I get blood drawn a lot. I don’t think there are many people in the world who think “Oh boy! I get to get blood drawn!” when they know they need to have labs done, but I’m certainly not in the camp that is needle-neutral. I can’t watch the needle going in, I can’t watch the blood being drawn, and my mental/emotional state when I have blood drawn is reflected in the bruise that develops later. (The first time I had blood drawn in the hospital was when I was still waiting in acute psychiatric services, and extremely freaked out. The guy who took my blood was actually the most soothing of the revolving cast of characters who saw me that night, but my arm still reacted with an angry bruise the size of a golf ball.)

But now I have blood drawn about once a month, sometimes more often (twice this month), and I just have to deal with it. Luckily the place I go is staffed by wonderful people who are great at what they do.

Moderation. Before I was diagnosed, especially in the several months leading up to my hospitalization, I was essentially self-medicating with alcohol and caffeine. In some ways I guess I was doing a pretty good job–none of my friends or co-workers suspected anything at all was wrong with me until probably the day I was hospitalized–but I was also, well, self-medicating, which is pretty dangerous (especially if I’d decided to start using any harder substances, which a lot of people do). I cut both substances out of my life entirely for a while, and now I’m on Weight Watchers so I couldn’t drink a ton even if I wanted to, but now my relationship with alcohol (forget caffeine–that shit is just bad for me) is one defined by want rather than need. I find I’m drinking much less and enjoying the drinks I do have much more, as now they’re explicitly paired with food and often part of special occasions rather than a standard part of my evening routine.

Sweet, sweet sleep. Anyone who has experience with insomnia will tell you it’s awful. You learn to function on a sliding scale of exhaustion, being “productive” in the wee hours of the morning once you’ve given in to not sleeping, lying there in bed trying to will your brain to shut off for hours on end. I think my insomnia was particularly hellish because what little sleep I did get was so often punctuated by nightmares.

I’ve always dreamed vividly, and I’ve experienced all five senses in particularly lucid dreams. Which is awesome if you’re having dreams about, say, running through a field of marshmallows and puppies, but not at all awesome if it’s a confusing, graphic sex dream or a dream where you’re running away from someone with a knife and trying desperately to wake yourself up.

Now I’m on a combination of medications that knocks me out cold at night pretty predictably once I’ve taken them, and I don’t (usually) have to worry about my subconscious setting out a minefield for me.

In short: life now is different, although not earth-shatteringly so, and I’m eternally grateful for the people who stuck by me to make it happen. Last year at this time I was clinging to my partner for emotional support as I went home to a pretty strained family Christmas, and this year we’ll visit both families and I couldn’t be happier. No dread, no strain.

I understand that we all want to use our personal experience to make sense of the world. And I realize that I’m not yet a parent, so I don’t have a parental point of view on what it’s like to send a kid through school. But I’m tired of the opinions of educators–those of us who are actually in schools and communities, fighting for better resources for children and young adults–constantly being shouted down by amateur education reform scholars.

Education is underfunded. If you look at the amount we’re shelling out for national security and defense versus education, our priorities are severely out of whack. The US ranks second in GDP purchasing power parity in the world, but it currently ranks 46th in education spending as a portion of total GDP–behind some of the usual characters, like the UK and the Netherlands, but also behind such nations as Cuba and Lesotho.

Educational funding is also seriously inequitable. The same neighborhoods and communities who find themselves shorted on municipal services, police and fire support, and social services are often the very same ones fighting to keep their schools open and adequately funded. Look at the proposed school closures and mergers for an urban district like Boston Public Schools, then try overlaying with crime data (PDF) from those same areas. Hint: Dorchester is District C, just as one starting point.

But beyond that, education is undervalued and maligned as a profession. Whenever individual school unions make unpopular choices, all educational unions–often all teachers–are demonized. When individual public schools and districts fail to meet benchmarks, the successes of other schools–yes, even inner-city public schools–are dismissed. The perceived power of some metropolitan teachers’ unions lead outsiders to paint teachers (and organized labor) with broad strokes. We’re in it for the money. We don’t care about students. We’re making outrageous demands.

