jenniferh

I could NOT get up this morning at the crack of dawn to go jogging.  I was a good girl last night, turned in early so I could get an early start… but the morons in my neighborhood broke the rules and had firecrackers.  Firecrackers of any sort are prohibited by our HOA.  I was miffed.  I can sleep through almost anything because I’m just that tired, but the toddler was kept up.  Consequently, so were mom and dad.

So this morning I slept as late as I could (until the toddler got up) and then after I got her dressed and set up with breakfast, I hauled out the mini-tramp and jogged on it for ten minutes.  After I’ve done all my housework for the morning and played with the Wii a bit I’ll probably jog another 10 minutes on it before I jump in the shower and get ready to go visiting.

We’ve been invited to my Dad’s house.

Anybody who knows me knows that this is a Big Deal.

I’ve never really had a close relationship with my dad.  We just moved within 45 minutes of his house this summer, and he’s been to my house once since then and I’ve yet to go to his.  We talk on the phone maybe once a month.  About once a month he forwards a cool email my way and vice-versa.  Usually we invite him to our house, and if we go to his it’s because we invite ourselves.  We’ve never been ASKED, “Please can y’all come visit.”  So being asked has made me feel all wierd.  Like we’ve got to dress in our Sunday Best and take dessert or something.

I had about 60 ounces of water, yesterday, and my lips aren’t chapped for the first time in about a month.  That’s it… no more soda.  I feel so much better without all that useless sugar, and I’m sure the water is doing me good.  My hands are less swollen and I can comfortably wear my rings, again.

My daughter went jogging with me this morning.   I could only do 8 minutes, but I’ll get back up to a reasonable level before too long.  I just have to get DISCIPLINED enough to get everything ready before I go to bed, and get up early enough to go jogging and still have time to get ready to go to work.  I can do it - I WAS doing it… I just quit for some reason.

Eating, I did REALLY well, yesterday.  I did eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, what bread I did eat was 100% whole wheat, I didn’t eat any chips, and my only indulgence was a tiny scoop of vanilla ice-cream with some pumpkin-pie spice sprinkled on top for dessert - which was eaten bite by bite between turns on the Wii, playing golf and bowling with my kids.  That thing is the coolest toy, EVER.

***update*** I’m doing GREAT today - drinking water, don’t even WANT a soda, and I dyed my hair.  It’s been about 4 months and the gray was getting really bad.  I look my age, now, instead of 10 years older.  That always makes me feel better.

My New Year’s Resolution has less to do with numbers than it has to do with lifestyle.  I’ve resolved to eat a healthy, balanced diet every day, drink water instead of soda, and exercise at least some every day.  But I did need to know how badly I got off track, so I jumped on the scale this morning and it was pretty bad.  I’m not quite up to where I was before I started - I was at 186 at this time last year and I’m at 179 right now.

I don’t know how much weight I want to lose in a year, but I do know that I want to eat right and get lots of exercise and just be healthier, this year.  And yeah, losing some of this weight would be great, too.

I’ve started a weight loss challenge for myself about my New Year’s Resolution, and I’ll be renewing it monthly to try to keep myself on track. Anybody who wants to is welcome to post their own resolutions on there and keep me company in trying to stay on track!

OH! And my husband and I decided to get a Wii this year for Christmas, but instead of spoiling our children, we spoiled each other.  It’s “Mom and Dad’s” toy, and sometimes we let the children play on it.  They had a good Christmas - we got them some things they needed, a few things they DIDN’T need but were fun, and we had a fantastic time on Christmas Day because we were with family.

We got tennis rackets for the whole family, and I’ve sent off to the HOA for a key to the neighborhood tennis courts.  And I found out about a park in town that has a walking track and FREE mini-golf!  Coolness!

Have a Happy New Year, Y’all!

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.

Catching up: Friday, two of my “special” students decided to try to ruin the class effort to earn a free day for the day before Thanksgiving break. I called their parents Friday afternoon, then yesterday I told their class that I wasn’t going to let two people ruin it for them, that those two people were out of the game and would be taking an assessment the day before Thanksgiving out in the hallway with an AP to monitor them.The girl griped and moaned once or twice about snoopy, mean teachers calling parents, then I didn’t hear another peep out of her for the rest of the class. The boy, however, stayed after class to help clean up and pick up materials, and he asked, “What can I do to get back in the game?”YAY!

This is getting ridiculous.  I REALLY need to make time to eat breakfast in the morning - because even when I DO manage to pack a lunch, 9 times out of 10, the damned lunchbox is coming home just as full because I don’t have time to eat.  I spend my conference and planning time doing (duh!) conferencing and planning, and getting my room prepared for my 5th period class because it is a different format from the rest of my day -  and then at lunch I’m getting things ready for 6th period which is back on the regular format and  I usually have 3 or 4 students pop in for a quick tutorial or a sympathetic shoulder. 

