Weird and Powerful

 Krystal: I found this random quote posted on “The Book” as I like to call Facebook. After exhaustive research, I was not able to determine the source. Whoever said it, though, was dead on.  This quippy quote resonated with me so much that I felt it necessary to text it to Kate one morning. We were in separate rooms of the apartment, so I could very well have walked my phone over to her; however, texting it seemed to make it more “special”.

Kate: And it is special because it is exactly how our friendship started six years ago... 

2008

Some of us from school were planning a get-together in Portsmouth for some dinner, drinks, and dancing (before the big baby-boom of MVMS happened). I was in the teachers’ room having lunch when Krystal came in to grab something from the refrigerator. I had really only had one prior conversation with her across the table at the “Wan” one ninth period.

Krystal: That’s Schezwan Gardens for all of you who aren’t hip to the lingo, and ninth period is code for drinking session after school on a Friday.  We used to go often to celebrate the success of making it through the arduous work week.

Kate: I remember thinking, this girl is funny and seems to have no filter. Though we seemed to have different personalities, I felt we had a lot in common too and had the potential to be friends, which led me to asking her if she wanted to join the Portsmouth gathering that day in the teachers’ room.

And the rest is history.

Krystal: Thank God she thought my lack of filter was amusing- not everyone agrees. At that time in my life I was living alone, had recently lost a bunch of weight but had not found my confidence, and had no social life to speak of. I walked into that lunch room and she invited me into her life at the exact moment that I needed a friend. It was kismet. And she was right, I am funny. But as I always tell her, she’s actually the “funny one”. I just seem funnier because I say the F-word a lot.

Kate: I’m not sure about that, I mean me being the funny one, not the F word comment; that is very true. (That’s the no filter part I was referring to earlier).

2014

Krystal: Kate and I have obviously become BFFLs (best friends for life as dubbed by our former Bagel Works barista, Nadia) over the years and have done a lot of “stuff” together. Last weekend, for example, while in Boston for our third Jay Z concert (That’s right; we’re teachers, we read self-help books, and we are down with the Jigga Man!), we went out to lunch with The Smiths. Andrew was supposed to meet us at the restaurant but was running late per usual. I thought Kate was annoyed by his tardiness because she was keeping hyper vigilant watch towards the door.

What I didn’t know was that she had a surprise planned that she was dying to share. Once he arrived, practically before he had even sat down, she whipped out a little flip book that contained a super clever post-it note message revealing that she and Andrew are taking me on a trip to Las Vegas for my upcoming 30th birthday. These are some seriously GREAT friends I have. Overwhelmed by their generosity, I had tears of joy in my eyes and had managed to sweat right through my sweater.

Kate: Good thing it’s a sweater.

Krystal: SEE! I always say she’s the funny one!

Kate: Not only do I want her 30th birthday to be a memorable one, but I’ve never been to Vegas and can’t wait to hit the strip and see the sights. I also made sure we come home on a Thursday so that I have 3 days to recover from what I’m imagining will be some long nights.

Krystal: And by long she means she is likely to stay up past 9:30...Gasp! She has been practicing her late nights lately, and I didn’t know why. Now it all makes sense! What I need to work on prior to the trip is my Veg-ass. I have been hitting the gym once a week in preparation! I’ve let myself get soft this winter, what with random Cone Heads from Friendly's and a dark chocolate Lindt ball after every dinner. My Veg-ass needs a major tune up. When I mentioned that I should probably go to the gym this morning, Kate’s response was, “Yes, you should.” Her support means the world to me.

Kate: Whenever it is a question between working out and not, I will ALWAYS say do it. There’s an open invitation to join me at boot camp…

Krystal: Hahahaha! I am not much of a tire flipper, but thanks.

Kate: This folks, is how and why we work.

Our friend and yoga goddess, Tina, recently wrote on a Selvesie™ (that’s a selfie taken by two people) of us that friendship is powerful. I couldn’t agree more.

Krystal: Ditto. Our friendship certainly is weird and powerful. I'm weird and you're powerful. You can give credit to those boot camp classes you've been attending lately.

Daring Greatly

With Brené Brown at the Massachusetts Conference for Women in Boston, 2012.

Krystal: Ladies and Gentlemen, we are so sorry about the delay of this post. We’ve been über busy this week, what with having actual jobs (a fact we had both conveniently forgotten during our 17 day hiatus) and spending this weekend in Boston dining (at Davio’s), wine-ing (still at Davio’s), and taking in a show (at the Boston Opera House). We saw Once, which was amazing (for two highly educated chicks, this is the one word we kept falling back on to describe dinner, the wine, AND the show. BUT according to a recent BuzzFeed, it’s one of many words we’re supposed to stop saying once we’re over 30-which I’m NOT...yet!)

