Scrapperblog

2009-07-07T17:01:50Z

2009-07-04T16:01:17Z

First Fish

This was the  first fish he caught. I let him catch 6 fish before I caught my one. I wanted to let him get a good lead. lol

Eight Years Old

Our boy is growing up. :( 

We had a very nice spring break. Of course it didn't last long enough. M got to go to Chucky Cheese with his best friend on Wednesday and the friend spent the night as well. He said it was the best birthday ever because he got to be with his best friend, play his best games, eat his best food (pizza) and get the best present (a Nintendo DS game).

The Nintendo DS is the game of choice these days. We went to the allergy doctor last Monday and counted no less than 4 kids in the waiting room playing their DS games. They must come in a multitude of colors too, since nobody in the room had the same color.

I'm back at work and counting down the days. Seriously. I don't know what it is about this year. I have a really awesome class. They are pretty capable and they are a dream discipline-wise. So why am I not rocking it in the teaching department this year?

Part of it is the contract negotiations. All the budget cutbacks and negativity surrounding this process has just soured me on the nobility of this profession. It's not even about the money even though I am peeved that I will be missing out on an 1100 dollar raise because the rest of the contract is just so full of crap that I can't accept it. And so I go to work and feel crappy about that. The place gives me a stomach ache every day in the afternoon and I don't think it's the school lunches.

We are doing a lot this week to get ready for our Exchange City field trip that comes up in two weeks. The other school is coming over to meet with us so we have to have jobs and bank accounts assigned to the kids by Friday. It's a huge chore but it will be worth it in the end. The thing about this field trip is that we teachers do all the work up front, teaching the curriculum and getting all the jobs divided and lining up parent volunteers. But on the day of the field trip it's all win because we don't have to do a thing except observe our kids in action (and I take a bunch of pictures too). It's a sweet deal.  Oh, and the kids learn a lot about economics and government in the process.

And you know why I haven't updated the blog in a little while... boy do I sound whiney... :) 

End of February Already?

I know it's the shortest month of the year, but wow, it's gone by fast! Can you believe it's been two months since Christmas? And it's less than a month until the boy's birthday.

I'm still working like a dog and getting over a sinus infection. Seems like I'm doing that a lot.

At work we're making our last big push to get ready for the testing. Math assessments are next week and reading the week after. We timed it so we'd be done with the major assessments before spring break. I still don't feel that we're totally ready for either one, but we sure are working hard towards it. I am, anyway...

And just like clockwork, my sinuses started jamming up again right after parent teacher conferences. I didn't waste much time getting into the doctor and he put me on some high strength antibiotics. Yikes, I'm taking 4,000 mg a day of augmentin for the next 3 weeks. I dare any bug to try and survive that. LOL

The school board is calling a special meeting tonight to discuss the budget issue, teacher contracts, and the planned layoffs. I've learned not to be too optimistic about the outcomes of these meetings. Let's all just hope that I'm mid-career enough and low enough on their radar to be left off the chopping block. I do have tenure, so I'm not terribly worried about losing my job, but I could get moved to another position in the district (maybe vo-ag?) at the discretion of the superintendent. But more likely, I could lose my brand new co-worker in fifth grade that I have come to enjoy working with.

On a positive note, there are only 85 calendar days left until summer vacation. :)

A Typical Day

Yes, you may have read about MissKim's day and yes, mine is probably a lot like hers since we are both Kansas teachers. But here's how a typical day goes at our house.

3:45am- DH's alarm goes off. He has it set for 4:30 but the alarm clock is set 45 minutes ahead so it's actually quarter to 4 when it goes off. He jumps in the shower and gets ready for work while I make myself go back to sleep.

4:30am- DH leaves the house, slamming the back door to make sure it's shut all the way. He started doing that after the day it was left open, leaving me to wonder why the heater would not shut off and the house would not warm up. The slamming of the door is usually enough to wake me up. I get into the shower and then get dressed and put my contacts in and my make up on.

5:15am- I leave the sanctuary of my bedroom and head for the kitchen. I feed the fish, open my only Pepsi of the day, and take my allergy meds. I also grab a breakfast burrito or donut or poptart, and every now and then some frozen mango chunks for breakfast. Then I pick out some clothes for the boy and sign his school agenda and read any notes that came home from school.

5:45am-I sit down in front of the computer and read the blogs and answer email, having some quiet time for myself until all the crazy starts. Some days I even have time to blog. :)

6:45am- I get the kiddo up and dressed. We're usually out the door by 7 or 7:15, depending on how much his socks bother him or if I forget and try to put pants on him with buttons on them. He refuses to have button pants at school because he's afraid that he'll have to ask his teacher to button them for him. And the socks... I don't know... sometimes they are lumpy in his shoes or something.

