June Goals: If I Write Them Out, Maybe I'll Stick to Them

Goals for June:

1.  To not complain about the heat on a public forum

2.  To read a book

3.  To blog at least 5 out of 7 days each week

4.  To cook dinner for my family at least 2 nights each week

5.  To take Howard the Hyper Hound (he's actually a boxador) on a walk of at least a half mile every day 

6. To begin attending trainings in preparation for returning to work

7.  To clean out the room that is supposed to be my office but is instead sort of a catch-all for everybody's junk

8.  To teach Gabrielle how to say "Mama" before any other word ;-)

9.  To stop drinking Coke

10.To be more social

11.To like myself more.

  

I guess in July, we'll see how I did ... and I will have a new list of goals for that month.

Follow these three hosts to get involved: My So-Called Chaos, A Peek at Karen's World, & Jenee Thompson

Overextended

Well, in case you couldn't tell, it's been quite a week ... the reasons being thus:

1.  We had an educational consultant at our school for the week.  I had the opportunity to work a lot with her, which was incredible and I got a ton out of it, but I lost my planning period in the process.

2.  Which is just as well since there is a study hall in my classroom during my planning period, so it's hard to get anything done then anyway because the kids in the study hall want to talk to me and I feel bad saying, "Leave me alone, this is my planning time".  Here is a picture, in fact, of me in the school bathroom taking pictures during my planning period ... it was an upside down kind of day ;)

3.  I had afternoon duty this week.  That means, "Stand in the lobby and keep the kids from killing each other for fifteen minutes."  It's not very fun.

4.  I had late meetings on Monday and Tuesday.  Monday wasn't too bad (got home around 6:30 p.m.), but Tuesday was pretty rough because I had nobody to watch Belle, so I had to leave work promptly after lunch duty, drive an hour to Belle's school, drive an hour back to my school, hope and pray that Belle behaved during the two hour meeting (she did ... she was wonderful, in fact, because one of my friends got her set up on a computer in the back of the library with headphones, so she played PBS Kids games), drive 45 minutes to pick Addie up, and drive forty minutes home (and yes, in case you needed to ask, it was snowing and the driving was terrible).

5.  The migraine from you-know-where started to settle in on Tuesday, probably a combination of stress and a pretty severe bout with insomnia that kept me from sleeping for three nights straight.  Anyway, I took a sick day on Wednesday and slept all day.  Felt much better after that : )

6. I'm a class advisor, and my students are doing a lot of fundraising.  This week we had a Valentine's Day carnation sale, but it meant that I had to spend my lunch time in the cafeteria with my students while they were selling flowers, so I lost my lunch (as well as my planning time) all week.  On a positive note, the flower sale was AMAZING ... we sold well over a hundred flowers, which was awesome (I work at a very small school).

7.  My group of students are putting on a dance tonight, so trying to get everything organized for that has been stressful.  My co-advisor is out on maternity leave, and I have to be honest, I totally took for granted all the things she usually does.  It is very stressful trying to do all this stuff on your own.

8.  I went out with the gang from work last night.  I am no longer 21, which is a fact I sometimes forget ... days of thoughtlessly downing Scorpion Bowls and shots of McGillicuddy and 151 need to be in the past.  Oh, man ... it was a lot of fun, though :-)

So anyway, I have been neglecting this blog because there just hasn't been enough time this week ... to breathe, never mind write.  I'm working hard on my meme, by the way ... I'm quite excited about it, actually :)

How do you handle those weeks when everything just seems to pile into a perfect storm of stress and commitment that make you feel like you should have gone out of your way, at some point in time, to learn how to juggle?

The Gas Gauge Conundrum

I noticed something funny this morning on my lovely hour-long commute to work (where I'm spending my summer vacation because that line about teachers having all summer off is pure hogwash).

I filled my car up with gas last night because the little red light came on when I was going to the store to grab a dark chocolate Milky Way (for Addie, not for me ... I made do with Oreos out of the cupboard).

When I was maybe five minutes away from work, I looked at my gas gauge and noticed that it was still on F. It got me thinking about how there are a ton of little measurement lines on the gas gauge, yet for me, there are only four real gas status reports:

1. Full tank.
2. Half tank.
3. Almost on E.
4. Shit, the warning light's on.

I honestly don't think I notice when the little indicator is anywhere else other than those four places.

I'm kind of weird, aren't I ;-)?

Five Things I Have Recently Learned

1. Water is Extremely Important.
So we just got our water back on this afternoon. Evidently the underground hose/pipe thing had a crack in it and, when half of the side yard was being dug up as they made this discovery, it turns out our well was evidently not up to code, so that had to be remedied as well. I never realized all of the things you need water for … it’s not just if you’re thirsty or something. I mean, I’m just about out of clean underwear, and my children were peeing in cups and dumping them outside. It was crazy!
The yard:

The picture Andy texted me to rag me about the waterless situation:










2. It’s Not That That Hard to Change Brakes.
When I bought my car, I knew it would need the brakes replaced sooner rather than later. The dealership was pretty upfront about it, and replacing brakes is something Andy can do pretty easily so, considering the price cut on the car, it seemed like a good idea. Anyway, they got very squeaky a few weeks ago, so it turned out to be sooner. We did the brakes in Andy’s driveway, and I felt like pretty hot shit because I actually HELPED :-) I felt so non-girly!
My dirty hands (after removing one of the tires):

Andy fixing my brakes:










3. Catching up With Old Friends is So Much Fun!
One of my friends from high school is a hairdresser in L.A. She was in the area for Father’s Day, so she organized a mini-reunion. It was so much fun catching up with everyone! The coolest part was that none of the people that went were among my close high school friends, but we had a blast. I was in the hospital on a morphine drip during my ten year reunion, so I missed out on the “what the hell has everyone been up to?” thing. This kind of made up for it. Oh, and those Mango Martinis at Blue Latitudes … they are freaking amazing!