Kate: And I am, but they can NOT make me stop saying it. Totes adorbs maybe, but not amazing.

Krystal: Well, the fact of the matter is the lead in Once WAS totes adorbs and the show WAS amazing! If you ever get the chance, go see it. You must.

This sage advice leads me to our next topic for contemplation: Self-help. (I’m currently picturing that Mike Myer’s SNL character, Linda Richman of Coffee Talk, “I’ll give you a topic...talk amongst yourselves.”)

Kate: I have a confession to make: I am a self-help junkie.

Being the Oprah-follower that I am, I finally felt the draw to read some of the books she touted on her talk show once I turned thirty (is a tri-life-crisis a thing?). I started out with Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, and I am not exaggerating when I say it changed my life because it changed my way of thinking.

From then, I was hooked, and my love for self-help reading began.

Krystal: See-Oprah again! Let me assure you all, she is serious when she says she’s hooked.

And while Kate has been helping herself for only five or so years, I have been reading self-help for a much longer time but with much less seriousness and frequency. My first foray into helping myself was in the form of a book picked up at a yard sale when I was in my teens. I was 16, newly single, and trolling yard sales for fun one Saturday morning (I was suuuuper cool). As I poked through the book box, my favorite part of any yard sale, I found the 1992 classic: Planning a Wedding with Divorced Parents by Cindy Moore. With optimism for my future marital bliss in my heart and 25 cents burning a hole in the pocket of what is sure to have been sweatpants, I bought the book and took it to my weekend home at my dad’s. As most know, this book has yet to come in handy.

What have come in handy over the past five plus years, are all of the recommendations that Kate has made to me. Kate has introduced me to the works of Patti Digh, Gretchen Rubin, Deepak Chopra, Marie Forleo, Marianne Williamson, Danielle LaPorte, Gabby Bernstein, and the courageously vulnerable woman we met last winter, Brené Brown. I have learned a tremendous amount about myself, creativity, love, and life from all of these brilliant minds...except that damn Eckhart Tolle...he’s good, but he’s a bit too deep for my liking. And while I'm being totally honest, I only read books Kate has read first for two reasons: 1. I save money because she buys them all and then lets me borrow them and 2. She highlights and makes notes- It's like CliffNotes for self-help books- Kate's Notes™!

Kate: I stumbled upon Brené’s work through one of the previously mentioned self-help writers. She had recently given a TED talk on vulnerability that to this day is one of the most viewed talks on the site. The title of her most popular work, Daring Greatly, spoke to me. And through the power of Amazon.com. I was reading it within days of discovering it. This book and Brené’s work is pure genius. Because everyone knows what it is like to fear vulnerability and putting ourselves out there.

Once you finish the book though, you feel empowered to dare greatly and “put yourself in the arena” as she likes to say.

Not that I have become a daredevil or done anything too drastically different, yet, but it has encouraged me to take small steps towards that fear-inducing word, change.

Krystal: Admittedly, I have always been a fearful person. Afraid to try new things, go new places, risk failure…ew, failure is the WORST. However, this book opened my eyes to the importance of acting in the face of fear rather than cowering. Brené wrote about being courageous and taking risks and not being afraid to fall on your face every now and then.

When discussing whether or not we should: A. Start this blog and B. Actually publish it for the world to see, Kate and I both battled the fear monster a bit. “What might people think?” “Who will actually read it?” “Who cares?”  Ultimately, our desire to be ourselves, write our truth, and try something brave, won out. This is our attempt to get into the arena. (Although Kate wouldn’t let me include the “F” word in this entry, so I don’t know exactly HOW daring we are going to get here…)

Kate: Like I said before, small steps...

The book taught us that no life is free from criticism and judgement. However, the only people who really have a right to criticize and judge are those who are also “in the arena” putting themselves out there. This is true of anything: writing, teaching, parenting, etc.

The following quote inspired Brené to do the work she does and write her book, and, through Brené, has inspired us to take more chances:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the  man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly… who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

- Theodore Roosevelt.  

Krystal: Old Teddy also said something about carrying a big stick…wink, wink. 

There's No Day Like Snow Day(s)...

Unless it's a Rain Day.

Thursday, you sweet sweet vacation extender, you.

Krystal: Being teachers, there's nothing like the first snow day. As soon as the temperatures had dipped below freezing, heck, way before that, we had placed a bet about which day of this sure-to-be-too-long winter we would have our first snow day. We both had confidently picked days in mid-December, hopeful that we would have just one before vacation. December flew by, vacation arrived and life was good.

