Thursday, August 25, 2011

"No, I'm NOT a student!"

So, what is the one thing that has happened to me the most in the past month?!  People thinking that I'm a student, not a teacher.  Sad face... lol.  So really, I don't mind that much because I am only 23, and I do kinda look like a 16 year old.  However, when you're wearing dress pants, heels, and a nice top, carrying around a clipboard and a set of keys, if you were a teacher, don't you think you'd take a closer look before yelling at me?  I mean really, I know I look young, but how many high school students dress like business professionals?  And here's the problem I'm struggling with:  I don't want to change who I am just because I got a new job.  I know, of course, automatically, I step up and be the adult instead of laughing at the jokes kids tell; I know looking professional is just part of the job; I know a new job is huge life change.  However, I've already adapted my clothing style A LOT to fit school dress codes (I don't even wear inappropriate things, but I've had to start dressing older than I am), and I'm being an adult.  Do I really have to go even further?  I don't want to dress all frumpy and get a short haircut to make me look older and act like a mom all the time.  Because I'm NOT.  But where's the line?  Am I still too much like a student?  I don't know.  Heaven knows I'm a thousand times more comfortable on the other side of a classroom (sitting in a student desk) so I'm sure I'm over analyzing it all, but... I just don't know. 

Anyway... the moral of the story is...  Mrs. Bernard is NOT a student!  Lol.

As you can probably tell, I am just tired and stressed out and going a bit kookoo!  So, I'm going to stop dawdling and get ready for bed!

P.S.  I miss my loom.  Could somebody lend me some extra time so that I can weave this weekend?  Lol.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

School Tomorrow? I Vote No!

So yeah, today was nuts.  First football game of the season.  Rain.  Heat.  School.  All of that.  And we still have school tomorrow and Friday!!!  I don't think I'm going to make it through this week!  My feet are KILLING me!  I mean, I was standing up teaching ALL DAY!  And then I went and stood at a football game for 3 HOURS!  And, I just walked in the door at home.  And, I still have to make sure that I'm ready for tomorrow!  And, we have band practice after school tomorrow.  And I'm so freakin stressed out!  And BOOOOOOO on life!!!

So... can we please just get a freebie day tomorrow?!  If everyone hopes for that, maybe we can all make it come true!

P.S.  A shout out to my wonderful husband, Thomas, and my great friend, Cassie, who can always make me feel better when I'm having a bad day!!!  Yay for you!

Monday, August 22, 2011

So, yeah... Hurricane Anyone?!

So.  Basically, I don't watch the news.  Never have, probably never will.  Most of the time it's pretty much because I don't feel like getting angry and depressed all at the beginning of the day.  So, usually my morning routine consists of hopping on the Weather Channel online and checking the daily forecast.  Lately, however, I haven't even been doing that because I already know the answers to my two questions...  Is it going to be hot today?  Most definitely.  Is it gonna rain?  Yup, probably!  So, this morning when I got to work (school) and checked my school email, there was an email about a hurricane!  Apparently, Hurricane Irene is in the Caribbean at the moment and is due to hit our area sometime Thursday.  Oh... ok!  So, maybe I should start watching the weather or something!

Anyway, the school I work at is apparently a shelter for when there are hurricanes, and apparently, we are one of the first shelters that open if/when a hurricane does threaten the area.  So, if we even get close to hurricane status, school will be closed at some point.  Huh.  SO... since the hurricane is supposed to be here on Thursday, the school went ahead and moved Friday night's football game to WEDNESDAY so that we won't miss it, just in case.  SOOOO, since I am the assistant marching band director, I have to be at the football game all night Wednesday, and then, get up and go to school on Thursday and Friday too!  Really?!  I don't think I can handle a football game in the middle of the week!  I mean, this is NOT my first football game, but it is my first one where I have a little bit of adult responsibility.  So, yeah.  Anyway, since they went ahead and moved the football game, I just know that we're going to have school on Thursday and Friday (not that I'm hoping for a hurricane to devastate the area or anything) and I'm going to be exhausted and dead by Friday!  Anyway...

