Yes. Most of the time. I'm exactly where I should be. Not at all. And probably the same as 26

I'm currently sitting in the backseat of Boyfriend's sister's car, on our way to northwestern Wisconsin for the Thanksgiving holiday. And even though I'm bouncing along at 70 mph, the rushed feeling I had leading up to the point in which we got in this car has not yet worn off. Tonight I didn't get off work until 6:20. I GPSed my drive home, as I always do--not because I don't know the way, but because I like to see the live traffic. It told me my drive that under perfect conditions should take 33 minutes was estimated to be a whopping 1 hour and 17 minutes. Cringe. Fortunately, living in a city whose streets are all in a grid pattern, I was able to chop over 20 minutes off my time by not taking the freeway highway. 

Once I got home though I still had less than an hour to attempt to pack, eat dinner, shower, do the dirty dishes in the sink, find enough food/activities/magazines to hold me over for the 4 days we'll be gone. I was able to accomplish all of that except the showering. Boo. I mean, it's not like there won't be a shower at his grandma's house, but it's always more comfortable to shower at home, right?

Anyway, I didn't start this blog to just tell about my busy evening. Since it's been almost 3 weeks since my last post, I figured I was way overdue and since I've still got over an hour of this leg of the drive left to go, now is definitely as good a time as any to catch up on my blogging.

My school job has become approximately 20938409280272 times easier, give or take. We had a TACC (Teacher, Assistant, Coach Conference) two weeks ago and we rearranged our groups to ensure that all students' needs were being met and that they were in the program that would best suit current needs. As a result, my fifth grade group went from 6 kids to 4 and I only have one of my "original" students left. I also switched programs to one that is much easier to do (not that I don't like a challenge, but this new program just runs so smoothly) and the dynamic amongst my new students is really the aspect I appreciate the most. They're all so positive with one another and not at all vindictive like my last group sometimes was with one another. 

I subbed one morning last week for a 4th grade class and next Tuesday I'm covering a Special Education class for a bit in the afternoon. I'm thankful that I'm able to be utilized in sub positions whenever the teachers need to be out for meetings. I love the chance to be back in the classroom and know that every time I'm flexible and accommodating of my school's needs, it just makes me look that much better :) A true team player! 

Speaking of jobs, lately I've been giving some serious consideration to leaving my afternoon nanny job. Mostly what's becoming frustrating isn't the job itself, but the commute. More often than not, the drive takes me nearly an hour when it should just take around half an hour. Add to this the fact that it's not doing anything for me as far as furthering my teaching career. Yesterday in my district's newsletter, I noticed two part time positions that are open at other schools in my district that would work with my existing Reading Interventionist position. 

By a stroke of luck, the woman in charge of hiring for those positions happened to be at my school this afternoon and I ran into her in the office and chatted her up and expressed my interest in replacing my nanny job with another position within the district. Fingers crossed that we can schedule a meeting next week to talk about the potential opportunities. I'd be willing to take a pay cut to leave my nanny job. My district is only 6 miles from my house and I can get there in 15 minutes. I've dreamt of a commute that short my entire working life. I talked to Twinsie about it a bit last night, and she ensured me that I need to do what is best for me. Love having her for advice, especially since I am essentially following in her working footsteps since she was a Reading Interventionist last year and this year is an amazing 2nd grade teacher :) Plus the position(s) don't start until January 9th so I'd be able to give the family I nanny for plenty of advance notice which makes me feel better about the whole situation. 

In other non-school/work related news, I went to my first NFL game this past Sunday. I saw the Bears take on the Chargers. I really couldn't have gone to a more fitting game. My home team versus my new home team :) Even though it was pretty cold (42, with a wind chill of 34), I still had an awesome time. I hope we can go again next year, but preferably earlier in the season when sitting outside for 3+ hours isn't as daunting of a task. As a result of using so much energy to keep myself warm, I fell asleep at 9:30 on Sunday night. Hah. I must be getting old?

Speaking of old, my birthday is one month from today and I'm having a hard time understanding how it is that I'm going to be 27 already. Seriously 27? Am I mature enough for 27? Am I where I should be at 27? Do I look 27? What does it feel like to be 27? Haha. I'm pretty sure the answers to my questions are, in sequential order: Yes. Most of the time. I'm exactly where I should be. Not at all. And probably the same as 26 :P

There's a lot more I could continue typing about, but motion sickness coupled with the pillows that smell gross next to me as a result of our bedroom's proximity to the kitchen, have crippled me with some intense nausea now. But I vow to post a Thanksgiving/Things I'm thankful for blog sometime over the next 4 days :)

I kind of can't even comprehend how big that must mean Alaska is

I'm laying here on the most delicious chair-and-a-half, listening to "Sounds of Nature", specifically the tracks with rain and thunder and wind, as if I don't get enough of that here, haha. It makes me wonder if people who grew up with those types of weather elements find the sounds as satisfying as those of us who put them on to pretend. At least, that's why I listen to them. I am adjusting well I think to living somewhere that gets nearly 40 inches of precipitation a year compared to the measly 12 inches at home. 

It's funny because tonight on Facebook, a lot of people from home are commenting/complaining about the cold weather. It's actually going to be colder the next few nights in Southern California than it will be here in Chicago, haha. Though I'm sure they will be the ones laughing when in just a few weeks, I'll be the one covered in snow while they enjoy their mild, 60 degree winter.

I can't believe it's November. Like for real. I saw my first Christmas commercial today. Seriously?! And at the grocery store I saw Christmas candy already too. I know I'm probably jaded in my view of Christmas, since I've always felt it cheapens my birthday, but I think Christmas supplies/decorations/etc in the same week as Halloween is just absurd. Considering Christmas is nearly at the end of December, bringing it out so early is overkill. I am excited for this Christmas though, I will admit. But that's only because it's the first one I'll spend in a city that actually has seasons and maybe we'll get snow on the big day :) And a tree will be super fun to decorate with Boyfriend. But I'm not excited enough to start preparing/celebrating it yet! Haha. And hopefully by then we'll have a puppyfriend in the family! Tomorrow is our home visit with the volunteer from the rescue, so fingers crossed that it all goes well!

Boyfriend and I might take a little weekend trip somewhere next weekend. We're kind of playing it by ear but I told him it might be one of our last dog-free weekends so we should take advantage of not having the responsibility of a puppy quite yet and go away to recharge our batteries before the busy holiday season is really upon us, not this fake, 4 days after Halloween crap :P If we had more time than just a weekend, we really are within a day's driving distance of some places I'd like to see someday, like Pittsburgh and Nashville and Washington D.C. and Minneapolis. That's one thing that it's nice about not living in the country's 3rd largest state--here, you can drive through multiple states within a matter of just a few hours, unlike home where it takes over 4 hours to leave through the East and over 12 hours to leave through the North. Road trips from home to my aunt's in Texas seemed like such looooong treks because it takes just as long to get from home to El Paso as it does to get from El Paso to her little town. I kind of can't even comprehend how big that must mean Alaska is...Oh the thoughts that scamper through my head. How random they are.

And now it's 2:00 in the morning and we really should go to bed since tomorrow we have a busy day of projects around the house, our Mastiff visit, a beer tasting event, and our usual Saturday night out on the town :P And when I say we, clearly I mean me and Boyfriend. I don't have multiple personalities. Pretty sure at least ;)

It fully explains my aversion to nachos

I really don't know what it is that inhibits me from keeping myself out of crappy moods. I was in a perfectly lovely mood while I was driving home from work, happy to get home before 7:00 for a change. And now since I've been home, I've been ridiculously productive: emptied/reloaded the dishwasher plus washing the pots and pans that we don't put in there, cleaned the kitchen counters, started dinner, finished all but 1 load of laundry (out of 7!), folded 2 other loads of existing laundry that had been sitting around for nearly a week waiting to be folded, cleaned up the living room...yet, somehow during my massive housework accomplishments, I slipped into this super cranky state of being. Thankfully, Boyfriend's not home to have to experience this side of me. 

Or maybe that's the reason why I'm annoyed. He's out with a friend and his phone died and now I have no idea when he's coming home and it's bothering me 'cause I'm such a planner and want to have all the details of my life figured out all the time. I really try not to be such a stubborn, over-planner but it's really hard to change that about me. It's also going to be hard to not be annoyed at him when he gets home, which sucks because we rarely ever argue, but if the situation were reversed, he would be just as annoyed as me. Mostly it's just that I worry when he's out. It's not like we live in a bad area or anything, but we do live in the 3rd largest city in the U.S. and who knows who or what he might encounter walking home alone from the El. Ugh, makes my stomach hurt just to think about. 