Kate: We were starting to have visions of being on the beach mid-June as opposed to early July and really believed that the Almanac’s prediction of the coldest and snowiest winter in years was false. Then came Hercules. Typically, I would never want a snow day on a Thursday; it’s the best day of the week for me at school, and it means the weekend is close by. Something about returning to school on a Thursday, post New Year’s really did seem awful though, so I was secretly hoping we could have just one more day and return Friday for one fast-paced day before the weekend came. When the news hit that our wish had come true, I knew that I had to do something productive with my bonus hours (since I hadn’t in the week and a half prior, really).

Krystal: God forbid she sleep until noon and lay around in sweatpants all day (My not so secret wish for just about every non-work day…)

Kate: It was time to get down to business. Only after a trip to the gym and some snow day pancakes of course.

This is how I roll.

Krystal: The gym- Ew. The pancakes- yum! But the pressure to perform got the best of me, and I too decided to be productive. I spent the greater part of my room pulling things...all SORTS of things out of my overflowing drawers. I started with my tights- a collection of over 40 that I am overly impressed by. I’ve heard word that teachers shouldn't wear colored tights- it’s a young look to be sure. But as I rolled each and every pair of my rainbow colored leg coverings, I felt supreme vibrancy and started plotting outfits.  

Kate: I had a mission: mop the kitchen floor. For some, this might not be a big deal. Enjoyable perhaps even. But I have never classified myself as a cleaner. I didn’t get the clean-gene. As an almost 35 year old, I figured it was time to start seeing what this hard-core cleaning thing is about.

Krystal: I still have almost five years before this urge is liable to strike...

Kate: I had good intentions a couple of months before when I actually bought a new mop. I conveniently “couldn’t find the time” though before now, what with having to be places like Live Juice, Hermanos, Bagel Works, Portsmouth, and Boston. It’s hard being a socialite (said in sarcastic tone).

First, I busted out the vacuum for a pre-cleaning of the floor. I even moved the baker’s rack that probably hasn’t been moved in years (Kell, you can attest to this). I moved furniture out and was ready to go. And go I went. After about 5 minutes of some intense scrubbing, I was starting to sweat, so off went one layer of clothing.

Would Martha clean wearing this?

Krystal: This is around the time that I snuck out of my room to see what the heck was going on out there...and HAD to snap a picture. The sight was priceless, but I couldn’t sit around and watch; I promptly ran back to my room in case she asked me to help scrub something.

Kate: I was like Cinderella, if she had just come from the gym.

Krystal: I was like the mouse that hides from the evil cat. You know, that fat one...Gus Gus.

Kate: I was feeling so accomplished once the kitchen was done that I moved on to the bathroom. I hadn’t committed to this in my mind once starting because the bathroom in our apartment can be a scary place. It really is true what they say about just starting something though because it gave me the momentum to keep going.

Meanwhile, Krystal was still “organizing tights”. - I knew exactly what she was doing. I mean she does have a lot of tights, but over an hour’s worth???

Krystal: To be fair, I unloaded many drawers...my numerous scarf drawers, my strapless bras and shoe laces drawer, and my broken necklaces, contacts, kitschy buttons, and tacks drawer….all needed to be cleaned, I assure you.

After hours of scrubbing on Kate’s part and hours of avoiding scrubbing on mine, we decided to hose off and take our show on the road. A quick trip to Live Juice for some sustenance and a chilly shuffle down the street to True Brew Cafe, and we were about to do the thing we had talked so long about doing. We started this here blog!

******

There has since been another snow day on Friday- snowy, frigid and wholly uneventful.  

Kate: Unless getting your car door handle replaced is an event.

Krystal: And getting Beauregard, my devilishly handsome 2008 Honda Civic, a little oil jobby and inspection…

Kate: Thank God we had the weekend to relax after all of that. A trip to Portsmouth was just what we needed to get out of the house and mentally prepare for the inevitable return Monday.

Krystal: With my bags by the door, my “I’m such a rebel” nose hoop safely resting in a drawer and replaced with my “I’m a teacher” stud, and my back to school outfit laid out, I went to sleep promptly at 10:15 PM- ready to get back to this teacher thing once and for all.

Kate: Except that didn’t happen. A rain day, however, did: freezing rain, light rain, heavy rain. Rain of all kinds. Which brings us to the present.  

Krystal: Which was, I suppose, a present. Because on this day, the words they were a flowin’. 

You’re welcome.

Project Themoir: The Beginning

Krystal & Kate- If one selfie is good, four must be GREAT!

Krystal: Ah yes, the beginning. Anyone who knows me can confirm this as fact: I don’t tell a short story, nor do I always tell an entirely true one. Sometimes, only sometimes, I embellish. This doesn’t make me a liar, but I guess I am what some might call- an unreliable narrator. But don’t fret, you can trust Kate. Her word is truth. I swear.

