Category Archives: Jared

Jul13

On the Importance of Flowers

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On the Importance of Flowers

When I was first dating Jared, I used to say how he didn’t need to buy me flowers for Valentines Day, birthdays, or anniversaries. First of all, flowers can be expensive. Anybody who has had a significant other or a mother knows that any flowers bought on Valentine’s Day and/or Mother’s Day are priced to rack in the big money. And then, after a few days (or if you’re really lucky, a week or two) they die. Get all limp and soggy or dried up and brown, and it’s a nasty mess to clean up.

So I told Jared not to bother.  He, like any smart man, decided to play it save and did it anyways, but I would have probably been okay without it. I really did feel badly about how expensive and overrated they could be.

But secretly, I was always really glad he did it.

I LOVE having fresh flowers around the house.

Cayenne Roses Close up

Especially since we have our own home, I feel a certain pride in the beautiful things that are around, even the temporary items like flowers that you have to keep changing.

Flowers Outside  

There’s a certain charm in having them around. The subtle fragrance. The many shapes. The variety of color. I’m always amazed with the beautiful, delicate colors that nature can come up with. I love being surprised by the natural beauty that we can find in the world, and so grateful for it being here.

Cayenne Roses Top view

H-E-B is having a “Rose Festival”. Lots of the flowers aren’t in the best quality, but I found these “Cayenne” roses in the big bin and loved that color. And for roses, they have lasted quite well for the past 5 days. 🙂 Woohoo!

On a side note, I also found this awesome color highlight setting on the phone that I tried out on the roses!

Color highlight Cayenne Roses Close up Color highlight Cayenne Roses Close up 2

What are the simple things that brighten YOUR day?

May12

A happier post…

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A happier post…

Sorry about the downer post of a few days ago. That’s primarily why I haven’t been posting much because what I HAVE had to say is all along those lines—not so happy!

Fortunately, I do have happier things to share.

1.) We had our FOURTH wedding anniversary at the end of April! And Jared was sweet enough to “kidnap” me from work the next day for a nice weekend in the town of Fredericksburg, Tx.

We spent a few nights in a cozy little cabin.

Cat’s Meow Bed    Cat’s Meow Jacuzzi    Cat’s Meow Kitchen

We tried a few of the restaurants in town and walked around. We even went to a nearby state park, Enchanted Rock.

Enchanted Rock-Jared    Enchanted Rock-scenery

It was okay, but we both agreed it’s probably more enchanting when there’s not been several months of drought interfering with the wildlife and greenery.:)

It was nice to get away and not worry about all my worries for a few days.

2.) Jared got a new toy. He’s pretty excited about it.

Motorcycle

Normally, this would be something to frown upon because it’s a dangerous sports bike that would get him into trouble. BUT for several reasons, this is okay with me. Jared is a believer in wearing full-gear. With the ridiculous gas prices, this is less of a gas hog than the truck. And most importantly, it makes Jared happy by satisfying that part of him that wants a little more adventure and it’s a new toy to modify.

3.) It was my favorite guy’s birthday yesterday!!!

Cards and cake

I made him a triple-chocolate layer cake all from scratch. I am pretty proud of myself.

Cake

Can you guess how old he is?

Birthday boy

Who couldn’t love this guy? Look at that incredibly good-looking face!!!

So, despite the hardships of life lately, there’s been a few rays of sunshine.

Ironically enough, Jared’s a part of all of them! 🙂

May8

Reflections…

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Reflections…

This year has been one of the most difficult years of my life. I don’t say this to be dramatic, but looking back, I have never felt so low and hopeless. I know there are several things that have contributed to why I’ve been so busy and constantly stressed.

The foremost, largest stressor has been my job. Teaching hasn’t been what I thought it would be. This year in particular has emphasized everything wrong with teaching. The financial situation in Texas right now is absolutely ridiculous. Examples:

* What place would expect that if you cut millions of dollars in education, it would benefit the students? Districts all over the state have had to forgo renewing some of their best, brightest teachers. The girl that I have been mentoring all year received an email from the person being forced to take her place. The email essentially stated that she didn’t want to teach but she was only doing it for insurance, and that it sucks to be jobless for this particular girl. How could you be so inconsiderate to say that to somebody who’s job you are taking, when that person would love to remain there when you couldn’t care less?