In other, more positive news, my phone call with the volunteer from the Mastiff Rescue went really well and we have a home visit scheduled for Saturday afternoon. I had our vet records faxed over to the president of the rescue and the volunteer is planning on contacting our references, so providing the home visit goes well (which I'm sure it will), we should be added to the list to be placed with a mastiff :) I was told that after everything is cleared, it typically takes between 1-3 months to get placed with a dog, though it's happened as quickly as two weeks so there's really no telling. Hopefully by the end of the year, but I'll be patient :)

I think I'll attempt to find something to do to keep my mind off of my...mind? Maybe I'll go read one of the 20+ Time magazines I've been stockpiling and not reading, for some inexplicable reason. Speaking of reading I just came across this article, and I can totally relate: http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2011/11/02/the-psychology-of-food-aversions/?hpt=hp_bn8. It fully explains my aversion to nachos :P

Kbai.

I clearly fell off the blog wagon...

The weekends lately have really been throwing off my sleeping schedule. We keep staying up/out until 3:00ish and yet my body insists on waking up at normal time. Which I suppose is a good thing 'cause then on Sunday night when I have work the next day I'm actually too tired to stay up ridiculously late. I never really realized how much my body depends on its rhythm though, haha. 

I clearly fell off the blog wagon a few days ago and have been thinking about writing ever since. Thursday night I came home in a bad mood and didn't feel like doing much of anything, not the least of all blogging. It was one of those funks due to wacky monthly hormone levels that makes me feel like life is too hard and I can't possibly function as an adult. Boyfriend clearly doesn't suffer from the same hormonal hardship and can't relate/doesn't understand whenever I get into one of those extremely apathetic, nearly catatonic states. He just tries to encourage me to stop, which does absolutely nothing at all except for remind me that I'm being outrageous which just further aggravates me because I can't just be normal at times like that. It's a vicious cycle and I feel bad that he has to be a part of it, but living with your loved one means participating in all aspects of their life, not just the good times :P

The mood carried over into Friday when I again became extremely depressed about a Groupon I bought back in July for CorePower Yoga. It was the last day I could use it so I called one of the studios to try to set up my membership only to be told that I'd have to do so in person. Boo. That set me off into the depths of despair because actually going to one of the studios to sign up just seemed way too difficult. And we were supposed to be meeting up with Boyfriend's sister and time was moving too quickly but all I could seem to do was lay there and lament about how incredibly taxing the entire situation was. Obviously, writing this now I can see what a windy whiner I am about it all. And really I feel like at the times when life seems like one entirely too complicated feat, there is a small, logical side of me that's telling me to get up, shut up, and do whatever it is I feel I'm incapable of accomplishing. I'm working on getting that side to grow bigger in hopes of one day dominating the dreadfully depressed, hormonally influenced parasitic organism that takes over my brain from time to time. 

I've decided that I'm going to go to yoga today. I think. I told myself I'd go to a 1:30 class and in my head I really, really want to. It's just getting the rest of me to cooperate with that decision. And now since writing that, I looked at the class schedule again and decided I really don't want to go today because I'd like to use my Sunday to relax. I know that's just a cop out. And I know that I really should go because I absolutely LOVED going to yoga all the time before I moved out here. Until I get back in the habit of going on a regular basis, I feel like I need to schedule it on a weekday morning to make myself get up and do it before work to serve as a nice start to my day. What I really need is someone to go with to motivate myself to get there so I don't let them down by flaking out. What I really need is to stop talking about it and just do it. 

My Sunday feels incomplete because the Bears have a bye this week. Before moving here I wasn't a necessarily a Bears fan, but since I live in the city, I feel compelled to root, root, root for the home team. (Random Chicago related tidbit about that song--At the Cubs games they say, "Root, root, root for the Cubbies" and when Boyfriend heard me sing the song as just "home team" he realized that not everyone [obviously] says Cubbies when they sing it :P) I'm sure the day will mostly be spent helping Boyfriend recover from too much drinking last night and hopefully carving our pumpkins (finally). If we don't do it today we might as well not carve them at all because, unlike Christmas, I feel like Halloween is a holiday whose decorations should be put away by November 1st.

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I started this blog before noon today and now it's nearly 9:00. We've literally spent all day just laying around, making great use of our Netflix streaming app on our tv. We've watched 2 episodes of South Park, Paranormal Activity 2, and 3 episodes of The Walking Dead. It's the most tv I've watched in one sitting in a reallllly long time. Boyfriend is also the most hungover he's been in a reallllly long time. Hah. I know my limit. He apparently does not :P Needless to say, pumpkin carving did not happen today. I think pumpkin guts would have made Boyfriend lose his guts yet again :P Poor puker. 

I'll end this blog with one last bit of exciting news: I have a phone call scheduled tomorrow night with one of the volunteers from a local Mastiff Rescue to hopefully start the adoption process for adding a new member to our little psuedo-family :)  So anxious and excited!!! :D Fingers crossed we are accepted as potential adopters! I will most definitely be posting a follow up blog tomorrow. Until then!!

If that's not a sign of some dangerous moves, then I don't know what is

I think the last time I posted four days in a row was...wait? Have I ever done that? 

• I just realized that it's almost November and I signed up for something I mentioned on here a while back called NaNoWriMo. To me, completing that will be the equivalent of a mental marathon. I still haven't even started brainstorming ideas and should really probably get on that if I plan on taking this challenge seriously considering it starts next Tuesday.
• Also next Tuesday is my neice-y's 2nd birthday! I can't believe she's already 2! I also need to get on having her present made and shipped. Why oh why aren't there enough hours in the day?
• In all honesty, I feel kind of guilty complaining about a lack of free time when tonight I fully enjoyed laying here on the couch all cuddled up with Boyfriend as we watched "Casper" on ABC Family. Haha. It's not often that I take nights off to do absolutely nothing. Monday we bottled a batch of hard cider that Boyfriend made a few months ago and then started a new batch with some cider we bought at a farm the same weekend of the corn maze 5k. Last night I went all sorts of shopping, so tonight I think I'm entitled to some down time. Especially considering today is the most loathed day of the month coupled with this intense sinus pressure related to some grimy sickness the germ-laden kids I work with have so lovingly bestowed upon me. I really don't know who I feel the need to justify myself to. Haha. I'm an adult and I'll do as I please.
• Boyfriend and I submitted our information to be considered to adopt a Mastiff through the Great Lakes Mastiff Rescue! It says we'll hear back within 10 days from someone regarding the next step in the process and I am suuuuuper excited that we might be adding a little, ok well not so much little, but a puppy friend to our little household! :)
• Boyfriend is sitting on his computer about 15 feet away from me and I just sent him the link to this video. I'm having formatting issues and Blogger isn't letting me post it in the right spot. As soon as he started listening to the song, he started dancing. I smiled and then I melted and fell in love with him all over again. I melt when he dances. Seriously, his dancing is so potent, it caused this warm weather loving, Southern California girl to move to the North Pole! If that's not a sign of some dangerous moves, then I don't know what is :P
• Tomorrow is gonna be super easy in my reading groups because it's Progress Monitoring day. Yay! Today actually wasn't bad either and I ended up awarding my 5th graders all an extra point for our positive behavior system because I appreciated their hard work so much. I love when days go smoothly. And I love being able to tell my kids how proud of them I am at the end of our time together instead of taking about what could be improved upon for next time. One student was absent today so the feel of the whole group was different. I'm hoping the rest of them feel some confidence from today and that carries over into tomorrow and the future. 
• I managed to stay awake past 11:00! That is nearly unheard of these days. I don't like it at all because it means I rarely get to talk to my mom anymore. That needs to change. Still working on my overall progress in life :) And with four straight days of blogging under my belt, I'd say I'm doing a fairly good job at re-establishing old routines :D

It may be baby steps, but it's progress

Three days in a row! Could it be I'm slowly finding time in my life to do things once again?! Kind of. I'm still working on things like returning library books on time (note to self, that one book is about 5 days overdue), actually going to yoga class that I paid for like 4 months ago, and going running. I'll return that book tomorrow, I'll go to yoga on Friday (kind of have to because it's the day my Groupon expires! :P), and running...well...soon enough. I'm liking these bullets as of late, so they will continue.

