Gold Paint

I was ready for lunch by halfway through 1st period today. One of my girls brought the marker bucket up to me during class and pointed out that someone had put a huge puddle of gold paint in the bottom of it (likely sometime on Friday), so that every time someone moved the markers around the got coated in paint. UGH! I wanted to scream...and instead I stood at the sink for half of the class rinsing off markers. I could have sworn I taught high school, but apparently at some point they made the switch on me and I have 2nd graders now. Sometimes I want to strangle them, good thing I have my temper in check.

I've just started talking to a new guy from online, he SEEMS really nice so far. I say SEEMS because so far my experience has been that men are only fake nice to get in your pants. He does seem like a legitimately cool guy though, AND he lives in Pampa! Double Kudos points! He's also REALLY tall, like over 1 foot taller than me (and I'm 5'6", do the math). I haven't met him yet, but we talked online yesterday for hours and exchanged numbers. We're supposed to meet on Wednesday, I think we're gonna grab dinner and go bowling (where he will no doubt kick my ass). Yay!

Wow!

Best decision ever.

I saved $320 this month by breaking up with my boyfriend. The last 3 months I have had NO money left at the end of the month, and have had to really scrape by the last week of my paycheck...strangely enough this poorness directly coincided with my having a new boyfriend who was terrible with money (so I often wound up paying if we did anything). Tomorrow is payday, and I started the day with $320 left. WhOoOo HoOoO! Now I can get the cat fixed and declawed!

I must be a terrible teacher.

Am I the only one who sometimes thinks my students are complete idiots?? I started 2 point perspective with my kids this week, and I have put the instructions step by step on the board. I went over it step by step, and had them copy it down and practice...and they STILL start drawing stuff that is NOTHING like what is on the board. They say shit to me like "but I don't know how to do it!" and I can't help but wonder if they are just not all there. Its all I can do today to not just look at them and say "well, then you are a dumbass".

I was in a good buddy's wedding this weekend, and I swear to all of blogger world it is the last wedding I will go to for the next 365 days. I'm done, not doing it, don't care who you are. It was a beautiful ceremony, and a beautifully decorated home that they held the wedding at...and I was literally THE. ONLY. SINGLE. PERSON. THERE. It didn't really sink in hard until I started thinking about what was going to happen when she threw the bouquet and I was the only one standing there. It wound up being me and her new 5 year old step daughter-- and I told the little one that she better catch it because I had no intention of catching it myself. I've lost count of how many times I have caught the damn bouquet, and I sure don't see any ring on my finger-- I think it must actually be BAD luck to catch it. As far as I'm concerned, I am going to reverse my luck by not attending any more weddings for a long time.

First Day Back to School

One day down, and it actually went really well!I have 5 art 1 classes, and one Art 2-3 class (I only have 1 student in Art 3). This is different, last year I only had 4 Art 1 classes. As of today, I had 143 students total. That is LOT of kids to get to know. Today went pretty smoothly, all I did was introduce myself, pass out my syllabus and go over everything it said with them- and then I gave them free time. I knew better than to try to make them work during the entire class period on day one- SO not gonna happen. Tomorrow? Maybe.

The thing I was most excited about was my new Rules signs, I made a specific one with all of my actual rules, but I found some online that I printed out too...haha I love Mr. T!

Summer Cleaning

So yeah, I had pretty much abandoned this thing except to read my friend's blogs. That's probably the way it will go again in no time.

I've just spent the evening organizing and cleaning my house. It's going to take many more nights like this one to get it to where I would like it to be, but tonight was BIG progress. I've been working in my dining room/workroom, which until tonight had really been a Catchall-I-Don't-Want-To-Deal-With-These-Boxes-Right-Now room. Its been full of boxes, with a path through the middle so I can walk through my house, and now my dining room table is set up, and a work table is set up, and there is a huge pile of empty boxes and trash in the backyard waiting to go out to the trash tomorrow. This could even inspire me to finish the rest of the house...

Once I get this room finished, I promised myself I could go to the thrift store and get the new tv table, and dresser that I found the other day. Yay! New furniture!

TAKS

This was a rough and ridiculous day.