7:45am- Breakfast at school for the kid. And my chance to run any extra copies I need or get something for the day's lesson.

8:00am- First bell and the kids come in the door. Lunch count, gather up lunch money, ask for notes from parents, make sure the homework is turned in... It's a busy time.

12:00noon- Reading groups end and it's lunch time. I get 20 minutes of duty-free lunch. I get to sit with the other teachers and be around grown ups for a little while.

12:30pm- Plan time. My kids have computer lab or PE after lunch. That's when I run copies and write lesson plans and get ready for the afternoon.

1:00pm- Math class and then social studies or art, depending on the day. Right now in math we are working on solid figures and greatest common factor/least common multiple.

3:30pm- Dismissal. Yay! I love that part of my day. I get to clean up my room and get things ready for the next day. On Thursday I have afterschool  tutoring duty.

4:30pm- I usually stick around for a little while after school. On Thursdays I don't leave until after 5:15. I figure this makes up for the fact that on most days I roll into school about 15 minutes before first bell. It's easier for me to stay late than come in early.

5:30pm- Dinner. Some days I make supper. Some days DH makes supper. Other days he brings home fast food. And often, on Fridays, we order pizza. Twelve course gourmet meals are not happening at my house. My Schwan's guy has my home phone number.

6:00pm- Free time. We watch tv, read books, or play video games. I just ordered a new book to read called "The Shack." It looks interesting so far.

9:00pm- Bedtime. Time to get the kiddo into his jammies and same with myself. Often I'm waking up from a nap on the couch myself. Just writing about my day is making me tired. :)

Another Month-February Already

My goodness, the time is just getting away from me. It's time for a check in post, I think.

January was a busy month. I had plenty to do at work and M was sick with another bout of strep, which kept me on catch-up mode for the last half of the month. He did get better in time for the pinewood derby race, which was a bunch of fun for everyone. I think M was less enthusiastic about building his car this year, which left Daddy doing most of the work.

 

The blue truck with the white racing stripes is M's entry for this year. It ran well with all the weights mounted in the front of the truck. DH drilled a hole in the front and loaded the weights in there. M just liked the fact that his car got to go down the track. I loved that they gave the kids time to just roll their cars on the track because that's all they really wanted to do.

This month is not going to get any less busy. This week our school had its spelling bee and I was in charge of putting it together. Aack, I'm just not good in a position of leadership. I was totally out of my element in front of people and delegated as much of it as possible. One of my students won, which means she will go to the county bee and I'd like to be able to watch her compete, but I'm not sure how that will work since it's on a school day.

Next week is parent teacher conferences (today the midterms go out) and the Valentine's Day parties. I am running around like a crazy person trying to get all my grades finalized. And it just occurred to me that I need to buy valentines for the boy to distribute. Something to do this weekend, I'm sure.

DH has already put me on notice that he'll be gone fishing this weekend. Probably both days. We're expecting quite a few spring-like days and he's going to want to take advantage of that. I have recess duty tomorrow, and I'm already excited that I'll be outside when it's in the 60s, instead of shivering through almost freezing temperatures. The kids will get to go outside, finally.

M's teacher had to share an M funny with me yesterday. The kids were writing and they had to finish a sentence. "I arrived at work at 2pm and _____" fill in the blank. Most of the kids wrote something about arriving at 2 and leaving at 5. Here's what M wrote, "I arrived at work at 2pm and got fired because I was supposed to be there at 1." LOL  He is such a funny kid most of the time.

Today should be a fairly nice day. Good weather, a practice math test, some geometry fun in math... and then Grey's Anatomy this evening and some time with my family. Good times... :)

Technology

Good morning. Not a lot of blogging has been happening around here lately. Not much of anything has been going on around here. I've been so busy with work that I come home and am in bed by 9 or 10 most nights.

We tried to watch the inauguration at school on Tuesday. Epic fail. I knew that was going to happen and I was hoping to watch in the library on cable. But the librarian came in the night before to make sure it worked and discovered that our town no longer has cable service. I guess it makes sense since we didn't even notice it was gone until months later.

So we decided to grit our teeth and watch it on the computer. Of course every other class in the building wanted to watch as well and the server ground to a halt at just about 10:55am as Senator Biden was about the be sworn in as vice president. I pushed buttons and refreshed and prayed a little and still nothing. Finally I tried to go overseas and catch a feed from the BBC in London, but for some freaky reason the BBC is a banned site on our school's network. At last we got the cnn radio feed to work and were able to listen to the last 2/3rds of the address. /pout

One of the other teachers in the building taped it for us and we were able to watch the oaths and the full speech yesterday. I was so frustrated because I'd spent weeks teaching the constitution and the electoral college and the inauguration was going to be the final chapter on our citizenship lesson. The kids did enjoy watching and said it didn't matter to them that the technology wimped out on us. They are so forgiving.