* They will be shortening the time spent in math and language arts at the middle school level, giving teachers half the time they previously had with students and giving them twice the students to teach.

* TEA is still going forward with rolling out their new, more strenuous state testing to hold teachers accountable. But we now have LESS TEACHERS teaching MORE STUDENTS with LESS RESOURCES. How can we stay remotely close to the same standards?

* It’s possible we won’t know the official cuts until August 12th, if the senate and house refuse to compromise and have to go to a special session during the summer. More firing or hiring could happen literally the week or two before the doors are supposed to open for the school year.

How are we supposed to recover from that?

I’ve also been disappointed on a smaller scale. I have done everything possible to show that I am invested in being a good teacher, yet again I have been held back from moving up to a high school position. I’ve been part of the leadership teams on campus, helped with special side committees, been the 7th grade ELA department head and worked on developing curriculum. I’ve been a mentor to a first year teacher. I’ve been accepted to the Central Texas Writing Project (CTWP) for this summer. I don’t know what else I could do to show that I could be an asset, but yet, I’m held back in a position that I do not love, for the fourth time. I overheard a conversation with another teacher saying that  she’s been stuck in 8th grade ELA for 8 years, despite applying for transfers for high school time and time again.

Pros of middle school and teaching in general have been:

-7th graders have their funny moments;

-The curriculum is “easier”, and I have it mostly down, just tweaking from year to year;

-Up to this year we’ve had 90 min a day with the students;

-I like most of the people I work with.

Cons:

-I struggle with the maturity level of the students;

-“Helicopter parents” are worse at this age;

-I miss the challenge of the more strenuous and deeper curriculum I could get with high school;

-The ridiculous “rubric” system or “Standards-based grading” and no accountability crap;

-Paperwork is ridiculous;

-There are more meetings with admin and other teachers to “support student academic success”.

Frankly, I’m losing hope. I truly do not know if I can last another year, and that thought frightens me. I have invested 7 years of my life to this profession, and I don’t love it. It has its good moments of course, but those good moments are not sustaining me like they used to.

And the fear of the unknown: If I don’t continue on, I don’t know what other profession I could do.

These are fears and thoughts that have been building for months. In the past month, the more I’ve learned, these thoughts been more and more prevalent. It’s been a difficult, exhausting year, and I’m like a car just pushing to the finish line on fumes.

I’ll end with a positive thought. The bright side of my life: my husband.  This past month we celebrated four years of marriage. He’s definitely been my rock and strength during this difficult and lonely time in my life, and I am forever grateful for all he does to make my struggles easier. I consider him my biggest blessing in life, and am so grateful for him every single day.

Jared, thanks for making my burden lighter by being in my life. No matter what happens, I love you.

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!

Aug8

Birthday fun!

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Birthday fun!

First of all, before I get started, I just want to thank everyone for their kind words on my previous post. It means a lot to me and having those kinds of words in writing really does help to go back at and read.

Moving right along, yesterday was my 23rd birthday. It makes me excited because maybe, just maybe, I won’t be the youngest teacher at the school this year. Last year my nickname with many of the teachers was “86” because through one of the beginning of the year activities  we did to “get to know each other better, it was revealed that I was born in 1986. Which apparently bothered some of the teachers born in the 1940s. LOL. I would really love it if there was an 87 this year. 🙂

Yesterday was great. I woke up pretty happy because 1) I actually slept pretty well for once, and 2) I felt good about how much I got done yesterday.

I think due to my anxiety, sleep becomes an issue because I typically wake up several times a night after rather dumb dreams, making it difficult to fall back asleep. The end result is I generally wake up just as tired as when I went to sleep, or more so. So, when this doesn’t happen, and I actually sleep pretty well, it’s a big deal.