All of this demonization also ignores the very real struggles teachers face in the classroom (and wherever educators may work). Although the profession is still perceived as female-dominated, the narrative of female teachers and male administrators is still sadly alive and well–including in many of our graduate programs. Male teachers, meanwhile, particularly at the lower levels, still face social stigma thanks to the sensationalized threat of sexual predators in classrooms. All of us who work with so-called “troubled” youth have to wade through self-perpetuating narratives of underperformance, not to mention ignorance among parents, colleagues and community members about issues like learning disabilities and mental illness.

Those of you who don’t work in education might have the luxury of throwing up your hands and declaring the system broken. But those of us who are educators can’t, and don’t, do that. We go to work every day, and we bring our jobs home with us every afternoon (or night). Not because we’re getting glory, or money, or power, or fame–because we love what we do, and because we believe in a better world for our students. We are building it with our hearts and minds and hands every day.

I didn’t have any particular fear of glasses. I was already solidly unpopular, so the threat of being called four-eyes didn’t have much bite for me. I do remember hoping I would still see light sources in the same way. (I did.) I also didn’t see anything particularly “wrong” with my vision. I was having some trouble seeing algebra equations, sure, but things were supposed to get a little fuzzy in the distance, right?

The first time I looked at a lawn with my new glasses, I was stunned. There were individual blades of grass! Did other people see details like that all the time?

I have corrected-to-normal vision.

I also have corrected-to-normal emotions.

One of my doctors was thoughtful enough to tell me, “We need a better word than ‘normal.’ Maybe ‘average’?”

We were talking about the average person’s emotional highs and lows. Think of a piece of string that’s not quite taut. There are a few dips and bumps, but it’s relatively straight. Now try mapping the emotions of a bipolar person, and you’ll see a broken rubber band. The lows are lower, the highs are higher, and it’s entirely possible that something might snap.

My hospitalization came as quite a surprise to many people in my life. “I had no idea things were that bad,” my therapist told me. I almost laughed. I had no idea either. I thought I was normal.

And, in some ways, I was. Certain things are fairly universal, at least in terms of human emotion: change is scary. Breakups hurt. Long winters can be depressing. But for me–and, it seems, for many of us with mental illness–there was no way to predict the depth of my emotion. It was like perpetually diving into a swimming pool with no lights, never sure if I was going to crack my head on the bottom or struggle to reach the surface. (Did I mention it took me an inordinate amount of time to learn to swim as a child? It did.)

People now seem amazed when I tell them I wasn’t particularly scared when I was in the hospital. Confused, sure. Paranoid, boy howdy. Exhausted, absolutely–at least until we found the right sleep aid. But I was never scared. I knew I was in good hands, and I knew I was finally getting help.

Interestingly enough, I got help in what turned out to be an adult psychiatric unit specializing in medication-resistant individuals. I wouldn’t have thought of myself as “medication-resistant,” but then I remembered that I’d been diagnosed with depression and anxiety before–and always took myself off the medication. (For those of you playing along at home? Anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication, if taken alone, can work quite badly on those of us who are actually bipolar.)

I was in the hospital for a week, then a partial hospitalization program (colloquially known as a day program) for five days. I’ve been out sick from work for over three weeks.

And what am I going to say when I get back to work?

I was sick. I was in the hospital. Now I’m better.

Hits returned on the following searches:

Contraception: 0
Contraceptives: 0
Birth control: 1
Condom: 1
Adoption: 0
Adopted: 0
Birth parents: 0

I’d keep going, but it’s just depressing me.

Now, I’d like to think that the comment would have bothered me in any set of circumstances, coming from any friend or acquaintance or stranger. And I have reason to believe that’s true–the more I’ve read from amazing writers like the folks at FWD/Forward, and the more I’ve wrestled with the ways that things like mental illness and trauma intersect in my own life, the more I notice problematic language. I’ve been working really hard to erase “lame” and “crazy” from my own vocabulary, for instance.

But I can’t really know if the comment would’ve bothered me in another situation, because it happened in the situation I was in: sitting in a restaurant where, just moments earlier, our waitress had held the door open for someone using forearm crutches–who was seated at the table next to ours.