For those of you who occasionally read because you want to hear about weaving, sorry... the loom hasn't even made it out of the box yet.  And unfortunately, it might be a while.  Even though I'm really jonesing to sit down and weave a pretty summer scarf...  boo.

Well, to end, here are the videos for my new fave Taylor Swift songs.  (Yes, I am 23, a teacher, and I still like Taylor Swift.)

Happy Monday... NOT!  Lol.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Thank the Good Lord for Music and Weekends!

O.  MY.  GOSH.

This past week has been... crazy... beyond crazy... I'm sitting here, trying to think of a word that describes the madness that is flying through my head, and I cannot come up with a single thing.  You know when you feel like your day/week/life is SO nuts that you don't even have time to think?!  Well, that was my week... times 853, 542, 693!!!

So, today is the first time that I have even looked at my computer besides hitting the "Send and Receive" button on my email everyday.  I haven't even read any of them, I just glance to see what comes in...  and even while doing that, sitting at the computer for a whole 30 seconds while waiting for the server to actually send and receive the emails just takes too long.  I have to walk away and do something else until I remember to come back and check to see what came in.  I haven't even checked the weather AT ALL this week.  Usually, I do that every morning before I get dressed.  (Though now that I live in Florida and its August, its not too hard to imagine what it will be like each day... HOT!)  It's been raining a lot in the afternoons too, which I enjoy.  I like looking out my classroom windows and seeing that summer afternoon rain fall.  I don't always love love the rain, but in the summertime, there's just something peaceful about it.  Something that just makes you want to sit next to the window and sigh.

I've been tearing up a lot lately.  It's mostly because my tear ducts are hard-wired to my fatigue level.  And since I've been tired to the max all week, everything makes me tear up.  This morning, I watched a show on "E!" about Taylor Swift, and I was practically crying in the middle of it.  Why on earth would you be crying?  you ask... I don't know.  I don't even remember what they were talking about.  I teared up during a re-run of "Sons of Guns" two nights ago too.  I mean, come on... "Sons of Guns"???  Yep.  Oh, and I cried like a baby when I watched "Secretariat" last weekend.  (For those of you who don't actually know me, I have loved horses my whole life.  It is still a huge dream of mine to own horses someday.)  And at the end of the movie, when Secretariat was running the Belmont, I had tears streaming down my face.  It was just so heart warming.  One of those moments that reminds us all of how more than anything, we just yearn to be a part of something that's bigger than ourselves.  It's the same reason we root for our favorite sports teams; jumping up and down, screaming when they make the final goal and win the championship game!  It's the same as when we go to a concert and scream out the lyrics to our favorite songs along with thousands of strangers.  The same reason we mourn as a group/people/nation when tragedy befalls other people, whether they are near to us or half way around the globe.  Deep down inside, we all long to be a part of something bigger, something meaningful, something real.  And sometimes, that feeling hits me so hard that I can't hardly breathe... (or I just sit in front of the tv, with tears streaming down my face).  No matter how happy or loved or satisfied we think we are, there is always some part of us, deep down in places we don't like to talk about at parties, that whispers, "There's more to life than this."  ...And there is.

One book I love to read when I'm feeling this way is The Sacred Romance by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge.  It reminds me that we are all searching for our meaning and our true, abundant, fulfilled life.  And we are all searching in the wrong places.  I love it.

... Well.  I guess I got a little off track there.  That's not even what I was intending to write about, but there it is.  And, you know, sometimes things like that just happen, so I'm not going to erase it.  I'm just going to keep going.

