Long overdue

Wow I didn't realize it had been so long since I updated my blog. I can't say it's been because I've been relaxing or staying off the computer. I can say that it's been because May is always an extremely busy month at my house.

Since my last update:

Don and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary.


Brian turned 16.




Don and I went to St. James Farm the dairy and horse farm from the McCormicks who were the orignal owners of International Harvester.







and Don and I went to the zoo.

We are also trying to get ready for a big garage sale. I have 9 more days of school.
I'm trying to pack my entire classroom because we are getting air conditioning (YIPEE), I'm changing classrooms, I've been working on putting together a movie for a co-worker's retirement party this Friday, trying to keep up on grades, and trying to get some movement in each day aka exercise.

If I'm not back until June, you'll know why!

Happy Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day and here it is such a gloomy, rainy, windy day. It's pretty yucky actually. It's so dark, not the day you want to spend doing something fun in the warm weather. I don't know if our long, cold winter is ever really going to loosen it's grip from our weather. We get a warm day or two then a string of cold days. I have one window in my classroom that opens, and I've only really needed to open it maybe 2 or 3 days. We're in the middle of May and still we've had only a handful of nice days. I keep seeing flowers for sale everywhere and they are tempting but I don't usually buy flowers until my anniversary. So I can start looking at flowers on Friday. I'll probably only buy a couple of hanging baskets because flowers are so darn expensive and I really can't justify flowers when Don's not working.

Doug will be finished with school this week and he's started bringing stuff home. I'll be glad to have him home but that means double the food bill and more garbage. Those are the two things that we significantly noticed by having him gone. The food lasts longer, we eat healthier (he won't eat fish at all, and is a very picky eater), and we only have to take the garbage out every other week. We do put out 3-4 recycling bins each week though. He will be working, hopefully a few days a week and for sure weekends.

Brian wants a job too, he can start looking after Friday, when he turns 16. Friday is Brian's golden birthday. He turns 16 on the 16th birthday. That is he'll turn 16 on the 16th if I don't kill him this week first. He's on the bubble of earning driver's education for first semester next year. He could have had it this year,
2nd semester, but he decided that the number of credits he earned last year wasn't important enough and the school punished him for not having at least 7 credits before taking it. He will have enough if he passes all his classes this semester, but now he's failing 2 classes and d's in two more. He's got 2 weeks left of school and he'll have to raise all the grades AND pass all the finals to pass. We also found out that he's been ditching his last period resource. A mandatory class, but since his advisor was out on maternity leave with his wife, that Brian felt that meant it was optional and blew it off. Don said last night that Brian should be sent to summer school without any choice but again, here goes that money thing. For a whole semester of summer school it was $360 last year. One semester is $180 and last year we made Brian pay for most of summer school as his punishment. He was right on track to NOT to have to go but again he's totally screwed up passing school. This whole thing makes me sick, but Brian is Brian and he'll never change to be the responsible kid that Doug is. Can I feel safe letting him behind the wheel of my car? He doesn't get that it's a responsiblity thing. Don also feels that Brian isn't going to put in the effort to study the Rules of the Road book to be able to pass his test on the 20th. They want kids to have some driving time over the summer since they'll need 50 hours of behind the wheel practice and have successfully passed the class before the kid can get the license.

Oh well, we missed our normal 2nd church service so we've got to get going to make third service. Then we are going out for lunch somewhere, I haven't decided yet.

So I hope that if you are a mother, that you have a Happy Mother's Day.

I'm not a counter...

but today I did count how many more days there are of school. There are 19 days and 18 with students. I sat down with another co-worker to figure out what we were doing the last week of school. Then I worked out next week's lessons. After that I'll have 2 short weeks to plan for. Next week will be end of the year testing to show progress. I've also planned a couple of fun things for next week. We'll be starting a project that has kind of evolved out of several projects, and a science activity that is more like a game of rolling dice.

So my activity. When I student taught we did these comic strips that got copied onto transparancies then colored and each student did a presentation on the overhead.
My first year at Roosevelt, we made shadow puppets from cardboard and went behind the sheet so it looked like a play and we did it with fairy tales and reader's theater scripts. Last year I don't remember if my class did a big end of the year fun project, surely we did but nothing as sophisticated. Well I read in the Reading Teacher about doing shadow puppets in a smaller scale and put on popcicle sticks for the overhead.

Well in my afterschool reading group, I merged the two activities. The students got into pairs, they wrote stories, then they drew the characters and setting. I ran them off on transparancies then they colored them in and read their plays with the stick puppets. I'm going to have my classroom students do the same thing. They will pair up and write a story and kind of turn it into a play/puppet show for the overhead projector. I haven't decided if I'm going to do the transparancies or if I'm going to do it as solid shadow puppets. Both are cool, the kids love to see how the transparancies evolve, but to have them all color them takes forever because I only have one set of Sharpie markers. Those are the only ones that work, and they are expensive.