Man, the more I write about this, the worse I feel. I’m making a set of huge assumptions here: that the person next to us is disabled; that they overheard us; that they would take offense at the term my friend used; that my friend was being flip and doesn’t actually identify with the term herself… The list goes on.

But now–as I did then–I also feel crappy because I didn’t say anything.

Silence followed the comment. Not the kind of big, uncomfortable silence that is sometimes followed by “Wait, that’s not what I meant,” just a pause in the conversation. It was a weighty pause on my part–I remember looking down at the table, not meeting anyone’s eye, wondering if I should say something–but I don’t know if it even registered with anyone else.

My mind raced. Should I say something? If the comment had been overheard, would it just make things worse to keep talking about it? Could I pull her aside later, by herself, rather than address it at the table? And now as I write this, I realize my whole framework for this sounds an awful lot like the way many white people are more afraid of sounding racist than being racist.

I didn’t say a single word.

When I got home, I though about how crappy I still felt about the conversation, and it occurred to me that the students I teach must find themselves in situations like this all the time. Not necessarily with language use around disability–although “lame” and “retarded” are still very, very ingrained in many teenagers’ vocabularies–but with all kinds of insults and jokes that often seem harmless to the people who speak them, even while they solidify group divisions and prejudice.

I try to think back on being in high school and having to hear things I didn’t agree with, or that I knew were hurtful to me and other people I loved, but those incidents just aren’t jumping out at me. I can remember one particularly startling use of the word “faggot,” coming out of the mouth of a friend I’d never have expected to say something so vile, and I can just as clearly remember that I said nothing. I froze, just like I froze the other night, some ten years later and (supposedly) wiser.

So how do you do it? How do you stand up to other adults? I focus so much on strategies for opening dialogues with my students that sometimes I forget these issues intersect with my own life and social circles. How do you respond when the offensive comment comes not from a friend, but from a colleague–perhaps even someone higher on the pay scale than you?

Having my tattoos visible invariably means my students will look at them, ask about them, and want to talk about them. Where did I get them? Did it hurt? How long did they take to heal?

I wasn’t at all surprised to get the questions, and I’m always happy to answer them, but I was a little thrown the first time a kid approached me asking about their own tattoo.

My continued discussions about tattoos with teens have convinced me that at least one of the two following theories must be true: some teens just aren’t ready for a tattoo at this age; or some local tattoo parlors simply aren’t adequately informing their teen customers and preparing them for healthy tattoo aftercare.

I don’t want to say that teens in general shouldn’t get tattoos, because I really don’t believe that’s true. I know that I wouldn’t have been ready at that age–I waited until I was 25 to get my first tattoo. I also know a lot of parents aren’t thrilled by the idea of their kids getting tattoos (and, indeed, in the majority of states that regulate tattoo parlors, tattooing minors is either illegal or requires parental consent).

I do think, though, that when a teen says something to me like, “Wait, you’re supposed to wash a tattoo?”–that teen either really wasn’t paying attention, or they went to a really crappy tattoo artist.

Here, then, is my advice to teens who want to get a tattoo:

1. Don’t get your girlfriend or boyfriend’s name. This isn’t about me not believing that teen relationships aren’t “real” or that teens can’t experience love–I would give this advice to anyone considering such a tattoo. I know some teens who have tattoos honoring a loved one, living or dead, which I think is touching, and I also know some teens who have their own names tattooed on themselves, which I think is maybe a little silly–but neither has the same potential to be super embarrassing five years (or even five weeks) down the line that the name of a (current) romantic partner does.

2. Don’t get tattooed under the influence. Of anything. Any reputable tattoo parlor won’t tattoo anyone under the influence–in fact most will make you sign a form to that effect before you go anywhere near a needle–but shady joints (not to mention this guy my brother knows who’s totally awesome and he’ll tattoo you in his pickup) don’t always have the same high standards.

Aside from the logistic concerns–are you going to need to puke? Is your pain tolerance impaired? Are you shaking, hallucinating, or otherwise unable to sit still, which will all impact your artist’s ability to do his or her job?–getting a tattoo under the influence means your judgment and reasoning capacities are impaired. Your perception is also compromised; the tattoo that looks great now may turn out to be awful when you’re sober.

