Author Archives: Elisabeth

About Elisabeth

The joyous and sometimes odd adventures of a former English teacher and her trusty sidekicks, Jared the Hottie Husband and her two Italian Greyhounds, Stinky Stevie and Bonnie Boo. Recently the adorable baby, Princess Evelyn, has joined the clan to shake things up!
Sep13

On to week 4!

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On to week 4!

Well, I’ve made it through 3 full weeks of school. The house is a mess, but I’ve been keeping up with the school part of things, so life is good, right?

Really, the house isn’t that bad. It’s more or less that we just haven’t had time to look through all the boxes and put things away properly, so it makes everything look more cluttered. Which I can barely tolerate, meaning Jared is on the verge of a breakdown for not having time to keep things pretty and organized. (Love you, babe.)

In my spare time, I have been working on my project for Aunt Linda for way back when with the whole “Pay it foward” thing. I’m pretty proud of myself. I’ll post pictures once I know she’s gotten it. I am close to being done, but it’s taken a lot of man hours and planning. 🙂

My students are a lot of fun. Naturally, you can’t get away without having a couple of them be complete pills, but in general class has gone really well. I love the fact that my students look forward to “Poetry Circle” and get sad when we don’t get it or get to sit on the floor. This class is so different from my kids last year–I think part of it is that I am more sure of myself and what I am doing, but part of it is that many of these kids are really just more involved with good things in their lives.  They are a lot of fun, and when I am in class, I can remember exactly why I’ve always wanted to be a teacher.

So, between frantically trying to keep up with my students and planning the class and unpacking the home, I haven’t gotten a lot of downtime. Unless you consider “Downtime” the moment right after I get home from work and take care of the dog,  I collapse on to the couch or bed for a bit in a comatose state. 🙂

The best thing of all is that it’s finally raining here. We’ve been in a pretty nasty drought the past two years in the area, and in this weekend alone, I think we got around a foot of rain. MUCH needed rain. It’s so lovely to be able to look into the back yard and see all the wildlife; crazy dancing squirrels, doves, pigeons, hummingbirds, blue jays, cardinals, and even some really neat tropical looking birds with a black back and NEON orange belly. The closest thing I can find to it is this picture of a Baltimore Oriole.

Baltimore Oriole

So, life is pretty good right now. It would be even better if I had about 5 extra hours per day so I could do everything I need to and then get the sleep I need on top of it, but alas, it is not to be.

By the way, some books to read if you have time (I do silent reading time with my kids almost every day, and I try to read along with them, so that’s where that time comes in):

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins (sequel)

Uglies, Scott Westerfield

The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan

I love these books!

Aug30

Cleaning…

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Cleaning…

I’ve done my cleaning for the year.

This weekend was crunch time to get out of The Apartment. And naturally, when you have two procrastinators, these things get down to the wire, which in plain English = WE HAD TO WORK OUR HINEYS OFF!!!

Kids, do not do this at home. Seriously. Muscles I had forgot existed ache, head ache, and I got kinda nauseated from working with cleaning supplies for SEVEN hours. That’s right; SEVEN FRICKEN HOURS. I lost valuable brain cells during that time, and I really didn’t have any I could afford to lose.

And that’s just from the cleaning.

Also, I think I bumped my head on about  3 different times; my hands got burned from using so much cleaner; I am dead tired; and I walked into some walls and hit  various parts of my body doing so. That’s really nothing new; yesterday Jared and I were grocery shopping and somehow I didn’t realize the shopping cart’s vicinity to my person, and basically Heimlich-Maneuvered myself. Yes, once again, that will leave a mark. No wonder my legs are always covered in small bruises…

But I digress. The point is, I don’t think I could be more tired. And in pain.

Moral of the story: Procrastination is a very bad thing, especially with procrastinating perfectionists. It’s a bad combo. And possibly “Don’t expose yourself to various cleaning items for long amounts of time,” or “Be aware of your body and it’s proximity to other stuff so you don’t injure yourself.” All very important life lessons.

I am excited about the second week of school- I almost got everyone’s names down, which is good because parent night is this Wednesday, and how sad would it be if the kid walks in with his parents and I forget or say the wrong name. I’ll have to add more details about the name situations later–it’s pretty crazy.

Anyways, it’s late. And my bedtime. 🙂

Aug24

My SECOND first day!

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My SECOND first day!

I just have to agree with EVERYONE out there that says the first year is the hardest.

Today was my SECOND first day of school ever! And this time around, I wasn’t nearly as nervous or falling over myself; I knew the basic expectations and how to work on the timing of everything… and it was amazingly wonderful. I was just so relieved to make it through the day.

I also had lots of my “former” students come by and say hi and tell me about about their summers! That was just INCREDIBLY neat. I just had to smile so big that they didn’t avert their eyes and pretend they had NO IDEA who that crazy lady was!

My students this year seem great so far. A couple of them got a little ancy with the routine stuff that I had to talk to them about, but I was really pleased with how well they did. I still have really reasonable class sizes too, which is wonderful. I had one class of 15 by the end of last year, so this year my class of 23 (and counting) seems much bigger. I guess I really shouldn’t let it surprise me though, I had a class of 29, 33, and 36 when I was student teaching sophomores, but that just didn’t seem as overwhelmingly huge at the time. Still big, but I guess I found them a bit more manageable. Still, most of the 7th graders were incredibly cute and sweet; still mostly 6th graders mentality, and not sick of school yet.

