Miz S

My sister-in-law worries that I have a secret blog somewhere else that I am updating on a more regular basis.

Got food?

Got nothin' for you, really, but I thought I would check in so you know that I am still alive and kicking.

Work is...oh God it's so hard sometimes.

Do you know I have a student teacher? I swore I wouldn't take one this year--it's a lot of extra work--but in the end I succumbed to the pressure.

I can't decide whether I am a really good mentor teacher or a really bad one. In the minus column: I fly by the seat of my pants too much and am always scrambling to catch up with paperwork. In other words, I am the personification of Real Life Teaching.  In the plus column: I'm dedicated and I work my ass off and I am a skillful teacher. I suppose it's a toss-up. To tip the balance of the scale I will add that I generally bond with my student teachers, they seem to like me, and I am FUN TO BE AROUND. There. It's been decided. I am a good mentor teacher.

Evangeline has flown back to Iowa. Guess what? She will be in Moscow for Christmas because of a school project. She won't get back until December 29th. It will just be Josh, Sasha, and me huddled around the Christmas tree. *sob* 

Hey! Sasha got a job! She has been temping for several months, and then one of the places where she temped hired her as an admin assistant. She loves the organization and all the people there, her commute is 15 minutes, and there is opportunity for advancement later on. She is saving her money so that she can move into her own apartment by spring. Then I can use her room for an office! Yay!

Hmmm. Tomorrow is the first day of November. That must mean that today is Halloween! A day when I bask in a serene glow brought on by the fact that my children are all grown up and I don't have to fuck with costumes and cupcakes and class parties. My school doesn't do Halloween either ('cause it's the devil's birthday) so, yeah, the livin' is easy. On this day last year I went on a bike ride after school and took a shadow picture which I adore and use as wallpaper on my laptop. 

I am going over to my parents' house tonight to make dinner for them and help them hand out candy. I can't bear the thought of them shuffling back and forth to the door all evening. Josh will be out of town and Sasha will be out with friends so I guess April and Rosie will have to hand out the candy at my house. They better grow some opposable thumbs in a hurry.

Sorry for the lack of SPARKLE and PIZZAZ. I'm just not FEELING very SCINTILLATING.  Hey, have a good devil's birthday.

Saturday.

Criminy. This week has felt like a marathon. Except of course that there was no exercise involved. I will not share all the deadly dull details, but I will tell you that I am really, really happy that Saturday is finally here.

Well, I am happy that Saturday evening is here. Because this morning I had to wake up at SIX A.M. (did I mention that today is Saturday?) to get showered and dressed up and go be a PRESENTER at a CONFERENCE.

Yes, it's true. Me. Miz S. Somewhat inefficient. Very self-conscious. A tad insecure. I was a PRESENTER at a LITERACY CONFERENCE about word study.

Okay, a very local literacy conference. And I only said a few things. But still.

My friend Liz (naked swimming Liz) was in charge of the presentation, and she told me that I was required to "jump in" at 2 or 3 different points. This was partly to make the presentation more conversational and partly because she wants me to get over my insecurity and be more presenter-like.

And, I did it! I grabbed the microphone like a pro and put my 2 cents worth in. Out of the 3 things I said, at least 2 things sounded halfway intelligent/interesting. The 3rd thing sounded like I was just a little off topic, like I just didn't quite get it, but hey, what are you going to do?

Afterwards there was a make-and-take. Do you know what that is? The teachers all know, I bet. It's when you get to make things to take back to your classroom. The people running the event have all the materials and the teachers end up with (supposedly) useful stuff that they can use that very day in their classroom.

So, I was in charge of one of the make-and-takes. I had all these materials and stuff, and a model, and directions. There was enough stuff that everyone there could have made at least one "Long Vowel Go Fish" game. Except that these women were like vultures, VULTURES I TELLS YA, and some of them swooped in and grabbed piles of materials and disappeared before I could say anything. So then I ran out of supplies and some people were pissed.

But I didn't care. Sheeee-it. They're lucky I showed up.

Also? We got paid $1000.00 which we donated back to our school to fund special events, so our principal is really happy.The best part about that is that we can call ourselves Word Study Whores.

After that, I took Evangeline shopping for winter boots. I didn't get home until 5pm. On Saturday.

I think I'll take a nap now.

Enzymatic Action!

I am not a religious nut! Shut up!

I saw this cereal at the grocery store a few weeks ago, and naturally it caught my eye. I stood there and read the box and just loved all the health-nut jargon. "Our exclusive sprouting process not only increases valuable nutrients but also causes a natural change that promotes more efficient assimilation of the protein and carbohydrates through enzymatic action."

Take that, General Mills!

I didn't buy it at the time because, I don't know, I was worrying about the economy or something and couldn't justify spending $7.00 for a box of cereal.

So today I found myself in the store and once again spent a good 10 minutes poring over the box. Somehow it ended up in my cart.

I really love the italics on the front. I would like to see all the cereal boxes with a cover like that.