3. Seriously consider the placement of your tattoo. Like it or not, many people–including potential employers, potential romantic partners, and college admissions officers–have very strong opinions about tattoos. If your tattoo is in a visible location that can’t easily be concealed by clothing, it’s entirely possible your tattoo–not your personality, intelligence, work ethic or heart–will make the first impression for you.

4. Take care of your tattoo. Any reputable tattoo artist will ask you if this is your first tattoo. The really good ones will give you aftercare information and advice even if it’s not your first tattoo. If you’re someone who has trouble remembering directions, ask for a written aftercare guide.

Some artists prefer A&D ointment over an appropriate lotion (and some studios actually sell their own)–I usually start with A&D and switch to lotion once my tattoo is no longer losing excess ink and has started the scabbing process–but either way, they’ll usually send you off with a small sample.

You will lose some excess ink in the first few days. This surprises (and scares) some people who aren’t expecting it, but it’s perfectly normal. Immediately after being tattooed the ink will be mixed with a small amount of your blood (this is an open wound, after all), but after that it should be just ink. Your artist will likely wrap your tattoo with a bandage and tell you to keep it on for a few hours, but you shouldn’t cover your tattoo with a bandaid or plastic wrap after that–it needs to breathe!

Depending on the size of your tattoo and your body’s own healing process, your tattoo site may swell a little right after your session, but that should calm down after a day or two. If it stays swollen (or swells later in the healing process), if you see blood beyond the first few hours after you’re initially tattooed, or if your tattoo starts to give off any kind of discharge, seek medical attention immediately.

Always wash your hands before you touch your tattoo (yes, even to apply ointment or lotion), and never let other people touch your tattoo until it’s fully healed. You should also wash your tattoo gently with warm water and antibacterial soap before you apply new ointment or lotion (as well as when you ordinarily shower).

If your tattoo is in a spot that’s ordinarily covered by clothes, obviously you should wear clean clothes, and avoid materials that you don’t want to get covered in lotion or ointment. I also wouldn’t recommend fabrics with a lot of texture, like wool, while your tattoo is still scabbing–they can stick to your tattoo and potentially pull away scabs prematurely, which can impact the image quality (and hurt!).

Avoid pools and hot tubs while your tattoo is still healing. Hot tubs in particular can be breeding pools for all kinds of germs and bacteria. Once you’re done with the scabbing and peeling phase, always put sunscreen on whenever you’ll be outdoors with your tattoo exposed; sun can ultimately damage your tattoo, and prolonged sun exposure can wash it out considerably. (You can even find tattoo products to protect you from the sun and preserve the colors of your tattoo.)

Yellow. Yeah. This is an automated voice message from jet blue Airways. Your, Mary go bye. Yes important information on a change to your scheduled flight. Yeah may be helpful to have a piece of paper and pencil to write down your new flight information, your flight number. Gyro, Yeah. 9. Yeah to yeah 3 y’all, November 10th your partying. Yeah, Boston, and arriving in your condo your flight number. Gyro yeah. 9. Yeah too. Yeah 2 yeah. On November 14th. Your partying your condo. Yeah, arriving in Boston. Yeah has been changed. You are now confirmed on flight number. Yeah, 0, yeah. 9. Yeah too. Yeah 3 y’all, November 10th. Yeah, Departing, yeah, Boston, at 7:34 PM, Yeah, arriving in your condo at 9:23 PM, Yelena number. Gyro, Yeah. 9. Yeah 2 yahoo y’all, November 14th. Yeah, Departing, should condo at 7:10 PM, Yeah, arriving in yo often at 10:20, 10 PM, yeah we hope this new flight means with your needs. Yeah, we look forward to serving you, yeah. By.

Both wildly inaccurate, and grammatically incorrect! Now I totally want a gyro.

I would like full credit for what turned out to be a really good idea. [Warning: food porn ahead!]

After some hemming and hawing about trying to do this Priceline thing where you bid on an unknown hotel (you do know certain things about it, such as its average star rating and generally the neighborhood it’s in, but ultimately I find this concept a little odd), we decided to be sensible and allow Melinda (our GPS navigation unit) to help us find a hotel in the general vicinity of Woodfire Grill. I arbitrarily chose a Holiday Inn Express, which turned out to be a pretty good arbitrary choice. (Pros: close to restaurant; queen suite for less than most tiny hotel rooms cost in Boston. Con: hot tub was, in fact, tepid.)