My hope is I can keep that “sick of school” mentality as far as possible from my classes! I feel much better about this year and how I have taught most of these lessons at least once before.

So, all in all, other than the fact I was silly enough to wear HIGH HEELS ALL DAY, it went really smoothly.

Came home, put my feet up high to try and keep the swelling down, talked to my family about my experience today, and rested. Then, Jared came home a little later than expected and bought me A FLIPPING AWESOME FUTON/COUCH and two of these sweet lamps from the World Market store. It’s going to go with our “Asian” theme we have going in that other room so well.

I am so lucky!

Aug23

School starts again…

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School starts again…

I have to be honest; I have spent days trying to write this post publicly, but have found that the best way to communicate my thoughts in this time is up in my bedroom, quietly writing in my notebook. I have had a lot swishing around in my head; questions, worries, and excitement, but it takes a lot of work to lay them out and explain them to people who don’t live in my head with me! 🙂

Some highlights: At least this round I am much more prepared, emotionally, intellectually, and physically.

Just minutes ago Jared gave me a blessing. I get so anxious and uptight and I make myself sick by letting me get all tied up in knots. But in this blessing, he mentioned that the challenges would be there, but not as many as last year. And that I would be able to use my previous experiences to help get through challenges. At the same time, the new challenges won’t be as many as last year, so he said. I pray that is correct. I don’t want to be labeled as completely MAD when I am only 23.

Fascinatingly enough, the blessing mentioned how positive I have been with interacting with my family and that it has going really well, especially to my brothers. I’ll be honest, most of the time I don’t even know if they care about me calling them. I feel like they equate my call to Mom and Dad calling in to check on them. Mainly I just want to hear about their lives. I am not there to check up on them when they know how to behave and work on their own. I just want to know about what’s going on for every in the family, how they are feeling, stressors that they are facing, etc.

Ironically, whenever anybody asks me how I am doing, I say “fine.” Almost all the time when I say “I am fine, thank you.” It is a signal “I am not feeling great; there’s something going on, but I am not comfortable enough to tell you about it.” Ouch.  Lots of reasons for that response though.

My biggest goal this year is to maintain the fun in learning while still actually learning.

I am SO anxious for tomorrow. I can’t wait to see what I have to work with this year. 🙂

More updates later, I guess…

Aug8

Cutting down the forest, one tree at a time.

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Cutting down the forest, one tree at a time.

I have a crazy headache right now. *WhineWhineblahWhine.*

At least today was pretty dang productive. Of course, there is never enough time in the day to do everything you intended to do. I mean, I get 5 books for my birthday and you expect me to actually WORK?! I believe that truly falls under the 8th amendment in the US Constitution: “No cruel and unusual punishment.” You lock an English teacher in a room with some great classics, new and old, and then tell them to scrub the walls. WITH A TOOTHBRUSH. What do you really think is going to happen?

(Note: this is a partially true story. I wasn’t an English teacher -obviously- when I was growing up, but my parents would take away my books as punishment or if they wanted to make me do something I didn’t want to do. Cruel. I KNOW.) Love ya, Mom and Dad.

But I digress. Despite the obvious distraction, I was surprisingly productive today. Slept in (yay!), got up, had a gourmet breakfast of off-brand cereal, and then Jared and I did a whole crapton of work. In no particular order: went to the apartment, cleaned, got some more stuff that I have to put away at the house. Went to the bank. Did grocery shopping. Vacuumed. Price-checked products at Lowe’s and Home Depot.

Well, Jared price checked. By the time we made it to Home of Pot (if you know latin languages, you’ll get it) I was not feeling so well and decided to distract myself at the flower section. I was able to identify several of the plants in our backyard. So far, I found Texas Sage, Autumn Sage, Mexican Heather, lantana, crape myrtle, and purple fountain grass. Oh yeah. I was busy at the Home Depot. I also know we have some lilies and a rose of sharon tree, but really, I knew that before. And as you read that your eyes probably started to close and you were threatening close to nodding off, but hey, PLANTS ARE EXPENSIVE! It’s good to know what you have so you don’t kill it off, and then you have to replace it or look at dead ugly plants in a dead, ugly yard.

When we got home, we decided to have a delicious dinner of Costco cake and ice cream. OH YES WE DID! I still can’t beleive Jared was okay with that, but I’m not complaining.

Then to work off all those fatty calories, we did a lot of yardwork. To give you an idea of the comfort level, we were doing yard work at 7:00 PM in the evening. It’s now 11:00 PM and it’s STILL 88 degrees.  I took comfort by trimming bushes back and wagging war with the many, many mini trees in the area that we call “The Forest.”

TheForest

Here’s the infamous Bee Tree. This picture doesn’t even begin to show the immensity of The Forest, but when you are in the middle of it, it can be kinda overwhelming. It did surprise me how much I enjoyed cutting down all the sprouts. I think it would have been even better if I hadn’t been covered in sweat from having to wear jeans and a long sleeved shirt to protect myself from the bugs. Bugs are attracted to me as if I covered myself in chocolate and asked little kids to lick me. And then when they bite me, I am left with several days discomfort from bites that swell up to the size of a discolored, mottley orange.

And still, Jared loves me. Am I a lucky woman or what?

Hence the eau de “OFF!” and battle armour to protect Jared’s sanity. I am still awed by how I found it mysteriously satisfying physical labor for the hour I did it. And still, the majority of the forest is still there. And will need to be removed, because it’s a bug breeding ground.

So. I guess you could say I am just working on destroying nature, one tree sprout at a time.