jenniferh

That’s all I have to say.  mmmmmmm

 I missed breakfast and lunch today - it’s the first week of the new semester and I’ve got new students, new classroom layout, new objectives for the lab… and all that newness means a lot of work, and that means no time to EAT! 

So when I came home today I made myself breakfast - a glass of fat free milk and a peanut butter and banana sandwich on toast.

Lunch will be for dinner, and apparently I’ll be short on calories today because I’m not staying up late enough to eat a third meal.  I’ll be asleep by 8 - racked out on the baby’s bedroom floor.  That’s where I was last night.  How pathetic is that?  Can’t even stay awake long enough to get to my own bed after getting the baby to bed.

Then I’ll be up at 4:30 to get some exercise because that is the only time of day I have.  I think I’ll make myself another peanut butter and banana sandwich to eat while I’m walking.  Then I’ll at least have had BREAKFAST, for once!

I’ve decided to look for a job closer to home when the contracts come up in March.  I love the job I have, I love the challenge of trying to help the kids who need the help the most, but it is draining and I hate having to leave my house so early to get to work.  I’m applying at my kids’ high school, which is only about a mile from my home, and looking into the daycare that is closer to my neighborhood.  I just think it would make life that much easier for all of us.

Still eating the veggies and drinking the water, but I’m a little bloated because last night we celebrated a bit and we had pizza and I had a beer (oh and it was awesome to have hot pizza and cold beer!)  So today I’m still aiming for persistently following my plan.  No more celebrating for a while.

It took each of my classes about 10 minutes to say that.  Then the students all sat there looking at me for about 30 seconds until someone said, “Where are your glasses?”  So I had to play show-and-tell and show my cool contacts-case to my classes (they hang suspened in the solution in a nifty little cage-like contraption instead of sitting in a puddle of solution in those little flat dishes.)  I felt the love, today - ALL my students were smiling and happy for me while I was telling them how much I love my contacts more than my glasses. 

I did well, eating, today, but not GREAT.  I need to work more calcium into my day, somehow.  Maybe take a yogurt with me for breakfast and a string-cheese to go with lunch.  I did do SUPER with the water - I have a huge water bottle and I had to refill it at lunchtime today (when I usually fill it once, and take a lot of it home with me to get dumped out!)

This evening I’ll be watching Superstars of Dance and jumping on my trampoline for at least 30 minutes.  I meant to go jogging this morning, but I accidentally hit the off button instead of the snooze button, and my kids had to wake me up at 6:15.  I have to leave my HOUSE by 6:25!  But it wasn’t a catastrophe, just an inconvenience. 

Can’t wait for Superstars of Dance!

I’m 34.  THIRTY FOUR.  And my new eye doctor just told me that the problems I’m having with my vision (glare, night-vision problems) are primarily because they are such a light color, but also because I have CATARACTS.

AND I have problems with my right eye drifting outward. 

How the $#@^*( did my last eye doctor not catch this shit? 

She says my last eye doctor should be shot because he didn’t do anything for my eye health, he just prescribed glasses. 

 He didn’t educate me about omega-3’s which I need because I’m female, probably low-thyroid, and light-colored eyes are more prone to drying out.  He didn’t tell me that I needed glare-coating on my glasses because I have light-colored eyes and basically live in a brighter, more glaring world than people who have more pigment to protect the insides of their eyes.  She did say that I don’t have any sun-damage to the whites of my eyes, so the cataracts are probably an injury from abysmally low estrogen levels after the births of my four children and my thyroid is more than likely low since I had my last baby and that is leading to protein deposits which clump in my lenses.

I’m not happy.  I’m really trying not to cry because I went to visit this doctor to try to get contacts for the first time in my life, and I’m wearing them now. 

Being able to sit here and read the screen without frames in the way and baby-smudged lenses is really, really wierd.

I’m going to walmart in a little bit to get some eye-drops (she said I had to use the ones that are like real tears, 3 to 4 times a day) and some UV-protective sunglasses.

I really really really really really want some ice cream.  But I’m not going to do that to myself.  I’m having fish, salad, and pretzel-crisps dipped in roasted-red-pepper hummus.  Then I’m going to buy myself a REALLY PRETTY pair of sunglasses because I’ve never had any.

And I REALLY took those two weeks off.  I didn’t grade anything, didn’t PLAN anything… and it’s all catching up to me, now.

