a teaser... although it sounds more like an excuse...

so today . . . i am going to bed instead of finishing my blog.

i started a blog. actually i started two--this is blog number three! but i can hardly keep my eyes open... and i have to get up for work tomorrow. my weekends are not all that restful these days. so i work all week at school, and then all weekend at home. and then it is time to start again...

i'm not complaining. really, i'm not. i'm just tired. so i'm going to bed. i will try to finish today's blog tomorrow, but you will have to look for it to post before this blog, because i am going to give it today's date. but don't look for it until late tomorrow or even tuesday, because i still have to finish writing it.

did i confuse you? sorry about that, but i think my brain has already left the building...

just check back. i would like to say today's blog was going to be a tribute to steve jobs, but that wouldn't exactly be accurate...

hey! it isn't as easy as it sounds!!

so today . . . i was all prepared to tell you that i am going to take the rest of the month of march off. it has been crazy, between sickness and traveling out of town for business and a wedding and pre-k evaluations and helping rollie find the perfect sofa for his office... i have to say that there isn't much funny happening in my life right now--i can't even make funny stuff up!! (which is not to say that i make stuff up for my blog. i don't. everything you read on here is 100% true...) i sit down and write "so today..." and then... nothing.

i don't like to take a vacation from blogging, because i have found that if i take too many days off, i have a terrible time putting my brain back into blogging mode. but the truth is, blogging takes a lot of brain power, and right now my brain is otherwise occupied.

march 2011 is the month that is threatening to put me away. the straight jacket is dancing outside my window. there is so much going on, that my brain is just refusing to do much except keep my lungs breathing and my blood pumping. and so, i am giving myself permission to take a break until april...

at least, that was my plan. and then tonight i tried to boil water for eggs...

i can cook. really, i can. i just don't like to do it. i hate it more than i hate doing laundry--and i am not a big fan of laundry. (actually, i don't mind washing and drying the laundry, but the folding and putting away? not my favorite thing to do...) but since we eat those hard boiled eggs for breakfast most mornings, boiling them is a regular task. it has to be done almost every week. and yet, it is never easy.

i know i have written about the whole egg boiling thing before. but the problem is this--if i put water on to boil, and walk out of the kitchen, i will totally forget i am boiling water. i have boiled a 3 quart pan bone dry. more than once. do you know how long that takes?!? but if i stay in the kitchen to wait for it to boil, it takes FOREVER!!! and i lose interest before those little bubbles start popping to the surface, and wander away, only to later discover a very hot, dry pan on my stove.

don't worry. we have smoke detectors. and they work...

once i manage to actually catch the pan with boiling water still in it, i can plop the eggs in, set the timer, and the rest is easy. the hard part is boiling the water...

(i'm sure there is a joke in there, i am just too tired to make the connection.)

yesterday after church, a friend of mine was talking about how she was so excited to go home, because she had some sort of delicious, nutricious (i'm sure it was nutricious--she is a vegetarian,) soup in the crock pot. she could hardly wait to eat the wonderful yumminess. i could tell, her mouth was watering. i looked at her and said, "that's how i feel about my frozen hot pockets." i'm not sure she even knows what a hot pocket is!

my plan, when we move, is to cook more often. even though i hate it. because the truth is, i am getting a little tired of rubio's...

and yet, my plans are not always successful. i've been planning to exercise regularly for the last ten years! i think about it, i prepare to do it, i talk about it, but i still find myself sitting on the couch instead of pumping iron.

i am an excellent planner, but a mediocre implementer--as is evidenced by my plan not to blog in march. because here it is, march 7th, and what am i doing??

i am writing a blog.

so maybe i will actually cook more often after we move. maybe i will actually use my pilates machine a few times a week.

maybe pigs will fly...

;-)

home again, home again...

so today . . . we are home. from las vegas. i am sooooo tired. and there is laundry... so much laundry...

i sort of blogged in my head today as we came home, but now i am just too tired to write it all down. instead, i am going to bed. usually i choose blogging over sleep, but not tonight. tonight sleep wins.

maybe tomorrow i will blog about today. or maybe i will write the wrap-up blog to our little adventure. because there were some things that happened that didn't make it into the other blogs--not because they weren't funny, but because they would have hijacked the purpose of the blog...

yes my blogs have a purpose!! i don't just sit down and ramble on about my day!!! i know that sometimes (like now :) ) it might seem like i do, but i don't. every day i leave stuff out that doesn't fit in. surprised to hear that, are you?? well, it is true.

although now i am rambling. that is what happens when i am so tired that the thought of walking up to get into bed is almost too much to contemplate.

almost...

alert!! possibly whiny blog ahead!

so today . . . my house is a mess. i have laundry to do. i have a bag full of school work. i have music to work on. and cds to burn (oh, diandra is going to kill me when she realizes i am so far behind...) i'm so very tired. and i have no weekend...

well, actually there is a weekend, but it is full of obligations--that means events i have to attend and things i have to do that i don't necessarily want to do. these are all things i agreed to, which means at some point i wanted to do them. but that was a few weeks ago when i didn't realize what my last couple of weeks were going to be like...