• At the beginning of the school year, on a day that looked like it was threatening to rain, I asked one of the other playground supervisors what we would do if it were to begin raining while we were outside. She said she wasn't sure because she could never really remember a time when that had happened. At home, if it's going to rain, it's raining. When rain is predicted it's an all day event. Here, if rain is in the forecast, it might happen, it might not, and if it does it can and will stop and start at least 10 times, just for good measure. Since I asked that question, it has started to rain halfway through recess at least 4 times. Today was the worst time it had ever done so. I think I jinxed the school.
• I also realized today that people here don't have sprinkler systems for their front/back yards because there is enough precipitation here all year round to keep their lawns green. That is such a weird concept to me. Haha. Sprinkler lines would freeze and bust in winter here, so I totally understand why they're not used. But it was just funny finding yet another difference between Chicago and home. 
• I drove 45 minutes in traffic to get to my afternoon job, only to be told I was only needed for an hour today. I then proceeded to drive home in traffic for 45 more minutes once my hour was up. I spent more time getting to my job than I actually spent at it. Definitely need to look into something different for the new year. 
• Another one of my lilies opened up today. I love that I'm getting to enjoy them for so long! And there are still two more buds to go!
• One perk of getting off so early meant that I got my grocery shopping, Target shopping, and Costco shopping done in one fell swoop! And with Boyfriend along for the errand running to boot! I spent way more money than I care to at one time, but at least we'll be stocked up for like well over a month! :) You know you're an adult when something like that is one of the silver lining moments of your day. 
• I've been thinking a lot about trying to find a time to go home to visit lately. I'm just not sure when. Traveling over the holidays just does not at all sound appealing (not to mention it's super expensive). In my head, in my ideal future I'm trying to imagine for myself, I'll finish working my afternoon job at the very end of the year and use the second week of my Christmas break to go home to see my family. That is definitely some good motivation for me to work out my income situation!!
• Boyfriend and I decided that one of our goals to accomplish next year is for both of us to have what we refer to as "real people jobs". Yes, he and I are both real, physical people, but we want jobs that real people have, you know the kinds with salaries and benefits? I know those are hard to come by nowadays, but for serious, we need/want them. In obtaining these real people jobs, we will sell both of our cars and buy something new together. Provided he (or I for that matter) can get a job where we can take the L, we really only need one car. Super excited at the prospect of that!

That's probably plenty of reading for one sitting. I intend on doing this again tomorrow so I'm feeling less and less like I need to write a lengthy post of "The Iliad" proportions. It may be baby steps, but it's progress :)

Oh you betcha

Blogging two days (techinically) in a row? Oh you betcha (reminds me of Bobby's mom from Bobby's World). As I write this, I'm listening to an album an old friend of mine recently completed. We used to be email pen pals, with various periods of time producing more emails than others. I once got a hand written letter (people still write those?) from him as he took a road trip across multiple states and it was honestly one of the funniest things I have ever read in my life. I hope that I still have that letter tucked away in a drawer somewhere 'cause it was a precious little literary gem. Initially I just spelled gem, "Jem", yet another literary Jem :P

I'm a bit pressed for time as I'm trying to write this during the time Boyfriend's taking a shower in between our "Breaking Bad" marathon we've been in the middle of having for the past few weeks. We're about to watch the Season 2 finale. So I think tonight's entry will be in bullet form for speed purposes. 

• I think I'm going to quit my nanny job after the holidays, provided I can find another source of income because lord knows I can't survive on my 11.25 hours a week I work as a Reading Interventionist. I want to go back to school to get my ESL endorsement. Those of you who are interested in knowing exactly what that means and entails can find that out here. My hope is that I'll be able to get enough money in grants/loans that I can use that to live off of until I acquire full time employment. 
• It's really interesting working at such a diverse school because the students I work with are aware of so many different countries and cultures that in the past couple weeks I've been asked if I am Romanian as well as Russian. And really they're not all that far off. I feel like most kids from the melting pot I hail from would not be able to pinpoint exactly where I look like I descend from. The students at my school seem especially in tune with it. I secretly love that about them.
• I haven't tweezed/threaded/maintained in any way my right eyebrow since June. June. That was 4 months ago. I usually go for threading but haven't been able to find the time to do so. And because I wear my side bangs over my right eye, they hide it so well that one would never suspect I have a rainforest of an eyebrow growing under there. At first I didn't tweeze it 'cause I didn't want to mess up the beautiful shaping the girl from the threading shop so perfectly created. But now that shape is long gone and I chalk my unkempt eyebrow up to laziness now. 
• I've discovered my stomach is intolerant to sugar alcohol. So much for the sugar-free caramel I was dipping my fresh from the orchard apples in. Boo. 
• This morning as I was backing out of my driveway to leave for work, I saw a firetruck drive up the street in my rear view mirror. I didn't really think anything of it until I realized that if the firetruck ended up being called to our street, that it would have no where to park but in the middle of the car-lined, one-way street. Aaaaand of course it stopped about half way up my street, apparently having been  called out for some medical emergency. I came back in the house and called my school to tell them I might be late if the fire truck didn't move in time. Then along came an ambulance too. I decided I didn't want to wait any longer so I drove the wrong way down my one way street to leave for work. I figured that if by some unfortunate stroke of luck a cop were to drive by and see me committing this terribly illegal driving maneuver, that I would just bat my lashes and hope that they'd be sympathetic to my plight of getting to work on time, seeings as how they are fellow civil servants and all :P 
• If my 5th graders can't stop saying the word "fart" while we're in our reading group, I might lose my mind. Someday they'll realize that word is no longer amusing. Sighhhhh. 
• This afternoon at my nanny job, the 4th grader and I were pretending to be ninjas and my right pinky finger got jammed. I forgot what it felt like to jam a finger. Brings me back to my tetherball days :P

That's all I've got for tonight. Yay for being consecutively consistent! :)

15. 1-5. Fifteen.

I decided that last page layout I was using for my blog was just too much and as a result I am reverting back to something simple in the meantime until I find a good amount of minutes to logically sit down and come up with something cutesy again. I have minutes right now. Lots of minutes actually. But I don't feel like using them for anything that requires thinking. I really should be using the word time but because I already used it in the word meantime, I don't feel like I can use it again in this paragraph. I am most definitely the type of person who will Shift+F7 (yay for you if you know what that means!) repeat words in my writing just to sound more intelligent and to assuage my OCD tendencies. I learned the word assuage in my 6th grade language arts class. It took me a long time to realize it wasn't pronounced "a-sausage". Clearly I have no phonetic abilities. 

So here it is, 3 weeks after I last wrote and I am nearly just as fail as before. On the plus side, I guess I am getting this written before the one month between postings mark so there's a bit of a silver lining as far as the regularity of this blog is concerned. Not like digestive regularity. But regularity as in blogging consistently. 

Speaking of regularity, in a sense, I have a funny bathroom related story. I promise to not go into gross details but if you'd rather not read my potty prose, just quit here...

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For those of you who stayed, thank you for being as curious of a soul as I am ;) Last Friday, Boyfriend and I met up with his sister and some friends for an impromptu and super casual dive bar bar crawl. We started out at a not so scummy place and then proceeded onto a cesspool of filth before taking a detour to  a very nice, rather pristine local gay bar/club called Side Track (how appropriately named it is since we got "side-tracked" from our dive bar bar crawl :P). Shortly after arriving, my stomach started to churn and make weird noises in protest of who knows what. When I get these stomach episodes, they include cramps to the point of nausea, cold sweats, hot flashes, and other undesirable ailments. Typically I try to head home when I become so afflicted, but the trip home would have taken well over half an hour with lots of walking without bathrooms nearby. So I decided to swallow my fear of public bathrooms and wandered to the back corner to find the facilities. 

Usually when you enter the women's bathroom in a bar in the city on a weekend night, one walks into a barrage of various women doing various things like redoing their hair and makeup, crying with friends about how so and so isn't paying enough attention them, giving drunken directions to someone on the phone, etc. I braced myself as I pushed open the door, silently praying that it would be one that had more than 1 or 2 stalls and that hopefully no one would come wait in line behind me while my intestines angrily expelled their contents. To my surprise, the bathroom was completely empty. I then realized, duhhhh, 99.5% of the patrons at a gay bar are men! I was in the clear to use the bathroom in peace :) Crisis averted!

Life lesson # 101,511: Gay bars are one of the best places to use the women's restroom. 

In other news, Boyfriend and I ran a 5k through a corn maze in quite literally the middle of nowhere Illinois. It was difficult in that it was nearly impossible to gain any speed as there were essentially no parts of the course that were straight-aways. 