Ok so now that I've totally rambled on about a goofy school project, I've got a couple of pictures to share. LOL, I don't know if you've heard but the ladies of our bunko group (we don't play bunko, and we get together as couples) we've been having a traveling martini bar. We've been trying a lot of different flavors, even mixing our own "purple" martinis. I bought good vodka this time and the 4 or 5 martinis kinda put me in a happy mood! So I thought I'd give you all a good chuckle with these pictures.







I have to clarify the last picture. My girlfriend, Carmen, and I came across this car once not too long ago that all of a sudden the window was cracked open and a gloved hand shot out and pointed. We looked at each other shocked and just laughed. Then we got behind that car, it happened again. We figured out that the guy was using hand signals because he had no turn signals. While both cars were driving in the left lane, the gloved hand popped out again and signaled to change lanes. By then we were dying of laughter in the car. Well a few weeks later, my friend Carmen emailed me saying she saw the same guy using hand signals again. Well we were reliving the story at my house last Saturday and this picture clearly shows I know how to hand signal! Yes a bit sloshed, and you definately can tell, but yet still signaling.

This group of people have been getting together for about 13 years. Each month we move to another house and have so much fun. There are certainly some subjects that we reimeinice about more than others, but there is always fun and laughter.

Ok on to other news: It appears that although U-Haul tried to fight Don's unemployment, the adjudicator seems to believe our story and we're pretty sure he's ruled in our favor. He said if there were any more problems he'd call back and he never did. Also, Don's been cast as an extra in Johnny Depp's movie "Public Enemy". He'll be a prisoner. My brother, who is also out of a job, other than waiting tables, has also been cast too. It's a period piece so costumes are given and sizes were very strict. I'm going to try to get Doug to apply too. The director Michael Mann hand picks his extras so Don's picture got him selected.


If you read my post and said prayers for us about unemployment and other things thanks so much. I won't even get into the fact that a man who was angry that I wanted in his lane to turn left threw a big rock at my windshield tonight. I'm just so glad that it didn't break. I swear how has our morals got to the point that if you're mad at someone you throw a rock at someone's windshield. So I said a prayer for that man.

If I'm not back here over the weekend....please mothers, have a Happy Mother's Day.

Almost to Hump Day

Yes, I've been known to refer to Wednesday as hump day. Not my favorite name for it, but sometimes just making it to Wednesday and getting over the middle of the week hump is so exhausting and this week has been one of those weeks.

This is my last week of extended day reading so I'll be free from students one hour earlier on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We still have mandatory teachers' meeting on Wednesdays but I think something is cooking for tomorrow's meeting. We were told to bring socks. We're thinking sock hop or bowling since it is teacher's appreciation week.

I've got a million and one things on my schedule and it seems like not nearly enough time for it all. I can't even imagine how I ever got things done when both boys were in sports, I went to school, and worked. Now there is more free time, or time that I allow myself to slack. I have a zillion papers to grade, and I'll tell you that is the absolute WORST part of my job. I hate to grade papers. Usually I have the students correct their work as part of our period but there are just some assignments they can't. Of course they are usually the big projects that are so subjective and take forever to read and grade. Well there are about 3 big stacks of those in my school bag tonight. I'll let you guess how many I'll actually be grading tonight!

Earlier tonight, we, Don, my mom and I, took the money and donations over to the family shelter. It is a brand new facility that has offices, counseling, and a live in facility. It is really nice and for women who need that time to heal and get on their feet, the facility allows someone to live there up to 6 months. We did get to go into the living quarters, but we didn't go upstairs to the bedroom areas. I talked to the head of the facility about my volunteering idea and she loved it. It probably won't start until July, they said they'd like me to go through some training and I need to get through school and then take my well deserved vacation. My idea for them is that I would come in and read the kids a story and do some type of activity that is related to the story. I also figure I could ride my bike there and get some excercise in too. I've got some time to sort this all out but if things work out, this is something that could even last through the school year.

Last night I went to a friend's house. We played "beauty shop." It was quite relaxing. I put highlights in her hair and she helped me color the gray out of mine. Mine is slightly lighter and a bit more red. No one even noticed so I think we did a good job.

This post does sound all upbeat doesn't it?? Well in an earlier post I mentioned that Don was fearing losing his job. He did in fact lose his job and we are waiting to hear the outcome of unemployment. We should find out tomorrow. I hope it comes through because this is his pay week and we are used to having a paycheck each week. Please say a prayer that he's able to find something he enjoys and pays what we need.

Well I need to go take a picture of Don, he's applying to be an extra in the new Johnny Depp movie that is shooting locally. My brother already has an extra part so he told Don about it.

Hope you have a good hump day!