This week was the first week of school.  And I can hear you all, sitting at your computers going, "OOOHHHH!  I GET it now!  Now it all makes sense."  Yeah, sorry, maybe I should've started with that, but like I said, my brain just kind of went where it went.  And, it was a good week.  But I was just so stressed out and exhausted all week, that I could barely function.  Seriously, when I wasn't actually in front of the class teaching, I was sitting at my desk in my classroom, just staring at the floor... completely brain dead.  I also lost about 4 pounds because I couldn't eat until yesterday.  Every time I would try to eat, I felt like I was going to throw up, so... yeah.  That pretty much sums up how incredibly, incapacitatingly nervous I can get about just about anything.  However, last night I grabbed some Panera on the way home from work, so I think my nerves diet is over.  (If there ever comes a day when I can't stomach my Panera sandwich, someone will need to get me to the hospital immediately, because I'll probably be dying!)  It was a successful week though.  I had a major epiphany after my first (real) day on Wednesday, but I think I'll save that for another time.  Hopefully I'll get some work done today so that next week will go more smoothly.  So, I should probably get to it.  I've been stalling all morning.

Boo.  At least I'm wearing my favorite jeans though.

Oh!  Wait!  I didn't even discuss the meaning of the title of this post!  Haha!  Work, you will have to wait a little longer!  So, The weekends part is pretty self-explanatory.  But, above all else, music has saved my life this week.  Though there are so many things that I am thankful for, music is the one thing that kept me sane this week.  The 20 minutes to and from work when I had the music blaring, singing along, dancing, working hard to try and forget all my worries MADE my week.  So, thank you Lord for music and weekends!

...And, I just broke my desk... awesome.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Well, I'm Still Alive!

So, I officially made it through my first two days of being a teacher!  (Even though I haven't actually done any teaching yet!)  But, I got my classroom all cleaned out (you wouldn't believe how much junk got left behind)!  And, I'm working on decorations and such for my room.  My beautiful world map that I got for Christmas a couple of years ago was the first decoration to find a place.  And it's even too big for my bulletin board... oh well!

Here's a picture of the new shell collection Thomas and I started!  Aren't they pretty?!
 

Well, that's all for tonight!  We're finishing up watching "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King".  So, fun night!  Yay!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Make my Day

Have you ever heard one of those songs?  One of those songs that just makes the world stop?  One of those songs that just has a hold over you?  That can just completely change your mood, your day, your life?  For the past week, this song has been making my day...  "Your Love is a Song" by Switchfoot

Amazing, right?  This song has had a hold over me for about a week now, and I have yet to see an end in sight.  And I don't mind that at all.

On a lighter note, Thomas and I went to two new beaches today and we started a new collection of shells.  I'm too lazy to go take a picture of them right now, so I will try to do that tomorrow... they're really cool though!  The beaches were great!  The second one, which was called Ocean Park (nice name for a park that's right by the ocean... der) was probably my favorite so far.  Except for this one time when we were hanging out in the water, probably 15 feet from shore, and an entire school of fish (I SWEAR there were at least 50 fish) came jumping out of the water like 2 feet from us.  I screamed like a 15 year old girl!  And then Thomas decided we should get out of the water because who knows what scared them.  And can you guess why he was this worried?  Yep, that's right.  It's Shark Week, so of course, he was thinking shark.

So, today was my last official day of summer.  And it was a good day.

Random: Last night I watched "Beastly"... And I know what you're thinking, "What are you, 12?"  Well, yes, yes, apparently I am.  And I would like to say, it was not terrible.  Of course, I am a sucker for super cheesy and the Beauty and the Beast.  So, if you're not 12 also, you probably shouldn't waste your time.  However, Thomas and I went to see "Cowboys and Aliens" on Sunday, and it was a quality movie.  Lots of funny lines and scenes that make you (or maybe just me) jump.  And it was a good story.  Definitely not a bad way to spend two hours and 15 bucks.  Just thought you might like to know!  :)

Monday, August 1, 2011

Fine. Ok. Hi.

Well, obviously, I haven't blogged recently...  So now, I guess I feel guilty enough to sit down and write this up.  Acutally, I just had a blogging epiphany that spurred me over to blogger.  What I really need to do is sit down for five minutes a day and just write a short blog post.  Then, I would be able to blog more often because my posts would be so close together that I wouldn't have much to say.  But unfortunately, I was a history major... so that means that anytime I sit down to write or type anything, my brain jumps into essay mode.  Aka: must be no less than three paragraphs with seven to ten sentences per paragraph, constantly check spelling and grammar for correctness, use the thesaurus to find enormous words that mean the same thing as ordinary, everyday language but just sound more pompous... you get the idea.  And I believe this paragraph length is sufficient.