Here is a rough gps tracking of the course that I recorded on my phone using RunKeeper:

I know a 5k is not that far of a distance, but I was proud that I was able to run it in 35 minutes considering I haven't been running on a regular basis since July really. Boyfriend would have loved to go faster but he was sweet and stayed with me the whole time. He said he was running this race for fun, not for speed which I think is a nice way of saying I'm slow but he loves me anyway :P 

I've already picked out our next 5k: The Santa Hustle on December 3rd. Every participant gets a Santa shirt to run in along with a beard and hat. Plus there are hot chocolate and cookie stations along the course. Doesn't get much better than that! I'm sure I'll be singing a different tune when it's actually the first weekend in December and it's more likely than not snowy and/or snowing. But the concept behind it all seems super fun and I'm excited :) We'll see what it's like to run in snow... Definitely something I don't have any previous experience with!

Speaking of cold weather, this is something I found out a while back but never blogged about. Apparently here in Chicagoland, students are permitted/required to have outdoor recess until the temperature drops below 15 degrees. 15. 1-5. Fifteen. I know that the Mid West is not in any way, shape, or form Southern California and so the frame of reference for acceptable weather temperatures here is completely different. But I feel like 15 degrees is cruel and unusual punishment. If somehow the weather in Southern California were ever to drop that low and schools insisted the students still have outdoor recess, there would be a litany of complaints filed against the district. Haha. I am not at all looking forward to that aspect of Winter and have a list of cold weather items on my Christmas wish list that I'll be giving to Boyfriend :P

Speaking of Boyfriend, we had a bit of a disagreement on Tuesday night that carried over into Wednesday morning. We don't argue very frequently at all which, considering we have not spent a day apart since December of last year, is nothing short of miraculous :P Anyway, following the not so fantastic night/day, I came home from work on Wednesday evening to find that Boyfriend had bought me flowers as a peace offering. Super sweet. Just when I think he can't possibly get any better, he does :) The bouquet is a really pretty lily arrangement (my 2nd favorite flower after orchids, but those obviously don't come in bouquet form) and at the start there were 3 flowers and 5 buds and now four days later, 2 of those buds have opened and another 2 look like they'll be following suit soon :) I've never had such a successful flower arrangement where the buds actually continue to mature and open. Just typing this makes me smile. I love that boy. 

***

Yet again I've failed to complete a blog the same day I start it. I began writing this on Friday evening and now it's Sunday night. We had quite the busy weekend that resulted in us not going to bed until after 3am both nights, which definitely used to be the norm but is not at all our way of life as of late. My body is still used to getting up around 9 and promptly did so yesterday and today. So needless to say I'm pooped and feel as though I've been run over repeatedly by a truck. There's a random thunderstorm going on outside right now that sounds absolutely lovely so I think I'll go curl up in my freshly laundered, deliciously scented sheets and put myself to bed at a decent hour. Until next time! :)

P.S. I need to find a better way to link common topics between paragraphs. I started 3 paragraphs off with, "Speaking of..." Repetitive much? :P

blogging/life/anythingthatrequiresgoodtimemanagementskills

So there's been like this HUGE spike in traffic on my blog lately from some person(s) Googling the term "heat for the seat paddle". I have a picture that I linked to in a blog that I wrote when my Grandpa died back in February. It's really weird because now that blog post discussing the things I will remember/miss about my Grandpa has over 50 views. I really don't know why this term is being repeatedly searched for, but it's kind of amusing...that is, as long as the person entering those keywords isn't looking to buy one to use on their children, but is hopefully reminiscing about something funny as I was. 

In other news, I had something funny happen at work this week and I was just looking up YouTube videos in an attempt to find an example of what I wanted to talk about, and while this video doesn't exactly depict what I am going to discuss, it is still funny to me because it's done by a girl who moved from Chicago to LA, the flip flop of what I did (of sorts).  <---Click it, do it! I was trying to find a video of Chicagoan vowels, haha. But wouldn't you know it, there aren't any results for those search terms :P Maybe I'll have to video some Chicagoans and post it myself :P So, my story. I was working with my reading groups and we came to the spelling part of the lesson where I dictate words to the kids and they write them on their white boards. The word was "slot" and as I scanned their boards I noticed that one of the students wrote "slut". Aaah!

I can assure you this was not intentional as it was written by a student who probably does not even know the meaning of the word. I sounded out the word again and the student was able to get the correct spelling. I told Boyfriend about this when I came home and he said that it was most likely because of my accent that the student wasn't able to sound it out right. What the what?! My accent? I don't really have one. I kind of regard Californian speech as the standard now, due to the massive impact Hollywood has on seemingly everyone. He said if I would have said it with a Chicagoan accent that their probably would have been no confusion. To try to explain to those of you who are unfamiliar with Chicagoan accents, say the word "black". That is how people here say "block". The "o" sound is very high and somewhat nasal-y. The teacher in me feels like I should teach all this silly Chicagoans how to properly pronounce their vowels :P

A couple of other funny quotes from the week:

A conversation between me and a second grader playing with a plastic die (you know, as in dice, but just one so grammatically speaking it is just a die) at recess:

Student: I'm gonna roll the dice.

Me: What number do you think you'll get?

Student: I don't know! I'm not a robot!!

A conversation between me and a fourth grader whose class I supervise for indoor recess:

Student: You're like the best teacher ever. I think you're the nicest teacher at the whole school.

Me: Aww, thank you.

Student: I mean, it's like you're one of us. A student. You never yell at us and you understand us. 

(So glad to know I'm viewed as a student :P)

A 7 year old came up to me at recess and said the following:

Student: *snaps at the beginning of each word, while moving his hand from side to side* 

(snap) Nobody (snap) messes (snap) with (snap) me!

A 2nd grader talking to me at recess:

Student: Nobody wants to play with me.

Me: Well what are you wanting to play?

Student: School.

Me: Well how do you play school?

Students: First, you come outside and sit down and be quiet. Next, you listen to me talk. A lot. Then you take a really hard math test. 

Me: Well, sweetie, I don't know that people want to sit down and take really hard math tests at recess. Is there a different way you could play school?

Student: No. I really like math. Hard math. It's really fun.

...Needless to say, he never found anyone to play with him :/

***I'd like it noted that I started writing this blog post on September 30th. It's October 9th now. I'm trying to not be so fail at blogging/life/anythingthatrequiresgoodtimemanagementskills.***

Thank you, Rosh Hashanah

I just changed the design of my blog. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet but I think I'll give it a while to let it grow on me. Interestingly, the old picture I used for my blog background 

was a picture that I took when MelSav and I took our initial trip to Chicago last September. Little did I know that just 6 short months later I'd be using that very L line nearly every weekend. The house that Boyfriend and I moved into is just a few minutes walk to the Kimball stop on the Brown Line. I don't exactly believe in fate, but I think it's interesting that of all the Ls I could have taken a picture of, I took a picture of this very one that would have major significance later :)

Anywho, I didn't start a blog post to talk about the fact that I have a new layout, haha. There are a few things on my mind that I wanted to write about. I've been meaning to squeeze out a post since Friday but it just didn't happen until now. I'll recap.

Friday: I had an absolutely fantastic day subbing for a third grade class at my school. I had never subbed a full day before and was moderately nervous on my way to work, but took some comfort in knowing that I'm familiar with our school and it's procedures and routines so I wasn't working in completely uncharted territory. I had very detailed sub notes written along with the entire day mapped out for me on the SmartBoard (every classroom at my school has one!) so the day was super easy. 

Class started at 8:40 and I told the kids that I'd know all their names by 10:00. They didn't really believe me. At 9:25 as we transitioned into a different activity, I told them all that I'd learned their names. They of course wanted to take time to test me on everyone's name right then and there, but we had tasks to complete and I told them I'd prove it to them by using their names to call on them. I think my ability to learn their names coupled with the fact that they know I'm an existing school employee really helped to set the tone for the day and I immediately felt as though I had their respect, which is HUGE (and is something I'll discuss in another paragraph a bit later). 

Overall, I couldn't have asked for a better first day of subbing experience and I hope that I'm able to do it again in the future! I see my reading groups Monday-Thursday so technically I'm available to sub on Fridays in lieu of my planning periods, so we'll see if another opportunity presents itself! Fingers crossed! :)

Also Friday as I was driving to my afternoon job, someone pulled up beside me to tell me that all three of my brake lights were out! Scary! I was absolutely convinced that I was going to get rear-ended and was so, so thankful that I didn't. 