when i am out of the house as much as i have been these last few weeks, i find that i am only home long enough to make a mess. rollie doesn't understand how this happens. that is because he never makes a mess--or rather, he never leaves a mess. but sometimes i am just too tired to put my stuff away--usually because it requires decisions to be made, and when i am tired, my brain leaves me to fend for myself...

what i find odd, is that at school i am uber-organized--which is why i have been working until 5:00 or 6:00 almost every night, trying to get my new room put together! i know where everything is, and i put things away as soon as we are done with them. it has to be that way in order for me to function. unless i want my class to resemble a pinball machine with 14 balls pinging around, i have to be able to put my hands on stuff immediately--i can't turn my back and go looking for something or chaos will erupt behind me. i know this. i have seen it happen.

but then when i get home, i sort of go on auto-pilot. i see things that i should do, but when i assess my energy level and brain functioning, i usually decide to just leave it until another day--a day when surely my neurons will be firing. (i sound like annie--"tomorrow... tomorrow...") and since i have been practically living at school for the last three weeks, i am waaaay behind at home. and now i have school work to do. and worship band music to arrange. and blogging. and it is already friday night. and i am tired.

so i am giving up, at least for now. there is no way i am going to get everything done this weekend. no. way. and thinking that i can start out next week all fresh and orderly is just going to discourage me when monday rolls around and reality rears it's ugly head.

so, giving up. i don't think i've ever actually done that before. i am always thinking, "well maybe..." or "if i just tried..." but that is exhausting! i'm not giving up for good, though--then i would just be dead! but i think for this weekend, i give up. i surrender. i quit.

except for the laundry...

moving. AGAIN!!!

so today . . . i am tired. i am sore. i have no brain.

i have lived at school since wednesday. i worked thirteen hours on wednesday and thursday with just short food breaks, and today i worked eleven hours. my feet are killing me...

why, you ask?? because we found out just a couple of days before school was starting that some of us had to switch classrooms. and if you are a teacher, or know a teacher, you know how much stuff we tend to accumulate. so moving has been no small feat!

this is the third year in a row i have had to move to a different classroom! and the last two times, circumstances dictated that i could not move all of my things. which was a pain, because i had to choose which materials i really, really needed and leave the others. so i took the more useful ones and left the more fun ones--not really the way i prefer to teach, but it's just the way things had to be. but this time, i was able to move ALL of my stuff. i'm excited to have easy access to more puzzles and games and toys. as i was moving stuff, it was almost like christmas! ("oooo, i forgot i had this!" ) but it was a huge job to accomplish in a short amount of time, while also trying to keep my classroom functioning and training a new assistant...

i am so tired, i cannot talk at the same time i am doing anything else! really!! my brain cannot seem to process language while i am thinking about what i am doing. this morning i was just standing in the kitchen, trying to figure out how to get cream cheese onto my bagel at the same time i was trying to talk to rollie, and not doing either one successfully! rollie finally said, "just talk--i'll fix the bagel." and he did.

i got to school, faced with what i hoped would be my last day of moving AND teaching a new class of 12 little dumplings, and was soon immobilized by the enormity of the task. i just stood there and looked at the half-filled cabinets and the tables stacked with puzzles and toys and books and art supplies. i couldn't organize my thoughts as to where to put anything! so i did the only thing i could do... i drank a diet coke.

i came home about 7:00 tonight, dropped my aching body onto the couch, and wondered how i would get up. i plugged in my computer (because i haven't been on the internet since my lunch time on wednesday!!!) and tried to catch up on my internet activities, but my brain is oatmeal...

so i am going to bed. and i am going to sleep, sleep, sleep for three days. i will probably not blog--unless something really funny happens. but what could happen to me if all i do is sleep??? probably not much...

so have a great three day weekend, and i'll be back next week--hopefully with cute stories from my new favorite kids!

vacation: day 1

so today . . . my vacation began, and i am soooo tired! too tired to blog, actually. but the computer was on, and i heard these words in my head, in this sort of low pitched, echo-y voice: "VACATION--DAY 1." so i guess i am going to be writing about my vacation . . .

but not tonight. i started to do it, but my eyes will not stay open another minute . . .

sooooo tired. oh look, a gnome . . .

so today . . . was technically my first day of summer vacation. i say technically, because i actually went in to work this morning.

last week was jam-packed with end of the year activities. monday was totally dedicated to graduation practice, complete with tiny little pink, blue, or purple graduation gowns and hats (yes, i am rolling my eyes.) tuesday was a total loss, because the kids were all excited about graduation that night. wednesday was field trip day, and thursday and friday were busy days of cleaning and closing down the classroom. so by friday, i was pretty tired.

and then it was the weekend. i would have liked to spend it recuperating from my week, but that was not the way it went down. friday night was movie night at the church, saturday was consumed by diandra's birthday activities, and sunday was church and then father's day activities. it was a lot of fun, but by sunday night, i was totalled! if a mac truck had rolled over me, it would have been an improvement.

