First Day of Teacher Training

The first day back was great! I was practically giddy: as sociable as I come. Well, nearly. Anyway, I guess I was happy to be back.

I met the new teacher, and he seems really nice. But, since we didn't get that third teacher, he might be the homeroom teacher for the 7th and 8th grade, which means I might not even share a room! Weird! But fun! If it means I don't have to oversee the 7th and 8th grade clean-up in their room at the end of the day I will click my heels for joy (or something). That was the worst part of last year. Well, that and having to confess that it was me, and not one of my 7th grade girls, who had just screamed like that.

Today we learned Logic. It was great fun. As a Classical school, we teach Logic, and our headmaster decided it would probably be good if all the teachers (even those for the younger grades) knew some logic, so we could all be heading our students in the same direction. Hear hear! I really enjoyed the day - it was so much better than hearing about what the ideal teacher is like, and feeling like I was up to about 1% of that ideal. Bring on the logic! Plus, I'll be teaching it this year, so it's great review for what I learned this summer in preparation (as well as some new stuff!).

Most of all I had fun setting up my posters. I have decorated this post with copies of two of the poster I have hanging in my room now! Beautious, eh?

Overworked and Underpaid (but still loving it!)

Okay, here is my sob story (which I'm not sobbing about):

My school was going to hire another jr high / high school teacher. Good. We needed one. HOWEVER, somehow that fell through. SO, the other teacher and I are totally picking up the slack. Oy vay. I am going to be teaching SO many classes!

I was all set to do British Literature for the 11th and 12th grades, as well as general Lit for the 9th grade. I was also planning on Logic (hee hee hee), possibly for two levels, as well as Rhetoric (for two levels, but during one class time - one-room school house syle). Okay, good. I was feeling like that was quite manageable. Oh, typing too, but that really doesn't require a lot from me since it's just Mavis Beacon.

THEN I got this e-mail from the headmaster asking me to call him asap. Call him I did, with an elevated pulse. The conversation did nothing to lower my blood pressure. "How do you feel about math?" He asked me. "Umm, I think that it is evil in number form." No, actually I said "I can handle low-level math, but I never went beyond Algebra II..." "Okay, do you think you can teach Algebra I?" "Sure!" (That last statement was made in a fit of insanity. No, I think I can really do it, as long as the real math teacher can help me out a little...")

We discussed some other possibilities, and then he popped in a little, "By the way, I think you're getting your 7th and 8th grade Lit class back." Here there is a pause, as I reflect back on the fact that I have just spent the whole summer preparing two Lit classes, and have one week to work on this third one. "Ummm, I don't really have any books or anything." "Oh, just teach something you've read before." "Well, okay!" It wasn't like he meant to spring this on my last-minute - it wasn't his fault the teacher decided not to work at our school after all. Sigh. And I'm taking him up on the books you've read before thing: The Hobbit, Tom Sawyer, Jane Eyre, and maybe The Chosen. Fun!

So now I'm teaching EIGHT courses:

*Lit (11th and 12th)
*Lit (9th)
*Lit (7th and 8th)
*Logic (7th)
*Logic (8th and 9th) - this one might be in with the 7th grade logic, or might be scrapped all together, so I might only have 7 courses
*Rhetoric (11th as well as 12th, but in the same period)
*Algebra I
*Typing

QUITE THE LINE-UP, EH? Good grief. But now I have to say that it's really not that bad:) It looks like a lot of fun, and I think it's do-able. For one thing (and this is a big thing) Logic, Rhetoric, and Typing are all just three days a week. So really only four courses are every day. And also, some will take very little preparation ahead of time (like typing and Algebra). So it's not as bad as it initially looks. But I just wanted to make it look as bad as possible for effect:)

Should be quite a year!