Saturday: I took my car in to the shop that is literally half a mile from our house. It turned out the problem was just the brake light switch and I had my car back by the early afternoon. Yay! Around 3:00 Boyfriend and I started on a bar crawl for a friend's birthday. We went to 10 different bars in about 10 hours. We were both really good about pacing ourselves and neither one of us got too sloppy at all. There were about 25 of us and it was so fun to be a part of a massive group of people occupying the L and entire sections of bars. We also enjoyed some special pricing at a few of the bars which was just an added bonus :) After the crawl was over we met up with a girl a work with and I had fun chatting with her and getting to know her better. A fantastic Saturday indeed :)

Sunday: We slept in super late which is really hard for me to do now that I'm waking up early for work everyday so I was shocked to see 12:30 on the clock when I woke up! Haha. Our day was mostly spent watching/screaming at the Bears as they attempted to beat the Packers. For those of you who aren't from the Chicago area/don't know much about football, the Bears-Packers rivalry is one of the longest standing in the NFL. I personally don't find it as scary as the Chargers-Raiders rivalry, but it's definitely a long standing and deeply rooted emotional tradition in here in the Chicagoland area.

We made some absolutely amazing chili for dinner that night using as many of our homegrown veggies as we could: tomatoes, habaneros, bell peppers, anaheim chilis. I love, love, love having a garden and I'm really sad that the growing season here is quickly coming to an end. We plan on keeping some plants going inside using grow lamps during the cold months, like our pineapple and plumeria, but the only edible things we'll have are the herbs growing in the kitchen window. Dear Spring, please come quickly! Haha. I'm actually looking forward to the Fall and Winter here. It will be my first Chicago Christmas :) I'm just going to miss our garden a lot, but we already have plans for next year's! We can spend the off season perfecting our ideas to hopefully have an even more successful garden in 2012.

Monday: My first day of reading groups. I brought home my Teacher's Editions to look over my lessons for the week and Boyfriend was surprised to see just how scripted the particular program I'm working with is. It was amusing to see his reaction, haha. I had already met most of my kids from working in different classrooms and seeing them on the playground. My fourth grade group was a piece of cake. I only have 4 kids and while they can be a bit chatty at times, they're easy to redirect and they seem to be interested in the program.

My fifth graders are another story. I have a full group of six kids-4 boys and 2 girls. The kids' personalities are all SO different from one another's. It's not at all that I was expecting a group of drones, but they all vary from each other so much that it's been challenging for me to find ways to appeal to all 6 of them at the same time. I know that six kids is nothing compared to an entire classroom, so I don't mean to sound whiny. I'm just trying to find the best way to capture my students' attention and keep them engaged as active participants during the 40 minutes we have together.

Another issue I've been facing with my fifth graders is a lack of respect for me. One student in particular has no problem just talking over me and is constantly interrupting me. We had a discussion about how they should behave when they are with me and how they should treat me when they are in my room. Interrupting Boy was surprised to learn I was a "real teacher", not just a Reading Interventionist. Once I told them that, another boy suggested that "We should treat you the way we treat our classroom teachers. We should just pretend you are them." I praised him for his idea while I thought to myself, What a novel idea, dear child. I know that I can't use my own years in school as my standard for behavior because it was my personal experience, but it's so weird to me that students would think that adults of varying levels are worthy of different amounts of respect. Maybe I'll put up one of those posters in my room that says, "Treat others as you would like to be treated", just to serve as a reminder to my students that a little bit of respect can go a long way.

Their behavior was not at all enough to make me hate my job or anything like that. I'm well aware that as we establish our new routine, the students will try to test their boundaries with me. We've discussed setting up a positive reward system and they seemed receptive to that. On Friday, my co-worker and I are going to brainstorm about how to better organize our room and how to reward them for good behavior. Definitely looking forward to getting those two much needed systems in place.

On a not so fantastic note, Monday also brought with it the shock of Boyfriend being let go/fired from his job. It's a rather long story, so just know that he didn't do anything to cause it. You should also know that Boyfriend and I are extremely financially savvy and sound so we will be completely fine as he looks for another job. Fingers crossed that something comes his way soon. Hopefully with a company that helps its employees go back to school for their MBAs. That would be ideal! :)

Tuesday: And now it's Tuesday. I'm adjusting to life with a boyfriend who doesn't work bar hours anymore. It's weird having him home when I get home from work. Definitely a nice and welcome change because I'm kind of addicted to that boy and spending time with him. It's just that our entire relationship has been spent with him working the hours of 3:00pm-??? so having such a major daily lifestyle change is something that will take a little while to get used to and develop a new routine around.

Today is my mom's birthday and it feels weird to be spending it apart. We have always made a point of spending each other's birthdays together as a family. For some reason birthdays are more important to spend together in my mind than holidays. I think it's because on that one day, a birthday, we are celebrating one individual person whereas holidays are something that millions of other people are doing at the exact same time and it doesn't feel quite as unique as a birthday. That's not at all to say that I don't feel like that holidays are important, it's just that to me, having a day to celebrate one loved one is better than Christmas or Thanksgiving. We had an hour long phone chat this evening so at least I got to spend part of her special day with her in some form :)

I'll try to blog again on Thursday since I have no school that day. Thank you, Rosh Hashanah :)

What.the.crap?!!?

I'll be using more bullets again today. It takes some of the pressure off of writing when I know I don't really need to worry about making a cohesive paragraph. I really don't know where these blogging rules came from that I hold myself accountable to. 

There are things I should be doing, so I need to make this speedy. 

• I subbed for 1st grade today! Only for an hour to cover the teacher while our school conducted grade level TACC (Teacher/Assistant/Coach Conference) meetings to discuss reading and math interventions. It was so great to be back in the classroom again, if only for a short time. First grade doesn't at all intimidate me 'cause I've been there done that and I was able to not only be an effective sub, but to enjoy my time there as well :)
• Speeeeeaking of subbing, I'm doing it again tomorrow! But this time ALL DAY and for a 3rd grade class. I'll be going to my afternoon job an hour late tomorrow, but to me it's worth it to be able to have the opportunity to sub and show my principal just what I'm made of and that I'm a "Yes" girl :) Wish me luck!!
• Today I got my reading groups assigned and got my materials. I'm so bringing home my Teacher's Editions to read this weekend. Haha.
• I had an hour and a half long convo with Twinsie today. It makes me happysad to talk to her 'cause it makes me realize how much I miss her all over again. Blast these 2,000 miles between me and all 99% of my loved ones. I told her, and I quote, the "best story she's heard all month" and she laughed so hard she was wheezing and coughing and achey. I will not be repeating it here, but it is quite the doozie :P She also gave me some very good and much needed advice about not being shy about speaking up for myself to ensure that I'm doing everything I can to work toward my goal of having my own classroom next year. She is most definitely my sister from another mister. <3 <3 <3
• I got my haircut last Thursday. It is/was beautiful. I honestly got Thursday night-Monday night off that visit to the hair salon in terms of how long I "wore" my hair for before I had to wash it and do it myself. Don't worry, I use dry shampoo in the days I don't wash it wash it :P I really want to straighten it again tonight but I'm kind of lazy. We'll see if it happens or not. 
• I managed to go jogging on Tuesday night for the first time since August 24th. Still trying to figure out how to best work that into my schedule. I actually ended up taking my running clothes/shoes with me to my afternoon job and then I changed there and went running on this jogging path near their house. It worked out rather well and I think I'll try to do that as often as I can until it reaches the point where the sun is setting at like 4:07pm like it does in Winter here, haha. 
• I had a moment of genius-ness and as a result I now have THE BEST birthday planned for Boyfriend next year. It's 6 months away but I've already got a general outline. I'm keeping it all a secret from him though. I'm probably going to end up outdoing myself because it will be a difficult birthday to top in the future, haha. It also means he's gonna have to be super creative if he expects to match my level of expertise for surprise plans :P Poor guy has our anniversary, my birthday, and Christmas all within 3 weeks of each other! 
• Twinsie and I talked about this tonight: I'll be 27 in three months from today. What.the.crap?!!? How has 27 snuck up on me so stealthily? Eeeesh, that sounds old. 

I'm sure I could continue writing lots more, but I want to shower, watch the season premiere of The Office, and nap before Boyfriend gets home. I stopped by his bar earlier and he was having a super busy night, so I'm sure I still have like 4 hours before he gets here, haha. But if I don't go now I'll just procrastinate for-evvvvv-errrrr!!! Ready, set, go!

