A friend on FB liked something posted by someone else.  Now I know this other woman, even though we aren't FB friends.  I would guess her to be about 52 yrs old.  What she posted was a link to an article about gray hair, how fashionable it is with the young now and how women should feel proud of their gray, etc....   Her comment about it as she shared was "My gift to myself when I turned 50 was that I stopped dyeing my hair."
This gave me food for thought.  I dye my hair.  I have for 20 years now.  As I swam my laps I thought a lot about this.  Am I wrong to color my hair?  Should I just embrace the "natural me"?  However, as I considered what she said about how it was her gift to herself to stop coloring her hair, my one constant thought was "Honey, you should have gifted yourself that years ago."  For me, it's dyeing my hair that is my gift to myself.  I like my hair color.  If there's something you dislike doing so much that it's a gift to yourself to quit, then unless it's a necessity, why are you doing it?

I'm told that if I want to be a better writer I should write more.  The problem is that I'm not sure I should say the things that usually want to come out of my fingers when I sit down to write.  I'm not the only one who has noticed on Facebook (and other media) that people feel much more free to share more  . . . . um . . . strident? . . . . unkind . . . . less thoughtful  . . . type things when they are not writing to a particular person.  I wouldn't want to fall into that trap.  

Meanwhile, the dog is sitting on my bed in the other room whining because I'm not in there watching tv so they can have snuggies.  It's making me feel quite guilty as they've had a day mostly alone.  I shall go sit with them.  Maybe a doggie fix will put me in a better mood and I can try this again tomorrow.  

Follow-up to Long Weekend

Lessons learned by each of us:
Oldest Sprog - must use pill keeper to track if pills have been taken, memory is not enough
Father of Oldest Sprog - must not talk to oldest sprog when said child is not current on meds and most definitely should never ask if meds are current - even when you know they're not
Myself - move in with in-laws the next time this happens.

Long Weekends

As I sit here in church and listen to the babies cry and the toddlers scream, I think "storm must be brewing."

Then I think of my 18 yr old and his father who aren't speaking and think, "It must be a doozy."

Here's hoping the storm comes in and blows itself out soon before I am driven to drink.

The Boy

Our boy dog is 5 years older than the girls.  We came back from nearly two weeks gone and he seems rather listless, lacking in energy.  We had people living here while we were gone to tend the dogs, but I suppose the dogs had more time alone than they are used to.  I hope he perks up now that I'm back.  Soon, too, because I have that conference next week and I'll be gone for 3 nights.  The rest of the family will be here, but he's mostly just attached to me.

Vacaion

Do you drive faster on the way home?  I do.  I know I do and I tell myself not to (I already drive fast enough), but every time I come home from a long trip, I find myself flying down the last few miles of freeway at a speed I would not even consider on a regular day.

Friends and Invitations

Have you ever noticed that among friends there are the inviters and the invitees?  If you're one of the former, you know what I mean.  Are you the one that always has to suggest doing something?  Some friends never invite you round or suggest getting together.   Maybe they're the popular ones that have enough invitations they don't have time to issue them?  Maybe they're just lazy?  I don't think they do it on purpose.   At least not all of them.  Still, sometimes it can be hard to be the inviter all the time and never the invitee.  You feel like you're doing all the work.  You feel like maybe they don't value your friendship, that they're just too polite to tell you they'd rather not.  Jeez, can't you take a hint?  None of this is necessarily true, but there are days when you wonder "why bother."  Everyone likes to be asked occasionally.     

Post Ankle Surgery Day 1

This is the kind of day I dream about during the school year.  I'm lounging on the bed, the dogs have snuggled in.  I have a diet pepsi in easy reach, a murder mystery on the nook, my laptop nearby and best of all, not feeling guilty.

I'm sure by tomorrow this sitting around will start to get old.  By Saturday I'll probably want to go somewhere just to get out of the house even though it'll mean dealing with crutches.

