%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |  Welcome to Whatsit's Wild World. |
|
Sometimes I think we're all tightrope walkers suspended on a wire two thousand feet in the air, and so long as we never look down we're okay, but some of us lose momentum and look down for a second and are never quite the same again: we know. ~Dorothy Gilman The Tightrope Walker |
| I'm sick. Sniffles again. Yep - I know. I just had this a few weeks ago. I'm getting it again. My principal fussed at me for teaching the fifty states and state capitals. According to her, this isn't on the standardized state testing at the end of the year so they don't need to know it. Yes, that was exactly what she said to me. I feel like shutting myself up in my house and not coming out until everybody sees it my way. |
** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| Oooohhhh, the agony! For the past two weeks, I've had no idea whatsoever of what to buy at the store. My commercials telling me every purchase to make have been pre-empted by commercials telling me which person to vote for! Seriously, wouldn't the regular commercial buyers be aggravated because all their time is taken up by political ads? Which nobody can believe anyway, because we know it's just a matter of the other candidate trying to make that person look as bad as possible. I know one thing: there are a few - really only one or two - candidates who haven't slung any mud whatsoever. Regardless of party, I KNOW I will be voting for those people. Anybody who slings mud is just losing ground.  The school where I work is a polling place. The cars of people who had come to vote were parked waaayyyyy down the street. Thank goodness one of the men who works here was outside saving the parking lot just for employees. There are three places in town giving out free stuff for people who can show an "I voted" sticker: Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (yum yum yum), Starbucks Coffee, and Chick-Fil-A. This is the first year this has happened, to my knowledge. The Chick-Fil-A and the Krispy Kreme are across the street from each other, so you could theoretically have a free chicken sandwich, then a free doughnut for dessert. I'm all about getting whatever people offer for free. As my mother-in-law used to say, "My name is Jimmy, I'll take what you gimme."  |
| I'm thrilled that the time has changed. I no longer have to leave for work in the pitch-black darkness. At 6:45 AM it's actually broad daylight! As opposed to narrow daylight, I suppose. I'm going to another school Wednesday to observe how they do things. My principal isn't having a problem with me, I don't think - she just got through bragging on me Friday, which gave me the big head - she just knows that this is my first year, and I need to get with somebody more experienced in the ways of Jackson Public Schools. Which is fine with me. I get to cut classes - the ones I'm supposed to teach! I gave my 5th graders 9 million questions on the fifty states today. I asked one of them the other day if he wanted to be just as dumb when he left the library as he had been when he came in. He was whining about having too much schoolwork to do. Then I went into what I call my "Rant Number 33." This is the one about the fact that they get 13 years of free schooling - counting kindergarten - and they don't take advantage of it. They just want to slide through putting forth as little effort as possible. If it sunk into any of their brains, I couldn't tell. |
| Heck no! I won't NaNo! Nope. Sure won't. Not this year anyway. November seems like the wrong month for NaNo to me. My daughter's birthday rolls around, plus there is the whole Thanksgiving thing, at least in the US, and getting ready for . . . um, Scarlett, close your eyes . . . Christmas. Maybe one of these years I will try it.  I drifted off to sleep for one second in church this morning. It's bad when you go to sleep in church and your own husband is the preacher. I'm used to hearing him run on, I suppose. Can we just appoint a monarch for the United States? Somebody that would stay in office until they croak sounds good to me. That way, no more having to listen to election campaigns ever again! Oh, instead of Senators and Congresspeople we could have Dukes and Earls. Sure, why not? Haha! I'm blogging instead of napping. Weird ideas are starting to sprout in my brain. *Heads off to bed* Nighty night. |
