did you swallow a balloon, ms. miller?

an excerpt from an email i sent to my dear friend and former boss, aaron:

I spent all day till 4 with a bunch of kids who crack me up and tell me things like “ms. Miller what happened to the big bump on your belly… it looks like you swallowed a balloon” to which I responded, “well, Akolda, I didn’t actually swallow a balloon.” And I jumped to catch the football (recess duty for 2 hrs:) as one kid exclaims, “You can jump and catch the football?!... You’re not just a normal teacher?!” Yes, my days are full and it reminds me to take it all a little less seriously. I cook a lot and tried a chianti the other day that was yummy – I think I emailed it to you. I don’t have a lot of spare cash but its oddly freeing to be so frugal. I probably, no definitely, needed to learn something in that area of my life.

No good man stories of late. I had a boy drunkenly express his infatuation, while sharing his insecurities about his relationship with current girlfriend. Kinda over that whole genre of man... i get that they struggle with what to do but i am over attracting them. I know i have some responsibility in there since this is becoming a trend so I need to evaluate my interactions. I have been trying to get my work/money situation squared away so I haven’t had a ton of time to invest in finding a mate or anything but I know if I took too much time to sit still I might be a little lonely for a life partner. I went on a walk around my neighborhood (super sweet/freakin awesome) with a friend from home that was in town for meg’s bday and I had forgotten how nice it is just to have someone of the opposite sex to share life with like that, wandering down the streets talking nonsense or serious stuff. I look forward to that. In the meantime I’m meeting some cool people, and hearing new thoughts on life/love/Jesus, which is usually a good thing for me.

I miss the house parties and leisure mornings of tea and hippie flakes at Sacred Grounds… I never thought of Ruidoso as a mountain town, probably because I hadn’t spent much time in any others, but now that I’m in the land of plenty in that genre, I appreciate the intimacy of our circle of local love – the fact that you can email my mom something and the whole town knows, and that Landlocked has become a staple for our local and tourist economy. I do miss the homeland, in a way I haven’t before… when I think of home my heart is warmed at the thought of people I know and fellowship with friends who might not hang out in a big city but have found camaraderie in each other, all coming in sync in an unusually attractive town.

x Miller

EDIT: I realize that for some people the paragraph about "the type of men I'm attracting" may have been vague... I have not been dating or entertaining these types of men, but have been discouraged by a trend of attracting them for reasons which I am exploring.