I didn’t have time to pack a lunch this morning.  My husband had a hard time getting out the door, so consequently, so did I.  I did eat a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, and I had a packet of instant oatmeal in my desk at school and the Wal-Mart equivalent of a SlimFast shake in the fridge so I had something for lunch.  Not a very appetizing something, but something.

Now I’m trying to break away from the whiney, clingy three-year-old who doesn’t want to get off my lap and let me change into my sweats.  I really need to work out now because I couldn’t this morning.   Then I need to grade tests and create 200 flash cards for my labs to use tomorrow.

At least I’ve kept to my plan of getting my room ready for a sub, just in case, every afternoon before I leave school.  It gives me a measure of peace to know that if an emergency happens, I can just call for a sub and everything will be ok in my classroom.

Off to turn on a Dora the Explorer video to see if that can buy me 20 minutes to work out.

Hormonal weight fluctuations frickin’ SUUUUUCK!

I’m grouchy, sleepy, hungry, and feeling claustrophobic but too tired to get it together and get out of my house.  We really don’t NEED to go anywhere, and if I do leave the house, I’ll just end up wasting gas and spending money on junk at the grocery store.

I’ve jogged on my mini-trampoline for 20 minutes, today, and I want to do some upper-body strength training.  I thought about starting a little fitness challenge for myself for the month of January to see how many “boy” push-ups I can do by the end of the month.

As for my resolutions, I’m moving every day, I only had 1 soda with lunch at my Dad’s yesterday (it was that or beer!) and today when I was craving a bowl of potato chips I had a V-8 instead (low-sodium), and the craving went away!  YEAH!

We’ll be having BLT’s with mustard instead of mayo on 100% whole wheat bread for dinner, tonight, with tomato soup.   And I think the girls and I will go for a walk around the neighborhood.  It’s been a while since the weather was this nice and the baby needs some fresh air.

I disappeared for a while - just too much going on.  I’m teaching, raising 4 kids, my dh is working out of town and is only home on the weekends… Fun stuff!

Teaching is going well - everyone said I’d want to quit by Christmas because “The first year is the hardest!” but it’s just getting easier and easier.  It’s not a SIMPLE job, by any means, but honestly it’s not as hard as my senior year of college was.  College was freakin’ DIFFICULT!  I’ll take teaching, any day!

The diet and exercise, on the other hand…

I’m back on the sodas, back on the chips, off the veggies, not drinking water, and the only exercise I’ve been getting lately is walking around my classroom.  I’ve been completely SUCKING at being healthy.

So here we are, at New Year’s, again, the season of Grand Resolutions.

Maybe I’ll be able to keep mine longer than a couple of months, this time.

Ninth graders are monsters on Fridays when the weather is changing.  They were SOOOO bad today! And the worst one, the one who has an 8 average (yeah, E-I-G-H-T) refused to do the assessment again, today.  I emailed his AP and his counselor and the reply I got back was “Here’s his mom’s number.”

WTF?! 

I already called his mom and left messages, and she hasn’t answered me!  I emailed them AGAIN and said, “Yeah, I usually do talk to the parents as a first line of offense, but she won’t answer my calls.  So I’m talking to YOU.  I’ve tried talking to him and he’s like a brick wall.  His mom won’t answer my calls, and you’re his AP and his counselor, so YOU try to help him.” 

Then the answer was, “Oh, yah, his mom is aware of the problem. She says they’re changing his meds.”

His meds. 

Oh I see. 

Oh, gee, thanks for letting me know SIX WEEKS INTO THE YEAR that the reason he’s being such a colossal pain in my ass is because he’s got a reason to be.  Great job on the “heads up” there, administrative team.  Lets just leave the teacher hanging until the teacher pitches a fit that the kid won’t do a damned thing in class and seems pretty content with getting zero after zero.

On the upside, my kid’s toe ain’t broke.  It got slammed in a heavy metal gym door Monday before last - we took him to the urgent care people and they said, “See a podiatrist.”  So I made an appointment with the podiatrist  - and he said, “Why didn’t you come here sooner!?”

Um, because this was the soonest your receptionist would get us in.

He took the rest of the nail off, and we have to go back in two weeks - on Halloween at four in the afternoon. 

Sucks. 

I guess I lost my motivation once school started.  Honestly, I started getting serious about losing the weight late in the summer so I could at least be ten pounds lighter by the time I went back to work.  Well, I did that.  And then I stopped. 

