/journaling (Up late after chaperoning school’s Winter Formal tonight, and I have tomorrow off, which is nice)
Have some GAL stuff that I’ll post here.....
Went for a 15-minute run around the parish neighborhood this morning after dropping off OS at Sunday School. I know it’s probably not that long of a run, but I felt great after it, and what probably helped is that I had a really good breakfast before, and I didn’t wait until I taught a day’s worth of classes and THEN ran in the afternoon—I went for a run before I wore myself down with a day’s activities. Tomorrow I may do more running—or I could throw myself in our complex’s pool and just swim and splash around for a while, and do something lower-impact.
One GAL thing that I’ve tried (to no avail) to get back into is Knights of Columbus. Our parish has an active chapter, and they hosted a breakfast this morning. Once I picked up OS from Sunday School, I went over to the parish hall where the breakfast was and decided to seek out a contact so I could get the gears moving on that. Sure enough, the man that I approached and struck up a conversation with was the father of 2 former students—his daughters that I had were among the most extraordinary students and young women that I’ve had, and I told him as much. I got his contact info, so I’ll reach out to him and get moving on that. Of all the people, I find this person....weird, but cool.
My undergrad university has an alumni chapter in Los Angeles, and this Saturday they are hosting an outing in Downtown LA—meeting at a restaurant for lunch / drinks, and then going to a Kings / Blackhawks hockey game (I absolutely love hockey, though baseball is my first love for sports, and it’s been forever since I’ve been to a hockey game—there are few things like a live hockey game in-person). I registered for the event today and bought a ticket. W’s mom (my MIL) usually is around on Saturdays anyway, so I asked W if that would be the case this Saturday. She then asked ‘why’ and I know R2C and some others would have wanted me to be vague, but I wasn’t vague with her on this....and I just told her I’m doing this.
Before chaperoning tonight’s dance, I went to find something to eat relatively close to the venue. My preferred option (a Mediterranean place) is closed on Sundays (boo!—though the religion teacher in me gets it, as I implore my students every week to observe the 3rd Commandment and ‘keep holy the Lord’s Day’). So.....I needed another option. After searching online, I came across a Cuban place, and had that for dinner. Wasn’t sure what I wanted, so I ordered an appetizer sampler platter and had that for my meal, along with a pineapple soda (a Cuban drink). Ate the whole thing and made a pig out of myself, but it was so good. The fried pork was delicious—salty and crispy and tender and oh so good, but everything else was amazing. After that, I decided to go out and get a coffee because I knew that tonight would be a late-ish night—so I stopped by a Vietnamese sandwich place that serves coffee, and some of my students recommended it. Iced americano latte—yum. Only in SoCal—Cuban for dinner, followed-up by a Vietnamese coffee.
Despite the distance between W and I, and her relatively poor attitude demonstrated towards me, I’ve been in a remarkably good mood the last couple of weeks. Before I went to the Vietnamese place to get coffee, I rocked out in my car and sang to Belinda Carlisle’s ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth.’
The epiphany, if you want to call it that, that I realized tonight in my adventures is: it’s almost like I have to / need to ‘date myself’—to treat myself right first, before I date someone else (W, or otherwise), even though a Cuban dinner and coffee afterwards sounds like a really good date idea, tbh. That I’d have to make myself someone that I’d want to be with first, then worry about someone else hopefully sliding in alongside me down the road.
Tomorrow on my day off I hope to do a number of things:
*Go to early AM confession after dropping the boys off at sitter / school *Getting some new blue jeans (part of the upgrading the wardrobe thing)—most of my jeans are a size 36, but with the weight I’ve lost, I could easily wear a size 34 (I do have one pair of size 34 jeans, but that is it) *At some point in the not-too-distant future, I’d like to get measured for a new suit (I saw this on a post on a different thread from R2C). My current suit gets it done, but I know I could do much better, and look much better by finding something that really fits me right. My mom asked me what I would like for my birthday in April, and I told her: if you would like to do anything, then I would please like a contribution that I can put towards getting a new suit. Getting proper measurements is the first step.
And a couple of observations before bed:
*I’ve talked about hopefully piggybacking on a school trip to Spain or Italy (Italy looks like the front-runner right now, but we’ll see), but there are a number of places I’d like to visit, too. Would love to go to Australia, would love to go to Prague, and would love to go to Israel (OS and I had a discussion in the car on the way to Sunday School about the difference between Israelites [the Jewish people of the Old Testament] versus Israelis [inhabitants / natives of the current nation of Israel], and I told him I’d love to go there someday.) I think my school has sent a group in the past, and man I’d want to be in if that happens again. As a Christian, it would be extraordinary, from a historical / religious perspective. Would love to experience the culture, as I’ve heard it’s a very modern, first-world nation, and I’m sure the food is outstanding, too. I’ve also heard that the women are outstanding, too—Middle Eastern / Israeli women can be stunning (but then again any nationality or race can be—beauty is beauty, regardless of skin color or background), and I’ve heard that Israeli women love American men, and while I’m not sure how totally true that is, it sure sounds nice.
*At Winter Formal tonight, I wore my turquoise dress shirt, in the newer size. It fits great, and I received a compliment from a former student about it—she commented that she always wants to say something when she sees me wearing it. It’s funny—turquoise is not the shirt that I like the most (I’ll wear purple or a couple of other shades of blue more often), but it seems to be the one that I wear the best, if that makes sense. Lots of compliments when I wear turquoise, which is really nice, and affirming, and does wonders for PMA and overall self-image.
