Complaining

Stay with me for a second while I whine.

Seriously, I just need to complain for a little bit... It will probably be therapeutic for me and maybe it will be entertaining for you.

So this last Monday was a sad day for me. It marked the end of my Winter Break and brought my nose down close to the grindstone again. Don’t get me wrong — I enjoy what I do. It’s just that I was not quite ready to leave the hammock lifestyle of making the ever tough decision of either napping or reading all day.

Yeah, yeah, I am sure that I am getting no sympathy from all you Oregon folk shivering through another frigid, grey day but still, stay with me for a second.

I went from spending every day laughing with my family and girlfriend to saying a tearful goodbye in the Majuro airport with like 30 Marshallese people watching. By the way, that is no exaggeration, there were so many people watching me that I felt like I should have charged admission.

Sniff, sniff, “I am going to miss you so much, Tiff...”

Sniff, sniff, “I am going to miss you so much too, Tim..”

And out of the corner of my eye I can’t help but notice people watching with mouths gapped open and eyes wide... All that was missing was previews and popcorn.

So that is another reason why going back was so tough on Monday. I went from having this huge fun time with a bunch of people I loved visiting all of these beautiful places that made me feel like I was walking across the cardboard face of a postcard to telling Christy to stop spitting spit-wads at the wall. It felt like the day after a really good party.

Talk about a hangover...

And here is the thing, my kids were all right there with me. Joanna didn’t have her usual spark-laden attitude, Josephine only told me “whatever” once and Laijab didn’t make one inappropriate comment about wanting to make Tiffany his wife.

Everyone was flat.

So I struggled through Monday, came home and calculated how many days until I got on that fabulous air-conditioned flight and got back to my loved ones.

One hundred and fifty six days. Dang.

On Tuesday I decided to try something a little bit different. I decided to just be completely honest with my class.

“Hey class,” I said. “The reason that I have been grumpy is because my whole family and my girlfriend all just left and I am feeling pretty dang sad about it all and I am just a little bit frustrated... How about all of you?”

They stared at me for a while. They raised their eyebrows. I felt like they were making the same face my Dad did when I offered to take his car off his hands for the night when I was 16. Like, “did you really just say that?”

“What does grumpy mean?” Christy finally asked.

“It means when you are kind of fed up and just want to growl,” I told them and made a lion-like rumbling in my throat. The kids laughed and suddenly there was life. At least I had that going for me.

“We miss Ms. Tiffany,” Christy finally said.

“Me too,” I told them.

“What are we going to do now?”

“Lets learn about poetry.”

“That is so boring Mr. Tim.”

“Just stay with me for a second, class,” I said.

There was that attitude I loved...