| Thursday evening I remembered the costume box. This is the place where we put all the previous costumes from Halloweens gone by. We got it out, and Anna Claire and Matt found some outfits in there to wear. Matt was a dragon and Anna Claire was a queen. NOT a princess, as we were very emphatically told - a queen. Emily decided to stick to being a soccer player. Emily has two soccer games this morning. We're coming up on the end of the season - I can't remember if this is the last day to play or next week. Matt's last game was a couple of weeks ago.. Emily's 11th birthday is a week from tomorrow. Guess what she wants - a lava lamp.  Only three more weeks until Thanksgiving! This will be my first year to have a week off. At the Juvie place we just got Thursday and Friday. Our last day before Thanksgiving will be Friday, November 21, then we don't come back until December 1. That seems kind of funny, not to come back from Thanksgiving until December, but that's just how it falls this year. This school system gives you your birthday off, and mine is December 2, so I'll have one day back, then off again. Then only three weeks until Christmas - two weeks off then. Hooray!Yesterday was payday, so I'm going after soccer to see what I can spend my money on. What is that called? Oh yeah - retail therapy. Gotta run - soccer time. Y'all have a good day! |
| Well, I have improved my attitude somewhat lately. I have lost a lot of grouchiness and bad attitude. I resolved not to raise my voice at my students, and oddly enough, it has worked. THAT surprised me. The only reason I said I wasn't going to raise my voice at them is that I refused to stress myself out anymore, and it has wound up helping. I have a lot of them come up to me and hug me in the evenings when they are on their way out. Which is odd, because I am still very strict with them, but more quietly. I have also calmed down at home a lot. I NEVER raise my voice at my own kids anymore. I was coming home stressed every day, because I am so sick of my husband that I hated coming home at night, but that is resolved somewhat. Not the being sick of him, but my attitude about it. I decided to lose the anger and pretty much not worry about what he does. I didn't think I'd be able to do it, but out of having to save my sanity, I have done it. Therefore, the not yelling at my kids anymore. Not that I yelled at them very much, but I hate doing it at ALL. I still cry a lot though. I can't help that. I just don't do it where anybody can see me. Though at this point it's more of a stress reliever type thing than an out of desperation type thing. I guess I sound like I've gone nuts, doesn't it? I've hidden this for a long time. I normally hate revealing stuff like this about myself, but how likely is it I'll ever meet y'all? You're pretty safe. Besides, I can't afford therapy, and I'm definitely not spilling to somebody I have to see every day or every week. I'm not talking about what hubby has done to irritate me. He's not abusive - don't worry about that. It's more of a colossal pain in the ass situation. And I can't afford to move out at this point, and not sure I even want to. This may resolve. I can see it resolving at some point, maybe, and while it's still a possibility, I don't want to burn my bridges. I remember life without a father after mine died, and his relationship with the kids is not a problem. Stuffing. That's what I'm trying to stop doing, stuffing everything down so far inside. And I'm starting with y'all. Lucky you, right? One result of this is my friendships with people have deteriorated. It's totally my fault because I have clammed up and isolated myself, which is my tendency. I didn't grow up talking a lot. Can you inherit personality traits? If so, I inherited my dad's tendency not to open my mouth much. Being an only child reinforced this. This is why I don't have many friends - people don't understand this about me, and I don't blame them. No, I'm not a very good friend, people. Ah, well. I can feel things getting better, now though. It's odd how much changing your attitude will help. The only person I can work on is me.It's an uphill battle. |
| Sapsuckers. Rugrats. Worri-some-warts. Hard-heads. Silly selves. All of these are things that teachers, including myself, have called students in exasperation. There are certain weeks when we know to expect children to act like they're as crazy as a cat in a catnip bed. The week of the fair. The week before Christmas holidays. The last week of the school year. And this one: the week of Halloween. Bleck. Sometimes it's hard, fooling with other folks' children. * * * I'm a memoir addict. A memoir and an autobiography are a shade different, a memoir being the more interesting of the two. I'm speaking as a librarian and reading addict here. One fairly new memoir, Audition by Barbara Walters, has me mesmerized. I'm not particularly a fan of Barbara Walters - I'll go out of my way not to watch her specials. However, having interviewed everybody on the earth, I knew her book would be good, and it is. Read it. That's an order. * * * I have a whole $325 to spend at work. Every teacher in the district has this much. Our district is funny about giving you money, then telling you what you HAVE to order with it. The $1200 I had to spend a while