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Well, in the style of my dear Twinsie, I will be posting this blog in bullet form. While I have struggled with writing short, succinct bullet points in the past, I'm going to try really hard to limit myself to 5 sentences per bullet, haha. 

This week's happenings:

• I had a pretty smooth sailing week at both jobs and even had Tuesday off from my afternoon job. I spent it doing a whole lot of nothing but it felt good to just relax. 
• I went to a training on the curriculum we'll be using for Reading Interventions. I've yet to receive my groups of kids (we have the placement meetings this Thursday and groups start next Monday the 26th) but once I get my class lists, I'll start lesson planning using some or all of the Voyager, Read Natural, and Quick Reads programs. Super excited for this next chapter to begin!! I'll keep you updated :)
• I went to my first brew fest with Boyfriend and a few friends yesterday. I am not a beer fan, and didn't really find any beer that I really liked at the fest, but there were plenty of cider booths that I frequented until they ran out of their stock. We had intended to stay the night (the fest was in Racine, Wisconsin) but upon seeing the seedy establishment that Boyfriend had booked, we decided it was best to just drive home late at night. The motel wasn't quite as scary as the one MelSav and I stayed in in Oklahoma on our long drive from home to Chicago, but it was still gross and I didn't want to sit down on the furniture. Haha. 
• Speaking of MelSav, I'm reading a book per her recommendation titled "The 5 Love Languages" by Gary Chapman. It's a book about building a strong marriage based on understanding the love language your partner speaks. Obviously Boyfriend and I aren't married, but the principles in the book can be utilized in any loving, committed relationship. The 5 love languages are: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. I had Boyfriend rank those in order of most to least important to him. His least ended up being Words of Affirmation which is in fact, my most important. Haha. I'm not reading this book because there's anything wrong in our relationship--I just like to be the best at everything I do, which includes being a super amazing awesome girlfriend :)

And now I'm ending this post here, because I started writing it on Sunday night. It's Thursday now. And there are things I want to write about and I don't want to have to change the verb tense. Haha. Kbai.

Questions and Requests

So far at my new job, I've received lots of questions and requests. This week I've gotten requests from two different students. Not the typical, "Can I go to the bathroom?" or the like. These were requests that made me smile :) One student asked me to please teach third grade next year while the other was pleading for my presence in fifth grade. I'm definitely going to mention it to my principal that I've already received requests from students wanting me to be their teacher next year :) ***(Side note: My OCD is telling me that I used the base word "request" far too many times in this paragraph but I can't think of a good synonym so it's staying. Boo :P)***

The second grader actually said I should do something like this: "Ok, so what you need to do is go up to Ms. Insertmakebelievelastnamehere (a current 3rd grade teacher) and say, 'I'm taking over! This is my class now! You may leave!' " Bahaha! This boy is gutsy, I tell you. It was hilarious hearing his game plan for how to make me his teacher for next year. Truth be told, I'd love to have the little guy in my class some day. He's a great kid. Though really I'd love to have any little guys or gals in my class. I'd just love to have a class. Sighhh, patience!! :) It'll happen eventually, right?!!?

I also keep getting asked how old I am, to which I respond 135. It always catches them off guard as they try to figure out if I'm telling the truth or not, because teachers never lie, right?! 

One question I do always lie about is when they ask if I have a boyfriend. If I was married I would answer honestly, and that's not at all to say that I'm embarrassed/ashamed of Boyfriend because he's not my husband. It's just that I feel like a husband is something you admit to having, whereas a boyfriend, at least in a professional setting, is something you usually don't go around advertising, at least not to the students. I might be completely alone in this way of thinking, but it's just the way I choose to conduct myself. I'd rather err on the side of professionalism than be seen as a blabbermouth. 

I just love watching kids' minds at work and seeing what kind of questions they come up with in their attempt at interpreting the world around them :) One of my absolute favorite things about teaching.

I had indoor recess duty for the first time today, and honestly now I hope it rains everyday :P Haha. I had such an easy day only being responsible for watching one fourth grade class in their room. Much better than my day yesterday where I broke up a violent fist fight between two fifth graders at lunch recess. Eeeesh. While I definitely hope that never happens again, I now know what to do if another situation like that should ever present itself. 

Ok, just wanted to write a quick post (I had one particular Twinsie in mind while I jotted this all down :P). Boyfriend and I are off to cuddle in our glorious chair-and-a-half and watch "The Departed" :)

I'm working on it

I have this problem where I think about blogging, start to blog, and then as I'm writing feel like my post isn't going to be interesting enough so I just abandon it. There are nearly 10 half-written blog drafts that are seemingly going to just sit there eternally unfinished. I think know I put entirely too much pressure on myself and am most definitely my worst critic (aren't we all?), but I really am trying to put that behind me. I'm in the midst of attempting an overhaul of my life. I've felt so out of balance since I started my new job and I'm really struggling to find some type of happy medium. 

The most ridiculous part of my life that is "oh-so-off-kilter" is really that on most days, I work a combined total of about 5.5 hours between both my jobs. That's it. Five and a half measly little hours. Which sounds like an enviable piece of cake, but since they are a couple hours (and about 25 miles) apart, it's not as easy as working one solid block of time. Don't get me wrong, I'm incredibly grateful to have both of my jobs, I just need to figure out how to make it all work. And I also need to come to the sad realization that the amount of time I'm used to spending with Boyfriend/the amount of time I like to spend with Boyfriend, far exceeds the national average. But what can I say? I'm greedy and head over heels in love with the most amazing boy ever so it's kind of hard to NOT want to spend immense amounts of time with him. 

Boyfriend and I have been carpooling to work together lately. My afternoon job is in the same city where he works, and we both start at the same time, the only difference is I get off between 6-7ish and he stays into the wee hours of the night, which means I usually don't hang out there waiting for him to get off. Instead I take the train and then the L home, which takes about an hour and a half. I just bring a book and use that time to read and unwind, but it usually means I don't end up getting home until after 9. And by that time I feel like the night is nearly over and I reside myself to an evening of procrastination and moping. That is the part of my day that I need to change. The more productive I am on the week nights before Boyfriend gets home, the more free time we have on the weekends. And it's not like we are disgusting people who live in a dump, but it's easy to let things get a bit cluttered when we're feeling busy (lately I just can't seem to ever complete laundry in a timely manner) so that coupled with the fact that we live in a very old house that always needs something done to it means it's easy for a little old weakling like myself to feel overwhelmed and just shut down. Again, I'm working on that. 

I also need to find the right time/way to fit exercising back into my schedule. By now when I get home from my second job, it's usually too late to go running by myself since the sun is setting earlier than it was over summer. And as anyone who struggles with motivating themselves to work out can relate to, it's nearly impossible to make myself get up early enough before work to go running. It's really my only option though so I just have to stop making excuses and start doing it if I want to lose those 4 of 8 lost pounds that have recently returned :/

So all of that in a very large nutshell, is my explanation for why I suck at life blogging lately. And again, I'm working on it.

In other news, my morning job as a Reading Interventionist is going extremely well. I pretty much love everything about it. And my side duty as a Playground Supervisor is growing on me as well. The weather has been pretty amazing lately and it's so nice to be able to spend time outside, though I'm sure I'll be singing a completely different tune once December rolls around since they actually allow the children to go outside and play in the snow during recess. As someone who comes from the Land of Nearly Eternal Summer (aka, Southern California), I personally consider snow to be an inclement weather condition which should be avoided at all costs, with a small exception for sledding, because sledding is THE ONLY good thing about Winter. But here at the North Pole, recess in the snow is the norm so I will undoubtedly be buying myself one of those floor length winter coats, haha. Overall though, I love the school, the staff is great, the building itself is beautiful and well appointed, and with such a fantastically diverse student population, not only am I learning a lot about other cultures, I almost feel like I'm back home :) 

My afternoon job is great, too. The girls are in 4th and 7th grades this year. It's fun watching the older one try to gain more independence. And the younger one is such a phenomenal student that it blows my mind. She actually came home on Friday wanting to study for a test that was a week away! She loves exploring problems and has a great ability to recall detail. It also doesn't hurt that she's in my favorite grade to teach this year so when homework comes home, she enjoys hearing about when I taught my class that concept/story/idea. We went in search of a Junior Girl Scout sash last week and ended up at a local school supply store that carries them. We looked around the whole store at all of the deliciously fun borders, books, classroom organization aides, and whatnot and it definitely made me long for my own classroom. I do have my own classroom at work now and hopefully once my reading groups actually start (now that I've finished my assessments), I'll be able to get some classroom decoration goin on in there. I told my 4th grader that when I get a real classroom of my own someday, (I'm aiming for the 12-13 school year!) that she is more than welcome to come help me set it up. She was so excited. I'm thankful to have such great kids to work with :)

With all that said, I think it's time I get off the couch and go tackle those three piles of laundry that are looking at me, just itching to be folded. Send me positive thoughts as I attempt to find balance in my new little life. And hopefully I'll be back to writing on a regular basis soon. I'm working on it :)

Worrying cannot change the past, but it can ruin the future

I am a worriwort. I have been for at least 20 years now. Even in videos of me as a toddler, I frequently looked concerned and seemed to always be analyzing the world around me. In second grade I developed this random worrisome thought about bathrooms, particularly not being able to get to one in time. My anxiety about the issue eventually escalated to the point where I had an ultrasound on my bladder and kidneys to determine if there really was a physical reason as to why I needed to go pee every 15 minutes or if I it was my anxiety causing it. It was the anxiety. I was seven years old and had anxiety. Where does that even come from in a seven year old?!

