Fears

I used to only have one fear and that was disappointing my parents. I have outgrown that fear. I now have 2 fears that I think might be more tragic than diappointing my parents. Fear numero uno - falling in the shower, becoming unconscious (or dying) and then someone (my emergency contacts = Lucky!) finding my body, NAKED in my bathroom. This is a real fear. Now, the one positive aspect of this situation is...if I did die and someone had to find my naked body, at least I would never have to face them again and be all embarraced about having to look at them after they had seen me naked! If I didn't die and just passed out, then I would have to face those emergency contact people at Thanksgiving and Christmas and all other family gatherings and it just would not be a good situation. If this situation ever happens, I might just perfer to die.

Fear numero dos - walking in on one of my co-workers while they are using the bathroom. You might be asking yourself why I would even be worried about this and if you read on you will find out. At my pervious employer there was one staff bathroom and that was in the office. Naturally I could not be bothered to walk myself all the way down to the office to use the bathroom when the student bathroom was literally right across the hall from me. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I used the desinated staff bathroom. At my current employer there are multiple staff bathrooms and they are all what I like to call a single seater (meaning there is only one toilet in the bathroom). Staffers enter the bathroom and need to lock the door behind them before they settle in to do their business. I can be forgetful sometimes and therefore I think other people could probably be foregettful sometimes. In this single seater community bathroom, you DO NOT want to be forgetful. I am worry that one of these days I am going to walk right in on a co-worker and then I will have to either resign my position immediately, so I never have to see that person again, or I will just have to die. I have come up with a system to prevent this from ever happening. I open the door to the bathroom incredibly slow so that if someone is in there, they have a chance to stop me before I see anything that could scar our working relationship for life.

If you cannot relate to my fears, you might be able to relate to some of these fears.

Tender Mercies

I have been doing some serious putting things off lately. I have unloaded a ton of crap into my classroom and have taken several people to go see my classroom, but I have done nothing to prepare it for the coming school year. I got kinda burnt out last year and am in still some denial of the fact that schools starts in a week from tomorrow. I have lived in my new town for less than 2 weeks and have spent 5 days of that training for my new job. At the end of those trainings all I want to do and end up doing is going home and watching Netflix. Isn't finishing all the seasons of Brothers and Sisters a reasonable goal? I think so.

Today we were asked to sit with all the other new teachers who will be at our assigned schools (believe it or not, they had not asked us to do that prior to today). So finally I met some of the other teachers I will be working with. There were 5 of us and out of the 5 I was the only one with some experience. I was also the only one who had been assigned as a classroom teacher. All the other girls (they are all younger than me and in their first year of teaching and therefore are girls) had what I considered to be glorified para positions. They had "reading specialist", or "math specialist" titles (even though none of them had special endorsments in those subjects, I know because I asked) and will be working with small groups to support students and teachers. I had been thinking of what a burden and time-suck it is going to be to have to go ogranize my classroom and these girls were like, "Why the hell haven't you been in your classroom? I would kill for a classroom!" It made me reflect on how lucky I am to have a classroom and an assigned group of students that I will get to spend the bulk of the day with. I am sure I will have to remind myself of my luck in about a month or so when I'm not feeling so lucky. I don't know if I would have taken the position they were offered, so I need to be more grateful for the responsibilities of the position I have.

Brothers and Sisters - Behind the scenes with the brothers

After about 4 seasons and lot of careful consideration, I have finally determined that Kevin is my favorite brother. It also helps that he is Welsh. Just saying.

Please, let it be steroids!

As previously mentioned in another post, I am a member of a gym. The gym is one of the things that I will miss about St Joseph, because it is kind of a nice set up. The membership doesn't cost that much, it is open 24 hrs a day, and there is a good variety of equipment. However, some would say it is in a questionable part of town. As long as I am not raped or my car is messed with, that does not bother me. It does however, present some interesting/questionable activities.

Case 0000000001
One beautiful bright afternoon I saw a car with a couple of white dudes park outside the gym. I thought it was weird because they never got out of their car. Personally I hesitate, A LOT, whether to go workout or not, but if I make the decision to drive to the gym I usually get my fat butt out of the car right when I get there so I can get it over with (although one time I did drive over there and was like, "nope, this isn't going to happen", and kept driving right past the gym. I think it was just one time that I did that.). Like most people, I try to keeps tabs on suspicious people or situations. Most people do that right? So I kept watching these white dudes in this car, they were there for a considerable amount of time. Then another white dude pulls up, gets out of his vehicle and approaches these white dudes in the car. He doesn't get in the car with them, he just talks to them through the passenger side window. There is a handshake and then their conversation is over and the one guy comes into the gym. The other two white dudes drive away.