I think I got somewhere around 2 hours of sleep last night, even though I went to bed at 11 completely exhausted. I think I must have been nervous I was going to oversleep, because we had to be here early today to prepare for testing. I kept getting to sleep and then waking up 30 minutes later, and I finally just got up about 4:45 and went to the living room to surf the internet for a little while.

We administered the ELA portion of the TAKS test today. I shared the responsibility with another teacher, and we had a room full of freshmen. I got into the room, and we got everything set right before the kids came in. As my luck would have it, there was a little girl in our room wearing the most atrocious perfume I have ever encountered, and I almost immediately had a debilitating headache. It was miserable. The whole thing was set up so stupid. Once we finished reading off all the instructions and rules they had about 2 hours to finish the test. This was plenty of time for most of the freshmen, we only had 2 kids from our room not finish before then. After that point they take every unfinished kid and walk them down to the gym where they had chairs and tables set up for them to finish. Here's the problem with that plan-- The sophomore and junior test was designed to take 4 hours. They had a mob of unfinished test takers, and not nearly enough space for them in the gym set up. They had ordered 30 pizzas so they would be sure to get lunch, but they had probably 350 kids in the gym. We finished everything up and returned our tests to the counselors, and there were only 2 women taking everything up and making sure everything was in order. I was 10 minutes late to my own first class after the testing. Thats the other ridiculous part of this whole ordeal- we had all 8 class periods between 11:30 and 3:30. The 3 periods where kids have lunch were 35 min long, and all the others were about 20. How pointless.

On the bright side, we don't have to deal with more full school TAKS testing again until next month.

Things have been busy lately, but I've gotten a lot done at home in the last week or so. I had a couple of doctor's appointments last week, and I'm going today to get new glasses. I got a ton of stuff put away at home on wed-friday, and I plan to get more done today. Yay!

The Quarter Century Mark

I'm officially all moved out of Panhandle, and basically not unpacked AT ALL. Rather than my original plan of having one group of people help me load the truck on Friday evening and another help me unload on Saturday, I wound up with the same people helping me on Saturday and Sunday. We finally got everything off the truck and into the house by about 3:30 Sunday afternoon. I managed to pull something in several spots in my back, and spent most of Monday with an ice pack on the couch and at the chiropractor. I go back to the doc tomorrow and hopefully he'll get me all re-adjusted. I went to Panhandle yesterday after school and turned in my key, shut down my PO BOX, and changed my address officially. I haven't gotten much accomplished since I moved in, and I sincerely doubt tonight will be any different...especially because it's my birthday!(you might think after reading that last sentence that I am excited about my 25th birthday, but you would be sorely mistaken)

I hit the big 2-5 today. Whoo. I'm not really celebrating until this weekend, and I intend to embrace it not as my birthday party, but as my quarter life-crisis party. We're having sushi at Kabuki, and then dancing and drinking the night away at Burberry's where the Electric Gypsies are playing. I am going to be numb to the world by the time we go home. I promise.

School is going well, the substitute on Monday managed to single-handedly end my last project. Her ONE instruction was pick out a student from each class and have them spray down their clay projects and cover them up with the plastic...and when I walked in on Tuesday, every single class's project board was uncovered and dry. Good job sub, way to ruin a week and a half's work of work. Wow. So, this week we started pointillism. This project ought to take a little while as well, I am having them completely cover their papers, and requiring them to mix a few colors optically (by having blue and yellow dots together in a section it will look green from across the room). It's going really well, most of them picked out relatively complicated pictures to dot out. They're looking great so far!

Thursday

I got a lot packed last night, but I still have quite a but to go. I guess I have to finish packing tonight, because I come home with the uhaul tomorrow and plan to be shoving stuff into it all afternoon/evening. I sure hope I can find someone who can help me move my furniture into the truck,I'm relatively certain I have people in Pampa to help me get it out and into the house. I can't wait to get all moved, I'm so tired of freezing my ass off in my apartment in Panhandle because they can't manage to seal a window to save their lives.

We have a half day at school today, or I guess I should say THE KIDS have a half day. We have what promises to be a ridiculous and pointless training session this afternoon. Apparently it is to be over discipline, and we're all supposed to be prepared to speak about the most common reasons we send kids to the office....hmm, could it be that I am the only teacher who never needs to? I'm thinking yes. I have only sent one kid to the office, and now the little testicle punching heathen is on the run after accidently killing another kid (he hit his head on the sidewalk when he hit the ground after a punch to the head; wound up in a coma and was taken off life support). It will likely be a painful day to sit through, but luckily they are serving everyone chili for lunch beforehand, so maybe the afternoon isn't completely shot.