And knowing that it was the anxiety didn't alleviate the problem, it just identified it. At school I was given a special bathroom pass to take whenever I needed by signing my name on the board to let the teacher know I had gone out. I was fine at home, because I knew there was always a bathroom close, but in class I would leave upwards of 5 times a day to go to the bathroom (mind you, I always made sure to go before school, at recess, and lunch too). It's definitely a good thing that I was an excellent student growing up (until like, 10th grade when I failed geometry but I blame that on a combination of a terrible teacher and my bull-headedness, not because I was dumb), otherwise I feel like I would have failed second grade due to the amount of time I was in the bathroom and not in class. 

My anxiety about needing to pee all the time slowly dwindled over the school year, and by third grade I ended up with the most wonderful teacher who created such a welcome, safe, happy learning environment that I never wanted to miss class. My anxiety was alleviated and I thrived in school that year. Some of my happiest elementary school moments are from Mrs. Denney's class :)

Just as the anxiety over going pee all the time appeared out of no where, I was blindsided by another bathroom related anxiety in high school. All of a sudden I became desperately fearful of throwing up in class. I had never before thrown up in class, or even at school, but with the onset of 10th grade came the intense fear of throwing up. It affected so many of the choices I made on a daily basis: I would walk to classes with routes that passed bathrooms, if I was allowed to choose my seat in class it was always in the row closest to the door to serve as a fast and non-disruptive emergency exit location, I would ask to go to the bathroom as frequently as possible without getting in trouble for excessive bathroom usage.

My thoughts in class became consumed with the paralyzing fear of throwing up in front of everyone. I would sit at my desk, bouncing my legs up and down on the balls of my feet to try to alleviate some of the anxiety while I tried to analyze any and all feelings (real or imagined) I was feeling in my digestive system. I hardly paid attention to anything that my teachers said and usually relied on reading the board to know what was going on in class since my teachers' voices were always drowned out by my internal voice telling me that throw up was most likely imminent. 

There is something about pep rallies that, unbeknownst (<---- my computer is telling me this isn't a word, but I like it so therefore, I declare it is a word and it will be so) to me at the time, would become a major source of stress for me in my little world where I tried to stay throw up free. There was something about sitting there in that large gym, with not only the people from my class, or my grade, but the ENTIRE school that could potentially see me throw up that sent my body into fight or flight mode. 

I chose flight by convincing one of my favorite teachers to let me stay in his classroom during pep rallies. As everyone else was walking toward the gym, I slyly wandered the opposite direction to his classroom, which wasn't always easy because all the campus security guards and teachers were herding us toward the gym like cattle. I thanked him for his empty classroom hospitality by correcting papers whilst I sat in there alone (this is probably the time when I decided I'd like to have a classroom of my own some day because correcting papers makes me unbelievably happy, as do classrooms in general :P). Thankfully by my senior year they made pep rallies optional, so I no longer had to go hide out in his room (we both could have gotten in some serious trouble even though we were never in there together, but it definitely wasn't school protocol). 

So the fear of throwing up at pep rallies dissipated, but the anxiety over throwing up in class remained with me throughout my high school years. And just for good measure, on graduation day, during the ceremony, I was absolutely convinced that I was going to pee my pants. And I couldn't just walk off the field where we were all sitting to go to the bathroom. I sat there, near tears the whole time as my then boyfriend, in a very annoyed and angry tone repeatedly told me, "If you need to go so bad, just leave. Just go." It was a very sad day and it was all because I was fearful of peeing my pants. 

Thankfully I can say that now, 8 years after my public school education ended, I am mostly rid of my fear of not making it to the bathroom. However, my anxiety when I am put into situations that are out of my control still remains. But I am making a conscious effort to stop. I saw a quote on a billboard at a dry cleaners near my work that said, "Worrying cannot change the past, but it can ruin the future." I'm trying really hard to remind myself of that now when I find myself stressing to the point of almost certain insanity. Boyfriend has learned that if I'm quiet, as in was consistently talking and have abruptly stopped, that it means one of two things: I have to go to the bathroom, or I'm worried. The worry he can help talk me out of. And the pee, well, with that I am definitely on my own :P

A brief re-cap of the past three and a half months

It's been exactly three and a half months since I last posted anything on here. I didn't mean to temporarily give up on this blog, and I apologize to my handful of regular readers (Dad, Twinsie, Tia Catalina) who stop by to see what's going on only to find that I've seemingly been stagnant since May. Really the reason for the cessation in blogging was due to a disruption in my usual routine. I'm very much a creature of habit and when my little world gets thrown off kilter, well then something's got to give and that something was blogging. And now, for at least the time being, my old life that I missed so dearly has returned and I once again have time to devote to writing on a regular basis. 

A brief re-cap of the past three and a half months:

May: In my last blog I was getting ready to leave for our highly anticipated Hawaiian vacation. Aside from some extremely disruptive and inexplicable stomach abnormalities that I suffered from for the first two days, it was nearly the perfect vacation. The only thing that could have made being in such a gorgeous location with a boy I'm absolutely crazy about even better was if our vacation could have been longer :) We did lots of hiking (Diamond Head, Koko Crater, Manoa Falls) and sightseeing (North Shore, Nu'uanu Pali Lookout, and...pretty much anywhere and everywhere you look because that island paradise is so dang beautiful) and got to see his family quite a bit. A well rounded vacation for sure. And the best part about it was that it was 5 hours behind Chicago time so we got up at like 5:30 every morning and were able to get an entire day's worth of activities done before noon! Haha. The only crappy part about it all was that on the way home our flight was delayed in Salt Barf City, Utah and we were stuck in that dreadful airport for 4 extra hours. Wish those extra hours could have been spent in Oahu! :P Also, Boyfriend and I have decided it's in our 5 year plan to move to Hawaii, since we both have island roots :)

June: This was the month when my routine got disrupted. School let out for the summer and I went from working my measly 15ish hours a week to 35+. I am, and seemingly always will be, absolutely terrible with time management and found it too difficult of a task to find time to blog after my long days with the girls. June had lots of fun events though. My mom and Brother came to visit for week and a half, driving all the way here from Southern California and taking the northern route in the process, hitting up states like Montana, South Dakota, Minnesota and adding them to their lengthy lists of places they've visited. Their first night here I took them both out for their first L ride. Brother got a little bit of motion sickness, which is completely understandable, but she enjoyed how easy and nice the public transportation is here and said she wished she had access to something like that on a regular basis. I told her I wish she could come live in my 2nd floor apartment, go to art school here, and be near me :) My mom loved looking at all the different architecture that Chicago has to offer. I was actually able to get quite a bit of time off work, only having to leave them alone for 1 day, so we were able to get lots of sightseeing in at places like the Sears Tower, Chicago Botanic Gardens, Grant Park/Buckingham Fountain/Crown Fountain/The Bean. We even drove up to Winnetka and saw where they filmed Home Alone, a childhood staple in our house. Their time here went by rather quickly and I cried a lot on the morning they left. It's really hard being 2,000 miles away from your loved ones sometimes. June was also when we were able to get all our vegetable seedlings in the ground and get our garden started :) June was also when I saw fireflies for the first time :) :)

July: July was hot. Like, dangerously high heat index hot. Not everyday, but more days than not it was sticky and uncomfortable and just downright gross. This made it very difficult to go running on a regular basis and I pretty much stopped working out all together. Other than that, I really can't remember a single good thing that happened in July. I'm sure it wasn't all terrible, just nothing memorable. I was sad that I wasn't able to celebrate two of my besties' birthdays with them. Next year, when I'm rich :)

August: And now here we are. Nearly the end of the month already. The girls have gone back to school and this week has been my first week of 3:00 starting times again, which I so missed. I had two job interviews last week, one for the Chicago Public Schools' sub pool and one for a paraprofessional position in a district near where I work. I was unofficially told by the interviewer at CPS (so weird to me that it's called CPS. What I refer to as CPS is known as DCFS here) that I'd been accepted into the pool, but I've yet to get the follow up email confirming that. He did say it'd be 1-2 weeks though, and right now it's been about 10 days since my interview so I'm seemingly still in good shape. I actually got offered a position with the other school district, but I turned it down as it was not the position I had originally applied for. It was a really hard decision to turn down a full time job in a district, because I know what kind of doors that could potentially open for me, but in the end I had to go with my gut and my gut told me to hold out for what I really want. 