On #2, our house is starting to look more and more like a home, and you wouldn’t believe how nice it feels NOT to have a bunch of boxes lying around the living room or just stuff lying about the counters and floors. I also organized our closets (Jared and I both get our own closet… much to Jared’s relief!). Being able to see the possibilities and potential of this house is so exciting to me.

The rest of the day was a happy blur. Jared and I went to this great place downtown called Zilker Park. That’s just one of the cool things about Austin. First of all, it’s pretty dang cool that right next there downtown, there’s the big Colorado river. Secondly, Zilker Park is a real, and big, park. And within that area, you can experience wonderful things like natural springs and kayaking.

Jared and I were gonna do the kayaking, but my headaches decided to ruin that plan. It was a hot, like 100 degrees hot, long walk to the kayak place. Once we got there, they only wanted two things from us. Our cash, and our photo IDs. And naturally, because we didn’t want to get all that stuff unnecessarily wet, we left all but the cash amount for the kayaking in the car. We started the long trek back to the car… and suddenly that nagging mosquito buzzing headache turned into a throbbing mess, pounding in sync with each step I took.  Jared and I stopped by Barton Springs so I could rest enough to make it up the hill to the car. It was such a pleasant place! Dogs were allowed, people were just hanging out, and they even had a diving board! It was pretty awesome.

Jared was also sweet enough to make me all 3 meals yesterday. And I would just like to say, as the main cook in the house, IT WAS AWESOME to have a break. I need to make him cook more often…. or help me out at least. 😉

Presents were AWESOME. Thanks Aunt Linda and co. for the Inkheart books- I seriously have meant to get around to reading them, but haven’t yet, so I was PSYCHED to get those. Especially because I was really struggling to figure out that cool flowerpot card. Apparently, not all cards open up, y’all. The pretty “flower” part slides out of the flowerpot part and THEN you can read the message. And the sad thing was, Jared had to tell me that after I examined the card for 2 minutes. ha. Along with the book theme, the in-laws sent me the remainder of The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Seriously cool series for those of all ages, and I get that extra thrill from it because of how much I LOVE Greek/Roman Mythology! I had the first book, and the last book, not the 3 in the middle. So I think Jared must’ve colloborated with that, cuz I got the remaining three! Now, I just have to figure out how to read all of these 5 books in the next week before school/training starts. 🙂

My mom sent me this pretty purple jersey dress that actually looks pretty good on me. I also got this very colorful apron from Nana and Grandpa, Jared’s grandparents. I think she might have made it herself! And I can’t wait to make Jared put it on sometime and get a picture of it. It’s just a matter of time. DON’T THINK THAT I’M NOT WATCHING FOR THAT OPPORTUNITY!

Last, but not least, because perhaps he didn’t think the day had been awesome enough, Jared surprised me with tickets to WICKED. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! 3rd row. I seriously don’t know how I resisted the little girl squeal because I was so excited. It’s showing in Austin for the next 3 weeks, so I can’t wait to go to that. I have heard from several reliable sources that the play is completely different (and better) than the book. (Take my word for it, DO NOT read the book. Unless you enjoy sickeningly pornographic images and seriously twisted relationships happening.) I also love the music from the musical version, and even Jared gets a kick out of “Popular.”

We ended the evening with Neapolitan ice cream,  succulent chocolaty chocolate Costco cake, and watching one of my favorite movies, Stardust. This cake was the 7 pounder glorious cake that you gain weight just by looking at it. We’re hoping there’s some left when my mom and Stephen come next Wednesday. We might just eat ourselves sick before then. Just because it’s there, and we can!

Ok, back to the movie part. And even though Jared isn’t a big fan of such movies, he didn’t fall asleep until the last 30 minutes of the movie were left! Which, according to him, “are the best and most exciting parts of the movie!”And since it was late, and no longer my birthday, I figured it was okay to pause it and go to bed.

And that, was my intensely awesome and busy birthday day. And I can’t believe that it took me a good 40 minutes to type all of that. If you made it to this ending, congratulations. Go get yourself some chocolate. NOW.