Woodfire is, apparently, the kind of place so popular that when you call around three in the afternoon for a reservation, you get to choose between five thirty and nine fifteen. We chose the latter, although on general principle I consider this an altogether ridiculous time to eat dinner. I’ve never agreed with the concept of anything being “fashionably late.”

The benefit, however, to arriving so late was that we really got to see the  Adult Club District in its proper, fully-lit glory–because the Adult Club District, apparently, is where both Woodfire and our hotel are located. I counted two establishments called Inserection, which is both not at all how that word is spelled, and sort of a strange thing to call your sex toy shop. Woodfire itself is next to a boutique called Dirty Laundry. Discuss.

Anyway, despite the lateness of the hour, we opted for the seven course chef’s tasting. Because a) any restaurant that gives you a 9:15 reservation is probably prepared for you to order a full meal, right? and b) seven course chef’s tasting. Seriously, how many places do I go that even offer that as an option? None, that is how many.

Our first item was actually an amuse bouche, described by our server as marinated beets topped with a broccoli pistou. (Are you also not convinced that’s a real word? I had to look it up–apparently it just means a sauce made of garlic, fresh basil and olive oil. I’m guessing this one also had broccoli. Just a guess.) This was also described as a “gift from the chef.” Now, when I hear that from a server, deep down I know that everybody else is also getting that “gift.” While I’m eating it, though, I prefer to ignore that reality, and imagine just for a moment that I’m truly a special snowflake. The chef sends me presents! This is awesome!

(That said–I don’t really like beets all that much. So this was probably an appropriate amount of beet for me.)

The first official course: carrots poached in local honey, almonds, eggplant puree, and almond cilantro oil. We both agreed that the almonds were pretty superfluous, and that the eggplant was heavenly. Cooked carrots are ordinarily on the short list of things I don’t particularly care to eat, but as a vessel for scrumptious eggplant puree I will pretty much eat all the cooked carrots you care to hand me. Which, in this case, was two. Ish.

I’m going to go ahead and call this my hands-down favorite course. Flounder “sashimi” (I’m not sure what about this isn’t actually sashimi, but our waiter definitely described it with verbal air quotes, so apparently this is just in the style of sashimi) with some manner of citrus, topped by king salmon tartar and an herb salad. Also the tiniest piece of avocado ever. I liked the flounder best, but this tartar also puts every other tartar I’ve ever had to shame. For shame, other tartar!

Some manner of shrimp under pickled slaw, sitting on a sesame morel broth. I tasted more sesame than morel, but nonetheless opted to sop up every trace of broth with some bread. (That was my only reason for touching the bread: sopping up delicious things. Why would I waste my appetite on bread, even if it’s really good bread, when I’m getting seven courses of food?) The shrimp was quite sweet, and more delicate (read: not at all rubbery) than I’m used to shrimp being.

Another sign Kevin secretly loves me: gift from the chef #2, this time some manner of pepper stuffed with chevre and something else we absolutely can’t remember. It was extremely tasty.

Our waiter described this as the “rockstar course.” He was not mistaken. Littleneck clams, chorizo, some manner of bacon, veal sweetbreads, and broth we’ve decided we’d like to take a bath in, please, and make it snappy. (My dining companion went so far as to suggest we should just fill up the tepid tub with that broth. The broth was probably hotter, after all.)

Quail, cheese grits, pork belly, pepper oil. A. Mazing. The squab appeared to be honey-glazed. I eschewed all pretense of being a person who belongs in fancy restaurants by picking up my little quail drumstick and chewing on it. Dude, I’m paying for this quail, and I am going to eat every damn edible part. The pork belly also had some manner of glaze or rub on it–vaguely barbecue sauce-ish?