"Take also unto thee oat flour and brown sugar and wheat starch and trisodium phosphate and riboflavin and put them in one bowl and make generic Honey Nut Cheerios!"

I am enjoying a bowl of Ezekiel 4:9 at the moment. Although "enjoying" might be overstating it a little bit. Evangeline likes it, and it's supposed to be low-glycemic so that's good for her and her stupid defective pancreas.

Yes, Evangeline is home from college for her fall break. Josh and I both took today off from work and went down to Children's Hospital with her for a checkup AND...dunh dunh DUNH...her brand-new continuous glucose monitor. One more tool to guard against acute hypoglycemic episodes like the one she had at the end of August. AND, our insurance company paid for it. Which is awesome.

That's all I got. So boring. Sorry. Hey, are anyone else's hands getting all cracked and dry even though it's only October and the real cold weather hasn't started? No? It's just me? Shit. I'm going to have to start wearing gloves filled with vaseline or something.

I just wanted to say "pedagogy."

Emely. Mary. Gisselle.

I've been sick all week, and in kind of a fuck-you mood. Not YOU personally, of course.

I had a mild sore throat over the weekend, which I reported to Josh the minute I noticed it. I am a hypochondriac. You guys know that, right? I like to catalog any symptoms that crop up, compare them to symptoms I have had in the past, diagnose my condition, and then speculate as to what this condition might reveal about my overall state of health. So naturally, I've been busy. 

The sore throat morphed into hideous, croaky laryngitis with headaches and exhaustion. On Monday I went to bed at 6pm. WHO THE HELL GOES TO BED AT 6PM?

I shoulda taken a day off, huh?

HELL NO.

Teachers have to be on their deathbed before they will call in sick. It's simply too much trouble to write sub plans.

Teachers? Can I get an "amen"  here?

Since I couldn't talk, I was forced to develop a new pedagogy based on messages written on a white board, accompanied by whispers and glares. 

The icing on the cake this week was that the temperature in my classroom was well over 80 degrees every afternoon by 1pm.

Despite these trials, I feel inexplicably happy tonight. Who the hell knows why?

Maybe it's because I teach kids how to read. How awesome is that?

Oh fuck. That sounds all conceited. I don't mean it to sound that way. I just...really, really like teaching kids how to read.

Buying a Scooter.

Josh rides a scooter to work every day. At least, he did until June 9th when it developed a cough or something.  Long story short, it turned out that his scooter was tragically flawed. All the king's horses and all the king's men, etc.

Today we drove to Hershey, Pennsylvania to buy a new (used) scooter. Oh sure, it would have been more convenient to buy a scooter right here in Maryland but nooooooooo. Apparently no one in Maryland was parting with a scooter. The drive up was kind of, you know, meh. East coast interstates aren't all that picturesque.

But the drive back was so lovely that I whimpered most the way. We didn't want to go on the interstates because, hello, scooter, so we followed all the little 2-lane state roads. I led the way, and Josh scootered behind me. We came down the Susquehanna Valley, through little towns with names like Maytown and Marietta and Mount Joy. All the houses were decorated for Hallowe'en and all the little kids were out playing. There were yard sales and old ladies and volunteer fire departments. The sky was BLUE, you guys! You know how much I like the blue sky! And leaves are starting to turn. And the rolling fields and silos. GOD. I was afraid to stop and take pictures because I was certain that Josh's safety, his very life in fact, depended on me gripping the steering wheel very, very, very tightly and rapidly switching my eyes back and forth between the road and my rear view mirror to make sure he hadn't fallen off yet.

In between all the steering-wheel gripping, though, I thought happy thoughts about small towns and blue skies.

Wouldn't it be cool to do one of those trips cross-country where you take back roads all the way? I want to do that someday. 

I want to be Kayla's fen, too.

Here I am at home, atoning. My school district shuts down on Yom Kippur.  Josh and Sasha are also home because they are being Jewish today. Josh fasted until like, 8:30am. Then he fasted again until noon. He's going to have a little snack now and then fast until the cocktail hour. Ha! I be funny!

My plan today is to be all about the laundry and the bill-paying and the junk in the basement, although at the very moment that I typed that I felt a sudden fit of sleepiness.

Shortly after school started this year I noticed an increase in my anxiety, almost to pre-Cymbalta levels. (Nah. That's an exaggeration. It didn't approach the many years pre-2005 when I cried every single day and walked around with my stomach in knots and my heart pounding, and really, honestly, didn't understand that it wasn't normal to feel that way. I just figured I was a little high-strung.) Still, I definitely felt more anxious than I should. I figured it was just related to the beginning of the school year, but when it didn't go away after more than a month I asked the doctor if I could increase my dose of Cymbalta from 60mg to 90mg. And goddamn I feel better. I came home from work yesterday and, when Josh asked me as he always does, "How was work?" I hesitated for a moment and said, incredulously, "It was...good!"

