Weird week!

This week has been incredibly busy, incredibly stressful, and full of unexpected surprises...not all good surprises. I feel like I have had a mountain of work all week. I get to school early, stay late, and still bring things home to work on in the evening. Thankfully, tonight, I left school with no work! What a huge blessing after the week I have had.

To begin, my Monday started off as any other stressful Monday. Busy, busy, busy...not much of which I can even remember.

However, Tuesday is when the excitement began! I was teaching my students to divide with fractions, when suddenly there was a fire drill. I have come a long way since my first year of teaching in regards to my reaction to a fire drill. The first fire drill I ever experienced, I ran out of the school, leaving my students to fend for themselves. This week's fire drill seemed pretty normal until I noticed that the students toward the back of my line were moving around and jumping out of line. I went back there to see what was wrong, and there were fire ants everywhere! This is one of those things that I never experienced back home in Indiana. So, I was trying to get my class under control and brushing ants off of some of them, when suddenly I was viciously attacked by the same ants! They were up my legs almost to my knees before I felt them. By the time we got back to the room, my legs and especially my feet were freckled with bites. That was enough excitement for one day!

Jerks of the insect world! 

Wednesday was full of surprises too! It was picture day, so after getting my hair under control, or as under control as I could, I headed to school in the rain. The rain stopped just in time for us to have prayer at the flag pole. The humidity was incredible though. I could feel my hair growing bigger and bigger. Just in time for us to have our school pictures. I can just imagine how that one is gonna turn out.

Mrs. P-sixth grade teacher

Wednesday afternoon, some of my students were heading to cross country at the other campus, and through a series of circumstances, I got to drive them over in the school's van. On my way back, I nearly hit a squirrel and was a nervous wreck. Little did I know that was the least of my concerns. As I turned to head up the drive toward the school, I saw a stick in the road. A stick that moved. It was a snake! A SNAKE! I still can't think about it without shuddering! It raised its head when it saw me coming toward it. And I drove right over it! Hopefully I killed it, but I didn't see it there when I left that day. I was so afraid to get out of the van. I just knew it was hanging on to the wheel to jump on me when I got out. So, I got all my stuff together and jumped out of the van, as far as I could away from it! I am so thankful no one was there to watch me look so crazy!

I almost can't look at this picture! I still have the heebie-jeebies!  I also don't know if this is the type of snake it was, but it looked kind of like it. 

This has been my first encounter with a snake in my life. I have never seen one outside of the zoo. This is also my first experience with the fire ants. I hope I am done for the week with my random encounters with nature. So help me, if I get attacked by a rabid raccoon this week, I am going to be furious!

Finding a balance

We are about 7 weeks into the new school year, and I am really struggling to find a balance between being a good wife and a good teacher. I feel like when I am doing great things at school, my home life is a mess. The opposite is also true. I try to remind myself that God will not give me more than I can handle, but that doesn't always give me the comfort that I need.

I love what I do. I love teaching. I honestly feel that I am called to be a teacher. Really, what other job can you play games, talk about bugs, and do art projects all day? Ok, I do a bit more than that. I love the challenge of teaching. I love watching a student understand something for the first time. I love getting to celebrate small victories with my students, like finally understanding how to change a mixed number to an improper fraction. I love that every day in the classroom is an adventure. There are no two days the same.

I also love being a wife. I love my husband and I love to cook dinner for him and clean the house and do the laundry and all those other chores. (let me clarify...I love doing those chores for him...I don't actually love cleaning) I love having time to spend with my husband in the evenings and on weekends. We love a quiet night in or a date night out.

My problem is that I want to be perfect at both things. I want to be the perfect wife and the perfect teacher. Deep down, I know this isn't possible, but I am trying. And usually failing at one or the other. The other day, I had a small meltdown because we didn't have any groceries. I couldn't even imagine finding a time to get to the store to get the groceries. I felt like a terrible wife. Especially when the only decent thing I have made for my husband for dinner this week came out of a take-out bag.

When I feel like I am being successful in taking care of my husband and home, I feel like I am a terrible teacher. I want to do more in the classroom than I actually do. I want to have extra activities and I want them to look effortless.

I know that this year will fall into place soon. I know that. And perhaps the whole point of this blog is to help myself realize that. Every year, I feel overwhelmed, and every year I get on track, and everything eventually straightens itself out. But until that happens, I am going to keep trying to master the balancing act I have going on, all why trying to look like I am not completely crazy.

Where were you?

As the 10th anniversary of the September attacks rolls around this weekend, I am at a loss for words. I teach a class of 11 and 12 year old students who only know what they have been taught about it. They have no memory of that event, and yet to me it is still a very vivid memory. This must be how my parents felt about the JFK shooting, or my grandparents felt about the bombing at Pearl Harbor. They remembered vividly, but to me, these events were just something from my history books.

Until September 11, 2001. Then, I knew how they must have felt to be experiencing a tragedy that affected everyone. A day so horrific that my mere account of it cannot clearly express to my students the reality of that day. They will learn it as a fact in their history book, while I remember the emotion and grief and confusion.

I was a senior in college and running late to my algebra class. I remember running to the dean's office to drop something off, and the dean of men put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Have you heard? An airplane crashed into one of the World Trade towers and a few minutes later another plane crashed into the second." That small insight into the day's events will stay with me forever. I remember heading into class and no one knew yet. I told the girls that I sat with and by the time the class was over, it seemed that everyone on campus knew. We went back to the dorms and looked at video online. Then we headed over for chapel and we watched it on the TVs at the gym.

I still remember the next day, when George Bush addressed the nation, I was at Pizza Hut. Everyone stopped talking and stood up while he spoke. The restaurant was silent as he vowed to seek those who had committed such a horrible act. I can still remember how it felt to look around at all those people and feel a sense of closeness to them, even though we were all strangers. But our shared experience had given us a sense of unity. I remember how touched I was when Congress began to sing "God Bless America".

Looking back, my memory is still so vivid. I can recall the pictures I saw, the articles I read, the stories I was told.

Where were you?

Broccoli Salad

I love a good cook out, or a barbeque as some call it. I have always enjoyed going to these functions and preparing dishes for them. However, the food sometimes becomes a bit mundane. Burgers, hot dogs, coleslaw, deviled eggs, potato salad, macaroni salad, baked beans, and the usual dessert. Recently, while feeling too lazy to make potato salad, I thought that broccoli salad would be the perfect dish to take to a dinner. I scoured the internet for good ideas and after combining and tweaking, this is what I have come up with. And it was aMaZiNg!

Here's what you need:

2 bunches of broccoli
1 container of cherry or grape tomatoes
1 red onion
8 oz. cheddar cheese
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 pound cooked (crispy) bacon
1 cup mayo
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
black pepper

Here's what you do:

Cut the broccoli into bite size pieces and cut the tomatoes in half. Put in a large serving bowl.

Then slice the onion into slivers and chop the bacon. Add those on top of the broccoli and tomato.

Next, add the golden raisins and the sunflower seeds.

Then take the block of cheese and cut it into very small cubes. You could probably use shredded cheese for this, but I love the way the little squares of cheese look in the salad.

Then mix all of these ingredients together.

Next, assemble the dressing. In a separate bowl, combine the mayo (you can substitute plain yogurt for the up to 1/2 the mayo if you want to cut the calories a bit) sugar, vinegar, and black pepper. Mix it well and then pour on top of the salad.

Finally, mix it all together!

This is really good if eaten immediately and it tastes even better the second day. Ours has never made it to the 3rd day, so I don't know how well it will keep beyond that.