 I rarely even have time to pee, so I have to admit that I’m not terribly sympathetic toward students asking to leave the room - they get 6 minutes between classes, lunchtimes off, and nobody asking for their time before and after school, and I’m having to “hold it” from 7 in the morning sometimes until 4 in the afternoon!  I will say this, though: On the rare occasion that I do have a quick 60 seconds to myself, I go on down three hallways to the faculty restroom, bypassing 2 girls’ restrooms on the way.  I just can’t take the level of filth in the girls’ restrooms anymore - teenagers are some really nasty creatures.

SO the plan: to eat breakfast and TRY to eat lunch every day.  To continue working up to 30 minutes of jogging (I’m at 21 minutes tomorrow morning!).  To drink water.  To hurry up and lose the next 5 pounds so I can take Rosa my clothes.

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 keep my eyes wide open all the time

I keep the ends out for the tie that binds

Because you’re mine

I walk the line

Hmmmmmmmmmm……. 

We’re “Walking the Line” in Algebra lab tomorrow to practice adding and subtracting integers.  They get confused about how it works when you “minus a negative” so I’m making a giant number line on the floor of the lab with tape, post-it’s and more tape, and they have to solve equations by walking them out on the number line, following these rules:

• Always begin by facing positive.
• Subtraction means “turn around”
• Positive numbers mean you walk forward (whether facing positive or negative)
• Negative numbers mean you step backwards (whether facing positive or negative)
• Face positive again after each operation.

 I’ll be playing Johnny Cash on a continuous loop, and video taping for posterity.  I figure I can cobble together a nice video the kids can watch on the one day off I’m allowing before Thanksgiving break.

Now about little ol’ me:  Slept in for an hour this morning because I’m baked - totally done - exhausted.  And I have evidence that I’m using more calories than I’m consuming: I’ve lost another pound!  And it makes me TIRED.  My two-year-old is being a clingy whiney-butt (HOW MANY TIMES IN ONE MINUTE CAN SOMEONE SHOUT “MINE!”?) My HMO says our PCP has to refer us to the podiatrist - NOT the emergency-room doctor - so yesterday we had to finagle a last-minute appointment with our doctor, a trip BACK to the hospital today for the x-rays she ordered, and much faxing of paperwork to keep the appointment I made for tomorrow at the podiatry clinic to get his possibly-broken big toe LOOKED at.  Rachel has band every night, Rebecca is practicing for district choir tryouts every night, Sean’s upset because he’s missing weeks of football because of his foot, my husband is working out of town and I’m being a single mom 5 days a week plus teaching some very challenging freshmen not only how to do Algebra, but how to do school and sometimes even life in general  (I just found out today that two of my freshmen… 14 or 15 years old… are about to be a mommy and a daddy together.  How the Hell are they going to do that when neither one of them is even old enough to work or drive or anything…  my heart hurts for them.)

And so I’m tired. 

But tomorrow I WILL get up before dawn and go for my jog.  It’s good for me.

I was SPECTACULARLY horrible this weekend.  We had cookies, enchiladas, sodas, chips, dip… football on the couch, movies in the dvd player - it was like a slumber party all weekend long.  I relished every moment of it.  And I don’t regret it at all - I needed the break, my husband needed the downtime, and my kids needed their parents to chill out for a couple of days.

No diet, no jogging.  Just chillin’.

Now I’m back to my routine, only I’m being a bit more strict with myself than I have  been, and I’m not jumping on the scale again until Friday morning.  I want to know, I just don’t want to KNOW.

Did well with the jogging after three days off - I ran for 13 minutes without stopping to walk!  Then I walked the rest of the way home.

Off to prepare for a brilliant day of teaching Algebra.  Maybe TODAY I’ll get my room organized with a plan to where the kids can find their work after they come back from an absence.

And it was frickin’ HILARIOUS.

This is the part where someone who thinks teachers sit behind a desk and read from a script should pucker up and kiss my ass.

Anyhow.  Musical chairs.  2 chairs fewer than students, set in 2 lines back to back.  Students walked around the chairs counterclockwise while I played some Bob Marley tunes (which made it even more funny, because they all started bobbing their heads and walking in time to the beat!) and scrambled to sit when the music stopped.

The two left standing had to answer any question I posed about our test review. 

I never took away any chairs, we just kept playing “round 1″ all period and two students at a time had to answer questions.  Yes.  Musical chairs for ninth graders.  THEY LOVED IT.

I owe them a treat - I had cool “Halloween” pencils and a package of candy - I’ll just give it to them tomorrow after they all finish their tests.

Okay - now about me.

I went to school with no caffeine this morning and it SUCKED for my labs because I completely forgot to do the review I had planned for them.  I put them on the computers and had them take a practice TAKS objective, instead.  I had a couple of cinnamon rolls (pillsbury) for breakfast, a single, solitary and lonely chicken tender for lunch, popcorn for a snack, and a turkey sandwich for dinner.    I did go jogging this morning (8 minutes before stopping to walk- yay me) but no walk this evening because I was stuck for too long waiting in my car for my kid to get out of band practice a half an hour late. 

I’ll go jogging again tomorrow, and the goal is 10 minutes - so I need to add to my route.