search: empathy

struggling

it's been a hard week. most days i've come home with red eyes and feet that scrape through the kitchen. i've never had a group of kids that tax my energy to the breaking point. kids that are so needy in so many ways. part of me wants to slam out of the room, run up to the front office and scream, " i can't do it!"

every single day i feel like i'm not enough.

and then this tuesday i had to make one of the hardest phone calls of my teaching career. of course i can't say anything about the details of that call, but just know that i was shaking as i held the receiver.

my heart hurts for some of these kids. but at the same time i want to close down, to save at least a piece of my energy for the other 5-6 hours of my day.

it's only been 5 weeks. that thought is not one i can contemplate right now.

what i love the most

totally ripping this off a country song, but i felt inspired, so here goes...

i love velveeta mac and cheese,
and i love when tiny kids say please,
i love GATOR football games,
and the meaning behind baby names.

yeah, i'm a fan of dooce's site,
and roses soft and creamy white,
Harry Potter always makes me smile,
and it feels good to jog a mile.

yes, i love to talk with friends,
and what family time invokes,
i dip grilled cheese in ketchup, yum,
and jack d in my coke,
lightning storms make my heart beat fast,
i'll jump off anything high, no boast
but after God himself, i know,
I love Daniel most :)

slight rant

multitasking might be my thing, but the teacher tasklist is getting slightly ridiculous. a quick overview into my to-do list:

-teach writing, math, social studies, and science to 44 kids
-integrate weekly lessons on respect, responsibility and safety
-touch base with all kids in a small group setting at least twice a week
-reteach concepts with struggling kids in a small group or one-on-one daily
-integrate monthly reading focus skill into lessons and display student work
-teach 30 minutes of structured ACADEMIC physical activity a week
-conference with parents twice a year with all necessary paperwork
-keep track of ESE (special needs), Rti (struggling), and PMP (struggling in a single area) students and their requisite paperwork and accommodations
-keep track of my ESOL students, have accomodations made for them in every lesson
-create vocab word walls for every unit of study and display them constantly in my room
-while ONLY using 20% of wall space per fire code
-keep track of documented parent communication as per our title I requirements

oh, and try to meet the school goal of 90% of kids testing on grade level this year.

you have GOT to be kidding me.

RE: she ain't right, part 2

tracy recently spilled her thoughts about identity and truth and what we choose to reveal. i happen to agree that it's rather exhausting hiding pieces and parts of  myself from the world. at some point will i stop fearing rejection or is that a human constant?

regardless, the idea to clear the air appealed to me.,(as did her "your turn" invitation), so here goes my truth:

i worry about my marriage...too many of them fail. the idea of having kids both thrills me and makes me want to run and hide. it shames me that i lose my temper so easily. i'm a manipulator...sometimes i realize it and sometimes i don't. dogs and i don't often get along. sometimes church is a strain because of the happy mask you wear. i get wayyy too jealous of my friends. part of me is sad that i'll never be someone's maid/matron of honor...it would have been a responsibility i enjoyed. i don't enjoy chocolate and peanut butter mixed. i often quit when i am bad at something. i'm already thinking of changing jobs.

that DOES feel good.

is it july 25th already?

you'd never know it by looking at my bedroom, but i am a scrupulously organized person. at least when it comes to project details. and every single one of my friends who have ever offered to help me with something know that i don't really trust anyone else to do it to my specifications.

which brings me to wedding plans.

i thought that my ridiculously anal nature would come in handy. i would have lists to keep me organized and everything would fall into place. riiiiiight.

i'm typing on my laptop right now, afraid to look in my planner to see what tomorrow's tasks are. not quite prepared to make all the phone calls to people who didn't rsvp. tired of counting and recounting tables which have not even begun to be assigned. and did i mention that i'm supposed to be moving in a week?

i've never been so tempted to burrow under the covers and never come out. although then my mother would design the centerpieces..../sigh/

defeated by my own nature.

beware household chores

cutting the grass used to be my favorite chore. we owned a riding lawn mower, so i'd just pop it into high gear, throw some sunscreen on, and zoom around the backyard. soooo much better than sweeping and mopping.

last night i got all defensive when daniel asked me if i knew how to work a lawn mower. "uh, YES!" i got up on my high horse around 7pm and had mowed most of the backyard when something flew at my eye.

now despite my defensiveness, i KNOW how to mow grass. i also know that sunglasses or some other sort of eye protector are a necessary defense against flying grass blades and dirt. so the bit of lawn that decided to attack my eye was wily. it flew UPWARD.

