Avoidance

I am on Fall Break...three blissful weeks of Fall Break. I love it.

However, for some unexplicable reason, I feel the need to spend my break time at work. Right now, I'm sitting in my classroom at my desk, likely the only teacher in the building. I did the same yesterday. I got a whole laundry list of things accomplished. Syllabi for both of my courses, an assignment sheet/rubric for my new journal initiative in my Honors English I class, and some materials for the kids. Today, I've covered my graffiti-laden desks with contact paper, rearranged the seats, and I'm working on a seating chart. Productive? Yes. Necessary? Not so much.

What I SHOULD be doing is grading the mountain of Writer's Notebooks sitting on the table. Or I could be at home cleaning the house or putting away the laundry.

Hmm...I guess I'm just avoiding the necessary!

I don't mean to be judgemental

But I am so good at it. I may rename my blog this.

Anyway, I got "friended" yesterday by a guy I went to grade school with. It took me a minute to figure out who he was because:
a. He has changed his name.
b. He has gone uber-gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that...
c. He looks vastly different.

Now, I'm thinking I'll unfriend him. This may seem like a shallow reason, but I don't care. Here's the thing...he posts a lot of pictures. A LOT. They pop up on my feed. In most of these pics, he is wearing only underwear. I think he's an aspiring model or something. Whatever. It grosses me out. Not to be a prude, but really. People, I don't want to see my handsome sweet husband in his underwear on my Facebook page and I love him. I for darn sure don't want to see some weirdo acquaintance strutting his pickled pepper on there.

Then and Now

Last year on Opening Day, this picture was taken. Granted I was DOG sick. But still. That's me, circa 2008.
Below, is me, circa 1993. Holy cow.

School has started

I've had an awesome start to the school year. The kids rock, I'm feeling good, things are just flowing along.

But I'm sitting here working on my August/September calendar getting a little stressed. I've slipped back in to my bad habits again....I've already had a box of Nerds and an Almond Joy.

Sigh. Good bye size 6???

Trying to create!

So a couple weeks ago, I went to an awesome workshop that inspired me to write more. I've been trying my hand at journal keeping and then mining through my journal for things I might want to write about. I came up with this. Now, don't go assuming it's about me, folks. It's a piece of creative writing. I'm taking a different persona here. It's not GREAT, but is a start. It makes me want to write more.

"Surrender"

I wake
To the ordinary
Start of a never ending
Cycle
A not so merry go round

I march
To the steady
Beat of a drum measuring
Time
That is not my own

I answer
To the ceaseless
Demands of the diminutive dictators
Forces
Of the nature I created

I grant
To the greedy
Hands of the small seekers
All
That I have to give

Reading Update

I've finished Uglies by Scot Westerfeld and Skinny Dip by Carl Hiassen. I'm sure the authors are glad to know that I enjoyed both. Now I'm working on The Shack by William P. Young, which has gotten lots of acclaim in religious circles. I've enjoyed the author's style in the few pages I've managed to finished before I'm claimed by my pain-killer induced sleep, but I can't tell if I'm going to like the story. After my surgery, I plan on doing a great deal of reading, so I will update the blog with my reading pursuits later on.

"I'm So Sleepy!"

My daughter Audrey is nothing short of genius. Not to be a bragging mother, but, let's face it folks, she is. I mean, she's artistically gifted (from her Daddy's gene pool), starting to learn basic math (again, John), very verbal (don't knw where that comes from...), loves reading, and just generally smart. However, she is just a four and half year old. She has her limits.

The other day, she put two fingers up to her lips and said, "I'm smoking. I'm so cool." John FLIPPED out. WHERE has she seen this? I mean, if she blurted a stream of obsceneties that would make a sailor blush, everyone would point to me. But smoking? We do NOT support that. So we started drilling. Where have you seen this? Who does that?

Audrey's response was what is beginning to become her usual cop out. She started crying and said (instert gasps and sobs for effect), "I'm just so sleepy." Right. Cause that means we're going to let it go.

We finally convinced her that she wasn't in trouble and she calmed down enough to fess up that it was someone outside of her daycare (!) that was smoking, and not a game that she and her friends were playing at school.

All that aside, I think I am going to try her tactic. I've been just a tad stressed out lately, what with school ending and it being utter chaos and all. Add to that the fact that I'm having surgery next week to remove a good portion of my colon, and I still don't know what I'm teaching next year, and you can understand why I am perpetually on the verge of tears. Change my lunchtime and I might go postal. Look at me wrong and I might open a vein. And some people have been really pushing their luck.

Next person who presses me about, well, anything is going to be treated to my new reply. "I'm(sob) just so (sob, sob) sleepy!!!!"