 SO I’m floundering around trying to find some other motivation - setting goals, telling myself “I can buy music for every five pounds.”  But those things AREN’T WORKING.  I still hover, 2 pounds away from my mini-goal, and when I jump on the scale every day I think, “Hey, at least I haven’t gained any back.”

I’ve started jogging daily, hoping that I will better.  I’m eating more fiber because of a different challenge.  But what I really need is a REASON to drop another ten pounds.

I may have found it.

If I drop another ten pounds, there is no way my size 14 clothes will fit anymore.  I’m already sewing darts into the waistbands to keep my pants and skirts up, but when I lose 10 more pounds, there will be no quick fixes - I’ll have to either take the clothes apart and reconstruct them or just break down and buy size 12’s.

Could I also be subconsciously sabotaging myself because I had to spend SO MUCH money this summer to get Rachel into band that I don’t want to spend money on clothes for me?  Maybe. 

But now I have a reason to want to get out of those clothes and go ahead and buy new ones.  A teacher I work with is a single mom, with three kids, struggling to live in this economy on a single, teacher’s salary.  Let’s not get back into the debate over whether or not teachers make enough money - I’m just going to flat out tell you that a single woman CANNOT comfortably raise three children on a teacher’s pay.  She also cleans houses in the evenings to try to get her budget to stretch a little farther. 

Well, last week, someone stole her wallet.  Her bank said it could take up to 6 months to reimburse what was taken out of her checking account via a debit/credit card.

She was complaining this week that because of her recent financial difficulties, she hasn’t been eating.  She figures in another month she will need to buy new clothes because her 16s won’t fit anymore.

So here’s the plan.

I’m going to work my ass off to lose those ten pounds as fast as possible, and then I’m just going to park next to her one morning and have her open the trunk of her car.  Then I’m going to take all the size 14 clothes I can’t wear anymore and transfer them from my car to hers.

Pray for us both.  I want to do this for her so badly.

What a good time to take stock of who I am.  Pardon me if the thoughts today are random and disconnected. 

I’m sitting here with a head full of “Revlon: Medium Golden Brown” not because it is my birthday and I’m feeling my age, but because I’ve been coloring my hair every couple of months since I was 21 and started going grey (don’t you just love genetics) and it was time. 

I just read a blog from someone who is hurting so much, because they want all the things I have: a houseful of children.  I’ve never, ever complained about becoming a mom at the young age I did.  I’ve never, ever felt like I missed out on anything because my children fill me up so completely that there is nothing to miss.  High-school Graduation?  Pfft.  Rinky-dink ceremony on a rickety stage at a football field surrounded by a townful of people who honestly didn’t give a crap about anything but themselves.  Prom?  Please.  High school dances are more painful than childbirth.  Partying my way through college?  WHY?  I was busy doing something MEANINGFUL!  I was entrusted with the care of the most beautiful little souls ever to grace this planet!  How could I waste my precious time with those precious people on stupid adolescent selfishness? 

And now: I’m so glad.  I’m so glad that I grew up when I did, I’m so blessed to have this houseful of spectacular people around me every single day. 

Getting through college, becoming a teacher - yeah, those were accomplishments.  But the biggest, best thing I’ve ever done is to be a mom, to wear myself out to take care of my kids.  They make all the work and the stress WORTHWHILE every day - they are growing up so fast and becoming such brilliant humans! 

So now I’m 34.  Obviously I joined this site because there are things I’d like to change about myself, but mostly those are just physical things.  The really important things sit in a journal in a folder on my desktop labeled “goals.”  I started at the beginning of September following Benjamin Franklin’s good example of choosing one character flaw at a time to work on.   Right now I’m working on my temper.  I need to learn how to short-circuit that adrenaline response that gets me seeing red when something doesn’t go right.  I don’t scream or throw things or hit, but I cry.  I hate crying when I’m mad because people see that and think I’m looking for PITY, and I can’t stand it.  So I’m working on just being still, breathing, and listening to what God is trying to tell me when I get that angry.  Once I can get that mess under control, I’ll think about whatever character flaw is bugging me the most and begin working on that.

I’m not planning on doing anything special for my birthday.  I may buy $25 worth of music online so I can make a couple of CD’s of my favorites to take to school. 

My husband wants to take me clothes shopping this weekend, but I kind of don’t want to!  I want to lose some more weight before I buy new stuff!

Time’s up: gotta go wash that gray right outta my hair.