My usual response is something like, "THIS WILL NEVER WORK I AM NOT MEANT TO BE A TEACHER GODDAMMIT THIS IS A STUPID JOB I HAVE TWO MORE HOURS OF WORK TO DO BEFORE I CAN GO TO BED."

Don't get me wrong, I still poured myself a huge glass of wine to dull the pain, but I think we can agree that I'm making progress.

By the way, I joined the YMCA and paid for the first month and I think I am going to quit. I went there one night and used the treadmill and went swimming and everything was so gross I wanted to throw up. There were old band-aids everywhere. And it smelled bad. I bet I caught a disease.

Gotta go now. It's crossword puzzle/lying-around-in-bed-in-the-middle-of-the-day time.

Harper's Ferry Hike

 

The railroad trestle over the Potomac River. Or maybe the Shenandoah River. They meet at Harper's Ferry.

Yesterday Josh and I drove up to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia to hike a steep, rocky trail through a beautiful forest, on a day when the air was so soft, the sky so blue that to be inside would be a crime. Our destination was Maryland Heights, which is a mountain ridge that overlooks the town of Harper's Ferry. The trail that we hiked on was originally a road built by some hapless infantry unit from Massachusetts early in the Civil War. Building the road up the mountainside was bad enough, but then 9,000 pound cannons had to be hauled up to the top and you know that must have sucked for the poor mules.

 

The temperature was in the low 70's, with a breeze. It was so perfect.

 

Josh thinks he is sooooooooo funny. This is why I usually don't let him have the camera.

It was a really fun hike. I feel like we have barely seen each other since the school year started, and it was good to spend time together, just the two of us, with no distractions and no conversation about household business. 

 

Artsy. I'm being artsy here.

Oh, here's a question for you. If the trail information describes a hike as "steep and strenuous" and the roundtrip time is given as 2-3 hours, why, WHY would you bring young children with you? We hiked behind a couple with a dog and a four-year-old for awhile. The child rode on the mom's back most of the way, which had to have been tough on her. At one point she put him down and tried to get him to walk and we heard him wailing, "NO! I AM NOT THE BEST LITTLE HIKER!" which of course made us snort with laughter.  We saw another family with a little girl who was too big to be carried, maybe 5, and who was whining and carrying on. Most little kids don't have the muscle strength or the fuel reserves to do a hard, steep hike like that. Common sense, people. It's all about the common sense.

So, as you can see, the hike was made even more fun by the opportunity to judge other people's parenting. Yay!

 

Steep! Strenuous! Can't you people read?

 

Josh is king of the castle. The Potomac River is on the left, the Shenandoah on the right, and the town of Harper's Ferry is on that little point in the middle. As you can imagine, it often floods. Also, it changed hands 8 times during the Civil War. I am full of factoids today. 

 

Snake picture for FC. Juvenile black rat snake, I believe. This little guy was in the road outside the ice cream shop in town. Josh picked him up and moved him into the woods so he wouldn't get run over.

We arrived back home in time to shower, change, and drive up to Baltimore for a dinner date with Julie and Mike. We went to a fancy bar with an adorable gay bartender, then to a fancy restaurant with an adorable gay waiter. It was really fun. Happy birthday, Mike!

Today is another gorgeous day, but I'm sad to say that I have to spend at least part of it inside, because I will be cranky as hell all week if I have to look at this messy house every day when I come home from work.

Hope you guys are all having a fun weekend.

He's Got A Bum Ticker.

I took Nash to the kitty cardiologist yesterday to find out why he has a heart murmur. The vet was blonde and adorable, in a sort of top-of-her-vet-class-nerd sort of way. She endeared herself to me by whispering to Nash while she examined him and kissing him on the head and calling him "Shmow." This made her seem like a completely goofy cat lover, but the next minute she took off her stethoscope and began talking in a businesslike tone about regurgitant murmurs and mitral valve involvement and whatnot. Clearly she knew her shit.

She praised Nash for being handsome and strong. She was very impressed with his abs. Man, I wish I could impress someone with MY abs.

He was very, very bad during the echocardiogram, and finally had to be given a shot of Valium. In the picture above he is totally zonked out.

Nash's heart is a little screwed up. He has blood flow problems caused by mitral valve dysplasia and some other malformations. He will probably be on beta-blockers for the rest of his life, assuming that he tolerates them well and they don't slow his heart rate too much.

I thought I would have all kinds of time on Tuesday to do other stuff besides take Nash to the vet. It took longer than I thought, then there was laundry, then there was the nappin' time. Afterwards I was all annoyed with myself because I thought I should have been more productive but you know what? It was fun to lie around in bed and read and then drift off to sleep with Rosie cuddled up beside me. I work hard, dammit, and I deserve a nap on my day off. Go me!

I have so much more to tell you, but I'm going to bed now. The computer screen is swimming in front of my eyes, and it's not even 9:30 yet. Have you noticed that I have been trying to post more regularly? Because I LOVE YOU. I'm still not caught up on the blogs that I read, so if you haven't seen me around, don't be mad. I'll get there eventually.