But I'm not going to think about that.  I'm going to try and enjoy one guilt free day of relaxing.  I just need to ignore the fact that I haven't had a shower today and that the pain pills are making me nauseous.   :)

Seat Belt Assignment

My son had to complete a seatbelt assignment for driver's ed.  He had to watch cars and record each passenger as male/female/child and restrained/unrestrained.  He had to get in 30 cars.  I took him errand running with me and he sat in the car while I was in the post office, etc...  Final results?  Just over 25% of the cars he saw had unrestrained people in them.  Really?  I never would have guessed that so many people didn't wear seatbelts.  At least none of them were children.


We got down to the last car, we were in a Walmart parking lot and I parked next to a 20 something girl who had just gotten in her car.  We figured he could watch and see if she put on her seat belt and he'd be finished.  So we waited while she:
put her hair in a ponytail
put a headband on her head to hold back the strays that didn't fit in the pony tail
tried a different headband
did something that looked like change her bra (I wouldn't let my son look)
I think she slipped off some sweats that were over shorts, but I didn't want to look too closely (once again, I made my son look away)
change her shoes
fussed a bit with her make-up
And I'm not sure what all else because we were trying not to look too much.  We spent a good 10 minutes waiting for her to leave so he could write down if she put her seatbelt on or not.  She didn't, but was that because she doesn't wear a seatbelt or because she wanted to get away from the crazies in the car next to her?

Got Cheese?

I'm feeling like having a good whine right now.  However, since it's mostly of my own making (a complete lack of motivation is a major contributor), I'll skip writing up the details.  I just hope it's the short days and cold weather that have me acting like a slug.  That would mean it'll get better without any effort from me.  (Spoken like a true slug huh?)

Fun Monday - Cold Weather Eats

Sayre Smiles is hosting Fun Monday today.  She says:


This weekend's cooler weather put me in a Fall state-of-mind and for the first time since last March, I wanted soup for dinner.  I heated up some chicken noodle soup which the Boy and I shared for dinner.  The Man had leftover pizza.  That craving got me to thinking - what do people crave when the weather gets cooler?  Sign up in comments, and I'll add your link to this post.


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My craving isn't always what to eat, it's what to cook - although of course I do plenty of eating of these things once they're made.  When the weather turns cooler and I start to think of the upcoming holiday season, I get this irresistible urge to bake.  Serious baking too.  I want to make decorated and fancy schmancy cookies.  I want to make every flavor of quick bread I have a recipe for, chocolate, pumpkin, cranberry, etc...  And most of all, I want to roll pie crust.  I have been known to make as many pies as there are people on Thanksgiving. 

Is it my job?

This is something I have always struggled with as a teacher.  Whose job is it to get students to finish work they didn't complete before the deadline?  In the old days I hunted them down like a sniper.  Nowadays though, all of that assignment information is available online, easily available for parents to look up any time night or day.  


So my thinking is that if the parents care what grade their students get, they'll get after their students to get it done.  If they want my help, they'll ask me for it.  I shouldn't have to harp on them constantly at school.  I'm not saying I never talk about it.  I give them lists of missing work at least once a week and there's a reward activity each Wednesday for students who have everything turned in.  It's the chronic non-workers that are killing me.  I have about 8 of them.  Do I keep them in from every recess and hold them back from every special?  Or do I figure their parents can deal with it and move on to other stuff?  I want to let the parents deal with it, but I also know that they won't ever stand a chance of passing a test if they never do an assignment.  

Everyone Else's Mother Said Yes

Started off the day with six students absent.  


I wish I could have been absent.  


My husband just came in and said it felt like a Friday.  How nice for him, it feels like a Monday all over again for me.


Ok, I stand corrected.  He told me today that what he meant by it felt like Friday was that the two days felt like a whole week.  We were in the same boat, so tonight we did some restaurant therapy and went out to dinner together.