A few other little miscellaneous updates:

• All our poison dart frogs have died. Starting in June we lost one every month, spaced about 4 weeks apart. We have no idea what caused their deaths and I feel horribly guilty that I couldn't help them.
• Our garden is growing quite well. We've had numerous zucchini, tons of cherry tomatoes and snow peas. We're almost ready to harvest some broccoli, more eggplant, bell peppers, to name a few. We just found two pumpkins growing on the 25 foot vines that have taken over our backyard while sneaking through a slat in the fence to creep into the neighbor's yard too. 
• Our house is looking better and better. There are still a lot of cosmetic changes that need to happen, but those can wait. Though lately we've been having some electrical issues, like the night where the hall light wouldn't turn on without the bathroom light being turned on as well. But the bathroom light being on caused the kitchen light to turn off. Seriously, what the crap, old house?
• My car pooped its pants on the way home from work one night, leaving me stranded in a grocery store parking lot for nearly 3 hours while I reactivated my Triple A and then waited not so patiently for a tow truck. Turned out my coolant reservoir tank cracked open, but thanks to the super friendly and fast auto repair shop that is literally a half mile from our house, it was up and running the next day :)
• I'm now able to run three miles straight and I'm getting super close to averaging 10 minute miles. It's hard not to compare myself to Boyfriend, who has been running for a few years now and has some of the longest legs I've ever seen. But I think I'm finally accepting that he and I are two different people and I shouldn't think negatively about my progress just because I don't perform at the same level he does. We're hopefully gonna run a corn maze 5k in October. I know I'll be able to complete that no problem.
• I've decided that I need to make myself as marketable as possible so for the 2011-2012 school year, I will be taking the necessary steps to clear my Illinois Provisional Credential to obtain the next level, Initial. I'm also going to hopefully start an endorsement program which will give me extra certification in a specific area (I'm thinking ESL would be the most beneficial). And I'm going to try to take as many Professional Development courses/seminars/workshops/conferences as I can get my hands on/afford. It's my goal to have my own classroom for the 2012-2013 school year and I will bust my butt trying to make that dream a reality :)

Thanks for sticking around to read this ridiculously long post. Sorry it wasn't full of humorous quips or fancy language, but I wanted to just get a blog posted to get myself back into the routine. More to come in the very near future :)

You know, 'cause they hold the up the house and all.

Lots going on this week with getting things ready for our new tenants/roommates to move into the second floor of our house. Definitely excited about it, but there's quite a bit to do so I'm guessing I won't get around to blogging til Thursday-ish. 

In other house-related news, this is a (brief) list of things that NEED to be done around here and I'm trying to organize it into order of importance:

• beams in the basement
• heating/cooling
• dryer issue
• insulation
• re-doing the electricity
• appraisal
• garage 
• hot tub shack demolition
• tilling
• weeding
• storm doors
• drywall
• cats
• scrap pile removal

What do YOU think is most important? I'm thinking it's the support beams in the basement. You know, 'cause they hold the up the house and all. No big deal :P

'Til Thursday! :)

Shiikaago Shorts

I'd like to introduce you to a little side project I'm starting called "Shiikaago Shorts". It is yet another blog that will be made up of snippets that I find too...boring...is probably the word, (or perhaps less detail oriented sounds better 'cause who wants to willing read something that is described by the author as boring?) to be made into actual blog posts here since I like to use this as an arena to expand upon the inner workings of my sometimes mentally unsound mind. 

I plan on posting to Shiikaago Shorts daily, ideally multiple times a day, since it will be short and similar to a tweet or status update. Though why not just post my snippets as status updates? Well, that of course, sillies, is because I have a Facebook reputation to uphold and if my "friends" knew I think about things like squirrels eating plastic cups and squeaky hardwood floors then I have a feeling I wouldn't have so many "friends" anymore :P

Today, for only the second time here in Chicago, I actually got hot outside.

You know that saying, what a difference a day makes? Completely true for the difference between yesterday and today. The weather was finally starting to wear me down and two nights of coming home after dark made me feel like I had little to no free time, even though my entire life when I am home is nothing but free time, but that's besides the point :P I got off at 6:00 tonight, got a lengthy Target shopping session done, and made it home just as the sun was setting. It felt good :)

Lately, Boyfriend and I have been trying to make a habit out of working out on a regular basis. We both have...expanded...since my arrival here in The Prairie State and we've been making a conscious effort to rid ourselves of the extra squishiness we've accumulated, hopefully in time for Summer :) I've heard that summers here are beautiful, although they are notoriously humid, a weather condition I am definitely not accustomed to in my desert-like hometown. I fear for the health and safety of my hair. Haha. Humidity is a girl with a Hungarian Jew-fro's worst enemy. Ideally before then I will have learned how to properly wrangle my mane. 

(This is completely off topic but I just made some vegetable dumplings and dipped them in some hot dumpling sauce Boyfriend bought at the Asian market the other day and their scent is still lingering in the air though they are long in my tummy and it's making me want to eat the whole bag. Curse you, portion control!!) 

Back to the previous paragraph's original subject matter: working out. More often than not, Boyfriend and I go out running in the morning. I'd love to leave the house around like 10:30-11:00 but unfortunately Boyfriend also suffers from extreme procrastination issues like myself. Which only further validates how ridiculously similar we are, haha. Today, for only the second time here in Chicago, I actually got hot outside. Granted I was running and that most definitely attributed to my raised body temperature, but still,  I was hot. I almost was unfamiliar with the feeling since it's been so long since I experienced it. The only other time I've felt hot outside was a few weeks ago when a freakishly warm 85 degree day arrived as the precursor to a most epic thunderstorm. I don't know how I feel about Chicago being warm. I had become so accustomed to the frigid temperatures and frequently cloudy skies that they had become my new norm and I learned to embrace them. 

Everything about Chicago is changing now that Spring is slowing emerging. I've never seen the city with foliage. Well, that's not entirely true. I was here for a whirlwind 42 hours in September but it was such a speedy trip filled with so many (unbeknownst to anyone at the time) life changing events and experiences that I forgot to take in my surroundings. Since my arrival in December, Chicago has been a vast, FLAT (which is something I still am learning to deal with), desolate landscape that was sometimes covered in snow. Now it's a vast, flat, colorful landscape as the trees are beginning to get their leaves, plants are returning from their winter hibernation, and bulbs are shooting up their beautiful flowers (primarily tulips and daffodils, which grow wild on the side of the freeways highways here!). The city has completely morphed into something almost unrecognizable to me. It's a welcome change and I'm slowly going to adjust to warmer temperatures, and by warmer I mean today it was 62 degrees. 

Moving to the Chicagoland area was something that I never could have anticipated myself doing, especially not in the middle of Winter. But here I am. And there Winter went. And I survived it. And now Spring and Summer will bring with them so many new experiences, such as finally getting to explore this city, hopefully with the tour guide assistance of the girls :P I asked them what they want to go do this summer, since I'll be with them for about 11 hours every day, and the only thing they could come up with off the bat was that they wanted to come to my house, haha. School lets out one month from today. 

I've got a lot to accomplish in the next 30 days, including mustering up the motivation to go running without Boyfriend since our schedules will conflict during the week. And with only two weeks until we leave for Hawaii, I need to try to get my squishiness in shape so I can confidently lay on the beautiful beaches and know that I look great :)