Hmmm, this has possibilities.

Ok, back to my current level.

I am now at the level which will now give the acronym of "MWRPW". In case you are wondering what in the world this stands for, I will now elaborate.

It's "Men Who Resemble Psychotic Women".

If you know anything about me at all, I am fond of Lifetime movies.  And in Lifetime movies, there always seems to be a woman who goes psychotic and wrecks havoc everywhere she goes..normally on her husband or boyfriend.

Like Betty Broderick.

Meredith Baxter plays her in a two part (yes, it takes two movies to tell this story) movie in which Betty Broderick loses her husband to his secretary, and she gets mad. When I tell you she gets mad, she does things to them that will not land her in the "Nice Woman Club" and ends with killing both her ex-husband and his new wife. And this is a true story, I might add. She would be one of the founders of the "Psychotic Women" club.  

Now most people are under the belief that it is women that usually go nuts and do things that would make you call the police when a relationship ends..or begins...or when things do not go exactly as they expect them to go. And I am not denying this. I've seen it happen. I've also been the one that would panic when a man didn't contact me 1.2 minutes after I contacted them. ..and to be sure that the world as I knew it had come to an end. Any of my friends can verify  this as well. Poor them. I am not proud of this fact, but that is when I was at the beginning step of the dating continuum. So I should be given some credit that I have learned not to flip out when I wasn't contacted back within an unreasonable amount of time. This fact could help explain one of the reasons I am still single. 

However, I am now encountering men who exhibit this kind of "Betty Broderick" behavior as well. Perfectly normal looking and reasonable looking men, who actually have jobs and teeth.  (Please remember those two traits are part of my criteria for men).  They seem normal, they act like they are reasonable, focused, funny, real..a lot of the things that I find attractive in a man. 

The second facet of this disability is that they think that I am absolutely amazing. They love my voice, my wit,  my laugh. They are drawn and connected to me in a way that they have NEVER been connected and drawn to a woman before in their lives.  Pretty neat, huh?

The only issue is that they haven't met me yet. 

Danger, Danger, Will Robinson. 

The third facet of this disability (and yes, I qualify MWRPW as a disability) is that the reasonableness and normal like behavior switches into someone who resembles....

You know the movie. Remember the poor bunny?

The men with this issue begin to exhibit "Fatal Attraction" characteristics.  It kind of goes like this:

 Man with MWRPW: "Why don't you think I'm amazing like I think you are?" 

Me: " I haven't met you yet."

Man with MWRPW:  "You need to live in the moment, let yourself go, not hold back".

Me: "I just met you". 

Man with MWRPW: "We will be a great couple together. I don't understand why you are not letting yourself feel what I feel is an deep, once in a life time connection".

Me:  "I just met you".

Man with MWRPW:  "Well, something is obviously wrong with you since you (You can pick from the following choices) :

                                      1.  Don't think I'm amazing.

                                      2.  Won't have sex with me on the first date.

                                      3.  Act normal. 

Me:  (in my inside voice) " Are you kidding me"?

I guess it is reasonable to make the connection between men and women in their 40s and 50s that are thrust into a dating world in which all the rules are different, and the ground that you are are is a slippery slope leading to psychotic disaster. So I will continue on the path of my dating continuum world, and pray that somewhere between the second step (approaching dating proficiency) and the fourth step (a relationship) is that out there somewhere there is a normal man who is...well, as normal as you can expect someone to be without whipping out a knife and trying to slash me because I won't conform to their ideal of what ideal is.

I don't think that's too much to ask. Is it? 

When you hit a bump...

It seems as if most cities have speed bumps. They are highly annoying, I might add. I know that they are placed in strategic positions so that normal people who are just trying to get to their designation can't get there quite as quickly as they would like. It's not like I speed or anything excessive like that, it's just that slowing down is not in my DNA..which is a good and a bad thing.

I have been pretty proud of myself lately. I've been handling events and people more like a normal person would..well, more like a normal person who is meeting new people and trying to navigate the world of singledom.  For instance, I started talking to a man who seemed nice and interesting. We did the online dating thing.

1. We e-mailed on the online site.
2. We then exchanged numbers and started to text back and forth.
3. He seemed to find me very attractive, desirable..which kind of amazed me, since we hadn't met.
4. When I mentioned that fact, he got defensive and said that I was "holding on to the past" since I didn't feel like I should run off to Tahiti with him, and tell him that he was the greatest thing since the Coach purse...or the invention of the Sharpie.
5. I decided he was a bit psycho...and declined to talk to him again.
6. Bonus points for me.

So there I was, very proud of myself, and thinking that I was becoming like the "Rambo" of  the dating world, when it happened. 

I got an e-mail from a man that I was fond of, and someone who had been very generous and kind to me. 

Do you ever get a funny tingling in your chest when you see something that you know is going to be bad and scary? That "heart attack" kind of feeling which spreads throughout your body and makes you feel like you are going to throw up? 

That's how I felt when I saw the e-mail..before I even read it. 

Not good.

He talked about how busy he was, how he missed talking to me, how he was still planning to move to Thailand, or the Philippines perhaps, and that I would be proud of him because he was going to take two trips in the late summer and fall. I really don't remember the rest of it, because as I was reading/skimming it, the panic inside me began to grow and build. 

I had (foolishly, I know) mentioned to him that he could come over to my house for dinner sometime. He said although the invitation was "alluring" he was now "pretty much" dating someone that works for him,  and someone who was like a mother figure.  She wasn't the description of the "ideal" that he said he had to have to be attracted to someone, but I know people do change. 

But it hurt.  And it was even more hurtful since I felt I was on the right track..and he was a friend, or so I thought. 

And I didn't want it to hurt. I was tired of being hurt...and feeling hurt. 

So I have been highly irritated with myself about it all, because deep inside I knew I was holding on to feelings that I knew were not healthy for me.  And I still have some work to do in that area. 

But then I realized that by hurting I work through my feelings, and then can let them go.  I was confusing someone being nice and generous to me with love. But at least I took a chance, and although it does hurt to know what people say is not always what they mean, I will be ok. 

Bumps are necessary things in life as well. I don't like them, but I will get over this one too, and once again add to my "Lessons in Life" manual. 

Which is getting pretty thick, I might add.