What they understand

Yesterday at church I helped out in the nursery for a bit.  We sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" which was lots of fun.  Of course this led to some discussion of noses and one little boy said to me; "My Grandpa says my nose is ugly."  What a thing for a grandfather to say?!?!!  I told him I thought his nose was just adorable.
Later on, I got to thinking, this child is 2 or maybe 3 years old, does he even know what adorable means?  I wonder if he thinks I told him his nose was ugly too?

Kids Say the Darndest Things

I was reading through some journal entries the other day.  Yes, I read the journal entries of my students.  They know it too so it's not like I'm invading privacy.  They shouldn't have an expectation of privacy in an assignment they do for school.  
One of the boys wrote something very interesting.  The topic was "Things I Don't Like."  What he said he didn't like was when people took his glasses from him, put them on and said "Wow! You really can't see."  He compared it to someone taking away someone's wheelchair and saying "Wow! You really can't walk."  
Good point.  Not bad coming from the 12 year old.  

Even when I'm organized, I'm not

It's hard to remember, but there was a time when I made lists of everything that needed to be done and crossed them off as I did them.  I actually belonged to an online group with 8 other ladies and we posted our lists, talked about what we were able to accomplish during the day and our kids, etc...  The online group started as a yahoo group, went over to a message board, but pretty much died when facebook was born.  We're all friends on facebook, but we don't interact as much there.  You don't say the same things on such a public place that you might say on a private message board.  I miss that.  I have things I'd like to say that I don't want to post to the whole world.  
Must be time to have breakfast with the girlfriends, but the date we were talking last wasn't until October.  <sigh>

Sixth Grade

So far so good.  Actually, (shh, don't tell anyone) I think I'm kinda starting to like it.  There's a lot more prep involved and not just because I've changed grades.  However, I can get a bit done during the day because once I launch them on a project or assignment they can work on their own for short periods of time.  I can see how some people think that this age ought to be in a middle school instead of the elementary, but from my viewpoint, I can see so many little things that say they're not quite ready.  Certainly by the end of the year most of them will be more than prepared for the shift into jr. high.  For those who argue we're holding back the ones who "are ready" I'd say that we'd be doing far more harm to advance the non-ready kids than we do by keeping back the ones that are ready.

The Big Wind

Or perhaps it was the Great Wind?  Or the Big Storm?  Most likely it was the Mighty Gust. 


My husband was awake in the night and heard something hit the house.  I think that sound is what woke me up.  What I heard was metal scraping on concrete.  I told him the grill had blown over.  It's happened before.  However, we went out back and the grill is fine, the yard looks fine, but there's a cat made of either plastic or fiberglass about two feet high.  It's lying on the ground not too far from being under the bedroom window.  We wondered how it got there.  It was too hard to imagine the wind blowing such a thing.  It was also hard to imagine the neighbor kids being out at nearly 4am throwing things like that into the yard.


All questions were answered the next morning when I saw the trampoline that used to be next door in a crumpled heap in the driveway across the street.  I returned their cat and the neighbor said that the cat had been on their patio table, the trampoline (which had a net) must have picked up the cat and flung it over in our yard during its flight across the street.  It broke their glass table top.  I'm glad it didn't hit our window.  

Getting Ready

Taking out Sundays, I have 7 days left to prepare for the first day of sixth grade.  Big shout of thanks to my friend C who gave me all kinds of ideas.  I think I might make it through the first week.

Official

I have officially crossed over to the dark side and will teach 6th grade next year.  I'm good with this.  I think I was actually reaching the point where I was hoping it would happen.  I've had the idea of switching grades on my mind since Christmas, but when we all moved over to the new school, my principal put me in fifth where I've always been and that was fine.  The numbers have drastically shifted though and so it was either sixth or fourth and I chose sixth.  (They'll hire a new 4th grade teacher from somewhere.)  I'm excited about doing something different, but I've got two weeks to "cram" my new curriculum.  So of course my first course of action is to get on facebook and announce it to everyone and then talk to my friend on the phone.  Now I'm over here blogging about it and I'll probably send an e-mail to another friend next.  Tomorrow we'll go over and shift books around and Monday I'll dig in to the new stuff.