Girls Singing Boys' Songs

So here's this dilemma. Some of the most beautiful songs in the world are written from the male perspective. But when I'm rich and famous and cutting 276 CDs a year, I'll be realllly tempted to use the most beautiful songs in the world! Because really, why would you want to cut CDs that didn't have the most beautiful music in the world? I mean, that would be like if you were an incredible writer but chose to write stories about red ponies who die and stuff.

"Danny Boy" for instance is an incredibly beautiful piece. I love singing it at the top of my lungs when the occasion warrants (occasions in which I'm cleaning the house and no one else is home, for example). But really it was written from the father's perspective. Lots of girls sing it, and thus change it to a love song, and it's very pretty. But for me it loses some of its meaning that way. Sigh.

"My Love to My Bride" is one I actually sang at a recital in college. It is another incredibly beautiful one, but really there is no way to make that work. So that one gets the old scratch.

Fortunately for me, and all other females who like to sing, there are also beautiful songs that are written from a female perspective. So all's well there. I don't really have to settle for ugly songs for all of my days...

Anyway, this all came because I was listening to just such a song being sung by a girl on Pandora Internet Radio. PEOPLE! You should check it out! Melissa introduced me to it, and then Penny reminded me of it (Pandora, that is). You type in someone you like, and then you can listen to tons of music in that same style! Right now I'm listening to "Lisa Kelly Radio" and it's beautiful. (Lisa Kelly is one of the "Celtic Woman" singers.) COOL, HUH? I highly recommend it. It can introduce you to all kinds of great new music!

Also, I'm still having a fabu time in GA! I love it down here. We've done some great shopping, some great fellowshipping, some great dining, etc. Oh! And swimming! For like an hour and a half or so last night we had the pool to ourselves and it was such fun. I won the "swim underwater the farthest" contest. Yippee! My calling in life! Today we joined the Adams girls for shopping on the square and had a delightful time. We had fried green tomatoes at the sweet little restaurant there. Success all around. Hurrah for GA!

Happy Birthday to Gretchen!

Today is my big sister's birthday! I love her.

When I was little she was one of my standards of cool-ness.

Now she is one of my standards of Godly-woman-ness.

I admire her devotion to God - her vision for what her life is about - her unselfishness for the sake of her family.

I love being friends with her.

Happy Birthday, Gretchen!

Penny = Superer Woman than Superwoman!

Okay folks. So you see THIS. But I saw the process! Well, not the painting, which was already done, but the hanging of the accessories. And was I ever impressed! I wish you could have been here to see Penny, surrounded by tools, working away with levels and tape measures, hammers and weird tools whose names I didn't even know. She's amazing! I was wicked impressed. She even has her own power drill! You can get much more super-woman-ish than that. This living room is BEAUTIFUL! If I even get a house, I think I'll ask Penny to be the interior decorator. I love her style. Oh, she also makes her own iced coffee! Folks, this girl is goooood. I'm such a fan.

In other (but pretty related) news, I'M IN GA!!! Man, I love this place. Katie and I had a lovely time getting here, except for about 2 hours in NY City and 1 hour in Virginia where we weren't doing very much in the "getting here" department. But actually, even that wasn't too bad, because hey, we were hanging out, and taking a road trip! Okay, I'm lying. NY City stank. But VA was okay:) Anyway, the rest of the trip was fantastic. Katie read "The Ball and the Cross" by G. K. Chesterton out loud to me, and it was fantastic. I HIGHLY recommend it. Funny, great story, great characters, and great point!

Yesterday I joined the youth group for some basketball. After two days of sitting in the car I was ready to move around, and it wasn't too hot (amazingly). So I jumped onto the court and went at it. I was having a fabulous time. I even got some baskets (I was on Zohrab's team which meant that everyone on the team got the ball - yay!). But after awhile my feet were really starting to hurt. I was playing barefoot on the pavement - and this was no ordinary pavement. Very rough. Soon my feet hurt so badly that I had to take a time out to go beg some sneakers off someone.

