another year comes and goes....

i am coming up on my last few hours of being 25... and then i will be 26. (obviously).

what does being 26 mean? what does a 26 year old look like? how does a 26 year old act? i have never been 26 before and i don't know what it is supposed to be. and by the way, when did it happen? when did i enter my mid-late 20's?? i still feel like i am 17...and i probably still act like i am 17 a lot of the time.... what does being 26 years old feel like?? and on top of that, what is a single girl...one without a husband...one without kids, supposed to be?? a lot of women are married way before 26 and have a couple of kids by 26... that was *my* original plan...to be married and have kids by now... but that isn't the way things have gone....and that is (mostly) ok...

so what does 26 look like?? since i don't know, i am going to decide how i want it to be.

i think i want 26 to be an optimistic year. a year of lots of travel. a year of being debt free. a year of independence and a year of dependence all at the same time. a year of letting things go. a year of finally re-acquainting myself with crocheting...and a year of making something. a year of great hair and getting my rear finally into some skinny jeans. a year of being a yellow maid. a year of evergreens in the desert with giraffes and ipods. a year full of <3 for all things...

i am not sad about turning 26.... i am kinda looking forward to it... :)

i can do it better....

i have 14 students. 10 of which are boys... and i have come to realize that boys are competitive. very competitive. and everything turns into a competition/argument.

just today alone...

" ...'bama sucks. period"
" shut up! just wait until next year...."
"...gators will KILL 'bama again next year...."

this argument will go on forever and ever and ever with the same basic points...just throw in a few different insults... today at lunch, actually, this argument went on for at least 20 minutes...

also at lunch....

"jon, jon, jon, jon, jon, jon, jon.... watch this...bet you can't move your eyes faster than this..." student moves his eyes in a clockwise motion as fast as he possibly can....

later today, the same student decided that he was going to compete with a girl to see who could go the longest without talking. during this time, the class decided they wanted to play pictionary... well, this boy was getting frustrated with the student leading the game and (without talking) took over the game and decided that he was going to create a third team with just me and him on it... because he knew our team would win... which we did... :)

everything is a competition with my boys... "anything you can do, i can do better or louder or faster" i only have a sister, so being around all these boys is a whole new, very loud (because the loudest person is always the "rightest") world....

birmingham. take 2.

today i am heading back to birmingham... i was just there last week for a teaching convention but this weekend i am going back for a much better reason. to pick up ams! she was on vacation in florida and has a flight tomorrow morning out of atlanta and her friends live in huntsville... and well she needed to get from point A (alabama) to point B (atlanta) to get to point C (charlotte...her home). well... somehow this all translates to me going to birmingham to pick her up and bring her here to catch her flight in the morning. i am excited to see her!! :)

i went grocery shopping after i did laundry last night.... so now i am hanging out at home until i have to leave for birmingham later this afternoon. i almost don't know what to do with myself. i guess i will go and get my mountain of papers to grade out of the car and i can work on that for a bit... :/

somewhat a proper entry

ok... now that i have gushed over weather and i have been watching the weather news for the past 3 (!) hours... i should be working. oh...but instead of working, i would much rather publish a new entry. why? 1.) i will do anything to not be working on my science lesson for tomorrow and 2.) it is time for a sufficent/decent/ full of information kind of post. so here i am sitting on the couch... wrapped in an afghan, science curriculum to my right... weather news on the tv (so much for trying to figure out what the heck is going on with lost...) ....listening to it rain outside... composing a new entry.

last weekend i went to birmingham with the rest of the staff for a teachers convention. it wasn't a bad convention by any means, but it is a TON of info crammed into a few days. i learned some really good things, but it has been a long time since i have had to sit through 6 hours of classes a day... it definitely reminds you of what your students go through on a daily basis. it was a good trip, but i am happy that i don't have to go through that again for another year....

we had monday off....props to the presidents of years past for earning us another day off of work/school. i say all the time that i wish i never had to work and i could just lounge around and read and do whatever i wanted to do... i came to realize that i almost *have* to work. i don't know what to do with myself if i don't have a work plan of some sort. i have to have a project or something i am devoting my attention to or i go nuts. seriously.

one week from sunday i will be another year older. i am not sad or upset about it... it is just another day... but i am a bit surprised at how quietly and quickly it snuck up on me. i have no plans or my birthday... and i don't really *want* plans for my birthday... it isn't a huge deal for me... i do, however, need to call the tag office so i can pay my registration.... :/

other then that, not too much is going on. just normal everyday life.... now i guess i have to go back to my science curriculum.... sigh. it is such a huge lesson for tomorrow.... darn you fossil fuels!

thus it begins...

tornado season is here! i know i have mentioned before, but my two choices for a career have always been teacher or meteorologist. i went with teacher, but i L-O-V-E weather. we have a moderate risk of severe weather and i just heard the first rumbles of thunder of this year. we have tornado watches and we are getting storms that are producing tornadoes in alabama....those storms are trucking right along heading toward us.... granted, storms and tornadoes to scare me... or more like the adrenaline gets going.... and usually lsf gets a panicked phone call from me... but all in all i love it. i think it is one of the few things that my grandpa passed along... <3

....ok...so the big storm went south of us... but they said that a tornado hit a county on the al/ga border and the town where a university is got hit too... they issued tornado warnings for douglas county (i live on the border of douglas county) so i can hear the sirens, but i know the storm is in south douglas....which is a good thing, because i think if it was headed for me, i would probably cry. :p

it's time...

i think a good sign that one needs to do laundry is when you have to search for clean underwear and socks. i haven't done laundry for two weeks...and i have enough clothes, just not enough of the essentials... i am hoping to hold off until monday....but it may have to be tomorrow that i take my insane amount of laundry (mainly socks and underwear) to the laundromat to clean them all.

this week is a short week at school....monday, tuesday and wednesday. then on thursday, teachers head to birmingham for the conference thing we have to go to in order to be certified (*must* do laundry before then...) the conference isn't really too painful...you get free stuff.... so we will be there thursday and friday. then we have monday off too in honor of our presidentes. so it will be a week that (hopefully) we can get some work done and then have a really looong weekend for all of my students to forget all of it... :/

...with folks like me on the job from 9-5

throughout my working life, i have had various jobs of all sorts. i started working when i was fifteen and since i moved around a lot after high school, i had all kinds of jobs....and at times, two jobs at once. i have worked at the following places:

* dairy queen
* a bakery
* an elementary school (while in high school)
* a bank
* a movie theater
* a sports store
* kmart
* bojangles
* walmart
* a dry cleaners
* cleaning houses
* for christ jesus as a missionary
* a christian school (where i currently am)

as you can see, i am open to any kind of job....

on my way home, i was thinking about jobs and if there was any job i could not/would not do. i would be willing to learn any job and if i was smart enough, do any job except for the following:

* ER doctor/nurse--blood and guts. no thank you.
* cave tour guide--close/tight spaces...
* scuba diver instructor--underwater...lack of natural oxygen that is freely available...
* a "woman of the night"/adult film star--for obvious reasons...
* astronaut--close quarters in a tin can....

i think that is about it. i would be willing to try or learn about every other profession. yes, that means trash collecting, professional fisherman, exterminator (the whole time, of course, talking like the terminator), midwife, semi-truck driver, the military, herpetologist....