my right eyeball turned flaming red and no amount of water flushing or eye drops could soothe it. i finally passed out just to get away from the pain of my blinking eye being gouged out by yard detritus.

this morning, convinced by daniel and the county nurse at my school, i made my very first appointment with an eye doctor. they shined a lot of multicolored light in my eye, informed me that a grass seed was lodged up at the top under the lid, poured a numbing agent all over and went in. the seed extraction was a success.

so next time you are driving by my house and happen to see me out on the mower, don't laugh at my courtney lee-like face mask. the age of innocence is gone. this means war.

this hits home

i am a country music fan. have been for more years than i can remember. most likely there was some george straight lulling me to sleep in the womb, but i can't swear to it.

lately, though, i've been less than impressed. some of the more recent songs are short on the simplistic storytelling that makes country great and long on let's-talk-through-a-bunch-of-lyrics-that-belong-in-a-rap-song.

all irritation at country radio aside, i was driving home from my dad's birthday dinner and flipped over to k92. jason michael carroll's "where i'm from" was halfway through and i caught myself rolling down the windows. turning up the volume. looking  back at the jacked up truck behind me. flying down a road that was bordered by fields and trees.

and loving it once again.

saturday

the town felt empty today. apparently everyone i know left in order to attend a wedding or family event somewhere far from here. so i hung out with daniel and the brothers all day. and let me just tell you how strange it felt to be sitting at the dam smoker (yes, that IS the name of the bar-b-que joint) eating lunch with a  bunch of deans realizing that soon i, too, will be a dean.

whoa.

my wedding is 2 months away and this is just now hitting me. anyway, back to the whole "now i have brothers" story. i have never had brothers before. and not that my sisters and i are all that girlie, but, it's just different hanging out with boys all day. there was a lot less walking the aisles at target and talking and a lot more video games and basketball.

we also took the boys to the humane society where daniel and i became the proud owners of two little kittens...kinda. we bought them, but can't bring them home until june 5th. so of course i spent an hour researching kitten names tonight only to be appalled by some of the things people call their animals. do-do head? really?

i have been feeling the urge to run lately. probably because my body has been forced to survive on a diet of sugar, diet coke, sweet potato fries, and no sleep, and then further tortured by having to stare at the monthly charge from the gym on my credit card while I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE GYM LOOKS LIKE ANYMORE. argh. something must be done.

9 more days of school. hallelujah.

believe

when you have paint all over your elbows before 11am on a sunday, it's a long day. i michelangelo'd my way around the towering niche in our living room. this activity requires a 10-foot ladder, plywood to stand on so i don't go crashing through the drywall, and a very nervous daniel willing to hand me the roller. not for the faint of heart.

there's just something about purple paint that likes to linger on the elbows even after a 15-minute scrub fest in my shower. i know i'm going to be walking down the aisle in july and find a paint smudge somewhere on my body. i just KNOW it.

with the painting behind me, i decided to move on to grading papers. (yes, my sunday is the BEST day ever, thank you.) the lure of the computer proved too strong for immediate grading action, however, and i found myself on postsecret. every week there's a secret there that makes me pause my scrolling and today was no different. but as i continued to read a little section about graduation, i found a secret that required more than a pause.

"my friend thinks they can change the world. and i believe them."

lately in life i feel as though we've all gotten more realistic. apparently that happens as you grow up. but reading this secret made me feel ashamed. how dare i doubt dreams? how dare i put away my pom-poms? my friends deserve more from me...and i from them.

i close this post with the eternal words of journey..."don't stop, believin'"

it's as true now as it ever was.

what happened to the DA?

tonight i scrolled through a sampling of google reader and tweets. a task made all the more easier by the fact that they are currently stationed on my homepage. if not for this, they, like many extraneous details in my life currently, would be ignored.

and as i was reading through a catalog of happy hour dates, movie plans, weekend trips, and restaurant outings, i realized how sad i am not to be doing any of that. i miss the days when my friends and i actually hung out. i miss the weeks of a standing thursday night obligation to some rock band and laughs. i miss target trips and starbucks chats.

i can't dismiss the feeling that we're allowing ourselves to be lame. or maybe i'm the only one for whom nights on my couch and an occasional text message isn't good enough. and though i've been buried in wedding-house-job minutiae, i can't help but think i'm missing out on something just as important.

i miss my friends.