One might ask us, “Krystal and Kate, why are you writing a blog? Haven’t you tried this before?” The answer, for me, begins when I was four. Allow me to regale you with the details- most of them are irrelevant, but then, I already told you I don’t know how to keep it short, and I honestly love writing about the topics of “me” and “us”.

****

I have been writing for as long as I can remember. I started when I was in preschool at The Crayon Connection in Concord, NH; I’d scrawl stories about the most mundane topics on that sickly beige paper with the solid blue lines and the little red dashes (or is it the other way around?) ...Pause please while I Google Image the paper of which I am speaking; accuracy matters in these things.

...Back with inconclusive results. Apparently, no one thought to take pictures of preschool handwriting paper back in 1988, and if they did, they didn’t feel compelled to upload it onto the Internet in 2013. 

Anywhosy, as I was typing, I have always had a love of words. Reading was my first passion, but as soon as I was able to hold my pencil correctly, I was scribbling nearly illegible words of my own across the page. Ponies, princesses, real life people, all topics were relevant and fodder for my stories. During my kindergarten year, my teacher Mrs. Donovan, one of my favorite characters from my elementary school days, worried about my sight and fine motor skills. When I wrote, no matter what the story was about,  all of my words flowed together with no distinction between the end of one and the beginning of the other.

Having told me time and time again to space my words carefully, Mrs. Donovan suggested having my eyes tested in case I perhaps suffered from some horrific sight deficiency. Upon testing, I was diagnosed with shockingly perfect vision (It wasn’t until several years later that my sight decided to shit the bed). With my eyes cleared of all blame, my patient, angel of a teacher decided to teach me a trick, and by trick I mean she forced me to put my dirty little index finger down between each word to ensure adequate spacing.

In addition to the fact that it was highly embarrassing, I distinctly recall thinking to myself, “Who has time for this?!”  What she didn’t realize was that I had no time for spaces or finger tricks-I had ideas a-flowing. Words were flying through my brain, and I had to get them onto paper as fast as I could. I was convinced, even at that young age, that I was going to write the next Noisy Nora or Blueberries for Sal (my personal favorites at the time).

Years have passed (nearly 25 in fact...I’m chasing 30 like a run away dog!!) and I managed to figure out how to write quickly (thank you, computers!) and space my words correctly (tap the space-bar and voila!) I have never run short of ideas. What I have run short on in self-confidence and at times, motivation. Thankfully, I met Kate.

...Hmmm...I don’t think I answered the hypothetical question that one might ask us upon hearing we started a blog. Kate, can you take this one?

Thanks pal.

Kate: Unlike Krystal, I am not going to start from the from the first time I picked up a writing utensil; after all, I am five years older, so we could be looking at a significantly longer background story. I’ll spare you the details and skip to the good part.

Some of you may remember a little blog called “The High Five Herald” that Krystal and I started writing in the early days of our friendship. It was a blog about the highs and lows (mostly lows) of our dating experiences at the time. We had a blast collaborating and writing together, but sadly we realized that continuing to write about our pathetic love lives was not sending the right message to the Universe, so we said goodbye to “The High Five Herald” - not that it changed the dating situation much...

Back to the point: Over the last 5 years, we have had a lot of ideas for other writing ventures that never came to fruition; we even tried our own solo projects, but without each other to hold one another accountable to keep writing, they fizzled out. FYI, Krystal may have been inspired to continue with a genius blog she started, “Fatter, Poor, Almost 30.” 

Krystal: I was! Check that business out here. 

Kate: I approached Krystal with the idea again to start a blog.  I just have this feeling that we were meant to do a creative project together.  We are best friends with different points of view and writing voices. We experience 99% of our lives together being roommates, working in the same school, and sharing the same core group of friends. Why not write a blog about our lives from both perspectives? And hence, the idea of the Themoir was born.

Krystal: After re-reading my diatribe, I realize that my story was long-winded and off topic (shocking). When I asked Kate if it worked, her response was, “It’s funny.” You can blame her for the fact that I truly believe I am hysterical and fail to censor or revise my work even when knowingly off-base. All joking aside, our hope is that we can produce a joint work that is both funny and insightful. We hope that our words will make you laugh and think- maybe run out and buy a book or download a new song you hadn’t heard of. Maybe, you’ll even start writing yourself. There can never be too many words in the world.  

Kate: We are constantly telling our students to do what they love, follow their passion, and take risks. We thought we’d follow our own advice and do the same. New year, new beginnings, new adventures.

“I don’t believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.” - Oprah (Krystal: Classic Kate…)