Lo and behold, after more basketball and some volleyball too, I returned to the Browns to discover that there were large blisters on the bottoms of my feet! Like I say, no ordinary pavement. Both big toes were really scuffed up. Interestingly enough, they scuffed along the toe-print lines. Weird. But the balls of my feet were the worst. They had large, paisly-shaped blisters just below the big toes. Woooo! They are things of beauty. I guess it's from all the rapid changes of direction and such. I don't know. But there they are. Large, red, and squishy.

So since then I've been walking around on my heels and the outside edges of my feet. I feel like a grandmother. A really old one. But it's kind of fun. You should try it! It makes my walking really slow though, so sometimes I kind of run that way in order to catch up with the person I'm walking with. It makes for quite the hobble.

Last night Nate, Penny and I went swimming at the near-by pool (which was empty!). We were walking back to the car, when I commented that I hoped no bad guys came to chase us, because I'd have to just run regularly, and the blisters would have to fend for themselves. Then Nate said cheerfully that he and Penny would be fine - they'd just have to make sure to run a little faster than I could. I told him I didn't like his attitude.

I'm having a wonderful time!

"It could happen!"

Last night Katie and I went bowling. Actually, Katie went bowling and I went to watch her. We only had one pair of socks between us. And the Red Sox game was on, so I wasn't in great need of other entertainment.

I took some sweet video of the occasion on my phone, but alas, I can't get it to transmit. Something is definitely wrong there. I'll have to look into it.

Anyway. I sat there, happily keeping one eye on the tv and one eye on Katie. The result was strange to behold, but fortunately Katie had requested a lane far away from other people, so nobody noticed.

As I watched, I began to notice a strange phenomenon. When the Red Sox did something right, Katie did well, and when they did something bad, she did... um, not so well. Odd, I thought. I pointed it out to Katie. And then it got a little uncanny. Katie got the ball, er, semi-far-from-the-middle, and the pitcher (Hansen) got a ball. Katie got one more middling and Hansen got a strike.

There was definitely some kind of connection there!

But then there was a commercial and I kind of forgot about it. I got absorbed in the games (Katie's and the Red Sox). But THEN it happened. Ortiz was up to bat, and Katie was up to bowl. She strode forward, released, and lo! it was RIGHT down the middle. A PERFECT STRIKE!!!

And I looked up at the screen and Ortiz was trotting around the bases. Trotting? Why YES. He'd just hit a HOMERUN!!!

Oh my word. Stop the presses. Folks, it has become abundantly clear that Katie is the key to success for the Sox. Obviously there is some mystic bond between the two. One cannot succeed without the other. I predict that this year's World Series will occur with Katie in the bowling alley. We need to foster her love of bowling. Take her often. Get her in excellent form. She must bowl the Red Sox to VICTORY!

Hm. On the other hand, she'll probably want to watch the World Series. This could be a problem. Okay, solution: have her bowl many and many a 300 before the WS, in order to get some victory in the bank that the Sox can pull out and use at the opportune moments.

Now if I ONLY had that video to post...

My Confession (which is quite different from Josh Groban's)

I HATE SALAD! There. I've said it. After years of just eating it because it was there, it finally hit me, clearly and undeniably: I simply loath the stuff. I wouldn't mind if I never saw another leaf of it again. I like the veggies fine: tomatoes, green pepper, cucumber... yummmm. But as for the leafy stuff, absolutely no redeeming value. Except for nutritionally, of course, which doesn't count.

Many of my more meritous friends enjoy it, which makes me wonder if perhaps I am missing out. Sometimes, even where there is the option of a hamburger or a quesadilla, they choose it at a restaurant! To me, that is a waste of stomach space that could have been used more efficiently, and pleasurably.

I don't see any way out of this vicious salad-loathing cycle. Every time I convince myself that it's good for me, and try some, I am reminded all the more vigorously of why I do not like it, and I am all the more hardened in my anti-salad stance. It is not for me to munch upon the green and leafy.

Now if they would come up with CHOCOLATE lettuce, that would be a different story!