A week (of spring break!) inside a teacher's head...

I may be only speaking for myself, but I am hoping that all my teacher-friends will weigh in and *hopefully* agree with me about what goes on inside a teacher's head this time of the year, otherwise I guess this means I need therapy:

Friday, the day before spring break starts:  "I can't stand any of these kids.  If I never see any of them again it will be too soon.  A meteorite could hit this town for all I care."

Saturday night, the first official full day of spring break:  "I need to start looking for another non-teaching job because I am NEVER going back to work at Pecatonica High School EVER again.   I should get on the internet and job search.  But, I think I'll just do anything else, because I may come across something school -related on the computer"--insert gagging sounds here.

Tuesday evening, day 4 of spring break:  "I wonder how L__ and her family are enjoying their trip to the Keys...I hope they are having a good time... I wonder if A___ and her friends made it to her aunt's house in St. Louis... I hope they are having a good time....  Oh look, there is the softball team practicing in the lot next to the grocery store!  Aren't they having a good time!  How nice for them!... I wonder if B___ is behaving himself... I hope he is, he's such a good kid, deep down inside..."

Thursday evening-carried over to Friday morning, days 6 and 7 of spring break:  "Hmm, we start the chapter on radical expressions and radical equations when we get back on Monday. I sure love that chapter!  I'm really excited about playing that game I learned a few years ago that introduces simplifying radicals!  This is going to be a great! Hmm, what else can I dream up to make next week fun?"

Saturday noon, day 8 of spring break:  "Wow!  When we get back to work on Monday, there will only be about 8 weeks of school left!  Oh no!  I'm going to miss these guys next year; I've really had a good group of kids this year!  Now I'm sad."

Sunday, last day of spring break:  "Ok!  I CAN do this, I AM excited, this is going to be GREAT!  And boy am I glad I had a week off to regain some of my sanity...Good thing a meteorite didn't actually hit..."

Random sweetness sightings...

A few months ago I was telling my coworkers about a blow-up I had at (or is it "on") the girls the night before.  It went something like this:
I told them not to pull on the curtain that I had just washed and fluffed and folded and swagged "just right".   Sure enough, one of them walked by and yanked it down.  Then a few minutes later, the other one (or maybe the same one) walked by and yanked it again.  I told them to stop pulling on the curtains twice, and then after the third time I BLEW UP!  And it sounded like this:  "That's it!  I've told you 2 times in the last 15 minutes not to tug on the curtain!  There will be NO FLASHCARDS before bed!"


I was THAT parent: the one who punished their kids by taking away their... flashcards.  You see, we had gotten into this routine where we did flashcards every night before bed and they were loving it!  They were learning math!  They were able to beat their peers who were still doing adding and subtracting!  They were getting all this secret knowledge about how multiplication is just repeated addition and how there is a trick for the 9's!  The next day I woke up with this terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Who cares about a curtain?  If I'd have tucked it under the rod like it was BEFORE I took it down to wash it, this wouldn't have even been an issue.  And seriously, the flashcards?  Do you hear how stupid this sounds?!?!

Anyway, here's the happy ending:

I walked into the girls' room the other night to put them to bed and found this on their dry-erase board.

They had been doing math for fun!  I guess they still love math and I haven't ruined them after all!

By the way, shortly after the NO FLASHCARDS FOR YOU incident, we started reading again.  We recently finished Caddie Woodlawn; totally loved it!  Next up is Island of the Blue Dolphins.  What else should we add to our list of bedtime reads?


Also, on a related note:  Our precious flashcards have their own special bowl (see above).  My grandma was cleaning out her china cabinet and allowed me to pick out something special.  I chose this beautiful antique bowl.  When I got home with it, I thought, "It's so special and pretty and meaningful.  What should I put in it?  Aha!  Our flashcards!"  That's normal, right?

We DO still exist...

Yes, I've been neglecting my dear blog lately.  My excuses are lame.  I don't have material.  Life has just been business as usual.

But, it's a new week and I have about 1 month and 4 days until my dear blog's 2nd birthday.  My goal is to hit 100 posts by then, so I have 6 more to go.  I had better get busy, right?

Now, for a blog post:

Tomorrow, Danny starts middle school track! He's been running on the treadmill in the evenings after supper and yesterday morning he and I hoofed it down the road.  He hit a mile in under 8.5 minutes, so he's feeling more confident that he can "hold his own" this season.  Last week he passed his drug screen (?!?! seriously, how sad is it that we require this of 7th grade track and field ?!?!?!)  and we bought him some spiffy new shoes today.  He's all set!

Emma's front teeth are starting to grow in nicely, or at least one of them is...

And I'm really going places in the world of nail polish fashion (there must be a better phrase for this...)  I saw on Pinterest something about pairings of toes and fingers polish, the theory is that you should do neutrals and nudes up top and something flashy and bright down low.  I think I nailed it:  (Get it? See what I did there? Ha ha!)

Toes:  Pink Promenade
Fingers:  Wall Street
Brand:  NYC.  Both can be purchased for $1.47 at Target.  Both will last about 34 hours and 20 minutes before chipping (or two sinks full of dishes and a hair-shampooing.)  And I think that the obvious needs to be stated:  Yes, yes I did waste moments of my life attempting to take a picture of my fingers and toes at the same time.