Case 0000000002
Same situation as case# 0000000001. Beautiful afternoon, 2 white dudes driving a car and one white dude approached them after they had been parked for a few minutes. They share a handshake and then 2 white dudes drive away and one white dude enters the gym. After this encounter I have 2 questions, #1 What is he buying? Is he buying steroids? If he is, I don't think they are helping him any, because I have seen this guy multiple times at the gym and he is no more muscular than the previous sighting. (Although he could be saying the exact same thing about me. "Great she's over there huffin' and puffin' and gigglin' on that treadmill AGAIN!"). Is he buying something a little bit stronger than steroids? I hope not, I don't like to think that I am witnessing a hard core drug deal. Question #2 What does he do for work? Both of these situations have happened in the middle of the day. Does he work nights? Or is he a teacher who gets laid off every summer like me? I hope not. Those summer lay-offs really suck.

I'll probably never have answers to these questions, unless I strike up a conversation in the gym with him and ask him what he does for a living. IF that ever happens I will amend this post. I did try to find a picture to include in this post, but all of the pictures I saw had a white dude with a black guy or a hispanic gentleman. I just didn't feel right about that, so....no picture.

Copy Cat

I am a HUGE fan of The World Market. Unfortunately for me, I can't hardly afford anything in that store (except their half kegs of root beer). Awhile back I needed some artwork for my bare walls and really liked a canvas painting they had in there. This one to be exact. It was PERFECT except for the fact that at the time I was shopping it was $100!

So instead I found this blog called Two Girls Being Crafty and they had a tutorial on how to recreate this exact painting. I finished mine today. This is the result: 

My picture taking skills aren't that great, but I am really pleased with the results. Instead of making it on one canvas, I made it on three. 

IF you are also a fan of The World Market and find yourself in the vicinity of one, feel free to pick up any of these painting for me. My birthday is fast approaching, so if you are feeling generous buy both of them! Heads up, they are PRICEY! 

I also LOVE this! 

Stick a Fork In Me

I'M DONE! Well......in 5 more hours! I have been moving out of my classroom this week in preparation to move and set up a new classroom. I "vergot" how much I hate moving. My apartment now looks like my classroom threw-up all over it. Exhibit A, B, C, D, and E.

 This picture didn't turn out so good, but, trust me, it is a TON of stuff! 

I started taking stuff down and home on Monday, so by Wednesday my comfy classroom was looking pretty empty. One of my students even said, "Our classroom is just so....sad now." I told him I would take that as a compliment to my decorating abilities. My classroom looks really sad now, because I am officially moved out, took the last load today! 

In addition to moving out, I have also been trying to make lasting memories before I leave. On Wednesday I loaded up my car with stuff and was almost out of the town I teach in when I realized I had vergotten to make some copies that I needed that night. So... I had to turn around and go back to the school to make the copies. Got the copies made and headed out again. Got 2 blocks from home when I realized I didn't have my phone. Went home and unloaded my car then headed back to the school to get my phone. When I got to the school the doors were locked and no one to help me into the school could be found. However....one of my fellow 5th grade teacher's had left her window open!!! Jackpot! Me and my sexy fat butt (to borrow a line from Fat Amy) knocked out the screen and crawled through her window. From her class I went to mine, got my phone, and left. Mission accomplished! Last year I had to crawl over the 10 foot chain link fence surrounding our school to get into the parking lot, so my record in 2-0! My only regret of both instances is that there is not security camera footage as proof, and I regret not kicking the screen out, because that would have made the story that much cooler!

Last Book Report

At the beginning of 5th grade we discover that most of the students have never read a book all the way through, so we create an opportunity for them to do so. Starting the 2nd quarter we institute book reports. The kids don't really like doing them because they have to read a book in 3 weeks and then do some kind of report/project to represent the book. Last year the kids came up with some pretty awesome stuff, this year... not so much. The last book report of the school year was due on Friday and we just got done having everyone present today. For this book report they had to take a 2 liter bottle and decorate it to represent a main character in their book. Some of them went all out and did a FANTASTIC job! I was really impressed because they actually did what I asked them to do and put some real effort into this last project. These are some of the best examples:

I got really excited when she brought this in because I thought it was Harry Potter, but I was wrong. It is Klaus from Series of Unfortunate Events. Still, AWESOME job! 

This kid's main character was a badger and he did a really great job, even though he admitted that his grandma "helped him a lot."

 His was a dog, so he decorated his bottle horizontally instead of vertically and then added legs and a tail and everything, really great job! 

He used doll clothes to dress his bottle. 

This girl rocked my world when she said that she crocheted the "fur" for her main character, a dog. I was super blown away because #1) what 5th grader crochets? That girl! and #2) she spent all of that time doing it! 

 This is a side view of the dog, and I know it kinda looks like corn on the cob, but I just wanted to prove what a great job she did. Yes, her dog has wheels for feet. In the book the dog gets electrocuted and becomes kind of mechanical so wheels for feet work. 

This girl turned in crap, so I berated her at the end of her presentation for thinking that this was acceptable.