One of the women at the table next to ours–regulars, I gathered–deemed her lamb too tough and left some of it on the plate. I wouldn’t go that far, but I would have to (grudgingly) admit that this dish didn’t really let the lamb shine. (Having grown up on a sheep farm, I’m going to go ahead and say that I’ve probably had a lot more lamb than your average diner, so I believe I can comment on the quality of lamb served even in a really awesome restaurant.) The pepper rub, twelve local bean sautee, and squash puree all overpowered the lamb itself, which was a bit over-salted. (And I say that as someone who routinely eats coarse grain salt straight up.) My cut wasn’t overly tough, though perhaps not the most tender lamb I’ve ever had–though, yes, as the waiter explained to our fellow diners, leg of lamb isn’t typically the most tender cut.

Cola cake with an inverted root beer float and coffee creme. The float seemed a little silly, and oddly strong, and the cake for me was a little meh–but while we’re filling up hot tubs with broth, we might as well fill up a wading pool with that coffee creme, because damn.

All in all, I’m thrilled we decided to go to Woodfire, and very pleased they had a table for us. I’m more convinced than ever that Kevin should have won Top Chef (though, to be fair, I haven’t eaten in either of the Voltaggio brothers’ restaurants–we’ve already been through Maryland, and Pasadena isn’t really on our itinerary at this point).

Observations from the day:

While Massachusetts (and presumably some other states; I can vaguely remember this being true in Oregon and Idaho) considers wearing your seatbelt to be the law, and Virginia espouses said law as a law (we can live with), Pennsylvania is oddly possessive–it’s our law.

I don’t think the temperature got below 96 until well after dark in North Carolina. Everywhere else temperatures were solidly in the 97-102 range.

Virginia claims to enforce its speed limits via aircraft. I won’t deny that aircraft could monitor speeding violations, but when was the last time you saw a speeder pulled over by a chopper?

Virginia also still has pump locks in gas stations. You can actually buy a soda while pumping your gas. It is lovely.

Tomorrow: more driving, with some planned camping in Alabama. The spot we have in mind doesn’t keep any of its maps online, with the exception of the motor vehicle map–which “is black and white and does not provide much information besides the roads and trails open to motor vehicles. It’s not a very good map for recreation orientation use.” Thanks for the honesty, Alabama!

What’s at play when I refer to my girlfriend as merely my friend?

For me, this is just one more manifestation of the way I, as a queer person, am constantly negotiating a largely homophobic and heterosexist (not to mention transphobic and cissexist) world. Even without realizing it, I’m assessing the potential risks of every situation. Is it safe to hold hands with my girlfriend on this street? If this co-worker knows I’m queer, will that change the climate of my workplace? Do my career prospects suffer if potential employees can’t decide whether I’m male or female?

The stakes range from very minor to very serious. I can’t say that I’ve ever personally felt like my life was in danger, but make no mistake–queer and trans people all around the world are assessing situations where the risks include assault and death. I’m lucky; the worst threat I usually face is a security guard getting involved in my bathroom routine.

Still, sometimes I decide the risk isn’t worth it. I decide I’m headed out of town to visit a friend. I decide not to bring up my girlfriend in conversations with co-workers, even as they’re all mentioning their (heterosexual) spouses. I never feel great about these decisions–in fact, most of the time I feel extraordinarily guilty and cowardly. But I make them, and I have to live with them.

So how do the straight, cis people in our lives feel when they’re making these same decisions on our behalf?

More to the point–what is your dad, or your neighbor, or your co-worker negotiating when he or she decides to refer to your partner as your friend or roommate?

Some of these people are certainly our allies. They are thinking of the same stakes that weigh heavily on our own minds. Do these people know she’s queer? I don’t want to screw anything up for her at work, so I’ll hedge. It’s not safe here to tell them about his boyfriend–I just have to lie until we can get out of here. They may sometimes get things wrong, and sometimes they might even err on the side of caution more than we do, but they don’t offer up these euphemisms thoughtlessly. They choose their words with care, and afterward they ask us about them. They may even apologize before we have a chance to bring it up.

But not all of those who euphemize us have our best interests forefront in mind.

So if a straight, cis person in my life refers to my “friend,” what kind of stakes are at play? Is he ashamed of my relationship? Is acknowledging a queer relationship taboo around here? Does she not want her friends to know? Have they decided I’m not in a real relationship?