Not much time spent playing Warcraft these days. Mostly because I have work stuff to do on the computer (I got the kids started on a classroom blog and email accounts) and because I'm just not sure where to take my character now. And I'm really not connected to anyone in the game at this point. So about 3 days ago I just stopped playing. Weird, I know, but it's true.

State testing is coming up in about 6 weeks. Next week is our spelling bee to determine who goes on to district/state/national. We'll be selling trash bags next week to earn money for our field trip to Exchange City. Kansas Day is next week as well and we're having a big school wide celebration and activity day. Lots going on around here and it's all good.

Later, gators.

News from the ENT Appointment

Did I forget to blog about my ENT visit? Poor blog needs to be kept up to date.

The ENT doctor shot numbing spray up my nose and then proceeded to freak me out by sticking a really long metal tube into my sinuses to check them out. I had flash backs to Bud Not Buddy (children's book) and the Ticonderoga pencil. My nose was numb for an hour and a half, which felt really weird.

The good news is that he didn't think I needed any treatment for the deviated septum, since it's probably been that way for a long time and isn't the root of my problems. The root of my problems is my long standing allergy to trees, grass and weeds. He suggested that I see an allergist and get that under control as well as a surgical roto rooter of my sinuses.

He wants to remove the polyps and shrink the turbinates, which are important for some reason which escaped me during the appointment. It's supposed to be a really minor thing, outpatient surgery on a Friday and back at work on a Monday. His big mistake, however, was in letting me leave his office without making an appointment for the surgery. LOL Now I'm too chicken to actually go through with it and I really don't have time in my schedule to be laid up.

I can wait until summer to get this done, but the risk of that is that I'll have active allergies by then and the risk of losing more sick days to another sinus infection. But I can wait and I'm guessing I'll wait it out until the next sinus infection hits and then I'll be all over wanting surgery right away.

M is doing well. He is a bit sniffly so we've started giving him breathing treatments again to keep him from getting worse. I think the proactive treatment is working for him, finally. He's been well for at least a month now.

We got our block of wood for the pine wood derby. Here's the link for the slide show from last year's derby. We haven't done any work on it yet, but we do know that it's going to be blue. The dads are also having a bracket this year, so DH is thinking about making his own car.

The weather has been crazy weird again, with temps in the 60s and then 20s and then back to the 40s. And we've been totally locked out of the snow fun, having barely any snow so far this winter. Of course there's still plenty of time left for that and I'm not really complaining about the lack of snow and ice.

Work is great. This class is the dream class I've always wanted. I would totally keep them another year. Quite a change from last year. If the worst thing I have to deal with in the day is one kid licking another girl's pencil, then it's a good year. (yeah, he doesn't know why he did it either and swears not to make a habit of it). I spend more of my time on other projects, like getting the spelling bee scheduled and bugging the tech guys for server space so our kids can save their work in the computer lab. And in finding kids to recognize for their science and social studies achievements during the next reading/academics rally. So it's not like I'm on autopilot this year, but it is an easier year for me.

And that's really what I've been doing lately, just working and hanging with the family. Hope everyone is doing the same and doing well. :)

Blogging from the New Laptop

Doing the dance of joy here. I got the laptop loaded with Windows Live Writer and a bunch of my favorite programs (warcraft) and am getting all settled and comfy.

It has been nearly three years since I last bought a laptop. I went back through the blog and found this entry from March 16, 2006. So, it's been longer than a year. I've probably been blogging about wanting a new computer for about a year.

I had talked a l ot of my derision of Windows Vista and my desire to get a mac laptop. But my thriftiness and lack of delayed gratification meant that I wanted a cheaper computer and I wanted it right now. So I went to the computer stores and wandered around looking until I found this one. Then I waited until they fixed it up for me- they added 2gb of RAM (for a total of 4gb) and upgraded the hard drive to a 320gb drive and cleared all the junk pop up stuff off for me so I'd have a clean interface.

The doctor's office called back yesterday and I have an appt next week with an ENT doctor. The biggest question I'll have is how long I can delay having surgery. :) I really, really dread the idea of having someone poke around my nasal passages with a sharp object. If I can delay it until spring break, that would be awesome. Summer vacation, even better.

We took the Christmas tree down this morning, but the boxes I bought are too small. Gotta find some bigger boxes. /cry 

Hubby was supposed to go hunting today but his hunting partner got sick. :(  So I'm stuck with him I get to be with him another day. Guess I'll go see what kind of mischief we can get into.

Have a great Tuesday!