4. Some People Are Just Not Nice.
I don’t talk smack about my co-workers, but suffice it to say that one of them had me in tears a couple of days ago. Now, I admit that I cry easily, but what I’ve always loved so much about the school I work at is how nice everyone has always been—the kiddos, the staff, even the administration. There is now a person that is jealous or threatened or something, but anyway, it’s freaking harassment. I’m trying to come to terms with it and try to figure out the best way to move forward. Yuck!



5. The World is So Beautiful.
This is the most well-placed (and best timed) rainbow I’ve ever seen. It reminded me of what is really important, and so I’m sharing it with you.

Experiences with Dumb Employees

Sometimes, with the sheer stupidity of some people, you just don't know whether to laugh or cry ...

So I just went into VIP (it's an auto parts store ... I'm not sure if it's a national chain or not) to get a bulb for my mother's car. Now, you need to understand that my mother is rather odd about certain things, for lack of a better way of putting it. Her car, for example ... she takes it to the dealership for, like, having a blinker bulb changed, gets charged over fifty dollars, and doesn't realize how asinine that is. Andy said he'd change the bulb for her, that it'd take him, like, five minutes if that, and he wouldn't charge her anything. She thought that sounded like a good plan and, since she's in Florida with Belle, I told her I'd make sure it got done before she got back. Yeah, they're getting back tonight ...

So anyway, I went to the service desk at VIP and said, "I need to buy a left rear blinker light for a Ford 500." The guy looked at his computer for a few minutes and replied, "It's not listed." I kind of looked at him blankly for a minute ... I mean, this is an AUTO PARTS STORE! Then, as so often happens in my life, it perpetuated. He called over a couple of other employees and they looked in the computer and basically said that, since it wasn't listed, they couldn't help me out. One said, "If you have the car with you, we can take out the old one and try to match it." Well, I didn't have the car with me because driving my mom's car makes me nervous enough already because with my luck I'd total it, plus it's (no offense intended to anyone) kind of an old lady car, plus it doesn't have a left rear blinker at the moment.

Anyway, I called Andy and told him they "didn't have it listed", and he said, "I'm not sure off the top of my head, but I'll call a Ford dealership and get right back to you." Approximately two minutes later, Andy (who was at his own work, I might add, and certainly not getting paid for being an auto parts specialist) called me back and said, "Tell them you need a 3157." That simple. Two minutes. One phone call.

Obviously, I don't expect them to know the exact parts for every car in existence, but
a) We're talking about a Ford here, not a Maserati.
b) Three VIP employees stood around looking on the computer for the same thing.
c) It didn't occur to them to explore other options (Andy said there's some book that VIP should have that gives all that information).
d) It took Andy two minutes to get the information ... it certainly couldn't have taken them any longer than that.
e) After I left, I googled "blinker light Ford 500" and the information was RIGHT THERE. I don't know what the heck they were doing on the computer, but I could have figured it out on my CrackBerry in less time. Uh ... I could have figured it out on my CrackBerry PERIOD.

When I took the Praxis II exam to be certified as a high school English teacher, I was really nervous because the test covered the entire body of literature, from pre-Homeric writings to the relatively recent genre of "chick lit" and everything in between. I needed to have a working familiarity with Moby Dick, but I also needed to know about iambic pentameter and gerunds and so on. Trust me, I know better than anyone about having too much material to know, and you can't possibly be an expert at everything, but at the same time, it's okay to stop and look something up and, in this day and age, there are a vast number of ways to do that!

Okay, rant over. Am I overreacting here? (I have a tendency to do that sometimes ;)) What experiences have you had with incompetent employees?

The Inequity of Life (Special Economy Edition)

How is one supposed to feel when people doing the same job as you--people who have been in the workplace longer than you--lose their job due to budget cuts? Do you sagely say, "There is surely more to the story that I don't know?" Fret over why it wasn't you? Wonder why budget cuts are necessary at all (okay, I know that's not feasible, but ...)?

I take my job very seriously. I love what I do and put in 100% every day. I think I'm a pretty good addition to my workplace and have made every effort to be there not just for my students--which is, of course, vital--but also for my coworkers. Getting to know people well, having discussions about educational philosophy and teaching methods with them, and then having them be let go ...

All I know is, I feel like an asshole. Like, a hard-core asshole. How am I supposed to look at these people--one in particular--without them thinking, "If they hadn't hired her, I'd still have a job?" And they'd be right.

Yet I feel badly for the administration, too. These decisions are never easy, and I think it must weigh especially heavy when "laying off" an employee will impact a large number of children and not just the employee (personally and professionally) and the workplace (not great for morale).

If I was allowed to drink at this point in time, I would have gotten very drunk last night.