and THEN, today i had to get up even earlier than usual, because in a weak moment i had said i would substitute for summer camp, which meant getting to school by 7:30 this morning!! after working harder than i had planned to for almost six hours, i came home and drove diandra (who is kind of sick today,) to the post office and then the ups store.

after that, my plan was to take a nap, but it never happened.

and here it is 11:00 at night, and i am still awake. and blogging. which is proof that it is actually my summer vacation, even though i got up early and went to work. i figure i can sleep until lunch time tomorrow, if necessary . . .

rollie had the sense to go to bed a couple of hours ago. i am still up, because even though i am too tired to go to bed, diandra and i are watching tv and doing computer stuff, and i am wishing for barbeque lay's potato chips. we decided to take a short break so that diandra could move her car into the driveway--thus thwarting the parking police--and i could go to the kitchen in search of salty snack food.

i know there are no potato chips in the kitchen, but i went to look anyway. i thought nuts might be an ok alternative, but i know we don't have any nuts either, and yet still i opened the nut container to look. (i am thinking it might be time for a trip to costco.) as it turns out, it was my lucky day! i found two almonds . . .

when diandra came back into the house, she had a package. we looove packages at our house. in fact, i have decided that is why i buy stuff from shopping tv--just so i can get packages in the mail! however, i figured this package was for rollie, because the return address said angels baseball. but as diandra pointed out, it was addressed to occupant. we decided that meant US! so we opened it. and this is what we saw peeking out of the end of the mailer . . ."a garden gnome?" diandra said. well, that is what it said on the box top, but it seemed too good to be true. we pulled the box all the way out of the package, and it sure looked like the angels had sent us one of their garden gnomes.i noticed the date on the box was from a few weeks ago. in fact, now that i think about it, we had tickets for that game but were unable to attend. so perhaps not too many people went to angels stadium on garden gnome night. i don't know why--a garden gnome seems much more useful than some of the stuff they give away . . . but did they really send out garden gnomes to everyone in orange county? or were we just one of the lucky few?

we opened the box, and there he was--the coveted angels garden gnome! diandra picked him up and looked him over. she handed him to me, and said, "i'll bet you could get high from sniffing him." (did i mention how late it is and how tired we are and that she is kind of sick today?!?) so of course, i had to sniff him. let's just say that i am fairly certain he is made from some sort of petroleum product, because he does have a distinct odor--which will hopefully dissipate now that we have released him from his box . . .and i know he looks a little scary, but that is what happens when a flash goes off inches from a person's (or gnome's) eyes. we decided it was good we had opened the package, because we were way more excited about this little guy than rollie would have been. i am sure that in a few years he is going to be valuable, because we are keeping him inside. i'll bet lots of garden gnome recipients will put their gnomes right out into their gardens--where they will fade and crack and eventually end up in the trash. but not us. we will treasure him right along with the rest of our sports memoribilia.

which has nothing to do with my extreme tiredness, except it gave me something to blog about, which is why it is now after midnight and i am still not asleep!

blast the angels and their garden gnomes . . .

**whiny blog alert**

so today . . . i cannot blog. i keep trying, but nothing is funny.

here's the thing. i've been going nearly non-stop for the last two weeks. my brain has been full of everything that needed to happen before our big event at church last week. there were lists to make, emails to send, sessions to write (i spoke four times during the weekend,) and a voice to protect, as i was also leading the music. usually i am not responsible for so much, but this time there were circumstances.

then, i missed two days of work so i could attend pastors retreat with rollie. that sounds restful, doesn't it? but it really isn't, although i did sneak in a nap one day. i returned to work on wednesday, only to find that the substitute on tuesday didn't do any of the work i left for the kids to complete--which might not have been such a big deal, but i spent a lot of time preparing those materials and this is a short week anyway because of our "harvest festival" on friday. so that made me feel lethal. really lethal. i was "mean" teacher miss julie on wednesday. not to mention, i am still coughing which is affecting my ability to get a good night's sleep, so i am tired too.

all of which results in my lack of a blog today. nothing is funny. i feel tired and a little congested and did i mention I'M STILL COUGHING--even though i have been on medication for a week.

but i am no longer lethal, or even really cranky--mostly just tired. today i was back to my usual "mostly nice, but you'd still better follow the rules" teacher miss julie. i spent more time talking to kids, but we just had normal interactions, nothing funny. or maybe there were funny things and i just missed them . . . either way, it was a much better day. just not funny.

i wasn't going to blog--i hate it when my blog is whiny! but today it was a whiny blog or no blog, and since i haven't posted in a week, i needed to get something up! so whiny it is . . .

and now my nyquil is kicking in. my mom told me to take it. she said it would help me sleep. i'm sure that is true, because i can barely keep my eyes open--i only hope i can wake up in the morning . . .

anyway, don't hold your breath for blogs throughout the weekend. i think i am going to spend some serious time in bed or bundled up on the couch, trying to get well. but that won't expose me to much blogging material, so it may be a quiet weekend. hopefully by monday, i'll be back up and running again, random thoughts flowing from my brain and out my fingertips . . .