back HAD to be for hardback books. The $325 HAS to be for general classroom supplies. Bulletin board border and stuff like that. Also, if you need any equipment, you can get that. I'm looking at a little classroom laminator. We are under a mandate called "Jackson First," in which we are requested to try to spend our money within the city of Jackson if possible. This is to benefit the Jackson businesses. There is only one teacher resource store within the city limits, Write-Way School Supplies. Don't you know that guy is rolling in the dough, being the only teacher store in the city where the school district HAS to spend their money? Anyway, I didn't have a catalog, so I got on the website and requested one. Get this: they sent a man over here with my catalog. Can you believe it? I guess they DO like Jackson Public Schools, with service like that. I couldn't get over it. I thought they would mail it. So I'm going to knock myself out ordering from them every chance I get - I guess they figured on that too. Librarians are more exempt than teachers from the spending-only-in-Jackson rule, because there are no library-book-stores here, but I'm still going to order from them when I can. It's rare to find service with a smile these days. I'd like to reward it. |
| I paid $2.19 for gas this morning. It was $2.25 yesterday. When it went from $3.05 to $2.97 a couple of weeks ago I almost jumped through the roof of the car, I was so thrilled. This gas situation has been something serious. I can wear the same old boring clothes day after day. I can get by with not buying winter clothes for our little few months of winter by putting on a jacket for the little few minute a day that I'm outside. I know how to eat bologna sandwiches every day at lunch. I can keep the air or heat turned down. I can avoid going out to eat very much. But I haven't figured out how to skimp on the amount of gas I need to get to work. If you have to put gas in your car, there's no way around it. If you're hungry, you can go to the next meal - your car won't do that. Not that I AM going hungry - - not by a long shot. I'm just saying that you can't reason with your car about needing gas. I'm not driving all over the countryside. I pretty much go to work and come home. $2.19 is looking pretty good. Real good, in fact. And so far it's been going in the right direction. After Hurricane Gustav, gas prices almost gave me a heart attack. The gas station around the corner from my house, normally one of the cheapest in town, went up to $5.19. Oddly enough, they said on the news that he wasn't price gouging. The owner, a local fella, was able to produce the documents that showed that he paid that much for his gas. But the public outcry was such that he was forced to cut the price per gallon to way below what he paid for it, and he said he lost several thousand dollars. The Chevron across the road from this particular station was selling gas for $3.69 per gallon. And we were glad to get it. Did I mention that gas is now $2.19 per gallon? Thankfulness. I'm using mine right now. |
| We are having a free preview to the Game Show Network this week. My kids' eyeballs are glued to it. Somehow, Game Shows are winning out even over cartoons. We don't watch TV THAT much. But the few minutes they get to watch it each day, that's what they have looked at. I was under the impression from one time before when we had a free preview of this station that it showed old old reruns, but evidently the shows that have been on this week are a little more current. I was a little disappointed by this, because I've been looking for an epsode of Family Feud with Richard Dawson on it. I was a little child when he was on, and it used to fascinate me, him kissing all the women. That was his gimmick, I suppose, to get people to watch.Another host didn't stay on very long, but she was one of my favorites. I'm not positive of her name, but I'm almost sure it was Anne Robinson, on The Weakest Link. Her wicked sense of humor coupled with that English accent made her eminently watchable to me. I think Regis Philbin is kind of fake, as well as being dingy, but I kind of liked him on Who wants to be a Millionaire? After all, how much depth do you need to host a game show? After Bob Barker's reign on The Price is Right - almost the length of my whole life - Drew Carey was the worst possible pick for the new host.  No class, and he talks through his nose. I like Jeopardy because I'm an intellectual snob. $64,000 Pyramid gets on my nerves. Well, the game itself doesn't, but they tend to have really stupid people on there. Yesterday, it was Arianna Huffington. I couldn't put enough eye-rolling pictures here to express my disdain of the ineptitude with which she played. Stupidity always gets on my nerves, no matter where it shows up. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
