Let's Talk About...ME!

All-righty, then, let's do talk about me.  I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin's Teacher Week, so here goes:

1.  I am a frustrated hairstylist wannabe, who has a daughter with be-a-u-tiful hair, just waiting to be styled, but said daughter will NOT, under any circumstances let me near it!  Just look what she lets other people do! But me?  I can't even brush it.  Fine.

2.  I'm also a frustrated interior designer wannabe.  I drool over Houzz.com, Southern Living Magazine, Pinterest, and many, many other beautiful spaces I'd love to get my hands on (as well as some not so pretty ones I feel sure I could fix!).

By the way, if this is your living room, call me.  I can help!

3.  Last frustration - I'm an art teacher wannabe with only ONE class to go, which happens only to be offered every fall semester, while I happen to be busy teaching school.  Bummer.  Fortunately, I make gorgeous anchor charts.

4.  I'm the happy mother of two beautiful girls, and the happy wife of one wonderful husband.  I know, I talk about them a lot in this blog, but they really are the center of my world.  I just told my husband Saturday, as he slaved around in my classroom, "Honey, I don't know any other man anywhere who would do all this for his wife."  It's true.  He is amazing!

 

5.  I believe with all my heart that God only gives us as much as we can handle.  Today, at a very routine post-op checkup for my little Clare-Bear, the doctor told me that the procedure she had last month didn't work.  At all.  This, I already knew from watching the video monitor during her little test today, but he confirmed it. What this means is, that Clare will probably have to have tethered cord release surgery.  Again. It's been two years since the last time we waited for the doctor to come out of the 7-hour operation smiling. Two years since my baby had to lie flat on her tummy for five straight days in the PICU.  Two years since she had to learn to walk again, run, and finally climb.  Two years seems like such a long, yet incredibly short time.  And yet, I know that God has a plan.  We were already scheduled to see her neurosurgeon for tomorrow.  That's not coincidence.  So, my favorite verse rings true again today:  "Fear not, for I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."  Jeremiah 29:11.  This is all in the midst of beginning work on Wednesday, moving classrooms, looking for a house to buy (we really can't afford the one we currently rent), and beginning a new program, curriculum, and materials this year.  All that seems very small and insignificant now, while last week, it seemed like an insurmountable hurdle.

Last month, in recovery...Pansy the Panda has already been
warned that she may have to go back to the hospital.  I think
that's Clare's way of preparing herself.

6.  I just finished reading Lucy Calkins' The Art of Teaching Reading.  It's the fifth "teacher" book I've read this summer.  Here's what hit me up-side the head.  All through the book, I was highlighting, taking notes, making plans to use every little detail.  I read on airplanes.  I read by the pool.  I read in Las Vegas, for cryin' out loud!  But until the last two pages, I was learning all about being a better teacher.  Then, I learned to be a better person.  Lucy leaves her readers with an anecdote about a co-worker who became quite ill, and was later diagnosed with AIDS.  As his health became worse, she visited him in the hospital one day, having felt guilty for not doing so earlier.  She noticed there was no music, and knowing that he loved music, she asked him about it.  Her friend said he had no radio, so she asked if she could get him one and bring it by.  He responded that Beethoven would be so nice right about now.  Days got busy, Lucy graded papers, spoke at conferences, and soon it was fall.  She received a message, in her office on campus, that Jim had passed away, and only then did she realize that she never got the radio.  I now have a post-it note on my computer desktop that reads, "Get the RADIO every single day!"  I hope I can live by that post-it, and by Lucy's experience, not as a teacher, but as a crazy-busy mom, wife, teacher, and friend.  I pray that I will make time for the radio, which I see as a metaphor for putting God, family, and friends before work, work, work.  So, GET THE RADIO, friends!

7.  Okay, I know this is weird, but I am deathly afraid of squirrels.  There.  It's out.  My students can make fun of me.  My brothers already do.  My children think I'm nuts.  I DO NOT CARE.  Squirrels are nasty little rats with fluffy tails, and I know for a fact that they would attack, bite, and kill all of us if they had the chance.  Nasty, I tell you!

 

Just look at them, poised for attack!

8.  I ADORE nutty, crazy, wild little kids.  Seriously.  I know, I need them to settle down and listen.  I know, they have to quit playing and get busy at some point.  But I seriously connect with those little nuts, and they know it as well as I do.  Teachers never have favorites, right?  Um, well...daggum it!  Some of those crazy little nuts just get to me, and I love them maybe a teeny-tiny bit more.  They're funny, and I like funny! They make me laugh, and I like to laugh!  They're usually really smart, and kinda smart-alecky, and I really like smart AND smart-alecky!!!  I'm doomed.  My principal is probably reading this right now, loading up my roster with all the nut jobs he can recruit from all over town. :)

 9.  I have an addiction.  It's coke.  Not the white one, the right one, baby!  Yep, 79 pounds down, and I'm still drinkin' those 130 calories per can, once per day!  It really is opening happiness!

10.  My tan is totally fake.  L'oreal Sublime dark bronzing lotion every other day, alternated with Neutrogena dark tanning spray.  They even each other out, they're not orange, and they actually smell good!  Get dark, though, not medium.  I don't care if you're pasty white.  Get the dark.  Trust me.  The dermatologist who sees my daughter told me to stay out of the sun.  I told him it was lotion, and he could not believe it!  That's some good fake tan!

There it is.  Ten random things about me that you probably didn't already know.  See you tomorrow for...dare I say it?  My classroom?  We'll see.  You may not get every vantage point...just the good ones, but I do have a little glue gun trick for you, so stay tuned!

Hugs,