New House

I'm moving to Pampa!

Yesterday after school I went by to check out a rental house a friend had told me about. It has a living room, dining room, kitchen, 1 bedroom and an additional little room off of it (previously a nursery), a little utility space with a washer and dryer, and a bathroom with a great deep bathtub. It also has a garage and a big backyard that has very little grass in it. It's a cute little house, and they told me I can do whatever I want to with it, she doesn't care if I paint big flowers all over the walls. Its going to take a lot of work to make it really nice, but since I will be living in town and won't be so exhausted afte ra long drive home, and will get to sleep in later, I shouldn't have trouble finding the energy to fix it up. I'm excited, I'm going to walmart to look at paint colors this afternoon after school. I'm planning to get some painting down this weekend, and a lot of packing done next week. I'll move in the weekend of the 1st! Yay!

I'm planning to take some pics of the place on my phone today, so hopefully I can get some shots up soon-- before and after.

New Haircut

As promised, here is a shot of me with my new haircut. I really love it! Short and spiky is kinda sassy too, so I feel like smiling when I look in the mirror for a change.

This was a rough week. I went home from school sick on Tuesday morning. I hit the clinic in Claude later that morning, and came home with an allergy medicine, a nose spray, an antibiotic and a bandaide on my ass where they gave me a big shot...I had first year teacher academy the next day, so that made getting up a little easier since I didn't have to worry about classes all day. The rest of the week has pretty much slid by. Taylor and I went and got pedicures last night, and that was really relaxing. Plus, the place I like to go to gives free margaritas while you are getting your nails done. It wasn't a very good margarita, but good enough as far as free ones go.

When I was gone on Wednesday, my advanced class did the funniest thing I think they have done all year. One of my kids was messing around with the paint when my sub asked him what he was doing. The other kids at the table explained to her that Michael was "special" and that "he does that sometimes..." and instead of getting mad that they said he was special, Michael just ran with it. He played the part all class period, and my sub BOUGHT IT. He apparently even came in to 7th period as well, and when she asked him what he was doing he ignored her, sat down at the boy's table, said "I'm gonna draw a cow" and drew one, stood up and ran out of the room. Ridiculous! The only note the sub left about it was "Michael played with the paint some, the other kids said he does that sometimes. I don't think he hurt anything." I didn't even have the heart ot be mad at them for messing with the sub, the whole thing was so creative and well played. Plus, I can't believe how dumb she must be to have believed them...

Resolutions

Happy New Year!

As my New Years resolution, I have decided to try to make it a point not to lie to myself this year. No more trying to convince myself I am happy when I am not, no more trying to fool myself that I will do things that I most definitely will not without being forced. For instance, I'm not even going to write down that I intend to post more often- I know better. I might do well for a few days or even weeks, but I think we all know that eventually it will be a month or two inbetween posts and the promise would be broken.

So far its started off to be a pretty good year. I ended last year sick as a dog at xmas, and stayed kinda ill for a few days after. I'm finally feeling better. I hope I stay that way. I started off the year right, and had a 90 min swedish massage on New Years Day. Yes!

Its good to be back at school, but I definitely did not want to come back from the break. I was not looking forward to it, but I am walking into this semester with a slightly new outlook. I'm going to make a few changes, and they're not going to like it- but they'll deal. They'll have to sink or swim.

I have a new look for the new year, I chopped my hair off short, and its spiky in the back now. Very cute, and REALLY easy to fix. ( I like that the best )Plus, I went on a big shopping spree last night. I got 3 new pairs of pants (because I lost so much weight last semester that all my pants were falling off me), a long-sleeve button down that looks more like a shirt dress, a sweater, another long sleeve shirt and a 3/4 length sleeved shirt. I'm pleased with my purchases. I got new silverware and kitchen knives for xmas, and I bought a new set of dishes too. I also have plans for getting glasses to math them. I want all my kitchen stuff to go together. Having money after xmas is nice.

Hopefully I'll have pics soon with my new haircut pictured, that way I can put my picture up!

More eventually.