And j.s.y.k. (which means "just so you know", which I said so often at my previous job that we decided I needed a t-shirt that said "JSYK".  So, Carrie or Cassie, I hope you read this, and get a laugh from that)... Anyway, jsyk, Thomas and I watched "Top Gear" tonight (the British version), so I've still got their British accents and hilarious ways of explaining things stuck in my head.  So, if I say something that's a little off, just disregard.

Well, one of the main reasons I have not blogged recently is that I had band camp at my new school last week.  So from 8am to 5:30pm all last week, I was hanging out with 100 high school students in the 90+ degree heat under the blazing Florida sun...  And when I got home, I ate dinner and promptly fell asleep.  So, yeah.  The great thing was that the band kids and director are great!  And, being the assistant director and being brand new to the school, my main job was to just help out... well, and try to memorize over 100 names and faces immediately... hah!  (I maybe know about 25-30, and that's only when they're holding their instruments!  Oh well!)

So, the first day for teachers is on Wednesday (yikes!).  And of course, they start everyone off with a breakfast in the cafeteria on Wednesday morning.  Really?!  So I'm not even a high school student anymore and I still have to walk into the cafeteria on the first day and wonder who I'm going to sit with... boo.  And for those of you who don't know me... I don't make friends very easily.  I HATE walking into a room and having to find someone to sit with when I know pretty much no one.  You might as well make me run through said room in a gorilla costume because I wouldn't be any more nervous about that than just having to find someone to sit with.  So, yay.  At least we get the hardest part out of the way first... hopefully.  (Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that I don't even really know where the cafeteria is in my new school!  So I get to go to the front office first and ask where I'm going and how to get there... yippee!)  Anyway, enough with the downer mood... let's find something happy to talk about...

THE BEACH!!!  YAY!!!  So, Thomas and I have been to the beach three times in the last two weeks!  Yay!!!  And each time, we've been to a different beach!  Lol!  I think we're just going to go up and down the coast to try out all the nearby beaches to find our favorite!  We went to a really beautiful one on Saturday.  Here's a pic:
Isn't it gorgeous?!  The water was so blue!  Love it!

So I think we're going again tomorrow, on my last official day of summer!  I'm pretty sure the beach will be a weekly occurrence for us now!  Isn't that amazing?!  I'm stoked!

My washer and dryer arrived on time on Tuesday!  Thomas and I were just hanging out (Thomas was napping), when I heard a big truck in the parking lot.  So I ran to the window, and looked out... And it was the truck carrying our brand new washer and dryer on it!!!  I immediately ran back to the bed, "THOMAS!!! THOMAS!!!  Our washer and dryer are here!!!  GET UP!!!"  I was so excited!  I am so excited!  I no longer need quarters to do laundry.  And I can just throw a load in whenever I want.  And I only have to step out onto the patio to get to them!  YAY!!!  And Lo loves laundry time, because that means she gets to come out on the patio too!  Its all screened in, so she could really be out there by herself, but its too hot to leave the door open.  And I really don't want to take the risk of forgetting about her while she's out there and leaving her out in the heat.  So, when she hears the door opening, she comes running!  (That was a bit of a digression wasn't it?!)  Hm... reminds me of Beowulf...

Well, it is now 10:17 Eastern time, and I am going to bed!  Have I been random enough for this post?  Hm... not sure, so here's one more thing... hold on, I've gotta think of something random... oh, ok.  So, we have cable again, and I really have mixed feelings about it.  Because we have the cable, but not DVR, so Thomas' life once more revolves around what's on tv.  This week its "Shark Week"... which means the tv is on. period.

(And I just went through and proofread this post.  And there was a typo or something I wanted to change, but by the time I got to the bottom of the post, I forgot what it was.  And now I'm too tired to figure out what it was again.  Oh well, I guess.)